Citizens Creek (10 page)

“Where’s it from?” Cow Tom asked.

Harry inclined his head in the direction of the firemen’s barrel. Both of the crewmembers dozed, backs to the wall and chin to chest, and Cow Tom didn’t push further as to whether they had given or Harry had taken.

The brown liquid burned going down, and Cow Tom relished the punishing jolt when it reached his stomach. Thank goodness for Harry.

“What do we drink to?” he asked.

“Getting out alive,” said Harry.

“Alive,” said Cow Tom. “And no more Florida.”

“To no more alligators.”

“No more sand fleas.”

“No more treaties.”

“There will always be more treaties,” said Cow Tom.

They passed the flask between them for another round at the truth of it.

“To going home,” said Harry.

Cow Tom grunted, the sadness returning and claiming its rightful place. “We don’t have a home,” he said.

They both let the thought linger. He’d had no definite word of Amy and the girls, whether they were still with Chief Yargee. Or if Yargee himself was alive or dead. He could only hope the rumors
were true, that they waited for him in one of the holding camps. Or were already in Indian Territory, waiting there. Harry took another long pull on the flask and handed it over. One of the firemen stirred and shoved more logs into the fire before falling off to sleep again. The clanging from the boiler room made it harder to think a thought all the way to the end, and so Cow Tom gave up and drank instead. The boat chugged forward at a steady pace.

“To whatever waits,” said Harry.

At least they knew their intended route, shared by the general’s aide-de-camp before embarking. Pick up another load of Seminoles awaiting Removal from the camp at Tampa Bay and on to Mobile, along the coast to Pass Christian, Mississippi, then to New Orleans, Louisiana. There, they’d change boats for the final leg of the trip, up the Mississippi River, then the Arkansas River, and then overland to Fort Gibson and resettlement to a new home in Indian Territory.

Cow Tom lay on the wooden floor and propped himself up onto one elbow. His queasy stomach taunted him but the thoughts aswirl in his head gave him even greater unease. “How about a tune?” he asked.

Harry’s fiddle, never far away, was in his knapsack, but he didn’t make a move toward it. He slipped into slurred Hitchiti. “I’m in no mood,” he said.

“They’ll be there, waiting for us,” Cow Tom said. He tried to sound convincing, but the sentiment was more wish and hope than fact. He couldn’t stop thinking of Amy and his girls either. Harry’s concern was the white-haired woman on the plantation he came from who acted as mother for most of his years. He’d described her so often Cow Tom felt he knew her. Auntie Mim. She’d already fallen into old age and bad health a year ago before they left, and from their far perch of Florida, there had been no way to determine whether she survived the deprivations in Alabama, and if she had, whether she could endure the Removal from Alabama westward.

Harry didn’t answer. He rearranged the splits of wood, tucked the flask into the waist of his trousers, and curled himself on the
floor. Within minutes, he fell into a deep sleep. For a while, Cow Tom lay, eyes open. The boiler clanged at his back, insistent, and Harry’s nasal snoring grew louder, as if in competition. Cow Tom stretched out full length and lay on the floor by the wall, closing his eyes against the day.

The sea pitched, but finally, he too slept.

Chapter 14

EXCEPT FOR A
few forays to use their translation skills at one of the military men’s request, Cow Tom and Harry Island kept to their alcove with only brief visits to the more populated deck. They fit into whichever attitude their situation demanded, alternating between making themselves useful and making themselves invisible, as most slaves could. Above board, they watched the Florida coastland glide past until they got their fill. The open space helped reacclimate their bodies to the roll of the sea, and they passed two days and nights in this way, down below and up above, until the steady progress of the ship down and around the horn of Florida broke pattern and they prepared to dock in Tampa Bay.

Sailors uncoiled ropes, calmed the fires, shouted instructions, followed the buoys set apace adjacent to the shoreline, and jockeyed the boat in. By then, everyone was on the deck, including Cow Tom and Harry, amazed by the great mounds of additional supplies delivered to the dock and lying in careless stacks of various heights and shapes, guarded by two military men in blue uniform and cap, rifles slung over shoulder. The terrain was marshy by the dock, with a white sand beach common to coastland Florida, but quickly gave way not far inland to a green, dense forest, with limited visibility. If there was an encampment of refugees here, it lay beyond the trees.

