Song Yet Sung (29 page)

—Why not? he said.

Amber drew his knees up to his chest, his eyes glistening in the firelight as he spoke:

There's a great big camp meeting, where thousands of people are all gathered up. So many you can't imagine, stretching as far as the eye can see. And a colored preacher stands before them. He's dressed in the oddest suit of clothing you can imagine—I reckon it's of his time—and he speaks to a magic pipe that carries his voice for miles. He uses words I can't describe: powerful, righteous words. He preaches about the rights of man. All mankind. And the people, colored and white, red and yellow, man and woman, they hold hands and weep at his words. And when they holler at him to go on, the colored preacher hears them hollering and gets so excited, he reaches into the past and shouts a song from our own time! A song that ain't been sung yet…

Sitting forward, staring into the fire, Amber sang the words slowly, to his own melody:

—I don't know the rest, he said. That's all she dreamed. She said more was coming to her each time she dreamed it.

Denwood stared into the night, watching the fog billow past and stake its claim on the woods. He felt as if he were dreaming himself.

—What is so great about your God, he asked, that colored folks will take a heap of garbage from him? They just about fall out of the box for him. Take Him at His word while he lets your children die and lets y'all be sold like dogs; your God takes all your tomorrows away, and still you dreamin' about Him in your songs and tomorrows?

—Why not? Amber asked.

Denwood shifted and sighed. I killed a man today, he said. Killed him on his horse, even though he owned his tavern outright. Wasn't the first I killed either, he said ruefully. What your God think about that?

—When you leave your mother's womb, all the goodness is throwed out of you, Amber said. That's man. But God lays plans for emptying your storehouse of evil. He will fill you with good if you let Him. Yes, sir, Mr. Gimp, He'll forgive the worst sin.

—My son was but six years old, Denwood said. I put him in a basket with a six-legged dog and he died six days later. What does your God think on that?

—But Jesus yet rose, didn't he? Amber said.

—So my son's gonna rise from the dead?

—No, sir. But he ain't selling snake oil to poor folks or running the Trade or killing the bay out here, selling God's oysters hand over fist, the Devil keeping score. He ain't had time to sin. He's pure as a snow angel. God gived your boy a soul to save and then saved it for him. He ain't never going to grow old, your boy. He's living forever.

Denwood stared into the darkness, the flickering candle illuminating his long face.

—Don't a day pass when I don't think 'bout him, he said.

—I s'pect that, sir. Surely do. I got no children. But I think about my missus and her little Jeff Boy. Fact is, she could've sold me off after Mr. Boyd died. Her pa wanted it, but she wouldn't. One reason, I suspect, is 'cause me and Jeff 's close. Fact is, if it wasn't for him, I'd be—

Amber stopped. His tongue had gotten too loose.

Denwood eyed him dully. You'd be what? he asked.

—I'd be up the road a piece.

Denwood pulled out his saddle blanket and rolled it around himself.

—All right, then, he said. If you feel so strong on it, tomorrow we'll take a day and hunt for the kid. Maybe it'll help me. I'm going to hell in spite of redemption anyhow.

T
he rain came full force just before the dawn's light. Patty Cannon, still clad in oilskin and a wide-brimmed hat, her broken arm in a homemade sling and still wearing only one boot, clopped steadily through the downpour. The old logging trail had given way to mud, but she was sure she wasn't far from a lean-to that some long-ago muskrat hunter had left behind. She had spotted it at the end of the logging trail the previous day, right where the trail crossed Blackwater Creek and continued to the last piece of land on the Neck that bordered Sinking Creek. She found it in the dawn's light, tethered her horse in the rain, shook the water off her jacket, and stepped inside to wait.

Several minutes later the sound of a horse traveling up the road brought her to her feet. Stanton dismounted, left the horse standing unsteadily in the mud, and hurried inside.

—Where's Joe? Patty asked.

—I was gonna ask you, Stanton said. Joe said to meet him at the Indian burial ground, wherever that is. I got a skiff ride from Cambridge City and worked my way backwards over that old logging trail. Is this it?

He glanced down at Patty's unshod foot, then at her arm. What happened to your arm?

She ignored the question. Odgin got stabbed by a rascal nigger, she said.

—Hurt?

—Not too bad. I let Hodges run him to a doctor up in Reliance, she said. No use telling him the truth, that Odgin was dead and Hodges had run off. Stanton, she decided, was not trustworthy enough to impart that information to. She might have to kill him before the day was done, the way things were going.

—The girl done it?

—Naw. Some kind of nigger bastard. A beast. I'm gonna mount his head on a stake when I get him. What you doing here?

Stanton stifled a shudder. The old girl was furious. He had never seen her this way. Calm mad. Dead in the eyes, a face that looked murkier than the swamps that surrounded them, wearing only one boot, looking unreal. She seemed not to notice her missing boot.

