Cion (22 page)

It is dark in the woods but we are able to find our way with the aid of my penlight. We have no idea where we are going or why. The urge to mourn has dissipated, perhaps with the realization that I cannot mourn in civvies. I can only mourn effectively in my sacred costume. Something gleaming on the ground attracts my attention. It is a piece of porcelain. There is a mound covered by leaves and lots of debris. More broken pottery. We clear the leaves and discover a lamp chimney and a pot. We rummage some more in the leaves with our fingers. There is a white ceramic hen. There are seashells surrounding part of the mound. Clearly this is a grave.

“We must find the gravestone,” I tell Obed.

But it is too dark. We mark the spot with a cairn of stones so as to make it distinguishable in daylight. We walk back home, my heart pumping from the discovery. This is not just any grave. It is an African grave.

The next morning Obed and I return to the woods armed with a small digging spade, hoping that we did not just dream the grave. Today I am wearing my mourning costume, for I am going to mourn the African sleeping under that mound. Children titter along the way and ask Obed why I am wearing a Halloween costume when it is long past Halloween.

“It ain’t no Halloween costume, you little asshole,” says Obed. “My man here is an African shaman.”

“You don’t talk like that to children,” I admonish.

But the kids don’t seem to mind. They laugh and one of them asks: “What the fuck is an African shaman?”

He is not offended at all but promises to explain to them next time.

Well, the grave is still there. And this time we are able to find the headstone with ease. After scraping the mud from it the crude inscription becomes clear:
Here lies Niall Quigley—Slave Owner, Slave Trader, Slave, Slave Stealer, Professional Witness. Died: 1875
.

“Who was Niall Quigley?” I ask.

“The first Quigley,” says Obed.

“I wonder why they buried him like an African.”

“What they wrote here is bull, man,” says Obed. “My great-grampa was no slave owner. He was no slave trader either. They got it all wrong, man. There were no slaves in Ohio.”

“We’ll know when we mourn the man,” I assure him.

We kneel at the mound and I teach him new mourning wails. They are like the sound of a coyote, he observes. I combine them with groans and moans and sacred chants of my own invention. Obed follows faithfully and together we are able to muster a two-part harmony at one time, and a call-and-response at another. Our mourning transports us to another place; another realm; another time.

The story is told by the mound and the white chicken and the headstone: Niall Quigley lost everything he owned in the gambling dens of County Tipperary, Ireland. After serving time at the Bridewell for some fraudulent transaction aimed at recouping his losses, he traveled steerage aboard a vessel to the new world where he hoped to start a new life. He endured the rough seas in crammed and filthy conditions. Some of his fellow passengers fell sick and perished, and were thrown overboard. He was determined to survive the voyage, and when his provisions ran out—passengers in steerage provided their own food—he stole from others. Even after a beating that left him all bloodied and tattered for most of the journey, the thought of the great fortunes awaiting him in America sustained him.

When we meet him for the first time in the gaming dens of New York he had not made the fortune, but like any decent white man he had a slave of his own. Ownership of this particular property was a source of great mirth at his haunts, not only because New York was no longer a slaveholding state, and hadn’t been one for fourteen or so years, but also for the fact that Quigley was a lowly Irishman. In the eyes of his fellow citizens he was not of a much higher breed than his property.

He won the property in a card game—a toothless scrawny African who would not fetch any price at the slave market in any of the slaveholding states. Even those who had offered to buy the slave before he became Quigley’s property had only done so for the good-Samaritan purpose of putting the poor creature out of its misery by shooting it dead at a target practice.

Quigley walked around the dirty streets of Five Points with his slave on a leash around his neck, and used him to beg as a “performing Negro.” But the fellow did not have any talent at all and people laughed at his attempts to sing and dance. His venture into some variation of tap dance was pathetic. Five Points citizens had seen better. After all, Five Points invented tap dance, although they didn’t call it that in those days. They called it “buck and wing” or the Juba Dance after the great “Master Juba” Lane whose nimble footwork of African rhythms combined so expertly with Irish clogging to create magic.

“What kinda Negro is this who can’t sing and dance?” people asked as they walked away, with their fingers trying in vain to stop the atrocious sounds from polluting their ears. The kinder souls put a coin or two in Quigley’s hat and fled to the bordellos in the tenements as fast as they could.

The partnership’s only bane was the band of ragamuffins who played cruel tricks on the performer and disrupted Quigley’s business. One day they set fire to the tattered seat of the slave’s pants for better entertainment than his performance was able to provide. He ran up and down the street screaming. At first Quigley enjoyed the sight and laughed. But when he realized that the pants had really caught fire and there were some flames he dived onto the fellow and rolled him on the ground. The ragamuffins ran off laughing.

That night in the church basement they shared with rats—courtesy of a kindly Methodist minister—Quigley took the leash off his slave and broke out laughing as he cleaned his scorched buttocks with cold water and lye soap that was never meant for human skin but for laundry.

