Song Yet Sung by James McBride
Amber watched Denwood’s lantern flicker as a breeze blew it, the flame nearly dying, then flaring up again full.
—Yes, sir. I knows it. But I can’t turn my back to God’s dangers any more than I can keep a bird from snatching a crumb off the ground. Never did have no pets. Dogs, cats, nothing of the kind. Heart’s too soft. That’s why I kept most folks away from me. To turn someone away looking for help, I reckon, is to do God wrong.
Denwood chuckled bitterly. You people and God: I wanna get mud-eyed, he said.
—Sir?
—Taste the moonshine, son. Joy juice. Get happy. Suck sponge. Swig one. Power my way up the tree.
—Yes, sir. Won’t do you no good, though. If it ain’t got God in it.
—I don’t believe in God.
—Yes, sir. Every colored round here knows that. But God believes in you.
—Sure he does. Lucky for you I ain’t a slave owner. There’s your God lovers! Slaving bastards. Meaner than the Devil, most of ’em. Bunch of yellow-bellied frauds. Got big boats now, that’s their new hobby. They done found oysters. The poor man’s last refuge. They dredging the Chesapeake now with brogans, schooners, even striker boats. They gonna scoop every oyster off the bottom. Bottom of the bay’s gonna be cleaner than the inside of a peanut shell when they done.
—Yes, sir.
—You reckon it’s the same God that governs them that governs you?
The young man glanced at him. I reckon so, Amber said.
—How does that work on you?
—It don’t work on me a bit, Amber said. All God’s things, His mosquitoes, His bugs and snakes, is beholden to Him, sir. God put them here to wake man up to what his limits is. He gived man knowledge and a soul to save. How man rule in them things is up to man, not God. How man rule another man is up to God, not man.
—Are you a preacher? Denwood asked.
—No, sir. I just stand on God’s word like most colored do.
Denwood glared at the roaring fire, its embers snapping and spitting towards the sky.
—I had a son, you know.
—I heard it, sir. He got put in a basket with a dog, and then he died.
—How’d you know?
—Most colored knows you, sir. What you do has a heap to do with us, if you understand my meaning.
Denwood suppressed a grim smile. You hate me, don’t you? he asked.
Amber looked into the darkness outside. I expect if the Dreamer is to get captured, I’d rather you do it than somebody else, he answered. Don’t matter how far she runs, you gonna run her down. I know you ran Mingo all the way up to Canada and brung him back, and Mingo’s something.
—I ain’t gonna do nothing but turn her in and collect my money.
—I know it. I wish I could tell you where all the riches was in the world, so you could collect them instead of her. If I could, I would do it.
—I’d be the biggest fool in the world to work against myself, Denwood said. I gave my word to the man who owns her and took his money. All’s I got is my word.
—Yes, sir.
—Where is she, then? Denwood asked.
Amber looked at him in surprise: You don’t know?
—Stop hot-footing around. If I knew, would I ask it?
—She’s already gone north. Out this country. Towards Delaware.
Denwood, holding a coffee cup, nearly dropped it. Anger shaped itself around his long jaw. Why’n’t you tell me earlier? he hissed.
—You didn’t ask where she went!
—You let me caterpillar all round this swamp and didn’t say a damn thing about it. What the hell is wrong with you?
—I thought you wanted to find Jeff Boy! Didn’t you say that a while ago? Ain’t that what you was asking when you was asking about Miss Kathleen?
Denwood stifled an urge to pull Joe’s five-shot Paterson from his oil slicker pocket and level it at the Negro’s face.
—I ain’t come out here to let you think for me and lead me round like a barb-tailed mule. Finding him’s the constable’s job. He’s likely dead anyway.
—So’s the Dreamer, once that old captain gets ahold of her.
—Don’t give me the odds and ends ’bout what you think a white man’s gonna do! What difference does it make?
—Makes a big difference, said Amber. No matter how the cut goes or comes, the Dreamer’s gonna get caught if you the one running her down. But Jeff Boy, he ain’t but a child. The constable ain’t gonna find him. He’s out here, surely. You said it yourself. And if somebody’s gonna find him, surely you can do it.
