Song Yet Sung

by James McBride

  Lums was confused. This kind of white man frank talk always made him feel done in. It was dangerous talk, honest talk, which demanded honesty in return, which for a colored could be deadly.

  —Believe in what, sir?

  —In heaven.

  —Surely do, sir.

  —You got children? Denwood asked.

  Denwood watched a pained expression flash across the old slave’s face, then vanish.

  —Had four. Cap’n sold off two. The other two’s twins. Deaf and dumb. They work over in the boathouse.

  Denwood scratched himself.

  —How old would your children be? The ones sold off?

  The man’s blank expression didn’t change.

  —Don’t know, sir, Lums said.

  —Would you like to know what happened to them?

  —I do know. They was sold off. They in the Lord’s hands.

  —Why’d the captain sell them?

  —Well, I reckon you have to ask the captain that, sir. I’m just an old colored man.

  Lums turned the side of ham over and brushed the hairs out the other side handily, swiftly.

  Denwood rose and limped to the door, looking out at workers who could be seen digging a canal in the distance. From the doorway their singing could be heard.

  —I love colored music, he said.

  Lums was silent.

  Denwood spoke with his back to Lums, watching the workers chopping away at the canal with shovels and pickaxes.

  —Tolley tells me your boss is aiming to connect two creeks with that canal, he said. So he can float his timber to Cambridge City.

  —Yes, sir.

  —He’s losing money hand over fist on that thing. It ain’t gonna work.

  —Wouldn’t know nothing about that, sir.

  Denwood wagered that the man knew everything about it. He turned to face Lums.

  —They don’t seem to be going too hard at it, do they? he said.

  Lum’s face remained blank.

  —Sir?

  —Tolley said you’s a truthful colored. Is that right?

  —Yes, sir.

  —Did you ask Mingo about me, then? He lives on Deal Island, last I heard. Unless he ran off again or got sold.

  —No, he ain’t run off. Yes, sir, I did speak to him. Mingo said you was a tolerable man.

  —What else did he say?

  —He said if you get crossed, you’ll pull the trigger and tell the hammer to hurry.

  —You know I’m gonna catch Liz, then, don’t you?

  Lums was silent a moment, brushing the meat with one hand.

  —You know your business, sir; ain’t none of mine.

  —I expect you dislike me greatly, don’t you. Me being a hunter of men.

  —I ain’t the type to waste hate on nobody, sir. Everybody got a purpose. This pig here got a purpose. You got a purpose. I got one. But truth be to tell it, sir, there’s lots more round here who can tell you more about Liz than I can.

  —But you knew Hewitt well, didn’t you? He raised her, didn’t he?

  A dark expression crossed the old man’s face.

  —Hewitt never hurt nobody, he said. He was uppity at times, but he done no wrong. He’s gone on to his reward now.

  —He did a good job with those children he raised?

  —Done very good.

  —What were their names?

  —Tolley can tell you. I forgot.

  —He already did.

  Lums was kneeling, slowly brushing the meat down. Denwood watched his hands move slower and slower. He was getting to the old man.

  —What did he teach them children?

  —Sir, I don’t know what Hewitt did with them kids. He was an odd fella. Wouldn’t take a wife, no matter how much the captain tried to make him. Captain gived him them children to raise and he done it. When they was big enough, captain sold off every one of them, except Liz. Captain took her inside when she was fifteen or so. I never seen her much after that. She was an inside nigger. I’m an outside nigger. Big difference.

  Denwood frowned.

  —You can play that with the man inside the house there, he said, but not with me. There ain’t no difference.

  —Sir?

  —I mean there ain’t no difference. Outside or inside, the white man’s got to watch you all day and night. Around his house, round his wife, round his children. He can’t sleep till you sleep. He can’t work till you work. He can’t eat till you eat. ’Cause he’s busy watching you. That’s why your captain’s gonna go broke.

  Denwood motioned to the men digging outside.

  —Digging a canal, Denwood snickered, so’s he can float his timber to Cambridge City. I been working these waters all my life. I can tell you right now, it ain’t gonna work. It ain’t big enough. The LeGrand’s gonna suck that thing, dry it right out, the minute they break through. What you think?

