by Wayne Grady
“Go ahead and pry. Safe from the massa, what I meant. It safer at night in the slave quarters than sleeping alone on the pantry floor or in the kitchen woodshed.”
Then why would Lucas not take the driver’s job, and get Benah out of Millican’s house? Unless he knew Millican would go back on his word, and Lucas would end up being a driver and still not have Benah. That sounded like Millican.
“We talked about slavery in New Harmony,” she said, “almost nothing but. New Harmony started by white people, but they abandon it and left they slaves behind, and the slaves stayed on and worked the land, and when I got there more ’n a hundred coloreds been living there nearly twenty years. Brother Joshua said we finished the social experiment.”
“I didn’t know that,” Moody said. He was glad she’d got around to talking about New Harmony, because Lucas might have been there. He didn’t seem to be anywhere else.
“We didn’t tell too many whites. The people all live in five communes. We in the Morning Star commune, that the horse and tobacco commune, because I worked with horses in Kentucky and James worked tobacco. Everyone did what we did. We all had stories about what we suffered and what we lost, a child, a husband, a mother, a finger or toe, brands on our cheeks, nicks in our ears, wales on our backs. And how we escape from the South, whether set free, bought free or run free, hiding in cane brakes or the woods, listening for dogs, filing off ankle and wrist and neck brackets, starving but afraid to steal because of the hounds or just because we honest. Brother Joshua say we already come through the Valley of the Shadow of Death and we should fear no evil. But you always got to fear evil. You never catch the Devil. My mam say, ‘Yu cyan ketch Kwaku, yu ungle ketch him shirt.’ ”
Moody laughed. “I’ve lost a lot of card games to Kwaku,” he said.
“Brother Joshua preach the wrongness of slavery, how in the Bible there be slaves, but they weren’t stolen from they own countries and sold like cattle, like us, they live in the same house as they massas and set free after six years.”
“We had that kind of slavery in Texas,” Moody said, “except for the six-years part. We called it ‘indentured servitude for life,’ but it was slavery, if you were the indentured servant. It was how we got around Mexico’s antislavery laws. Now that Texas is part of America, they’ve gone back to good old-fashioned slavery.”
“That why you left?”
“Partly.”
“Brother Joshua say New Harmony the last lick of the New Moral Order, where no slavery be, and everyone share they work together and prosper.”
“Who’s Brother Joshua?” Moody asked. “And you still haven’t said why you left.”
Tamsey sighed. “All right,” she said, as though reluctant. “Let it come.”
8.
“We left New Harmony when the catchers come,” she said. “A whole army of them. They come at night, when we sleeping. I woke in darkness hearing a horse whicker, and when a horse make that sound it talking to another horse close by. I lay still as dead, listening, not breathing, until I hear the other sounds I knew would follow. A hoof stepping onto dirt. The creak of saddle leather when a rider put his weight on a stirrup. I clamped my hand over James’s mouth and kept it there until he hear it, too, then I got up and looked out the window onto the common. Twenty men on horseback, taking they positions in front of our houses, two men to a house. James come up beside me, pulling on his overalls.
“I wasn’t afraid yet. It was like I seeing a prophecy come true. They was bound to come sooner or later, I always knew that, but I never did anything about it. That what we do. If we don’t know what to do, we do nothing. In Kentucky when there was talk of a tornado coming and no one knew what to do about it, everyone did nothing except go around saying a tornado coming, a tornado coming. Then the sky got dark and the wind bent the locust trees, and the slates blowin’ off the houses, and suddenly we all knew what to do, we had to get down into the cellar and pray to Jesus not to kill us for our own stupidity. So I knew catchers would come. Every time it was quiet, that was what I was listening for. Every time I saw dust on the road, that what it was, catchers coming. And now they come.”
“Where’d they come from, so many together like that?” She was describing an army of catchers. He’d never known them to be so organized before. A whole army of slave catchers, sweeping north of the Ohio River. Sweet Jesus. The Ohio Grande.
“I wonder that now,” she said, “but then I just had to move, like they a tornado and I left the chickens out.”
