Song Yet Sung

by James McBride

  The blacksmith reached the cabinet and opened it. There was nothing inside other than a few tools. Several unshucked oysters lay scattered on the floor, as if dropped there in haste, the tasty delights still inside them.

  —I told you it wasn’t nothing, the blacksmith said. Boy’s done run out by now. He glanced angrily at Stanton. You was ’bout ready to kill me for nothing.

  Stanton’s eyes scanned the room, unbelieving. He flung open the back door to check the alley and was surprised to see Eb standing there, holding his horse by its traces.

  —What you doing here?

  —Joe sent me.

  —For what?

  The kid looked uncomfortable. Said to wait for you, he did.

  Stanton stifled an urge to swing his fist into the kid’s jaw. Something was not right. You working with this nigger? he asked, pointing to the blacksmith behind him.

  —I don’t even know him! Eb said.

  —’Course you do, the blacksmith said. I seen you at Miss Helena’s bakery the other day.

  Eb’s face clouded a moment as he searched his memory, while Stanton, suspicious now, glared at them both. This was the problem with Patty being stupid enough to work with niggers, he thought bitterly. They could be in cahoots together and a white man would never know it. He would never in a million years hire a nigger to catch another nigger. It was a terrible idea.

  —I might have seen you there, Eb said slowly. But I don’t know you. There was lots of colored there that morning.

  —Ain’t no need to fib, son, the blacksmith said. I spoke to you a good five minutes.

  It was true: the blacksmith had spoken with Eb. But he’d made it a point to appear before the boy in his Sunday clothes. His frock coat, boots, calico pants, top hat, and boots gave him a far different appearance than the wretched bib and tattered pants he now wore.

  —Okay, stop petting like two pigs, Stanton said. It doesn’t matter. He spoke to Eb: You see anything back here?

  —Naw, Eb said.

  —Nothing funny?

  Eb shook his head.

  —Tell me exactly what you seen, Stanton said.

  Eb said, I was looking for the girl and ain’t seen her. Seen a child or two. That nigger ducker who quacks, seen him. I had to run him away from me ’cause he was pestering me. Old man from the general store, he come out the back of the Tin Teacup making deliveries. Nothing more.

  —All right, then, Stanton said. Wait here.

  Stanton holstered his Paterson and turned to the blacksmith. I still want my money back, he said. Them shoes is gonna drop off my horse the minute she moves out single pace and goes to trottin’.

  —Whatever you say, the blacksmith said.

  The two disappeared into the shop.

  Eb stayed where he was, watching their backs disappear inside, nervous now. He hated being caught between two white masters. He wished Miss Patty had taken him with her. He was bored. He’d sat outside the back of the blacksmith’s shop for three hours, eyes peeled. He’d seen nothing: a few stray dogs, some passersby, the old man from the general store, and Ducky—who purposely agitated him enough for Eb to chase Ducky a few precious blocks down the alley, just long enough for Clarence to slip into the back of the blacksmith’s shop, pull the Dreamer out of the covered hole, stuff her into his huge wheelbarrow full of oysters, then cart her away right under Eb’s nose. Dead asleep she was, too, covered with oysters, dreaming of a song with Jesus in it, oyster juice dripping into her face and hair.

  the woolman meets patty

  The white man was coming. The Woolman, lazing high in the branches of a thick cypress tree outside the Indian burial ground, could feel him. And he was prepared.

  He had safely tucked the boy inside his hut, near the mouth of Sinking Creek, several miles beyond the old Indian burial ground, near a deserted stretch of island known as Cook’s Point. That was the Land. His land.

  At first the boy would not eat. He had yelled and screamed and cried. The Woolman ignored him. No one would hear him anyway. They were miles from the white man. He had chosen the spot many years ago for that very reason, for when his own son was a tiny child, he had cried frequently. The hut sat in the corner of a sliver of land less than three hundred yards in width, surrounded by water on three sides, perfectly hidden by a crop of brush and rock. The front door was nearly swallowed by vines, overgrowth, and the low-hanging branches of a giant weeping willow. The noise of the rushing creek behind it would drown out the sound of whatever came from within, and even if it didn’t, unless someone stood at the front entrance looking directly at it, they would barely recognize it as a hut, it was so well camouflaged.

