Flight to Canada

by Ishmael Reed

  “Won’t do us any good. He freed the slaves in the regions of the country he doesn’t have control over, and in those he does have control over, the slaves are still slaves. I’ll never understand politics.”

  Robin is sitting up, the covers down to his naked waist. He picks up the champagne bottle and pours.

  “That’s Lincoln playing. Lincoln is a player. The Emperor of France’s secretary called up here and told Swille not to show up to that party for the royal people next week. Swille tried to get through to the Emperor, but the secretary refused, and when Swille called the Emperor by his first name, the secretary said to Swille, ‘Don’t you slave peddler ever be calling him that again,’ and hung up, in French.” They laugh. “Is Ms. Swille still on her strike?”

  “Is she! Today she called me and Bangalang her sisters and said something about all of us being in the same predicament. Me and Bangalang just looked at each other.”

  “She used to be so beautiful.”

  “Wasn’t she so! The belle of the Charity Ball. Horse rider. Miss Mississippi for 1850, same time Arthur got his award.”

  “When do you think they’re going to tell her about her son?”

  “You mean how he got eat—Oh, that reminds me. I mean to tell you. Speaking of the dead. Well, Bangalang told us today that one of the children was out in the cemetery and they wandered into the crypt where that old hateful Vivian, Arthur’s sister, is, and that the child saw …”

  “What … what she see?”

  “As she said, she heard somebody talking and he went inside, and the child saw Massa Swille and the man had done taken off the lid from the crypt and was on top of his sister and was crying and sobbing, and that he was sweating and that he was making so much noise that he didn’t even notice the child and the child run away, and the child say he saw Vivian’s decomposed hand clinging to his neck.”

  “That kid’s got to be telling a fib, Judy. I told you about letting those children play in the cemetery.”

  “But, Robin, ain’t nothin in there but dead folks.”

  A low moan of a solitary wolf can be heard.

  “Oh, there go that wolf again. I hope he’s not out there all night again. Judy … Judy?”

  Robin turns over and sees that his wife is asleep. They are back to back.

  9

  RAVEN QUICKSKILL WAS SITTING in a house with black shutters on Free Street in Emancipation City. It is an eighteenth-century schoolhouse he is “watching” for a few months. The owners, Sympathizers to the Cause, had left for a resort in another state, and knowing that he was a “fuge,” as a person of his predicament was called, had asked him to watch it. That’s the way it was in the fugitive life. Minding things for Abolitionists and Sympathizers to the Cause. They had left some plants, which he tended. And some cats. He was sitting in a rocker, reading a book about Canada, about the plentiful supply of gasoline, the cheap, clean hotel rooms that could be had in Toronto and Montreal; the colorful Eskimo sculpture that could be bought in the marketplace; the restaurants specializing in lobster; the scuba diving, the deep-sea fishing.

  There was a knock at the door. He opened it on two men. They were dressed in blazers and wore grey slacks, black cordovans. They were very neat. One was medium-sized, the other, squat, short. The short one was carrying a briefcase.

  “Mr. Quickskill?” the man with the briefcase asked.

  “That’s me.”

  “We have orders to repossess you,” said the medium-sized one. He sneezed. Removed a handkerchief and blew his nose.

  Quickskill was thinking. It was three years since they had sent him a bill. He’d been moving ever since. They’d found him.

  “Here’s my card,” the medium-sized man said, sneezing again.

  “Have a cold?” Quickskill asked, reading the card. The card said NEBRASKA TRACERS, INC. “I have some vitamin C in the cabinet.”

  “Hey, Harold,” the man with the briefcase said, “that might help. Vitamin C.”

  “Would you gentlemen come in,” Quickskill said, escorting them into the room of Shaker furniture. They walked across the waxed hardwood floors and sat down. “Can I offer you something?” he asked, cool.

  “No,” they said.

  Quickskill clasped his hands on a knee, lifting his feet off the floor a bit. “Now, you gentlemen said that you were going to repossess me.”

