Song Yet Sung

by James McBride

  Patty stared at the man a long time.

  —I’ll remember your favor for the next time, she said. She turned and stalked out of the store, pushing aside crates as she left.

  Joe approached the merchant and offered a dollar.

  —For your troubles, he said.

  The merchant shook his head.

  —This ain’t for the pork or none of that. Just a little something for your pains, Joe said.

  —I don’t want it, the merchant said.

  The wife said something to the man that Joe didn’t understand. That made Joe even more nervous. He didn’t like Cambridge. Too many outsiders. Germans. Hebrews. Foreigners speaking funny languages. Unhappy constables. Even abolitionists posing as slave traders. In the world of trading cash for human souls, a man had to know the territory. These were constant worries. The world was changing too fast for him. The Methodists had made it tight for slave owners in Cambridge. He felt better back in Caroline County.

  —How much for that stuff altogether if I paid it now? Joe asked.

  —Thirteen dollars total.

  Joe reached into his pocket, pulled out a wad, and counted off the money.

  —That squares us. Feel better?

  The merchant nodded, but he clearly wasn’t convinced.

  —By the way, Joe said to the merchant. We are on the lookout for a couple of runaway niggers. One’s a girl. Deep brown colored. Seen one like that around here?

  —I don’t know one from the other, the old Hebrew said.

  Joe glared at him.

  —I bet you don’t, he said.

  He backed out the door and let it close behind him. Patty and the others were standing outside at the wagon.

  —We got no friends here, he said.

  —Stop fretting, Patty said. We got a lead. A nigger boy was brought into the doctor here with a wound to his foot. Got caught in a muskrat trap out near Blackwater Creek. That’s out on the Neck district. That’s in our direction.

  —So what?

  —Said a pretty nigger girl helped him. Girl had a wound to the face.

  —He said it?

  —Naw. They put the boy in county jail. Colored woman in his cell got it out of him.

  —How’d you hear all this?

  —Somebody saw the pa outside the doctor’s office, trying to leave the boy there. The pa looks like a monkey. Real beast. Filthy. Hair looked like a wool patch. A couple of deputies chased him towards Blackwater Creek. Said he’s wanted for killing somebody. That gives us a place to look.

  —Who’s out there on Blackwater Creek? Joe asked.

  —Ain’t but two families. Gables is out there. They friendly to us. And the Sullivans. They’re not. They’re watermen. Probably Methodists. Me and Odgin’ll ride out there. Stanton stays here with the wagon and Eb. You too.

  —Why I got to stay here?

  She cast a quick glance at Stanton and Odgin, standing by the horses and wagon.

  —I want you to watch Stanton, she said softly. I don’t trust him.

  —I ain’t come all this way to baby him and feed him boiled grits, Joe said. He ain’t going nowhere till he gets his money.

  —How do I know he ain’t gonna catch the girl and carry her back to Spocott? Patty said. The old man got a big reward out on her now.

  —Joe frowned and followed Patty towards the others. He watched Odgin mount. Patty did the same. Stanton watched them grimly.

  —It’s too hot around here for us, Joe said. They could put the lock on us.

  Patty grunted and swung her horse around. We got five or six slave keepers who’ll speak to our favor, she said. Ones who we sold goods to, forged papers for, done some documents to their favor, moved some niggers on their behalf. We could spill the beans on them. Just be quiet and watch out. Somebody said Spocott hired a slave catcher to run down that girl.

  —Who?

  —Heard it might be the Gimp.

  Joe tried to keep the alarmed look off his face. The Gimp’s outta the game, he said.

  —He better be. I ain’t forgot the boathouse at Lloyd’s Landing.

  Joe nodded. He wanted to forget that one too.

  —What do we do if he shows?

  Patty looked across the muddy town plaza, shielding her eyes from the sun.

  —Just keep your gun oiled and your eyes peeled, she said. Look around here for a couple of days. We’ll be back on Saturday. That’s five days from now. If we ain’t here by Saturday, ride out towards Blackwater Creek.

  —You want us to set here five days?

