The Sport of Kings (46 page)

His first night is pure and blinding panic, sure the bloodhounds have been loosed, sure there are white men behind every oak tree, every maple. He remembers a nursing woman he had known as a child, one who ran off only to be hounded against a tree where the dogs ripped the breasts from her body; she had lived long enough to be whipped with the tooth side of a handsaw. Now, in fear of patrollers, he steers clear of the road to Mason County and Maysville, and won't travel as far east as the Lexington–Cincinnati road, and on that blessed day when he arrives in the Queen City, he won't go knocking on the door of Mr. Coffin's Grand Central Station. He considers himself unschooled but not reckless—he won't seek the aid of a strange white man, no matter his reputation. No, he'll go straight to Bucktown and throw his body and his soul down on the charity of the first black church he sees: there is no safe place in this world, but a black church is the closest thing. His mother taught him that.

He plunges into the nocturnal edge of the county, racing a desperate, diagonal line north, hoping, if chance and property lines favor him, to emerge at the river a full day's walk to the east of the city, a good distance from the Lexington–Cincinnati road. As he stumbles along in the dark, he clings to the rock-strewn streams that branch along the forest, where cold, plush water gurgles up from the soil, and for two hours becomes lost in a labyrinthine terrain of towering limestone hallways, which veer this way and that beneath the black rooftops of the trees. Eventually freeing himself, he passes along a series of tended pastures, just a dark wraith along the split rail fencing, an unsafe passage to be sure, but no other humans are about in the deep of the night. All around him, the dark forest is alive, vital, a black lattice before a white moon. Things unseen touch his face in jest and curiosity. Every step of the way, the owls question his route, his choices, his odds, and the night critters speechify and debate, but never once does he hear the clipped voices of white men or the brute, pitiless baying of distant hounds. He stays the course until the break of the next morning, when he climbs a sugar maple and expends a jittery, sleepless day at the tangent of limb and trunk, staring wretchedly into the vast green canopy.

Then night again, and no aid, no friend, only the North Star to conduct him. He walks on and on, eating only small bites from a satchel containing fatback, hogmeat slices, and crumbling cornpone. Two more days and his overshoes of turnip have fallen away, his hair is peppered with bits of leaf like green ash, and he has lost weight he didn't have to spare. He begins then to traverse during the day, still fretful, almost forty miles from Lexington now, and safer, he knows, but desperate to cover more ground. The waking world seems to have changed in the four days since he has seen it. The light is shocking and the land is fertile with late summer—the bright corollas of flowers, the winding vines loping tree to tree, the cool and pungent drafts of pine, ginseng here and chanterelles there and everything covered with a green, fair moss like verdigris on copper. He eyes the beauty with bitterness; yes, he thinks, this whole world ain't nothing but a bad penny, keeps turning up and going to mold.

In the muddled brew of his worry and overwhelming fatigue, he grows careless and the next morning stands accosted by a tiny white woman in a stove-black bonnet so enormous and overhanging, he can only see the tight sphincter of her mouth as she says, “Nigger, I got eggs.”

He's half-asleep and so surprised by her sudden appearance that, despite the instincts of his legs, he doesn't run, his eyes locked on the eggs she's carrying in the gaping pockets of her tattered linsey-woolsey pinafore. She reaches down and holds out three eggs to him without ever once looking him in the eye.

She says, “Now, my husband he preciated the niggers, but I ain't concerned if they live or die. Still my husband preciated em, so I give em to ye to have. Here now.”

With care and fleet glances in all directions, he takes the three eggs from her hands; they're the color of boiled chicory with new milk. “Grateful, missus,” he whispers.

“Tain't no difference to me,” she says. “If they hang ye or hightail ye back to Africkay, tain't no business of mine. Them's fresh eggs. They'll keep.”

He runs then, cradling the delicate, knocking eggs in his shirt until he reaches a distance of a mile or more, and when no one seems to be following, he cracks the eggs and drinks them down. Then he moves on through what he hopes is the center of Harrison County, and on that very same afternoon, after having not seen anyone in four days except the woman with the eggs, he spies a second woman—this one from the back and from such a distance, he just watches her creep shakily along for a breathless minute before he realizes she's colored. He can hear her crying now from where he stands, but he makes no sound at all, resolving to melt back into the undergrowth and shield himself from her eyes; he can afford no joiners, least of all a woman. Then she turns jerkily, suddenly, like a deer that senses rather than hears its predator, and he sees that her belly is as big as a sugar kettle and now her black eyes are on him. Deep as coal rocks, full of lustrous tears. She reaches out one hand to him, her mouth aslant: “Help me! Help dis poor gal!”

