Song Yet Sung (16 page)

And in that moment Wiley saw something that made him gasp.

Under one arm Wiley saw—he whimpered like a child when he saw it—a tiny white figure, the sight of which made him nearly faint. Jeff Boy, his arms flinging wildly, stuck under one of the man's muscular arms like a loaf of bread. Whether he was dead or alive, Wiley could not say, but he knew that death would follow that little boy now wherever he went, for the rest of his life, whether the rest of that boy's life was today or a hundred years from now. The boy was cursed because of what was transpiring today, at this moment, at this time, and someone—and not just a dog—was going to pay dearly for the abduction of this child. Wiley was sure of it, and the thought made his knees weak.

It was fear that pushed him onwards; it shoved a surge of energy into his legs and he ran as he'd never run before, and incredibly, he managed to keep the man in sight. The man crossed Sinking Creek well ahead of him, but Wiley saw him slow a moment to dodge a large cypress that had fallen on the opposite bank, and Wiley thought he'd heard, to his utter relief, as the black figure vanished out of sight for the final time, a shriek of terror from Jeff Boy.

It was just a yelp, an irritated
Ow,
but that fleeting sound was enough to give Wiley hope and send a fresh wave of naked terror cascading through his insides. That same shriek of terror, he was sure, would emerge from his own lips once the white man got hold of him. There would be no getting around it, for no one would believe him if he told them what he had just seen—which he did not plan to. For who would believe him when he said a spirit had taken Miss Kathleen's son? Who would take his word that a devil had claimed the life of a white boy, just as it had claimed the life of his master Boyd and his pa out on the Chesapeake? No one. The white man blamed who he wanted to when he wanted. One colored looked just like another. The sins of one caused the suffering of the many—that was the rule of the world. That had been the story of his ma and pa's life, and he expected the tale would be no different when his name was on the dot. Maybe Amber was right to plan their escape to freedom, but it didn't matter now. They would blame him. And Amber. And Mary. Even many coloreds would not believe him if he told them he'd chased the Devil himself. It was only because of his mother that he ran in the direction of the man now. He would accept the consequences, he decided. He would lie on the matter if need be. Just so she'd be spared.

He ran on, but the figure had disappeared. He could see nothing ahead now, but he ran for a good ten minutes more, splashing into the chest-high waters of another creek, then splashing out again. He fell, hawked, spat water, and ran on. Distress dripped off him like raindrops. Every hope he had, every dream he had known, fell away like the water that dripped off his soaked ragged pants onto his knees and ankles, which were showing. Because of the Dreamer. She had bewitched Amber. She had brought slave stealers among them. And now she had called on a demon to claim them, one by one. Jeff Boy was the first, he thought bitterly as he climbed down to another creek, sloshing through the water, slapping away a water snake, fighting back his own tears. There would be more.

The water was knee-deep and he slogged forward, slower now, frightful and tense, for he had reached the outer parts of their neighbors the Gables' property past Sinking Creek and towards Cook's Point, and the realization that he was chasing the Devil hit him and he changed direction and ran back towards the Gables' house. They would help.

He took two steps, busted through the underbrush to a clearing, and felt a whack as a rifle butt slammed across his face. He dropped like a sack of stones.

Lying on his back, he looked up and saw the figure of a tall, lean white woman on a horse staring down at him, her rifle aimed at his face. With her were two other men.

—Where you going, nigger?

Wiley gasped to catch his breath.

—Missus' boy's been snatched! he said.

—Who?

—I swear, Missus' boy! Lil' Jeff Boy, he's been snatched away.

—By who?

—The Devil.

—Well now, Patty said. I thought
I
was the Devil. Didn't you, Hodge?

Hodge shrugged.

—Ain't that what the colored call me? How could I be in two places at once? I didn't snatch nobody, did I, Hodge?

—Please, miss, Wiley said. A colored devil done it.

—Will you make up your mind, you fibbin' rascal. First it was a devil. Then a nigger devil. What you doing out here on the Neck without a pass anyhow?

—I belongs to Miss Kathleen!

