The cops went out. My mother sighed and put her feet up. Ab brought in the salad. The newspapers said police were interviewing leaders of every black advocacy organization they could find. “Let’s go for a walk,” Ab said.
“You still go walking?” I asked.
“Every day. How else you think I’ve lived so long?”
“Wild sex?”
Ab grinned. “Haven’t had much of that for a month or two.”
Ab led me west on Reynolds Street and across George’s Square. We stopped for a drink in the water fountain. We had gone about three hundred yards, and it took close to ten minutes. Never mind. He was walking. We were outside. We came up Trafalgar, east on Randall, and walked to his home.
He took me inside. His small home was perfectly organized. The kitchen was spotless. Books leaned neatly in one direction on his shelves. “There’s something I want to show you,” he said.
He took me to his room. He had a small, single bed raised high above the floor on a cedar box that he’d built himself. He’d built drawers in the box. Ab pulled out one of them. He removed a plastic bag, opened it, and pulled out some dried yellow papers.
“Open them carefully,” Ab said. “These pages have been sealed. They are 136 years old.”
“What are they?”
“Your father liked to talk about Langston Cane the First. The one who came up here on the Underground Railroad. Remember?”
“Sure I remember, Ab. I’ve been digging around. I’m trying to write about this stuff.”
“I heard. That’s why I’m showing this to you.”
Ab broke the wax seal on an envelope signed Langston Cane, African Methodist Episcopal Minister, Oakville. “Your grandfather asked me to respect this seal for fifty years.”
“When was that?”
“Almost seventy years ago.”
“How come you never showed it to my dad?”
“Your father is a good man, and I love him. But he’s a man who does things. Likes to keep busy. You don’t give something like this to a man with no time on his hands.”
“You could have shown this to me a long time ago.”
“You weren’t ready.”
I took the materials to Ab’s kitchen table. He had made it from cherry wood. It was dark, smooth, and lustrous. I opened up the pages. There were two documents.
African Methodist Episcopal Church, Oakville,
August 1, 1859.
Accused: Langston Cane
Residence: Oakville
Occupation: Rat Catcher and Stone Hooker Accusation: Bigamy Plea: Not entered
Hearing Date: Set for August 15, 1859.
N.B. Mr. Cane has been made aware by Rev. Caldwell of the said charge. He has been informed that he is to stand trial in the church. And that, if convicted, he could be excommunicated. Mr. Cane refused to speak of accusation. Displayed anxiety. Lowered his eyes, rubbed his hands ceaselessly.
Particulars: Langston Cane of Oakville is said to be married to two women. Mr. Cane is known by members of this congregation to have married Matilda Tylor in Oakville on October 11, 1852, in the Oakville A.M.E. Church. Three sons are issued from this union, all named Langston Cane. Mrs. Cane and the three like-named sons live with the accused.
A certain Jean Simms of Hamilton alleges that she, too, is married to said Langston Cane. She claims that he has been supporting her for a year. She claims they lived apart because Mr. Cane said he had to undertake constant business travel. No children issued from their union. Jean Simms was unable to produce a marriage certificate.
A Mr. J. Yardley, a neighbor to Jean Simms, traveled to Oakville to discuss the purchase of lake stones, and recognized the accused from his frequent trips to the home of the said Simms. Mr. Yardley made investigations as to Langston Cane’s activities in Oakville, and determined that the accused was married to Matilda Tylor.
The Mayor G. K. Chisholm was out of town, and Chief Constable George J. Sumner was traveling to Kingston, so Mr. Yardley brought details of his discovery to A.M.E. Minister Caldwell.
Signed,
J. Worstell, A. Adams, B. Beck
Deacons of the A.M.E. Church
The second document was dated August 15, 1859. It was called Trial in Absentia of Langston Cane. It gave the same information as the first document, but added:
Given that Mr. Cane has fled Oakville, and that his whereabouts cannot be ascertained, these proceedings have been stayed out of respect for Mrs. Cane (in Oakville) and her three sons.
