Sweet Song (9 page)

Leon stumbled along, the sun draining remaining energy through his skin. At a beach made by a turn in the river, Leon waited for the sun to angle down so he could see clearly into the shallows. The fish were small, hand-sized. He reached in, but his reflexes had been compromised by his weakness. A hawk squealed overhead.

As nightfall approached, Leon went into the woods and carved a forked spear from a thin branch. He carved barbs into each point. With his spear, he headed back to the river flat. Leon missed his mark repeatedly, the trout easily slipping away until, apparently, tired of the game it swam deeper into the river.

Leon plopped down on a stone with his feet in the water. His eyelids closed and he rested until, nearly asleep, he started to fall over. He wished he had blackberries, regardless of their painful effect on him.

Pushing up into a crouched position, he grabbed his spear and lumbered into the woods. Although the woods were already dark under the canopy of trees, something drew him deeper. He heard laughing. Stumbling forward, Leon tried to count the number of voices, but kept getting confused. Then, in the middle of a count, he smelled food cooking. Rabbit or chicken.

He crept on all fours, his sack in his teeth. In a small clearing a fire burned bright, snapping and sending cinders into the warm night air. His hunger pushed him on. The ground felt damp on his
hands and knees. When his knee snapped a twig and the conversation halted for a moment, Leon became motionless.

“Juss a deer,” he heard someone say. Then the talking, the storytelling started up again. Soon laughter and the sound of people eating filled his ears.

Leon leaned against a tree. He planned to wait until they fell to sleep, then sneak in and dig the bones out of the fire. He’d break them open and suck out the marrow. He’d lick them so clean they’d shine in the sun. His mouth watered. His tongue slipped over his lips. He slept and dreamed of eating.

His dream shifted to him being dragged behind a hay wagon. His shirt had gotten torn. His face was being slapped by newly felled hay. When he woke, he was being dragged, but not by a hay wagon.

Leon kicked his feet. He felt the grip of an enormous hand let go of his shoulder. Then his hat and burlap sack fell next to his face.

“There it is,” the big man said.

Leon put his hat and sack in his lap and shot up into a sitting position. His eyes burned. His mouth watered. He waited for something to happen. The big man lowered his body down on a log next to a smaller man with a pearly-white beard. Two more men sat on another log and one man leaned on an elbow perched against the second log. All five men were old. All five were black.

“Gonna steal from us? Kill us in our sleep?” The man leaning against the log said.

“I wuz gonna steal bones and lick ‘em clean, is all,” Leon said.

“Hungry,” the man said to the rest of them.

“You runnin’ son? You awful skinny,” the man said.

“You a criminal? You kilt somebody?” Another one of them asked.

“I not runnin’. I never laid a hand on nobody,” Leon said.

“You look familiar. You the son of that farmer we take those eggs from two days back? You trackin’ us?”

The leaning man looked over at the man at the end of the log. “Hell, Jesse, who send a boy out to chase down five old niggers robbed a han-full a eggs?” They all laughed.

“You don’t know what white folks do with they kids sometimes,” Jesse said.

Leon listened to them. His stomach cried out.

The smaller man who sat next to the giant who had dragged Leon into their camp said, “The boy’s hungry.” He pointed at Leon. “You hungry?”

Leon nodded his head.

“I’m feedin’ ‘im,” the man announced.

“Ain’t juss your food,” the leaning man said.

“This piece is.” The man crouched down and stretched an arm toward Leon as if he were a wild animal. A half-eaten chicken leg pushed out from the man’s greasy fingers.

Leon took the leg and popped it into his mouth, holding the bulbous bone in his fingertips. The meat slid off into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed, then licked and gnawed at the bone.

“What yo’ name, boy?” The man who had given him the chicken asked.

“Leon.”

“Leon what?”

“Juss Leon.”

“No need to be scared. We ain’t hurt no one.” The leaning man lifted slowly to a standing position. “Ma-name’s Cracker-Jack.” He took a breath. “That there, who give you his chicken bone, that Buddy.”

