Flight to Canada (16 page)

W
HAT THE AMERICAN ARTHURIANS
couldn’t win on the battlefield will now be fought out on the poetry field. Lincoln, the Saxon chief, is slain. Lincoln, London, two towns in Britain—Lincoln, London, England, Lincoln London England—the savage sounds of rock worshipers. “Anglo-Saxon was abandoned to the use of rustics and hinds, who knew no other,” Sir Walter Scott said. Sir Scott.

Old man Ruffin, who fired the first shot against the Union at Fort Sumter, shot himself when he heard that Lee had surrendered.

Jefferson Davis is captured, disguised in his wife’s hoops, shawl and rainproof coat. Davis’ defenders say it’s a lie. Historians still debate this.

Oscar Wilde, “The Great Decadent,” would say, “His fall after such an able and gallant pleading in his own cause must necessarily arouse pity.” Davis later invited “The Apostle of Aesthetics” to his Mississippi homestead, where Wilde “charmed” the ladies. Maybe it was Wilde’s knee breeches and the sunflower pinned to the lapel of his coat that appealed to them. Raised by mammies, the South is dandyish, foppish, pimpish; its writers are Scott, Poe, Wilde, Tennyson; its assassin left behind a trunk in which was found: “clothes in fine silk velvets; silks, ermine and crimson; and also hats, caps, plumes, boots, shoes, etc.”

Davis later said that he desired to carry on guerrilla warfare in the hills of Virginia. Davis missed the point. Davis, who was accused by
The Charleston Mercury
of treating Southerners like “white Negroes,” misread his people. It wasn’t the idea of winning that appealed to them. It was the idea of being ravished. Decadent and Victorian writing both use the romantic theme of fair youth slumbering. Fair youth daydreaming. Fair youth struck down. In the New Orleans Mardi Gras, that great Confederate pageant, the cult of Endymion has a whole evening. Saturday.

Davis claims he tried to wrestle his captors to the ground from their horses. He is a proud patrician with a “chiseled” nose and tells the Union soldier to kindly take his “buckrah” hands off of him. The rude Yankee soldiers refer to him as “Jeff,” and when he is jailed they draw cartoons of him hanging from a tree on the wall of his cell.

B
UFFALO, NEW YORK. THE
reading was held by the Anti-Slavery Society of Western New York at the Eagle Tavern, located at Main and Court streets. Above the entrance was an eagle holding in its talons a banner which read, “Our Rights, Our Liberty.” It was a red building, three stories high, with a balustrade fronting the roof.

There was a spacious entrance hall and a reception parlor. On one side was a bar. Inside the bar was a wood-and-charcoal fireplace. On the walls there were photos and autographs of famous customers: Dan Webster, General Lafayette.

Before the reading they had dined on roasted and fricasseed fowl, boiled potatoes and vegetables.

For cocktails, Quaw Quaw, Quickskill and their hosts had partaken of a large decanter of brandy. Their hosts were very friendly and had arranged for them to be taken to Canada by a Friend. The reading, however, was far from successful.

Things kept going wrong with the microphone. The lights went out a couple of times. When Quickskill mentioned, in passing, that Millard Fillmore, a well-known Buffalo man and first chancellor of the University of Buffalo, had signed the Fugitive Slave Law, one heckler threw a tomato; the heckler was hustled out, but Quickskill’s lecture suit got smeared, and some got in his hair. He had had it done in the style of Frederick Douglass and Abe Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth, one side of the forehead shaved back V-like. Some of the people in the front row began to snore, and the black help from the kitchen stood on the side, making comments, talking loud and staring at him evilly.

He wasn’t a performer, and some of the people in the audience wanted more fire. He remembered the man at Lincoln University who said, “Quickskill, you all right. You make some good points. But you ought to put a little more fire into it.” And when he said “fire,” he hit his left open palm with his right fist. A little more fire. They wanted to get warm.

Sometimes he felt like a cheap Sears, Roebuck furnace. A little fire, but not enough to heat the whole house. Some of the other slaves were downright rude. They came in late, and when they didn’t like what he was saying, got up, making comments, and walked out. Other slaves, however, sat at attention. They’d begun some kind of Raven cult. He didn’t want to have a cult. A Raven is always on the move. A cult would tie him down.

Not only were the slaves enslaved by others, but they often, in subtle ways, enslaved each other. As soon as he and Quaw Quaw had entered the tavern, two of the female slave help had begun to let out their ignorant slave cackle, giving them signifying looks.

