Song Yet Sung

by James McBride

  And there was another problem.

  Maryland’s eastern shore was shrouded in myth and superstition. It was a rough, rugged peninsula, 136 miles long and 55 miles wide at the shoulder, shaped roughly like a bunch of grapes, veined with water throughout, filled with hundreds of thick swamps and marshlands, which at night seemed more dreadful than the retreats of the ancient Druids. It was rough, untamed land, populated by watermen, a breed of white pioneer whose toughness and grit made the most grizzled Western cowboys seem like choirboys by comparison. Farmers by summer, fishermen in winter, watermen were unpredictable, pious, gritty, superstitious, and fiercely independent. Descendants of indentured servants, stuck between servitude to powerful landowners and the mighty Chesapeake Bay, which often claimed their lives, they were beholden to no one. They did not like slaves. They did not like slave owners. And lately Patty had been hearing of a popular Methodist minister traveling around Dorchester County by boat, raising questions about the Godliness of slavery, infecting watermen with his ideas. Watermen were cowed by only two things, weather and God, and when they got on their hind legs about something, they were no small problem to contend with. Slaves, politicians, sheriffs come and go, she knew. But angry watermen could spell trouble, bringing in the authorities. Not the local ones—the sheriffs and constables she owned through fear and graft—but the big boys, the military boys, from Washington, the ones who could not be bought, who had long boats, big guns, and were foolish enough, even, to take on the watermen.

  She turned to Eb.

  —Where did you hear this, Eb?

  —The regular places, the boy said. Bucktown. Cambridge. Old lady down at East New Market told me ’bout Big Linus. She seen him watering himself down at Muskrat Creek near New Market. Said he was the biggest nigger she ever seen. How come you never showed him to me?

  Patty sat back and sipped her beer. She set the glass down slowly and spoke to the Negro boy calmly.

  —What we gonna do about it, Eb?

  Out of the corner of her eye, she watched the faces of her four men as she plowed the mind of her one remaining slave, the only key to redeeming the lost damage. Long experience running slaves taught Patty Cannon the true secret of success. Know your prey from within. She actually liked the colored. She trusted them more than she did the white man. They were predictable. They gravitated towards kindness. She could tell when they thought or did wrong, could read it in their faces. They were like dogs, loyal, easy to train, unless of course they learned to read, which made them useless. Patty herself saw no value in books. She only enjoyed reading the faces of men, particularly slave men, who were the most interesting read of them all. The ones whom she employed were selectively chosen, well built, finely sculpted, beautiful to look at, and able, loyal servants. They saw it as their duty to tend to her wants. She had no fear of touching them, even wrestled them from time to time, offering food, shelter, camaraderie, an occasional warm caress, and the sense of home. Her colored boys had never let her down. They were crude, distasteful at times, but they were honest, protective, and, when necessary, savage on her behalf.

  She waited for the colored boy’s response to her question, keeping an eye on the faces of the three men at the table. All but Stanton’s were blank. His bore a hint of disgust that slipped across his eyes and disappeared behind a glum purse of the lips. Her instinct on Stanton, she decided, had been correct. He bore watching. Eb, watching her, blinked in confusion.

  —’Bout you showing me Big Linus, you mean?

  —No. About all them people who got out.

  —Why, I wouldn’t do nothing, Miss Patty, the boy said. I would wait it out. Big Linus won’t be hard to catch. Every nigger for a hundred miles is scared of him. He got no horse and he got to eat, big as he is. The other ones, well, we just round ’em up. The ones that’s caught by other white folks round here, they’ll be returned to their masters. And the rest, why, seems to me there’s three or four who’ll turn up not too far off, since they got young’ns. Ain’t no one gonna run too far west towards Sinking Creek with Woolman and his gator Gar out there.

  —You think Woolman is real?

  —Well, I heard tell of him plenty, Eb said.

  —Have you ever seen him?

  —Naw, Miss Patty.

  —I been running these marshes for fourteen years, Patty said. I never seen him. Nor have I ever seen no alligator down at Sinking Creek, Sinking Swamp, or Cook’s Point.

  —So Woolman ain’t real, then, the boy concluded.

  —Let’s hope he is, Patty said. We could get a good price for him.

