Ishmael Reed - Flight to Canada

Raven felt woozy. The night before, flying down to Washington, he had shared a little ale in one of the taverns down on Vesey Street frequented by the anti-slavery, or “free,” crowd. He hadn’t gotten much sleep.

He clutched his stomach where the pain grabbed him. He began to sweat all over. It must have been the rich lunch they had thrown for the visiting “scribes,” as they called them. He was never too hot on French food. He could even eat slave-ship food: salt beef, pork, dried peas, weevily biscuits. But French food always made him sick.

Lincoln’s wife Mary was wandering about the room. She was dressed in a white satin evening gown trimmed with black lace. Some military man was escorting her. She shook hands with writers coolly. Todd Lincoln tapped him on the shoulder. It was Todd Lincoln. Rumor had it that he was a bigger lush than his old man.

“Anything wrong, Mr. Quickskill?”

“Oh, nothing, Mr. Lincoln, I …”

“You know, I enjoyed the poem ‘Flight to Canada.’ You really laid that Swille planter out. Such wit. Such irony. You’re a national institution.”

“I … I …” He was about to collapse.

“Something is wrong?” Todd hurried over to where Lincoln was discussing something with Mathew Brady and whispered in his ear. They looked over his way. He was trying not to make a scene. Lincoln said something back. Todd returned to Quickskill.

“Dad said you could lie down in his bedroom. He never uses it anyway.”

“You mean the Lincoln bedroom?”

“Sure, think nothing of it.”

IT WAS SIPPING FROM a glass of wine and listening to the radio. Some new group with a fife, drum, flute. A lot of snare — rap-a-tap tap. Nice. It puts the glass back on the rosewood rococo-revival table. It is lying in the bed that matches the table. It feels better, and now its head is swimming, not from the sickness, which has left, but from the occasion. It is lying in the President’s bed, just as in “Flight to Canada” it bragged about lying in Swille’s bed. The poem had gotten it here. The poem had placed it in this place of majesty, of the great, talking and drinking with the creative celebrities of the country.

The poem had also pointed to where it, 40s, Stray Leechfield were hiding. Did that make the poem a squealer? A tattler? What else did this poem have in mind for it. Its creation, but in a sense, Swille’s bloodhound.

It put its hands behind its head and was lying in the soft pillows and clean sheets. There was a noise in the hall. It heard one man talking loud, and the other in a high-pitched squeaky voice — the President.

“But you told me that I ought to get some culture, and so I decided to try to win over the intellectuals in the Eastern establishment who’ve constantly written Op-eds about my lack of style; now that some of them are here, they are commenting on the beauty of my prose, in between drinks. That’s a favorable sign, don’t you think?”

“I don’t care, Lanky,” Swille said. “That shine is my property. I paid good money for him, and you yourself, you said …”

“I know, I know. But, Mr. Swille, if you bag him, would you mind carrying him out the back way? If it reaches the newspapers that a fugitive was taken from the very White House, the Radical Republicans, the Abolitionists and the anti-slavery people will call for my impeachment.”

Quickskill rubbed his eyes. He hadn’t returned to the house for fear of running into the Tracers. He took a sparsely furnished apartment in the Manumit Inn. His bed was a bunk with institution sheets and blankets. That was some dream. The dream was accurate, too, for those who could read dreams. Three years since the Emancipation Proclamation, and it wasn’t doing him any good. Swille was an empire unto himself, the Uncrowned King of America, as they were beginning to call him. Swille’s law, that’s what the Nebraska Tracers cared about. Swille wasn’t in the international editions of the Tribune. In fact, Swille wasn’t in the newspapers much at all any more, since Lincoln had proclaimed Emancipation. Rumors were coming from behind the huge sinister walls of Swille’s Castle that the old man had cursed Lincoln’s name and was said to be acting in an “inappropriate manner.”

People didn’t know whether Ms. Swille was dead or alive.

The South was in shambles after Sherman’s march. Sherman said that he would “make Georgia howl,” and Georgia had howled indeed. The only people Quickskill could convince that Swille was after him were 40s and Leechfield. Leechfield seemed flippant about the matter. Did he actually believe that Swille would accept money from him?

Quickskill went to the window. He didn’t see any Southern license plates on the cars. Maybe it was safe. They seemed like gentlemen, but what would they do next? He’d heard of fugitive slaves put in trunks, sacks, in the back of wagons, blindfolded, gagged as they were returned to their Masters. Some were put on trains and others were brought back in elegant buggies in which the slaves were entrapped. Watch out for elegant buggies.

The South is strange. Some of the slaves are leaving the plantations, and some do not desire to leave at all. They are even following the Mistress from town to town. Strange indeed. A mystery.

Quickskill turns on the radio. That Union station in nearby Detroit is playing some patriotic music. It couldn’t have been a Union band. The Confederate bands sounded snappy, tight, measured, and played with precision. They were playing this song called “Dixie” with the strange lyrics. The Union bands were rag-taggle.

He dressed and went to the neighborhood of the house he was watching. There weren’t any cars in front. He put his collars up about him and walked past the house. Nobody was inside. He went up to the porch, picked up the mail, which was always marked Forward Please, it seemed. There was some junk mail and another letter on some stationary made of expensive cloth. It was from Beulahland Review. He had sent in a poem; but that was three years ago. They wrote they were going to publish his poem, just as the Nebraska Tracers had said. Hey, they didn’t tell him all of it. Two hundred dollars. Two hundred dollars! He could go to Canada. He leaped into the air, throwing his hand behind his head, clutching the letter. Gooooodddd Daaannnngggg! Goooddddd Leeeeee. He was going to CANADA.

Back at Manumit Inn he was lying in bed, daydreaming about himself and some fine suffragette dining on a terrace of a hotel, gazing at the American Falls, and he was about to say, “You’re the most beautiful fan I’ve run into.” The phone rang. He picked it up.

“Quickskill?” It was Carpenter. He recognized the voice. Carpenter built red barns and log cabins.

“Yeah, Carpenter. How did you know I was here …?”

“These two dudes from Nebraska was at your house, and they said you’d gone to the john and didn’t come back. They said they’d figured you’d be at the Manumit Hotel and asked me to tell you not to make things difficult. What did they mean by that?”

“Skip it, Carpenter. What’s up?”

“I’m going to Canada, so I thought I’d throw a little jubilee party.”

“You too? My poem, I won a poem, I mean my poem is being published. They’re going to give me two hundred dollars. Soon as I get the check, I’m leaving.”

“Great! Maybe I’ll see you there. I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Maybe so.”

“Well, be sure to come to my party. We begin at about seven.”

“I’ll be there.” He hung up. Carpenter could go and come back. He was a free Negro, and had been free for some years. He had what they called a “viable” trade. He had bought the freedom of his mother and his wife. Free. Quickskill thought about it. A freedom writer, never again threatened with “Ginny.” His poems were “readings” for him from his inner self, which knew more about his future than he did.