by Zakes Mda
Quigley felt that his wedding had been defiled and turned into a circus both by the uncle outside and the minister inside.
With the encouragement of his best man he went through the service with stoicism.
They had been inducted by Birdman. And for four years they had worked tirelessly as conductors of the Underground Railroad. They had crossed the Ohio River on many occasions to steal slaves on the other side. Or to assist those who had escaped up to the river to cross to freedom in skiffs. They had had close shaves with the law: decades-old slave laws stipulated that blacks were not permitted to reside in Ohio unless they could prove they were free. Abednego did not have any such proof. Nor did the countless fugitives they conducted to safety. In the very free state of Ohio it was a criminal offense to harbor blacks or to aid a fugitive. Once, Quigley had been kidnapped by a party from Stewart for the crime of aiding and abetting fugitives, and all in Tabler Town had been up in arms as a result. The Stewart folks had to release him. Slave hunters were fearful of Tabler Town as a result.
And now on this beautiful day here were Quigley and Abednego standing on the banks of the Ohio River at Gallipolis, looking helplessly as the steamboat took Birdman away. He had been captured in the woods in Meigs County. Quigley and Abednego suspected that William Tobias had something to do with it, although admittedly they had not heard of Tobias for some months, or even years. For some reason he was lying low. If it was not Tobias who captured their mentor, destroyed his old manumission papers that he used in Ohio to prove he was a legal black and dragged him to the steamboat in chains, then it was one or other of the slave hunters who were always lurking around, sniffing like bloodhounds and ready to pounce on any black they came across. They had taken to capturing free blacks to sell in Virginia or Kentucky. But most importantly, they were always on the lookout for Underground Railroad conductors, who were lucrative bounty. Everyone knew there was a big price on Birdman’s head. Even as Quigley and Abednego stood there, watching the steamboat sail away, shaking in anger, they knew that they were not safe at all for there was a two thousand dollar reward—money raised by plantation owners—for the assassination of the Underground Railroad operators.
The message came too late to them. They were working in their father-in-law’s orchard when a young rider came with the news that Birdman had been captured and was held hostage in a house in Athens. Without wasting time they took their guns and rode to Athens. They planned to invade the house and save their mentor. But they were too late. He was already being transported to Gallipolis. There was no time to go back to Tabler Town to warn their families that they would be away, perhaps for a number of days. In any event their wives and young children understood the nature of their work. They rode toward Gallipolis, hoping to catch the wagon transporting the captive even before it got to Pomeroy. They never did.
When they arrived in Gallipolis it was too late. The steamboat was already sailing away. Birdman was going to be sold as a slave in Kentucky. All they could do was to curse the steamboat captain. They knew him very well. They had often bribed him to take runaways to the Ohio side. The scoundrel worked both ways. He was sometimes bribed by slave hunters to take their captives to the Virginia side of the river. The bastard worked for the highest bidder.
Abednego and Quigley had on many occasions recovered abducted blacks in steamboats before they sailed away. It pained them greatly that they failed to recover their mentor.
In the weeks and months that followed the two men went on with their daily lives. Yet deep inside each one of them was a deep pain that could not be healed. Abednego gradually withdrew from the Underground Railroad and focused on the orchards and on experimenting with pawpaw. Quigley built a whiskey still and rode the countryside flogging his moonshine made of corn and wheat; or negotiating for the freedom of human property in exchange for great quantities of his potent whiskey with the Christianized Cherokees across the river who had adopted the European habit of buying and selling Africans. He was relentless in his quest for the freedom of others. He was also relentless in another quest: that of redeeming his soul. He became part of the Great Awakening, attending religious revivals that were sweeping the Appalachians, screaming the name of the Lord at nightlong Methodist and Baptist vigils without discrimination.
His active participation in religious revivals did not stop him from dabbling in the art of predicting the future using his red and white scroll whose inscriptions he continued to struggle to interpret. But he told people whatever they wanted to hear and therefore he spread happiness all around.
