I don’t stick around to enjoy the fruits of my labour. The only thing men like Larwill and his father hate more than a nigger is a rich nigger.
*
You never heard the Reverend King himself recount the story of his showdown with Edwin Larwill. Too busy, too occupied with fresh scuffles to be fought and won. Besides, legends don’t advertise—it wouldn’t be dignified, myths can become mottled. That’s what legends have disciples for.
My mother told me—told me more than once—about how Edwin Larwill was a Chatham businessman and local politician who had founded the Free and Easy Club to offset local temperance tendencies and promote saloon society. “That tell you all you need to know right there,” my mother would say. “Town leader goin’ ’round promotin’ sin.” Told me how, as soon as Larwill learned of the Reverend King’s plans to settle the land that was to be Buxton, he got busy drafting and delivering petitions and resolutions of opposition in abundance through his roles as a school commissioner, a Raleigh Township councillor, and a Member of Provincial Parliament. Told me how “Larwill was their leader, but it wasn’t just him either,” how the letter Larwill wrote in protest to the Crown Commissioner was signed by hundreds of Chatham’s most prominent citizens. Years later I read the actual letter for myself, was glad my mother never had:
The Negro is a distinct species of the Human Family and far inferior to that of the European. Let each link in the great Scale of existence have its place. Amalgamation is as disgusting to the Eye as it is immoral in its tendencies, and all good men will discountenance it.
George’s father told me about Larwill too—told George and me both while we were fishing. About how, while in Chatham arranging a survey of the land, the Reverend King was warned by a stranger on King Street not to remain in town after dark, that his life was in danger. How, instead of fleeing Chatham, he immediately set up a meeting to confront his foes head-on as soon as it could be arranged, how the Reverend King always said that “‘procrastination is the thief of time.’ You boys remember that, you hear?” How another meeting was organized—this time by Larwill’s forces—a couple of months later, and how the Reverend King, after travelling to Toronto on Settlement business, arrived in Windsor by lake steamer the night before the meeting as planned only to discover that Brothers, the Thames River steamer bound for Chatham, had developed engine trouble and would not be able to sail the next morning, and how the Reverend King, determined that his enemies would not be given a single opportunity to believe that either he or his cause was faltering, immediately rented a horse and buggy and drove all night, arriving only a couple of hours before the afternoon assembly. The next part of the story was the part my mother liked to tell best.
“The Reverend King, he knew things might get unruly as soon as he step foot in town, was not just peoples from all over who come to hear what was goin’ to be said, but twelve special constables that was sworn in that very morning to keep the peace just in case. Now in them days there weren’t no town hall or the like in Chatham, and the meeting commenced in an old barn out back of the Royal Exchange Hotel. And not only was that old barn filled right up, there was men pushin’ and shovin’ and tryin’ to get in at the same time that the speakers was tryin’ to speak, and with all that hollerin’ and shoutin’ it was impossible for a body to hear a single word being said. So finally somebody decide let’s move the meetin’ to the street and let the speakers have their say from the balcony, and after everybody file out and get settled, the Reverend King is given ten minutes by the chairman to say his piece from the balcony of the Royal Exchange Hotel.”
At this point my mother would rest her hand on my knee or my elbow, like she still didn’t believe that the Reverend King was safe from harm, like her future and mine and that of the other first thirteen ex-slaves to settle in Buxton was still in doubt.
“But every time the Reverend King try to speak, Larwill’s men shout and curse and holler and wouldn’t let him be heard. They only settle down when Larwill himself come forward, and that to tell them that because the Reverend King was a Yankee, he had no right to say nothin’ to nobody. Well, that crowd, if it was loud before, it was ten times that now, like it can’t wait to get its hands around the neck of this here Negro-loving Yankee daring to show his face in their hometown. But the Reverend King”—my mother would lower her voice and lean in closer now, and even if you hadn’t heard her tell the same story ten times already, you knew that something special, something miraculous, was about to happen—“he just stood there standing his ground with his arms crossed and let them peoples hoot and holler all they want, moved as close to that rail as he could get, and let them men of Larwill’s scream and yell for him to go back where he come from until they get blue in the face, until finally they see he ain’t going nowhere no time soon and they just get sick and tired of the sound of their own yellin’. And so the Reverend King, he finally get his chance to speak.
