Gear, W Michael - Novel 05 (57 page)

 
          
 
Travis chuckled. "Reckon so. Our Boston
Yankee thinks it's a . . . what in Hob, uh, 'fetish.' That's what he calls
her."

 
          
 
"What's a fetish?"

 
          
 
"Beats hell outa me. But pass the word.
We don't want none of the crew a-telling him he's wearing that Pawnee's topknot
on his side."

 
          
 
"Civilized, my ass!" Green fingered
his chin.

 
          
 
"Whar ye been?" Travis asked,
turning toward the boat. "Take my hand, Dave. Reckon I cain't afford ter
fall off'n the damn plank. Thanks."

 
          
 
Green helped him balance as they crossed to
the deck. "Had no trouble at all. Seems as if the Company factor was down
sick." Green slapped a hand to his leg. "That Bap-tiste, he's a sly
one. Showed up just as we landed at the fort. He was standing on the bank
cursing like a sailor. Gave me all kinds of hell for being late. Said we were
due in a week ago, and how in hell could the Company expect to keep the upriver
trade if the supplies were late."

 
          
 
"Do tell?" Travis settled himself
against the corner of the cargo box and slid down onto his butt.

 
          
 
"You put him up to that?" Green
asked.

 
          
 
"Nope. Reckon he figgered this was his
chance ter head back upriver. Baptiste, he's a clever coon. He's figgered
there's a chance fer him with us. One he ain't never gonna get with the
Company. Treat him square, and he'll back ye to the hilt."

 
          
 
Green watched the last of the whiskey being
toted aboard and stowed. Henri was shouting orders as the plank was drawn in.
"After that cocky captain signed our papers and had his boys search the
boat, Baptiste walked up as plucky as a strutting cock and hired on. Asked for
ten percent."

 
          
 
"Ten?"

 
          
 
"Yep, and I gave it to him. He's another
American— black though he might be. He'll stick ... if you will."

 
          
 
The Maria was swinging out from the bank as
the polers drove her into the current. "He'll do. Half cat scratch and all
fury. But he's just looking fer the same things the rest of us is. Wants ter be
treated like a man, and willing to fess up ter the consequences."

 
          
 
"He's got it." Green watched the
trees passing by on the bank. Through the trunks, the horses could be seen,
Baptiste, Richard, and Willow riding along. "Since we weren't under
suspicion, I took an extra day and signed on three more engages. The gamble is
they'll more than make up the time. Now, what's between you and that damned
Yankee?"

 
          
 
Travis leaned back and told the story. When he
finished, he cocked a grizzled eyebrow. "And that's the whole of it. That
Packrat had us dead ter rights. Woulda kilt us all, and lifted the whiskey.
Willow suckered him, and Dick kilt him. We end up with fat cow instead of poor
bull."

 
          
 
"Is he going to run?"

 
          
 
"Hell, I don't know. He don't even know.
He's all knotted up inside over this philos'phy. Got all these high and mighty
notions of ethics and responsibility. Reckon the trouble is, folks can spout
what they will, but that coon's never mixed his idears with real life. It's
a-playing Hob with him. Shoulda seen him trying ter talk me inta burying them
damn Pawnee."

 
          
 
"So, you sent him out with
Baptiste?"

 
          
 
"Yep. Poor Dick. Fer a feller full of
worries about being a slave, I reckon old Baptiste is a gonna fetch him up
right smart."

           
 
As an unbroken courser raises its mane, paws
the ground, and rages at the sight of the naked bit, while a trained horse
patiently suffers both whip and spur, in a like manner the barbarian will never
extend his neck into the yoke which a civilized man bears without murmuring,
but prefers the most stormy liberty to a peaceful slavery.

 
          
 
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the
Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Mankind

 
          
 
Richard studied Baptiste surreptitiously. With
his swinging fringe, heavy rifle, knife, and a pistol jammed into his belt, the
hunter fit every image of a swashbuckling brigand. He sat his horse as if he
were a centaur. The blacks Richard had known were mostly house servants, like
Jeffry, waspish, elegant, and mannered.

