Song Yet Sung (5 page)

Denwood was silent, watching the water.

—What's the captain want her back for, then, if she's that much trouble?

—I don't ask no questions on him. She's easy on the eyes, I reckon. Fella like him, with a lot of chips in his pocket, he don't care about suffering the Devil.

Denwood shook his head. No nigger's got that kind of power, he said.

Tolley reached down towards Denwood and handed him a rolled up flier.

—There's the information, he said. Captain'll pay you up front. You can take the job or not. But you ain't gonna catch her.

With that, he spurred his horse towards the ferry and rode as fast as he could.

T
he other escaped slaves from Patty Cannon's attic slipped across the creek and vanished into the high grass on the other side, running in different directions. Liz watched them leave, trotting silently, only the tops of their heads visible, bobbing up and down in the high marshy grass until they disappeared. She tried to follow Big Linus for a while as the giant lumbered along the bank of the creek on her side, but the giant noticed her following and quickened his pace, disappearing into thickets that lay behind the marshy bank. After several minutes she gave up chasing him and sat down, feeling hungry.

She slaked her thirst at the creek and took stock of her surroundings. She had no idea where she was. It was afternoon now, and while the gentle breeze and warm sunshine were welcoming at the moment, she knew they would not last. The frigid March frost would kiss the black creeks and bite her face and back as soon as evening came. Sleep, if it came at all, without shelter, would be a cold and difficult affair.

She stood up and peered across the creek to the opposite bank. The marshy grass on that side was thick and tall. She crossed the creek and pushed through the high, thick grass, her head still throbbing. Weeks of running told her that it would not be long before whoever owned Little George would be coming and they would not be slow about it. There was no place to hide. She could not outrun them. Patrols, constables, sheriffs, slave hunters, money prospectors all, would hunt her with money and murder on their minds. The thought made her push forward faster.

The high grass surrounding her thickened into swamp and the murky water at her feet deepened. Her dress was torn into nearly rags, and the sharp thistles and vines scratched her shoulders and neck. Her face, though healing, was still swollen, her body still weak from recuperating. She quickly grew exhausted and found a high, dry spot of land near a cypress tree and sat. She noticed a few berries growing out of the side of a bush. She pulled them out and bit them, munching slowly. They were tangy and bitter. They only made her more hungry. She leaned her back against the tree trunk and peered out towards the swamp. She watched a thick flock of wood ducks flutter and rise above the bog like a cloud. They circled slowly in the air and descended towards her. She closed her eyes, expectant, waiting to feel them flapping about her, but instead she fell asleep and dreamed again.

She dreamed of Negroes eating in taverns, thousands of them; huge, fat Negroes, gorging themselves with more food than she ever seen: giant portions of pig, pie, steak, fried potatoes, laughing heartily as they ate, holding their stomachs as they gorged themselves. She saw Negro children with bulging faces, strutting about in undergarments as if they were the finest clothing: undershirts, undershorts, nightshirts, and sleeping caps. She saw other children sitting in great dining halls before plates piled high with food, desserts, pies, meats, cakes—so much food that it seemed impossible for a child to eat. Yet, even as the children ate, gorging themselves with pounds of food and washing it down with sweet, colored water, they cried out of hunger and starvation, weeping bitterly as they ate.

The last image awoke her with a start, for she realized she was starving. It was late afternoon. She had to find something to eat. She rose and walked frantically, with purpose now, desperately looking for something to eat, stumbling over logs and splashing through ankle-deep mud. Every sound she made, every splash, every cracking leaf and snapping twig, made her feel as if she were walking in the loudest swamp God ever placed on this natural earth. The mourning doves overhead cooed so loudly that she suppressed the impulse to cover her ears. The earthly things that floated into her vision, the old logs that floated past, the discarded pines she fell over, the burping frogs and colorful snakes that slithered about in the stinking, decaying bog in which she'd suddenly found herself, seemed to point her in a specific direction, as if to say,
Here, this way.
She was changing inside in some kind of way, she was certain. She was not sure if that was a good thing, but despite an aching, pounding pain in her head, she seemed to be able to hear better, to see better, to smell more. She decided she was delirious.