When he returned to Athens County from his quests he helped his good wife, who was now running a full-time Underground Railroad station on the outskirts of the city. Not only did he become an esteemed stationmaster, but he bore witness whenever it was necessary to do so. Black people could not bear witness in cases involving white people. Even free blacks who had been captured by slave hunters could not bear witness on their own behalf against their white captors. They needed a white person to testify on their behalf; otherwise they were denied legal protection. This, of course, emboldened slave hunters who defied the laws against kidnapping free blacks. Quigley always stepped forward to bear witness for the free blacks. He was such a regular at the courts that the judges derisively dubbed him a “professional witness” and placed little or no weight on his testimony.
In the evenings Quigley and Abednego sat on the porch of Harry Corbett’s house smoking their pipes. At these moments they did not speak much to each other. Only the smoke rings that floated above their heads spoke of their sorrow. At odd moments one of them would remember something from the very distant world of Fairfield Farms. Then they would ruminate about it. And after some more silence one would provide some piece of wisdom. Like when Quigley related some titbit from the Underground Railroad grapevine: Mrs. Fairfield was rumored to have manumitted her exotic slave and run away with him to Ohio. Since the runaway lovers could not feel safe anywhere in the state, they were en route to Canada. After digesting the news with a few puffs and a number of lazy smoke rings Abednego observed that the hunting season would provide particularly tasty deer that year.
One day, after a particularly long silence, Abednego jumped up and said: “We gotta do something!”
“’Bout what?” asked Quigley.
“Birdman…Nicodemus. You was right, Niall. We gotta find Tobias.”
“Yeah,” agreed Quigley. “None of us gonna be top dollar till we do something about the bastard.”
It was not easy to find William Tobias. People had not heard of him for many years, which was rather strange because he had been a flamboyant fellow who was in love with his own booming voice and was fond of riding the paved streets with a throng of bodyguards in red and black uniforms that resembled those of some storybook military guard. And then one day, poof, William Tobias was not there!
It took a lot of patience to find him living a frugal life in the town of Ripley, Ohio. Clearly the man was enamored of the Ripley name since his origins were in a town of a similar name in Virginia. The two men could not understand how Tobias had fallen on hard times since slave hunting, even in those dying years of slavery, was still a lucrative business. When they found him in a run-down house he was in conference with another man who soon left on horseback. Quigley knew him immediately as one of the sons of the Reverend Rankin and wondered what a respected abolitionist and slave stealer was doing with a dirty man like Tobias.
Abednego was suddenly seized by a fit of anger, which he tried to control nevertheless. He remembered that face very well, although Tobias was now much grayer and the face had lost its luster and chubbiness. The man extended his hand to greet the visitors but Abednego could not bring himself to touch the hand that had murdered his brother. Quigley quickly withdrew his in solidarity.
Tobias did not know who the men were, but he invited them in and offered them his hospitality despite the obvious meagerness of his means. Even when the men introduced themselves their names d
id not mean anything to him. He assumed that they had come to join him for evening prayers or had some slave fugitive business to discuss.
“So how come you so poor if you still in that business?” asked Quigley.
Tobias laughed, and then said his guests were misunderstanding him. If they were looking for a slave hunter they had come to the wrong place. He had found the Lord, or the Lord found him, years ago. He was now a Quaker and an abolitionist. He was working in cahoots with the Rankin family and other Underground Railroad operators. That was why he had settled in Ripley by the Ohio River.
“Shite,” screamed Quigley, “you wanna make things difficult for us. We came to bloody do you in.”
“Why do you want to kill me?” asked Tobias.
“’Cause you killed my brother,” said Abednego. He did not say anything about Birdman. It was already obvious to both men that Tobias had nothing to do with Birdman’s capture. When it happened he was already a Quaker abolitionist.
“I don’t know your brother,” said Tobias.