  —Old as I am, Lums said, it don’t much matter to me. I ’spect I won’t be alive to see it finished nohow.

  Denwood rose and stretched, then gently asked the question he’d really come to ask:

  —Tolley said something about some words that Hewitt taught his children. Something about a code.

  Denwood had spent years studying the coloreds. They were expert at keeping a straight face. He never watched their faces, because their expressions told him nothing. It was the hands. Lums was no different. His hands gave him away. Lum’s hand tightened on his brush just so. He stroked the ham side just a little bit faster, brushing away the bristles, then slowed again.

  —Don’t know nothing about no code.

  —Mingo told it to me too once, something about a code. Said he learned it up in these parts.

  —Well, Mingo don’t live here. Ain’t no code here, sir.

  Denwood turned away. He smelled it, but there was no bacon. He decided to try a different tack.

  —Why’d Liz run off? he asked.

  —Captain was gonna put her in a cabin by herself.

  —You have any idea where she’d be going?

  Lums shrugged.

  —Where do everybody go? She weren’t going to Alabama.

  —She had a suitor?

  —Captain was her friend.

  —I know that. But a colored suitor?

  Lums smiled.

  —I understand, sir. She had no suitor. Colored men was scared of her. She dreams the future, y’know.

  —That sounds touching, Denwood snorted, but it’s a lie.

  Lums paused his brushing a moment.

  —Couple of years ago, a white fella, a waterman from over Bucktown way, came down to the general store in Cambridge City. Hewitt happened to be in there with Liz—she was a little bitty thing then, a knee-high girl—and somehow them two got into some kinda hank ’bout Liz. I don’t know what was said or not said, but it was some kinda wrangle ’bout Liz some kind of way. The white fella went to strike Hewitt with a flatiron and that child jumped on him, Liz did. She got knocked silly with that flatiron. Since that time she’d fall asleep anytime of the day. Just fall out. And when she wake up, she’d tell strange things. Visions and such, dreams about tomorrow and whatnot. ’Bout flying chariots, all sorts of things.

  Lum sighed, then continued.

  —Captain got wind of that ruckus that happened down in Cambridge City and he got mad. He had to pay a doctor to fix Liz up. He blamed Hewitt for it. Whipped him scandalous ’bout it, but it was too late, if you ask me. She been a conjure woman since that day. Some folks round here believes Hewitt done the whole thing on purpose. Set up the white man just so’s Liz could get trained to conjure. Everybody knowed that white fella who done it was a hothead. That’s one of the things you got to suffer to be conjurer, so they say. You got to get struck by evil, and everybody knowed this fella was the Devil. Maybe Hewitt couldn’t bring hisself to do it, for he weren’t evil enough hisself. But he knowed this fella was evil, certainly; I ’spect he knowed she was gonna get sold. She was his last one, y’know. The last of the five he
raised. Maybe he got her struck on purpose. That’s what some folks around here say, if you wanna know.

  Denwood rose to leave.

  —You can believe that mumbo jumbo if you want, he said. But Patty Cannon lost fourteen coloreds. That’s a lot of money. If she comes round here looking for Liz, it won’t be pleasant, captain or no captain.

  —Let her come, the old man said. I got a knife sleeping in my pocket.

  —Knife won’t do you no good if Patty comes around raising hell, Denwood said.

  —What do it matter to me? the old man said. I’m in hell now.

  everything in fives

  It took Liz nearly an hour to get the fire started with the flint that her mysterious benefactor gave her. Her hands were shaking from exhaustion and the excitement of pending food. After much effort she got it going, however, and the fried muskrats brought welcome relief to the hunger gnawing at her insides. She ate the bones, the eyes, everything, then devoured two ears of corn. She bathed in the nearby creek, slipped into the jacket, tied the crude shoes to her feet, carefully placed the remainder of the food and the hemp rope into the crocker sack, and took to the woods quickly, knowing the smoke from the fire might draw attention.

