Samantha Moon was standing on the veranda wearing a veranda-standing dress, her light skin catching the moonlight. She was asking me why I hated Bond and why I hated her. I told her that I did not hate, but that I was sad for her, for her inability to accept herself, for her refusal to acknowledge her real self. She glided across the room and went on about Bond.
“He has raised you like a son, even broken the law to teach you to read. He never beats any of you,” she said.
“You?” I repeated.
She look upon me, puzzled.
“You mean us.”
She stepped more fully into the moonlight, I imagined to appear whiter.
“Oh, yes, he’s a good master. Good ol’ massa Hamish. He sho nuff good. He don beat us or nothin’.” I stared at her. “How would you describe a relationship where one of the good things to say was ‘he doesn’t beat me’? Do you know about his past?” I asked.
“He told me all about it. How he was a slave trader, and he was known as Captain Strike Down and about the Rio Ponga. He told about the burning village that haunts his dreams. He also told me that it was not only white men doing evil, but blacks as well. He told me about Geezo, the black king whose men were burning the village. He told how they would split open heads and run their fingers through the brains of still-living people. He told me all of it, Raz-ru.”
“And you believed him. I suppose you would want to. Poor rich Hamish Bond, living with the guilt of ruining so many lives. I don’t see him sharing his wealth with the ruined. No, he stays rich and we stay slaves because there were black men as evil as him. So says he. It is his burden to care for us.”
Then stuff happened, as stuff happens in dreams, things that I either cannot remember or in fact didn’t happen, though it seems like those things, forgettable as they apparently are, must have happened. But there I was, knowing that Bond had left the plantation only to test Samantha’s love by leaving her alone to the advances of Charles DeMarion, evil neighbor slave owner, beater of slaves, raper of slaves. Knowing also, as I stood outside the closed doors of the drawing room that Samantha Moon was in there with Charles DeMarion and that I would be running in to save her from his inevitable attempt at rape.
And so I did respond to her cry for help and why, I’m not certain. Would I have run in to save a dark slave from his raping hands? Was it her carriage? The way she believed herself to be white? Was I defending her honor? Defending white womanhood? Or was it, sicker still, my attempt to protect the property of the master I so hated? I hated myself as I ran across that room. I pulled him away from her, and he began to beat me with the crop he always carried. I stood tall and punched him. All this while a choir of black voices floated over us, singing, “I Shot the Sheriff.”
Michelle came running into the room, looked at the unconscious DeMarion and then to me. “Run, Raz-ru! Run before he calls the sheriff!”
I ran. I ran for all I was worth, which was a pretty penny I was told, through the acres of tall cotton, through the towering stands of sycamores, over the eroding levee and into the stagnant and stinking swamp where I knew my white pursuers would not follow—not into the swamp, into the deepest of black backwater, full of poisonous snakes and angry gators and long nights with light from only wild eyes. I was happy to be there. A wet hell, but a quiet heaven. All the singing was hushed.
Tornado. Rain. Bird calls. Spiraling. The blue uniform of the Union Army fit tight across my chest and loose in the trousers. The war was pretty much over. Growers like Bond and DeMarion were wanted for having burned their crops and had fled into hiding. The city of New Orleans was awash with blue uniforms like mine. The former town palace of Hamish Bond was empty, and I sat there in it, candles burning on the dining-room table, dusk turning to night outside. Samantha Moon walked into the room from the courtyard and was startled by my presence.
“Come in,” I said. “How does freedom taste? Oh, that’s right, you’ve already tasted freedom. Does it taste the same? Is it sweeter? More bitter? Does it go down easily? Like your master’s sperm?”
“You’re disgusting,” she hissed.
“I thought you might find me so.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to light the candles.” I stood and walked toward her at the other end of the table. I picked up the six-candle holder. Only five burned. Narrow candles with tall flames. I held the light close to her face. “Are you able to see yourself more clearly now? I think that I can see you more clearly. Now that you’re free. And now that I’m free.”
“Where is Hamish?”