“You son of a bitch!” said the slave. “You let them do this to me.”

“You saw I didn’t let ’em, you ninny!” said Quigley still laughing. “But you must admit it was damn funny.”

“I’m gonna do it to you one of them days and you tell me if it’s funny.”

The fellow was not able to sit for a few days. But the show had to go on. Every day they went out on the streets to perform, and then to the taverns to partake of the good life. Once in a while they went to the bordellos and Quigley treated his slave to more good life with either the Negro or Irish prostitutes; those who were so destitute that they accepted any customer.

It was at the bordellos that Quigley was struck by a brilliant idea. There were many stray white children in the street. Abandoned by women of the town. Some not quite abandoned but neglected by mothers who had to spend days and nights servicing customers. These children had to fend for themselves in the streets or even follow their mothers’ profession before the age of ten. At night Quigley discussed the welfare of these children with his slave. There could be good business here.

“All we need is to transport ’em down to Virginia,” he said.

“And then set up a house for orphans for them down in Virginia,” said the slave with a sarcastic chuckle.

“Sell ’em as slaves, you ninny.”

“I ain’t gonna kidnap nobody’s child,” said the slave.

“We lure ’em, man, we don’t kidnap ’em. We promise ’em a better life and jobs and the like.”

“Who’s gonna buy white slaves, you ninny?” asked the slave.

“Oh, they buy ’em all the time! You call ’em mulattos they buy ’em. No questions asked. They know pretty damn well they ain’t no mulattos. I hear Irish girls make excellent slaves as if they had nigger blood running in their dear li’l souls.”

It was easy to capture stray Irish and German girls in the streets of Five Points and other New York slums. When Quigley could not sell them at the House of Reception on West 13th Street because of the competition of more professional slave traders, he loaded them on a wagon and drove for days to Richmond, Virginia. He invested a lot of resources in treating the children very well, feeding them the kind of meals they would never even have dreamed of in the streets or at their bordello homes, and made sure that their clothes were clean even though most were tattered. The reason for this generosity was that healthy-looking slaves fetched a better price. But also it helped to keep the girls from ever thinking of escaping. If the journey to the South was this comfortable, what of the life that awaited them? Only a foolish girl would even think of escaping from such a prospect.

Quigley and his slave never used the children for any nefarious purposes. They were not unscrupulous at all. When it was necessary to satisfy their manly needs they went to the auction rooms. No, not to auction their children. Those were going to be sold directly to specific customers at the plantations that had placed previous orders. Each child was earmarked for a specific owner even as she was being captured or lured by the two. Quigley and his slave went to the auction rooms to rent women for the night. Slave dealers who were entrusted with girls to sell at the auction earned some extra money by hiring the girls out for the night. Whenever Quigley heard a new batch of female slaves had arrived he whispered in his slave’s ear, “Let’s go get some fresh pussy from the auction rooms.” And they tittered like two naughty schoolboys.

So, the children in their care were never in any danger of being used for the gratification of the two kindly gentlemen who were taking them for wonderful jobs with kind-hearted employers. Through most of the journey they sang happy songs and dreamed beautiful dreams. They were happy to have Quigley’s slave at their beck and call, for they did not know that soon they would themselves be slaves and would be used for the pleasure of their new masters.

Sometimes there were women among the children. Irish and German women who had had enough of destitution and were quite willing to walk into servitude and even slavery with their eyes open. Most of these were sold to rich Negroes who kept white slaves. In Virginia and Maryland there were a number of free blacks who were quite wealthy and were slave owners. Some of these were happy to keep white women both as slaves and concubines. It was a better life for the women than the cold and hunger at Five Points, and Quigley was always ready to rescue them from that life and transport them to the South. Some of the women—denounced as depraved by white society—ended up marrying their black masters.

Things were looking up for Quigley and he wondered why he had wasted so many precious months begging with his performing Negro instead of engaging in such a lucrative business. At ten dollars cash per slave, and the cost of transporting it, he was making a killing. Even his slave seemed to be gaining more flesh on his bones. But alas, Quigley couldn’t stay away from the gaming dens. The wealthier he became the more he stayed for nights on end losing money, and then staying for more hours hoping to recoup his losses. His slave was always by his side, still on his leash, or sometimes in chains in order to emphasize to the onlookers that the fellow was a slave and he was indeed the master. This enhanced his status. Or so he thought.

Sometimes he won a few dollars but most times he lost everything he had in his purse that night at the roll of a die. The gambling binges became frequent and he began to neglect the business. This worried the slave and he tried to talk to his master about it. But Quigley was too stubborn to listen to a mere slave. He made the money through his brilliant ideas; he had the right to enjoy it. The fountain would never run dry as long as indigent women continued to manufacture babies.

