Song Yet Sung (25 page)

She realized that Kathleen was staring at her.

—So? Kathleen said.

—I'm sorry, Missus, I forgot what you was asking me.

—What makes you think he's gonna look for Amber?

—I got a feeling, Mary said. On top of that, I begged him to do it.

Watching Denwood poke around the grove, Kathleen remarked, I don't know that his type is easily moved.

From his vantage point, Denwood could see the two women observing him from the porch, and he felt embarrassed. He owed them both, but not that much, he thought. He would be beholden to Mary, of course, if her information proved correct. As for the pretty missus, well…they were both, he reckoned, dependent on what he could accomplish. He didn't like the feeling.

He had positioned himself in the grove to check the position of the sun in relation to the place where the assailant had hidden, then checked the area around it to see what it told him. The ground bespoke someone who knew how to hunt and move. He wondered, vaguely, if anyone had bothered to check whether the woman and child in jail whom Travis and Herbie were fussing about had anything to do with the two missing people out here. He doubted it. Travis was as dim as a dead candle on any given day, and most white folks, he knew, did not fully grasp the range of Negro emotions, which were, as far as he was concerned, as great as if not greater than any white man's.

He mounted his old gelding and, instead of taking the old logging trail that ran along the creek at the back of the property, decided to push through the swamp to the Indian burial ground. He pointed the horse into the dense thicket and slowly worked his way in, ducking beneath the low-hanging beech and cypress branches, vanishing from sight. As the two women watched him disappear, both prayed to God for the same thing.

The tiny bungy splashed gaily across the wide expanse of Church Creek under the morning sun, the water gently cradling the boat and rocking it from side to side. Sitting in the stern, Liz reached into the water and doused her face. She had washed the oyster juice out of her hair and discovered that, like most bodies of water on the eastern shore, this one had its own particular smell. It was better than the one that clung to her before.

Facing her, old Clarence, who had seemed feeble and slow while working in Franz's store in town, rowed with precision, moving the boat with the power and ease of an experienced waterman. His shabby bearing, stooped posture, and sober expression were gone. The face she saw now was stern and serious, that of a leader of men. He regarded her with no small amount of caution and even, she suspected, a bit of disdain.

After several minutes of rowing, Clarence raised the sail, then tacked easily towards the Chesapeake, staying wide of several oyster boats that were anchored, their inhabitants busily tonging the bottom of the bay.

—You know much about boats? she asked.

—Surely do, Clarence said. Worked on 'em all my life. Till I got too old.

—How old was that?

—Twenty, he said.

He looked at her, expecting to see a smile, but none appeared. Liz stared at the bottom of the boat. The open air, sun, and gentle bay breeze had given her fresh strength, but still she was worried. Her head had never stopped hurting. She was, she feared, seriously ill. Her sleeping bouts, once frequent, were now unstoppable. She'd fallen asleep in the old man's cart and awakened to find herself coughing blood, so much that the old man and his wife had to hastily wash her blood off the oysters once they'd pulled her out of the wheelbarrow at Clarence's house, where she'd hidden while he finished his morning deliveries.

—Where we going? she asked.

—Time for you to leave this country, he said. I'm taking you to a delivery point. And I'm mighty glad to do it.

—You working the gospel train?

—I'm working to the Lord's purpose.

—What's that mean?

—It means it ain't the song, it's the singer of it. The song not yet sung.

—What is it about you people? she asked. Why can't anyone talk straight? First Amber. Then the blacksmith. Now you. Why'n't you just say what you are?

—I know what I am, the old man replied. The question is, who are you?

—What's that mean?

—It means exactly what it says, the old man said. You come round here staking a claim to being this, that, and the other, yet I can't tell if you's got the straight of a woman who knows who she is or not. Honest, I know folks pretty good from seeing 'em, and I don't know you from Adam—and don't wanna know you, neither. But I reckon you must be special, for Amber to stick his neck out for you the way he done. Time for you to leave this country, though, that's for sure.

—I wanted to repay Amber, she said, for helping me. But I can't do nothing for him. I brought nothing but trouble to him.

—I reckon you did, the old man said. He's likely going to prison. Or get hung, one.

—He's done nothing wrong, Liz said. His missus will forgive him for being gone two days. He said it.

—It ain't the missus I'm concerned with. It's his nephew, Wiley. And his sister, Mary.

—What they done?

—We all connected. You know that. White folks round here is riled. Bunch of niggers done cut free from Patty's and now there's a white boy missing. They don't know who done it. Likely Miss Kathleen's child ain't never gonna be found. Probably got drowned, or bit by a water moccasin snake, and
then
drowned. Somebody got to pay for it. Who you expect?

She stared at the floor of the boat, her head hanging low.

—No need to fret about what's done, Clarence said matter-of-factly. It's God's world. He washes you clean. He makes you whole. He puts rain in your garden and sunshine in your heart. Just pray when you get free, child. Pray for what you done, and what you gonna do. Lotta folks around here believe in you. I don't, but lots do. You got some kind of purpose, they say. It's got to be.

—But I don't know who I am.

—Well, there it is, he said ruefully. That's a problem, ain't it. If you don't know who you are, child, I'll tell you: you's a child of God.

—With all I seen, I don't know that I believe in God anymore, she said.

—Don't matter, the old man said. He believes in you.

