Sweet Song

by Terry Persun

Hank met with Earl, “Let’s get a quick drink while they take care of this.”

  Josh put his arm around Bob’s shoulder – way too familiar for Bob, but he tolerated it. “Now there’s a sad story,” Josh whispered. “Their pa was shot stupid by a runaway nigger that raped his daughter. You believe it? Later, she gave birth to a monster child. Hank had to smash its head in and bury it. His sister ran away the next week. Never seen again.”

  Bob shivered. Blood rushed to his throat and pounded in his temples. They were coming around the wagon. He didn’t want to see Fred Carpenter, but it was too late. A slumped, heavy-set figure, his hair cut to a stubble, his neck fat and humped, sat motionless.

  “The boys,” Josh was still telling his story, “went back and killed the runaway’s whole family and anyone else who got in the way. Bloodiest night in history, at least on that farm.”

  Bob resisted Josh’s pull on his shoulders, but the hunched figure on the buckboard must have heard them coming. He turned his head and shoulders together and in slow motion.

  Fred’s eyes, at first, were black, dead to the world and empty to life. But once he saw Bob, they opened wide. Bob expected his name to be called. Recognition burst along Fred’s face. “Aaahhh.” Drool slipped from his mouth. “Aaahhh.”

  Bob broke loose from Josh’s weak grip. “Oh, God,” he said. He ran to the side of the building and vomited.

  Josh ran after him. “What the hell’s wrong?”

  Bob vomited again.

  “Shit,” Josh said. “Are you all right?”

  Bob shook his head.

  “You’ve got one weak stomach, my friend.”

  Bob spit onto the ground. “I’m sorry.”

  “No need. I understand. It’s a pretty frightening sight.”

  Bob held back tears. “I need to leave.”

  “Go on. The loads look good. We can handle it from here.”

  Bob jogged as best he could back to his room where he buried his face in his hands and cried silently. He couldn’t even howl like he wanted. He had thought that some day he’d return to see Martha, but now he knew he could never do that. The evil that he brought into the family burned them all.

  His whole family was gone. Martha had done nothing but witness the horrible lives as they played out inside the shack. She was innocent.

  He imagined the scene. The fury in Hank’s and Earl’s eyes would have been easy to decipher. Hate, their eyes would say. Anger, their bodies would announce. The household, what was left of it, would be stunned by the attack. Bess and Martha – awake and waiting for Big Leon who would never return, being already dead. Hank and Earl and the men must have burst into the shack and shot holes into anything that moved. With Bess and Martha waiting for Big Leon, candles would have been lighted. The wind through the open door would have caused shadows, the breath of life forced into them suddenly, to scurry around the shack like so many rats.

  Horrible and wild gunshots ricocheted inside Bob’s mind. He held his hands to his ears. His eyes squeezed tight bringing only a clearer picture, Bess falling backward and Martha surprised to find she had been shot several times in the chest and shoulders. Understanding fell over her face and her humming ceased. And then a smile appeared. Satisfied that life was finally over for her, Martha nodded to her assailants – and to Bob. Blood bubbled from her lips and she mouthed, “Leon.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Bob woke that morning in a thick sweat. His blanket lay on the floor. His head and neck burned. The area around his eyes felt caked with dried tears, although he was positive he ran out of tears long before morning. He reached up to rub his head and neck and pain shot through his shoulder. His fingers ached, too, as though he had held his fists clenched for hours. Then he noticed his legs and back. The progression of pain enlarged with his evolving consciousness.

  When he opened his eyes, light already filled the room. He had run six, eight scenarios through is head, one more gruesome than the last. Several of his – were they dreams? –happened in slow motion. Several played out with him, as Leon, watching through a window from outside, one occurred with Leon participating in the killing. That was the worst of them.

  He rolled onto the floor and his back snapped. He stretched in every direction possible and in complex ways, like a cat getting comfortable.