Abednego took this as an indication that William Tobias was a callous liar who was now denying murdering his brother when he saw him do it with his own eyes. He hit him on the head with his Brown Bess, the flintlock musket that he used to carry during his conductor days but that had never fired a shot in anger. Tobias fell on the floor. He pleaded with the men to leave him alone for he had no money to give them. Whatever he owned had been given to the poor years ago. He had had a personal encounter with God. Because God’s spirit lived deep in his soul he was a pacifist and did not believe in any form of violence or in the taking of human life.
“Shut up, you son of a bitch,” yelled Abednego, blinded by rage. “You killed my brother Nicodemus in cold blood. You captured fugitives and took them back to slavery.”
At this time Tobias was on his knees, his shaking hands together as if in prayer.
“That was then; I am a changed man now. I renounced that sinful life years ago. I disavowed all belief in slavery and in the inferiority of any race of God’s people. I have the Inner Light. God has forgiven me.”
“That ain’t gonna bring my brother back,” said Abednego raising the musket and taking aim. Quigley was too slow to stop him from blasting the man’s head off. Quigley then whipped out his own pistol and shot Tobias’s corpse so as to share his friend’s guilt and to personally experience any pangs of conscience that were sure to attack Abednego when he regained his sanity.
The two mounted their horses and escaped. They knew that the abolitionists of Ripley would be up in arms searching for the killers, thinking that they were slave hunters. The two former slaves wept uncontrollably as they fled for their lives from the wrath of the abolitionists.
The killing of William Tobias did not heal the two men’s deep sorrow. Instead it became worse. They spent the remaining days of their lives sitting on the porch brooding about William Tobias. They had killed a man who did not fight back. A man who was kneeling down in prayer.
7
Ghost Orchids
Orpah. She will never know the things I have done with her in my dreams. In my sleeping and waking hours. In the day and in the night. Throughout the winter months right up to this scented season—the final weeks of spring. Even as I sit on a mound wailing like the wind for the child who is lying in a small white coffin my thoughts are racing up and down the contours of her naked body. It does not help that she is standing across from me in a black dress and black lampshade hat. I have never seen her in a dress before. It makes her look more voluptuous than she really is. She is holding a small bouquet of rambling roses. The serenity on her face is befitting to the occasion.
I try very hard to focus on the business at hand; namely, mourning the child in the coffin. I need to excel myself, for this is the first opportunity I have had in this community to mourn in public. The audience are the relatives of the deceased, which is the same as saying every adult in Kilvert. From the depths of my soul I draw deep and hollow groans, howls, whimpers and moans as rhythmic as they are harrowing. My lamentations are meant to help the grieving relatives who have been numbed by the pain of death come to terms with their sorrow. Through my tears I share their anguish with the rest of the world. For me this is a glorious moment. It’s been a while since I have mourned at a live funeral.
Ruth and Mahlon are here too. He brought a chair for her since she cannot stand for long periods. He dutifully stands behind her. She is in a navy blue dress with yellow flowers and a black and white fur pillbox hat. She has obviously sewn the dress herself and it hangs like a tent on her. He is in a rumpled gray suit, white shirt and a colorful tie with an image of Mickey Mouse. Even on this solemn occasion he has a smile, although it is fainter than usual. He holds a Bible with his left hand and Ruth’s ample shoulder with his right.
I am determined to save Orpah from him.
Even my favorite scoundrel is here. Instead of his usual khaki or denim shorts today he is formal in a blue dress-shirt, a very English tweed jacket, black pants and black brogues: all courtesy of the Kilvert Community Center, as is the case with everyone’s attire here. He would not have missed this funeral for all the beer in Athens. The self-satisfied smile on his face is well earned. He worked very hard to have me as a mourner here today. Sister Naomi, the mother of the deceased, was adamant that she was not going to have a professional mourner at her child’s funeral. Obed went twice to the pokey in Athens where she is awaiting trial to plead with her to let me mourn on her behalf and on behalf of the community. She declined the offer. She claimed that she was a good woman of the church and would not have unchristian practices, even if they were African, at her son’s funeral. Obed went to the other relatives, who gave differing views on the matter. One of them, a certain Ruth Quigley, pooh-poohed the whole idea out of hand. Professional mourning was not in the Bible, she said.
