Song Yet Sung (24 page)

—I wouldn't take your word for hog slops, miss, he said dryly. I'm going on home. If you git out this swamp alive, you can tell folks you seen him. Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. White folks'll know I ain't lyin' if you get back. I hope you do.

With that, he spun Odgin's horse around and spurred it, taking off at a gallop towards the Sullivans' land.

D
enwood emerged into the bright sunshine outside the Sullivans' barn to see Constable Travis engaged in a screaming match with his deputy Herbie Tucker in front of the house. Several watermen were gathered around, awaiting instructions, their boats lapping lazily at the bank as the two men hollered at each other.

Denwood wanted to get moving on the lead the slave woman Mary Sullivan had given him, but out of deference to the widow he mounted his horse and trotted up to the house to thank her for the use of her barn. Several watermen eyed him warily as he made his way. Even Travis and Herbie, their pitched voices rising over the flat dirt of the front yard, halted their squawking for a moment to glance at him before tearing into each other again.

Denwood spotted the widow Sullivan at the edge of the porch, watching the fracas with a worried look. He rode around the circle of men, then leaned down from his horse and asked a waterman, What's the hank about?

The man shrugged. Something about a colored prisoner, he said. Died in the jail.

—What's his name?

—It was a woman died in there.

Denwood's heart skipped a beat and his face creased into a frown. Nine days of hunting and now this. His patience and money were just about gone, with nothing to show for it, either. He dismounted and led his horse to the side of the porch, where the colored woman Mary stood behind her missus. He motioned with his head and she approached, leaning over the railing.

—Who's the woman dead in jail. The Dreamer?

—That somebody else they wrangling about, she murmured. Lady was in the cell with a sick child. Don't know if the child was her kin or not. She got into a fight with Constable Herbie in the jailhouse some kind of way and died.

—Who's the lady? he asked.

—Don't know her, Mary said. Rumor is she's Woolman's wife.

—Who's Woolman?

—Escaped slave from years back. Said to be living out near Sinking Creek with his alligator, name of Gar. Don't speak a lick of English, so they say. This woman here, they say she spoke English fine. So maybe she weren't his wife.

She watched Herb and Travis arguing and said under her breath, I don't know what she got to do with all this, though. They got to git to what they gonna git to. Start searching again! What they waiting for?

Denwood understood it now. Herb and Travis were arguing about money. The constable's department, supported mostly by the taxes of grumbling plantation owners who begrudged their taxes with no small amount of complaint, was chronically broke. A captured runaway who was not claimed by an owner could be sold. A dead slave, on the other hand, was cash out the window, plus the cost of burial. He glanced at Kathleen Sullivan, who had turned away in disgust from the arguing constables and seated herself on the only chair on the porch. She had recovered from the previous night, and while she still looked anxious, he could see her dark eyes carefully scanning everything about her: the boats, the other watermen waiting to put out to the bay. He took note of the shapely, full figure beneath the dowdy dress she wore. In her hands she clasped a Bible. Her gaze, fixed on the bay, suddenly turned in his direction and caught him off guard, standing at the edge of the porch railing, looking uncomfortable.

She rose from her chair and approached.

—No offense meant yesterday, she said. I wasn't myself.

Denwood found himself straightening his collar and trying to flatten his oilskin jacket, which had hardened as it dried in the morning sun. He was, in essence, a proud man, yet something about her made him bow down inside himself. He wished he could snap the tiredness out of his face the way one flaps a sheet in the wind. He knew what he looked like: Drawn. Raw. Uneven. He was rough-looking, a cur, even compared to the watermen around him. They were men who lived on the water chasing fish. He was a waterman who lived on land, chasing human chattel. Big difference.

—None taken, he said. I just wanted to thank you for letting me sleep in your barn.