He hastily explained. Joe sent me to the blacksmith's in town to see if the girl was hiding there. Time I come out and gone to the dock where he was, he was gone. He left a note at the Tin Teacup that said meet him out here. He was following a nigger on foot, nigger from Miss Kathleen Sullivan's farm yonder.

Patty's eyes lit with interest.

—Did they, now? What's his name?

—Don't know, but Joe said he was harboring the girl.

—I knew it, Patty said grimly. What about the missus?

—What missus?

—The boy's missus. Was she in on it?

—Joe didn't say nothing about no boy and no missus.

Patty looked down the trail grimly, trying to decide whether to go back to Kathleen's house and check there first. She decided against it. The woman was ornery and there was some kind of ruckus going on there, probably because her nigger was missing. She had noted yesterday, out on Blackwater Creek and in the Choptank beyond it, several bungies sailing to and fro, searching. Oystering boats, she knew, did not normally sail back and forth. They normally sailed to an oyster bar and stayed, dredging or tonging. Also, among the boats she recognized out there was Constable Travis's boat. Something was afoot.

—We got to move fast, she said. The law's around. I think they got a search party out on the water looking for somebody. I think I seen the constable's boat out there.

Stanton's eyes widened in alarm. I thought Constable Travis was in your pocket, he said.

—If they squeeze him, he ain't worth chicken shit. He's gonna watch his own tail. Something ain't smooth round here. It's swilling bad.

—Maybe these Dorchester niggers ain't worth it, Stanton said. Maybe we ought to do what Joe said: cut now and take our losses.

One glance from Patty was enough. You ain't taken no loss, has you? she said.

—I'm paid up.

—Let's go, then.

She placed her hat on her head, led her horse outside into the pouring rain, and tried to mount it, but with her broken arm she had difficulty.

—How'd that happen? Stanton asked.

—Be quiet and help me up, she said.

He complied, then asked, Where we going?

—The old Indian burial ground. It's not far from here.

Stanton mounted and followed. They traveled about a mile down the old logging trail before they noticed a spot to the left where the bushes and grass were pushed about, as if someone had ridden in them. Patty slowed, took a quick look around, then spurred her mount down the trail, but Stanton, an old waterman, had long experience trapping muskrats in swamps like this one. The swamp here, he knew, was a muskrat kingdom. A muskrat trapper, he thought, might push his way past that thicket to get to the low-lying water around it where the muskrats made their homes. But he would not, Stanton was sure, make such a mess that it would scare game away, which was what this was.

—Wait a minute, he said.

He pulled off the trail and rode in several steps, reading the crushed grass and thickets. He followed the disturbed undergrowth, gently urging his horse through the six-inch-deep water while Patty sat impatiently on her mount on the trail, watching him till he was out of sight. After a few moments she heard him shout.

She gingerly made her way in, dismounting to lead her horse through the last few yards of brush, taking care not to step on anything sharp with her bare foot. She found Stanton standing in a clearing, staring at the ground, where Joe Johnson lay on his side, half submerged in black, muck-filled marsh water, his arm fully extended over his shoulder as if he were scratching his back while sleeping, his head nearly underwater.

Patty gasped, coughed, then spun away, her face furrowed in silent rage. She pulled her horse by its reins and staggered back towards the trail, leaning on a tree for a moment, then walking farther away, her head bowed. Stanton followed.

—You all right, Patty?

She waved him away. When she looked up again, she was calm and deliberate, and Stanton had to look away himself. The face had taken on a kind of grey pallor, like a body that had been left in the bay too long. Oystermen called it “bay face.” It usually described a man who'd had a horrible life change and was waiting on the bay to swallow him; a man who would oyster in any weather, come frost or freeze, until he no longer was what he had been before. Such a man did not fear death but welcomed it. Patty now wore that face. Stanton had not seen it on a person in many years, and never on a woman before. He decided she was a devil.

—Take them boots off him, she said. I can't do it myself.

Stanton did as he was told. He handed the boots to Patty. She splashed over to a patch of trees and mud, found a tree root sticking out of the water, and sat down on it. She removed her one boot. As Stanton helped her squirrel her feet into Joe's boots, daylight pushed through gaps in the trees above, and he noticed the glint of a familiar-looking oyster-shell-handled pistol lying in the shallow water near the base of the tree where Patty sat. He reached in, picked it up, and held it high. The handle was split in half, and one of the barrels was blown open.

—I seen this gun before, he said.

Patty, still seated, took it from him and held it up, regarding the handle and blown barrel in the morning light. She nodded.

—Seems like old Gimp's busted his pepperbox blowing Joe's brains out, she said.

Stanton looked over his shoulder nervously at the woods around them. What we gonna do? he asked. He looked around, checking the woods behind him and in front. You wanna bury Joe, Patty?

