Tom Piazza - A Free State

Ignoring him as well, Tull put two dollars in the other’s hand. Vic counted the coins.

“I thought we had agreed on three dollars as my fee,” he said.

Tull looked at the man, now, standing in front of him with his hand still out, the coins on his palm, looking at Tull with a mixture of fear, indignation, and irony. A weak man with a vein of effrontery in him. He probably enjoyed taking punishment, Tull thought.

“You fell asleep,” Tull said.

“I don’t wonder,” the man said. “I had nothing to do but sit there.”

“Then you’re lucky to get that.”

The man looked at the coins in his hand.

Trogdon was watching Tull. “Come on, Vic,” he said. “I’m satisfied.”

“Well, I’m not,” Vic said.

“You’d better be,” Tull said. “Get out of here now.”

The man assumed a wounded expression. “You needn’t speak crossly to me,” he said.

Tull pulled his pistol out of his jacket. The man looked at Tull as if this might be a joke. Tull rapped the man’s hand with the barrel and sent the coins tumbling to the sidewalk.

“The niggers can have the money if you don’t want it,” Tull said.

“That was unnecessary,” Vic said, crouching down to get the coins.

“Was it?” Tull said. He cuffed the back of the figure’s head with the gun barrel, and Vic fell forward on one knee and put up his left hand to fend off any other blows.

“Stop it,” he said. “Vicious bastard.”

Tull laughed out loud at this. It was funny, as if a mouse had addressed him in a booming voice. He slammed the side of the man’s head and sent him pitching forward onto the sidewalk. The man rolled to his back and looked up at Tull, panicked. This was correct, Tull thought. Now we were getting somewhere. He pointed the gun at the man’s face and knelt with one knee upon his chest.

“Don’t move, Vic,” he said, smiling.

“Help!” the man called out. “Help!”

Now Tull laughed again, and he used the butt of the gun to break the man’s front teeth off into his mouth. A spatter of blood appeared on Tull’s knee. The man was crying.

“You got my pants dirty,” Tull said.

“Here,” Trogdon said. “Here—”

Tull had forgotten about him. “Stand away,” he said. Trogdon backed up. Tull looked down into the weeping man’s face. Tull stared at a spot on his temple, and imagined bringing the gun down upon it and cracking his skull like a pecan shell. But the man was no longer resisting him. Tull wiped some blood off the gun butt onto the man’s pants, from which the stench of fresh shit was now rising. He stood up. Two Negroes who had been watching from across the street quickly turned and continued down the sidewalk. It was very nearly dark.

Trogdon was speechless, for once.

“Get your friend home,” Tull said. “Thanks for your help.”

He crossed Lombard toward Seventh Street without looking back, then disappeared around the corner. He had had it with Philadelphia.

They tell you Freedom is coming. They say Cross the river to Canaan’s land. By which they mean Somewhere Else. Mr. Still said, “The Bondsman is not running away from slavery, but running toward freedom.” Poor fool is always running somewhere . Where is it? What’s he going to do when he gets there?

If I had a needle and thread,

Fine as I could sew,

I’d sew my good gal to my side,

And down the road I’d go.

And go where? Free to do what? Nobody asks that question. When you get there, will you have to go somewhere else?

They say the plantation is Paradise for master and Hell for the slave. But if you read Scripture, nothing happens in either place. Nothing changes; it’s always now . I would have bit the apple, too. But if you get free, then you have to start running. As soon as then and later come in, it’s time to go.

White people make up stories in their head about you and then they put you in the story and make you stay there. But as soon as you’re in their story, you might as well be dead. If it doesn’t have an end, it isn’t a story. Never was a book yet ended on the word “and.” If I ever wrote a book, that’s how it would end. Maybe that would be the only word in the book. And .

The bird in a cage, he sings a song,

But the bird who’s free flies all day long.

Where does he fly? And why?

If somebody opens the door to a cage and says, “Get in; I’ll feed you,” it’s still a cage. Where’s freedom? If you choose to be in a cage is that freedom? Why would you let somebody be your master? She volunteered to be a slave. Somebody ought to write a book about that.

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. Some people die to be free, but some people rather die than be free. Go away someplace with your freedom. They say, Free to do what? I’m happy here. Maybe they are right. As long as you’re alive there’s a chance of figuring it out, but I have a bad feeling maybe there’s nothing to figure out. I have a bad feeling it’s just questions all the way down.

But you won’t see me crying. They won’t catch me. I’ll go straight up in the air like the Travelin’ Man. Make a pair of shoes like Lost John:

Heels in the front, and heels behind,

Now nobody knows where Lost John gwine.

Here’s a riddle:

My old mistress had a hen,

Black as any crow.

Laid three eggs every day,

Sunday she laid four.

That’s all you get, and now I’m gone.

Imanaged to get through Thursday night’s performance, barely. Mulligan took me aside afterward and asked if I were all right, and I told him I was. He looked at me from under his prodigious eyebrows, and I repeated that I was all right. But of course I was very disturbed, shaken by the appearance of the bounty hunter and the news he brought.

On Friday afternoon I arrived at the theater before the others, as usual. I had sent several messages to fellow minstrels who might be able to replace Henry, but I’d received no reply. I had no way of knowing if Henry would show up, nor of what the evening might bring. It was perhaps a quarter hour before six o’clock when I heard footsteps outside the dressing room. It was still early for any of the fellows to arrive, but when I went to the door I found myself face-to-face with Eagan, flushed, uncharacteristically minus cravat, and clearly upset about something.

“Michael,” I said. “Are you all right?”

“Well,” he said, “what are you going to do about this fellow now?”

“Which fellow?” I said.

“Come on, you know damn well who I’m talking about. You know damn well.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Damn well or otherwise.”

“Your Colored protégé,” he said. “Your black Don Juan.”

“What do you mean, Eagan?” I said. “Consider before you say another word.”

“I’ve had plenty of time to ‘consider,’ Douglass. He came to Rose’s apartments last evening. Followed her home in secret, and asked her to come away with him.”

“I don’t believe that,” I said. “Not for a minute.”

“Don’t you!” he said. “Turned up, begged her to let him stay with her overnight, and then when she denied him told her that she did not love me, and said she should come with him and sleep on the ground somewhere. In some nigger sty.”

“Rose told you this?” I said.

“No, James — the man in the moon told me. What are you going to do about this? He said he was being hunted. He’s a runaway, Douglass. Contraband. I’ll turn him in myself if you do not.”