Ishmael Reed - Flight to Canada

While others had their tarot cards, their ouija boards, their I–Ching, their cowrie shells, he had his “writings.” They were his bows and arrows. He was so much against slavery that he had begun to include prose and poetry in the same book, so that there would be no arbitrary boundaries between them. He preferred Canada to slavery, whether Canada was exile, death, art, liberation, or a woman. Each man to his own Canada. There was much avian imagery in the poetry of slaves. Poetry about dreams and flight. They wanted to cross that Black Rock Ferry to freedom even though they had different notions as to what freedom was.

They often disagreed about it, Leechfield, 40s. But it was his writing that got him to Canada. “Flight to Canada” was responsible for getting him to Canada. And so for him, freedom was his writing. His writing was his HooDoo. Others had their way of HooDoo, but his was his writing. It fascinated him, it possessed him; his typewriter was his drum he danced to.

CARPENTER NOTICED HIM AS soon as he entered the house. He left the circle of guests around him and ran up to Quickskill.

“Man, I can’t wait. I’m going to hit all the spots in Toronto. I got this fine suite reserved for me in the King Edward Hotel. It’s advertised in The New York Times. ‘A Gracious Tradition’ it says in the ad. I’m going to get me a good night’s sleep and get up and order me some breakfast. I’m going to have me some golden pancakes and maple syrup, bacon, sausage, ham — I’m going to have all three. Then I’m going to have some marmalade and a big old glass of grapefruit juice. That’s how I’m going to start out. Then I’m going to take in the sights. Up there the Plantation House is just something on display at the Toronto Museum. Don’t have to worry about who’s my friend and who’s my enemy, like it is here. Anybody might turn out to be crazy, I’m always mistaken for a fugitive sl — I … I …”

“That’s all right, Carpenter. You know, I’ll be joining you soon.”

“When you coming up?”

“Soon as I receive the check from the magazine.”

“Man, I’m glad. I didn’t know that writing paid.”

“Yeah, well …”

“Hey, Quickskill, I did a poem once. Maybe you’d look at it. It’s not as professional as your work but maybe you can introduce me to one of them big-time editors and …”

“I’m busy right now. Maybe when I get to Canada, maybe then.”

“Yeah, sure, Quickskill. There’s plenty of time. Think I might crowd out your gig, huh, Quickskill?”

“Sure, Carpenter, sure.” Quickskill managed a weak smile. There was always an air of condescension in the way free slaves related to fugitive slaves. Especially the ones from Louisiana. He was never able to figure that out. The slavemasters in Louisiana often freed their sons by African women. Some of these children became slave owners themselves. But some of them in Emancipation, seeing that there was some money to be made in anti-slavery lecturing, often mounted the platform and talked about their treatment from hickory whips, lashes made of rawhide strands, so convincingly, it was difficult to tell the real sufferers from the phony ones. Carpenter wasn’t like that, though. He had a trade. He could find work anywhere.

“Look, Quickskill,” Carpenter said from that round face which exuded warmth and friendship, “come on in and make yourself comfortable. What did you bring?”

“I brought some Paul Lawrence Dunbar cuisine.”

“Out-of-sight, man. Take it into the kitchen.”

Carpenter returned to his guests. Quickskill entered the parlor in Carpenter’s shotgun house.

They were playing some kind of old-style Spanish dance; the women were wearing flowers behind their ears and doing fancy dips and turns, while the old men wore their mellow California hats, slanted. There was some bending back and some elegant freezes going on; weaving of invisible nets with fingers. Some of the local Native American poets were there too, standing in a huddle, drinking Coke. In the dining room men were standing around a table, smoking cigars and discussing the Emancipation.

They began to smile when they spotted Quickskill laying down his contribution to the slave food that was on the table. Dunbar food: wheat bread, egg pone, hog jaws, roasted shoat, ham sliced cold. He had brought some Beaujolais, which he placed down next to the dishes of meat, fish and the variety of salad with Plantation dressing. Somebody else had brought John Brown à la carte — boiled beef, cabbage, pork and beans. The bottles of champagne looked chilled and ready to pop their tops.

He returned to the main room, where the guests were dancing. Leechfield was in the middle of the room doing a mean Walk-Around with this long-legged stack of giggles, who was dancing around like a tranquilized ostrich. Quickskill recognized her as the Abolitionist principal of the Free High School. Due to her New England Abolitionist ideas about education, some of the slave children had become, under her influence, surly and unmanageable, wouldn’t mind their parents and referred to themselves as the future; 1900s people, they were calling themselves. Leechfield, a little grey in his beard and with those squint devilish eyes, was enjoying himself. He hopped into Chicken Wings and ended it up with some dance they were doing called the Copperhead. His partner was trying to keep up, bouncing about and moving her bony elbows like a mutant ape.

The front door opened, admitting a new guest: Princess Quaw Quaw Tralaralara. She was the frontier dancer, an accurate-shooting, limb-wriggling desperado; tear a man’s nose off. She could put the palms of her feet on the top of your bush, so limber was she. She was extremely good doing limber things. She wore Western boots, denims. She recognized Quickskill and began that smile that made you feel that the top of your brain pan was coming off. You could put the tip of your tongue along the roof of her mouth and feel like Pinocchio inside some soft whale, spouting and leaping in the Atlantic. She could stand ten feet away from you and make you feel that she was all over you. She was a real mountain climber. She was popular on the college circuit, performing Indian dances.

She approached him, hips moving like those of a woman who swims fifty laps a day and subsists on bananas and yogurt. “Quickskill,” she said, in one of her Anglicized sentences, “it’s so nice to see you. It’s been such a long time. Fort Thunderbird?”

Fort Thunderbird was where the fugitive slaves obtained their Emancipation papers as soon as they arrived in Emancipation City. It was a complex of buildings called “Jack’s Plaza,” built by her husband, Yankee Jack the pirate, or rather consultant on trade routes and compiler of shipping logs, as his business card read. He was somewhat of a hero in these parts because of his condemnation of those pirates who pirated human cargo. He was even more indignant over the fact that they kept bogus logs so as to deceive the British Navy. He considered them to be untidy. He was a respectable pirate, and so he only dealt in things like distribution, abandoning taking over trade routes and shanghaiing ships as crude. He also dabbled in jewels, gold and real estate.

He was dedicating his life to building Emancipation City, a refuge for slaves, Indians and those who committed heinous acts because society made them do it. This Wordsworth reader, connoisseur of good wines, good theatre, good art and other finer things of life was known around these parts as the Good Pirate. And when he took as his bride Quaw Quaw, cultured performer of Ethnic Dance, finer than Pocahontas, sturdy as the Maid of the Mist — actually married this Third World belle, since heathen women were available to pirates under any condition the pirate wanted — when he actually put a ring on her finger, there was a celebration for days. Neighboring tribes attended. And when his church objected to this marriage between a Christian and an Infidel, he closed the church down, so to this day there’s no church in Emancipation City, just various temples of different religions where people wander in and out. Some are near the city parks, others right downtown. He was a worldly pirate, but Raven Quickskill had learned how to read between the lines in his job of preparing slave invoices. He had something on this pirate. Something … something awful! Something everybody knew but Quaw Quaw. No one had the heart to tell her. Quickskill had written an unpublished poem about it. A rare “serious” love poem for him.