  She followed the creek south until it opened up to a bay, surrounded on three sides by a well-worn, winding dirt road. The road curved around the bay, then looped back towards an inlet, the bay on one side and the woods on the other. She decided to stop there. From her position she had only to watch her front and not her back. She decided to wait there until a colored came along and try to hitch a ride.

  A wagon drove past, driven by a white farmer, then a second one driven by a white woman and a child. She let them go. A short while later a wagon driven by a colored man appeared. She hesitated as it drew close, took a deep breath, and stepped out of the woods and into the road.

  The driver slowed, regarded her torn dress, the man’s jacket, the beaten shoes—all of which screamed that she was a runaway—and drove around her, disappearing down the road.

  She sat in the woods again. An hour passed. Two. Three. Several times she stared at the water of the inlet and considered drowning herself in it. But each time she considered it, something attracted her attention. The ticking of a belted kingfisher. The scow call of a green heron. The odd coloring of a marsh hibiscus. She had the strangest feeling ever since leaving Patty Cannon’s attic, a kind of awareness that seemed to lay new discoveries at her feet at the oddest moments. Her head, which had acquainted a familiar dull throb since she’d been wounded, had developed a different kind of pain, an inner one, as if something had come unsprung. She felt as if air were blowing through an open window in her head somewhere. It hurt surely. Yet, through that new pain, or perhaps because of it, she began to feel a light-headed sense of discovery, as if every plant, every breeze, every single swish of leaf and cry of passing bird, contained a message. She began to play guessing games in her head with the nature around her, saying to herself, I bet that little old bird there won’t fly to the third branch on that tree yonder, and then watched with amusement as the bird flew exactly where she’d expected it to. She tried the guessing game several times, with a heron, a duck, with a red-bellied turtle, and then an otter. There was something amiss about it—unsettling, to be certain—but it diverted her attention away from the real issue, which was born long before she was captured by Patty, and which she had hidden from the Woman with No Name in the attic and kept secret from every living person in the world, save one, Uncle Hewitt, and he was now dead: the white man. She hated the white man. Hated his children, his dreams, his lies, his world. If she could have struck them all with a bolt of lightning and sent them to kingdom come, she would have. They live in a world where they are not raised to goodness, she told Uncle Hewitt one evening shortly before he passed away as they sat in the hearth of his muddy cabin watching the fire burn down to embers. They are raised to evil, she said.

  Uncle Hewitt was old then, grumpy and tired, his brown face sagging at the edges, his once bright dark eyes yellowed. He sighed and said softly, You put yourself in a hard position, thinking them thoughts.

  —I can’t put them away from me, she said. Uncle Hewitt did not understand what was happening between her and the captain, and she was afraid to tell him.

  —You crowing and running a fit ’bout the white man only makes you wronger than him, he said.

  —How so?

  —He got an excuse to hate you. You ain’t nothing to him. You’s a dog to him. ’Cause in his sight, you not equal to him. You less than a woman to him. That’s his excuse. What’s your excuse, hatin’ him? He got his excuse, what’s yours? You gonna stand on God’s word or you gonna go round living wrong, spreading filth, ’cause you spreading hate, and that’s the same as spreading filth.

  —Captain’s gonna sell me if you die out, she said.

  —I know it, he said softly, his eyes watering. I know it. That’s why you got to lean on the everlasting cross, child. There ain’t but a short time till tomorrow. God gived you but one soul to save. Move to the job now and tomorrow will be yours. The way to good ain’t a straight line. It’s crooked and full of snares. That’s why you got to leave yourself to God’s will. Chance belong to God. It’s an instrument of God. He controls everything. The birds, the insect pesters, the snakes. He gived you control over them things in some form or fashion, but chance belong to Him. That’s his instrument. Captain ain’t got nothing to do with that. He can’t touch it.

  Chance is an instrument of God…

  Sitting in the darkening swamp by a bald cypress tree, playing a stick across the muddy earth, she suddenly sat up straight. Wasn’t that exactly what the Woman with No Name said? Chance is an instrument of God? Evil travels in straight lines? She couldn’t remember. She reeled her memory back to Patty’s attic, but was not sure. Was it possible that Uncle Hewitt knew the code? But then, if he knew it, why wouldn’t he have told her?

