Walk Through Darkness (4 page)

Mason studied the downturned face of the young boy searching for the effect of his words. “That would never happen to one of my Negroes. That will never happen to you. You are protected so long as you are faithful to me. You will always be protected from the anger of other white men, from the poisons spread down from the north and from your own baser nature. I take your welfare as a matter of honor. Understand?”

“Yessuh.”

“Good. I have always been very happy with you, William. You are a fine boy despite the misfortunes of your parentage, and I trust you will always obey me as you should.”

Three days later William was hired out to the family of an Annapolis shipbuilder and his life of toil began. In truth, he saw nothing akin to logic in the man’s words. As a boy of eight he didn’t try. He sat there wishing that the interview would end, knowing that his mother would ask him about it later, angry at himself because he knew he couldn’t lie to her. It wasn’t until much later, when he heard such theories repeated, that he sought to make some sense of them. He never did. He wasn’t even sure that he understood what Ham’s crime had been in the first place. Was Ham cursed for seeing his father’s own depravity? Why would God honor the wishes of a drunk, a man that woke groggy from overconsumption? Was it simply that Ham had looked upon him and saw him as he really was, while the
other sons turned their eyes away? Was he cursed for knowing the truth about the man from whom the entire world was descended?

The beginning of his third week as a fugitive found William a lean, ghostly version of his former self. His food was long gone. He had to tighten the cord that held his trousers up. His face took on the gaunt qualities attributed to the starving and the holy. His eyes retreated back into his skull. The flesh of his nose became a thin veil over the contours of the bone and cartilage beneath it. He was taken by a hunger he had never known even in his worst days, then pushed beyond it to a numb place that was the backside of hunger. Strange visions assaulted him. Or perhaps he was seeing normal things but only now finding them strange. One morning he awoke with several millipedes curled into balls and sleeping within the crescent of his body’s heat. Another afternoon he leant to drink from a stream, but paused with his hand cupped above the water, shocked by the sight of an enormous, spotted spider gorging itself on a fish twice its size. And one evening while paused to survey the land ahead, he looked down to find a half-dozen daddy longlegs climbing up his trousers.

He was also struck with occasional bursts of prophecy. He had dreams in which whips fell from masters’ hands and writhed as serpents on the ground, scenes of white men engaged in the most desperate acts of self-flagellation, glimpses of tails poking through trousers like the curled barbs of swine. There were visions of Dover as he had last seen her, memories so distant he distrusted them. She appeared to him in a fractured prism of images, a mosaic in which each part of her appeared with a singular clarity. The ringlets of hair curled against the base of her neck. Her eyelids flickering as he pleasured her. The slack weight of her breasts against his cupped palms. Her canines pressed against her bottom lip in anger. He awoke once to the image of
a young girl spinning away from her playmate, her head thrown back in laughter. Though it had not been a dream of Dover, it brought her to mind. He always remembered her sternness and strength, but that girl brought back a memory of her laughter as well. She had a wonderful laugh, a joy that came from low in her throat and rose up through her body with a physical force that tossed her head back. Yes, she had quite a laugh, but she had shared it rarely, at unpredictable moments.

Though his mind was full of images, it didn’t mean he lowered his defenses. One evening, in the small hours of the night, he realized that he was being followed. He didn’t see his pursuer, but he knew someone was behind him, just out of view. He doubled his pace. He climbed into a wild land measured by tree-lined ridges and sectioned by streambeds. He dropped down into a ravine and fumbled his way over boulders and through water-pocked rock slabs. He tried to manifest his fear in motion, to feed off the adrenaline building within him. But by the time he mounted a wide plateau of white pine his apprehension had mixed with anger. The person was still following him, a shadow that he couldn’t shake free. So he decided to change his tactics.

He jogged into the fragrant pine forest, bent over beneath the branches. The dawn light was just strong enough to bring out the colors and textures of the pine’s rough skin. He chose one of the trees at random. He grabbed at the dry nubs of the broken, lower branches, wrapped his thighs around the trunk and cinched his heels against it. He heaved himself upward until he found another handhold. In this painful way, he inched up the lower portion of the trunk. When he got his arms around a sturdy branch, he kicked a leg out to the side, hooking the branch with his ankle. He straddled it in a second, and the very next he was reaching for the branch above. The pine allowed for easy climbing after that, the branches spaced as if for just such a purpose. He perched on a branch halfway up the tree, stilled his breathing, and waited.

