Charles Johnson - Soulcatcher - And other stories

Malawi did not let go. He tried to lift his brother, slipping his arms under Oboto's shoulders, but found him too heavy. The phantom watched him struggle for a moment, then took Oboto by his feet, and together they carried the body onto the deck, with Malawi still singing his people's funeral songs. They stepped to the rail, Malawi blinking back tears by then, the edges of his eyes feeling blurred. Then he and the phantom swung his brother overboard, dropping him into wind-churned waters. Instantly, Oboto disappeared beneath the roily waves. For a few seconds Malawi's heart felt so still he wondered if he might be dead, too, then involuntarily the words he'd learned came flooding back into his thoughts, and he knew there was much in him — beyond the reach of the ghosts — that was alive forever.

The phantom, his yellow hair flattened to his forehead by spray, was watching Malawi closely, listening to the lay on his lips. He was very quiet. Malawi stopped. The boy said, "Naw, go on. I don't understand what you're singing, but I like it. It's beautiful. I want to hear more… C'mon."

Malawi looked at him for a moment, unable to understand all his strange words. He glanced back down at the waters, thinking that Oboto's songs had only taken him so far. Just to before the time his village was raided. His people's chronicle was unfinished. New songs were needed. And these he must do. Hesitantly at first, and then with a little more confidence, he began weaving the events since his and Oboto's capture onto the last threads his brother had given him.

Malawi sang and the phantom listened.

"Y'ALL WANT ME to sit there?" he said, nodding toward the barrel amiddlemost the old barn because his hands were tied behind his back. Tiberius was wearing a linen frock and red velvet waistcoat He was thin, clubfooted, and not too happy that the militiamen had brought him back to Colonel Hext's place after what he and the others had done to the old man's wife. But they hadn't killed him, as they'd done with fourteen of his co-conspirators — laying waste to them in a one-sided battle — and maybe, Tiberius thought, they'd let him live if he just did what they asked. He sat down heavily on the barrel, taking just a moment to glance round at the bins of grain, the lofts of hay and straw overhead, and the frail light shafting down from cracks in the roof to the spot where they'd placed him. "All right now, I'm sittin' down, just like you asked, but you don't have to push. What's that? want to know why I joined up with Jemmy?"

Tiberius looked down at his bare feet, took a long breath, then his eyes fluttered up at the three white men surrounding him. They were passing a flask of home brew between them. Of the trio he recognized two. Mr. Hutchenson, owner of the general store in Stono. Tiberius placed his age at forty. Forty-five. He wore a pair of riding boots and a tattered balandranas. His eyes were a bit red-webbed from the whiskey, his chestnut hair was thinning, and Hutchenson looked at him with a profound sadness, or so Tiberius thought. He'd ran errands for his Bathurst family since he was a boy, and prayed that Hutchenson, if no one else, would understand how his life had been turned upside down in the last twenty-four hours — or, more precisely, since the king of Spain promised to shelter and protect runaway Negroes if they made it to Augustine. The other man he knew was Ethan Whittaker, an overseer with a gray Cathedral beard, who worked on the farm of Tiberius's master, William Boswell, and Tiberius was more than a little afraid of him, seeing how ruthlessly the heavyset Whittaker drove blacks at planting time; he was drumming a short-handled whip over and over against his palm. The last man — Ethan called him Colonel Bull — was dressed in a travel-stained coat and had a double-barreled gun loaded with buckshot hitched under his arm. He had the air of a parson or maybe a politician, somebody important at least, but Tiberius'd never seen him before — or had he? — so when he spoke, staring up at the three men standing over him, he directed his words at Hutchenson.