Buddy nodded.

“Next there, that Big Josh.” Cracker-Jack pointed to the opposite end of the log. “You probably got that there Jesse.”

Leon waited, looking at the last man. The other four looked at the last man, too. Then they started giggling.

The last man looked from one to the other of them. “Well, God-do-diddly-dam,” he said. “My name’s Bob.”

Everyone burst into loud laughs except for Leon and Bob. Cracker-Jack slapped his thighs. “He named Bob after an old white man’s horse. He not even named after no man.”

“Ain’t so do-damned funny to me,” Bob said. “Looka him.” Bob motioned toward Leon. “He got a nigger’s name. What you suppose his ma and pa thinkin’?”

“Maybe they foreigners and don’t know no better. He do look a little I-talian,” Cracker-Jack said.

“He look dirty white to me,” Buddy said. “He been in the sun all summer, I ‘spect.”

Big Josh handed another piece of chicken over to Buddy, who handed it to Leon. Leon ripped some breast meat from the bird and stuck it in his mouth.

Cracker-Jack, obviously in charge if anyone was, motioned for Jesse to hand over some bread.

Leon took it right away and stuffed it into his mouth beside the half-chewed chicken breast. He stared at the ground waiting for the hammer to fall.

D
espite the conversation of the five men, their through-the-night discussions, singing, and laughter, Leon seldom woke, and when he did, he only rolled over and fell back to sleep. In the morning, he awoke to the sweet smell of breakfast stew. His arm had fallen asleep. His hands, together like in prayer, rested under the side of his face. The stoked cooking fire burned against his back. He sat up, dazed and hungry. It took a few minutes of rubbing his arm to bring life back to it.

In daylight, without the shifting light and dark, the appearances of the five men were more accurately revealed. They were very old. Leon didn’t know how old, but they all moved slowly, showing wrinkles like ripples on water, and had white hair.

Jesse stirred the pot hanging over the fire. “Where Buddy wit them mushrooms?” he asked no one in particular.

“He comin’.” Cracker-Jack said.

Leon had thought to eat mushrooms when he was hungry, but never learned which were poisonous. He hoped Buddy knew.

Bob hobbled over and kneeled next to Leon. “What you real name?”

Leon looked into the deep chasms of Bob’s face.

“Come-on. You runnin’? Kilt somebody?”

“It’s Leon. My real name.”

“Naw.” Bob laughed. “I got one boy name of Leon. Ain’t heard a no white man namin’ his boy Leon.”

“I’m not white.”

Bob slapped Leon’s face lightly with a leather palm. “You ain’t black neither.”

“I know.”

“So, we got that cleared. Now, what you really doin’ here?”

“I free to do what I want, ain’t I?” Leon said.

“S’pose you are. You don’t fend well, though. That tell me you a cared-for nigger if you one at all, or a set-free white boy don’t know what he got his-self into. I be-diddly-do-thinkin’ you mixin’ a bit a truth wit yo’ big lie.”

Cracker-Jack shuffled over to them. He had a long look to his face, which made his flat nose appear extra wide. His skin looked as though it had swallowed all the night shadows, so black it was almost featureless. “We don’t need to know no truth. Yo’ truth belong to you,” he said.

“Juss curious,” Bob said.

Leon turned away without saying anything.

Bob moaned into a slouched stand. “Don’t want this boy slittin’ no throats while we sleepin’.”

“He won’t slit nothin’.”

Bob followed Cracker-Jack back to the log. He yelled over the fire, “I know you white ‘cause I see that book you hidin’. Unless you steal it from your master outta spite.”

“Ain’t no masters,” Big Josh said. “And, Negroes can read too.”

“Yeah. You right. Look at us,” Bob said, “we’re five fish-flaimin’ freeee niggers who be too damn-dimmidy old to clean pots or sweep out stalls.”

Buddy showed up with an armful of cleaned mushrooms that he threw into the pot Jesse attended.

They all laughed at Bob’s joke.

Leon, though, sat up straight, curious at their laughter. He didn’t understand. “What’s funny about being free?”