  She flushed thoughts of him from her mind and stared out at the road. It was getting dark now. She had to move. She was about to venture to the deeper cover of the woods behind her when a single horse wagon pulled by a grey mule appeared in the distance. Night was coming fast, and the man was obviously in a hurry to get home before dark. On the back of his carriage were two hogshead barrels and assorted supplies.

  She waited anxiously as he drew nearer. The wagon was out of sight for a moment as it dipped into a curve in the road and looped around the inlet. When it appeared again, she saw the driver was a colored man. She stepped out into the road.

  The carriage stopped.

  The driver was not a man but a Negro boy of about seventeen. He was tall and slender, with a long, lean face and wide eyes that sucked in everything about him: the cove, the road, the woods behind her. He regarded her suspiciously.

  —Evening, she said.

  The boy didn’t speak.

  The old lady’s words suddenly ran through her mind. Scratch a line in the dirt to make a friend, she had said.

  She knelt and drew a crooked line in the dirt.

  The young Negro looked at the line, then at her, then at the dirt again.

  He spoke to his mule.

  —Git, he said.

  She turned and watched him leave in a hurry, shooing his mule on, winding his way hastily around the inlet till he was gone. She sank back into the bushes, knowing she had to flee quickly, afraid he might summon a posse. He was nervous and young. Probably a turncoat. He’d be eager to please the white man. The type that was liable to turn his own mother in for a silver dollar. She hated him now, then hated herself for hating someone she didn’t know.

  Minutes later she heard the sound of something rolling down the road, approaching from the same direction as the boy had just fled. She crouched in the thickets and peered out. It was the boy, pushing one of the hogshead barrels along.

  She stepped out of the woods when he reached her and he stopped. He stood his barrel upright and busily began fussing with the meta
l strap on it, undoing it and fastening it tighter as if it were broken.

  —Why you doing that? she asked.

  He spoke to the inlet, not to her.

  —If somebody comes, I can say the barrel fell off the wagon and I gone to get it. I’m in a hurry, he said. The missus expected me two hours ago.

  —I’m Liz, she said.

  He looked alarmed.

  —You trying to trick me? he asked.

  —No.

  —No names, then. Why’d you scratch the dirt?

  —Somebody told me to do it.

  —Who?

  —I don’t know her name.

  He seemed really vexed now.

  —You trying to fool me, ain’t ya.

  —No. I don’t know her name. She said she didn’t have one.

  He regarded her suspiciously.

  —Where’d you get that fancy coat?

  —Man in the woods gave it to me.

  —What man?

  —I don’t know his name, either. Where am I? she asked.

  She watched a nervous hand run itself across his furrowed brow. He glanced up the road nervously. Night was coming fast.

  —I’ll say good evening, then, he said. He hastily flipped the barrel onto its side to roll it back towards his wagon.

  She stepped forward and placed a hand on the barrel.

  —Brother, please.

  —I don’t know you, sister, he said, glancing nervously about. I don’t know your purpose.

  —I was trapped in Patty Cannon’s attic, she said. I dreamed of tomorrow and I met a lady there. Woman with No Name. That was her name.

  He turned to her, wide-eyed.

  —You the Dreamer, then?

  He sized her up fully now, as if for the first time, and seemed to come to a decision. He stood his barrel up straight and pretended to fiddle with the metal band that fastened it. As he did, he spoke:

  —About two miles down this road this river splits off. The big river goes left, and a small creek goes right. Follow the creek about a mile. There’s a yellow house along that way with long pine trees in front. Go past that house, then take to the woods to the right as soon as you can’t see the house behind you. Wait till you can’t see that house no more. Don’t turn before that. Just as soon as you can’t see that house no more—and not before—just turn and walk right, straight into the woods. Cross the swamp there, about ten minutes’ walk. You’ll see a field and a stone wall. Follow the wall to a fat white oak tree with a big hollow in it. Sit in that hollow. I got an uncle who’ll see you.