He went on, “I got away by ducking into a narrow space between the cannery and the adjoining building, and then I ran on behind other structures along the water. I remember seeing the growing flames as they reflected on the harbor water. I knew the fire was going to be a bad one; most of the town buildings were old and of wood. I heard the River Sunday alarm going and the fire trucks running along Strand Street.”
“You say you didn’t start the fire,” asked Sheriff Good, with a smirk, his little eyes half closed as if he didn’t believe Walker.
“That’s right.”
“You say you didn’t see the fire start?” asked Charleston.
“No, actually I didn’t see it start. I knew the fire was going though, behind me, as I ran away. Then again other people around me kept telling me with their yells to run because a big fire was behind me. I didn’t really have time to look back.
“I followed a path, between wooden fences, through a couple of gardens down to the water. I remembered that the Albright sisters were in a nearby house, right in line with the oncoming fire. I worried about them and ran up on their porch. The door was locked but I tried to call upstairs to warn them. I went back into the yard and threw a stone against the upstairs glass. I’d done gardening for them when I was a child and I knew where they’d look out at me from their bedroom in the morning. In a minute or so, Miss Heather came to the window, raised it and called out, “What you want, you Walker John. It’s late to be out.”
“Yes Ma’am,” I said, “but the town’s got a fire and you two best get out of the house.”
“She looked up in the sky and saw the flames licking across the cannery roof not too far away. It was noisy too and she had to yell back to me, ‘Good Lord, let me get my sister up.’ She put her finger to her lip the way she often did when she was thinking what to say.
“‘I’ll have to remember where I put that key to the door,’ she called down to me.
“I said, ‘You keep it by your bedroom door you told me once.’
“She waved at me and I could see her mouth move saying thank you, and then she ducked back inside. I heard the men coming around the corner and I knew I best get out of there, so I did.
“A few crab skiffs were tied at the water’s edge. I hid among them. When I looked back after I got out into the water, I saw firemen I knew, putting a ladder up to the side of the sisters’ house. Flames were on the house roof by now so I guess they had some troubles going any further.
“In the water I got behind a rowboat and cut it loose from its stake. Then I pushed it along the shoreline right past the fire trucks pumping water out of the harbor. No body noticed the rowboat drifting along. Bymbye I got to my own mooring and started up my race boat.
“I’d been tuning the Black Duck earlier that day and she was gassed and ready to go. The only problem was the noise she’d make going out of the harbor. Even with the fire, the police would hear those exhausts popping. Fortunately I had a set of mufflers I used sometimes when I would run her in the daytime out in the harbor. It took me a few minutes to convert the exhausts into the collectors, but I managed, working in the dark. The only person who came around during this time was my mother who heard someone out by the boat shop, namely me, and come to see who it was. I saw the light go out over the yard and frame the shop when she opened the kitchen door. She couldn’t tell it was anyone out on the Black Duck though because I was real still. She never saw me and pretty soon she went on back up to the house. Fire sirens were going off up to town a few blocks away and she looked at the glare in the sky for a few minutes, then went inside. The light went out when she closed the door and it was night again.
“I ran the boat at half throttle until I was well out past the slave monument. The fire was pretty high over the town now. I never realized how small that eighteen foot racer was until I was there in that night. The glare from the town fire hit on the port side of the boat and cast a shadow on the water. I could see the hull’s black profile racing over the waves and their crests were topped with the bits of light they were picking up. Above me was a great cloud of smoke, gray against the black sky, filled with pieces of flying boards and paper on fire, the sparks everywhere raining down on the harbor water and all around me like burned out fireworks in the blackness.
“Then I turned and headed straight out into the Bay. If anyone was watching I wanted them to think I’d gone to Baltimore. About a half hour later, I got way off shore into the Chesapeake channel and out of sight of land, I decided to fake an explosion on the Black Duck. I burned a hole in my jacket and put it overboard with a part of the deck I cut off with a knife. I had an old transmission casting in the bilge and I dropped that overboard. The casting had been in a small explosion in my transmission during my preparation for the regatta and I hoped that the police would find all this stuff and figure the boat had exploded. Then I turned north and come around back into the Wilderness Swamp where I figured I could hide for a while like the runaway slaves used to do.”
“They searched the swamp,” interrupted the sheriff.
“I was almost caught, too,” Walker said. “I managed to swim out into the Bay and hide when the police came nearby. They only searched for a day or so until I was declared dead. Thank God the false sinking fooled everyone.
“I knew the police would be watching my home so I figured I would have to be real careful. It wasn’t as crazy as it sounds. I figured a course to swim back to River Sunday. I could swim through the swamp to the Nanticoke River and then down the Nanticoke to the point at the old fort, around the point and along the shoreline to home. I figured it would take me about two days to make it to town and back and I’d have to hide out along the shore during most of the daylight.
“I allowed a few days for the town to quiet down. The first trip, I took off at night and made it all the way up the Nanticoke River to its mouth by dawn. I hid at the fort during the daylight. I almost got discovered. A family of tourists had come in and were walking around looking at the old fortification. One little girl come over towards the shed where I was hiding. She looked all around and I thought she had seen me for sure.