“Looks like you saved the chickens.”
“Hmm, so far. I look out back and don’t see anyone between the house and the barn, or on the road beyond the barn that come north, so I get dressed and go into Granville and Sabetha’s room and wake them up. I told Granville, ‘Go out the back door and snake along the fence to the stable, then run through the pines into town and tell Brer Joshua’—he like the headman of the town, preacher and headman together—‘to bring help. Catchers may be in town, too,’ I said, ‘so be careful. Stay off the road. Stay in the pine trees.’ They a double row of pines that run from the houses to the main road. ‘Stick in that,’ I tell him, ‘then get back here and wait in the woods back of the stable. You know that big rock down by the creek? Get down behind that rock and wait.’ Then I said to Sabetha, ‘Go wake up Leason and Sarah. Tell them to get some horses ready, but do it dead quiet. Then go down to the creek and wait for Granville.’ ”
“What was happening out front all this time?” Moody asked.
“I don’t know, I didn’t look. I took our papers and some money that we never give to the commune, our freed money, and put it in my dress. I heard the back door open, that Leason running out. I heard Sarah pulling on her clothes and I prayed: Dear Jesus, don’t let them come before she decent. From the house to the stable is thirty running strides, thirty chances to be caught or shot, but no shots come and no catchers riding around to the back. Granville gone, and no shots. Leason gone, and no shots. I push the back door open and look out. Chicken house, buggy shed, the backs of the other houses, barn, stables, road. James come up behind me. He say we got to wake the others.
“ ‘Let’s get to the stable first,’ I said, ‘then you fire Old Kentucky and we make for the woods through the tobacco.’
“So we set off across the yard to the stable and nobody shot us. I guessed Leason was getting the horses ready, and Sabetha and Sarah were down by the big rock. I couldn’t think why the catchers weren’t coming around the back. I looked through the trees above the creek, but I couldn’t see if more catchers waiting there for us to run into they arms. Then a sound come from the stable corner and Sabetha run around it, then Sarah and Leason with two horses.
“Then I heard Old Kentucky crack, that old musket sound as loud as a cannon, and then James calling ‘Halloo! Catchers in the yard!’ And two catchers come around the side of the house, headed straight for the stables. James had Old Kentucky reloaded and he fired again, I couldn’t tell if he missed or if he fired above they heads, but both men rein up. ‘Catchers!’ James calls again. ‘Everbody up! Catchers in the yard!’ He starts reloading. Windows and doors fly open, men come out pulling they braces on, carrying whatever they could find to fight with. There was shouts and gunfire and the sound of breaking glass. James hopping up and down like he at a country fair.
“ ‘Take the children and run,’ he shouts to me. ‘Never mind the horses, I’ll bring ’em later. Stay on the road. I gotta go back.’
“This knock the wind out of me. He always had to do what was right. Not right for him, not right for us, even, but right for the people. He ran back into the house, like he forgot something, and I felt a sadness settle over me, like he been pulled out of me, like some powerful hand come down and grab he away. I couldn’t move. It like my soul left me. Maybe you know what that like.”
Moody looked down to the river. The pale bodies of catfish circled in the oblong patch of lamplight falling on the water’s surface. She was like An
nie. She could see into him and didn’t always like what she saw. “What happened to James?”
“He stayed back.”
“And you ran.”
“I ran. He held the catchers off for us to get away, and then, in some life we was all being pulled into, he would join us and he would give me back my soul. At the river, maybe, or by the lake. Maybe in Canada. I had to believe that or I couldn’t run. I still believe it. What you think?”
“I hope you’re right,” he said. “I don’t believe much in souls. I once killed a Mexican soldier while he was praying. I saw life leave him, but I wouldn’t say it was his soul.”
“Oh, glory, his soul fly to heaven.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
“Don’t matter what you believe. It only matter what you do.”
“What did you do?”
“I ran to save the children. Leason had two horses saddled, Jezzy and the roan. He said nothing, just turned and ran back to the house to be with James. I let him go.”
“You did the right thing.”
