Raintree County (80 page)

And why did she fly from the house in Freehaven taking the child with her, following a trail of madness in which she bore the name of a woman who had died in fire, a woman beautiful and stained, the black Helen of an epic rape? What ancient crime did she thus expiate by self-chastisement? And what was the goal of this furydriven self-pursuit which turned upon itself in an immense circle?

He sat, musing these questions. Meanwhile the fumes of the little train and the steady jostling motion aggravated his fatigue. He felt sick, as though he had been poisoned. His eyelids kept sticking together. He shook his head and pulled his beard. He felt that if he slept now, relaxed his vigilance, something might happen, he would
lose control of the situation, would never again see the lost faces.

The fat man was saying something to him, and he kept trying to listen. Words drifted misty and meaningless on a broad yellow flood of sleep, pulling him strongly downstream. Gettysburg . . . Lee . . . Lincoln . . . Mississippi . . . Downstream, downstream, on a great slow river of sleep . . . Downstream to ancient days and far away . . . Lost child and wandering Susanna . . . Lost child . . . Lost . . .

The steamboat rocked slowly in toward a levee thronging with faces. In his dream he was leaning on the rail, looking at a scene timemellowed, tinted in nostalgic colors: fat bales piled for loading on the levee; slave cabins inland on the verge of the cottonfields; Negroes in attitudes of work and play—supplebacked pickers diminishing to specks and pickaninnies waving at the boat; in the background the old plantation home. The murmur of a million tongues drifted down a rhythmic river of departed summers. He remembered a legend of his youth.

There had been gentle and dark faces; a little white girl had died that a race might be free. He too had loved the earth and the great yellow river. Alas! and a tragic name hissed in the music of those voices. Gone were the days when hearts were young and gay, all gone, he knew, all lost on the river of the years, a dream recaptured in the greatest of the sentimental novels or perhaps in the poem of a lost young bard of Raintree County. . . .

A lane of green lawn dwindled to a distant tomb.

PROFESSOR JERUSALEM WEBSTER STILES

dapperly pedantic, sinking a spade into a mound of earth,

—The skin of the Negro, though black in the womb, is transmuted to white by the touch of the tomb, while the skin of the white in the grip of the grave is black as the black of an African slave.

JOHNNY

digging frantically,

—You really do believe then, Professor, that by untombing the body of this woman we are unwombing the secret of the lost child?

PERFESSOR

leaning on spade, lighting cigar,

—I have a dark suspicion, John, that all is not well in the Old Kentucky Home.

The smoke of the cigar spread with a stink of fever and the river; the valley darkened where they dug.

PERFESSOR

riding away on a broomstick, black hag's hair shaking,

—White is black, and black is white.

Hover through smoke and swampy night!. . .

On the stage of an old Opera House, the play was about to begin, a tragedy of vengeance and incestuous love, more richly implausible than
Hamlet.
The house was filled with people, but behind the curtain all was confusion. Perhaps he ought to warn actors and audience how this old play had ended in fire.

VOICE

of a woman filling the Opera House with a thrilling sound,

—Think of your freedom, every time you see UNCLE TOM'S CABIN; and let it be a memorial to put you all in mind to follow in his steps, and be . . .

The hero of an Old Southern Melodrama, he stood in pale dawn before a house. To this calm mansion, he remembered, a woman had been stolen whose dusky limbs and nodding breasts and beautiful, proud face had made men mad to fight for generations. They had fought here where the river flowed past an adulterous city to the sea. For the rape of this dark Helen, blood had darkened white columns by the river; time had turned the blood to pools of shadow. And a woman with a twisted mouth avenged the old crime—so went the ancient story. But now the memory faded, and he couldn't remember the names, names murmurous of the earth enriched with a charred dust.

Like one passing into the brown shadows of a daguerreotype, he entered the house. Through the deserted hall, a dress trailed audibly.

WOMAN

ascending the broad stair, lamp in hand,

—Follow and you will find a lost child, the tragic issue of a house divided.

JOHNNY

—Who was the mother of this child? Who fired the shot that slew an old republic? What is your earthcovered name, a legend of the Southern sun?

