Queen (9 page)

off to America to join his wastrel brothers.

    The sense of complete failure of his domestic life was shocking to him,

    but he did not blame himself. Matrimony, he decided, was an archaic

    institution, of peasant origin, and worthless to the modern man. He had

    refused to marry his mistress, Sarah Black, because he did not want to

    be disappointed by marriage again, but she was content with the hours he

    could give her, and he bad two fine boys by her, who appreciated him and

    never asked for more than he could give. Why could not his legitimate

    children be the same?

    But still Jamie was his son, and he could not send him out into the world

    without some provision for his welfare. He wrote to his lawyer advising

    that Jamie should be excised from his will, but he did not cancel the

    letters of credit. Whether the boy chose to use the money or not was up

    to him. He had done his duty as a father. In the morning he went to

    Belfast on business, and never made contact with Jamie again.

Jamie spent a day with Sara and Jimmy at their cottage, and they envied

his plans. With Washington at school in Dublin, Jimmy was no longer

employed as tutor, but had found some few hours of part-time work, with

other families, but was hardpressed to make a living. They had often

talked of emigrating, and Jamie's plans gave their own fresh impetus.

Jamie laughed that soon the whole family would be there.

48 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

"And why not?" Sara asked. "What is there for us here?" Jamie was anxious

to be gone from his father's house. He planned to return to Dublin and to

find work for a month, to give him some spending money, or to ask Eleanor

for a loan. He spent a happy evening with old Quinn in the barn, talking

of racehorses and getting drunk on poteen, and said a tearful farewell to

Jugs, when he staggered into the kitchen late that night.

    She saw the moment she had been waiting for, and pressed a small bag of

    money into his hand. It was not much, but as much as he needed. He looked

    at it in surprise, and sobered up fast.

    "It is some part of my savings," she said. "And ye have need of it. "

    "I can't take this, Jugs," he protested, for her generosity embarrassed

    him. She was a poor woman, and he could have been rich.

    "Oh, tosh," she said. "Put it in your pocket, for I know ye have none.

    Ye think I could rest easy with you going off to that savage land and not

    a penny to bless yourself with?"

He would not take it.

    " I have no need of it, " she cried. " I have everything here. And,

    sensibly, she gave him a way out.

    "It is a loan," she said. "Ye can easy pay me back when ye've made your

    fortune."

    That, and his need, convinced him, and he swore that he would pay back

    every penny of it. He kept his word. From the first few dollars he earned

    in America, he sent small sums back to Jugs until the loan was paid off,

    and he continued to send her money for the rest of her life.

    The following morning, at dawn, Sara and Jimmy came to the house to wish

    him Godspeed, and they stood with Jugs and old Quinn, and watched him

    trot down the drive and away, out of their lives. Then they went inside

    and sat with Jugs, who wept for the boy she had raised and would never

    see again.

The sadness and many tears of the leavetaking depressed Jamie, and halfway

down the drive he spurred his horse to a gallop. The sudden energy and

easy motion of the horse broke

    BLOODLINES 49

him from melancholy, for he was on his way at last. He galloped through

the chill morning, the crisp wind biting his hands and ears, and felt an

extraordinary power of masculinity within him, for he was taking on the

world.

    He stayed with Eleanor in Dublin again, and said his goodbyes to his

    sister and Washington, and in late March he took the ferry to Liverpool.

    As the boat sailed out of the harbor, he looked back on his native land

    with little regret, for his father's insult still rang in his ears.

"You will never amount to anything."

    He would amount to something, he swore to himself. He was casting off his

    old life and taking on a new. He was not a boy anymore, he was a man,

    hardened by life, blooded in war, forged in prison.

    He was not young Jamie either. The diminutive always made him feel

    little, if loved, and not quite a man. It had been used to distinguish

    him from his father, but there was no need of it now, for he had no

    father. A new name for a new life seemed fitting, and anyway, it was not

    a new name, it was his true name, and his father's name, and perhaps to

    spite the man who had sired him, he called out his name.

"James," he shouted at the seagulls.

And again, to convince himself.

"I am James."

    In May, when he sailed from Liverpool on the good ship America, under the

    command of Captain Silas Swain and bound for Philadelphia, the passenger

    manifest listed him simply as James Jackson.

    6

The ship pitched and rolled, and mountainous waves endlessly broke over

the bow. The storm had raged for two days, and the passengers had come to

believe that the ship could not withstand the tempest, and must break

apart. Most of the passengers, apart from James and some of the crew, were

wretchedly ill, and spent their days in their cabins, moaning their fear

and their distress. To a few of those who had never been to sea, the

sickness and fear were worse than death, and they begged the good Lord for

deliverance, and if that meant the ship would be smashed apart and plunge

them to a watery grave, it was preferable to their present plight. There

was talk of mutiny among some of the men who had no experience of the sea,

of forcing the captain to return to port, but he, an old sea dog, only

laughed at them.

