Any Known Blood

by Lawrence Hill

  Ab read every book he could find in the Oakville library about the history of Africa. Then he started reading about the West Indies. He read about the slave trade. He read about Christopher Columbus. He came to Langston again.

  “Did you know that Columbus intentionally gave the blankets of his sick shipmates to South American Indians, to wipe them out?”

  Langston shook his head and admitted that he had never heard that.

  When Ab had exhausted thirty books in the Oakville library, he started having books ordered in from out of town. Langston grew weary of his questions. He told Aberdeen to take a course in history at the University of Toronto.

  “I could never do that,” Ab said.

  “You can do it. All you do at university is read books and listen to people talk, and then write about what you’ve been reading and hearing. You’d like it. And it’s not as hard as you think.”

  “I don’t think I could do that, Reverend.”

  While Langston mobilized the Negro community, handled complaints about the minstrel show cancellation, commenced studies at the University of Toronto, and continued writing and delivering weekly sermons, Rose started looking for a house. She walked every street in town. She headed west on Colborne and north on Kerr, just to be sure there was nothing up there she wanted. There wasn’t. Oakville’s poorest families lived there. Many were without electricity and running water.

  Rose walked east on Colborne, south along Navy, and east on King, but the houses close to Lake Ontario were too ostentatious. The Turner empire, as Rose called the mansion where Renata Williams worked, had sprawling gardens, a tennis court, a goldfish pond, a pagoda, and a barn. It was almost indecent. Rose didn’t need that much. And she had to be sensitive to her husband. He’d lose credibility if he moved into a mansion. Rose didn’t want a house right by the lake, anyway. Too many people went by. Walking, talking, riding, driving. At any rate, the houses closest to the water had rat problems. She’d read about it in the Standard. A rat story had shared the front page with the minstrel show business, several days earlier. That decided the matter. The Cane family would not live by the water.

  It took Rose only a day of walking and scouting to decide on a neighborhood: north of Colborne and east of Reynolds. It was quiet. It was modest. There were one or two colored families around. It was on the north edge of town, but only a five-minute walk from the center of things.

  She picked a house on Sumner Avenue, between Reynolds and Allan. It was a two-story wood house with yellow trim. It looked modest from the street. In the yard, a spruce tree had grown taller than the house. A large window fronted the living room. Simple, square pillars supported a verandah. That was good. Langston loved porches, but he’d never go for rounded pillars. Too evocative of plantation history. The unassuming front would win over Langston. But the spectacular rear satisfied Rose. The current owners had doubled the size of the house by expanding backward. On the second floor, there were three bedrooms near the front of the house and a large new master bedroom at the back. On the ground floor, the addition contained a room with a huge fireplace. The house had two bathrooms with running water and odorless toilets. There was a study on the ground floor. Rose would ask Ab to knock out the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. She believed a big kitchen brought people together to talk, and she wanted a family with lots of talking. Rose took her husband’s arm as they stepped in the front door.

  “Nice tree out front,” he said. “I like spruce trees. Nice porch, too. We’ll need two chairs.”

  “What do you mean, we’ll need two chairs? You haven’t looked inside yet. How do you know you’ll like it?”

  “I can tell.”

  Rose showed him every room in the house. And in every room, Langston said “Fine.” He spent an extra moment in the study. It seemed like a good place to do work. Reading. Writing. Thinking. This would be a house where great work could be done.

  “Buy it,” he said. “Ab will be moving with us, I expect.”

  “Of course,” Rose said. “I knew you’d want that. He’ll have the first bedroom at the top of the stairs. Overlooking Sumner. Mill will be in the next bedroom. The baby will be on the other side. And we’re in the back, overlooking the yard.”

  “Terrific.”

  Rose bought the house in September 1923 for seven thousand dollars. She set aside the remaining three thousand dollars from her mother’s gift for furniture, a car, and Langston’s tuition and book costs.

