Diann Ducharme (20 page)

He just shook his head. “Banker logic, I believe,” he muttered to Abby.

But she said, “I think there’s something to it. Sometimes I like trees better than I do people.”

She started struggling through the sand, looking at all the dead trees and picking up pinecones and leaves. It was so quiet I could almost hear the trees gasping for help, like fallen soldiers lying in the ashes. Where she walked, the sand spread down the smooth dune like slow-moving river water. It was just like her, to walk where nobody had ever set foot before.

Abby turned to me and said, “It’s a real struggle for life out here, isn’t it?” Her green eyes were exploding with light up here so close to the afternoon sun.

I puffed out my chest and said, “It ain’t easy, that’s for certain. But that’s what makes living here so special. It’s what makes this place you’re standing in so special. It takes a heap of toil and trouble to make something so beautiful.”

Abby finally smiled at me then, a great big smile that caused her whole freckled face to shift upward. “Ben, the philosopher,” she said.

And just like that, I was on top of the world, even if it was made out of sand.

With the sun sinking into the west over Roanoke Island, we made our way back down the hill to the other folks, who were getting right corned.

Maddie hollered out, “So, Benjamin, was that Negro with y’all a runaway slave before the war? I heard from my daddy that these islands were just swarming with no-good runaways and criminals once upon a time.”

Her friends looked on like a pack of jackals. “You mean Jacob? Naw, he was born free, down in Ocracoke. He’s got family there still.”

“And do tell, do you keep him around to wait on y’all? Or are you actually friends with him?” She seemed serious, but with someone like Maddie, you could never rightly tell.

“Sure, Jacob is one of my best friends. He’s a real jack o’ trades, that one. He’s a pilot and boat builder, and he can fish most folks out of the water. You should get him to tell you some of his yarns—they’re famous ’round here.”

Maddie snorted the air through her little nose. “If only we could understand his African gibberish.”

Red piped up. “We don’t usually speak with niggers, unless it’s to tell them where the work is.”

I stopped dead in my tracks and clenched my jaws. I hadn’t heard that word in many years, and I wished to God it had been snuffed out along with slaving.

Then, out of the blue, Abby said, “Stop it, you all.” And there was something in her schoolmarm manner that bade the cussed fools to shut up. “During that storm we had a few days ago, Jacob tried to resuscitate a drowned man, a man Benjamin here had pulled to land all on his own through the stormy sea. I saw it all right before my eyes. Jacob is a good man, a hero.”

They all stared at Abby with dead eyes. They were trying to make sense of her little speech, but I could tell they were having a devil of a time. I doubted they’d ever heard a planter’s girl step up for a Negro before.

Then Abby looked over at me with proud eyes. And with that one look, I knew that she had been acting so off-put because of the present company she was keeping. She was ashamed of them, but couldn’t say so.

I thought the whole thing was done with, but Maddie declared, “Getting pulled from the sea by Benjamin might be a real treat, but getting resuscitated by a Negro—you’ve got to be joking! I’d rather die!”

I snorted. “I doubt the sailor would have cared what color the man trying to save him was.”

Then Red said, “Seems to me like he died because a Negro was working him over! Should have been a white man doing that kind of work.”

I hollered, “Now, you can’t talk that way out here, folks. It ain’t like on the mainland. And it shouldn’t be like that there, either. What the hell is wrong with you Edenton folks?”

At that, I turned to leave them, even though it didn’t feel right to leave Abby there on her own.

Maddie whined, “Awww, Benjamin, come back, now. Lordy, we didn’t know you were such a nigger lover!”

I squirmed all over and walked on fast, ahead of the bumping cart on the pathway, ’til their liquored snickerings faded away. There was no telling what those uppity folks put the blacks through back in Edenton. I doubted they were freer now than they were before the war ended.

I shook my head in disgust. Out here, Jacob was as free as any man, with work to do and money to be made. Not too long ago we
were out on the ocean fishing for blues, and he said to me, “I’m one lucky man, to be born and bred on the Outer Banks. On this here boat, on this here water, I’m free to do as I please.”

And I had to agree with him. During the war, I had seen many runaways smuggled to Union territory on the boats of black watermen just like Jacob. With nothing but cotton sacks pulled tight over their only possessions, they’d hide in cotton bales or trunks on the boats. Then they’d hide out in the swamps ’til things died down, a whole town of runaways living on the lam.

That’s how bad they wanted their freedom. And the Banks was a better place than most for them.

But now I saw what Abby was up against, with friends like those folks. They were likely all in the same club as her pap. I thought she was real brave to try to go against the tide like she was. But the more I thought on it, I was afraid for her, too. That tide was mighty high, maybe too high to get over on her own.

S
ATURDAY MORNING WAS GROWING MERCIFUL HOT WHEN
I
MET UP WITH
Mister Sinclair on the docks. He didn’t even want to fish today, and I had planned a nice outing on the ocean, hoping to catch a breeze, as well as some sea bass.

The change in plans made the hairs stand up on the scruff of my neck. This threatened to become a custom.

He pulled on my elbow. “Come on. Let’s get a drink at the hotel. It’s too damned hot out here.”

I’d never actually set foot inside the hotel. It was a place for rich vacation folks, mostly. Folks exactly like Mister Sinclair. Even me and Pap conducted our fishery trade around back.