A collection has been raised for the assistance of Mrs. Cane (Oakville). Mrs. Cane has been forewarned, in the most humane terms possible, that, should the said Langston Cane return, he should face expulsion from the A.M.E. congregation and possible arrest by Chief Constable G. J. Sumner.
Signed,
J. Worstell, A. Adams, B. Beck
Church Deacons
Aberdeen Williams gave me more details. His grandfather had been a friend of Langston Cane, the accused bigamist. They had come together to Oakville on a schooner operated by Robert Wilson in 1850.
There were no photos of my great-great-grandfather, Langston Cane the First. No sketches. He was of medium height, Ab had heard, and “as darkly complected as they get.” He had a chest like a barrel. As a fugitive slave, he had apparently spent some nights hiding in damp, coffin-like conditions near Canandaigua in upper New York State.
Ab’s grandfather, Paul Williams, worked for years as an apprentice to a blacksmith. Langston Cane quickly established himself as a rat catcher in Oakville. Many of the houses and grain storage facilities near the Oakville harbor had rat problems, and Cane was said to be ingenious in his use of traps and ferrets. When the rat catching was slow, Cane worked as a stone hooker. Shale lay in great abundance on the floor of Lake Ontario. The long, flat stones were perfect for house foundations and walkways. The shale was attractive, but cheap. Stone hooking was hard work. Hooking lake-bed stones in shallow water and dragging them close to the surface was no great feat. But breaking the water surface and lifting the rocks up onto a scow could break a man’s back. It was risky business. The scows were frequently overloaded, and prone to tipping in storms. Schooner captains scoffed at stone hookers, and thought of them as buffoons on the lake. But they had courage — no one could take that from them.
Langston Cane was not a church-going man. He took ale, when it was offered, and had a sweet tooth, especially for fruit. Aberdeen had heard that my great-great-grandfather was a womanizer. He married Matilda Tylor. She had come to Oakville as a fugitive and found work as a cook on Captain Wilson’s schooner.
Ab said Langston Cane the First was involved in a secret meeting before he fled Oakville. Ab’s grandfather knew about it because he, too, had attended the meeting, which included John Brown and Captain Wilson. Early the next morning, Cane was seen riding in a horse and buggy with a furtive, silent, long-bearded white man with unflinching blue eyes. Ab’s grandfather said this was the famous John Brown. Aberdeen couldn’t substantiate talk that Cane had died in Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. His grandfather argued to the death that Langston may have done his wife wrong, but that he was a good man. On the morning that Cane skipped town, he left Matilda a pile of gold coins sufficient to sustain her for two years.
“So what happened to Matilda?” I asked. Ab knew only that she had returned with her sons to Maryland seven years later, when the Civil War ended.
The next morning, there were more cops milling about my parents’ house. My mother got a sympathetic call from Norville Watson’s wife. My mother wished her well, too, and got off the phone. My mother hated telephones.
Ab came over with Belgian croissants. Ten of them, still warm, in a paper bag. He fixed coffee, which only he and the cops drank, sliced oranges, unveiled a chunk of three-year-old Gouda cheese from Prince Edward Island, and laid out the food for us.
Robert Hay, the holdup squad inspector, whispered: “Who is this guy, wandering in and out of your home, bringing food, cooking, looking
as if he’s four hundred years old?”
“Ask him,” said my brother, who had arrived during the night. “He’s a form of intelligent human life.”
“Go ahead, ask him,” I teased the cop. “He may understand English.”
“Okay,” Hay said. “Who are you, mister?” “I’m the one who told you yesterday that Langston Cane is still in Oakville. Are you listening to me yet?” “Not this again,” Hay said.
“I hope you folks are knocking on doors,” I said.
“Give me a break. There are a hundred thousand people in this town. You want us to knock on every door?” Hay turned back to face Aberdeen. “What makes you so sure Cane is in Oakville?”
“Because Watson is here, too,” Ab said. “Like Dr. Cane said, you’re barking up the wrong tree, looking for black militants.”
Hay left us and came back an hour later with an announcement.