  The men sitting around the table laughed, except, she noted silently, for Stanton. He had not reacted at all since this news broke. He hadn’t laughed, or joked, or showed any outward sign of distress at all, which on its face was nothing suspicious. They had, after all, lost a lot of money. At the moment, as far as they could tell, their investment—in fourteen slaves they had spent considerable time, money, and risk gathering for sale to the south—was wandering around the eastern shore, spreading bad news about her and, by extension, them. Of the four, only Hodge Wenner and her partner and son-in-law, Joe, were loyal enough to hold off without pay until she could recoup her losses. The other two, Stanton and Odgin, she decided, were ambivalent. That was deadly for her—and for them. Odgin, she knew, was ambivalent about everything: his wife in Kansas, his second wife in Delaware, his four kids scattered about. But Odgin, when under the gun, was a steady hand. He could shoot and ride, and he enjoyed slave hunting. He would hang on, she decided. Stanton, on the other hand, would probably not stick without being paid. He was the newest. He’d come recommended by a fellow slave runner named Primus Higgins up near Hooper’s Island. Stanton was a waterman, the only one among them who could put a bungy—a hollowed-out canoe, often equipped with mast and sail—out on the rugged Chesapeake and not get them drowned, which on its face was enough not to kill him or dump him immediately, because she figured some of her escaped goods would most certainly take to the water, and her last waterman had given up the ghost four months before. The Chesapeake was treacherous business this time of spring; everyone on the eastern shore knew it. Late winter freezes and spring gales could push a bungy into rocks, sweep it out to sea, or simply dash it to bits. The bay, like the watermen who lived on it, was beautifully unforgiving and cruel, and like most eastern shore folks, she was wary of it. She decided to pay Stanton out of her pocket until this job was done, then jettison him later.

  She patted Eb’s head.

  —Don’t you worry about old Woolman and Gar, she said. We’ll run ’em all down. And you’ll ride with us this time. You about ready. Your own horse, pistol, everything.

  Eb’s face lit up.

  —That’s righteous, Miss Patty, he said.

  —Go round up our horses, then.

  The boy gazed at her with true gratitude, stepped back, kicked his heels in the air, and ran off.

  She watched him go. Now that Little George was gone, he was her favorite. She had raised him from infancy, just as she had done Little George. She’d been training Eb to replace Little George for quite some time, though she hadn’t the intention of putting him to work this early, largely because of his age. But his time had come. Little George had gotten too big for his britches anyway. Sex had destroyed Little George, Patty believed. She hadn’t minded him impregnating the captured women—it made them more valuable—but he’d gotten obsessed with them, bringing them gifts, ravaging some until they were sick and useless. He had gotten off the track with that last one, blasting her in the head, then nursing her back to health. How stupid she was! She should have let her die and buried her behind the tavern, where several other formerly useless Negroes lay, gathering worms. But Little George had argued that beneath the blood and guts, there was a valuable, pretty colored face. Patty had let her greed win the day, and now she was sorry. The high-mannered wench had turned tables on him and cost her thousands. She was worth a lot of money, that last one. Patty had to
bite her lip to keep the rage off her face when she thought of her. Liz was her name. The two-headed nigger.

  She turned to her son-in-law, Joe.

  —Who’d that nigger belong to? That Dreamer?

  —Belonged to Captain Spocott, from down in the Neck district.

  —Who’s he?

  Joe snorted.

  —Don’t you read the papers? He got almost two hundred head of slaves, timber farm, saloon, and a windmill. He’s building a canal off the LeGrand Creek to float his timber to town, to collect his money in express fashion. He got the local law out there, Travis House, in his pocket. Travis’s a Methodist, you know.

  Patty fingered her lip, then said, I seen that apeface Travis selling stolen oysters from the Virginia side last year at Chancellor’s Point. Selling ’em right and left right out the barrel, the Devil keeping score. We can use that against him if he comes at us.

  Joe frowned and said, Ain’t nobody from Maryland gonna complain about him stealing oysters from them yellow-bellied Virginians. They’d give him a medal for it.

  —Whatever they give him, he ain’t gonna trouble us.

  —Maybe so, Joe said. But we ain’t got many friends in Dorchester County. I say we let the captain’s property go, gather up the rest, and quit. It won’t do to ruffle the old captain’s feathers. He got too many friends.

  Patty sipped her beer and reached in her pocket for a cigar.

  Too bad, she thought bitterly. The captain would have to chalk this one up to providence. She planned to even the score.

  the gimp

  Two days after Liz Spocott led the breakout at Patty Cannon’s tavern, Denwood Long pulled his bungy out of the Honga River of Hooper’s Island and noticed, out of the corner of his eye, a horseman approaching. It was late morning and a thundergust was coming. Already the diamondback turtles that basked atop the shoal side rocks in the morning glare had slipped back into the water. The yellow-legged egrets that normally wallowed about in the shallows, ducking their heads into the black water to hunt for fish and worms, had spread their wings, lifted off, and disappeared.

  Denwood, a lean, rangy figure in oilskin hat and jacket, his right leg oddly disfigured at the knee, rested against the edge of the pier to watch the approaching horseman with squinted eyes. The horseman was coming from the direction of the ferry, which was pulled back and forth across Gunner’s Cove from the mainland by an old man named Owl, who tied a rope from one shore to the other and pulled his skiff across all day for whoever could produce a penny, no matter what the weight.

  Staring at the approaching figure on horseback, Denwood decided that the rider had taken Owl’s pull ferry across and was a waterman. The thundergust coming from the north was a nasty one, and the rider was in a hurry. Only a waterman could smell the anger in the warm, inviting wind that blew across the busty shoreline, bristling with growth, trees, and salt marsh grass. The storm was far out over the bay now. In an hour, though, it would be different. The sky would turn hazy purple. The inviting March breeze would circle to the north, kiss the Pennsylvania mountains, and return, this time with teeth. By nightfall, howling frost would bite Hooper’s Island in half. The river would freeze over, the jeering gale would push huge chunks of ice around and chop his fishing nets to pieces.