    "Would You have me go back into the teeth of the gale when we have nearly

    ridden it out?"

    They were hardly convinced that an end to their suffering was in sight,

    but it gave them a small hope, and they could not countenance going back

    and into the storm again.

    The missionary Reverend Blake and his good wife spent hours on their

    knees, when they were not on their bunks being ill, praying to their

    Savior to calm the seas, as at Galilee, and on the third day, when the

    waves subsided and the wind abated, they believed He had wrought a

    miracle.

Jamie found his sea legs early. The Irish Sea had been choppy, but he soon

got used to the rolling motion of the ship and spent happy hours on deck,

watching the sailors clamber up the ropes with the agility of monkeys,

furling or unfurling the vast sheets of canvas to mysterious commands, or

singing sea chanteys when, as if on their knees in a pagan temple to the

    50

    BLOODLINES 51

sea, they holystoned the wooden decks to a pristine whiteness. He loved the

salty, briny wind, and the companionship of his fellow passengers, who

shared, in varying degrees, a fear of their formidable voyage, but were

united in a common optimism that their destination would be the earthly

paradise they sought.

    The great port of Liverpool had excited and frustrated him. He was overawed

    by the huge numbers of ships in the harbor, which had journeyed from every

    comer of the earth, bringing with them strange and exotic cargoes. He

    smelled the scent of spices he had never known, and watched in wonder the

    unloading of the chests of tea from India and silks from China and cotton

    from Madras, sheets of raw cork from Portugal, and oranges from Spain. He

    loved being among the community of seafaring folk, the hardy and colorful

    sailors, rings in their ears and tattoos on their arms, who walked with a

    rolling gait, as the rolling sea had taught them. He saw small brown men

    from the Malacca Straits, and blond descendants of the Vikings, giants to

    him, and heard strange languages that were beautiful and others that grated

    on his ears. He loved the women of the dockside, raw and lusty creatures,

    who cheered when the ships docked and wept when they left, and he spent

    days in tiny smoky taverns by the water, hearing tall tales of the seven

    seas, and Africa and Madagascar, the Azores and the Caribbean, Araby and

    Siam.

And he saw a black boy, the first he had ever seen.

    A well-dressed woman came to the docks to greet her returning husband, a

    captain. Behind her trotted a little black boy, elegantly appareled in

    velvet and a turban, and around his neck was a long silver chain, with

    which his mistress led him. Like a pet dog, James thought, and watched as

    they passed by, fascinated by the ebony child. He had heard of these

    African creatures, niggers as they were called, heathen sava-es, who ran

    around naked in their native jungles, bloodthirsty warriors, licentious

    animals.

    He heard of the slave ships that sailed from England to Africa with cargoes

    of iron or manufactured goods, and from Africa to America with cargoes of

    naked savages, and from America back to England with raw cotton, or

    tobacco, or rice. He had heard of the calls for abolition of the slave

    trade from

52 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

some of the church people, and the furious opposition to that abolition,

for the slaves were apparently the most lucrative of all cargoes, and some

of the planters in America claimed they could not survive without the

labor. He had no special feelings about it, for it was not part of his

life. The fate of these odd and alien creatures did not matter to him, one

way or the other.

    He grew impatient as his days of waiting wore on, for he longed to be at

    sea himself, to experience some of what he had heard about, off on his

    own great adventure. He lost a little money to a prostitute and a little

    more to a pickpocket. He avoided the city itself and stayed near the

    docks, for he quickly discovered that his Irish accent caused him to be

    disparaged among people whose own dialect seemed primitive and guttural

    to him.

When he boarded his ship at last, the cramped spaces belowdecks surprised

him, and he banged his head several times on overhead beams, before

leaming to duck, as the sailors did, as naturally as breathing. He shared

his cramped and crowded cabin with five others, Englishmen who loved their

country and couldn't wait to leave it. Good-humoredly, they denigrated the

Americans as ungrateful and troublesome colonists, but were anxious to be

of their number. They baited him for a bog-Irish peasant, and he took

their jokes in good part, but they wearied him, and sometimes he had

trouble controlling his temper. The tiny cabin was claustrophobic, and the

natural human stench of his fellows reminded James of his time in prison.

He talked with the first officer, and they gave him a hammock, and on the

pleasanter nights, he slung that hammock up on deck, with the sailors, and

slept pleasantly, rocked by the gentle wind.