 
          
 
Baptiste rode to Richard's left, Willow to his
right. For once she wasn't asking for words in her headlong charge to learn
English. Rather, those beautiful eyes reflected a pensive struggle. Reprising
the morning's events, no doubt.

 
          
 
He longed to reach out, to pat her arm
reassuringly. Anything to see that warm glow in her eyes. His gaze kept
slipping in her direction, fastening on the curve of cheek and nose, the
fullness of her lips, those high breasts pressed against the soft leather of
her dress.

 
          
 
"Known Travis long?" Baptiste asked.
He rode with his polished rifle held easily across the horse's withers.

 
          
 
"No. Only since they dumped me on the
deck one night."

 
          
 
"Reckon yor not gonna find a better coon
nowhere."

 
          
 
"Indeed?"

 
          
 
Baptiste examined him with veiled eyes before
returning his attention to the countryside. Richard had noted the same habit in
Travis: constant vigilance.

 
          
 
Richard cleared his throat. "Look. I'm
not here of my free will. I was robbed, tied up, and sold to Green. I'm a man,
not a chattel!"

 
          
 
Baptiste used a finger to push his hat up on
his head. "Then why're you heah? I'd a run by now, hoss."

 
          
 
Richard slumped, wishing he had stirrups.
"It's a little complicated. It's partly my fault that Travis got hurt. You
heard him. I'll stick it out until he's well. Then I'll do what I have to to
gain my freedom."

 
          
 
Baptiste laughed sourly. "Freedom, coon?
Look around. Where on God's green earth is you gonna be more free than
heah?"

 
          
 
"
Boston
."

 
          
 
"Shit!"

 
          
 
"Have you ever been there?"

 
          
 
"City, ain't it?"

 
          
 
"Perhaps the grandest in the world."

 
          
 
"They got slaves there?"

 
          
 
"There are ... some." Like Jeffry,
God forbid.

 
          
 
"Ain't no freedom in no city, coon."
Baptiste's smile rode crookedly on his face. "Ain't no freedom nowhere
there's men. Freedom only comes of a wilderness."

 
          
 
"Then you don't know the meaning of
freedom. Freedom is born in the mind, in the ability to think and question. It
is reason that raises man above the beasts."

 
          
 
"Do tell."

 
          
 
"Indeed I do! Can there be any vocation
greater than the search for absolute truth? I think not. And how, the question
is asked, can we, as mere mortals, search for the ineffable and sublime? Our
only course is through reason, Baptiste. Absolute truth is attainable, and our
minds are the levers by which we shall lift ourselves to that lofty goal.
There, sir, is the only meaningful freedom."

 
          
 
Baptiste was looking at him as if he were some
kind of unusual new insect. "What did you just say?"

 
          
 
"We agree that rationality, the ability
to reason, is what sets us apart from the rest of the animals, don't we?"

 
          
 
"The ability to figger."

 
          
 
"Exactly."

 
          
 
Baptiste scanned their surroundings, then
frowned. "Reckon so. And yor saying that the ability to figger is what
makes men free?"

 
          
 
"Absolutely."

 
          
 
"That's a passel of nonsense, Dick."

 
          
 
"My name is Richard. And if you don't
think reason sets us free, what does?"

 
          
 
"Wal, Richard from
Boston
, fo' me, it was a double-bitted ax."

 
          
 
"I don't understand."

 
          
 
Baptiste made a slicing gesture with his hand.
"Whacked off my
massa
's head. Cut her right clean, I did. Shoulda
seen his eyes a-blinking when his head bounced on the ground. A feller don't
die right off when his head's cut off, you see. It takes a couple of seconds
afo' the blood drains out."

 
          
 
Richard grimaced. "I thought we were
talking about freedom, not murder."

 
          
 
Baptiste chuckled. ''Reckon it can be the same
thing."

 
          
 
"Why'd you kill him?"