As they passed the mouth to the Blackwater Creek, the old man turned and tacked north, away from Dorchester, towards the Choptank River and Talbot County. Liz turned to take one last look at Blackwater Creek, but her head hurt so badly that she lay down on the lip of the boat instead, staring down at the water and feeling nauseous.

—You okay, child?

The wind blew across her face and she closed her eyes. The rhythmic lilting of the boat calmed her, and she felt the cool breeze of the Chesapeake playfully work its way into her hair and lips, driving into her nose, whistling into her chest, and as it did, from someplace deep inside of herself, she heard the song of the old woman from Patty's attic whispering in her ears:
Way down yonder in the graveyard walk, me and my Jesus going to meet and talk…
And in that manner she fell asleep and dreamed.

She felt herself floating down into the water and saw a vision clearly: the brown waistcoat, the calico pants, walking in a marsh near a wall at the old Indian burial ground, a man on a horse following.

—God Almighty, she whispered. She sat up in the boat, grasping her head.

—What is it?

—Amber's got the Devil on his back, she said. You got to turn back.

—Forget him, child. He's gone home. We got two hours to get where we gonna git.

—Please. I'll throw myself in the water and swim if you don't turn back.

—Go 'head. Once you get on the train, ain't no getting off.

His smile was gone now, the old eyes set firm, his powerful hands gripping the oars, which lay across his lap, the sail mounted high, taking in full wind, speeding them away from Blackwater Creek, the Neck district, and the Indian burial ground.

—That's the code, he said. The coach wrench turns the wagon wheel. We is the coach and you is the wheel. Chance is an instrument of God. God rules the world, you see. We do what
He
says, not what man says. I would no more turn this boat around than stop you from throwing yourself overboard. I'm a soldier in the army of the Lord. The Lord put you in this boat, not man. It's
Him
that put you here. It's
Him
who'll throw you overboard if He sees fit.

—Why you talking crazy?

—I ain't crazy. This is a war, child, and I'm gonna die in it like the rest. I coulda got free long ago, but I'm sworn to Jesus to free His people. You go back and they whip you till you give me and everybody else up that knows the code. That can't be. God says to free His people in the manner He chooses. Truth be to tell it, I don't care for you no more'n I care for this piece of lumber I'm holding in my hand here. The colored man's chosen, see. Chosen by God to be free in His kingdom, and if you want to go on to reward before the rest of us, why, go ahead. I won't weep for you, being free. I won't. Even though you is young and high-minded and pretty, and ought to have a full life with children and a husband.

—Do you have children, Mr. Clarence?

The old man's watery eyes hardened.

—I did. Once. Had a daughter, 'bout your age. But she…

And then he broke. His own memories pushed up against him, and he choked up as he spat the words out. He turned his head away and grabbed his oars and rowed again, although there was no need to, for the wind was at their backs now.

—We ain't never gonna be truly free here, he said. Not in this land. No matter where we go. Up north. Down south. That's why I stay here. I live for the code. Code's like my Bible, right next to Jesus.

She grasped her head and closed her eyes, her head throbbing, the hot sun beating down. She covered her face with her hands to shield her eyes, then leaned forward and spoke to him.

—Let me tell you about tomorrow, she whispered.

—You ain't got to, he said, rowing.

—You the only person that ain't asked me about it, she said.

—I don't wanna know, he said.

—Why not? Tomorrow showed me there's a part of the code missing.

—Code's been that way all my life and my pa's life before it. Ain't nothing wrong with it.

—Can you listen anyway?

—I already done heard 'bout your dream, he said. Many have talked about it. Colored children eating themselves to death, smoking strange cigars, preaching murder through song and whatnot. Watching themselves in magic boxes and trading in their eyes for different-colored eyes and whatnot. It don't say nothing to me but there's a fool colored for every day the good Lord makes. Today and tomorrow.

—But that ain't the only dream I had, she said. I had another one. Had it since I come to this here country. I haven't told a soul about it except Amber. And I didn't know what it meant when I told it to him. But I dream it again and again, and the more I dream it, the more I understand it. I know what it means now! And if I tell it to you—prove it to you—that this boat got to turn around because the code's meant for it to be, would you do it?

The old man thought a moment, then stopped rowing.

—Go 'head, he said.

She sat forward as she spoke, legs straddling the bottom of the boat, hands folded, the old man leaning in.

—This is about another dreamer, she said. A great dreamer.

I dreamed of thousands of Negroes,
she said,
and thousands of white people with them, folks stretching as far as the eye could see. They were at a great camp meeting, and one after another various preachers spoke out. Finally the best of them rose up to speak. He was a colored preacher. He was dressed in the oddest suit of clothing you can imagine; I reckon it's the finery of his time. He stood before these thousands of people and spoke to a magic thing that carried his voice for miles. And Lord, he preached. As Jesus is at His resting place, that man preached. He opened up the heavens. On and on he went, in the most proper voice, using the most proper words. He used words so powerful, so righteous, I can't describe them—words that seemed to lift him into the air above the others, words that came from God Himself. And the people could tell! They wept at his words and tore their hair and cried. White and colored, they held hands and hollered at him to go on, and when the colored preacher heard them yelling, that drove him to an even greater fury and he became even more excited, and as the crowd hollered at him, he grew so excited, he reached into the past and shouted a song from our own time! A song not yet sung. I heard it at Patty Cannon's house. The Woman with No Name said it: It ain't the song, it's the singer, she said. It's the song yet sung.

Sitting forward, she recited the words, slowly: