The knife Jean-Jacques carried
in his right hand was made from a wagon spring, a quarter-inch thick,
reheated and beveled down to an edge that was sharp enough to shave
with, mounted inside an oak handle with a brass guard. He thrust the
blade through Olin Mayfield's throat and extracted it just as fast.
Mayfield's mouth opened in
dismay as the blood drained out of his head and face and spilled down
his chest. Then he slumped to his knees, his head tilted on his
shoulder, as though the trees and sweet potato fields and the empty
wagons in the rows had become unfairly torn loose from their fastenings
and set adrift in the sky.
His lantern bounced to the
bottom of the coulee and hissed in the stream but continued to burn.
Then the entire band of escaping slaves bolted for the shoreline and
the gangplank that led onto Jean-Jacques' boat.
Abigail was at the end of the
line as it moved past Olin Mayfield. He lay on his side, his mouth
pursed open, at eye level with her, his hands on his throat. When she
looked at the twitch in his cheek and the solitary tear in one eye and
the froth on his bottom lip she knew he was still alive, unable to
speak or to fully comprehend what had happened to him.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
She gathered the infant she
was carrying closer to her and dashed after the others.
AN hour later the rain
stopped and the sky cleared and Abigail stood in the darkness of the
pilothouse and looked out on the vast moonlit emptiness of the river
and the black-green border of trees on the banks and the stump fires
that smelled like burning garbage. She wondered if any sort of moral
victory was possible in human affairs or if addressing and confronting
evil only empowered it and produced casualties of a different kind.
The slaves had at first been
terrified at the slaying of the paddy roller, but once they were in a
new and seemingly secure environment, hidden inside the cargo hold or
under the canvas on deck, the fear went out of their faces and they
began to laugh and joke among themselves. Abigail had found herself
laughing with them; then one man in the hold found a splintered piece
of wood from a packing crate and hacked at the air with it, pretending
he was executing Olin Mayfield. Everyone clapped their hands.
What had her father said? "We
will do many things in the service of justice. But shedding blood isn't
one of them." She drew a ragged breath and shut her eyes and saw again
the scene in the coulee. What a mockery she had made of her father's
admonition.
"You still t'inking about that
man back there?" Jean-Jacques said. A palpable aura of rum and dried
sweat and tobacco smoke rose from his skin and clothes.
"Yes, I am," she replied.
"He made his choice. He got
what he deserved. Look out yonder. We got a lot more serious t'ings to
deal wit'," he said.
They had just made a bend in
the river and should have been churning past the Confederate
encampment, unchallenged, on their way to New Orleans, with nothing to
fear until they approached the Union ironclads anchored in the river
north of the city. Instead, a ship-of-war with twin stacks was anchored
close to the shore, and soldiers with rifles moved in silhouette across
the lighted windows. A pair of wheeled cannons had been moved into a
firing position on a bluff above the river and all the undergrowth and
willows chopped down in front of the barrels. Abigail heard an anchor
chain on the Confederate boat clanking upward through an iron scupper.
Jean-Jacques wiped his mouth with his hand. "Maybe I can run it. But we
gonna take some balls t'rew the starboard side," he said.
"Turn in to shore,"
she
said
.
"That don't sound like a good
idea."
"Get everyone down below," she
said.
"There ain't room," she said.
"You have to make some."
She pulled up her dress and
lifted the bottom of her petticoat in both hands and began to tear at
it. The petticoat was pale yellow in color and sewn with lace on the
edges. Jean-Jacques stared at her, his face contorted.
"I ain't having no parts in
this," he said.
"Get Flower to help you.
Please do what I say."
He frowned and rubbed the
stubble on his jaw.
"Leave me your knife," she
said.
"My knife?"
This time she didn't speak.
She fixed her eyes on his and let her anger well into her face.
He called one of his boat
mates to take the wheel and went out on the deck and opened a hatch in
front of the pilothouse. One by one the black people who were hidden
under the canvas crawled on their hands and knees to the ladder and
dropped down into the heat of the boiler room.
Abigail ripped a large piece
out of her petticoat, and knelt on the floor with Jean-Jacques' knife
and cut the cloth in a square the size of a ship's flag. Then she tied
two strips from the trimmings onto the corners and went to the stern.
She pulled down the Confederate flag from its staff and replaced it
with the piece from her petticoat.
Jean-Jacques came back into
the pilothouse and steered his boat out of the channel, into dead
water, cutting the engines just as the Confederates came alongside.
"What we doing, Miss Abigail?"
he asked. He watched two soldiers latch a boat hook onto his gunnel and
throw a boarding plank across it.
She patted her hand on top of
his. He waited for her to answer his question.
"Miss Abigail?" he said.
But she only touched her
finger to her lips.
Then he glanced at the tops of
his shoes and his heart sank.
A major, a sergeant and three
enlisted men dropped down onto the
deck. Jean-Jacques went
outside to meet them, his smil
e
as natural as glazed ceramic.
"Had a bad storm up there.
It's cleared up all right, though," he said.
The faces of the soldiers held
no expression. Their eyes swept the decks, the pilothouse, the canvas
stretched across the front of the boat. But one of them was not acting
like the others, Jean-Jacques noted. The sergeant, who was unshaved and
wore his kepi low on his brow, was looking directly into Jean-Jacques'
face.
"You see any Yanks north of
here?" the major asked.
"No, suh," Jean-Jacques said.
The major lit a lantern and
held it up at eye level. He was a stout, be-whiskered man, his jowls
flecked with tiny red and blue veins. A gray cord, with two acorns on
it, was tied around the crown of his hat.