"Sir, you know me. I ain't never been one for trouble, or for fightin', or steppin' out of line in any way. Ain't that so? I was born right here, not like Jemmy and them others who come from Africa. I played with your children when we was growin' up. You remember that? I don't know nothin' but here. And I always been thankful Mastah Boswell let me work in the house, seeing how I can't get around too well. You ask him, he'll tell you what a good worker I am. I'm always hup before anybody at the house, even before the daylight horn is blown to wake hup the field hands. It takes me time to walk from the quarters, but I'm there before Mastah Boswell, wearin' his Beard box, gets outta that big bed with its pewterized nickel headboard. See, I'm the one lays out every day his razors imported from England — he likes a different one every morning, you know? I lays out his linen shirt with lawn ruffles on the sleeves, his cravat, and breeches. If it's cold, I'm the one lights the fireplace downstairs, and I carries coal in a pan to all the other fireplaces upstairs and down — it stays colder in them second-floor rooms than downstairs, you know. And it's me makes sure Mastah Boswell's breakfast is just like he wants it. Toast with a li'l flavor of woodsmoke in it. And he likes his coffee roasted and ground no more'n two hours before I serves it to him. His wife, well, she favors egg bread, grilled fowl, bricks of cheese, and fish from New Orleans, along with ice water and mint tea in the morning. You ask them if I don't make that old cook Emma have everything just so on the table, with the pewter bowls and plates set out right pretty, before the mastah and missus come downstairs."

He saw Hutchenson nodding. He'd eaten more than once at Boswell's home, knew how much effort went into preparing those elaborate meals, and Tiberius felt consoled by the slight upturn at the corner of his lips. "I've always done my best by 'em, and read my Bible like they wanted. You know, just between you'n me, some folks in the quarters didn't like me much 'cause I worked in the house. I told 'em it was on account of my affliction that Mastah Boswell didn't send me to the fields. But that didn't change their minds. They still thought I had it easier than they did. I swear, sometimes I felt like I was livin' in two worlds, just 'cause I worked in the house. On Sunday, the day y'all give us to ourselves, I'd bring food the mastah and missus didn't eat over to that spot near the general store where coloreds get together to talk and dance and such. If Mastah Boswell complained to his wife 'bout one of the field hands, I'd take that fellah aside and tell him what I heard so Mistah Whittaker there wouldn't wind up havin' to whip him. What's that? How'd I meet Jemmy? Yessir, all right. I'll talk about that. Just let me collect my thoughts a li'l…"

The white men waited. Tiberius, facing the open barn door, could see other Carolina militiamen bringing their bound captives to Hext's farm. The sky above Colleton County was fast losing light. He found it hard to swallow, but cleared his throat, licked his dry lips, and went on:

"I reckon Jemmy come to St Paul's Parish 'bout a year ago, him and a wagonload of other saltwater Negroes. That's what we call them come straight from Africa. I don't know who his mastah is. At first I didn't pay them no mind when I seen them on Sundays at the gatherin' place. I couldn't talk to most of them, they bein' from Angola and all. They couldn't read or figure. Jemmy, he spoke better English than them others. I guess what they talked was Portuguese. It sounds a li'l bit like Spanish, don't it? Thing is, there was somethin' 'bout Jemmy that was… different. Oh no, I'm not just talkin' 'bout the way Jemmy looked. They was all big, strappin' boys. Jemmy stood six feet five. You got to figure they had to be strong 'cause workin' rice broke so many people down. Visit any of the quarters, and you'll find somebody got malaria. Cholera. Whooping cough. The children keep intestinal worms. So, yessir, Jemmy, he was fit. But more'n that, he had somethin'… inside. You could see it in his eyes. The way he looked right through you. If I recollect rightly, them Angolans was workin' on a road crew round the time we heard about the Spanish king's proclamation. That was last Sunday. Della, she took a newspaper from Mastah Boswell's study, and Jemmy asked me to read it, which I did, tellin' 'em 'bout how slaves who fled to the Presidio at St. Augustine, Florida, was free. Jemmy listened real close when I read that newspaper. His eyes got real quiet. Then he told the others what I said in Portuguese. Just 'bout that time, Mistah Whittaker, you come out of Mistah Hutchenson's store, seen what we was doin', and ripped that paper right outta my hands. Jemmy snatched it back. And him doin' that liked to make you so mad" — Tiberius laughed, then caught himself—"you commenced to beatin' on him with a harness strap. I ain't never seen you so wild. But Jemmy took it straight up without makin' a sound. Didn't take his eyes off you either or move until finally you was all sweaty and breathin' hard and tuckered out, and just threw down that strap and rode off. You remember that last Sunday?"