  “Your lease on yourself has come to an end. You are overdue. According to our information, Mr. Swille owns you,” the short one said, reaching into his briefcase. “Here’s the bill of sale. You see, Mr. Swille sees you as a bargain. Bookkeeper, lecturer, an investment that paid off. He’s anxious to get you back, and since there are a lot of invoices and new shipments piling up, he says a man of your ability is indispensable.”

  “Uncle Robin is performing that function now. He needs Uncle Robin in the house. Robin’s overextending himself,” the medium one said. “He’s reading and writing now. Seems to have begun to assess his condition. One of the white house slaves, Moe, reported that the old codger had taken to philosophizing. Swille says he’s concluded that the missing invoices and forged papers will be ignored. He blames the whole thing on your misled humanitarian impulses.”

  “And if I don’t want to return to Virginia, then what?”

  “We’ll have no choice but to foreclose,” the short one said.

  “Look,” the medium one said, “I hate doing this but … but it’s the law.”

  “Even Mr. Lincoln said that what a man does with his property is his own affair,” said the short one.

  “Yeah, Lincoln,” murmured Quickskill.

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “You’re lucky, if you ask me. Why, that poem you wrote …” the short one said.

  “How did you know?” It had been nearly three winters since Beulahland Review promised to publish it. Maybe Swille owned Beulahland too.

  “Mr. Swille gave us a copy. You know, if we weren’t his employees, we’d circulate it ourselves,” the short one said.

  “Regardless of the copyright?” the medium one asked.

  “Oh, I forgot. That’s the law. We must obey the law, though he doesn’t come within the framework of Anglo-Saxon law. Justice Taney said that a slave has no rights that a white man is bound to respect.”

  “Is it autobiographical?” the medium one asked Quick-skill.

  “I’m afraid it isn’t,” Quickskill answered.

  “See, I told you. They have poetic abilities, just like us. They’re not literal-minded, as Mr. Jefferson said. I knew that he couldn’t have possibly managed all of those things. Sneak back to the plantation three or four times. Know about poisons,” the medium one said. “That would have been too complicated for a slave.”

  “You see, Mr. Swille, we’re students at a progressive school in Nebraska. We’re just doing this job to pay for tuition in graduate school. We’ve even read your poetry,” said the short one.

  “You have?”

  “Yes. The Anthology of Ten Slaves, they had it in the anthropology section of the library,” the medium one said.

  “I’m a Whitman man, myself,” the short one said.

  “Really?” Quickskill said. “Isn’t it strange? Whitman desires to fuse with Nature, and here I am, involuntarily, the comrade of the inanimate, but not by choice.”

  “I don’t understand,” they said together.

  “I am property. I am a thing. I am in the same species as any other kind of property. We form a class, a family of things. This long black deacon’s bench decorated with painted white roses I’m sitting on is worth more than me—five hundred dollars. Superior to me.”

  “Fine thought. Fine thought. You see, I told you they can think in the abstract,” the short one said.

  They were looking at the painting on the wall. Abraham Lincoln, armed with a gun swab, fighting the dragon of rebellion who has the face of a pig. A short pipe-smoking man has chained Abe’s leg to the tree of “constitutionality” and
“democracy.” Lincoln became dictator after Fort Sumter. Told Congress not to return to Washington until the Fourth of July.

  “Excuse me, I forgot the vitamin C,” Quickskill said.

  “Of course,” the short one said. “Thanks for remembering.”

  They picked up a copy of a first edition of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. As Quickskill walked into the bathroom, he heard the short one say, “I hear she made a pile on this book.”

  Quickskill, the property, moved past the bowl, the sink, and to the window. He opened it quietly. He climbed out and jumped, landing on the ground of an alley. He went by the open window, ducking. The men could be seen talking. He started to run. It was easy for him to run, and he was fast. He had burned the fat from his waist running through the streets of Emancipation City. Nebraskaites. Nice, clean-cut killers. Human being-burglars. Manhandlers. Always putting the sack on things. Putting anacondas in the Amazon in a sack. Trapping a jaguar with dogs, then lassoing the jaguar from above, lifting the jaguar, then lowering the jaguar into a net. Sacking things. Jump on the armadillo from a horse and sack the armadillo. Well, they aren’t going to sack me, Quickskill thought. Nebraskaites. Now he understood Elymas Payson Rogers’ poem:

  But all the blind Nebraskaites

  Who have invaded human rights,

  Will at the North in every case

  Be overwhelmed in deep disgrace.