“And he said to them, ‘I have come two hundred miles to attend this meeting and you cannot put me down. Besides, I am from Londonberry, and Londonberry never did surrender.’”
And, unbelievably, some of the men couldn’t help but laugh. And after the Reverend King told them he had been born a British subject and was a ratepayer too, just like them, he went on to outline the vision and the goals of the Elgin Association—how education and religious instruction and economic self-sufficiency were the bywords of Buxton, and how a man, any man, was not unlike a crop, any crop, was only likely to grow and thrive if afforded the right mixture of good soil and a fair climate and ample precipitation—and to explain that the Elgin Settlement would add to their tax revenues and increase the value of the land—their land—surrounding it.
“And you know, those men—some of ’em anyway, maybe not all of ’em, but some of ’em—they change a little bit that day. They change not so much by what the Reverend King say as how he say it, the way he show no fear, the way he believe in every word he say.”
My mother would take my hand and place it in hers, cover it with her gnarled other.
“Show no fear and mean what you say, son.”
Amen.
6
Because it attracted runaway slaves, Chatham also attracted slave hunters. An industrious slave catcher could make a more than passable living tracking down and returning a Southern master’s runaway property. The Fugitive Slave Act, which compelled American citizens to assist in the return of escapees, wasn’t recognized by the government of Canada West, so slavers’ agents who ventured north needed to be extra cunning. A notice posted outside the Chatham courthouse, which George and I had come across when in town with his father to help pick up building supplies for the Freemans’ new chicken coop, wasn’t unusual:
CAUTION COLOURED PEOPLE!
From information received from reliable sources, we learn that parties are at present endeavouring to induce coloured persons to go to the States in their employ as servants. From the character of the propositions, there is reason to believe foul play is intended.
Let no misplaced confidence in this or that other smooth-tongued Yankee, or British subject either, who may be mercenary enough to ensnare you into bondage by collusion with kidnappers in the States, deprive you of your liberty.
What was unusual was the hand-drawn rejoinder scrawled across the width of the poster in thick strokes of bright white paint:
TROUBLE MAKKERS STAY OUT OF CHATHAM
On the way home, I told Mr. Freeman what we’d seen—he’d given us a nickel each to buy candy while he attended to some other business in town. It was my first firsthand experience of bad people doing bad things, and I was more confused than angry. How could anyone in Chatham possibly believe that people trying to assist slaves were troublemakers? It didn’t make sense, I complained. Slaveholders, all right, at least they had a reason—money—to want to preserve the institution of slavery. But what could someone from Chatham gain from keeping Negroes in chains? It just didn’t make sense.
Wh
ile Mr. Freeman listened to me speak, he slowly nodded his head as if I’d just informed him it was going to rain presently and that he’d better bring in the wash off the line. When I was all done, he told George to go in the back of the wagon and make sure that the large roll of chicken wire we’d loaded near the very rear was still tied down properly. I thought he was thinking about how he was going to answer me. When George climbed back beside me and reported that everything was fine, Mr. Freeman answered, “Good,” and cracked the reins and was silent again. The sun was going down and the leaves in the trees along the road back to Buxton looked as if they might amber into flame at any moment. I got tired of waiting for Mr. Freeman to make me understand.
“Just bad people, I suppose,” I said, and that was that. I caught George with his hand palm down on his knee and slapped it. He pulled it away, but it was too late, I’d gotten him good. He knew it, too, just shook his head and rubbed the back of his hand.
“Ignorant people,” Mr. Freeman said.
