John Wray - Canaan's Tongue

I gathered up my gown and left him. I had no gentlemen to wait on, only the rabble at the bar—; but his humiliation had worked itself under my stays. It had dug itself into me like a tick. Perhaps I felt a kinship to him already—: perhaps I felt it most when he’d been made a fool of by his betters. Love and shame both make your body hot, then chill it as the years pass near to freezing. Virgil tells me I loved him, and he may well be right. I know of no better word to describe the shame I felt — feel even now, remembering — than that word so abused by all who touch it.

“I’ll go down and find that lieutenant of yours,” I said to him.

And so I did.

The bar was well stocked with gentlemen, but I had no trouble finding Beauregard. He was seated at a corner booth, flanked by two great Araby ferns, talking quietly with the R—. The tiff upstairs looked to have been forgotten. Here and there, at tables or along the bar, I made out the others—; all were making a great show of being unacquainted. Virgil hadn’t followed me downstairs.

I came and sat down between them, pretty as you please. My anger made me bold. Neither looked at me. Beauregard was trying to get something out of the R—.

“Don’t condescend to me, M—,” he said.

“I’d not dream of it, Lieutenant. Drink your sherry.”

Beauregard scratched at the corner of his mouth. “You’ll have to kill those niggers,” he said. “That much is sure. They’d bear witness against you.”

“As I understand it, the bounty on escapees applies whether alive or dead,” the R— said in a comfortable way.

A silence fell. I looked from one of them to the other. My mouth was dry as parchment.

“Good God, sir,” said Beauregard.

The R— did not blink. His mouth was straight and solemn but it was not impossible to imagine it in a grin.

“You mean to carry this through, I see,” Beauregard said at last. “I appreciate that now.”

“You’ve never doubted my resolve in the past.” The R— sipped at a glass of rye. “Or my discretion.”

“No,” said Beauregard, the dash gone from his face.

“I have your support, then?” the R— said, letting his eyes drift idly across the room. They found Kennedy, hunched over at the bar, and settled.

“You have it,” said Beauregard. He looked weak and disbelieving, but there was something else in his look besides—: a flicker of excitement. “You have it, M—! You have it. Let your Irishman drink his porter.”

THE HOW OF IT WAS SIMPLE, Delamare says.

I came in on a packing-boat, by foot if the place was set back from the river, found myself a room or a corner someplace in the nigger-town, and stayed there. I might stay for a day, I might stay for a week. Sometimes one afternoon was enough to see I wasn’t welcome. But if the mood was right, if there was the slow, suspicious eagerness in their eyes and in the way they talked, if they stopped to say good-night as they came in from the fields, not looking me in the face but only at my clothes, my hair, my skin, I’d know the lay of the land was fine, and I’d stay on.

First I’d lay my clothes out on the cot, or on the pallet, if that was all I had—: jacket at the top, pressed shirts underneath, linens at the bottom. My second pair of boots I’d set at the open window, as if I hardly cared whether somebody ran off with them in the night. I’d sit on the stoop (if there was such a thing) and black them in the early evening, when it was still light. When they asked me about the boots and the rest, about the sweet blonde tobacco that I smoked, about the tonic for my hair, I’d say I’d got it up in Louisville, or Baltimore, or Cincinnati. No more than that. But that was all it took.

I looked about as much like them as a sherry-glass looks like a plate of beans, but anyone could see that I had nigger in me. That and the clothes, and the way I carried on, light-hearted and conceited, was enough to put the thought into their heads. I did no selling of it—: no prompting, no whispering, no missionary work. I let the idea do my whispering for me.

They came when it got toward dark, full and ready to receive. One or two might want to hear details of life in Boston, or Sandusky, or Ottawa, if only to hear those names spoken aloud. But by the time they asked they were as good as struck already. A white man, however nimble, would have held no sway for them—; but I was living, preening proof of freedom’s alchemy. The South they knew could never have engendered me.

Finding shelter was the hardest part of it, and that was no great work. I arrived in the early forenoon, when the men and a good deal of the women were in the fields, and looked for a cabin apart from the rest, neatly kept, with a woman inside it. Whether she was fat or thin, bright-eyed or stony-faced, made no difference to me at all. I looked for signs of children, and if I found any I moved on. If not, I stayed. Sometimes I was traveling for religion—; sometimes I was peddler—; I could have told them anything I liked. By the second or third night the men would start coming round and I’d bring out the idea and let it loose. Once I started I worked quick, pausing only to sleep, so that by the time word reached the big house I was back out on the river. I learned that early, about the quickness. I had marks on my back and on the soles of my feet to keep me mindful. By the end of a week — if I’d stayed that long — the marks would begin to itch and I’d light out within the hour. But not before I’d looked in on each of the men I’d struck. Not before I’d left each of them a token.

Often as not a woman would be waiting for me when I called, sitting with her arms crossed in the middle of the room, mute and blank-faced as a cinder. My man would be sound asleep beside her, half-covered by a quilt, or hid behind a dirty sack-cloth curtain.

“The wind’s up, auntie,” I’d say to the woman.

“Then get you gone,” she’d say. “Gone back down under the river.”

“Get him roused, auntie,” I’d say. “Wake him, or I’ll take him tonight.”

“I’ll wake the marse, that’s who. I’ll wake his hounds.”

I’d say nothing, looking at her as I might at a cow laid in the middle of the road. It was always the same. After another stretch of dullness she’d get stiffly to her feet and walk out of the shack without a word.

I was sixteen years old when I began as a striker, reckless and full of bluster—; I was caught on my very first strike. A foreman and two boys tied me to a fence-post with a length of hemp and laid into me with a switch for a while, but their hearts weren’t in it. They’d heard of the Trade by then, heard of it and feared it, and they had little regard for the master of the house. He came down himself after a time, looked me over indifferently, then dismissed his men. I could smell his anise-scented breath as he examined my cuts. I can’t abide anise to this day.

“You a right fortunate little coon,” he whispered. Then he cut me loose. I learned later he was one of our share-holders.

Once the husband, or the son, or the lover of the cinder-faced woman was roused from the bed, I’d refuse whatever hospitality was offered — a slice of cold scrapple, perhaps, or a wedge of boiled yam— then press a silver ring into his palm, holding it there until his fingers closed on it. I’d remind him that he must have the ring on the first finger of his left hand when my associates came for him, and that they’d come for him within a fortnight. Then I’d have him repeat what I said word for word.

“If you don’t have that ring, they’ll shoot you in the belly,” I’d say. “These aren’t patient men.”

And he’d look me in the face at last, sober and respectful, and swear to me he understood. I did my work well—; I did as right by them, each one, as I was able. Not a one of the niggers I struck failed to turn out for his rendezvous. Not a one of my strikes was wasted.