  When their eventful life is o’er,

  No one their loss will much deplore;

  And when their kindred call their name,

  Their cheeks will mantle o’er with shame;

  But soon their names will be forgot,

  The memory of them all shall rot.

  And let their burying places be

  Upon the coast beside the sea;

  And let the ever-rolling surge

  Perform a constant funeral dirge.

  And when the stranger shall demand

  Why these are buried in the sand,

  Let him be told without disguise:

  They trod upon the Compromise.

  10

  THE SLAVE HOLE CAFé is where the “community” in Emancipation City hangs out. The wallpaper shows a map of the heavens. Prominent is the North Star. A slave with rucksack is pointing it out to his dog. The café is furnished with tables, chairs, sofas, from different periods. There are quite a few captain’s chairs, deacon’s benches. There are posters and paintings and framed programs: Our American Cousin, a play by Tom Tyler; a photo of Lincoln boarding a train on the way back to Washington from a trip to Emancipation. Sawdust on the floor. A barrel of dill pickles. Above the long bar is a sign: PABST BLUE RIBBON. Corn-row and nappy-haired field slaves are here as well as a quadroon or two. Carpetbaggers, Abolitionists, Secessionists, or “Seceshes,” as they are called, even some Copperheads. The secret society known as the “Rattlesnake” order meets here. They advertise their meetings in the Emancipation newspaper: “Attention, Rattlesnakes, come out of your holes … by order of President Grand Rattle. Poison Fang, Secretary.”

  Confederate sympathizers go to places named the Alabama Club, but some come here, too. They’ve been known to smash a bottle after a slave has drunk from it. Ducktail hairdos go here. Crossbars of the Confederate fly from pickup trucks.

  Quickskill ran into the Slave Hole out of breath, went to a table where he saw Leechfield’s Indentured Servant friend, the Immigrant, Mel Leer. Well, he wasn’t indentured any more. He had served his contract and was now at liberty. He and Leechfield were inseparable. When he plopped into the chair the Immigrant rustled his newspaper in annoyance. His hair was wild, uncombed black curls, and he kept brushing some away from the left side of his forehead. He had an intense look, like Yul Brynner, wore long flowing ties and velvet suits and some kind of European shoes. Lace cuffs. Jewelry.

  “Man, two guys just tried to confiscate me. Put a claim check on me just like I was somebody’s will-call or something,” panted Quickskill.

  “Kvetch! Always kvetch!”

  “What do you mean kvetch? If I hadn’t run away, I’d be in a van on the way back to Virginia.”

  The waitress brought him a frosty mug of beer like the kind they feature at Sam’s Chinese restaurant on Yonge Street in Toronto.

  The Immigrant looked at him. “Your people think that you corner the market on the business of atrocity. My relatives were dragged through the streets of St. Petersburg, weren’t permitted to go to school in Moscow, were pogrommed in Poland. There were taxes on our synagogues and even on our meat. We were forbidden to trade on Sundays and weren’t allowed to participate in agriculture. They forced us into baptism against our wishes. Hooligans were allowed to attack us with weapons, and the police just stood there, laughing. Your people haven’t suffered that much. I can prove it, statistically.”

  “Oh yeah? Nobody’s stoning you in the streets here. You are doing quite well, hanging in cafés, going to parties with Leechfield. And you have a nice place to live. What are you bitchin about? All you and Leechfield seem to do is party and eat ice cream topped with crème de menthe.”