His pursuer crested the plateau at a limping shuffle, breathing
heavily, a sack slung over his shoulder. There was no stealth or guile in his progress. Viewed through the screen of branches, he moved with a strange, wide-legged gait, his legs bowed out to either side of his body. He passed below William, ducking beneath the branches, muttering curses so steadily they seemed to be a necessary feature of his progress. William couldn’t see the man’s face or hair, hidden as they were by the brim of his hat, but his voice had a throaty cadence, a richness that William recognized. The realization stunned him, for in the various forms he had envisioned his hunter, this was certainly not how he had imagined him. In the few moments it took to conclude this, the man faded from view, leaving in his wake a silence greater than the one that had preceded him.

William sat for a few minutes. He looked around him from tree to tree, but there was no company with whom to confer. He leaned to study the ground below, as if some further information might be offered in that quarter. Strangely, it was. A smell rose up, pushing aside the pine syrup and replacing it with an even stronger odor, pungent, repulsive, and delicious all at once. It was the scent of overripe cheese. It went to the back of his brain with a force that set his mouth watering. He shook his head at his own stupidity, but began the climb down anyway. On hitting the ground, he set out after the man at a lope. He had long ago discarded his sack, but he still carried the corn knife. He pulled the weapon from under his shirt as he ran and strode with it out to his side.

When he caught up with the man, he was standing on the far side of a dry creek bed, under the full force of the sun. He was bent over, alternately contemplating the ground and peering through the low-slung branches ahead of him. He scratched his butt cheek, then lifted his hat and fanned his face. William moved toward him, crooked a little to the side as if ready to bolt to the left at any moment. The needle flooring gave beneath his feet, not completely silent, but muted enough not to betray his approach.

As he grew nearer, so gaining a clearer picture of the man’s narrow back and thin arms, William’s demeanor changed. His posture grew more erect, his strides more forceful. The lines around his mouth twisted like a man preparing to spit. Whether he thought out the actions that followed or not was unclear. They happened fast, fueled by a sudden overflow of anger. He switched the knife from one hand to the other. Without catching his step, he bent, snatched up a small rock in his free hand, cranked his arm back past his ear, and snapped it forward. The rock flew with an audible hiss. It hit the man at the base of his neck and sent him stumbling forward onto all fours. He scrambled like that for a moment, then remembered himself, stood up, and turned around. He stared wide-eyed and mute as William strode toward him, knife once more in his favored hand.

The other man was a thin Negro. He pulled his straw hat down tight around his head, beneath which a mass of curly hair struggled to get free. He stood on crooked hips that set the whole of his upper body on a slope, like a person carrying a bucket in one arm. His clothing was as bedraggled as that of any field hand, although his shoes were of a better make than the coarse brogans allotted to most slaves. He rubbed the back of his neck viciously, as if whatever thing had done him harm was there to be wiped away.

“What’d you do that for?” he asked.

“Why you tracking me?”

“Tracking you? I ain’t tracking you.” The man’s features were a mismatched collection of parts, eyes canted at divergent angles, forehead exceptionally wide, tufts of hair dotting his cheeks. He used the whole of his body when speaking, shoulders jolting around in the sockets, neck thrusting forward and back in the effort of it. “I caught sight of you a ways back,” he said. “Was wondering if maybe we couldn’t travel on agether. I don’t mean you no trouble. You can be damn sure of that.” He held up his hands to show that he was unarmed, with intentions as plain as
the whites of his palms. “What I mean to say is, judging by the look of you we’re in the same particular. You a runaway too, ain’t you? Only ask cause I’d confess the same about myself.”

William switched the knife from one hand to the other and back again.

The man shuffled back a few steps. “You looking to stick me with that? After I come up on you like a civilized body? I didn’t make you for a culprit. Figured you for a Christian, at least.”

William wiped the sweat from his eyes with his free hand. “What difference does that make?”

As if this question established some confidence between the two, the man explained that in his experience Christians made for the best company. And that was all he was looking for, a little companionship in his travels. He had more supplies than the good Lord should’ve provided him and he thought it best to share with others in need. “You can smell that cheese, can’t you? Got a stink to it, right enough, but it’s fine going down.”