“I told Sarah, ‘Take the horses and find Granville by the big rock, then head up the road. I be along.’ ”
“You went back, too?”
“The noise from in front of the houses was louder now, the catchers must have charged. Muskets and pistols, then silence, then more firing and shouting. I imagined catchers storming the houses and James and Leason fighting them off. The silences frighten me more than the noise. At least gunfire meant the fighting still going on. I listen for Old Kentucky and hear it once more, then the sound of battle grew louder. I didn’t know if men from town got there or more catchers showed up, then I saw that the fighting was in the backyard. I turn and run alongside the field toward the creek. I had to think of the children now. Then I turn and see the back door of our house open and James and Leason run out, bent double like they running under trees. But the catchers are there and James pushes Leason into the pines and turns and fires Old Kentucky, and one of the catchers raise his rifle and fires back, and James goes down. I see him go down. He on one knee, trying to reload that cursed musket, and then he is down hard, like a hand reach up from the earth and pull him into it. Leason run out of the pines for him. I start to run, too, but Leason sees me and stands up to wave me away, so I stop. No, don’t stand up, Leason! I can’t see James, he should be up with Leason, but Leason still waving for me to go. Run! A catcher took aim and fired again, and I see Leason fall. I run toward him, then stop and turn around and run for the creek. And we didn’t stop runnin’ till we got here.”
“What about James?” Moody said quietly.
“That my story,” she said. “A story a story. Let it come, let it go.”
Moody wanted to reach over and touch her arm, but he didn’t dare, not even a reassuring pat to tell her she was safe. She wasn’t safe. He wanted to ask her if she’d seen Lucas in New Harmony. The possibility of him being there had reawakened his hope as well as his pain. Lucas and Benah could have gone to New Harmony after Paducah, it looked like hundreds of others had, but he didn’t want to disturb the calm that had come to her after she had told her story. There was time, he thought, and he would ask her. In the morning, or the next day. Asking her would mean he’d have to tell her his story, and he wasn’t sure he could do that yet. Not that he didn’t trust her. He didn’t quite know what his story was.
9.
It took them longer to get the skull out than he’d thought it would, and everyone was getting nervous. Moody couldn’t rid his mind of the notion of an army of catchers out there in the woods, moving north, and was anxious to untie and move upriver. But the skull resisted their efforts, refusing to budge even though it was three-quarters exposed, and then the weather joined in. After five dry days came a morning of pelting rain, turning the quarry into a pool of wet clay and gravel, when even stepping off the Pelican was a risk none of them felt like taking. Moody threw the tarpaulin over the quarry while the others brought the parlor inside. It was warmer and cozier, but the noise on the cabin’s flat roof kept them from talking. Moody and Sabetha read, Granville looked out one of the windows at the fidgetous river, and Leason and Sarah sat on the bed, holding hands and looking sideways at each other. Moody studied the family over his book, Mr. Darwin’s account of his voyage aboard the Beagle, when he found the giant sloth and then turned his attention to birds. Sabetha was quiet and watchful, not as absorbed in Jane Austen as she let on. Granville was all surface, like a puppy; he missed his father and wanted to keep busy so as not to think about him. Tamsey was mending one of Moody’s shirts so that Leason could wear it.
But it was Sarah who mystified him. She rarely spoke, rarely had an opinion that she shared with the others, but there was obviously a lot going on behind her placid facade. She was the opposite of Tamsey, who spoke first and only realized afterward that what she had said was true. Sarah thought about what she was going to say for a long time before saying it, and what she said wasn’t always the whole truth.
As he expected, it was Leason and Sarah who broke first. Sarah announced they were going for a walk, never mind the rain, it was dry under the trees. They should check on the horses. Tamsey stuck her finger with the needle and said, “Oh, fine.”
Shortly after the midday meal, cold pork, white bread and black tea, the rain stopped and the sun turned the still-bare branches of the trees into living skeletons against the sky. Granville was out the door and headed down to the quarry before Tamsey could caution him against catchers and panthers, both of which she said came out after a rain. Moody put Darwin down and said he’d go with him.