  “There are more types of slavery than merely material slavery. There’s a cultural slavery. I have to wait as long as two weeks sometimes before I can get a Review of Books from New York. This America, it has no salvation. Did you see what happened in those battles? At Bull Run? They were like picnics attended by the rich. Cowboyland. Look at this filth …” It was a copy of Life magazine; a photo of the carnage at Gettysburg. “Filth! Obscene! Disgusting! Just as this country is. Why, during the whole time I’ve been in this town, I haven’t seen one person reading Dostoevsky. Your people! Requesting wages and leaving their plantations. They should pay for themselves. Look at us. We were responsible. We paid for ourselves. Paid our way. I earned myself! We never sassed the master, and when we were punished we always admitted that we were in the wrong. The whole world, sometimes, seems to be against us. Always passing resolutions against us. Hissing us. Nobody has suffered as much as we have.”

  “Nobody has suffered as much as my people,” says Quickskill calmly.

  The Immigrant, Mel Leer, rises. “Don’t tell me that lie.”

  The whole café turns to the scene.

  “Our people have suffered the most.”

  “My people!”

  “My people!”

  “My people!”

  “My people!”

  “We suffered under the hateful Czar Nicholas!”

  “We suffered under Swille and Legree, the most notorious Masters in the annals of slavery!”

  “Hey, what’s the matter with you two?” It was Leechfield. On his arm was a Beecherite who had just come over from Boston. She looked like a human bird, her nose was so long, and she wore old-maid glasses. Her hat was covered with flowers.

  “What took you so long? You were supposed to be here an hour ago,” the Immigrant said, sitting down again, looking at his watch. Leechfield just stared at him with those narrow eyes. That squint. And that smile which got him into the homes and near the fire of many a female Sympathizer about town. His arm dangled over the chair in which he’d plopped down. He snapped his finger for a waitress. The cold Beecherite just sat there, looking at him adoringly. The waitress came.

  “Gimme a Southern Comfort.”

  The girl giggled. Quickskill, now relaxed, even smiled. But the Immigrant, Mel Leer, looked at him, frowning.

  “Look, Leer,” Leechfield finally said, “I’m the one who’s bringing the money into this operation.”

  “Yes, but you don’t understand. It’s more complicated than that. I was the one who introduced you to the game. I taught you the techniques of survival, when you were merely interested in getting by. You see these fingers?” Mel Leer revealed his long, lean fingers. “They’ve rolled dice at Monte Carlo, distilled vodka in a vodka plant, sewn furs, deftly overwhelmed superior forces while you were humming ‘Old Black Joe,’ you … you …”

  “Hold it, man. Don’t get excited
. Now sit down.” Meekly, Leer sat down. (What was going on here? What was this strange bond between them? A white bondsman and a black bondsman in cahoots in some enterprise.) “She ready, you ready, so let’s go.”

  The three rose to leave. Mel Leer put the foreign-language newspaper under his arm.

  “Look, Leechfield, I have to talk to you, it’s important,” Quickskill said.

  “Can’t do it now, man. Got to go. Come over to the loft sometime.”

  “But …”

  The three had moved out of the café. Quickskill ordered another mug. Canada Dry this time. That morning he had heard that Air Canada was cutting its rates by thirty-five percent.

  Everybody had turned their attention toward Canada. Barbara Walters had just about come out on national television to say that the Prime Minister of Canada, this eagle-faced man, this affable and dapper gentleman who still carried a handkerchief in the left suit pocket, was the most enlightened man in the Western world. The world expected great things from this man. His wife was a former flower child: intelligent, well-bred, capable of discussing cultural subjects on television. So good-looking!

  Harry Reasoner agreed with Ms. Walters, saying that though some of his critics disapproved of the way the Prime Minister still followed the custom of attending the Potlatch, that great festival of giveaway practiced by his people, during his administration the ban on the Potlatch had been lifted. Mr. Reasoner said that this would make it possible for the Potlatch to be brought into the United States as a way of relieving the people of the dreary, sad life caused by the conflict.

  Ah! Canada! There had just been a free election in Canada. The Liberal party had won 141 seats in the House of Commons. There was a picture in Time of the Prime Minister standing next to his wife, she holding his hand, he looking down as though his sharp Indian nose would bump her forehead. There was a big sign over the archway where they stood, written in Halloween letters: CONGRATULATIONS.

  His wife said of him: “He’s a beautiful guy, a very loving human being who has taught me a lot about loving.”