 
          
 
"I wanted to be free, boy. I runned off
twice. Got ketched both times—and whupped like a damned dog both times.
Reckoned I warn't gonna live like that. No, suh. So, I whacked the planter son
of a bitch what owned me, and I runned again." Baptiste gave Richard a
hard glance. "Now, yor not a slaveowner, are you?''

 
          
 
"N—No, I'm not. I don't believe in it.
One human being shouldn't own another human being."

 
          
 
Baptiste jerked a nod. ''Reckon I'll tolerate
you."

 
          
 
They passed the next minutes in silence.
Rather than contemplate the fact that he rode beside an ax murderer, Richard
turned his attention to the country. The plants seemed greener in the bright
sunlight. Three buzzards spiraled in the hot air. Wildflowers of all colors
swayed at the passage of the horses' feet through the tall grass. Birdsong rose
and fell.

 
          
 
Richard finally nerved himself and asked,
"Is that why you're out here? You can't go back because of, uh, having
dispatched your owner?"

 
          
 
Baptiste tilted his head, making another
inspection of Richard. "Aw, that's right, I forgit you ain't got no idea
of freedom. I'm out heah to be free, coon. It ain't like yor
Boston
. Ain't no folks out heah to be shackling a
man's legs in iron." He jerked a thumb back toward the river where the
Maria now moved under sail, the wind finally having turned to the north.
"I got ten percent share. Why? 'Cause I can be who I is. It don't matter
if'n I be a nigger. Dave Green sees a man when he looks at Baptiste. He don't
see no runned-away slave. So, tell me, what's all this head-shit about reason
and freedom?"

 
          
 
Richard frowned. God in Heaven, what do I say
to that?

 
          
 
Baptiste went on, "Reckon fo' this coon,
I done found all the freedom I can stand. Tarnal Hell, I hated that fort. All
them so'jers looking at me like I was some kind of animal instead of a man.
Listen well, Mister Dick. So long's you can stay ahead o' them folks from back
East, you'll be a free man. It's only when they shows up with their army, and
churches, and solid folk that a man's got to bow his head 'cause he's a
nigger."

 
          
 
"That isn't what—"

 
          
 
"Now, I reckon you can chaw on that fo' a
while. It ain't no easy thing to larn, and old Travis, he said you needed a
mite of laming. So, I'm laming ye, Doodle."

 
          
 
Richard sighed. "All right, I'll think
about it. I'm not a boy." He glanced at
Willow
, but she'd obviously been unable to follow
the conversation. Good! She doesn't know I’m sounding like an idiot.

 
          
 
"Huh, wal, that's notional."

 
          
 
"You don't talk like I'd expect a man
raised in slavery to talk."

 
          
 
"How so,
massa
? Sho 'nuff, I's a-gwine talk like dis from
now on? Make yo all feels right at home now, chile?'' Bap-tiste threw his head
back and laughed. "Tarnal Hell, coon. Folks judge a man by how he talks.
Old Travis, he done lamed me that right off. Told me, "Now, ye needs ter
talk like a white man. Do her, hoss, and ain't no sheriff a gonna figger yer no
'scaped slave.' So I larnt it."

 
          
 
"How long have you known Travis?"

 
          
 
"Since the day he saved my sorry hide
down to
New Orleans
. Reckon that's back in eighteen and eleven.
They plumb near had me, hounds closing in, folks swarming the country with
rifles, shotguns, and knives a-looking fo' me. I's about as dangerous a nigger
as had been loose in them parts in years. That's when I run acrost old Travis.
He skins me up an old live oak and I hides up there in the moss. Meantime,
Travis scrapes this gouge in the mud next to the bayou. When that posse shows
up, he's a cussing and stamping, swearing some buck nigger just done stole his
pirogue.

 
          
 
"Me, I lays up there on that limb, still
as an old gray squirrel. That posse, they ask some questions, and finally turn
right around and head back south. Travis, why, he scouts around, sees thar
ain't nobody watching, and waves me down. From there, we lit a shuck north.
Follered the river right up."

 
          
 
As Baptiste talked, Richard measured those
powerful shoulders and swelling biceps. Dear God. Richard absently fingered his
neck. How soft and fragile it felt.