Patty, staring at the Gimp's gun, seemed distant.

—Patty, Stanton said, you wanna bury him?

—No, I'm just gonna shoot him, she said. Somebody else can bury him.

—I mean Joe!

Patty glanced down at Joe and slowly rose, sloshing over to her horse, treading softly, trying out her new boots. These hurt at the heel, she said. She turned to head out of the swamp and back to the trail.

—Patty, ain't you gonna bury your kin here?

Patty frowned. My daughter was the one who tucked him in bed every night, she said, not me. But you right. Joe was a good drummer. Anybody else, I'd go through his pockets and take his belt and them leather riding pants too. But I'll leave him right there. Even though he's likely got twenty or thirty or maybe even fifty dollars tucked up in one of them pockets of his.

Stanton's gaze cut from Patty to Joe, lying in the muddy, swampy water.

—It ain't no use to him, Patty said coyly. If you love him so much, g'wan over there and bury him with that fifty dollars in his pockets, or whatever he's got.

Stanton's hands fell to his pocket knife and the thought of what fifty dollars could do.

—It won't bother you? he asked.

Patty had already turned her back to him, grabbing her horse's reins and turning him around. Do what you wanna, she said. I'm gonna burn my way out this hellhole and find this nigger wench and git my money outta her. And God help that cripple waterman if I catch up to him.

She grabbed her horse's saddle and, broken arm and all, pulled herself up and guided her mount through the muck towards the old logging trail, leaving Stanton to flip Joe's body onto its back so he could rifle through the pockets and his socks in the pouring rain.

—I won't be long, Patty, if you wouldn't mind holding a second, Stanton said.

Patty kept going, not even bothering to glance over her shoulder, ducking her head as her horse picked its way slowly through the swamps under the thick, wet cypress trees.

G'wan and dig in his pockets all you want, she thought bitterly. She hoped Stanton did a thorough job of it, because the way things were going, she decided, there was a good chance that Stanton himself would soon fall to earth as worm food. And she would have no problem picking him clean. So everything would work out. It made a nice, neat circle.

Four miles away, in a cove in a rocky outcrop just beyond the Indian burial ground, Liz slept beneath her jacket, curled into a ball, protected from the rain by the rocks overhanging.

A gust of chilly air awakened her, and she opened her eyes to see the Woolman standing before her, his eyes beckoning her but bespeaking nothing.

—You slept all night in that? she asked, nodding to the pouring rain and the beach where he'd lain the night before.

He mumbled something unintelligible, then nodded for her to follow.

She tried to rise but could not. Her legs were cramped and her head was burning with a new kind of pain. She was exhausted and feeling worse. Her chest felt as if it were going to break apart. There was something wrong inside her. Deep inside. She needed to be inside somewhere, anyplace where it was dry and warm.

He held his hand out and she grabbed it, pulling herself to her feet. The Woolman's palm felt like flint, scratchy, hard as iron, as if it had never touched anything soft. She suspected he had never lived inside anywhere. She judged that his wounds were still bothering him by the way he moved, slowly, deliberately, sometimes holding his arm, but despite his obvious discomfort he was the most sculpted living creature she had ever seen.

Standing before him, she looked at him dead-on.

—Who are you? she asked.

He shook his head as if to say,
No answers,
then took a few paces and nodded at her to follow. She complied.

He led her through the trees to what seemed to be the mouth of Sinking Creek, but it was a false mouth, for the creek bent into a body of water that seemed to be a calm pond. He led her around the edge to a small thicket of brush marked by a tiny stream, which within several yards grew into a small stream, then a larger one, then around a bend, and before her the Choptank River yawned into the wide-open expanse of the Chesapeake Bay.

—No wonder nobody could find you, she said.

She knew who he was now. Before she'd had some doubt, but now there was none. She followed him around the tiny bends and through the high marsh grass.

—Woolman, she said to his back. But he did not respond. Woolman, Woolman, Woolman.

He ignored her and pushed on. Not more than a quarter of a mile farther she realized there was water on each side of them. The tiny sliver of land was less than a half mile wide. She imagined that if the view were not blocked by woods and marsh grass, she could see both bodies of water on either side of it. The Woolman worked his way through the high grass to a small cove, shielded from Sinking Creek by a projection of rock that rose up above it. From a distance it appeared as if the entire piece of land was part of the next cove, Cook's Point, which jutted out into the Choptank. It was an extraordinary hiding place, one that even the most experienced hunter or waterman could miss because of its tiny size and location. Even from a few yards away it appeared only as an outcrop of rock.

She followed the Woolman around the outskirts of that outcrop, whereupon a tiny cabin made of sticks and wood with a thatched roof appeared, neatly blending into the rocks, marsh, and trees that surrounded it.