—I was just there two days past. I didn't see you. You's a runaway. Maybe you're one of them that ran off from me.

—You can check! Wiley sputtered. I'm Wiley.

—I already lost one boot on account of you people, Patty said, reaching into her saddlebag and pulling out a long ankle chain and set of foot locks. I ain't getting' rolled again.

C
ambridge City deputy Herbie Tucker ran a serious poker game with three buddies every Thursday night at the Cambridge City jailhouse. It was a rip-roaring, bubbly, libation-filled event that he looked forward to all week—a toot, tear, and blowout while real money exchanged hands. It wasn't just the money that Herb enjoyed—he was a decent poker player but hardly ever won anyway—but rather the shell game. Between hands, after everyone had dutifully gotten cockeyed and wobbly from sipping holy water, Herb tossed three identical oyster shells on the table. He tucked a bean underneath one, then scrambled them around, and the player who picked the oyster shell covering the bean won two dollars. Each player got a turn planting the bean, so there was no cheating. Even Herbie had to pick while someone else planted the bean and shuffled the shells. Herb had gotten lucky last winter, picking the winning shell nine weeks straight. His buddies had begun questioning his winning streak, suspecting he was a cheat. Still he won, and it was triumphant business to Herb that they had not yet figured out why.

It was Thursday afternoon, and Herbie had spent a considerable amount of time at his desk, marking the different oyster shells, carefully scraping the bottom lip of each so that he could tell one from another, when a knocking at the door interrupted him. Irritated, he rose to answer. He opened the door.

Before him stood a blathering, sweating Negro woman.

—
DevildonestoleJeffBoy!
she said.

—Say what?

—The Devil done stole Jeff Boy! she said.

Herbie, a thin, angular soul with the smooth face of a doctor, rolled his eyes and looked at his watch. This was the third major crisis this week. He was, after all, only a deputy constable. Why should this happen to him? The boss, Travis House, had left on business up at Fell's Point in Baltimore about when Patty Cannon hit town. Surely Travis didn't expect him to handle all this hell that broke loose, did he?

Herbie had several crises at once. Two watermen had shot it out over on Holland Island two nights before, haggling over an oyster bar claim. Shootings over oyster bars—the sandbars at the bay's bottom where oysters were plucked using long tongs or dredged with long scoops—were nothing new. In fact, squabbles between Maryland and Virginia oystermen were so commonplace that state lawmen from Maryland were allowed to arrest Virginians who trespassed on Maryland's fishing waters, and vice versa. The Holland Island incident was local, though, and it required a boat to get there. Herbie had nobody to send. The constable's only waterman, Mousey Sopher, had ferried Constable Travis to Fell's Point a week earlier and hadn't been seen since. And while Herbie, like most eastern shoremen, wasn't a stranger to a sailing bungy, he wasn't fool enough to set sail in the Chesapeake in anything less than an eighteen-foot dory this time of year. Late winter and spring were dangerous seasons on the Chesapeake, a time when sudden spring squalls could appear out of nowhere and send a boat foundering into fog so thick you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. The fog often appeared like magic in the mornings, billowing across the eastern shore and covering everything in a dripping, freezing embrace. He hated the water altogether. He had no intention of going out to Holland Island to question anyone. Whoever was shot, living or dead, he'd find out their names soon enough. Besides, he had a colored boy in jail to look after. Not that he cared to. The boy was a wild-looking thing, a runaway of some kind, and Herbie had locked him up with a local colored woman who absconded every week, a habitual drunk. The boy was nearly dead when he was brought in, suffering from a leg wound. He spoke no English. He seemed like a savage, fighting and kicking. Jasper Baxter, the local doctor, had made matters worse by insisting on treating the boy. As far as Herbie could tell, from an account of a waterman who had spotted the boy on the day he arrived, the boy had come from out near Joya's Neck with his father—a monster; a horrible-looking, hugely muscled Negro, with natty hair down to his back. Herbie and several white men spotted the man crouching behind a gate when the boy was found and grew suspicious. They approached him and demanded papers. Instead of producing them, the nigger cut and ran. They gave chase, but that was the fastest nigger Herbie had ever seen: he ran like an antelope, scaling a six-foot iron fence behind the town's stable in one leap. He flew out of Cambridge like his tail was on fire, and lost his pursuers within minutes. Herbie spent the better part of two days hanging fliers around Dorchester County for any potential owners who could prove the wild boy was their property. So far no takers. He expected Constable Travis would sell the boy soon, the proceeds going to the constable's office, with a generous portion, Herbie thought bitterly, no doubt going into Travis's pocket as well.

