Tim Bowling - The Tinsmith

But he did not think in terms of armies and battles: the cries of the wounded circled his legs and threatened to pull him down, for they were cries that contained the same suffering he had witnessed in Daney and Caleb and their children. Except, in the case of these fallen soldiers, he could still do something.

So he walked the body-strewn battlefield, picking up the wounded, one after another, and taking them to the hospitals, the barns, and houses on the neighbouring Mumma and Roulette farms that had been converted for that purpose. His fear had gone. He did not feel like a fugitive slave anymore, he did not tense, waiting for the baying of a bloodhound or the shouts of a patrol. He had been through that terror. The battlefield was almost a relief, or it would have been if not for Orlett. But where was he? A black from another farm said that the overseer had not left when the battle threatened, that he was too greedy and too drunk to leave his property unprotected. So where was he?

John cradled the wounded white men and watched out for the overseer. From the bodies of the dead he took whatever food and drink he could find. When soldiers approached, he either lay low or sought to blend in. The soldiers, however, took little notice of him; most were searching the battlefield themselves or were limping away from the front lines.

Hours passed quickly. By nightfall, he had returned to the master’s house, to the elaborately carved veranda running along every side of it and to the large dormered windows and turreted roof. Inside, the house seemed even emptier than before, the darkness having swallowed what shreds were left of the finest furnishings—a bunched bit of velvet drapery like a puddle of blood. If the overseer had sought to protect his property, he had failed. But then it occurred to John in a flash what the “property” referred to. He decided to search the shacks.

The battle sounds had ceased. Only the occasional crack of a picket’s rifle echoed over the stillness. Across the fields he could see the flickering lights of the hospitals. The wounded would be many, and he had to fight off the urge to help. It wasn’t that he cared so much for the soldiers; it was because they were Daney’s army, his army too. Their survival and eventual triumph were the black man’s. That was why so many blacks had attached themselves to the federal troops and why he was able to blend in with the contrabands through most of Maryland. It was also why he could slip away for his own purposes and assume the guise of a soldier. In the chaos of battle, he knew he had his chance. But he also knew that chance wouldn’t last long.

The shacks were empty, stripped of their meagre tin utensils and homemade wooden furniture. He stood in Caleb’s and felt the strange acceleration of time—how quickly the world had changed. The air around him even seemed cleared, as if a whirlwind had passed through. Yet the longer he stood there, the more the shack refilled with its recent miseries. As soon as he remembered Orlett’s grin again and heard the unbuckling of his belt and heard his grunts and Jancey’s cries, John hurried on.

Back at the master’s house, he realized that he had not made a thorough search of it from top to bottom. The instant he started down the cellar stairs, he heard the low thumping. It was very faint, and he might have ignored it if he had not known the house so well. Behind a false wall, down a short flight of stone steps, he found a thick oak door chained and padlocked. A hectic search of the cellar uncovered nothing that would help, so he left the house at a run and entered the barn. There he found an axe and hurried back to the cellar.

He put all of his hatred for the overseer into his axe swings. But the last year and a half had taken its toll. Overworked and underfed, almost starved on his run from the rice plantation, he had only begun to regain his strength once he’d joined up with the federal troops. Now his arms weakened as the axe splintered the wood. With each pause, he listened to hear if his actions had brought others to the house.

But it remained silent as the axe finally struck the decisive blow. John stooped through the jagged opening into a putrid, dirt-walled room with a low ceiling. The air stank of sweat and excrement. He heard breathing. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he made out the bodies sprawled on the dirt, their hands chained; some wore iron collars.

“Is you from de North?” a voice said weakly. Another croaked for water.

John noticed there seemed to be about a dozen bodies, all men. He quickly assured them that he was a friend as he tipped his canteen into several mouths. At the fifth mouth, he drew back, shocked by the loose-skinned, almost toothless old face. John dropped the canteen, spilling the water. It was Caleb.

He reached for the canteen as he spoke the old man’s name.

“Who is dat knows me?”

He moved closer, on his knees.

“It’s John.”

“John?”

Caleb’s eyes moved slowly, like flies in blood.

“Yes, it’s John. I’ve come back.”

Slowly the thin arms lifted their chains, then dropped them again.

John placed the canteen to the split lips and tilted it. The water trickled down the grizzled chin. Caleb’s Adam’s apple worked rapidly. He mouthed her name and John could not speak. The others groaned for water. He crawled away with the canteen.

“I’ll have to fill it at the cistern,” he said. “I’ll be back directly.”

Outside he leaned against the house, panting. Caleb was alive. The overseer’s brutality opened inside John like a raw wound. He saw the grinning face clearly as a harvest moon, felt the searing iron on his cheek. The taste of blood filled his mouth.

Back in the dirt room, he lied, as he knew he must. He told Caleb that Daney and his children were sold to a plantation in Alabama, that they were all together. The old man closed his eyes and said nothing. There was no point in lying to a clever man like Caleb, but John could not bring himself to speak the truth. Not yet. He asked about the overseer. Caleb said he was worse than ever, crazed with spirits. That he’d taken over the farm when the master had died—over two years ago, a few months after the trader had taken them away—and had sold most of the other blacks, replacing them with blacks from the Deep South who could hardly speak a word of English. When the federal army entered Maryland, the overseer left Cray, the mulatto, and several other vicious white men in charge, and disappeared for long stretches. Some said he was a spy for the Confederates. Some said he was a soul driver himself, that he made his living that way because he sure didn’t work the farm.

“But where’s he now?” John said. “And why are there no women here?”

“Dey somewhere near. Dey his living and his pleasure too, him and Cray together. Dey no more dan two devils. Cray? Oh, he’s jes as bad. I don’t think he b’lieves he’s coloured at all. He b’lieves he goin to git de overseer’s place once he done drink hisself into de grave.”

“But where are they? Where are they?”

Caleb sighed and dropped his head to his chest.

“What you gwan to do? Dey ain’t no point in it now.”

“I’m going to see that they don’t hurt anyone again.”

“But dey two devils, you hear? Dey evil and dey know how to stay alive.”

“I’ve come here to kill him,” John said, “and I can kill the other too. Why else would I come? He said you were dead. I believed you were dead.”

“Den Daney and de chillen thought so?”

“Yes.”

Caleb’s tears filled his deep wrinkles. For several minutes he did not speak. At last he raised his bleary eyes and fixed them on John. A flicker of triumph touched his face.

“Jancey knows different. I got word to her.”