Ignorant meant not knowing something, I knew that, so Mr. Freeman must not have understood everything I’d told him.
“Whoever did it, they knew what they were doing,” I said. “They wrote ‘Troublemakers stay out of Chatham.’ They were calling the people who were warning the slaves troublemakers.” It was wrong to correct one’s elders, but I was right. Besides, maybe saying what was true regardless of who said otherwise was how one ended up becoming an elder oneself one day.
Mr. Freeman was in no hurry to answer me, kept his eyes on the horses and the road. I kept my hands balled and at my sides, knew that George was waiting for his revenge.
“Don’t pay no attention to ignorant people,” Mr. Freeman finally said. “Scared is all they is. Ignorant and scared.”
“Why would they be scared?” I said, confused. And angry. It sounded as if George’s father was feeling sorry for the bad people who’d defaced the poster. “The runaways, they’re the only ones who should be scared. Of getting captured. Of being sent back.”
“George, see if that wire still tied good,” Mr. Freeman said.
“I already did, Pa.”
“Don’t talk back, now, go and check it again.”
“Ah,” George said, but going.
There was no one else on the road, either behind us or coming our way, but Mr. Freeman watched where we were going as if one inattentive moment would send us into the woods.
Eventually, “Scared man is a dangerous man,” Mr. Freeman said. “Maybe most dangerous man of all. Who done what they did in Chatham likely don’t even know what they scared of. Don’t make ’em any less dangerous, though. Maybe make ’em more dangerous.”
Mr. Freeman, I thought, was a nice man—a good man—but he knew more about what plants could make you feel better when you had an upset stomach and how to get your chickens to lay more eggs than he did about what made people good and bad. Somehow I needed to help him understand.
Trying to figure out how to say it without hurting his feelings, “Got you!” George yelled, whacking me hard, harder even than I had him, on the hand I’d forgotten to protect.
“George,” Mr. Freeman said, “sit yourself down and stop that foolishness, both of you.”
George slid beside me on the seat and kept quiet, but was smiling like someone had just told him he’d won a hundred dollars.
“Is that wire all right?” Mr. Freeman said.
“Same as it was before.”
“Don’t sass me, boy, I didn’t ask you that, I ask you if it all right.”
“It’s fine, Pa,” George said. “It’s not going anywhere.”
I scratched the back of my hand. He’d gotten me so good, it itched.
*
Walking, pointing, “A full moon,” I say.
“Yes,” Loretta says, without looking.
“At least pay me the courtesy of pretending to be impressed.”
“I have seen the moon before.”
“It’s a particularly beautiful full moon tonight.”
“It was beautiful before too.”
It’s not the moon’s fault—it is beautiful, is a shimmering soft, perfectly round orb expertly suspended somehow high in the sky above us for our, and absolutely no one else’s, planetary viewing pleasure. And I haven’t had a drop all day. Sometimes the world is intoxicating enough straight-up.
But Loretta doesn’t trust nature. Nothing that hasn’t had human hands on it can hope to impress her. Even the faces she collects, it’s their reproduction that interests her, not the cold flesh-and-blood source. No living person, not as long as I’ve known her, has ever held her attention like a single photograph of the dead. Her photographs of her dead. God died, so Loretta created a new one. When Loretta says, Let there be light, you can be damn well sure there’s going to be light.
It’s cold and snowing, but it’s still disappointing there’s no one on King Street except for us and Henry. Time-tested couples don’t need words to communicate, so although neither of us has ever said it, we know we both enjoy the act of making passersby at least uncomfortable, and preferably angry, when seeing Loretta and me arm in arm on the sidewalk. What their mouths are afraid to say, or only whisper, their eyes have no hesitation shouting: The only thing worse than a nigger and a German ex-whore is a nigger and a German ex-whore acting as if they’re actually a respectable couple entitled to enjoy the fresh morning air just like any other respectable couple. That’s the cue for Loretta to entwine her arm even tighter with mine, for both of us to lean into each other just a little bit closer.