Slaves judged other slaves like the auctioneer and his clients judged them. Was there no end to slavery? Was a slave condemned to serve another Master as soon as he got rid of one? Were overseers to be replaced by new overseers? Was this some game, some fickle punishment for sins committed in former lives? Slavery on top of slavery? Would he ever be free to do what he pleased as long as he didn’t interfere with another man’s rights? Slaves held each other in bondage; a hostile stare from one slave criticizing the behavior of another slave could be just as painful as a spiked collar—a gesture as fettering as a cage.

Some of the people had remained behind to chat with Quickskill about his work, including the two Friends who were his hosts. They were eating Freedom Hamburgers. A little Union flag hung from the toothpick that went through the buns and the meat. Quaw Quaw was still upset by the poem. Once in a while he would squeeze her hand. She’d lay her head on his shoulder. He wondered if they’d ever be as deeply in love with each other as before. Would it be a “cerebral” relationship, with them occasionally fucking like crazy animals? They said they wouldn’t become involved the way they had before. They’d just enjoy each other, learn from each other. She was a twentieth-century woman. Way ahead of the Beecherites. Finally a man appeared at the door. The two Friends nodded.

Quickskill and Quaw Quaw picked up their baggage and followed the man who was standing in the doorway. He said, “The carriage that will take you to Black Rock has arrived. Good luck, my brother, my sister.”

They got in. This was it. There was a Ryder moon over the water when they arrived at the ferry. They could see the yacht not far from the shore. The yacht that would take them to freedom.

A man rowed them out in a canoe. “I thought we’d stopped these runs since the war was over. What’s going on?”

“My slavemaster, Arthur Swille. You don’t understand. These issues don’t apply to him. He sees me as his chattel, and he won’t rest until he recovers me. If I’d taken Greyhound or Air Canada, his men would have seized me at the terminal.”

“Some kind of maniac.”

“You might say that.”

They had reached the boat. The man who’d rowed them delivered them over to another man who helped them onto the boat. Already Quickskill’s heart was pounding. Quaw Quaw was pleased, too. This was an “adventure” for her. They were directed to a room where they would greet their benefactor, who must have been pretty wealthy, because the yacht was a luxurious boat. They opened the door of the room they were directed to. He saw the man. Quaw Quaw had a shocked look on her face.

“Hey, you ain’t no Quaker,” Quickskill said, for it was her husband, Yankee Jack.

He was wearing a pin-striped Savile Row suit. Cuff links from Jolly & Rogers. He was wearing a black glove over an artificial hand. He was twirling a fountain pen in his fingers. On the wall was the photo of some kind of swami.

“Well, what do we have here?” The silver earring on his left earlobe glistened. He wore a headrag with a design of a Confederate flag.

Quaw Quaw noticed the ashtray. “That ashtray, Jack, where did you get that ashtray?”

“What ashtray?”

“That one,” she said, pointing to the skull which had been polished until it had the appearance of china.

“One of our many … well, in the old days when we were still in that crude business, I’m not exactly proud of that … I was in my pre-Zen period …”

“That’s my father, you shit. You killed my father and are now using him as an ashtray. And my brother, you …” She went to where the skull rested and began hugging it. “Daddy, Daddy,” she said.

“You don’t belong to the human race, Yankee Jack, you … you pirate,” Quickskill stormed. “But you’re more suave, more sophisticated than the Gilbert and Sullivan variety. That was a good idea to bring in poets to give you an artsy-craftsy front. You call yourself a ‘distributor,’ attempting to make yourself respectable. You decide which books, films, even what kind of cheese, no less, will reach the market. At least we fuges know we’re slaves, constantly hunted, but you enslave everybody. Making saps of them all. You, the man behind a distribution network, remaining invisible while your underlings become the fall guys. Taking the rap, their reputations capsizing while yours remains afloat. And what you’ve done to Quaw Quaw, you … I have a good mind to—”

Quaw Quaw is really sobbing now.

“Hold on, whatever you are,” said Jack. “You know it’s not even been determined whether you’re a human being. I pay my taxes. Contribute to the March of Dimes. Someone has to get the goods to the market. I’m just a middle man.”

“Yeah, a middle man. Cool. Like a model stepping out of the pages of
The New Yorker
magazine. Scrupulous, precise, correct, but entirely devoid of human feeling.”