And then there was the real problem.

Herbie had never in his life met a woman like Patty Cannon. In a town where the most serious offense by women was last year's fistfight between two women parishioners at Second Avenue Methodist over which night to play bingo and which night to clip paper doll cutouts, Patty was an enigma. Unlike the worn-out, tired-looking whores who occasionally wandered into Cambridge from nearby Oxford, she was beautiful and monied, pleasant and charming, and quite deadly. No lawman on the eastern shore, on either the Virginia or the Maryland side, was anxious to arrest Patty. The last lawman who tried, a poor sap from Caroline County, had stumbled out of her tavern with so many broken bones and missing teeth that his wife had to chew his food for him for the next two years. At a deputy salary of eight dollars a week, Herbie felt, it wasn't worth it to get his teeth kicked out, not with a wife and three kids to support. Besides, Dorchester County wasn't like its rich neighbors in Essex County, Virginia, or Prince George's County outside Washington, D. C., where lawmen made real money. This was Dorchester, home of broke watermen who got their duffs kicked regularly by the Chesapeake, and thus did not need any more reminders about how poor and powerless they were, particularly from free niggers who were becoming increasingly numerous and problematic. As far as he was concerned, he didn't give a shit if Patty stole niggers in Sussex County or Canada, so long as she stayed out of Dorchester. But now she was his problem, because most folks were not slave owners, and were afraid. They did not mind the Negro problem being an underground problem. But Patty's presence brought it out into the open. She had been hanging around town for two weeks, walking around like a steer at a sheep ramp. Watermen did not like anybody strutting around their town fluffing their feathers too much. If the Negro problem exploded in the wrong direction with breakouts, revolts, murders, it could cost them, too, in lost fishing revenue, time spent on posse roundups, more taxes for more constables…And what did they gain from it? They weren't slave owners. The watermen were living on the edge too. Herb wanted her to leave, but of course could not ask, for if she did pull out her heater, she could clear the town faster than a meat market on a Friday, and she seemed to be of no mind to do anything but what she wanted to do. And who would ask her to leave? Him? Certainly not.

Herbie had actually seen Patty close-up only once. He often traveled great distances to play poker and two years earlier had found himself at a high-stakes game in Hughlett's Neck, a river town off the Choptank River, up in Talbot County. It was a punchy bunch up there, low drummers, snake-bitten bastards, drunk watermen, and card sharks who cheated each other and told lies all evening. Patty sat among them, smoking cigars and playing in intense silence, surrounded by her young posse, smooth-faced, charming killers, all of whom could shoot fly shit off the wall, and two of whom, Stanton Davis and Joe Johnson, Herbie knew, were sitting at the the Tin Teacup just up Main Street at this very minute.

Standing at the door of his jailhouse, Herbie glared at the woman, a slender young Negress of about twenty, whose face raced between alarm and panic.

—Slow down, Aunt Polly. Tell it slow, he said.

The woman was clad in a bright quilt wrapped around her shoulders despite the temperate March weather. She sputtered and backed away from him, then walked in a small circle, wringing her hands, before looking up again.

—Devil stole Jeff Boy! she said.

—Who's Jeff Boy?

—Miss Kathleen's son. From out Joya's Neck.

—Boyd Sullivan's widow? Herbie asked.

—Yes, sir. Devil stole him.

—Dead? Herbie asked.

—No, sir. I just told you, sir, she said. Boy went out to the grove. A hole opened up and the Devil came out and snatched him!