—Don’t tell me you care ’bout a white boy so much you want me to find him over the Dreamer. I seen how you talk ’bout her, wanting her in nature’s way and all. You think I’m stupid?
—What you seeing is true, Amber said. ’Cept I’m heading straight over the Devil’s back now, no matter what. Prison’s ahead for me, or a hangman’s noose. You know it. And the Dreamer, well, like I said, there ain’t no place in the world she can run that you can’t find her. If I’m going to prison or God’s kingdom, I want to do the best I can for everybody I cares about. I done my best for the Dreamer. God willing, I will meet her by and by. But if Jeff Boy ain’t found, my nephew Wiley’s likely going to prison, and my sister Mary’s sold down south, and Missus, she’s down the river too. She can’t run the place alone. They’re my family in this world. All of ’em.
Denwood listened in silence, then said, You sow an awful lot of sugar with your thinking, son, and I don’t believe it.
—Wanna hear a dream, sir? Amber said excitedly. The Dreamer told me. She dreamed of tomorrow. You wanna hear it?
The fog was rolling in, thick now, and Denwood, staring out of the burrow of the tree into the night, was tired and confused. This was not what he had in mind. But he could not resist. He supposed it would be just a matter of riding to Spocott’s plantation in the morning and dipping in the old man’s copper trousers once more for a few more chips. He’d done it before. Besides, there might be a clue in this Negro’s story as to the girl’s whereabouts.
—Why not? he said.
Amber drew his knees up to his chest, his eyes glistening in the firelight as he spoke:
There’s a great big camp meeting, where thousands of people are all gathered up. So many you can’t imagine, stretching as far as the eye can see. And a colored preacher stands before them. He’s dressed in the oddest suit of clothing you can imagine—I reckon it’s of his time—and he speaks to a magic pipe that carries his voice for miles. He uses words I can’t describe: powerful, righteous words. He preaches about the rights of man. All mankind. And the people, colored and white, red and yellow, man and woman, they hold hands and weep at his words. And when they holler at him to go on, the colored preacher hears them hollering and gets so excited, he reaches into the past and shouts a song from our own time! A song that ain’t been sung yet…
Sitting forward, staring into the fire, Amber sang the words slowly, to his own melody:
Way down yonder in the graveyard walk
Me and my Jesus going to meet and talk
On my knees when the light pass’d by
Thought my soul would rise and fly
—I don’t know the rest, he said. That’s all she dreamed. She said more was coming to her each time she dreamed it.
Denwood stared into the night, watching the fog billow past and stake its claim on the woods. He felt as if he were dreaming himself.
—What is so great about your God, he asked, that colored folks will take a heap of garbage from him? They just about fall out of the box for him. Take Him at His word while he lets your children die and lets y’all be sold like dogs; your God takes all your tomorrows away, and still you dreamin’ about Him in your songs and tomorrows?
—Why not? Amber asked.
Denwood shifted and sighed. I killed a man today, he said. Killed him on his horse, even though he owned his tavern outright. Wasn’t the first I killed either, he said ruefully. What
—When you leave your mother’s womb, all the goodness is throwed out of you, Amber said. That’s man. But God lays plans for emptying your storehouse of evil. He will fill you with good if you let Him. Yes, sir, Mr. Gimp, He’ll forgive the worst sin.
—My son was but six years old, Denwood said. I put him in a basket with a six-legged dog and he died six days later. What does your God think on that?
—But Jesus yet rose, didn’t he? Amber said.
—So my son’s gonna rise from the dead?
—No, sir. But he ain’t selling snake oil to poor folks or running the Trade or killing the bay out here, selling God’s oysters hand over fist, the Devil keeping score. He ain’t had time to sin. He’s pure as a snow angel. God gived your boy a soul to save and then saved it for him. He ain’t never going to grow old, your boy. He’s living forever.