William sucked his bottom lip, weighing the demands of his hunger against the prospect of traveling with this man. It was a hard call. “Don’t know that I need company. Where’d you come by that food anyhow?”

“Stolt it.”

“Then there’s men hunting you.”

The other shook his head. “Naw, I don’t reckon. I ain’t hardly worth the trouble. Got a weak constitution, they say.”

“That may be the first honest word you spoke.”

The man took no offense at this. Quite the contrary, he nodded and smiled. “Anyway, we ain’t properly met. Name’s Oli. And if that don’t impress you maybe some rock candy will. Got me a whole bag of it.”

William cursed under his breath, lowered the knife, and motioned for the man to retrieve his sack. “Let’s get some cover. For a spell, at least, while I think what to make of you.”

F
OUR
The hunt began as easy work. The hound found the fugitive’s scent with little difficulty. Her only confusion lay in separating the hunted’s scent from those of the other trackers who had already followed his trail. Once this was dealt with, she bounded away with Morrison in pursuit. They followed the path from the slave’s hovel and through the woods, down a creek and up under a bridge and on again. The rain began soon after. When the hound hesitated the man thought this was the cause. He urged her forward with an encouraging whistle and a rough pat on the shoulder. He took the lead for a moment, sure that the hound would bound past him, renewed by his touch. But the dog was of another mind. She spun in circles, scenting the air, and finally concluding that the trail led to the west. The man almost called her back, for the signs of the other trackers were clear to see, heading north in line with the slave’s progress thus far. But he held his tongue, for the hound was already some distance away.

When he burst through the vegetation and onto the beach, the storm struck him full in the face. Rain pelted into the Bay and jumped back up toward the sky. Water careened sideways as much as vertically and struck him like a hail of stones. He set his feet wide apart and shaded his eyes with his free hand. The hound moved up and down the beach in desperation, oblivious to the storm. When she caught sight of the man, she met his eyes and then turned into the face of the storm and howled out across the water. The man understood the message, but was little sure of what to make of it.

The rain had abated by the time Morrison returned to the plantation. He stood before the planter and told of his progress so far, of his hound’s conclusions and of how he had tried to convince her that the scent was still there to be found. He had even roped the dog and dragged
her along the path laid by the others in the hope that she would find the scent again. He had asked her to see reason and to overcome her stubborn inclinations. He had even offered her a bribe in the form of a twist of smoked meat. While the hound accepted the meat as her due, she wouldn’t be led away from her beliefs, and so the man acquiesced.

That boy went into the water, Morrison said. That’s one fact you didn’t share with me.

That’s hardly a fact, Humboldt said. He was sure that the boy in question was scared to death of water, just like they all were. He said that the rain had just scuddled the scent. He paused and looked between man and dog and added that perhaps the hound wasn’t much of a tracker.

Morrison studied the dog. She studied him back. Don’t believe she’s the problem here, he said.

Again the other man countered, saying that all the other slave hunters had turned their hounds to the north and were halfway to Delaware by now, and probably right on the boy’s heels. He said that there wasn’t anything else for it. A nigger don’t just disappear. And a nigger don’t swim across the Chesapeake Bay. I’ve known three men in my life who could swim, he said, and not a one of them had a drop of black blood in him.

Morrison knew what he knew and now that he had mentioned it he had no more doubts. He proceeded cautiously, not wanting to share too many of his thoughts with this man, but needing some aid where his local knowledge failed him. He asked if the fugitive might not have crossed the water by boat, but Humboldt doubted this. There hadn’t been any boats in that immediate area, nor had any gone missing. He didn’t doubt that there were Quakers and other godforsaken sons-a-bitches who would help a slave escape, but he was dead sure that none of that element had gained access to this particular boy.

So there it was, Humboldt said. He hadn’t stolen a boat, hadn’t been picked up by a boat, and he sure as hell hadn’t swum it. The boy ran north, he said. You get yourself in that direction and you might catch him. Otherwise you’re wasting my time.

He turned to walk away, but the tracker asked him one more question.

Did he have any family across the Bay?

Humboldt spun around, annoyance in the crags of his forehead. No, no family, he said. But he did have a bitch he was hungered for.

A woman?

That’s right, the planter man said, and, as an afterthought and a kind indulgence, he went on to tell him what he knew of her and her owner.