  —I didn’t say set. I said look out. Go see Big Linus’s owner, Gables. He’s living out towards Hills Point. Cut a deal if you can. Tell him we’ll run down that nigger and sell him off if he wants. We’ll take our piece off the top.

  —That nigger’s dead!

  —He don’t know that. Long as he thinks his money’s alive, he’ll help us. Maybe he’ll tell us where that nigger was going when we caught him. He wasn’t going north when we got him, was he? He was going someplace else. Likely some of our other ones gone where he’s gone.

  She dug her heels into her horse and rode off, Odgin following.

  Joe watched her leave, then turned to Stanton, who stood nearby. He nodded at the Tin Teacup Saloon up Main Street.

  —Let’s knock one back, he said. We’ll ride out on Hills Point tomorrow. I don’t see no reason to hurry on a fool’s errand.

  The two headed towards the saloon.

  As they strode on the wooden sidewalk, they passed old Clarence, the Negro deliveryman from the general store, rolling a barrel of oysters down the wooden-planked sidewalk, the sun shining off the tufts of white hair that sprouted from beneath the ragged straw hat atop his thinning, balding head. He was dressed in an old calico topcoat, weathered pants, and no shoes. When he saw the two white men coming, the old Negro hastily moved his wheelbarrow aside and removed his cap to let them pass. As they did, Joe reached into the barrel and snatched off an oyster, cracked it, and sucked it down, tossing the Negro a penny as payment before turning on his heel.

  The old man mumbled his thanks.

  Joe and Stanton headed to the Tin Teacup, neither of them noticing that the old man’s pants leg—the left one—was rolled up.

  eighty miles

  A flock of blue warblers circled high over the Chesapeake, circling slowly towards Joya’s Neck. Beneath them, a tiny female figure holding a bucket stood and watched them circle lower with keen interest. Each day, Kathleen Sullivan, a short, dark-haired, bright slip of a woman, stood at the edge of the creek near her modest cabin at Blackwater Creek, nine miles west of Cambridge at the end of Joya’s Neck, staring out over the water. Her husband, Boyd, had been on the bay oystering for six months. He had been given up for lost, yet each day she found herself standing at the bank’s edge, staring at the wide expanse of bay beyond Blackwater Creek, looking in vain for the sail of his dory boat, hoping it would appear, knowing it would not. Today was like any other, except for the warblers coming north for spring. She took it as a good sign.

  Her gaze followed the birds as they swooped low over her house, disappearing into the woods behind it; then she saw, out of the corner of her eye, Amber, one of her male slaves, walking slowly towards the tobacco shed.

  Amber usually accompanied her husband on his oystering runs, but on the day Boyd left, Amber had pleaded ill and been allowed to stay home, sending his brother-in-law, Nate, instead. Kathleen always meant to ask Amber about his supposed illness that day, but the question was lost in the tumultuous scurrying of disorganization and disarrayed grief that accompanies death. For days her house was crowded with wet, desperate watermen and her anxious father, all of whom searched the bay to no avail, finding nothing. No body. No boat. The man who had held her close and spilled his every dream into her bosom, who filled her heart with hope and sometimes dread, vanished, gone like the morning tide. She had wanted to blame someone, but Amber had behaved superbly during those difficult days. She wouldn’t have
survived without him. Besides, he’d suffered as well. His sister Mary had lost a husband. His teenage nephew Wiley lost a father. And Amber had lost a brother-in-law. They had grieved together. Still, now that she was emerging out of her cloud of grief to consider her future, which was uncertain, she noticed that his behavior lately seemed odd.

  She watched Amber approach the tobacco shed, axe in hand.

  —Morning, he called out, smiling.

  She waved at him and watched him go. He had been acting suspiciously. She could not place her finger on it, but something about him these past couple of days made her nervous. Amber was generally a happy man, smiling, always ready to laugh and offer a quiet joke, but in the past two days he seemed distracted. She depended on him heavily now, along with Mary and Wiley. In their close living quarters, the modest house she shared with her three young boys, and the slave cabin just fifty paces off, there were few secrets among them. Amber was keeping something from her. She sensed it. She’d known her four coloreds the better part of fifteen years—in fact, had helped Mary bring Wiley into the world. They were, she felt, part of her family, and hers, she felt, was part of theirs. She could not imagine life without them. She believed that they, like her, understood that their collective survival made them dependent on each other, and that made her feel safe.