WOMAN

with head averted, wringing her hands,

—Stained. By guilty lust and careless seed. Where can we wash it out except in darkness and the river, the river tinged with the color of our crime? For this, we died, we two. For this our blood made brown shadows on the earth of an old republic.

The audience in the unseen pit of the Opera House applauded as he climbed the stair. It was an old cabin of logs hewn from the great oak forest that once covered all these river valleys. In the rum-and-tobacco-fragrant darkness, a mirror on the landing showed his face faintly negroid, and he remembered the old taint in his bloodstream, which his father had privately spoken of. A woman waited for him in a fourposter bed hung with scarlet curtains, her flesh like a dark wine glowing from logfires on the levee.

BLACK JOHNNY

——It is all a legend of the earth. You and I were the same and are the same always, being children of the same dark loins. Tell me your name, a phrase of music and of strangeness—

WOMAN

—Had you forgotten all our fabled life beside the river? Had you forgotten the names of rivers and the great rich names of steamboats? Had you forgotten why they fought so long and long, my darling? For from our union came the Republic in blood and anguish springing. Had you forgotten? Fondly, fondly I embrace you!

His lips touched hers, drinking a taste of earth. Light lay scarlet on the naked hills, deep shadow in the hollows of her flesh. He knew then that he must repeat the rape of this dark Helen, his eternal sister, wife, and wandering child, weave out a tragic legend until he found again the lost charter that would give them back to purity and innocence. His desire clothed in the dark flesh touched her with . . .

Beams of swung lanterns shot across the room.

ROBERT SEYMOUR DRAKE

breaking through door, axe in hand, speaking pleasantly through white lips,

—It's just an old Southern custom, John.

Fine fat bullyboys in fancy clothes, stinking of whiskey, rum, and tobacco, hugged him hard and hurled him down, squeezed the breath out of him with their buttocky bodies, gouged him with pistolbutts, clubs, knifehandles.

BLACK JOHNNY

struggling,

—Help! Bobby! Help!

COUSIN BOBBY

—Hell, boy, you got to learn 'em young, as my Old Man always said.

OLD SOUTHERN PLANTER

white linen suit stained with tobacco juice, cotton sideburns and mustaches, winey complexion, fat cigar, whiskey voice.

—Jest take it easy, son. Y'all lun to lub the Suthen way of lahf as much as the rest of us. Seh, we Suthun gemmen have a big stake in the well-bein' of ouah slaves. Those were good days, seh, when we used to go daown theh to the little Nigro cabins bah the rivah and pick out the blackest, the sleekest, the puttiest, and shiniest little gal, and then, seh, by Gad, we planted the good old plantuh's seed. Pawt of ouah duty, seh, to stud foh the propuhgation of the labuh supply, seh, in the soft ole nots daown bah the rollin' rivah. Yassuh, way daown Souf in duh lan' of cotton, ole times dah am not fuhgotten. . . .

The Old Southern Planter and a dozen young Southern gentlemen fell upon the cringing form of the mulatto girl and raped her with practiced ease.

T. D. SHAWNESSY

shaking an accusing finger over the rapists, crouched on the fallen girl and pretending to shoot craps,

—Gambling's a sin before the Lord, boys.

T. D. fell through a trapdoor, out of which there sprang a huge dark tree, dripping medicinal gums. . . .

It was night in the Great Dismal Swamp. Stage sets representing typical views of New Orleans were sinking in the foul muck. Bloodhounds bayed in the distance. Lanterns flared. Shotgun blasts ripped the still leaves. A bloodred moon hung low on the horizon. The heaving muds of the swamp shimmered and stank. He was stumbling through the inky water, trying to find a way to freedom. The mulatto girl with him was going to have a baby. He was trying to remember how he had come by this unhappy burden. At any rate, it was a sacred charge, and he must find the underground railway and get her to safety on the northern shore.

The river ran broad and yellow in the semi-darkness. Artificial cotton snowflakes sifted noiselessly down. Floating icechunks swam slowly on the flood. The bloodhounds were just behind.

JOHNNY

sinking with the girl on a rotten raft,

—Help! Help! Save this poor woman!