The patch of swampy woods ended at a clearing of marsh with shrubbery and forestation that had grown tall, past her head, and ended at another creek, this one as wide as a river. She stood at the bank and watched a sudden gale blow at the stinking mire hard enough to whip the high grass around and bend it low, sending the black river water heaving up on itself, as if it were yelling for mercy from the afternoon wind, which had suddenly grown relentless and now threatened storm, the wind pushing the black water into waves whose angry white tongues lapped greedily at the shoreline, the wind dancing and roaring above the tossing waves.

She considered trying to swim across the river but decided not to. On the other side, the woods were fronted by marshy grass and swamp. It was a good mile or two through that muck to the safety of that thick forest. She'd have to swim across the river, then wade through the muck and high grass of the marsh in open daylight to get to that safe cover.

She turned back and worked her way into the forest behind her, sinking up to her ankles in the muddy swamp until her feet hit solid earth. She was exhausted now and could move no farther, so she found a thicket of branches and lay down again among them. This time she fought sleep, afraid to dream, knowing that night was coming soon and that would be the time to move if she could, but her fatigue was so great she could not resist, and she closed her eyes again.

When she did, she heard the sound of moaning.

She was not sure if she was dreaming or not, for she didn't trust her mind anymore. Lying on her right side, shivering with cold and feeling feverish, she turned on her other side, her eyes squeezed tightly closed.

—Two-headed or not, she said aloud, I will put this out of my mind.

She heard the moaning again.

—G'wan now, she said.

Then felt, rather than saw, the image in her mind of someone deeply troubled.

She sat up.

—Lord God, I'm starving, she said aloud. I'm hearing what I ain't supposed to hear. I'm seeing what I ain't supposed to see. Help me, God.

She heard the moaning again.

She looked around. Then listened again.

Sure enough, it was real. A thin, weak cry.

She crawled on her hands and knees and followed the sound deeper into the tiny patch of thicket. She peered through the thicket and saw, in the fading sunlight that sliced through the thick branches, a thin black boy of about seven years.

He was lying on his side, his ankle and foot clamped in some kind of muskrat trap chained to a tree. His foot, she saw, was blistered and swollen almost beyond recognition. He was nearly naked, save for a flinty calico sack worn as a kind of dress that covered his middle. He was soaking wet, having obviously been there for at least a day or two. He had the wildest crop of hair she had ever seen, matted and thick, growing in every direction. He appeared to be dying.

The sight of him made her draw in her breath.

—I can't help you, she said to him. I can't help myself.

She rose to leave but could not. She dropped on all fours next to the boy and looked at the device.

The trap was metal and wood, a crude clamp of some kind, made to trap muskrats. The boy had obviously wandered into it somehow. She gently lifted it from the ground and tried to twist open the jaws. The device would not give.

—Lord, she said aloud, but that I would have the strength of a man to pull this thing free.

The boy gazed straight ahead, his eyes staring horizontally at the ground, not moving, moaning softly.

She pulled at the device harder but could not free him. She rested. She was exhausted. She tried again for several minutes, yanking and pulling at the conglomeration of springs, wood, and metal, but the device was a newfangled creation that would not come loose. Finally she collapsed from the effort and lay there, her hands clasping the device, and closed her eyes, resting.

As she did, she had a vision of the future again, but this time not of men but of machines, mighty machines that lifted great objects high into the air, machines that could spin windmills powerful enough to spray water at forces and speeds beyond anything she had ever seen; machines with long rubber snout-like metal pipes that twisted steel and bent iron—pipes that were flexible so that they coiled like snakes, loosing great energy, pushing water through pipes, spinning wheels with enough force to throw a horse against a wall, making rigid things flexible, bending giant items in ways beyond what seemed imaginable; machines that worked like a force of God.

She awoke with a start. This was something new: a dream with an answer. She rose, searched among the thickets for an elm tree that had thick, twine-like branches. She pulled off two live stout ones, grabbed some smaller branches, and fastened a flexible one to a thick one, spinning one around the other, round and round until the thick branch coiled like a snake, then uncoiled by itself. She placed the thick branch under the teeth of the device and the coiled branch beneath it. She bent the branch back, and when she released it, the teeth of the trap opened slightly, just enough so that she could place another branch between the teeth, and yank the child's foot out.