He felt a sudden urge to gallop away from her, ashamed of what she might think of him. He'd retired from chasing coloreds. He'd given it up. He'd only come back to it because of his son, and the money—the peace he thought the money would buy for him. But so far there was none. And all of it was too hard to explain. He tried to decide whether it was his own knowing conscience that made him feel ashamed or if the sight of her was awakening something that had already been inside him, something that he thought he'd already lost, except now perhaps it wasn't lost at all. He couldn't tell. He only knew that looking at her had tapped open a vault in his insides that had for too long been locked tight, and further secured by years of travel, being alone, hearing excuses and sad stories of slave owners and slaves, all of them trapped by the Trade; and he, a policeman, a grabber, a hunter, a member of it, living amidst the walking corpses of it, more dead than alive. He was filled with disgust.

He backed his horse away and wheeled around. He heard her speak over his shoulder: About your offer yesterday, she said. About looking out for my boy in your travels…

He half spun his horse so he could see her. Standing at the porch railing, her face drawn, her lips pursed tight, she glanced down at her hands, clasping the Bible.

—He's a small boy, eight years old. Answers to the name Jeff Boy. Disappeared from that grove of pine trees yonder near the cornfield. If you see or hear anything, I'd…I'd appreciate whatever you do.

Denwood straightened his collar and tried to still his Adam's apple, which seemed to be quivering on its own account. He was hardened by years of being alone and holding back, yet was so startled by the feeling of nervousness in this woman's presence that he could not raise his eyes or even think of a response.

Instead he nodded.

—Thank you, she said. I'm Kathleen Sullivan. And you are…

—Denwood, he said.

—Denwood, she repeated. The name sounded like a thousand birds singing as it came from her lips, and at that moment he felt as if he were falling off a cliff.
So this is what it's like,
he said to himself.
This is what it's like when they say you hear the thunder, see the lightning, get struck blind, hear the sonnet. And it comes out of nowhere too. God Almighty, I've got to leave.

—I'll be on the lookout for him, he managed to blurt out.

He turned on his horse and fled, trotting past Herb and Travis and the other watermen, who parted as he passed among them. They were afraid of him, he knew, and it was just as well. He was afraid of himself, of what he might do. He could handle, he realized, any emotion but love. What he'd just felt, staring at that beautiful woman, was explosive and charged. He couldn't handle it, didn't know what to do with it. It was best to leave.

He started out directly west, towards an old logging trail that led to the woods behind Sinking Creek. Then, while still in sight of the house, he changed his mind, turned around, and directed his horse back to the cornfield, trotting to the grove of pine trees where the boy had disappeared. He dismounted and slowly walked around, examining the terrain.

From the porch Kathleen Sullivan watched him. She had been beside herself the previous night when he'd arrived. It was the fourth day since Jeff Boy had gone missing, and with the terrible storm and the bungling bluster of Constable Travis, in whom she hadn't a shred of confidence, she had spent a bad night. But now, with the sun in her face and the terror of the incident receding, she was beginning to think clearly. There was something suspicious about the whole bit, and she was not sure who to trust. The constable worked for the plantation owners. The watermen, many of whom had been friends of her late husband, worked for themselves. She was sure they would stay and search for Jeff Boy until she gave the signal to stop. The constable, she suspected, would be gone in a day or so. After the fifth or sixth day, the chances of Jeff Boy being found on the water alive were, she knew, not good. She was uncertain about what to do. The watermen had families. Many were poorer than she was and had their own children to feed. The oystering season was almost over. The watermen needed to get back out onto the water and get what they could before the season ended, then home to start planting for the summer months. She needed someone now, a real man, someone decisive, not some half-assed braggart and his card-playing deputies, to help her direct the search.

