Song Yet Sung (4 page)

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.

T
wo 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 said. 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.

—I figured what all you been through, it would be a good change for you, Tolley said.

Denwood's stare hardened. So that was it.

—You heard about my boy?

—I growed up here. But I ain't superstitious, Tolley said quickly.

Denwood glared at him, feeling the calm, silent rage, the old fury that had once lifted him up like a tornado and sent his fists busting into faces and knocking souls through tavern windows from Kansas to Canada, flooding him. He resisted the urge to pull out his pepperbox and part Tolley's face with it. His boy had been dead nearly a year. Dead at the age of six, cursed by a local preacher. A six-legged dog had been born on the island and kept in a wicker basket by a tavern owner who charged the locals a penny apiece to gape at it. Denwood walked into the tavern one afternoon with his son just in time to hear a local preacher declare that dog meant the end of days was coming. Denwood had laughed at the man and said, I don't believe in God.

If you don't believe in God, the old preacher said, I'd like to see you set your child in that basket with that mongrel there.

Denwood, smirking, had done so, without incident.

Six days later the boy got suddenly sick with fever and died.

On an isolated island of superstitious watermen, the fate of Denwood's son had roared through Hooper's Island like a tornado. The preacher instantly vanished, afraid for his life. Local opinion swayed back and forth. Everyone had expected Denwood, a feared slave catcher and notoriously cruel bar fighter, to retaliate. Instead he had retreated into himself as the rumor mills churned. His wife left him, saying, You perished our boy. She slipped off to Virginia with another oysterman. The island gossipmongers roared in response. Look at what he's done, they said. The fool left our land and learned the ways of the Devil, came back, drove off his wife, insulted a preacher, and killed his son with his disbelieving ways. He is cursed like the sons of Ham. He should have never left here, they muttered among themselves. Still, none spoke the matter to his face. He was, after all, one of them, and a feared one at that. So nothing was said. Yet, too much about him was known and believed. He was marked as bad luck and avoided.

As he stared at Tolley, Denwood decided that what the man offered was not an insult but rather an act of kindness. Tolley was, after all, an islander. Denwood fingered his oilskin hat and waited for the rage that hissed through his ears, that once ruled him, to wind back down.

Tolley, for his part, felt as if he were being scorched by the hot sun. No wonder, Tolley thought. No wonder they leave him alone. He felt Denwood's eyes boring at him; they seemed to reach down to the bottom of his spine and yank it towards the vicinity of his mouth. He'd heard of the Gimp for years. The Gimp was one of the few islanders who'd ever left Hooper's Island to venture to the rest of America and come back to talk of the outside world. Tolley had wanted badly to win favor with the Gimp by pulling him on this job, to hear of his travels in the world beyond, for it was rumored that the Gimp had torn up half the saloons in Kansas and the Nebraska territories, and he'd heard it from several different places and did not doubt its veracity. Besides, there was truly no one better suited to catch a runaway in Dorchester County than the Gimp. Everyone knew it. They were simply afraid to approach him. And now, with the Gimp staring holes into his face, Tolley realized he knew why. He couldn't believe he'd somehow uttered a word about the Gimp's dead son. He made a pact with himself to curry and season his thoughts inside his head before opening his mouth to utter them.

—Where'd you grow up round here? Denwood asked.

—Lower Island. I'm overseer for the captain now, Tolley stammered. Don't like it a bit.

—You want a piece of the action, is that it?

—I don't want a piece of nothing, Tolley said. I'd like to see you…get past things…move on, is all. With this kind of money, you can. Ain't nobody else gonna take this job anyway.

There. Now it was out. And Tolley shifted uncomfortably.

—That door's closed, Denwood said. Ain't no sense opening it no more. Though that is a lot of coin being offered up.

He felt the outrage leaving him, the roaring in his ears slowly receding.

—It is indeed, Tolley said.

Denwood gazed out over the bay. The storm was closing in. He could see the sky over Dorchester County starting to turn purple. He turned to Tolley.

—What's the catch? he asked.

—This nigger's smart. Can read and write. Got out from under Patty Cannon. You know how Patty is.

A flash of cautious tension sparked across Denwood's jaw.

—I got no quarrel with Patty Cannon, he said.

—Like I said, that's why the man's paying long dollar.

—Who's the nigger? Denwood asked. I caught most of the troublesome coloreds in this county. Mingo, Jim Bob, Miss Helena's boy. Caught some of 'em two and three times. Captain can save his money by leaving word with the colored that I'm coming. Word'll spread, and whoever ran off will likely come on in.

—That ain't gonna work, Tolley said.

—Why not?

Tolley's horse stirred, sniffing the wind, and Tolley, atop the skittish mount, anxiously glanced at the mounting clouds, which were no longer stirring in the distance but now nearly overhead. The storm was starting to show itself. He saw a flash of lightning. He spun his horse around and pointed its nose towards the ferry dock.

—This one's a girl, he said. A conjurer. She throws bad luck round like it's lunch. Even today. Looky here.

He pointed to the storm clouds approaching.

—Was bright as day when I started out this morning, wasn't it?

—That don't mean nothing.

—Say what you want, Tolley said. She's a witch, all right. Morris Neefe, slave catcher from Bucktown, he and his son ran her down near Ewells Creek and shot her in the face. Morris said she rose up out of the water dead as a doornail. She killed his dog and disappeared into the water again. When he went downstream to check further, she had turned into a horse and rode off with a dark-skinned nigger riding her like the Devil, and that nigger shot at Morris and damn near killed
him.
She's a devil, all right. Can change herself into anything she wants. A bird. A horse. How she turned up at Patty's tavern, nobody knows, but she's said to have killed three or four of Patty's niggers. She's a rabble-rouser, for sure. She can control niggers with her mind, they say. Don't need to say nary a word: just looks at 'em and they'll attack a white man. She can make even a child do her bidding.