He takes a step backward from her call, but he can't look away, and she comes forward a few broken paces. He is set to run, one foot behind him, his weight ungrounded, a bird preparing for flight.

“Help me! Help us get north!”

Warily, he whispers, “You got to shift for your own self.”

“Please, mistah!” she pleads. “You talk fine, I can tell you a smart nigger. Help dis ignorant gal and dis here baby get dey freedom!”

He rears back in distaste and manages one deliberate step backward, but she stumbles forward, grasping up his shirtfront now in her dirty fist; her touch is what he had most wanted to avoid, even more than her desperate voice. Her distended belly is inches from his. Her eyes burn into him. “Iffen you leave us, dey gone kill us. Dey gone kill dis baby.”

No, no, no, Scipio wants to scream in frustration and anger—unwind the clock, unspool time—but these eyes, this belly … sweat springs up beads on his forehead and upper lip. He wants to curse every step that brought him to this particular spot. All his effort was for him alone! He eyes her angrily and tries to press back his conscience, but it's no use. In another instant, the thing is done and they are a pair, Scipio plowing through the woods at a frightful, angry pace; the woman drying her tears and skipping along despite her bulk, her rounds of thanksgiving and gratitude devolving into pleas as she falls back now and again with Scipio saying only, “Keep up.” And when they stop at a burbling spring to drink, she whips off her headrag and falls to her knees, saying, “Praise de Lord for … what dey name you?”

“My name ain't no consequence.”

She blinks. “I's Abby and dis baby gone be name Canada when it come. I's gone live in dere, I is.”

“Listen here now,” Scipio says, “I'll take you two days and then you got to aim east on your own and walk to Mason County. There's a man there what got a yellow barn. He'll skiff you across the river to Ripley. He'll know you by the password ‘Menare.' I promise you that's the truth. But I ain't going there. I got my own plan to swim that river, and I can't be shaked from it.”

“I's gone where you's gone,” she says.

“You ain't doing no such,” he growls.

“I is!” And to this vehemence, he doesn't know what to say, he can only glower at her and then they walk on for another day, she at his heels like a bulky terrier, pestering and questioning him and thanking him again and singing and moaning until he feels sure she's soft in the head and he regrets her more and more each step of the way. Finally he whips about and, with a finger to her face, says, “Don't talk, don't ask, don't touch! Just follow!”

And Abby does follow, gradually quietening and walking with her forearms cradling her enormous belly like saddle straps to hold it secure. Scipio is at first grateful for her silence, but once or twice as they walk during that second day, he glances back and sees silent tear-trails tracking through the grime on her face. It gives him pause, he thinks of his mother. It slowly destroys his resolve.

That night when they've sat down side by side, preparing for sleep under the spread arms of a tree, Scipio takes up his case again, but gentler this time.

“Listen here, Miss Abby,” he says. “In the morning, you got to strike out for Mason County on your own. I aim to swim the river and you can't swim it with that belly a yours. You hear?”

“I can swim,” she says, staring at him mulishly.

He rears back. “God almighty, gal!” The wick of his impatience is lit now. “You gone and lost your mind? What kind of crazy gal runs off when she needs to be laying in? I planned this escape nigh on three years, choosing the month, the day, the very hour, and I won't have no crazy gal getting me shot on the riverbanks with Canaan right there in my sights!”

Scipio expects her to begin crying again, an act which seems nearly as natural to her as speech, but she just hangs her head for a long minute, like she's studying deeply on his words. He begins to wonder whether she's even understood him when she says, so quietly does he have to strain to understand her, “My mammy name me Abby. I am taken from my mammy when I'm age thirteen. I never forget de day. My mammy she done wrapped up my nubbins in a old linen rag so nobody see em, but de speclator come and he seed I got de age on me and he teared me from my mammy and I never forget, she say, ‘Be good, Abby, don't give em no cause to whup you,' and I ain't never done no such. I never seed my mammy anymore. Well, dat speclator man take me to Lexington and he stand me up on de Cheapside block. He den tear off my woolens and de mens come and look and pinch and de speclator cry me off. Dis one man, he pay twelve hundred dollar for me. Ignorant nigger I is, I thinks how lucky I is, a rich man gone pay dat kind a money for me, he gone take right good care a me.”