The bells of the Presbyterian church on Wellington Street, the first of ten identical ringing echoes. The sound of a church bell still soothes me, just like I can’t help but salivate every time Loretta fills the house with the warm smell of an all-afternoon-roasting, every-hour-basted roast. Knowing what’s true and feeling what’s right are rarely the same thing. A wise man once said that if you sit on a fence for too long, you’ll end up splitting your pants. Actually, that was no wise man, that was me. But just because I’m no La Rochefoucauld doesn’t mean my pants don’t need mending from time to time.
“It is time to go home now, yes?” Loretta says.
There’s a fresh body upstairs at Franklin’s that I know she’s eager to get at, but I’m not especially eager to do anything, and walking through the falling snow with Loretta on my arm and Henry by my side is as pleasant a way of doing it as I can imagine. “Ten more minutes?” I say.
Loretta doesn’t speak, is thinking, I know. It took me a while to get used to her contemplative silences. When Loretta doesn’t know the answer to a question, she makes her interlocutor wait until she does. It can be irritating, like waiting on a judge to deliver a verdict when all you want to know is if you can add a few minutes to the end of your walk; but, on the other hand, when she does answer you, you can be assured it’s what she really thinks. Like when she was surprised to spot my mother’s bible on my bookshelves and I asked her if, even as a non-believer, she wouldn’t have liked to have had the bible her father read from from his pulpit every Sunday, if only as an heirloom. “If I am going to read fairy tales,” she immediately answered, “I prefer Grimm’s, yes? At least then I get pretty pictures to amuse me, too.”
“You hated him, didn’t you?” I said, surprised at myself for wanting to hear her say yes.
“Of course not. He was my father. I loved him. I did not like him, but I loved him.”
The church bells have stopped ringing, their last notes fading, eventually evaporating in the frozen morning air. Henry stops to sniff something near the doorway of McKeough’s hardware store. Loretta and I stop too, let Henry handle the sniffing.
“We will walk for five minutes more, then we will go back. This way we both get what we want, yes?”
I just smile, don’t say anything, but not because I’m thinking.
“Yes?” Loretta says.
“Yes,” I say.
It’s started to snow harder now, and there’s no one c
oming our way, no one anywhere at all, but I tuck Loretta’s arm tighter into mine and draw her nearer to me anyway.
A nigger, a German ex-whore, a stray.
A man, a woman, a dog.
David, Loretta, Henry.
Sometimes logic makes sense.
*
I was fourteen when Fort Sumter fell to the South and the men of the Elgin Settlement began to enlist in the Union army. Attempted to enlist in the Union army. It would take two long years of continual Confederate victories and increasing northern casualties for Lincoln to finally relent and allow Negroes the privilege of risking their lives for the sake of the Union cause. And even though, by then, anyone who wasn’t simple knew that the Civil War was a white man’s war meant to settle white men’s scores—to keep the Union intact, to keep trade routes open for northern big business, to keep the tariffs in place that were making rich men in the North richer—the men of Elgin met with the Reverend King and asked him to petition the government on their behalf for the right to fight anyway. Emancipation might have turned out to be an afterthought, but it was an afterthought worth killing for.
I told my mother I wanted to enlist soon after Lincoln’s first inaugural address, after he assured the nation that “I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists.” The official age of enlistment was sixteen, but everyone knew that during wartime every government became careless with its arithmetic.
“I’ll ask if the Reverend King can find some time for you when he get back from Sarnia,” she said. Time to discuss my plans with me, she meant. “Big meeting of ministers going on up there.”
I couldn’t help but feel a little hurt. Mothers of young soldiers were supposed to weep uncontrollably and plead with their brave young sons not to leave for war—not to counsel patience until the pastor returned home to either give or withhold his permission. Hurt, but not really surprised. The unspoken motto among the settlers, especially the first settlers like my mother, was In the Reverend King We Trust.
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