"You'll find them for sure if
you keep going south," he said.
"I give a damn, me,"
Jean-Jacques said.
"They can confiscate your
vessel," the major said.
"What they gonna do, they
gonna do."
"What's your cargo?" the major
asked.
Before Jean-Jacques could
answer Abigail stepped out in front of him.
"You didn't see our yellow
warning?" she said.
"Pardon?" the officer said.
"We have yellow jack on
board," she said.
"Yellow fever?" the major said.
"We're taking a group of
infected Negroes to a quarantine and treatment station outside New
Orleans. I have a pass from the Sanitary Commission if you'd like to
see it."
The enlisted men involuntarily
stepped back, craning their necks, looking about.
"Where are these infected
Negroes from?" the major asked.
"Up the river. There's been an
outbreak on two plantations," Abigail answered, busying herself inside
her purse. She handed him a Sanitary Commission identification card. He
cupped it in his palm but did not look at it.
"Where are they?" he asked.
"In the cargo hold."
"Something's not right here,"
the major said.
"Why is that?" she replied.
"Is that blood on your shoes?"
the major asked Jean-Jacques.
Jean-Jacques studied his feet.
"That's what it look like."
"Happen to know where it came
from?" the major asked.
"People tole me I busted a
bottle on a fellow's head last night. I ain't sure about that, though.
I t'ink I would remember it if I done somet'ing that bad, me."
"Why are you transporting the
Negroes in the hold?" the major asked.
"It's an airborne disease.
Sir, why don't you inspect them and come to your own conclusions?"
Abigail said.
The major's eyes broke. He
brushed at one nostril and thought for a moment.
"I'll do it, sir," the
sergeant interrupted.
"Very well," the major said.
Willie Burke hooked his hand
through the bail of the lantern and walked aft. He hesitated a moment,
then grasped the iron ring on the hatch and lifted it. His face
darkened as he stared down into the hold.
"What is it?" the major asked.
"There appear to be a couple
of families down here, sir," Willie replied.
"And?" the major said.
Willie wiped his nose on his
sleeve. "I think their yellow flag is one we should heed, sir."
"Close it up," the major said.
He handed Abigail her identification card. "You appear to be a brave
woman."
"I'm not," she replied.
"Don't you people do this
again," he said.
"Sir?"
"You know what I mean," the
major said, and gestured for his men to follow him.
Willie passed within inches of
her. He wore a mustache now and his faded gray shirt was tight on his
body, his skin browned by the sun, his black hair ragged on his neck.
His armpits were looped with sweat stains and he smelled of campfire
smoke and leaves and testosterone.
His dark eyes met hers for
only a moment, then he was gone.
A half hour later Abigail
stood on the stern, the Confederate camp far behind her, and once again
she looked at the great emptiness of the river and the coldness of
the stars. She had never felt more desolate in her life. In her
victory, the joy of danger and adrenaline had been stolen from her, and
she was left to contemplate the lighted face of a dying man on the edge
of a coulee, a red-veined bubble forming on his lips.
THE winter of 1862 and the
following spring were not a good time for Ira Jamison. The weather
turned wet and blustery, the temperature dipping below freezing at
night, and the wounds in his side festered. From his bedroom window on
the second story of his home he saw his fruit trees wither, his fields
lie fallow, and many of the slave cabins remain empty. In order to
sleep he placed a lump of opium in his cheek. The smell of the
infection in his wounds filled his dreams.
Even before his wife had died
in childbirth, his life had been one of solitude. But solitude should
not mean loneliness, his father had always said. A real man planted his
feet solidly in the world, chose his own friends, male and female, in
his own time, and was never alone except when he wanted to be, his
father had said.
But when Ira Jamison's
possessions were in jeopardy, he experienced a form of soul sickness
that did not seem connected to the loss of the material items
themselves. His fireplaces seemed to give no heat, a tryst with an
octoroon girl no solace. He wandered his house in his bathrobe, voices
out of his childhood echoing from the coldness in the walls. For some
reason the fissure in the living room hearth and chimney would catch
his eye and
obsess him, and he would find himself feeling the rough edges of the
mortar and separated brick with his thumb, rolling a marble across the
hearth to determine if the foundation of the house was still
settling.On Christmas Eve he piled oak logs on the andirons and stoked
the fire until his face was sweating. An oil painting of his mother
looked down at him from above the mantelpiece. Her cheeks were red, her
lips mauve-colored, her black hair pulled tightly behind her head. When
his eyes lingered on the painting, he could almost smell her breath,
like dried flowers, like cloth that had moldered in a grave.
She had liked to stroke his
hair when he was a child and sometimes she pulled him into her skirts,
smothering him with her smell. His father had said nothing on these
occasions, but his eyes smoldered and one hand clenched and unclenched
at his side.
His father was a rough-hewn
Scotsman, mercurial in his moods, keenly aware of his wife's education
and his lack of one, generous and loving with his son, but always
fearful that his wife's indulgent and sentimental ways would make the
boy a victim of a predatory world. He was a curious mixture of
humanity, severity and self-irony, and Ira loved him fiercely and
sought his approval in everything he did.
"Spare the rod to feel good
about yourself and create a lazy Negro," his father used to say. Then
he would add, with a smile, "Spare the rod enough and create an
impoverished plantation owner. Truth is, lad, in spite of everything
we're told, there's no difference between the African and white races.
The day the Negroes figure that one out is the day they'll take all
this from us."