“Free,” Cracker-Jack yelled, and they all howled louder. “Boy, we ain’t ask to be free. We set free. You know why? ‘Cause we ol’. We can’t labor no more. Maybe they ain’t no slavery, but they ain’t no jobs neither. Not for ol’ Negroes like us.”

“But my Cookie can work,” Bob said. “She can still swaddle a chile and cook a good meal.” He quieted. “I miss my Cookie.”

“Boy, we all got wives who probably work ‘til they dead. We no good fer nothin’ ‘cept roamin’. We roamers,” Cracker-Jack said.

“Not Big Josh,” Jesse said.

Cracker-Jack glanced over at Big Josh. “Nope. Big Josh ain’t got no woman. Ain’t no woman wanna be poked every night by his big stick.”

Leon’s throat hardened and his chest felt compressed. He imagined Hillary’s bare breasts. He recalled Big Leon and Bess and how they related, how sex had tortured his whole family. Oh how he wanted it all gone. Forgotten. After all, he’d gone through the river of black hell and wanted it – his past – to disappear.

“Stew’s ready,” Jesse announced.

Despite his shyness to this point, Leon perked up and crawled around the fire to Jesse’s side.

“You lucky we got a extra pot we can feed you in,” Jesse said.

Buddy stroked his beard while Jesse dished out breakfast and handed plates around. “You know, young Jimmy White here could run for us.”

Several of the men nodded.

“He does owe us a couple meals,” Cracker-Jack said.

Big Josh, speaking for the first time said, “He small enough to shove through a window.”

Leon didn’t like the word shove, although the idea was accurate.

“We could use a younger helper,” Buddy said.

“Lick-bam-dibbledy,” Bob said, “you like to be our boy? Our Jimmy White?”

Leon swallowed. “Ain’t nobody’s boy. But I’ll help you. You been kind.”

“Ding-dong-dilly,” Bob slapped his knee, ‘we turning the tables. Got ourselves a white boy.”

Leon laughed.

After breakfast, all except Leon joined in for cleanup. Cracker-Jack and Big Josh bundled the blankets, Buddy reduced the fire to cold with a pot of water, then smoothed out the pit until it nearly disappeared. Jesse cleaned up the cookware and handed it over to Bob, who packed it into a bundle no bigger than a size ten hat.

Leon stayed out of the way.

When the others stood ready to go, Leon put on his hat and grabbed his sack.

“Take that.” Cracker-Jack pointed at the larger bundle.

Leon weighed the situation.

“You work for you food.”

Leon bent down and picked up the bundle. He followed tentatively as they walked deeper into the woods.

Jesse, Buddy, and Bob chatted about their wives and children. Leon stayed behind the men and listened when the conversation became loud enough. He lost long portions of information, but gathered that at some point each became too old for hard labor, and was set free to roam, torn from their families.

The stories included beatings and killings, having children sold, sisters sold and fathers set free against their will. Between the three men, they had some twelve or more children, many of whom were either taken from them or sold soon after birth. Some landowners let their Negroes have families, though, and he wondered why the children couldn’t have taken care of their fathers. Complain as they did, Leon got the distinct feeling that freedom was what the roamers wanted and what they cherished most.

Their lives, as the men discussed them, set a familiar tone with Leon. All Bob’s known and still living sons and daughters had already jumped the broom and had their own pickaninnies running around. Jesse, it appeared, had a ‘shit-house full of girls,’ each one a beauty, ‘a flower of light.’ And Buddy’s oldest, out of some number Leon didn’t hear, was already foreman and actually getting wages.

Leon heard this and felt proud of his own father. No matter what, Leon had never seen his father be mean to the other men. Leon touched the brim of his hat. He wanted to join in the conversation and say, “My Pappy was foreman too,” but he kept his mouth shut. They would never have believed him.

Bob, looked back at that moment and said, “That a fine hat.”

Leon shifted his pack so it didn’t drag so heavily on his thin shoulders. He nodded to Bob.