    The food was awful but edible, pickled pork and potatoes for the first

    few weeks, dried beef and hardtack later. The lore of the sea fascinated

    him, the defined but easy hierarchy, the absolute power of the captain,

    the endless, easy grumbling of the tars, and the constant cheerful

    resentment by all the seamen of their tantalizing, temperamental bitch

    goddess, the sea, which they loved with all their hearts.

    They talked with him about their country, for which they had a deep and

    abiding affection, and gave him some sense

    BLOODLINES 53

of the awesome size of it. James had always known that America was a large

country. Now he leamed that the United States was but a small fraction of

that continent. The physical land itself ranged from the ice-ridden north

to the tropical south, encompassing mountains and deserts, forests and

wilderness, and some of the finest farming land in the world. The British

still ruled the northern part, Canada, the Mexicans controlled the and

southwest and the legendary California, and the French, under Napoleon,

had assumed from the Spanish the great southern region of swamps and

jungle that was known as Florida.

    "Go west," they told him. "A man can find his true self there, and own

    land beyond his imagining, just for the taking. "

    For themselves, they had found their fortune at sea. So many of the young

    men of America went west, to settle the vast new territories, that

    sailors were in short supply, and well paid because of it, They cursed

    the British, who ruled the seas, and frequently stopped and boarded

    American ships, and pressed into service any of the crew who still

    maintained British nationality. They nodded their heads wisely at the

    stories of the savage Indians, but dismissed them as any threat to the

    settled colonies. The Indians were retreating, to the west, before the

    settlers' advance, and soon must stand with their backs to the great

    Pacific Ocean, and then where would they go?

    As they sailed on, he began to understand something of that love, for

    there was only the sea, always the sea, endlessly the sea. fie was lost

    in a world of water and sky, on which the sun rose each morning, and the

    stars and moon each night, and always, the crew told him, where they were

    supposed to be. The small ship became their only world, and each aboard

    it was joined to the others by a strange and powerful sense of community,

    united before a common foe, a common love, that was awesome in its

    breadth and power.

    The storm came, and frightened James at first, for he could not imagine

    that they could survive it. He was forced to sleep in his cabin, when he

    could sleep, and the men with him were as scared as he.

    "Surely America must be heaven," one said. "For you have to go through

    hell to get there. "

54 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    He preferred the attitude of the sailors, for they respected the wrath

    of the tempest, and were not overawed by it. They believed in their

    survival because of their skill and seamanship, their stoutly built

    craft, and because they had weathered worse, much worse, before.

    Then winds abated and the seas quieted, and for the next few weeks they

    sailed through calmer water, blue skies, and sunny weather. Flying fishes

    tripped through the whitecaps, and landed sometimes on the deck, and were

    good eating. At night the tars would gather round the capstan and sing

    chanteys, and dance strange steps that were, James guessed, centuries

    old, and known only to men of the sea. He laughed with the others when

    the two apprentices had their cars pierced with hot needles against cork,

    and wore the small threads of blue wool proudly, for days to come, as

    symbols of their initiation as mariners.

    He learned the map of the stars in heaven, and the directions of the

    wind. He saw whales, enormous creatures that spouted water from their

    backs like fountains, and could not believe what his eyes told him. He

    began to believe all the legends of the sea, of mermaids and sirens, and

    strange monsters from the deep. He lay in the bow for hours, in the

    sunshine days, delighting at the dolphins as they frolicked at the prow,

    and believed, as the sailors did, that these joyous creatures were

    guardians, guiding them safely to haven.

    He felt safe in their company, and as he watched them, following where

    they led, he dreamed of the life that would soon be his, on the distant

    shores that the dolphins knew.

    Bom to money, born to a secure station, his father's ffiends were

    oriented toward England, and many regarded the former colonies of America

    still as colonies, a hostile land of fort-ner convicts and the dregs of

    Europe, governed by unscrupulous merchants and planters, and constantly

    threatened by wild Indian savages. None denied the riches that could be

    made there, but all disparaged the way those riches were made, and the

    resulting lawless, classless society, in which Mammon was the only God.

    Yet the sailors told of a different America, of freedom and peace and a

    settled life. Go west, they told him, where a few dollars will buy a

    thousand acres, and a man could be a king

    BLOODLINES 55

in his own castle. If he could survive the Indians.

    From his Protestant teachers at school in Dublin, he had heard of a

    different America again, of a land free of religious intolerance, a land

    where idyllic, Godfearing communities could flourish in peace and

    tranquillity. If they could survive the Indians.

    From his school friends, he had heard of an untamed paradise, where wild

    animals roamed the wilderness, and a man could test himself against

    nature, and find undiscovered territories, and be hailed as an exploring