“Africa First has claimed responsibility for your father’s abduction. They say he has ‘proved cowardly in the face of demands for black Equality.’ They are still insisting on money and the release of prisoners. But they leave no way for us to reach them.”
Ab said he was going out for a walk.
“Don’t talk to any media,” Hay told him. “Don’t talk to anyone. This is confidential. Is that clear?”
Ab turned around slowly. “I changed Langston Cane’s diapers,” he said quietly. “I had his interests in mind before you were born, and I’ll be thinking about him long after this case is solved.” He left the house.
“He’s the best-looking old man I ever saw,” Hay said.
I stood up to join Aberdeen outside. Hay opened his mouth to tell me something, and then thought the better of it and remained quiet.
I drove Ab in my mother’s car down to King and Trafalgar. We got out to walk along King to Dunn. A warm breeze blew off the lake. Ab wanted to look at the old houses again. He knew every home on the block. At one point or another, he’d been called to fix something in every one of them. He and Renata had worked in the old Turner home on the corner. When he was a boy, Ab said, he sold quarts of strawberries from door to door on this street. First he picked them for one cent per quart. Then he was allowed to keep another three cents for every sale he made. Ab sold so many strawberries in Oakville that he could close his eyes and tell you the color of every door on King Street.
“You ever lay your head down in a strawberry patch?” Ab asked.
“No.”
“You should. You don’t want to die without having done that. It’s a light, sweet smell. You put your head down on the straw and have the impression there are strawberries right in your nose. I have only had one woman in my lifetime, Langston. Her name was Evelyn Morris. And the first time we lay side by side was in a strawberry field. I’ve been thankful for strawberries ever since. I only knew her for a few years, son. And she wasn’t really the woman for me. I guess that’s why it never worked out. But I’ve always been thankful for strawberries. And I’ve always remembered the softness of her skin. I can still feel it now, on the tips of my fingers.”
Aberdeen pointed to a sprawling house with a widow’s walk on the second floor. “That’s where the Turners used to live.”
I told Ab that I had read in one of my grandfather’s diaries at Mill’s house that Bob Turner tried to help defuse the Ku Klux Klan incident.
“You got that right, boy. Over there, that pink door, behind the poplar tree? The Smiths used to live there. He owned the bakery. I was in and out of that bakery all the time. And the next house? Blue door? The mayor used to live there He was a lawyer, too. The mayor had a fondness for Negro gals. I guess I should say ‘black,’ shouldn’t I? They change the word on us every generation, and I can’t keep up any more. Anyway. I never understood how the mayor could carry on with a Negro gal and have nobody up in arms about it, even though the whole town was in the know. Yet there I was, planning to marry Evelyn, and the whole world started shaking. Even your grandmother Rose didn’t want to see us tie that knot. Rose. I loved that woman, Langston. I have to tell you, I did love her.”
I nodded. We walked some more. Ab couldn’t stop talking.
“Hey. That green door. Wait a minute. I don’t recognize that car in the driveway. Langston, you ever seen that blue Volvo before? Course not, you spend about as much time in Oakville as I do in California. Stop walking, son. I want to look at that blue Volvo again. You know who used to live here? Dr. Jonathan Philippe Winston. He let everybody know that Philippe was with one l and had two p’s, like the French. He was real hoity-toity. That was a term my sister, Rennie, always used. She used to say Rose was real hoity-toity. I can’t walk fast, but I still got my eyes. Is that a footprint in the garden? Around here, people don’t step in gardens. I don’t know who lives here any more. Must be renters. They had a For Rent sign up, not long ago. Lemme see that footprint. Here. Just let me get up here on these driveway stones a little more. Langston, somebody stepped on this iris. An iris is a precious flower. And someone has stepped on it. I’m gonna go knock on that door.”
“And say what, Ab? ‘By the way, have you abducted anybody lately?’“
“The windows are all shut,” Ab said. “The drapes are closed.” I sighed.
“Where’s your curiosity?” Ab said. “You don’t wake up and get it at ninety, you know. Curiosity is like a garden, my boy. Needs cultivating. Indulge an old man. Get behind that car. Get down out of sight. I’m gonna knock on that door.”