  He could hardly think straight. He closed his eyes briefly and recalled Fred Carpenter’s surprise. Ironically, his blood father remembered what he looked like. He had been seen as a child by someone he thought had ignored his very existence.

  Bob stood to go. He didn’t want to run into the Carpenters again, ever. How could he prevent that from happening?

  The events of his life churned inside him. He had accidently shot his own father, who had shot Leon’s acting father. And his half brothers killed his mother and aunt. His half sister had had his monster child. Bile crept into his throat again. He swallowed the bitter flavor and shook the facts from his head.

  How long did it take to run the evil out of him? He thought he was through after crossing the river that night long, long ago.

  He stopped in at Jasper’s and bought a loaf of bread. Jasper took the money this time. Bob tore the crust open and reached into the loaf and removed the warm, soft center one mouthful at a time. The bread soaked up the acid building inside him. As he ate, Bob headed north. When he found himself in the thick of the Negro section of town, he sat at the edge of the street and watched the pickaninnies playing.

  Autumn rode the underbelly of summer air. A shiver went down Bob’s back. He wished he had been able to play like the children he watched now. The other mulattos from the farm, as long as they had Negro features, were accepted as Negroes, and he knew it. He wondered, once the thought came, if that were always true? Was that the only reason he was left out? Or was his ostracism partly because of his family’s special treatment? Big Leon being foreman? Bess being Fred Carpenter’s favorite? Had he been too ignorant as a child to see the real reasons behind the hate? It couldn’t have been that personal, could it?

  Bob noticed the children glancing at him as they played and handed one of them the leftover bread. “Share this with your playmates,” he said. Even before he turned away the bread was being segmented into nearly equal portions.

  Hugh would be working, but Jenny might be available. Bob rose to go. He took the long route around Jenny’s house in order to avoid the downtown area. Most likely the Carpenter crew would be gone, but why take a chance?

  He didn’t know what he was about to say to Jenny. She’d surely want to know why he came by. She’d most likely see that he’d been up all night. Every time he tried to plan his visit, his headache drew his thoughts away. Perhaps that was a blessing. When he got there he knocked and waited.

  Jimmy answered the door. He wore glasses and carried a feather pen in his hand. “Bob, what brings you around in the middle of the day?” He reached up and removed his glasses. Showing Bob his pen, he said, “Bookkeeping.”

  “Is Jenny around?”

  “At the market. I could tell her where you’ll be when she gets back.” He cocked his head. “You all right?”

  “Tired,” Bob said. “Tell her I’ll be down by the river.” He motioned toward the end of town. “She knows where. I really need to see her.”

  Jimmy got a serious look on his face. “You won’t be hurting her.” It was a statement, not a question, an order from a concerned brother.

  Not knowing what else to do, Bob just shook his head. “I hope not,” he said.

  Jimmy said nothing more.

  Bob walked east, and the sun burned a little cooler. At the river’s edge, Bob pulled at the late blossoms of wild tiger lilies, their orange heads trailing behind him where he dropped them. He sat near the river’s edge and watched as the sun sparked and spit light from the surface. On occasion a ger-plunk sound indicated a fish surfacing to gulp down a fallen insect.

  Bob threw a twig into the river and the current dragged it out of sight in a matter of moment
s. He lay back and stared at the sky, the river swishing and gurgling in the background, combing the tall grass at the water’s edge. The image of the clear sky broke along the edges of his vision into yellow and red tinted leaves of choke cherry branches. He heard the twitter of wrens, the caw of crows, and the occasional squeal of hawk. Bob’s shoulders relaxed into the ground, no longer tensed and rounded forward. With his hands clasped behind his head, he could use his thumbs to gently rub his neck.

  He could be anywhere in the world, he thought, at any time, past or future. Nature, in that spot, felt timeless. The sounds, even if they changed from bird and fish to human, could not affect the color of the clear sky.