“After the family left I moved quickly down to the water. Then I stayed in the reeds for the rest of the day and about sundown started the last leg of my journey. I worked around the point, past the rough water and then down along the harbor shoreline to Mulberry. I left most of my clothes out in the swamp at my hiding place and I was dressed only in my underwear shorts. ‘Course, being black, I knew I wasn’t likely to show up as much as a white man in the darkness.
“The town was still pretty active, even then. From the water, a few hundred feet offshore from the piers, I could see gangs on the streets, groups of young whites or blacks, and some of them fighting each other. From what I could overhear the fire was being blamed on me pretty roundly, everyone believed it, and therefore the blacks in town were being blamed too. I was supposed to have set the River Sunday fire to avenge that fire that burned out the General Store. I suppose, my being black, and that General Store fire being so treacherous, that people had a right to think that would be a motive for a person of color to get even by burning down the town.
“I made my way along the waterfront, from moored boat to moored boat, resting by holding on to their anchor lines. By nightfall I was up to my own boat shop and saw the outlines of the roof against the street lights. I was happy that no one had torched it in revenge. I waded out of the water through the seaweed and stepped up on the reed covered bank that was at the bottom of my mother’s little grass covered lot. I walked by the rose bushes that she cared for so much every summer and ahead of me was the back screen door. I stood on the steps of the back door and looked into the kitchen which had a light on. I was dripping water on the wooden step and worried that someone might see my trail.
“Inside at the table were my mother and my sister and a white man in a suit who I had never seen before. My mother had poured him a cup of coffee in her best china and they were tal
king. I could smell her coffee.
“The man said, ‘I’m sorry to tell you that we have found parts of your son’s boat. He’s dead, Ma’am.’
“My sister’s eyes got bright and wet when she was angry and they were that way I could see through the door. My mother looked the same, one leg up under her to sit on, leaning forward and calm, but with her eyes tearing, as if this was just one more tribulation that the minister had advised her to go home and bear, and I’m sure that was what Pastor Black told her.
“Later that night I made contact. I tapped on the door and my mother turned out the light and came out on the little back porch. Strangely, it was all as if she knew it was me there in the darkness, and she did not show any surprise at all. She said that, in her prayers, the Lord had told her that I wasn’t dead, that I would come back. As we talked, she said she had a plan, and part of it was that I was not to tell anyone but her that I was alive. She said as long as people thought I was dead, the pressure would be off. She would relate my visit to no one, not even my sister or my girlfriend. My mother cautioned that we had to find out real slow who we could trust and who we couldn’t. People, she said, changed real quick with money to be made and a reward for my capture had been announced. She also told me I couldn’t count on people just because they were black and she said that she knew no white person she could tell about me. We talked quickly and made plans for the next time we’d meet. I told her to get the money I had in the bank. She surprised me then by telling me that it was gone. We never did find out what happened to it. I was to swim over one more time and then she’d try to get out to the swamp. I took back a few provisions that night.”
Charleston looked at Harry across the room. Harry nodded. Now he knew why the family had not gotten the money. The bank had probably said it was stolen and the mother was too afraid to complain.
The old man went on, “Now that I was sure I could do it, I got pretty good at those late night swims. I can tell you I found out where every current was, where every snag, even where the sharp patches of oyster shells were along the shore. I could map the whole route even today from my memory. I had to know all this because I came in the dark and most of it was by feel of my bare feet on the bottom. Sometimes I’d be spotted just for a moment until I could hide and get away but, thank the Lord, no one reported anything or recognized me. Years later, I think people treated me as a ghost. Maybe I scared them. At least I was never pursued, although every once in a while someone would come around searching the swamp whether it was for me or not I don’t know. I’d have to be careful all the time. As time went on and I got more of a routine, I’d make trips to get supplies from my mother. She’d leave out what I needed and I’d swim it up to the swamp. She had her own little route she took. We knew back roads into the swamp and we had small boats stowed at the various landings. She chose the landing that was deserted. She learned out to row a boat in the dark, without any lights.
“Sinking the Black Duck was one of the hardest jobs I ever took on and probably ever will again. It was like cutting off part of my body. I had originally planned for me to hide out there for a few months of so until the heat died down and I could get out of the area. I realized that the Black Duck, with the large amount of fuel she needed, couldn’t make the trip across the Bay. My mother had no way to get me another boat. I was stuck in that mud so to speak. Most important, I realized that my boat might be spotted and I would be found. She was like an advertisement about where I was. Even after she sunk, though, I’d dive on her and keep the weed and mud from clustering on the hull.
“O’ course it was lonely and I faced the daily worry of being discovered. I had to keep fires very low and only during the day when they would be less likely to be spotted. Stella, my girl friend, was never told. I can’t begin to tell you how much I missed her. She was the only woman besides my mother I ever loved and, over the years, I thought of her many times. I’d like to see her again, if she’s willing to visit me.”
Charleston nodded at Harry, as if to say, he’d talk to Stella for Walker.