“I don’t think I’m dressed proper for that. Don’t I need shoes?” I asked, hoping to waylay the man.

But he just snickered. “Not if you’re with me.”

On the way, he curled his arm around my shoulders, weighing me down even more. He said softly, “Ben, you heard of a man called Elijah Africa?”

I nodded, a lump growing in my gizzard. His red beard looked like red ants feasting in the sunlight. “I heard of him, sure. He’s the preacher of a church on Roanoke Island. Every Sunday the church is packed to overflow, every colored man, woman, and child coming to hear his sermoning. Some say on a good day you can hear his voice clear across the Roanoke Sound.”

With a name like Elijah Africa, I thought even white folks might want to see what he was all about. But I just knew Mister Sinclair wasn’t all perked up about the man’s sermoning.

Mister Sinclair talked real quiet now, as we walked through the hotel, a-bustle with folks getting ready for their outings. “He’s the one we’re looking for. This preacher—Elijah Africa—is not who he says he is. He’s a bad man, Ben. The worst of the worst. We think he’s a runaway slave called Elijah Bondfield. But we’ve got to make sure before we take him.”

“What do you think he did?” I choked out.

“Back in fifty-nine, he killed his master and mistress with a hatchet. He’s been on the run ever since.”

My eyes bulged. “Lord almighty! And you think a killer like that has turned preacher?”

His put his finger to his lips to shush me, even though the hotel tavern was empty so early in the morning. “You can see why folks
want him caught. We ’ll take him down, then the rest of the darkies that follow him will go down with him. I’d say Jesus himself handed him to us, it’s so perfect.”

I wasn’t so sure Jesus would involve himself in all that muck, but I kept that to myself. Mister Sinclair walked over to Jeb Mitson, the hotel desk man, and gestured with him for a bit. Then he came back with a grin on his face. Soon after that, Jeb came running over with two glasses of whiskey, straight up.

Mister Sinclair took a big drink, then waited for Jeb to skedaddle. “None of us knows what he looks like, except the dead man’s oldest son. Trouble now is, we’ve gotten so many different descriptions of the reverend that we can’t be too sure he’s the one we want.

“People say he’s as tall as me, the biggest Negro they’ve ever seen. Then others say it’s just his girth that sets him apart. Then others say it’s his manner of presenting himself, real uppity. It’s made us wonder a bit.

“’Course, my comrades want to string him up first and check for identification later. The reverend is trouble any which way you cut it. But Hugh—he’s the Bondfields’ oldest son—really wants to keep him alive, if you catch my meaning. And you can’t blame him. He’s been dreaming about his revenge for years.”

The whiskey tasted like poison in this warm room. I said, “What did the man look like then?”

“Hugh remembers him to be real tall. ’Course, he was just a boy back then. But he did recall Elijah’s holier-than-thou demeanor. Apparently he was always trying to learn.” He looked at me like he was about to give up the secret of a magic trick. “The only thing he remembered for sure that could set him apart was the brand of the letter
B
on Elijah’s right shoulder blade. Hugh’s daddy branded all of his slaves, for just such an occasion as this.” He glanced around and whispered, “You think you could set eyes on that brand for me?”

I rasped, “How in tarnation you expect me to do that? I ain’t in the habit of laying eyes on half-naked men! Why don’t you get one of your own people to look on him?”

“Look, I told you I need a local man, someone to blend in and move around like he knows what the hell he’s doing. We don’t want to scare him off. It took us this long to find the bastard, and we damn sure aren’t going to let him loose again.”

He held his glass back and shot down the rest of the whiskey. His breath, when he whispered at me, smelled of stale onions, tooth rot, and alcohol, the nauseatingest scent I ever sniffed. “The men involved in this are upstanding leaders—state politicians and attorneys-at-law and such. They can’t be sneaking around some little island, peering at Negroes. You understand? We can’t be implicated in this.” He smiled a wicked devil kind of smile at me. “I’ve been helpful to you this summer, haven’t I, Ben?”

I nodded. “I appreciate it all, Mister Sinclair. Don’t want you thinking I don’t. But …”

He turned his face away from me then. “Are you shirking your responsibilities to me, Ben? Because if you are, I can take away everything I’ve given you, like that.” He clapped loud, making me jump. “My friend needs me, and I need
you.”

He snapped his long fingers at Jeb and ordered another round.

I said under my breath, “What are you going to do with him if you find out he’s the one?”

“That’s something you don’t need to know. We’ll take care of our own business. We don’t like to involve the authorities, usually. They’re too soft these days to do hardworking white folks justice.”

That didn’t sound good at all. The whiskey simmered in my stomach and my damp shirt was all sticky on my back. I mumbled, “I still ain’t got the foggiest notion of how to sneak a peek at his backside, Mister Sinclair.”

He laughed. “You’re a clever boy. Just figure it out, will you?”

He leaned back on the stool, stretching his long back. “I’ll be staying at the cottage, you know. Crops are growing up now, and I aim to enjoy myself for a couple of weeks. Come find me when it’s done. And listen, don’t let on to him what you’re doing, and be quick about it. Justice is waiting on you.”

Justice
, he said. I truly wondered how I had gotten into this fix. This was some low-down, tricky kind of work, only fit for the world’s scummiest scofflaws to carry through. It made me mad, thinking Mister Sinclair wanted
me
to do it.
He must think I’m desperate
.