  He allowed himself to go back, once again, to his childhood, what there was to it. He had been ridiculed as far back as he could remember. But that wasn’t what mattered. He wanted to feel out being Leon. If he could recall how it felt to be Leon, he could project those feelings into the adult who had removed himself from time and location to lie on the riverbank. He could re-experience who he had been and place it alongside who he had turned into.

  Bob struggled with becoming Leon. He didn’t expect that to happen. The boy wasn’t black, although he lived with blacks; he wasn’t white, yet he worked side-by-side with his white half-brothers. And they never even saw him. They never looked at him.

  The child Leon hurt inside.

  Bob White sighed with regret.

  Both wished that he could hate the people involved. The entire family eventually killed one another either emotionally or physically, and neither Bob nor Leon could figure out which death had been the worst. No doubt Fred Carpenter had suffered at his own son’s hand for the sins he had placed on the Negro family. And the sins of the father were handed down to the sons. Hank, at least, since Bob had avoided Earl, looked plagued. His wrinkled-before-age face, the sound of his tortured voice, the blankness behind his eyes, all stood to declare the pain of living out such an awful and ruthless life.

  Bob began to feel lucky and special that he had lived through what he had. He had not come through purely innocent by any means, but he had made it this far thanks to both his fathers, one whom he shot and the other who was shot while helping him to escape.

  He could not repay either of them except to live out his life. The only question being, as whom?

  Bob heard footsteps and sat upright. Jenny stood surrounded by tall grass, tiger lilies to her right, the sun behind and slightly over her left shoulder. His eyes adjusted to the slight change in light. Jenny had been crying. He stood and went to her, his hands out, taking hers. They faced each other. “What is it?” Bob said.

  “Jimmy said I should be prepared.” She sniffed. “But I didn’t know for what, so I conjured the worst.”

  “Oh,” Bob hugged her.

  “Please,” she said, “don’t make it last. If you no longer wish to marry me, just say it.”

  “That’s not what it is.”

  “Then what could be so serious and urgent?”

  “You may not wish to marry me,” he said.

  Jenny pushed from him, a curious look crossed her face. “But why?”

  “I’ve been lying here trying to figure out who I am and what I’m going to be. How am I going to live out the rest of my life? There is something I need to tell you, but I don’t know how or where to begin?” Bob’s eyes narrowed. He held back his own tears.

  Jenny reached and touched his face. “Nothing can stop me from loving you,” she said.

  “Perhaps,” Bob said.

  She appeared calmer. Yet, her calm had been replaced, Bob thought, by other concerns he couldn’t interpret. She waited to see what he had to say to her now and looked guarded.

  “Let’s sit together,” she said, leading him back to where he had risen from a moment before. She held his hand. Their knees touched when they sat on the ground. She faced him. “Now, I’m ready.”

  “I am not who you think I am,” Bob began.

  “And who do I think you are, but a man I met and fell in love with?”

  “My name’s not Bob White.”

  Her eyes strained to continue to maintain eye contact. He noticed her flinch.

  She swallowed. “Are you a criminal?”

  “I never thought about it in that way.”

  “Thought about what? You are going too slowly. What is it?”

  Before he spoke, he double-checked his feelings. His shoulders slumped. His face relaxed. “My name is Leon. My mother was black, my father a white farm-owner.” There, he’d said it straight out. He turned away and looked into the river.

  Jenny let go of his hands and let hers fall to her side. “Well,” she said.

  “There’s an entire story.”

  “I suppose there is,” she said.

  “But I’d like to forget much of it. Even at that, it could take years for me to feel comfortable telling you everything.”

  “I’ve seen a lot of horrible things myself.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you—”

  “I know a thousand Negroes who would love to live like whites, but won’t lie about who and what they are,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “I have to think,” Jenny said. “You have to think too.”

  He looked into her eyes.

  She leaned forward. “Who are you and in which world are you going to live?”

  She looked sad. Hurt that he had kept a secret from her. Or perhaps she worried for herself. Was she misinformed by his color as much as others might be? She might wonder whether she cared for him because he was black and that is what she had become used to? Why was she used to it? Did she curse her parents, then, for their participation in the underground railroad? For exposing her to more Negroes than whites? Was she questioning her own beliefs?

