Ishmael Reed - Flight to Canada

He shook his head. “I didn’t come all this way to turn back, Quaw Quaw. ‘Once you start out for a place, there’s no turning back’ is an old HooDoo saying. I mean, Quaw Quaw, I’ve been looking forward to this all my life. Ever since I was a kid, the old people talked about Canada. I have to have my Canada. Quaw Quaw, I’m going to go if it means swimming across,” he said, pointing in the direction of the lights of Niagara Falls, Ontario, across the Niagara.

“All right,” Quaw Quaw said. “I’ll come too.”

Jack laughs. “Okay, go with him. Be pursued by nigger-breakers, ‘paddies,’ Hays and Allen bloodhounds. Do you know that bloodhounds bite? They can eat five or six pounds of meat per day, and they’re not too particular about where it comes from, either. The woods are full of alligators and rattlesnakes. Panthers. That’s how your life will be. Afraid of the cop who stops you for speeding or running an intersection. Hiding in the bushes, depressed when the sky is overcast and you can’t see the North Star. Somebody always on your tail, and you know, Quaw Quaw, it’s hard to tell what you are.”

Quaw Quaw removes her hand from Quickskill’s and moves back a few bewildered steps.

“You’ve always complained about your lack of identity.” Jack goes on. “What do you think life with him will be like? They’d mistake you for a Negress of hazy origin. You’d have to scrub floors to keep him out of chains.”

“Stop,” Quaw Quaw says, placing her hands over her ears.

“Do you think it’ll be any different in Canada? The free population is getting too big. There have been incidents. Grave incidents. Students from the West Indies manhandled. Fugitives stoned. Canadian parents refusing to send their children to school with ‘coloreds.’ And have you ever heard of the Mounted Police? Vicious. After those huskies, you’d welcome the bloodhounds. Like wolves. They catch the flesh and won’t let go. They have mean habits. And don’t let the Prime Minister fool you. He may throw a Potlatch once in a while, but he’s still a white man. He sees himself as a white man in a white man’s country.”

“Race,” Quaw Quaw said. “Always race. You and Quickskill always boxing yourself in. What does race have to do with it? People are people.”

“Don’t listen to him, Quaw Quaw,” Raven cried. “Pirates have always undercut our dreams. Canada is beautiful. I hear that on some of the Canadian freeways trucks aren’t even allowed.”

Quaw Quaw walked to the table. She poured herself a glass of red wine.

Quickskill turned to Jack. “You try to worm your way out of all situations with your forked tongue. You and your graphs and your video charts that show your inventory immediately. It’s unearthly, the way you hold sway over the American sensibility. They see, read and listen to what you want them to read, see and listen to. You decide the top forty, the best-seller list and the Academy Awards. Breaking the legs of your rivals, making them offers they can’t refuse. Yes, you’ve moved up from looking for buried treasure of dubious value, Yankee Jack. Though I’m a fugitive slave, I’m still a better man than you. The hardships I’ve had to overcome. My mother sold down the river. My father broken for spitting into the overseer’s face. The whippings, the floggings.”

“That’s not what the revisionists are saying. Don’t forget, I read the New Republic. ”

“Revisionists. Quantitative historians. What does a computer know? Can a computer feel? Make love? Can a computer feel passion?” Quickskill tears off his shirt. “Look at those scars. Look at them! All you see is their fruit, but their roots run deep. The roots are in my soul. What does a fucking computer know about that?”

“Do I look like a hairdresser to you? I’m a real man. This arm. Do you see this arm?” the pirate says, pointing to where a real arm used to be. “What do you think caused that? The Indians got ahold of me. They cut off my arm.”

“You think that’s manly. Huh? You think that’s manly. One day I outwitted thirteen bloodhounds.”

“Preposterous.”

“I did. Thirteen bloodhounds. They had me up a tree.”

“That can’t be. I’ve studied the history of bloodhounds since the age of William the Conqueror, and that’s just a niggardly lie.”

“What did you say?”

“I said it’s just a niggardly lie.”

“Why, you—” Quickskill rushes around the desk and nabs the pirate, lifting him up.

They begin to struggle. The pirate delivers a stunning blow to Quickskill’s jaw. Quickskill comes back with a thunderous right uppercut, sending the pirate reeling against the boat’s rails. Quaw Quaw begins to scream. The pirate comes off the rail with a crushing blow to the forehead of Quickskill. Stunned, Quickskill shakes his head, and before the pirate is about to follow through, knocks the wind out of him with a short, savage right to the stomach, and then … a splash! They stop. Quaw Quaw is nowhere in sight.

They run to the direction of the splash and look over the rail. Quaw Quaw is swimming, moving away from the ship, in the treacherous rapids of the Niagara River.

Her clothes were in a small pile next to their feet. They yelled after her until their voices became hoarse. They yelled that mournful, pining Chloe yell. Chloe. Originally the haunting moan of the slave seeking his lost wife — Chloe.

THE PIRATE WAS SERVING Quickskill out of a silver champagne goblet. Quickskill was sitting at the table, staring straight ahead.

“Now we’ve both lost her,” said the pirate matter-of-factly.

“You haven’t lost anything. What was she to you, Jack? Something you could sequin and polish. A subhuman pagan you sent to Radcliffe to learn to appreciate twelve-tone music when her people’s scales were more complex, to appreciate nature poetry when her people were one with the bear and the fish and the mountains and the waters, to appreciate uptown classical painting when one totem out front was as good as anything inside.” Quickskill watched Jack take a sip. “You can always write her off as a loss, like all the other items you ship out that get damaged or fall from trucks onto the freeway.”

“No, you’re wrong, Quickskill. I have emotions too. That’s what’s wrong with your argument. You think you’re the only one with heart, with soul. I have feelings. I am not desensitized. I love her, in my own way. That night when I first saw her and captured her during the raid on her father’s village, she was a beautiful treasure to me. And there was great opposition to our marriage. From both sides. I had to send out thirty stereos and fifty mink coats to cool out the gossip. And I didn’t object to her affairs. I knew that her blood wasn’t like mine: cold, Anglo-Saxon. She had a different temperature and often, well, I was too busy. But you … Whatever you had going between you, it was too deep.”

“Well, it’s late. Maybe I’ll climb into a canoe and go back to Buffalo. Stay in the Eagle Tavern for the night. Head out to Canada tomorrow.”

“You can’t return.”

“Why?”

“Swille’s men are all over town. They’re in cahoots with the Buffalo Anti-Subversive Squad. A.S.S. Those fat men you see hobbling up and down the aisles taking notes and talking into walkie-talkies at anti-slavery meetings. They’ll certainly lock you up in the Erie County jail for the night. Then take you back to ’Ginny. You don’t want to go back to ’Ginny, do you? I understand that the worst torture a black can get is ‘Virginia Play.’ Isn’t that what they call it? ‘Virginia Play.’ I’ll take you across. This yacht has a thirty-thousand-dollar motor.”

“You know, Jack, you’re not such a bad guy. What’s wrong with you? Why are you … I mean, so mean. Raiding villages. Plundering …”