They had moved from the church basement to one of the tenements, and sometimes Quigley forgot to pay the rent. The landlord would come knocking and threatening to evict them without notice. The slave, who had taken to hiding some of the money under his own mattress, would pay the rent. Quigley would then ransack the house for more hidden money, which he would promptly take to the gaming dens.

That was how Niall Quigley and his slave fell on hard times. Creditors took everything he owned, including his precious wagon and horses that he used to transport slaves to the South. With only his clothes wrapped in a bundle Quigley and his slave trekked down South with the hope of finding new ventures in Virginia, perhaps with the assistance of the rich men he used to provide with fresh supplies of slaves. But none of them wanted to know him. Even the wealthy black landowners who had bought one or two white women from him and were now living with them in holy matrimony or blissful concubinage did not want to have anything to do with him. In cities like Richmond and Norfolk he tried to revive the old act of a “performing Negro” but it just didn’t get off the ground. There were no takers, and more often than not property owners drove them away from the sidewalks with whips.

The slave was now sickly and a burden to keep. Quigley tried to sell him. He took him to the auction rooms but the auctioneers would have none of him. Putting a scrawny fellow like that under the hammer would destroy their reputation as auctioneers of quality slaves. In any event no one in his right mind would bid for him. “A scurvied Negro like this ain’t good for nothing,” they said.

“He’s good for breeding,” Quigley insisted. “Like all men of his race he’s more robust in love than any white man.”

At this he displayed his penis, which was quite sizeable.

But the auctioneers and prospective buyers dismissed the whole idea. They didn’t think the children sired by the slave would be big and strong.

“Nobody’s gonna buy me, you ninny. You’re stuck with me,” said the slave with much glee.

There were no takers even when he wanted to exchange the impertinent fellow for a mere bottle of rum.

The concerns of the slave owners about breeding good healthy slaves gave Quigley an idea. He was going to invent a potion that would make slaves breed faster; a fertility drug that would ensure multiple births. He would take his example from nature. If dogs and rabbits could give birth to so many young ones at the same time, why not humans? Right there at the auction rooms he shared the brilliant idea with his slave, who merely laughed it off as the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard.

Quigley was not to be discouraged by the slave’s lack of faith in human credulity. Thus he became a snake-oil salesman, except he didn’t sell any snake-oil but a slave-breeding concoction of his own manufacture. He traveled from plantation to plantation meeting breeders and interesting them in his invention. Its main ingredient was extracted from the most fertile bitches, he told his customers. It was the same chemical substance that made dogs give birth to many puppies at the same time. The white drug was to be mixed with water and given to the females twice a day. In no time they would conceive. Not only would the potion induce multiple births but the period of gestation would be decreased by half. Quigley embellished on the powers of the potion as he went along and as more greedy plantation owners bought it.

Once more signs of health returned to both the man and his slave. Their cheeks began to fill out and their faces gleamed as they walked the countryside, the leashed slave carrying a sack of the powder and following the master. The leash was not to stop the slave from escaping. He had no intention of doing so for it was good enough for him that they shared the spoils. They were malefactors and scallywags of equal standing. The leash, therefore, served a symbolic function. It reminded the slave that he was a slave despite the companionship, and the master that he was the master despite the partnership in crime. The leash also showed the customers that the great inventor of the magic potion was a man of substance and a property owner. The fact that they were walking the countryside instead of riding on steeds was a matter of choice; so he made those who wondered believe.

Alas, the plantation owners discovered to their cost that the Irishman had duped them. They bayed for his blood, but it was too late because he had moved westward in the direction of Kentucky.

A plantation owner in Putnam County did not give up. The owner’s name was David Fairfield of Fairfield Farms. He had returned from carousing in Charleston one evening to find his wife excited about a purchase she had made from a wonderful salesman—a potion that would make their breeding business the most profitable ever. She showed him the white powder for which she had paid a lot of money. The Owner was suspicious at once. Unlike those who had discovered the chicanery months after trying the potion, The Owner was smart enough to know that no such mixture existed anywhere in the world, let alone in Virginia. He set out after the salesman with a posse of three of his trusted mulattos.

They caught up with the scallywags on the banks of the Guyandotte where they had set up camp and were barbecuing meat on an open fire. The Owner was very friendly. He joined the pair while his mulattos stayed mounted a short distance away. He introduced himself as The Owner of Fairfield Farms where they had so kindly sold their wonderful potion. Unfortunately he had been away on business, otherwise he would have loved to entertain them for the good service they were providing to the slave breeding industry. As the biggest slave breeder in the region he needed more of their wonderful potion. That was why he had followed them. He wanted to buy all the stock in their possession and order more for future delivery. Quigley was pleased to hear this. Most of his customers only bought small quantities to experiment with the potion first. He was surely going to strike it rich. He invited The Owner to join him at his meal. The slave was ordered to serve the two masters and then stand aside while they ate. He would have the bones afterward. The slave did all that willingly for he knew why the whole charade was necessary.