  The Woolman tied the white boy to a chair and let nature do the rest. Eventually, the child realized he could not escape and became hungry. The Woolman fed him roots and herbs he knew would calm him and make him sleep. He left him there, the chair tied securely to a pole, the boy’s head resting on the table.

  The weather had not cooperated. The rain had ceased. Now that the sun had reappeared, it meant a change of plans. He would have to fight at night now, because the white man would have dogs and there was no rain to wash his odor from the ground. But he was prepared for that as well. He rubbed pepper jasmine roots on his feet. He rolled himself in the swamp mud to give him the odor of the very swamps and forest he’d trusted and known most of his life. Then he hiked back to the white man’s land near where he’d first snatched the child. He climbed a tree and waited. He had no intention of leading white men to his own land.

  He was dozing in a tree when the sound of their footsteps crashing through the brush awakened him. The sun had risen, although the fog had not yet lifted. There were four of them, three on horses and one on foot. The one on foot was a Negro. The riders moved slowly, tired, he expected, for their horses had probably struggled and been bogged down in the mud and swamp during the storm. Judging from the direction in which they moved, it appeared that they were trying to make their way back to the Indian burial ground and then to the populated white man’s land beyond it. As they approached, he sized them up: two white men, a white woman, and the Negro, his hands tied. Woolman recognized the Negro as the one who’d chased him when he’d snatched the white boy. He expected that the Negro was being punished for what he, the Woolman, had done. Normally, he might have left the colored to his own devices. But this was war; the Negro would have to suffer as well.

  He moved to a lower branch of the thick cypress and waited as they slowly made their way to him, their heads bobbing through the thick swamp waters and dripping foliage, the immense amount of splashing and noise they made indicating that they were not hunters. When they got within ten feet, he hung from the tree branch upside down, knife in his teeth, his long arms dangling straight down, long branches in each hand held outwards to camouflage him against the backdrop of forest around him.

  Patty Cannon, leading Odgin, Hodge, and Wiley, found herself daydreaming, counting numbers in her mind. She was exhausted. They’d had to camp overnight in the pouring rain, and she was in a hellish mood. Nine days out, and with the tavern back home at Johnson’s Crossroads closed, they had nothing to show for their trip except this one Negro, good-sized and young, fortunately, but still only one. The busy season was here. There were several slave traders and their coffles—groups of slaves chained in a line—who would begin their spring journeys south within days, and they would need a place to park their coffles. She also needed someone there to open up the door should States Tipton, to whom she owed thirty-two hundred dollars, come knocking. States had written saying he would arrive from Mississippi in the spring. The spring was now. She considered the problem.

  States was a snakebitten bastard. She’d charmed him once. He wouldn’t be charmed again. She decided she would give him Eb and this new Negro she’d just captured as a down payment. Together they weren’t worth thirty-two hundred dollars—more like eighteen hundred at most—but it beat a minié ball in the face. And they were both young and strong. States
would see she was serious about paying him. Or would he? Only two exceptionally strong Negroes would draw eighteen hundred, and Eb, though smart, was too young yet to determine what his full-grown size would be. This one here, though…

  Wiley walked behind her, the rope that bound his hands tied to her saddle. She turned her head to take a good look at him over her shoulder, and as she did she heard a phit!—the sound of something slicing through the air. She felt a slight rustling of leaves at her left side and turned to see Odgin’s saddle empty. She rose up on her stirrups to look beyond his horse to the ground and had just enough time to see Odgin lying in the mud, trying desperately to pull out a knife that lay plunged into his heart to the shaft, when she was yanked off her horse from the right side. Whoever had stabbed Odgin had slipped under her horse to grab her from the opposite side. She had just enough time to place her left hand on the knife at her hip as she went down. She heard the clattering of hooves, saw the familiar back of a rider galloping away, and knew instantly what had happened: Hodge had fled. She’d seen it coming but could not admit it. She’d known Hodge nearly ten years. In ten years of riding, he was always more about money than guts, and lately, the money had gotten thin. Too thin, she supposed. The coward had reached his limit at the worst possible moment. But there was no time to consider that now. Her mule was hitched to death itself.