—Speak sense, woman! Herbie snapped.

—I am, sir, she sputtered. He was taken down. Taken down, sir. He went out to the grove. Out back behind the cornfield. Ground opened up and the Devil popped out and snatched him down the hole.

—What hole?

—The hole from hell he popped out of.

Herbie rolled his eyes, puffing his cheeks and blowing out a long sigh.

—You see it?

—No, sir. Miss Kathleen saw it. She told her Negro Mary to get help. Mary run over to the Gables to tell me, and I come to tell you.

—How you know the Devil done it, then?

—Miss Kathleen said it. Told Mary it was so.

—Where's the boy now?

The woman looked at him, incredulous. I just told you where he is, she replied. Devil got him down a hole.

Herbie wondered with a sudden surge of panic if Patty and her men were somehow involved.

—Was any white folks involved?

—Weren't no white folk! It was the Devil! Is you gonna come, sir? she asked. Miss Kathleen said it was really important that you come.

—I don't know what the hell you're talking about! Herbie retorted. You ain't doing nothing but spitting out a bunch of damned mumbo jumbo.

The woman looked at him, exasperated.

—He's been gone five hours, sir. Plus Wiley, Miss Kathleen's Wiley—that's Mary's son—colored boy 'bout seventeen. Guess what! Devil got him too!

—Where's he?

—Devil got him. He chased him after he snatched Jeff Boy.

—He chased who?

—The Devil! Wiley chased the Devil and ain't been seen since. I reckon the Devil pulled him down to hell too.

From behind him, Herbie heard the voice of the drunk Negro woman locked in a cell with the sick boy calling out.

—Suh! Hey! Hungry, suh! I got to eat! And this here boy's sick. Sick
and
hungry, suh!!

Looking at the woman before him, Herbie bit his lip and suppressed an urge to slam the door in her face, he was so angry. He had one crazy nigger behind him hollering and one crazy nigger in front of him hollering.

He glared at the woman.

—Where's Miss Kathleen live?

He already knew. The Sullivans lived fourteen miles from where he stood. Tough place to reach by land, a series of dirt roads, tiny pull bridges, over windswept canals. It was easier to get there by boat, which for him was out of the question.

He watched the colored woman's face crinkle in surprise.

—You don't know where she live, sir? Why, everybody knows where Miss Kathleen lives.

—You sassing me? I'm asking the questions here, he said, irritated.

—No, sir, I ain't sassing. She lives straight out on the Neck, sir. I swear 'fore God, I ain't lying. Mary was beside herself about it. Said the missus is losing her mind worrying on it.

—Ain't Miss Kathleen got some niggers out there?

—Just two. Amber went to get the constable and ain't come back.

—He ain't gonna find him, Travis said. He is gone to Fell's Point.

—Mary can't leave her missus, the woman said. She said the missus is gone crazy with grief about it.

—How old's the boy that's gone down the ho—gone missing?

—'Bout eight.

For the first time Herbie's face creased with concern. An eight-year-old out on Joya's Neck, which was surrounded by water on three sides, could be lost on the bay easily. Playing in any of those creeks out there, he could fall in and be swept out into the bay in minutes. Or float on a skiff and get stuck on one of the many tiny, sandy island patches that showed themselves during the day in March when the tide ran out, only to be swallowed by the bay at night when the tide came in. He glanced overhead at the sky. In the distance he could see a thunderstorm coming. March thundergusts usually didn't last long, but
if
the colored woman was telling the truth, and
if
the boy was playing on a skiff or in the water someplace, he could be in trouble. But then again, the nigger wench seemed touched, and he always took whatever any nigger said to him with a grain of salt.

—Wait here a minute, he said.

He walked inside, ignoring the pleas from the colored woman in her cell, and sat at his desk. He scrawled a hasty note on a piece of paper, strode to the door, and handed it to the young colored woman who waited.

—Okay, Aunt Polly. Take this over to the general store and ask the old Hebrew there to give this to Mr. Beauford when he comes in to get his mail. Beauford Locke is his name. He'll know what to do.