  Ab managed the move. All the people who owed him for gardening, cabinet making, and repair work were called upon to help. They packed boxes, loaded some on horse wagons and others in the vaults of cars, hauled them from the A.M.E. parsonage to the new home on Sumner Avenue, and unpacked them according to Rose’s instructions.

  Having paid for the house, Hazel Bridges invited herself up to help Rose prepare for childbirth. Langston enjoyed the new house, but he didn’t think it was worth having a mother-in-law around for two months. Ab stayed away from the house a great deal. He was around to cook and clean and help take care of Mill, but he slept elsewhere. He stayed out of Hazel’s hair.

  Langston dreaded his weekly trips to the University of Toronto. He telephoned — a phone had been installed in the new home, along with an electric refrigerator — from the university three times a day to check whether anything was stirring in the womb department.

  Rose and Langston planned in some detail how they would handle things during and after the delivery. Langston would suspend all obligations. If the baby was born on or near a Sunday, he’d bring in a backup minister. Ab would look after Mill. Langston would have nothing to do but be with Rose.

  “I don’t want you anywhere but with me. During, right after, and for days after that. I want you with me, husband. And I want you with the baby. I want you two bonded, from the start. I don’t want any of the troubles you’ve had with Mill. You’re going to diaper, hold, and cuddle him.”

  “How about if I hold and cuddle you?”

  “I won’t say no to that.”

  Rose’s waters broke at two o’clock in the morning on the first of December — three weeks before her due date.

  “Thank God it’s not a Sunday,” Langston said. “Sunday I would have had to preach. And thank God it’s not a Tuesday. Tuesday I would have had to go to university. And thank God it’s not a Monday. Shoot. It is a Monday. I’ll have to cancel an appointment.”

  “Shut up, dear pagan buzzard, and get me a towel. Hurry. What a mess.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Get me a towel.”

  “Here. Here’s my shirt. Now what?”

  “I don’t want your shirt, silly. Calm down, Langston. Look at me. Good. Calm down. Get me a towel and get mother to ring the doctor. Then walk over to Mr. Pearson’s door. He’s offered to drive me to the hospital, any time of day, come hell or high water. Now’s his chance.”

  “But it’s two in the morning. Shouldn’t we wait till dawn?”

  Rose opened her husband’s dresser drawer. She picked up his.45 automatic. She pointed it at him. “Move it, buster, before I shoot.”

  “That’s not funny. Put that away. That’s not for joking.” Rose laughed and put the gun away. Then she gasped. “Hurry. This is going to be a fast labor. I can tell.”

  “You sure you want to be here for this?” Dr. Wendy Evans asked Langston. He figured watching the delivery couldn’t be as bad as waiting outside with Hazel. So he nodded, yes. “Breathe, Rose,” the doctor said.

  Langston breathed with her. Huh, huh, huh, huh. They got her over that contraction. And another. And another. “I want to push,” Rose said.

  Dr. Evans examined her. Pushed her hand, starting with two fingers held close together, right up into that big black hole that resembled nothing Langston had ever seen before. Rose moaned long and hard, an animal, other-worldly moan of pain, when the doctor’s wrist disappeared in there.

  Rose would be ready soon, Dr. Evans said. She just had to ride thro
ugh a few more contractions. Those contractions lasted an hour and a half. Langston peeked out into the waiting room. Mill was asleep on Hazel’s lap. That was good. That meant Hazel couldn’t get up and try to barge in.

  Two hours after Rose got into the delivery room, Dr. Evans let her push.

  “When you push, don’t let go,” she said. “Hold your breath and push and don’t stop until I tell you, okay? It’s going to hurt, but you’re going to push right through it.”

  Rose looked at Langston and tried to grin. “What are you looking so pale for, you weak-kneed pagan buzzard? I’m the one having the baby. If you faint on me, I’m bringing mother in here.”

  “I’ve been in the trenches of France, dear, so I can handle a delivery once every few years.”

  Rose groaned. Her back arched. She clenched Langston’s hand and pushed, pushed, pushed, pushed. “Ow. That hurts. That burns. Me oh my, that burns. Water. Nurse. Doctor. I want water. Ow. Not again.”