  Patty enjoyed wrestling. She considered it a test of strength to pit herself against men, white and colored, although she preferred wrestling Negroes, whom she considered the best wrestlers. They were great sport. Quick. Lithe. Slippery. She’d once raised a Negro named Primus, a stout youth who had given her fits in wrestling because of his strength. She’d kept him longer than she should have, refraining from selling him, simply for the purpose of wrestling with him. Little George, too, was quite a wrestler, fast as lightning, quicker than Primus: he could grip, hold, slip away, and grip again. She often warned her captured slaves about how fast Little George was. You’ll never get away, she’d murmur to them, pointing at Little George. My nigger there, he’s fast as a mountain lion; faster than anything you’ve ever seen.

  But fast as Little George was, he was nothing compared to the nigger that was on her now.

  He moved like smoke with muscles, slamming her face down, straddling her back, pinning her down, and grabbing her head in an attempt to spin it backwards and snap her neck. He would have had her, too, had his own power not betrayed him. He pulled her head so hard his hand slipped, and Patty lunged forward like a serpent, nearly throwing him, but the nigger—she could see his black forearm, covered with mud and slime, flash past her eye—was as frightfully powerful as he was quick. He grabbed her hair again and pulled, exposing her neck. The utter outrage of it made her furious, and she drew her knees together, lifted her torso up, and made an awkward swipe at him with her free hand, which held her knife. Her first attempt missed, the flashing metal striking only air. The second connected. She felt a grunt but his grip did not lessen. She swung again, felt metal hit meat a second time, and heard another grunt; this time he released her head and grabbed at her hand holding the knife.

  She heard a shout and saw a tangle of legs as the nigger prisoner, hands still tied, threw his shoulder into the assailant, who was still straddling her, knocking him to the ground. As the two went down, she leaped atop them. It was her first chance to see her attacker, and she was glad she hadn’t seen him before, because she might have turned and run: the powder in her holstered pistol was probably wet, rendering it useless, and if it wasn’t, she was not sure if she would have had the presence of mind to draw it. For this was a colored nightmare like no other.

  This nigger looked like sculpted evil. He had the wildest mane of woolly hair that she’d ever seen on any colored, muscles in every part of his upper body, and legs as thick as tree branches. Blood poured out of his side from where she’d gotten him, yet he moved as if he were unbloodied, swift, sure, and full of purpose. She’d never seen anything like it, a man moving so purposefully while wounded so deeply, and as the three of them—the prisoner, the wild man, and Patty—rolled on the ground, hampered by the rope that tied Wiley to her horse, she could feel the wild man’s strength not ebbing but actually seeming to grow, and she grew frightened.

  The wild man held the struggling prisoner in a choke hold. The young buck tried to defend himself but was hampered by the rope that tethered him to Patty’s saddle. In desperation she sliced the rope binding the prisoner’s hands, allowing the gasping young man to roll, the wild man rolling with him. She followed their roll, and when the wild man came up on top, she leaped atop his back and grasped his head with her forearm and biceps, intending to expose his throat and slice it. He countered by rising up on his muscular legs and flinging her off him. She rebounded against a tree trunk, heard the snap of something in her right arm, nearly passed out, and he was on her again, holding her by the throat with one hand and using the other to squeeze the knife out of her left hand. The knife dropped to the ground. She was face-to-face with him now, close, struggling to free herself of his grip on her throat, staring straight at him, their faces nearly touching. She expected his eyes to be cauldrons of fury, but instead they were as calm as a lake. She tried to raise her right arm to strike him. It was useless. The arm was broken. He had her. He didn’t have the knife but he had her, his fingers pressing against her throat. She could see over his shoulder the giant birch trees and weeping willows swaying in the wind; she saw a bird flitter out of one, then two birds flitter out of another. Beautiful. She wondered why she had never noticed that kind of thing before. With all her might she pushed against him, but it was like trying to move a fallen oak. She felt blackness descending and closed her eyes. Then, for no apparent reason, he released her and she was free.