Leason came, too, so Moody told Tamsey he wouldn’t be long. He’d get the boys started and then return to the boat.
The three of them walked down the towpath, breathing the mineral-rich post-rain spring air. Even with the tarpaulin in place, the unshellacked sections of bone were so soft they had to scrape the claystone away, like dried glue off the shell of a raw egg. Arrayed around them were the tools of their trade: awls and brushes, cold chisels, two or three claw hammers, a small sledge, a marlin spike, a hatchet, a handsaw for cutting away tree roots, and an assortment of glass jars for keeping the bits of bone that they accidentally broke off and he would glue back on later. Moody envied Mr. Darwin, who found his Megatherium skull in the loose gravel of southern Patagonia. Indiana was all mud and mudstone. Alongside the box, Moody had a pick and a couple of shovels, with which Leason cleared away the rubble that had washed into the pit. Leason said a wheelbarrow would work better, and Moody told him if he saw a hardware store anywhere nearby to let him know and he’d get him one.
Moody was ready to return to the boat when Granville sat back and shook his head.
“I don’t know what this thing is,” he said, “but it ain’t no frog.”
“You don’t think so?” Moody said, stopping. “Why not?”
“Because frogs don’t have teeth,” Granville said. “And this here thing got more teeth than a sawmill.” He pointed to the mandible, which was lined with tiny, needle-sharp teeth.
“What do you think it is, then?”
“You ever seen a hellbender?” Granville said, and Moody shook his head. “It’s the god-awful ugliest thing I ever saw. A kind of lizard fish. We had one at our school in New Harmony. Erasmus caught it and brung it in. I didn’t know what it was because we didn’t see them down in Kentucky. But Brer Arkwright, he was our teacher, he said it was a hellbender. About this long,” Granville said, holding up the pick handle, “and a head on it looked like this frog’s, flat and round in front, except it had real squinty eyes and a whole bunch of little teeth, like this thing has. We took it apart in anatomy class, and then we boiled it in a big cauldron we got from the laundry house, and we got the bones out, and damn if the head didn’t look just like this except smaller.”
Hellbender. The skull didn’t belong to any creature still roaming around Indiana, but it might have been a distant ancestor. He wondered if any of his books menti
oned hellbenders.
“Did Brother Arkwright say what else hellbenders are called?” he asked Granville.
“He said they were giant salamanders. We had a salamander skeleton, too, a normal-sized one, and it was pretty much the same, bone for bone, and so we used it to put the hellbender skeleton together.”
“All right,” Moody said. “Giant salamander. We’ll look it up tonight.”
They walked back to the Pelican, where they found Tamsey, Sarah and Sabetha sitting quietly in the cabin. Tamsey had laid the shotgun across her knees. When he came in she asked him if he would move the Pelican upriver, closer to the quarry, so that they wouldn’t be so alone when he was digging up his damn frog. He told her that was a good idea, and he was sorry he hadn’t thought of it earlier. They’d move the boat first thing in the morning.
After supper, he was in the cabin immersed in drawings of extinct amphibians, when Tamsey came to the door with two mugs of tea. She held one out to him without coming in, and he followed her out to the parlor deck. It was a clear night and the living frogs were making their usual racket. Moody tried to imagine how much noise a chorus of giant salamanders would make.
“Where’s Leason and Sarah?” he asked her.
“Off somewhere it best not to inquire after,” she said. They leaned against the boat rail, looking upriver toward the dig.
“Granville thinks our giant frog is a hellbender,” he said.
Tamsey shuddered. “Granville a smart boy. A man caught one of them things in a swamp near New Harmony when he was cat-fishing,” she said. “Scared him so bad he never went fishing again, couldn’t even eat fish, said even the smell gave him night sweats. Don’t you go bringing one of them Devil things home,” she said. “We got enough to have nightmares about already.”
Home, he thought. “No sign of James?” he asked gently.
“He’ll find us,” she said.
“We’ll have the skull out tomorrow,” Moody said. “I’ll move the boat, but we can leave any time after that.”