  She sat so still and so silent that he had to wonder. Before she said a word more, Jenny fidgeted. Her fingers moved first, wiggling. Then her mouth set itself in a straight line. Her eyes narrowed. The birdsongs didn’t affect her. A breeze pulled on her pinned-back hair, removing a few strands from the pin, letting those strands struggle in the breeze as if they were trying to get loose of her head as well. The freed strands panicked. Bob could see the deep sound of words growing inside her long before she spoke. “I have to go,” she said.

  He followed her until she began to run. He stopped. The sun lay warmly across his shoulders. A breeze from the river blew into his face. The corners of his eyes became cool where his tears had accumulated in sad pools. Regardless of the hurried conversation about his past, Bob felt relieved. He felt lucky for being alive, even at the cost of being submissive, at keeping quiet, at holding the truth close to his chest and hidden inside his mind. Lucky and unlucky. Black and white. His world consisted of opposites.

  Jenny had stopped running, but she had never looked back. Bob continued to stand there, and as he did the realization of what he had done overtook him. His release, like sexual release, had been short lived. Fear reentered his life. Jenny would no doubt tell her brothers. Jimmy had already warned him not to hurt her. Bob suddenly felt vulnerable. Was this going to be a repeated situation, like the one with Hillary? He looked around to see whether anyone could have heard them. Chills ran down his back. The breeze appeared to be picking up. The trees leaned away from the river. Bob peered across the Susquahanna. His gut wrenched. Winter was coming. Logging camps would form soon. He fell to his knees and shook his head. He couldn’t stay there. Surely someone would come for him. Once word got out, not even the logging camps would be safe for him. In fact, that would be worse. They would kill him. Just as he had walked for days over the mountains to get here, he would have to go even farther to escape Williamsport. He wished he could end it. Let them do what they will. Yet, something inside him would not let that happen. No matter what he suffered, he would go on. He should have never stopped at this town. He should go to another state where the chances of being found out would be near impossible. Like the Negro roamers he had been with, he needed to c
reate a story that fit his life, a story that explained who he was and how he wished to be. The story the Lord had given him no longer worked.

  His life could be recreated. But not here. Not in this town. He knew he wasn’t invincible, yet, his life had been spared great pain at least twice before; perhaps this time it would be spared as well. He couldn’t expect that to go on forever.

  There was little time. Jenny had run off upset. Even if she wished to remain silent until she thought the situation through, her brothers might take it upon themselves to come for him.

  Taking the long way home would be safest. On his way, he offered a young Negro of about twelve, twenty cents to go to the mill and let Hugh know to meet him at Carl’s. Bob hoped he had a few hours, but didn’t know for sure. He could always run.

  He packed quickly, even though he thought he had plenty of time. He stood next to the window and peered out, watching the street, ready to rush down the hall he was told not to use, and out the back door. He also had the gun even though he didn’t think he could force himself to use it. Just touching the cold metal to pack it brought back the image of Fred Carpenter.

  It was funny to Bob how many Negro children had been separated from their families so that they had no connections in the world but their owner-employers. Fred Carpenter had, in many ways, created the same effect between him and young Leon by ignoring the boy all his life. Even Hillary must have felt that Leon was not part of her family.

  And so, as horrible an image as Fred Carpenter had been, it was of little or no difference – a misfortune of a mere acquaintance. It is when Bob added his own hand and gun to the formula that he felt the connection. That frightening connection also meant that he could easily be hanged for a crime accidentally committed. A crime as much of self-defense and fear as of attempted harm to another soul. A crime of black against white.

  CHAPTER 29

  Bob lost all sensation in reference to heat and cold. He sweated as though the bedroom burned. His predicament, still rolling around in his head, was reminiscent of how he felt as he and Big Leon ran toward freedom. Yet, Leon had become a different man, a new person, and Bob had as much reason to stay as to run.