I was not surprised at Ruth’s attitude. She had said as much to me on a few occasions before. It started when she waged a campaign against me for defending and even hiding Orpah’s drawings. She had attacked me for performing heathen practices.
Although I am not an expert on the Bible I know that in my country it was used to oppress and to fight against oppression. It was used to justify apartheid on the one hand, and the liberation struggle on the other—by liberation theologists, for instance. When Obed and I were cracking our heads on how to convince Sister Naomi and her relatives I told him about the usefulness of the Bible in justifying anything you want to justify, and he thought that was the most exciting thing he had heard in a long time. The Bible would come in handy not only for this special occasion of the funeral, but for all his future dealings with his mother. Why, he could even have used the Bible to counter Ruth’s biblical attacks on his hand trembling business!
Obed went to Brother Michael and asked him to search the Bible for any mention of professional mourning. I had also told him that in my quest I had not only learned about the Greeks and the Romans, but had also enriched my own mourning from the practice of Old Egypt where funeral processions pulled by oxen were accompanied by professional mourners hired to wail and gnash their teeth. In today’s world I had learned how the Taiwanese employed professional mourners such as the Filial Daughters Band to wail, scream and create the kind of anguish the weary bereaved were too numb to generate for themselves. I had also been inspired by the children of Israel who, in biblical times, did not only lament and weep bitterly for their dead but employed professional mourners to add more anguish to their sorrow. Even the poorest of families in Old Israel saw fit to engage the services of at least one professional mourner. It was for this reason then that Obed thought Brother Michael as a preacherman of The Word would be the best person to find a passage in the Bible that would justify my wails at the funeral.
The best Brother Michael could come up with was a few words on the burial of a man called Stephen in the Acts of the Apostles 8:2: And devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him. Thi
s was good enough to take to Sister Naomi, and the fact that it had been Brother Michael who discovered the passage in the Bible convinced her that indeed God did want her to have great lamentation at her son’s funeral. And who was best suited to provide that if not a professional mourner? The sundry cousins and aunts and uncles had to follow suit whether they agreed with this or not. Sister Naomi was the mother, after all, even though it was her irresponsible behavior that led to the death of the child.
When Ruth heard that Brother Michael decreed lamentations would be allowed at the funeral, and that they would be led by the African shaman to whom she had given succor under her roof, she felt betrayed once more. Not so much by Brother Michael, from whom no good could be expected in any event since he was a known adulterer, but by the so-called African shaman who used to be her own African only a few months back. At first she thought she would boycott the funeral. But common sense prevailed. That is why she is here today. And that is why she kept on telling her friends just before the service began that she was only here for the child, who could not be blamed for the foolishness of his mother and of those who professed to be messengers of The Word of God.
Obed had to explain the rudiments of my mourning before Brother Michael took over the service, so that the people did not get the shock of their lives when they saw a strange figure in black top hat, cape and tight pants punctuating hymns and scriptural readings with strange noises. He manufactured some origins for me that dated back to the pharaohs of Egypt. That is why everyone is looking at me in awe as I go full throttle with lamentations that even I did not know were possible.
But the scoundrel did not stop there. In his own Kilvert vernacular he explained to the congregation that every one of them was totally inept at handling grief. That was just how human beings were created. Hence the need for a professional mourner. He reached for his mother’s Bible resting on her lap. Ruth was caught by surprise and at first instinctively held on to her holy book, but soon released it. Her son paged through the good book frantically while everyone looked expectant. He read a paragraph from a letter that St. Paul wrote to the Romans urging them to rejoice with those who rejoiced and weep with those who wept. Then he paged through again until he got to Jeremiah 9:17—Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider the call for the mourning women that they may come; and send for skillful wailing women, that they may come. Let them make haste and take up wailing for us, that our eyes may run with tears, and our eyelids gush with water.