  For that reason Denwood turned his back to the man and hurried to winch his bungy out of the water. He didn’t have time to study the man. The man was a waterman. Let him come. Still, he lifted his four-barrel pepperbox from underneath a slip of sail on his canoe and slid the wide pistol into the pocket of his oilskin jacket, lest the stranger be unfriendly. Here on the island he was safe, but beyond it there were many who remembered who he had once been and might be inclined to test him. He’d even heard there was a reward for him in Boston. The offer actually impressed him. As far as he was concerned, the man the law was looking for in Boston was gone forever, and in its place were only shards of who he once was. The islanders called him the Gimp to his face now. Five years ago he would’ve pulled out his heater and smoked the offender for muttering such impudence. But that was before. Before his son. Before his wife. Before life humbled him and sent him staggering across America for three years, only to toss him back to tong oysters in the very same bay he swore he would never sail upon again, drinking himself into some semblance of peace at night like the rest of his fellow watermen. Unlike most of them, however, he did not drink to forget but rather to remember to forget, to preserve continuity in his life. He had been someone important once, with important thoughts, who had owned up to part of something good, but he could not remember what it was, or who was part of it, or why, or what it was that he had been, and why he did it, and did not care to. Life had exploded in his face and left emptiness, and he’d fled the eastern shore thinking the explosion would subside and the emptiness would be filled with joy somehow and that he could run from the raging silences that roared across his insides, only to discover that he was running in the same direction as the emptiness, and all he could hear during those long journeys across the northwestern territories was the sound of his horse’s hooves hitting dust and his own running feet echoing across America’s great, dusty valleys, so he came back to the water where there were no feet, no sound of running boots, and the lapping of waves brought him the only peace he thought imaginable. He was glad to be home.

  The horseman arrived just as Denwood tied his bungy to a tree along the shoreline, pulled his tongs off the boat, and dumped a load of oysters. He kept a good ten feet from the man. He planted his bad leg on a rock on the sandy shoreline, with his foot wedged at the bottom of the rock, just in case he needed firm footing to yank out his pepperbox.

  The man stopped his mount at a respectable distance, several yards away. Steam whooshed out of the horse’s nostrils. The rider, a squat, thick man with bushy eyebrows, regarded Denwood nervously, his eyes searching Denwood’s face under his oilskin hat.

  —Name’s Tolley, the man said.

  Denwood nodded, silent, checking behind the man to see if any other riders were sneaking up behind him.

  —Not much you got there, Tolley said, nodding at Denwood’s catch.

  —A few softies and some peelers, Denwood said. The bar’s done gived out. What you want? His eyes scanned the pier and the surrounding rock jetties.

  —I come for the Gimp.

  —I’m him.

  —Captain Spocott of Dorchester County has some work for you. Wants you to catch a runaway.

  —I’m retired, Denwood said. Finally secure that the man was alone, he busied himself with his oyster basket, tossing a few thin, useless ones into the water.

  Tolley chuckled. You saying that to raise your price? he asked.

  —I got no price for the captain, Denwood said.

  Tolley looked off into the cove towards the gathering clouds. He expected this from an islander. They did not harken to strangers. Hooper’s Island was actually three islands, a half-mile stretch of land ten miles long, separated from the rest of Dorchester County—and the world—by two large rivers, the Honga and the Chesapeake. The disdain the islanders felt for mainlanders was well known. Still, Tolley had a job to do, and he wanted to get to it before the old man who operated the pull ferry quit and went home. Hooper’s Island during a rainstorm was the last place he wanted to be stuck.

  —It’s worth your time, Tolley said.

  He watched the Gimp shrug and toss a second basket of oysters off his boat onto the rocky beach.

  —If I were you, I’d turn that mount around and git off this island before this thundergust comes, Denwood said.

  Tolley glanced at the sky overhead, then down at his hands holding the horse’s reins before looking down at Denwood again.

  —I chased this one myself for a hot minute, he said ruefully. Won’t do it again.

  Denwood shrugged and pushed the oyster baskets aside with his good leg, then grabbed the rope to yank his bungy further onto the bank.

  —I chased niggers fourteen years, Tolley s
aid. Caught every one but this one.

  —I told you, I’m retired, Denwood said.

  —This nigger’s worth a lot, Tolley said. He named a price.

  The amount was so large, Denwood stared straight down into his bungy in surprise. He raised his head and looked at Tolley dead on for the first time.

  Tolley gripped his reins nervously. Denwood was standing close to him, and for the first time he got a good look at the Gimp’s face and knew then that what he’d always been told about the Gimp was true: the man was dead inside.

  —It’s been five years, Denwood said slowly, since I saddled a mount to run down a colored.