Walker went on, “One night I fell asleep tending my crab lines. I was lying on the beach that fronts the Bay channel. I woke up hearing this grinding noise and looked out to see the excursion boat, the one that visits River Sunday. She was grounded head on in front of me, maybe two or three hundred feet out. A dance was going on up on the deck and the kids, they were all white, in ties and coats, the girls in pretty dresses, were in the bow looking down. On the lower deck a girl saw me and tried to get her date to look where I was. He was so drunk he didn’t hear her, thank the Lord. She watched me as I got up and ran back into the brush. Running away from that steamer made me feel like I was leaving the world, I can’t tell you.”
“I left the swamp, deep in the night, in October of that first year. My mother had arranged for a small boat, a crab boat, to pick me up. I waded out from shore, maybe waist deep and met her, rocking in the large Chesapeake swells that were up that night. The night had no moon, only a small light on the cubby of the boat.
“The man, I had never met him before, and I will never divulge his name, was a man of color like me, about my size and age, and although this was not his real name, let’s say his name was Tom. Tom, with a kind voice, shook my hand, bade me sit on the bottom of the boat near the engine box, and headed the boat around in a wide circle and then due south.
“The boat made slow headway, rolling as it did in the swells, but soon we were crossing in front of River Sunday, with the harbor to the boat’s left or port. A few of the town lights were on, even at this early hour. I saw, of course, the beacon from the slave monument that blinked every minute. I can’t remember exactly what went through my mind that night thirty years ago but I know my loneliness that had been growing as I lived in the swamp was acute, as I left for what I thought was the rest of my life. I had barely traveled from River Sunday all my first forty years. Tom understood my feelings, came forward and put his hand on my shoulder, saying that all would be right, that I shouldn’t worry.
“I found myself with a task right away. The boat’s engine did not run well. When it failed a hundred miles down the Bay shoreline from River Sunday, I managed to repair it while we drifted far out in the water. Tom said at the time that he could see some fine uses for my talent, that he’d have plenty of work for me, repairing all his equipment.
“So I went south. I was an expatriate, never really became part of the place, just lived there. My home, in my mind, would always be River Sunday. My mother had found this family, a man and his wife, who were willing to take me in, to hide me for almost thirty years, to keep me on their farm far south in a little hamlet on a southern river. I learned to help with the farm which was my contribution back to Tom and in the colder weather did automobile repairs for Tom’s congregation.
“He was a preacher, you see. Not a registered one like many are. In other words, he received the Word, and taught himself. He had surrounded himself with other believers and together they mostly made up this village of a hundred or so souls. Church events were several times a week, whether a dinner or a service. I did not go for fear an outsider might attend and see me. The town was so small it had no law enforcement officers, no visits by State Police. Some of the residents knew of my living out at the farm, because men or women would come by with their Bible to read. None knew my background, of course. I suspect most thought I was a distant cousin of Tom, fallen on hard times. Tom told them that treating me well was their Christian duty, their penance for their own sins.
“In time I found that Tom and his wife had a son but that he had died in prison for a crime that he did not commit, that he was killed when he was only in his twenties by other inmates. Tom explained to me that God had tried to make right this horror in their own lives by bringing me to them. Tom’s wife often said the Lord had given them me as a kind of second son.
“I, in turn, became more religious, I suppose. The Pastor would probably say that my love of the Lord was simply brou
ght forth, that it had always been there inside my heart. At any rate, I began to see the need for the Lord and for my loving Him. As days passed, I did become more thankful for what I had, and for the fact, that I was not in a prison. I did not see this farm where I lived with Tom and his wife as a prison. I saw it as an adventure in my life, a different way to live than I had supposed I would do, but a good one.
“Tom would come up with gifts for me at my birthday, that date which he wrangled out of me. I did not speak much of my home, of River Sunday, but Tom felt I would feel better if I did speak of the past, of the good times, and he made me talk. Money was scarce. The farm and what little fishing Tom could do with his boat, were our sources of food and plentiful enough they were, but cash was hard to come by. Evenso, the two of them, Tom and his wife, made sure that on my birthday I’d get a little something, something they had found that represented Maryland, like a small lamp with the name printed on its shade, or a little flag. My room in the back of the little house where we lived began to resemble a museum of Maryland things, and I myself added to the clutter with handmade models of racing boats. Of course, no one saw this room except Tom and his wife for fear someone would recognize me as a fugitive. All along, we knew that my so-called death would be suspect if a black man of my age and description were found suddenly without a proper background, without papers or driver’s license.
“One day, Tom surprised me with a new plan. I was working on his tractor and the weather had just changed, the spring sunshine becoming warmer. I had been at Tom’s farm for five years. During this time I had no contact with my past, and especially with my mother. I can tell you I thought of all of them constantly, of Mother and of Stella and of my sister. I thought of my old shop too. Of Stella, I can tell you, I regretted that she and I had not succeeded in making a child, and I despaired that I would never have someone to carry on. As I read the Bible and learned about the sons of the prophets, I knew this was one of my greatest failures, something I would never be able to change.
Powerboat Racer (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 3) Page 23