Denwood stared into the darkness, the flickering candle illuminating his long face.
—Don’t a day pass when I don’t think ’bout him, he said.
—I s’pect that, sir. Surely do. I got no children. But I think about my missus and her little Jeff Boy. Fact is, she could’ve sold me off after Mr. Boyd died. Her pa wanted it, but she wouldn’t. One reason, I suspect, is ’cause me and Jeff ’s close. Fact is, if it wasn’t for him, I’d be—
Amber stopped. His tongue had gotten too loose.
Denwood eyed him dully. You’d be what? he asked.
—I’d be up the road a piece.
Denwood pulled out his saddle blanket and rolled it around himself.
—All right, then, he said. If you feel so strong on it, tomorrow we’ll take a day and hunt for the kid. Maybe it’ll help me. I’m going to hell in spite of redemption anyhow.
liz’s discovery
The rain came full force just before the dawn’s light. Patty Cannon, still clad in oilskin and a wide-brimmed hat, her broken arm in a homemade sling and still wearing only one boot, clopped steadily through the downpour. The old logging trail had given way to mud, but she was sure she wasn’t far from a lean-to that some long-ago muskrat hunter had left behind. She had spotted it at the end of the logging trail the previous day, right where the trail crossed Blackwater Creek and continued to the last piece of land on the Neck that bordered Sinking Creek. She found it in the dawn’s light, tethered her horse in the rain, shook the water off her jacket, and stepped inside to wait.
Several minutes later the sound of a horse traveling up the road brought her to her feet. Stanton dismounted, left the horse standing unsteadily in the mud, and hurried inside.
—Where’s Joe? Patty asked.
—I was gonna ask you, Stanton said. Joe said to meet him at the Indian burial ground, wherever that is. I got a skiff ride from Cambridge City and worked my way backwards over that old logging trail. Is this it?
He glanced down at Patty’s unshod foot, then at her arm. What happened to your arm?
She ignored the question. Odgin got stabbed by a rascal nigger, she said.
—Hurt?
—Not too bad. I let Hodges run him to a doctor up in Reliance, she said. No use telling him the truth, that Odgin was dead and Hodges had run off. Stanton, she decided, was not trustworthy enough to impart that information to. She might have to kill him before the day was done, the way things were going.
—The girl done it?
—Naw. Some kind of nigger bastard. A beast. I’m gonna mount his head on a stake when I get him. What you doing here?
Stanton stifled a shudder. The old girl was furious. He had never seen her this way. Calm mad. Dead in the eyes, a face that looked murkier than the swamps that surrounded them, wearing only one boot, looking unreal. She seemed not to notice her missing boot.
He hastily explained. Joe sent me to the blacksmith’s in town to see if the girl was hiding there. Time I come out and gone to the dock where he was, he was gone. He left a note at the Tin Teacup that said meet him out here. He was following a nigger on foot, nigger from Miss Kathleen Sullivan’s farm yonder.
Patty’s eyes lit with interest.
—Did they, now? What’s his name?
—Don’t know, but Joe said he was harboring the girl.
—I knew it, Patty said grimly. What about the missus?
—What missus?
—The boy’s missus. Was she in on it?
—Joe didn’t say nothing about no boy and no missus.
Patty looked down the trail grimly, trying to decide whether to go back to Kathleen’s house and check there first. She decided against it. The woman was ornery and there was some kind of ruckus going on there, probably because her nigger was missing. She had noted yesterday, out on Blackwater Creek and in the Choptank beyond it, several bungies sailing to and fro, searching. Oystering boats, she knew, did not normally sail back and forth. They normally sailed to an oyster bar and stayed, dredging or tonging. Also, among the boats she recognized out there was Constable Travis’s boat. Something was afoot.
—We got to move fast, she said. The law’s around. I think they got a search party out on the water looking for somebody. I think I seen the constable’s boat out there.
Stanton’s eyes widened in alarm. I thought Constable Travis was in your pocket, he said.
