John Wray - Canaan's Tongue

His look took me so aback that I was unable to speak for a moment, let alone to act—; but I saw, looking past him, why the hold seemed packed so tightly. There was a gap half-way back, the size of a bale of cotton, where nobody wanted to stand.

“What have you got back there?” I asked the white-hair. My voice cracked as I said it, like the voice of a pubescent boy, and I knew in that instant that all was lost. “Well? Give me an answer, damn your eyes! What are you fussing with?”

“Nobody fussing, Savior,” he answered, his eyes widening as he spoke. All at once I saw the fear in them—: the fear, and the unmistakeable death-knowledge. My throat began to close, then, and my legs commenced to buckle. I had no intention of going down that ladder. There was a brightness, now, to every pair of eyes, the kind that comes to men with violence fermenting in their mouths. Those niggers knew what was waiting for them in Memphis. They didn’t reckon, or suspect—; they knew. All that could be done was to close the hatch and leave them to their knowing.

Toward the back of the hold, at the edge of the mysterious gap, someone shifted his weight and a sharp cry of agony rose up. The man with the candle took a deep breath, smiled sorrowfully at me, and let his eyes fall closed.

I took my pistol out and brought it forward to catch the light. “What the hell was that, you lying sons-of-bitches?”

The man looked up at me again. “Nobody trying to fraud you, Savior,” he murmured.

“Move aside or Christ-help-me I’ll unload into the middle of you!” I shrieked. My voice was tremulous and slight. I marveled at how far from the Redeemer’s easy bark of command it sounded. Panic was run through my voice like fat through a strip of bacon.

For perhaps the space of a breath all was quiet. Then came a shuffling and a scrambling and a falling of body over body and I made out a man pressed flat against the floor, his arms pinned beneath him, his face so badly beaten that I couldn’t have guessed his age within thirty years. I saw at once that the remainder of the poor wretch’s life would be measured in hours, if not in minutes.

A more prudent man would have let the hatch fall closed at that instant, stumbled back to the pilot-house, and let them pound their victim into pudding. The difference between fifty-seven head and fifty-six, after all, was not worth quibbling over. It was not prudence, however, that held me fixed above them—; nor was it Christian feeling. The only means of quieting that hold, I knew, was to make a show— however laughable — of sovereignty.

I leaned away from the square of candle-light, looked above me at the sky, and cursed the Redeemer, Parson, the Trade, and my own servile nature with a passion that was altogether new to me. Then I brought my face back into the light, wearing what I hoped was a look of homicidal ecstasy.

“You bring that man over here or so help me the Father, the Son, and the Heavenly Spirit,” I said.

Two things happened as I spoke—: (I) the white-hair began to laugh — a deep, unhurried laugh full of scorn and melancholy, and (II) the pulped and mangled body was carried forward to the ladder. I could tell from the way this was done — playfully, almost coyly — that I’d never be allowed near it. My panic was replaced at once by an overwhelming drowsiness. I wanted nothing more than to curl up next to the hatch and go to sleep.

“Who is it?” I said, once the body had been set down. I could see now that he was not a young man—: a bald spot was just visible at the crown.

“Just one of yin angels, Savior, sent down here amongst us,” the white-hair said. As he said this he rose, raised his right foot in the air, and came down with all of his great weight against his victim’s chest. I saw who it was in that same instant. It was Ziba Goss.

His shirt was ripped clean away, one of his feet was bare, and his breeches were in tatters—; but I saw, to my amazement, the butt of a one-shot pistol peeping from his boot. By some perversion of chance no-one had come across it in the dark. I knew then that I had to go down to them. So down I went.

The white-hair was so astonished to see me tumbling toward him that he simply stepped aside to give me room to fall. No sooner had I hit the floor than I snatched up Ziba’s one-shot, giddy at my own folly, and pulled the hammer back. The entire hold hushed at once. It took them a moment to accept this newest offering—; but a moment only. I turned to the white-hair just in time to see him nod to me respectfully and tip the candle from his shoulder.

My life in the Trade ended with that gesture. I could taste my own death, luke-warm and ferric, against the roof of my mouth, and my past was taken from me like a hat in a gust of wind. As the candle went out I emptied Ziba’s pistol at its after-glow and felt a jet of brackish liquor strike my cheek. The first pair of hands was already at my shoulders when I fired the second pistol, this time without any effect at all. Both guns were torn from my grip soon after and I heard furious curses when they refused to discharge. But even as I smiled at this my body was being tossed about and fought over and awareness was slipping out of me like a cat from out of a burning house.

MY FIRST SENSATION ON AWAKENING was pain—:my second was disbelief that I was still in my own body. For a time my eyes refused to clear, and when at last they did I shut them again at once. A great number of people were about me, muttering to one another and moaning, and behind them was the curved wall of the hold. This knowledge sickened me and gave the pain free run of my brain and body. I was not so well off as I’d thought. After a very great while, in which nothing whatsoever happened, I heard Parson’s voice behind me.

“I prefer my baptisms the old-fangled way, Virgil. I prefer them to be done with water.”

A drawn-out, comfortable sigh.

“People are amenable to it, you understand. They trust it—; they think of it as clean. I can see, of course, how such orthodoxy might bore you, free-thinker that you are. I’m often bored with it, myself. But this, Virgil — this display. . ”

I kept as quiet as a fish. Never in my life have I felt such a reluctance to come back to my senses. As understanding returned, so too did the memory of the struggle in the hold, and a good idea of what I’d see when I finally looked about me. Or so, with my last scrap of innocence, I believed.

Eventually I could stand it no longer and let my eye-lids flutter open. The sight that greeted me was the following—:

Parson sitting Indian-style in the middle of the floor, swaying to and fro like a hindoo snake-charmer. Trist just behind him, fiddling with something or other in his hat-box. A power of black bodies to every side, twitching and shuddering and weeping.

I thought, at first, that there were fewer niggers in the hold—; then I saw that they were simply pressed back even more impossibly against the walls, as far from Parson as their tangled bodies would allow. I took a careful breath and tried to move my fingers and my toes. All appeared to be in working order.

“How goes it, Captain?” Parson said, seeing me awake. He straightened slowly as he spoke, closed his eyes and smacked his lips together. His vertebrae clicked against one another like dominoes in a paper sack.

I shut my eyes at once. I took a breath, then rolled over onto my belly and tried to stand. My legs seemed to answer, for which I mumbled a silent hosanna—; when I made to push myself up, however, the room went all the colors of the rainbow and my face smacked resoundingly against the floor. “Christ preserve us!” I gasped. My right shoulder felt as if it had been chewed away by ants.