The boy roared in pain, the sound of his cries echoing off the trees and into the dank, shrouded forest beyond where her eyes could see.

—Shush now, she said nervously, looking around. Shush. You'll give us up.

The boy howled and howled, the sound of his pitiful cries connecting to each other like locking rings, clanging through the swamp like a brass band, the howls bouncing from tree to tree, vine to vine, rousting birds from their nests, unfurling muskrats from their holes, sending clouds of angry mosquitoes buzzing up from standing water; whippoorwills joined in, ospreys, ducks, geese, mallards fluttered into the air; the wading birds, sandpipers, sanderling, willet, black-bellied plover, ruddy turnstone, dowitcher, and glossy ibis appeared, splashed in and out of the water as they galloped away. The entire swamp roared to life around them, as if his cries had summoned all living creatures of the Chesapeake into action.

Liz frantically cast about for something, anything to calm him. She hastily dashed around the marsh, wandering several hundred yards away, until she found a sassafras bush. She dropped to her knees, dug at the bottom of it, clawing with her fingers, pulled out several roots, and hastily washed them off in the creek. The child continued to howl loudly. Even at the creek, a distance of several hundred yards away, it sounded close at hand, pressing the immediacy of the child's agony on everything.

She trotted back to the thicket. She approached the howling boy, gently lifted his head, and thrust the tangy, bitter-tasting root into his mouth. The boy bit down and choked a bit, then chewed, mercifully silent. His big eyes locked in on hers. She grasped his hand and stroked his forehead. His tiny fingers clung to her hand tightly. He stared at her with deep gratefulness.

—You ought to check yourself before you give me thanks, she said. You ain't in no better shape now than you was five minutes ago.

The boy whimpered in muted pain, both hands locked around her arm now, his tiny, pitiful hands not large enough to encircle her arm. She gently pulled him closer and he locked his arms around her neck. He smelled terrible.

—Good God, she said. I can't stand you.

With a grunt, she stood, holding his thin body, and staggered over to the nearby creek. She sat at the bank, formed a cup shape with her hands, and made him drink. He lapped like a dog, expertly, from her hands. She cleansed his wounded foot and he howled again. She placed a finger to her mouth to shush him and the boy did not obey, so she covered his mouth with her hand to silence him. He seemed to understand.

—That's better, she said. She gently lowered him into the water so that the creek flowed over him. She washed him as he cried softly, bitterly, and then regarded his foot closely. It was badly mangled. You need a doctor or some kind of healer woman, she said. I can't do much with this.

With great effort, she lifted him and took him back into the thicket, out of sight. She sat down, Indian fashion, cradling his head, drying him with a portion of her ragged skirt. She was exhausted and hungry, the effort of bathing him having taken what little strength she had left. Now that he was clean, he howled again, pitifully, his cries echoing into the treetops around them.

—You got to shush, she said, placing his head to her chest and rocking him. What's your name?

The boy looked at her, said something unintelligible, then placed his head into her breast, whimpering softly.

She cradled him gently.

—You's of talking age, I expect, she said. Is you thick-minded? Is that it? I don't think so. Why, if you was thick-minded, you wouldn't have sense enou—

She felt the movement rather than heard it. A presence. A frightening one. She froze. They were surrounded by thickets and gnarled thick vines. From her kneeling position, she looked directly up at the thick bushes and cypresses in front of her.

Whatever it was, it was right there. Silent; peering at her through a thicket of bushes not more than five feet off. At first she thought it was a shadow, for the sunlight was fast disappearing over the edge of the bay, and the dank afternoon light grimly hung on, dissipating slowly, descending, and bowing to the blackness of the bog, tossing shadows everywhere. But then the shadow seemed to move with the last slivers of afternoon sun that sliced through the slits in the trees, and she saw it move against the sway of the trees again, independently. She stared at it, petrified.