“Hamish,” I said. “I don’t know where he is, but I will find him and I will kill him.” I pushed the candles closer to her face. “Can you feel the hot? The heat? The heat they say we darkies burn with? Can you feel my heat?” I moved my face closer to hers and spoke to her left ear, the ear on the side of her heart. “You do feel the heat, Samantha Moon. You’ve always felt the heat between us. It’s starting deep down, isn’t it, like a tickle someplace. You feel it because here I am, waiting to reconnect you to your blood, ready to infuse you with your history, sad and ugly though it may be.” My breath touched her face, and it seemed to me she found it sweet smelling, the way her eyelids fluttered. I whispered to her, “You long to be filled with the juice of lost fruit, don’t you? You need your denied tale, the one I hold between my legs. You feel the blood, don’t you, Samantha Moon?” Her breath was fractured, catching snags as it left her. “The heat, Samantha Moon, the heat.”
Her lips trembled as she leaned toward me, aching for my kiss.
“Sadly, I don’t feel the heat,” I said.
She began to weep.
Then Hamish Bond was in the room. He held a long sword and leaned on it like a cane, like a swashbuckler. “You’ve made the lady cry,” he said.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I said. “It saves me the trouble of finding you.”
“You would kill me. After all I’ve done for you? I remember the village so vividly, so vividly. It was on the Rio Ponga in Africa. You think we white men are bad, but you should have seen those black pagans. I saw more than one whack off the top of a head and run his hand through some poor nigger’s warm brain while he could still feel it. I was sickened by them, sickened, I say. And there, under the body of a woman was a two-month-old tar baby. I put myself between one of Geezo’s men and caught a spear through my leg. I saved that little monkey and brought him home, treated him like a son, taught him to read, to move through the white man’s world.” He stared at me while moving closer to Samantha Moon. As he did, Samantha Moon’s skin grew darker. With each step her skin became more like mine. “I should have saved myself the wound and let the spear strike that little bastard dead.” He looked over at Samantha Moon and was startled.
I pulled out my service revolver and shot him in the chest.
The room became filled with hovering sullen, perhaps angry, perhaps relieved, black faces, and none of them sang.
Then I was in a brothel, plush red pillows soft and comfortable behind my naked back. My arm was slung over the back of a velvet davenport, my reddened and sore knuckles grazed the flocked wallpaper. A long-legged white woman with strawberry blond hair, pale blue and vacant eyes, crawled sensuously, yet awkwardly, toward me. I watched her over the distance, coming across the worn oriental rug, her deep red-painted nails like bloody claws. She came to me and kissed her way up my leg to my soft penis, then she took me into her mouth.
My penis was wet. I could feel that. I swam in the darkness of sleep, slowly remembering my pursuers, where I was. I opened my eyes to see the boy asleep across the room. I looked to my left and saw Patrice asleep on the cot. I looked down to find the top of the blind woman’s head in my lap. I scooted away and fastened up my trousers.
“Which one are you?” she asked.
“I’m the black one,” I said.
She spat. “I had me a notion.”
We sat in silence for a while, and then I asked, “Is it jus
t you and your little brother?”
“Yeah,” she said. “He thinks Mama just went out to de stow. But she ain’t comin’ back.”
“How long has she been gone?”
“Over a year now. She run off with the scrap-metal man.”
“How long have you been blind?” I asked.
“How you know I ain’t been born thisaway?”
“I don’t. That’s why I asked.”
“I was ten year old when Mama threw a pail of lye in my face. You can see I’se all uglied up with burn scars.”
“Hardly noticeable,” I said. In fact it was difficult to see the scarring, though it was there, and it made me sad to see it.
“Mama said she couldn’t keep no man on account dey liked me, and one day she got mad and threw the lye onto me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Den she had Bobo and blamt everthin’ on him.” She seemed to look off into space, but of course she wasn’t. “How old you be?”
“I’m eighteen.”
“You young,” she said.
“I look older.”
“You sho sound older. I like the way you talk. You sound fancy.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Well, you don’t sound like nobody from round chere.”
“I can well imagine.”
“What dey arrest you fer?”