—If they squeeze him, he ain’t worth chicken shit. He’s gonna watch his own tail. Something ain’t smooth round here. It’s swilling bad.
—Maybe these Dorchester niggers ain’t worth it, Stanton said. Maybe we ought to do what Joe said: cut now and take our losses.
One glance from Patty was enough. You ain’t taken no loss, has you? she said.
—I’m paid up.
—Let’s go, then.
She placed her hat on her head, led her horse outside into the pouring rain, and tried to mount it, but with her broken arm she had difficulty.
—How’d that happen? Stanton asked.
—Be quiet and help me up, she said.
He complied, then asked, Where we going?
—The old Indian burial ground. It’s not far from here.
Stanton mounted and followed. They traveled about a mile down the old logging trail before they noticed a spot to the left where the bushes and grass were pushed about, as if someone had ridden in them. Patty slowed, took a quick look around, then spurred her mount down the trail, but Stanton, an old waterman, had long experience trapping muskrats in swamps like this one. The swamp here, he knew, was a muskrat kingdom. A muskrat trapper, he thought, might push his way past that thicket to get to the low-lying water around it where the muskrats made their homes. But he would not, Stanton was sure, make such a mess that it would scare game away, which was what this was.
—Wait a minute, he said.
He pulled off the trail and rode in several steps, reading the crushed grass and thickets. He followed the disturbed undergrowth, gently urging his horse through the six-inch-deep water while Patty sat impatiently on her mount on the trail, watching him till he was out of sight. After a few moments she heard him shout.
She gingerly made her way in, dismounting to lead her horse through the last few yards of brush, taking care not to step on anything sharp with her bare foot. She found Stanton standing in a clearing, staring at the ground, where Joe Johnson lay on his side, half submerged in black, muck-filled marsh water, his arm fully extended over his shoulder as if he were scratching his back while sleeping, his head nearly underwater.
Patty gasped, coughed, then spun away, her face furrowed in silent rage. She pulled her horse by its reins and staggered back towards the trail, leaning on a tree for a moment, then walking farther away, her head bowed. Stanton followed.
—You all right, Patty?
She waved him away. When she looked up again, she was calm and deliberate, and Stanton had to look away himself. The face had taken on a kind of grey pallor, like a body that had been left in the bay too long. Oystermen called it “bay face.” It usually described a man who’d had a horrible life change and was waiting on the
—Take them boots off him, she said. I can’t do it myself.
Stanton did as he was told. He handed the boots to Patty. She splashed over to a patch of trees and mud, found a tree root sticking out of the water, and sat down on it. She removed her one boot. As Stanton helped her squirrel her feet into Joe’s boots, daylight pushed through gaps in the trees above, and he noticed the glint of a familiar-looking oyster-shell-handled pistol lying in the shallow water near the base of the tree where Patty sat. He reached in, picked it up, and held it high. The handle was split in half, and one of the barrels was blown open.
—I seen this gun before, he said.
Patty, still seated, took it from him and held it up, regarding the handle and blown barrel in the morning light. She nodded.
—Seems like old Gimp’s busted his pepperbox blowing Joe’s brains out, she said.
Stanton looked over his shoulder nervously at the woods around them. What we gonna do? he asked. He looked around, checking the woods behind him and in front. You wanna bury Joe, Patty?
Patty, staring at the Gimp’s gun, seemed distant.
—Patty, Stanton said, you wanna bury him?
—No, I’m just gonna shoot him, she said. Somebody else can bury him.
—I mean Joe!
Patty glanced down at Joe and slowly rose, sloshing over to her horse, treading softly, trying out her new boots. These hurt at the heel, she said. She turned to head out of the swamp and back to the trail.
—Patty, ain’t you gonna bury your kin here?
Patty frowned. My daughter was the one who tucked him in bed every night, she said, not me. But you right. Joe was a good drummer. Anybody else, I’d go through his pockets and take his belt and them leather riding pants too. But I’ll leave him right there. Even though he’s likely got twenty or thirty or maybe even fifty dollars tucked up in one of them pockets of his.