  Yet, a space had opened up. There was something about Amber. His face. His distracted look. The small things. The way he left half the pigs unattended. Forgot to close the barn door. Cut firewood and left half the cord strewn about as he wandered off to another task. Like most coloreds, he had an inside life that he never discussed with any white person, and she understood that. But it did not make her feel any more secure, not these days. The eastern shore of Maryland, she knew, was relatively uncivilized compared to the rest of the northeastern states to which it was attached. Schools were spotty, postal service even spottier. Communication was by word of mouth. Transportation was by horse, mule, or canoe. Water was a natural barrier between the eastern shore and the rest of the world, and Joya’s Neck was, Kathleen knew, remote even by eastern shore standards. Her house was fourteen miles from Cambridge City as the crow flies, surrounded by Blackwater Creek, Sinking Creek, and the Choptank River on three sides. The three bodies of water lay like canyons between the Neck and the rest of Dorchester County, which was how her husband liked it. But Kathleen never felt truly comfortable there, even before her husband disappeared, partly because of a troubling notion that had begun to bother her in recent years, swirling in her head like a dust storm.

  Kathleen grew up with slavery. She saw it as a necessary evil. Yet, the older she got, the more troubling it seemed. She believed the Negro was inferior—was sure of it—but lately she had taken to reading the Bible, something her late husband discouraged. The more she read the Bible, the less civilized slavery seemed. She’d even abandoned the Bible lately in favor of the newspaper, which only brought more troubling news: Negro breakouts, killings, rampages, all of which were quickly snuffed out by the local constables, who said, Don’t worry, it is not a problem, we have the colored problem under control. But it was not under control. She could feel it, saw it in the worried faces of her fellow slave owners in Cambridge City, who gathered at the general stores and taverns to discuss their slave problems, problems of marriage, of discipline, safety, and lately of missing tools and, even more frighteningly, missing weapons. It wouldn’t be so bad, she mused, if she were living in the Deep South, Tennessee or Alabama, far away from the abolitionists and troublemakers. But her father had visited two weeks previous, and he’d planted a disturbing notion in her mind before he left home for Ocean City. He had been trying without success to convince her to sell her farm and slaves and move to Ocean City, but she resisted.

  —How can a colored be happy, her father said, if freedom is only eighty miles away?

  Eighty miles, she thought, watching Amber duck out of the tobacco shed, grab a pile of tobacco leaves, then proceed inside.

  Eighty miles.

  That was mighty close.

  That notion circled in her brain day in and day out. Eighty miles. A person could smell it, sense it, feel it. In Annapolis on a clear day, a colored boy could climb a tree and practically look out on Philadelphia. No matter what the constables said, no matter what the newspaper and politicians declared about the contented, happy slave, no matter how many songs were sung, poems written, smiling mammies produced, weddings held, promises made, kindnesses offered, children celebrated, and jump-de-broom galas her rich fellow slaveholders held in the Big House on behalf of their beloved Sambos, Aunt Pollys, and Uncle Toms, the eighty-miles-to-the-freedom-line business hung grimly over the eastern shore like a cloud, and Kathleen felt it, every drop of it. She’d heard all the rumors: Coloreds who stole their masters’ boats and floated to freedom; colored women disguised as men stowing away on steamers; a slave who shipped himself to Philadelphia in a box. Reading the newspaper these past six months had given her the clear notion that the eastern shore was a sieve for runaway slaves, a sponge for freedom seekers, sucking them out of the woods of Virginia, North Carolina, and points south like a bilge pump. And her slaves, she knew, could not be that oblivious.