“Being black,” I said.
“Hmmm. I heard tell that was illegal.”
“It is in Peckerwood County, anyway,” I added. “I just want to get to Atlanta so I can forget about this place.”
“I always wanted to go to Atlanta,” Sis said. “Doan know why. Cain’t see nothin’, that fer sho.”
“Did you go to school?” I asked.
“For a while. Den Mama threw that lye into my face and I never went back. She said I was ugly and the other chilluns would laugh at me. And I couldn’t see no board or books no way. I heard one of Mama’s beaus say she dint send me ’cause she was afraid she get charged wit buse.”
“Abuse,” I corrected her.
“Abuse.”
“You don’t have to be able to see a book to read it,” I said. “You could go to school. You still could.”
“Dat’s crazy talk.”
Those words hung in the air awhile. Patrice snorted, gagged a bit, then settled back into his snoring.
“Is yer friend a good-lookin’ feller?”
“First, he’s not my friend. I don’t know. Somebody might think he looks okay. He’s looks a little like that old move star, Tony Curtis.”
“I ain’t never seen no movie,” she said.
“You haven’t missed much.”
“You got family in Atlanta?” she asked.
I shook my head and then realized the uselessness of that. “No. Sort of. No, I don’t. I used to live there.”
We sat quietly for a while, listening to Bobo and Patrice snoring in the darkness. I could see a bit of the moon through the far window.
“You think we’ll make it to Atlanta?” I asked.
“I don’t see how,” she said. For once she didn’t sound stupid or out of it. “Not on foot anyway.”
“Well, on foot is all we got,” I said, feeling rather colloquial.
“But if’n you was to jump the freight.”
I tilted my head. “What?”
“The freight train. It goes to Atlanta. And it be going real slow up the ridge. Kinda steep. I jumped on it when I was little. We rode it fer fun. We always jumped off befo’ it topped the hill.”
“Where is the train?”
“The train ain’t always there. It come by once a day going one way and at night goin’ tother.”
“Where are the tracks?”
“Across the branch, through the holler, over the hill, and round the bend. At least that where it used to be. I ain’t been there since Mama burnt out my eyes.”
“Which train goes to Atlanta? Day or night?” I felt terribly sorry for Sis, but she was making my head hurt.
“Day, I think.”
“And how far away are the tracks?”
“It’s a fir piece,” she said.
“How fir?”
“Fir nuff.”
“Is it two miles or twenty?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“Well, which?”
“Depends on what way you go,” she said. “Any fool know that. Bobo could show you the way, I think.”
I looked over at the sleeping child. “I’m pretty sure he could. Do you think he would?”
She didn’t answer. She leaned back, her face in shadow now, and she might have gone to sleep. I looked at Patrice’s sleeping face, then over at the boy. These were sad people, and for the world I wanted to think of them as decent. Perhaps they were decent enough, but the place that made them was so offensive to me that all who lived there became there. I wondered how a little education might benefit them, but I came to the same conclusion. Well, sort of a conclusion, as I hadn’t reasoned toward it at all. I believed they were all ego, but hardly conscious. As insipid as that model of mind seemed to me, it proved useful in my surface understanding of them. And I could see that any sort of hypnosis was unlikely to work as there was no sub- or unconscious to tap into.
“You two luv birds through yapping?” Patrice said.
“I thought you were asleep.”
“I was tryin’.”
“How is your back?”
I didn’t know why I was asking. I certainly didn’t care. Now that we were no longer chained together, there was no reason for us to remain together, except that Bobo probably would not take me to the train tracks, but he would lead the way for Patrice. I needed Bobo and therefore I needed Patrice, that was my conclusion, with a therefore and everything.
“I’m in treemundus pain. So, what was you and Sis talkin’ ’bout?”
“I thought you were awake,” I said.
“You was keepin’ me awake. There’s a difference. And I heard y’all, but I tweren’t listenin’.”
“Another interesting distinction.”
“So, what she say?”
“She said there’s a freight train to Atlanta that runs near here.”
“Where?”