  She opened her eyes and saw his back, punctured by a knife wound, vanishing into the woods at an even trot, and the nigger prisoner, who had obviously stabbed him, rise from the dirt holding her knife.

  She slumped onto her side, gasping, the colored prisoner standing over her, holding the knife.

  —God damn, I think my arm’s broke, she said.

  The prisoner reached down, snatched her pistol out of her holster, then stepped away. He turned his head in the direction the Woolman had run.

  Patty attempted a grateful smile.

  —You done good, boy. Very good. I’ll thank you, then.

  The Negro glared at her, saying nothing. She seemed to see him for the first time since she captured him. He was young, she knew, not yet twenty, not quite a man, but he would grow into one soon, and a fine specimen. He might be worth more than sixteen hundred dollars. Looking at him now, she decided she might not let States Tipton have him after all. He was, she decided, a smart nigger. Perhaps even trustworthy.

  —You remind me of my Little George, she said. Ever heard of him? He worked for me. I raised him. Treated him well. You can ask anybody.

  Not that there was anyone nearby to ask, she thought bitterly. She was, she knew, in a bad spot. Still, she was too proud to actually beg from a nigger.

  —I can put you to work, she said. I’ll treat you better than where you was. You’d be practically free with me. Little George, why, he came and went just about whenever he pleased. Said that many a time.

  The young man glanced into the woods westward, towards Sinking Creek, deep in the no-man’s-land swamp, where the wild man had disappeared. Odgin’s body lay nearby in a small puddle, his feet awkwardly splayed: his horse lingered nearby, rattled and confused. Without a word the colored man walked over to Odgin’s horse, mounted it, and pointed its nose towards the logging trail that led to the Sullivans’ property.

  —You can find your own way back, the boy said.

  Patty, realizing he wasn’t going to kill her, found herself angry now.

  —That’s my goddamn gun you got. And that’s not your horse. My arm’s broke too, she said. That black monkey bastard brother of yours broke my arm.

  But the Negro wasn’t list
ening. He stared out into the forest where the Woolman had disappeared, obviously trying to decide whether to follow him or not.

  —That ain’t my brother, he said. That’s the devil I was telling you about. He stole Jeff Boy. Took Missus’ boy, he did.

  The Negro seemed to be deciding whether to give chase or not.

  —Help me on my horse, Patty said, attempting to get up. I’ll help you chase him. We’ll git him together. There’s likely a reward for him. I’ll give you twenty-five percent. You know what twenty-five percent is? That’s a lot of money. More than you’ve likely ever had. We’ll run him down together.

  From atop the horse, Wiley looked down at her and frowned.

  —I wouldn’t take your word for hog slops, miss, he said dryly. I’m going on home. If you git out this swamp alive, you can tell folks you seen him. Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. White folks’ll know I ain’t lyin’ if you get back. I hope you do.

  With that, he spun Odgin’s horse around and spurred it, taking off at a gallop towards the Sullivans’ land.

  the song yet sung

  Denwood emerged into the bright sunshine outside the Sullivans’ barn to see Constable Travis engaged in a screaming match with his deputy Herbie Tucker in front of the house. Several watermen were gathered around, awaiting instructions, their boats lapping lazily at the bank as the two men hollered at each other.

  Denwood wanted to get moving on the lead the slave woman Mary Sullivan had given him, but out of deference to the widow he mounted his horse and trotted up to the house to thank her for the use of her barn. Several watermen eyed him warily as he made his way. Even Travis and Herbie, their pitched voices rising over the flat dirt of the front yard, halted their squawking for a moment to glance at him before tearing into each other again.

  Denwood spotted the widow Sullivan at the edge of the porch, watching the fracas with a worried look. He rode around the circle of men, then leaned down from his horse and asked a waterman, What’s the hank about?