It took Aberdeen Williams the better part of a minute to walk up the stone driveway, negotiate the six steep steps to the door, and knock. He knocked. He rang. He knocked again. I peered up over the car and saw the door open. There was a chain on it.
Aberdeen Williams started talking to a face past the chain. People in Oakville didn’t talk through chains in the middle of the day. I got down lower — too low to see through the windows of the car. Just in case. There was no movement in the street. No cars. No pedestrians.
I heard Aberdeen’s voice, although I couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying, something about the garden, something about gardening.
I heard a cough. I heard a shout. The cough was Aberdeen’s, but the shout wasn’t. The shout was my father’s. It came from inside the house. The chain rattled, the door opened, the door slammed, and I heard nothing more.
I didn’t move for a minute. The driveway pebbles dug into my knees. If I got up and ran, someone would see me. Someone was surely posted at that window, watching to see if anyone had noticed the tussle. I waited five minutes. I waited ten. Nobody would keep watch for ten minutes after the event. Would they? They’d watch for two, or three, or five, and they’d back away. They’d have things to talk about. Things to argue about. People were coming. Not from the house. From the sidewalk, on the other side of the Volvo. Talking. I waited for them to pass the Volvo. I got up quickly and joined two middle-aged women who were power-walking, arms pumping, breathing audibly.
“Excuse me. Somebody’s been kidnapped in there. I need to get to a phone. Do you live around here?”
“Let’s go, Betty,” one said to the other. “Please, mister, just leave us alone.” They crossed the street. I ran down the street to the car, drove straight home, and got all the cops in a complete panic. I hadn’t even taken note of the house number or the license plate number of the Volvo. Hay started asking me a hundred questions. I babbled a few answers and then said, “Just get the hell over there. I’ll talk to you on the way.”
Sean walked into the room. He had no idea what was going on. “Lang, you got a call. It’s Mill, from Baltimore.”
“Whoever the hell Mill is, she can call back later,” Hay said. “We’re out of here. Come on. Move it.” Hay made a call from his cell phone. He set up the scene. Cruisers were to pull along the streets perpendicular to King.
“Ab was pulled into a house midway between Dunn and Trafalgar,” I told Hay.
Into his cell phone, Hay said other cruisers were to go onto Front St
reet, which was parallel, and to the south, and still others onto the streets to the north. They were all to get in place. Go go go now. No sirens.
We drove down to King and Trafalgar. Hay told an officer to drive by the house. She came back with the license plate number of the Volvo and the house number, and said the blinds were still shut. A uniformed officer knocked on the doors nearest 398 King, into which Aberdeen had disappeared. Neighbors were asked to leave their houses by their back doors. Tactical police and sharpshooters were brought into position. Inspector Hay and his assistants took over a house a few doors down from 398 King. They set up in the living room by the window overlooking the street. I joined them.
Hay dialed the number for the house at 398. The phone rang once. It rang twice.
“Hello.”
“This is Inspector Robert Hay, Special Abductions Unit, Canadian Intelligence Bureau. We have a hundred and fifty police officers surrounding your house. Let me speak to the person in charge, please.” Hay clicked on the speakerphone button.
“One minute,” he was told.
“Hello,” someone else said.
Hay repeated his intro. “We’d like you to come out of the house with your hands up.” “No way.”
“I’d like to speak to one of your captives. How about Dr. Cane?”
“He’s not here.”
“How about the old man? Aberdeen Williams.”
“Just a minute.”
“Hello.” That was Ab’s voice.
“Aberdeen, this is Inspector Hay. We met at the Canes’ house. Are you all right?” “Very well, thanks.” “Are Cane and Watson with you?”
We heard Ab ask, “Can I answer that?” Someone took the phone from him.
“You spoke to him. We want the money. We want you to let us out. In our vehicle. We take Watson. You get the others.” “What is your name, sir?” “You think I’m going to tell you that?” “Are you a soldier, sir?”
“No more questions. You’ve got an hour to throw us the money. A hundred thousand. Small bills.”
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