“That’s the problem. We need Bobo to show us how to get there.”
“And I ain’t goin’ do it, less’n y’all take us to Atlanta wit y’all,” said Sis, sitting up and bringing her face back into the moonlight through the window.
“Ain’t happenin’, Sis,” Patrice said.
“Then y’all on yo own.” She crossed her arms on her chest and stuck out her chin in defiance.
“Well, naw, Sis, there ain’t no reason to be all like dat,” Patrice said. He reached over and put his hand on her knee. “I bet a purty gal like you got so many beaus round chere that you really don’t want to leave.”
“Ain’t no beaus and you can stop yer sweet talkin’. We’s going to Atlanta wit y’all or nobody goes.”
“I don’t want to argue,” I said, “and I don’t much care who hops the train with me. I just want to get on and get out of this hellhole. Bobo, what time does the eastbound train go by?”
“About dusk. If we leave at dawn we’ll jus’ make it.”
I leaned back and closed my eyes again. “We’ll need our rest,” I said. “I’ll need mine anyway.”
I slept a dreamless sleep this time, but I awoke to the nightmare of Patrice and Sis having sex in the cot. Across the room Bobo was eating cold beans out of the pot on the stove. I covered my ears to block out the grunting and moaning. Luckily the noise was short lived, and soon they were both snoring. I tried to repress my humanitarian thoughts of helping the poor blind girl find a school so she could learn to read.
At first light I was standing out in the yard, happy for the sun to be coming up, happy to be out of the beans-, sweat-, and sex-stinking confines of the cabin. Then Patrice walked out with Sis dressed in a fresh tattered calico dress. Their faces appeared even more vacant t
han before.
“Ain’t it a beautiful mornin’, Potay?” he said.
“I cain’t even see and I know it beautiful,” Sis said.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“We’s in luv,” Patrice said.
I shook my head. “And?” But I knew what was coming and then it came.
“Sis and Bobo is comin’ wit me to Atlanta,” Patrice said.
Bobo stepped out of the house and stood by them. He pulled at his sister’s sleeve.
“That’s great. Congratulations.” And it kept coming.
“Since you know folks there, we was thinking maybe you’d let us stay wit you fer a little while, til I get on my feet, ya know?”
“Are you crazy?” As I asked the question, to which I of course knew the answer, I remembered that I needed the boy to lead me to the tracks.
The hounds howled in the distance. The sound was chilling.
“If them is Jubal Jeter’s dawgs, they gone be on y’all real fast,” Bobo said. “Dem dawgs is mean, too.”
“I’ll do what I can to help,” I said.
“See, Bobo,” Sis said. “I told you, Potay be a good nigger.”
I looked at the three of them, standing there against the backdrop of that cabin like an Andy Warhol parody of American Gothic, residents of a cul-de-sac at the end of Tobacco Road.
It was just sunrise, and the air was already hot and sticky. As parched as I was I refused to drink any water from the well. I could only guess how many rodents had fallen into it to drown and decompose. Neither was I hungry enough to consume just one more bean or rock-hard piece of bread. The hounds called and they sounded closer.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
Before we could leave, Sis and Bobo grabbed a few things, and Patrice had an idea to throw the dogs off our trail. He covered the ground with black pepper and every other seasoning he could find in the house.
“It’ll take ’em awhile to sneeze dat out,” he said. He giggled. “I wish I could be here to see when dey do.”
Finally, we set off, Bobo leading the way, struggling with his oversized rucksack and a brown paper bag. Sis and Patrice followed after, each carrying a worn leather valise as she held his hand for guidance. A bad situation no matter how one looked at it, unless of course you were blind and in fact they all were, and perhaps I as well. I noticed the sad detail that Sis’s shoes did not match. Both boots were black and worn, but the heel of one was at least a half-inch higher than the other and so she limped. I brought up the rear. I carried the boy’s twenty-two rifle, mainly so no one else would, but a bit of thinking made me realize how quickly the presence of that weapon in my hands could get me killed, so I tossed it into the brush just after we crossed the creek.
I Am Not Sidney Poitier Page 8