They tied into port. Sailors on board the
Paragon
were first to disembark, and after catching a quick smoke or emptying blad
ders, they began to load the supplies onto the ship while Creeks watched from the deck. One of the sailors motioned to Cow Tom and Harry, and singled out, they helped carry great quantities of corn and bacon, cloth and blankets, and a replacement supply of coal and corded wood onto the boat.

Two military men strode off by foot and disappeared inland through the thicket. While Cow Tom and Harry made trips back and forth between dock and ship, half the Creek warriors walked ashore, stretching their legs and savoring the stability of firm ground under their feet.

“Boiler room’s empty,” Cow Tom whispered to Harry after their third back-and-forth carrying loads of wood and coal for the next leg of the steamer’s journey.

The firemen were ashore, and while Harry stood guard, Cow Tom refilled their empty flask from the open barrel of whiskey, after a long drink directly from the barrel.

It took a good hour of heavy lifting to transport all the wood onto the ship, but as they finished carrying the last, they made certain to leave space for themselves in the corner. They’d gotten used to their spot now, and considered it their own, and hoped their claim stood when others came aboard. But, the supplies transferred, they were happy to rest their muscles for a time and joined those ashore mingling aimlessly at the dock. Cow Tom still had a bit of tobacco, and as they waited, he and Harry smoked a cob pipe at the bay front awhile.

In the distance, a ragtag group on foot, flanked on either side by military men on horseback, approached the boat. There were more people than Cow Tom expected, men, women, and children, maybe a hundred, maybe more, advancing in a tired shuffle, kicking up dust as they trod. The Negroes of defeated Seminoles would easily outnumber the Creeks by at least two to one. The Creek warriors onshore didn’t seem pleased at the sight, muttering among themselves in complaint, but the group steadily trudged closer.

“No chains,” said Cow Tom.

The planned route called for them crossing into southern territory before reaching their final destination in Indian country, a circumstance usually calling for restraints of one kind or another. For all his shuttling to and fro between owners as a young boy and a young man, sold or rented out, his movements between plantations, his travel between different states of the Union, Cow Tom had never been put into irons, leg or arm or neck, not once, and just the thought of them brought a rush of bile to his stomach. He’d seen them, of course. Shackles. He’d seen the dull glow of them wrapped around the wrists of a coffle of slaves passing through at Master McIntosh’s, but Chief Yargee didn’t employ their use, ever.

“Best get back aboard and protect our spot,” Harry said to Cow Tom.

Cow Tom boarded the
Paragon
, following at Harry’s back.

They secured their belongings belowdecks, and came back above board as military men steered the new group up the gangplank onto the steamboat. Most of the Negroes stood about in uncertainty, shoulders slumped, eyes yellowed, cheeks sunk, arms bony, clothing ragged at the hem. One unusually tall woman elbowed several others out of the way and made a quick scramble to stake out a corner near the wheelhouse. She set her face to stone and fanned her three children, all under the age of five, behind her like a deck of cards, daring anyone to intrude. Her marked territory appeared to hold. No one questioned her.

From their elevated post at the rail, Cow Tom and Harry watched waves of unresisting men, women, and children herded on board the
Paragon
, as military men steered them up and onto the boat. At first, Cow Tom peered into every face, but saw only averted eyes, resignation, and weariness. The new crop of Negroes varied widely in appearance, from those who could have just stepped off the boat from Africa to those who could easily pass as Seminole full-bloods. They didn’t move singly, but clumped together in groups, babes in arms, children clinging to a mother’s tunic, boys and girls of the same age holding hands as they headed up the plank. Cow Tom
turned away to collect himself, but in the end, couldn’t resist, and stared again at the oncoming wave of humanity. They all looked exhausted, and hungry, and several sickly, helping one another forward.