AUDIENCE

excursionists leaning over the rail of a steamboat, politely clapping their hands, singing,

—O, Father, come out of that old lagoon.

They say you are drowned in——

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

nightgown, hair in curlpapers, sitting on deck, baby in lap, blowing on her hands from time to time, writing with whispering lips line after line and page after page,

—Calvin, mind the baby.
With wild cries and desperate energy she leaped to another and still another cake. . . .

JOHNNY

sinking up to his chin, trying to keep the girl afloat,

—Mrs. Stowe, for God's sake, hurry up and get us out of here! We're drowning, Mrs. Stowe! We're drowning! We're—

MRS. STOWE

raising her hand in benediction,

—Farewell, beloved child. The bright eternal doors have closed after thee; we shall see thy sweet face no more. . . .

VOICE

of a woman, husky, wailing, lost on dark waters,

—Henrietta Courtney! Henrietta Courtney!

JOHNNY

choking in the yellow water, holding a child in his hands,

—Help! Help! Somebody save him. Before it's too late.

The body of a woman floated in the pale chemical of the river, her flesh washed white as lilies and slowly dissolving from the bone. The child in his arms had turned to a burnt doll. He heard a

VOICE

calling, monotonous, insistent, with a note of sadness,

—Raintree County! Raintree County!

It was the voice of the journeying years, the trainman calling the cars to home. He was calling the names of intersections on the land, of little towns in Raintree County, he was calling names of old republics, he was . . .

Somebody was shaking his shoulder. Johnny woke up and stared through bleared eyes. The fat man was peering at him with a mixture of concern and disgust.

—Son, you better git home and git some rest. You were groanin' in your sleep.

Johnny looked around. The train had stopped.

—Where are we? he said dully.

—Beardstown, the fat man said.

—I have to change trains, Johnny said.

He got off and went into the little station at Beardstown. It was ten o'clock before he left the Beardstown station on the train to Freehaven. In fifteen minutes he would be home. He sat bemused, still holding the pieces of the torn letters in his hand like fragments of a crazy puzzle that he had not yet succeeded in fitting entirely together. He was looking for the missing part.

Reaching now into the pocket of his coat, he took out the daguerreotype around which Susanna had wrapped her letter. That, too, must have been part of the sad design, a plan unknown even to herself, in which she obeyed the bidding of a little dark remembered hand behind her hand. He stared at the daguerreotype. In the dull light he could hardly see the people in the brown shadow of the porch.

But he could see with a dreadful distinctness, rising, filling up the background of that ancient scene, the shape of a tall white house, in whose whiteness (because of the dimness of the light) the white pillars almost were dissolved. The shape of this house (destroyed in fire) was familiar: it had three stories and a corniced roof, and on its face, its doomed and tragic face, there were five windows looking out upon the river,

FOREVER LOOKING OUT UPON THE RIVER,
IN A LEGEND WRITTEN BY THE
S
OUTHERN

S
UN
, nooning, filled up the Main Street of Waycross with light and heat. Faces moved thickly on the Road of the Republic.

—It's eleven-four, the Perfessor said, returning watch to pocket. Phew! it's hot! What's next on the program, John? Can't we have a little excitement around here? I've been squatting here so long I've got bedsores.

—We're to meet Mrs. Brown at eleven-fifteen at the site of the Senator's birthplace. The Photographer's probably down there now.

The Perfessor studied a fullpage lithograph on page 41 of the Raintree County
Atlas,
his sharp nose pointing delicately at a rural landscape, twice-illumined by a summer morning sun.

—You see, he said, it is all sunlight. Farmhouse, barn, roads, brook, cattle, horses, trees, fences, buggies, people—it is all sunlight. We are all sunlight.

Mr. Shawnessy folded his copy of the
News-Historian.
Events of the year 1892 flattened obediently against each other, mist of ink on sheets of perishable sunlight. Older Events, elder brothers of those in the
News-Historian,
stirred in their illusive realm, dry dust of History that never happened. Somewhere through this sifting wordseed of old newspapers, telling of births, marriages, deaths, elections, sports, crimes, wars, pestilence, floods, a woman went holding a lamp in her hand, sleepwalking in the chambers of a house divided, still hunting sunlight and the river.