  “Deep breath, Rose, deep breath and push. All right. Okay. I can see the head. I can see hair. Push.”

  More screaming. More hollering. All sorts of yellow and red muck coming out of that big black hole. Langston wondered if lovemaking would ever be the same.

  On the fourth push, a head popped out. Covered with filmy water, black hair plastered to its scalp. Soundless. Not a noise. Was it a boy? A girl? Was it alive? Wendy Evans leaned in and ordered Rose to push again, and took hold of the baby’s head, holding it beneath the jaws, and pulled while Rose pushed. She pulled and Rose pushed and the rest of the little one rode out in a wave of blood and water and white gunk and meconium. The baby had a penis and swollen balls.

  “It’s a boy,” Langston shouted.

  Rose likely would have told her husband he was mad to want to call their son Langston Cane the Fourth. How long could this go on? is what she probably would have said. Aren’t you folks getting tired of that name? But she was angry at her mother, who tried to boss everybody around the house. She scared Ab away, acted like an army general around Mill, and induced Langston to take every opportunity to get out of the house. So Rose agreed to the name to spite her mother, who preferred Joseph.

  The baby seemed to like his grandmother. He spent a lot of time in her arms. Langston allowed Hazel that time with her grandson since she’d booked a train trip home in one week. When the departure day came, Langston offered to escort Rose’s mother to Union Station. It would be easy for him, since he had to go to school that day anyway. No, thank you, she said. She preferred to travel alone. So Langston took the eight a.m. train to Toronto, and Hazel left one hour later.

  Baby Langston, as Mill called him, was passed from hand to hand at the baptismal party. He was darker than his mother, but not as black as his father. He was a fairly big baby, at seven pounds, fifteen ounces, and he was gaining weight fast. His legs looked like little tree trunks. He had a double chin and chipmunk cheeks. His fat little lower lip came to a point, like a beak, in the middle, just like his father’s. And eyes. What eyes. Whatever there was to see, Baby Langston devoured it. When he lay in bed between his parents, which his father frowned upon but Rose allowed from time to time, he would move his head back and forth, back and forth, inspecting his parents in turn. And he lived by a simple rule. If you put him down, he cried. If you picked him up, he stopped. Consequently, he spent a lot of time in a lot of people’s arms. Mill’s. Ab’s. Rose’s. Langston’s.

  Aberdeen began bringing Evelyn over for dinner. Evelyn was a trifle jumpy, Rose noted, but quite cute, and fond of Ab. She was slender, but with a healthy bosom, and had a smooth, clear complexion. She had a lively way of speaking when she relaxed, and liked to laugh. She knew how to listen, and to respond to conversation, and she seemed interested in Ab’s obsession about African and South American histories. Lately, Ab had started suggesting things that Rose found preposterous. She said nothing, because she didn’t wish to discourage Ab, who was devouring books with undying thirst. Ab actually suggested that Negroes from the West Coast of Africa — Cape Verde, Rose heard him say — had been the first to discover America. They had beaten Columbus by more than two thousand years. Rose heard Ab say that mud bricks, adobe houses, certain specialized musical instruments and feather work — all originating in West Africa — had been found in certain pre-Columbian South American Indian cultures.

  Rose wondered if opposing the minstrel show had been a big mistake. It had derailed Ab’s preoccupation with fixing broken things, and had flung him into the waters of pseudo history.

  “What is this?” Eric Small, the minister at Knox Presbyterian Church, handed the letter to Langston. Rose, holding Baby Langston, stood with her husband on the porch.

  “I don’t know, what is it?” Langston asked, opening the letter.

  “Who’s it from?”

  “Aberdeen Williams.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “Just read it.”

  It was addressed to Eric Small. Copies had been sent to four other church ministers, the mayor, and the head of the Oakville library.