Three-quarters of the refugees were already boarded, the others waiting on the sandy swath of land beyond the gangplank for their turn. A white man appeared at a distance from inland, running his two-horse wagon team hard. He angled his winded horses directly alongside the ship, set the brake, and jumped down from the riding platform. He was civilian, plump and scruffy. An enormous, unkempt brown curly beard came all the way down to the middle of his chest, hiding much of the crumpled jacket beneath. Long loops of heavy chain and manacles lay in his wagon bed. The man made for the gangplank and tried to board the
Paragon
, but one of the military men blocked him. The man waved a paper, increasingly agitated.

“Take me to the man in charge,” he bellowed.

The soldier talked to him quietly, but the man was having none of it, and he made such a ruckus that the soldier finally sent for the captain, who met him at the foot of the gangplank.

“Some of these are my Negroes,” the man said, again offering up the papers. “They can’t be allowed to leave Florida.”

The captain barely glanced at the pages. Cow Tom saw easy dismissal of documentation enough times in his work as translator to posit that the captain of the
Paragon
most likely couldn’t read.

“We have a transport contract with the military,” said the captain to the white man. “This is no concern of mine.”

“I’m here to take my property with me. I demand to board and claim my property.”

“If there were claims,” the captain said, “they should be handled before now. My agreement holds with the government, and the cargo is arrived. Payment is based on the number of heads I deliver. The only amendments I recognize, sir, are with the government.”

“There!” the white man said. He aimed a long, crooked finger
at a dark face on the boat. Cow Tom caught only a quick glimpse of gunnysack and a printed head scarf, swirled, before the accused melted back into the others and disappeared from view. He was fairly certain she was a woman, short and dark-skinned. “See her? That one is mine.”

From the shore, the man continued to scan the clutch of bodies. “And that one!” he declared, pointing at a stocky man just to the other side of Harry.

Almost as one, the Negroes shrank back from the railings, cloaking their bodies as best they could, lowering their gaze and hiding their faces, easing their backs to the man on the shore, as if they too might soon be singled out.

“I demand their return. And there must be more. I demand to search the boat.”

He advanced toward the gangplank, but the captain put himself directly in his path.

“This is my vessel. This is my cargo.” He whispered to one of his sailors, who began to move the last few Negroes up and onto the boat. “There’s to be no open poaching on my ship today.”

The white man reddened. “You dare stand in the way of regaining rightful property?”

“Take it up with the government,” said the captain. “We depart within the half hour.”

The man turned to the military men still on land. “Let me on this boat.”

“We have our orders,” one said. The other shrugged a sheepish agreement.

“You haven’t seen the last of me,” he said to the military men and the captain. He directed himself to the occupants of the steamboat. “Don’t think you’ve seen the last of me,” he shouted.

He jammed his hat back tight on his head and stormed to his wagon. He jerked the reins, and drove the horses as hard as he dared on the shifting sand, back the way he’d come.

A cautious, almost indistinguishable murmur started on the
boat, and grew until heard over the commotion of the sailors making ready to set sail. A child began to cry, a little boy, far too young to understand exactly what had just happened, but old enough to feel the upset around him. And then another let loose, until muffled sobs were all round the ship.

“We best clear out of the way,” said Cow Tom to Harry.

Just minutes before, he’d pitied the Seminole Negroes, as if their plight were poles apart from his own, but with a sudden chill, he was reminded of his mistake. With the new Negroes on board, he and Harry were suddenly indistinguishable from the others, no matter the facts that the two of them were fresh from working directly for the general, that they had fought side by side in the Everglades with the warriors from the Creek tribes, that they had each earned significant money for themselves and even a measure of respect for their service.

In the eyes of the government, one Negro was the same as the next.

Chapter 15

THE INDIAN AGENT,
physician, and four additional military men boarding the
Paragon
at Tampa Bay didn’t separate the Negroes from the rest of the Creeks, or restrict their movements, and all were open to roam the crowded decks at their will. The military had rifles, but they produced no chains. No whips. But with few exceptions, blacks drew together from all corners of the ship, whether having lived among Creeks or among Seminoles, like the irresistible pull of magnets toward one another. They needed no order to keep separate. They did so of their own collective mind, gathering in pockets, but especially near the boiler room.