Abby stops, she seems not to know what to do with her hands as she speaks, pressing them into her hair now, which is wild and unkempt, her rag long fallen away. She will not look at Scipio, she just rocks her knobby hands into her hairline.

“Well, come find dat white trash man ain't rich,” she says bitterly. “Don't know how he paid dat kind a money. He only had him three niggers and only one dem's my age and he done make me de wife a all three.”

Scipio makes an involuntary jerking motion with his hands. He almost asks her to hush, but she continues on.

“Now, here he don't make me work in no field like I's expectin, no, he lock me up in dis quarter, ain't no bigger dan a root cellar and ain't got no window. He lock me on dis bed with one chain on de wrist and one on de ankle and den dey come messin with me and sometime de Marster he watch de niggers mess with me and den he mess with me. I don't know how long I's livin dere, den I get swole up big and he say, ‘You gone have you a baby, Abby,' and I got de amazement cause I don't know nothin and den dat baby get borned. Den he let me out and I gets de run a de place, cause he figure if I got a baby, den I ain't gone run. And he right. I ain't gone run.”

She looks at Scipio then and she appears crazy to him and he wishes all over again that he could have avoided her somehow, or left her along the way. Cruel as it is and against his own will, he wishes she were back where she'd come from, but still he utters no word.

She says, “Den I seed he got him a Missus. A Missus! Why he messin with a nigger gal when he got a Missus? I don't never understand. But dey both am mean as devils. Dey chained de niggermens to dey beds at night and dat Missus she whupped em in de morning with a leather switch out a pure devilment. Forty lashes ever day. Dey ain't never run, cause de Marster say he kill em if dey do and dey knowed it de truth. De Marster have him a old nigger name Perry and one day Perry say, ‘I's too old, you can't make me work no more, I's got to rest,' and de Marster, he say, ‘Dat sound all right, you slowin down,' and when Perry turn away, de Marster crack him over de head with de hoe he holdin and drop Perry stone dead. De Marster make de niggers wait to bury him five days and den without no stone. So us all knowed dat true.

“Now, on dis farm don't a body never visit, no preacher never come, no family never come, just us all de time shiftin for usselves. Well, I gets a string a babies and when dey six or seven year old de Marster, he sell each em away for de money and I ain't even say no, see, I pray God dey get sold to a good white man. I knows dey's lots a good white folk in de world like my mammy's Marster. He ain't hardly whupped on his niggers and only when dey deserved it.

“But—but den it finally happen. I gets me a white baby and den de Missus know de Marster messin with me and she open hate on me all de time. She pullin my hair and lashin me and de Marster tell her, ‘Quit,' but den she just do it when he ain't dere. It am a misery. Dis bout de time my Sarah die a de fever and I only got William who age six and my white baby, Callie. Den one terrible day I brings de sheets in de house for pressin and I fetch de iron out de fire and I got—” She screws up her lips, her whole body shaking.

“Hush!” Scipio whispers, fear and horror curdling in his belly. “Quit talking now, Miss Abby.”

Abby raises up her eyes. “Oh Lord, dat day I got Callie on my arm and she cryin and William, he complainin like he hungry and needin fare or some such and I leave de iron on de sheet and it burn a big black mark. And de Missus, she see dat mark and her face get real funny and Callie squawlin and den de Missus say, ‘Hush dat nigger chile!' and den she reach over and pick up dat jingling iron and she strike dat hot iron against my baby Callie so hard she break her head in. I never forget how it jingle. My baby don't even cry, she only open her broke mouth like she a baby bird, her face ruint and broke in and she gasp just like dat and shake oncet and den she die in my arm. Right dere in my arm. Oh God, Lord—I so pained I runs out de house and de Missus wailin to de Marster what she ain't meant it and he come a-runnin and a-shoutin.”