(A little origin here. Tralaralara was an Indian princess. She was carried off by Yankee Jack. It wasn’t just the turquoise beads, the rugs he was after. Nor did he want to corner the Arizona Highways Market. The pirate needed to get through the chief’s village to reach the oil before his competitors. His tankers were being out-highwayed. He needed the chief’s village out of the way. The chief stood fast and was about to defeat the pirate when someone, an informant, gave away the weaknesses in the chief’s defenses. He was taken by Quaw Quaw, a mere fourteen then. He carried her off, and he raised her. Sent her to the best Eastern schools and trained her in “the finer things of life.” She is under a white spell and has no feeling for her own people’s culture. She does ethnic dances because that’s what the colleges want, and she can earn a little extra money and, therefore, be not so dependent upon the pirate’s support.)

“You killed my father. How could you? Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“What are you complaining about? Before I raided your village, the chief ran it. Men. Isn’t that what you and your suffragette ideas are supposed to be about? That women should have equal power with men? Well, that’s what I brought to your people. You should be pleased with your emancipator. I was your people’s Lincoln. Not only that, we gave you women absolute power. The freedom to adopt Christian names. We gave you the property. We killed the chiefs and made your medicine men into clowns. Your father got in the way. He had to be … removed. And now he’s been put to good use. An ashtray. A fitting memorial for a hothead. And we gave your tribe a settlement for that highway we got through. Supplied them with plenty of whiskey. They like whiskey. Lots of money. I thought you didn’t identify with any group. Besides, you’re doing okay. You don’t have to do anything but dance. Dabble in art. I pay all the bills.

“You wanted to be a flower girl? Who do you think paid for that? The bills I got from International Florists! Do you think the honorariums from your ethnic dances paid for that? Look, I’ll let you in on a little secret. Do you think that those little colleges paid for your honorariums? No, my foundation supplied them with matching grants. That’s how they were able to pay your expenses and your travel. Crying over a fucking skull. As for your mother, she never says anything, and you see her as merely a remnant of the past, but that old lady’s got balls. She’s the one who gave your father’s position away in exchange for a cut of the settlement I made with your people. I’m distributing those robes for her. Got Buffalo Bill to buy some. He deals with her exclusively. She gets forty percent.”

“You’re a liar,” Quaw Quaw says, balling her fists.

“A liar, huh? Okay, take a look at this.” He reached into a drawer and handed her what looked like a contract with her mother’s signature on it. “I represent her in blankets, beads, rugs. How do you think she bought that Rolls Royce and that house in Santa Cruz, by the ocean? You never questioned it. As long as you were able to spend your winters in Rome and New York, your summers in Taos, you didn’t care who was paying for it. There was always plenty. And now that slaves are big in the papers, you went and took one, for diversion. Adventure. And those chapbooks you bought and those bum Bohemian friends of yours, those … those ‘Franklins’!”

“Those are my friends, they’re very talent—”

“Ha. That’s a laugh. Me and my friend Leo, the art dealer, were at a party, and one minute this painter friend of yours was pissing in the hostess’ fireplace, you know, showing his ass to the bourgeoisie, and next thing you know, when all of the guests weren’t looking, he was just about on his hands and knees asking Leo to give him a show. Made all kinds of obscene proposals. Then after the bum left, Leo turns to me and he says, Leo says, ‘You see that? They get all denimed and pure downtown, but as soon as they see me, you’ve never seen such obscene hustling.’ Sometimes Leo wishes he’d gone into the garment business.”

Quaw Quaw was choking. “You … you savage. My father was a great chief. A warrior. My brother was a noble prophet. None of your gentleman’s clothing, your sweet talk, your trucks and planes will hide your savagery.”

“The difference between a savage and a civilized man is determined by who has the power. Right now I’m running things. Maybe one day you and Raven will be running it. But for now I’m the one who determines whether one is civilized or savage.”

“Let’s leave, Quickskill,” she said, taking hold of the fugitive slave’s hand.

He shook his head. “I didn’t come all this way to turn back, Quaw Quaw. ‘Once you start out for a place, there’s no turning back’ is an old HooDoo saying. I mean, Quaw Quaw, I’ve been looking forward to this all my life. Ever since I was a kid, the old people talked about Canada. I have to have my Canada. Quaw Quaw, I’m going to go if it means swimming across,” he said, pointing in the direction of the lights of Niagara Falls, Ontario, across the Niagara.