  Dear Sirs,

  Given evidence that people of African origin sailed from the West Coast of Africa in intricate and powerful papyrus or reed boats and traversed the Atlantic Ocean in a westward direction, and given that predominating winds and currents would have assisted greatly in a trans-Atlantic crossing, and given that the most westerly coast of Africa is only 1,900 miles from Brazil as the crow flies, and given similarities too numerous to mention between South American and African artifacts, let it be acknowledged that the Negro Peoples were the first to discover America. After the Indians, that is.

  The point is, that Negroes beat Columbus by more than two thousand years.

  Be it respectfully proposed that our schools and governments and churches recognize the early Negro Adventurers on an equal footing with Columbus.

  Yours truly,

  Aberdeen Williams, Oakville

  P.S. I can provide numerous books and articles to back this up.

  “Has this man completely lost it?” Eric Small asked.

  “The ideas are interesting,” Langston said.

  Rose stared at her husband. “Not you, too?”

  “I’m not saying I believe it. But I’m not ruling it out.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Small said.

  “Is your grip on history so unerring that you can dismiss a theory without investigating it?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Small said.

  “No. But do you want to know how to get Aberdeen Williams off your back? He’s a little smitten. If you ignore him, he’ll just keep writing letters. What you want to do is defuse him. Send him a letter, thank him for his observations, and say that you’ll give them due consideration.”

  “Due consideration,” Small said. “Nice euphemism for the garbage bin.”

  “Well, say what you want. But thank him for his letter. That ought to satisfy him. Tell the mayor to do the same thing.”

  The next spring, Ab asked Langston if he had time for a long chat. They walked along the waterfront, passed the ice-cream store, and got a cone each. They asked for single-dip cones, but received double-decker scoops with chocolate sauce on top. Payment was refused — Ab had done some work recently in the back of the store. They started walking in town, but people kept stopping them to talk. Finally, they walked west on Colborne, crossed the bridge, continued on to Kerr, and headed south to the water reservoir. There was a walking path around it, about a third of a mile in circumference. It was abandoned. It was a beautiful evening. There were no bugs out yet. It was early May, and no people were in sight. They walked around and around the path.

  Langston had feared, initially, that Ab wanted to talk about his obsession with the Negro discovery of America. But he didn’t.

  “When we met,” Ab said, “remember how I surprised you by saying that I knew your grandfather had lived in Oakville?”

  “I do.”

  Ab said his own father had been bor
n in Oakville, and that his grandfather — like Langston’s grandfather — had come to Oakville as a fugitive slave. What is more, they had been brought across the lake by the same schooner captain, a man named Robert Wilson.

  Ab spoke of how his own grandfather had earned his living, and of how Langston Cane had earned his living — and a very good living at that — as a rat catcher and a stone hooker. He lifted shale off the bottom of Lake Ontario and sold it to people who wanted to lay foundations with admirable, solid, flat, inexpensive rock. Ab said he had heard these and other stories directly from his grandfather, who had lived till 1915.

  Langston asked why Langston Cane the First had left Oakville.

  “This is what I wanted to talk to you about,” Ab said. “You have opened my eyes to world history. You’ve helped me see the history of the Negro peoples of the world. I feel I must tell you something of your own family history. If you didn’t get it from me, you wouldn’t get it from anyone.”

  “What do you have to tell me?”

  “My grandfather, aside from being a blacksmith, was the A.M.E. Church sexton. He kept certain documents. He told me about them, but he kept them, too. When he died, I went through his materials, and I kept some of his papers. Among them were some A.M.E. Church documents concerning your grandfather.” Ab handed a package to Langston. “The set of papers in the broad envelope second from the top is the one that will be of greatest interest to you. It is the only one concerning your grandfather. The others are A.M.E. Church papers, but unrelated to his trial.”

  “Trial?”

  “Take them. Read them.”

  Langston spent two hours in his study, with the door shut. Rose asked to see him, and he asked her to wait. Mill asked him to put her to bed, and he told her he’d look in on her later.

  At ten o’clock that evening, Langston called Ab into his study.

  “These are very damaging papers,” he said.

  Ab said nothing.

  “They could do great harm to my family.” Ab remained silent.