She had seen how the watermen had given this limping man a wide berth when he arrived; noted his calmness, the deadness in his face, and beneath that the self-assurance and patience. She would give anything, she thought, to have a bit of solidity right now, a piece of emotional land to stand on. As much as she was grateful to the watermen for volunteering to search, she hated them, every one of them. They reminded her of her husband, with his wide-eyed dreams, big talk, and foolish love of the Chesapeake, taking to it each season as if it were his mother, till it reclaimed him as every mother does, just as it would the watermen she found herself staring at absently. Yet, the man who slowly plodded around the cornfield—this man with the long lines across his face, who staked his claim in each piece of earth he passed upon with the authority of the morning fog that drifted in from the bay each morning—seemed different from his counterparts. He was careful, deliberate, and most important, a hunter of men, colored men, a despicable practice, surely, but an important skill at the moment, she thought bitterly. One man is just like any other.

She watched him walk the land where Jeff Boy disappeared, limping through each row of the cornfield, head down, reading the land. She saw him crouch over the hole where the kidnapper had hidden, then check the sun to see its position from the hiding place, then stare into the swampy forest where Wiley had chased the dreaded kidnapper. She saw him look up at the trees overhead, then drift slowly towards the swamp, his head moving back and forth, reading the ground, then the trees up above.

She turned to her slave Mary and asked, Where's he from?

Mary shrugged. Mr. Gimp? Oh, he's from Hooper Island, I heard.

—He's a full-time hunter of Negroes?

—So they say, Mary said, trying to sound nonchalant.

—And you offered him my barn?

Mary tried to look casual, but knew Kathleen saw past it.

—Well, Missus, I didn't think he could put his foot in the road, the way it was raining.

—Why was you frettin' on him?

—Why, Missus, I wasn't frettin'.

—Surely you detest him.

—I do not.

Kathleen eyed Mary warily. There was logic in Mary's madness, Kathleen was sure. Her Negroes were bright beyond comparison. Whenever she gave them a job to do, even if she didn't have the tools for them to do the job, they figured out some way to get it done. Their solutions weren't always pretty, but they always came up with them.

—It's Amber, ain't it? Kathleen said.

Mary's eyes dropped to her feet. I know you're angry with him, she said. But I don't…If he knew Jeff Boy and Wiley was missing, he'd be here in a jiffy. I'm afraid he's…

—Run off?

—No. He ain't run off. He's in trouble somehow.

—What kind of trouble?

—I can't say, Mary said, looking away. But if Mr. Gimp there is good as they say he is, he'll find Amber. Dead or alive, he'll bring him home. I asked him to look into it, and he said he would.

—He'll likely do no such thing, Kathleen said. He's working for somebody else. He's paid to bring somebody home. That's the only way he'll do it.

Mary nodded her head, but as she watched the Gimp poke in and out of the grove of trees, she silently disagreed. She cared about the missus, and it was all well and good that they were in the same boat, having lost husbands together, and now both of their sons were missing too. But nothing in the world would make her confess to Kathleen or any other white person about the Dreamer. It would only complicate matters. The white men fussing in front of the house would move heaven and earth to find Jeff Boy. They would not, she was sure, do the same for her son. The Dreamer was her only hope. She had no plans on surrendering that hope to Missus or anyone else. So long as the Gimp kept his word, she had hope. She had prayed on it and felt sure there was hope. Yet, she could not contain, despite her best efforts, a feeling of betrayal, as the Gimp sniffed around the spot where Jeff Boy had vanished. It didn't escape her that now that Miss Kathleen had asked him to, he might feel inclined to lean more towards finding Jeff Boy than Wiley.

She stared at the Gimp, lost in thought, trying to keep her frayed nerves in check. She'd had plans for Wiley. She knew he and Amber had planned to run off. Wiley had never said it; it didn't need to be said. It was one of the millions of things that were better left unsaid. Wiley was her son, and she was his mother, and she knew him as instinctively as any mother would know a son. As a slave, she had prayed for his freedom. As a mother, she had prayed against it. After her husband, Nate, and Mr. Boyd died, she knew it was just a matter of time before the missus would lose it all: the farm, the slaves, the crops, everything. She saw the books each month. The missus was a hard worker, a good woman, good to her colored, God knows it. But without Nate and Mr. Boyd hauling in oysters, her debts were running her over. It wouldn't be long before she'd be forced to sell them all.