  She recalled even mentioning this to her husband, the notion that there was something in the air, for the question of slavery had been festering for a while, long before he died. But Boyd, who often came home after days of oystering on the Chesapeake exhausted, was thankful to have the strength of Nate and Amber to help him hoist up the twenty-six-foot-long oyster tongs and handle the dory boat on the rough waters, and was willing to cede them just about anything they wanted, knowing that his life depended on them when he was out on the water. That thought used to terrify her, his dependence on them. But that was moot now. It wasn’t her husband who was dependent on them. It was her. The first wave of bucktoothed, ragged suitors had already begun a steady parade to her front door, knowing she was a widow with property and slaves. They were causing trouble. She detested them. Her father volunteered to move in from his houseboat in Ocean City, but she declined. She had lived under a man’s thumb for fifteen years; that was enough. She enjoyed her new freedom and felt certain she could make a go of it alone, at least for a while, so long as her slaves stood fast.

  But would they?

  Standing on the shore of the creek, white fingers gripping her bucket, she watched Amber, still holding the axe, glance over his shoulder at her, and disappear into the darkness of the tobacco shed.

  He smells freedom, she thought. He smells it over my head.

  She bent towards the creek and dipped her pail in the water, fretting. The news of the breakout of fourteen slaves from the slave trader’s house was troubling. That was the problem with living so far out on the Neck: news traveled slowly. It took a full week to reach her. Moreover, by the time most reports reached the Neck, the stories had grown, gotten exaggerated, the facts altered, the stories conflicting, some including rape, mayhem, and murder. She didn’t know what to believe. It occurred just five miles from where she stood, that was certain, which made it even more disturbing. One of the Negroes, it was rumored, was a girl murderer, a possessed devil, who inspired fellow slaves to revolt. Posses had been formed, patrols established. But out on the Neck, there was no town, just a tiny general store near Phillips Creek run by a waterman named Stewart who soaked himself with booze and opened only during the cold oyster season so that watermen could oil themselves up further after their long, dangerous runs. The sheriff from New Market had already ridden out to the Neck to announce that while the local constable from Cambridge City was out of town for a week, he would check on her. They’re not on the Neck, he said. Most have been caught. The rest are long gone. Still, Amber and Mary took turns sleeping on the floor of her cabin. They swore, as they always did, that they would defend her with their lives. But she was not so sure. She was not sure if they were capable, even if they were willing. One of the escaped slaves, Linus, she had seen before. He was owned by her clo
sest neighbors, the Gables family, who lived four miles east. Linus was the biggest human being she had ever seen, well over nineteen hands high, silent and black as night. Frightening. When Linus was a boy, Will Gables had made a few dollars pitting him against other slaves in wrestling matches down in Cambridge City. But when he grew to manhood, Linus became uncontrollable, and Will had slipped him to a slave trader and said, Sell him as fast as you can. How he ended up with Patty Cannon was anyone’s guess, but Kathleen suspected it was not clean business.

  Eighty miles. Eighty miles…

  She swilled the bucket in the creek to clear it of mud and dead plants, pulling it out full. She glanced at the woods behind her, which led to the swamp behind the house and a large tract of unused land and Sinking Creek, and beyond that, Cook’s Point. She had never liked those woods, never fully trusted their area of the Neck district. It was too far from Cambridge City, too sparsely populated, too remote. The Neck protruded fourteen miles out into the Chesapeake Bay, with only one road in and out. Any slave west of her fleeing north would have to cross through her land. That thought was troubling as well. For years she had heard stories of the escaped slave named the Woolman, rumored to live west of her, in the thick bog of Sinking Creek near Cook’s Point, a large unpopulated area used for hunting and fishing. She had not believed them until recently, when a wild, woolly-haired boy was brought into town by a wild man. The boy barely spoke English. He had been injured in some kind of muskrat trap. He refused to give any information about himself. He was tossed into jail and fliers were posted to ascertain the whereabouts of any possible master from whom he might have absconded. The constable’s deputies had chased the man who brought him into the bog towards the Neck. They described him as half man, half boar, and said he ran like an animal. She knew part of all that was just man talk, part bragging, part truth, but the boy, she knew, was real.

  She had asked her coloreds about the Woolman. It was impossible to keep news away from them anyway. They had their own kind of telegraph, and often got the news of the town’s goings-on before she did. Wiley and Mary had allowed that they had heard of the Woolman. But Amber, the sharpest of her slaves, professed ignorance. That made him even more suspicious in her mind. She decided it was time to sell him.