Asimov's Science Fiction 10-11/2001

by Dell Magazines

  I figured it musta come off somebody's clothes—a shirt or a dress or a pair of britches, maybe—but whoever it was musta been one rich buckra. All the colored folks I knew, and most of the white folks, were poor as owl harkey, and my own shirt and britches felt like croker sacks next to this. The field hands’ clothes didn't get soft like this even on washday till they were next to rotten and no good no more. I rubbed the black scrap against my cheek. Betcha my mama is wearing a dress this fine, I thought. Then I stuffed it in the back of my britches so it hung out a little, like a rag I'd blow my nose on, and knelt down to talk to the fice, which was wagging his whole butt end. I didn't need him yapping behind me and bringing Maum Hannah down on us like Moses.

  “You, dog, stay put, now,” I whispered. “Take care of the place, you hear? No, stay.” I chunked another stick a far ways beneath the house, and when the fice went after it, I set off down the lane.

  Didn't take long to catch Maum Hannah in sight again, and after that I kept to the edge of the woods, picking along and scaring up critters, just in case she looked back round at the road. But what was behind her didn't concern her none, no ma'am. She was focused on the great blue in-front-of, was Maum Hannah that evening as the shadows got long, and she was stepping along right smart, too—for her. There were other people on the road, too. Ahead of her were three younger women, and when they saw Maum Hannah coming they stopped to wait on her to catch up. But she didn't stop in the road to do no bookooing, no, they all set off together, and I was way too far back to hear what they said. Between the trees it was near black dark now, though the sun would still be low on the Sound, and the bird Maum Hannah called the kambaboli would be calling in the tide—Whoot! Whoot! And the darker it got, the more people seemed to be on the road—way up ahead, and stepping out from the trees all around, like shadows grown legs and gone to walking. And finally I stepped out there in the road, too, cause no way Maum Hannah was gone spot me now, in the dark, and I walked long with everybody else, more and more of ‘em all the time.

  Some woman nearby said, “We ain't gone be late, is we?”

  A man said, “Naw, we be there in good time.”

  Musta been some shindig indeedy come to pass, get all these colored folks out in the road like this with the paterollers no telling where. Course, we'd be able to hear the paterollers up the road a ways off—clumpety clumpety clump, and their shackles and chains all a-jingle.

  As I walked along, not studying bout the people just ahead of me or just behind, I kept yanking at the shoulders of my shirt, cause they chafed me. Oh, man, go in the creek, I thought. Quit that. Ain't nothing wrong with your clothes. I knew what Maum Hannah would say. Always making the big-eye bout what rich people's got. Ain't your shirt clean and fresh patched and don't it fit you good? Them rich people's mouths is cut crossways just like yourn, ain't they? Lord, for truth, you is a backslid and head-pecked child. You ain't thankful for all the things God sent you down, God gone snatch you up. Gone go in your bed and take you out. I studied on it some, and I decided it was that soft black rag I got hold of, was making my shirt feel bad on me. I didn't think nothing bad bout my shirt before I found that. “Who needs this damn buckra cracker rag anyhow?” I said out loud. “Dog damn it.” I yanked it outen my britches, made like to throw it away, then put it back where it was. “Double dog damn it,” I said.

  Somebody next to me said, “You mighty little to be talking such a way.”

  He was big and stunk like dispensary liquor, and I didn't want nothing to do with him. But he got right up longside me and said, “Ain't you is Maum Hannah's Shad?” And then I knew him, too, cause everyone on St. Helena knew old Fuss-X Quall. We called him Fuss-X cause that was the cheapest liquor there was. Even the crackers wouldn't drink nothing cheaper than Two-X, and that only if some straw boss wouldn't buy ‘em Three. He grabbed my shoulder and leaned on me while he was walking—like on a crab boat in bumpty water. “You, Shad. You know old Fuss-X, don't you?”

  “Yessir, I do,” I said, cause Maum Hannah said God wants children to make their manners to their elders, even if that there respectular elder ain't good for nothing but drawing lightning and murdering groceries.

  “You don't mind, do you, Shad, if old Fuss-X walks along with you a ways? Old Fuss-X don't want you getting lost in the dark, now, and missing out on these big doins.”

  “Nossir, I don't mind it, I guess,” I said. I wanted to ask him what the big doins was, but I was ashamed to say I didn't know. My stomach went rrrr r rrrr like the fice, and I thought bout those good vittles back at the house on the stove, waiting on me. If I had me a bucket now, I could surely make that biscuit moan. Too late now. I done aimed high and had to follow it through.

  Hold it high, sweep the sky.

  Hold it level, kill the devil.

  “Yessir, big old doins,” Fuss-X said, like to himself. “Bout the biggest doins ever round Frogmore town, I'd say. Wouldn't you say so, Shad?”

  “I reckon so, yessir.” I wished he'd nail it shut, cause ever time he said something he squeezed my shoulder like he was gone pinch it off, and his breath stank like asafetida root.

  “Almighty big doins,” Fuss-X said. Then he got down in my ear and whispered:

  “You wouldn't lie to old Fuss-X, now, would you, boy?”

  “Nossir.”

  “To poor old Fuss-X, who's had such a hard shake of it, and who ain't so many these days, who can't walk hardly since the paterollers bout killed him alive, who goes to his knees ever night to pray, and who didn't never do you no harm, nor do any harm to any other of Aunt Hagar's children—no, nor the white folks either, no harm to any man, woman, or child in this sin-sick world?”

  Somewheres in there his question got away from him and he started crying, the way a stambling old drunk will do, till he couldn't talk no more and blew his nose on his sleeve. I was beginning to think he'd run out of Fuss-X and done filled up instead of home-brewed coon dick, which meant any time now he'd be fighting whatever come near, thinking he was crawling with monkeys. I tried to speed up and get away from him even as I said, sorta desperate-like:

  “I wouldn't lie to you, nossir, Mr. Fuss-X, I swear I wouldn't.”

  “Well, tell me now for the truth, then, Shad boy,” he whispered in my ear again. “When we all's get to where it is that we's going this evening ... uh, where, exactly, is that gone be?”

  I stopped in the road so sudden he walked on past me a step or two and nearbouts fell turning around. “Why, Mr. Fuss-X, you mean to tell me you don't know where we going, either?”

  “I'll tell you both where you going,” said a big old bald man who come up bout that time, and grabbed hold of me in one hand and Fuss-X in the other. “You both going into one of these trees with your heads knocked together if you can't stay quiet.”

  The little squawky woman with him said, “You two fools want to bring the paterollers down on us?”

  Fuss-X started getting all wet-eyed again and crying bout how he hadn't mean nobody no harm, but I spoke up quick and pitiful: “No, ma'am, but I done mislaid my folks, and I'm scared. Would you mind if I was to walk along with y'all till we get there?” I sidled around, hanging on her skirts, till she was tween me and Fuss-X. “I'll be quiet and good, I swear I will.”

  So she got all sweet and so nice and said I was the sweetest thing, I was just a doll baby, and how dare you take hold of that child, Cephas, what's got into you?

  And she kept on a-petting me and making nice to me as our crowd massed up in the road like there was something in the way. There were a lot of hellos and how-you-beens going on, quiet-like. And then I saw our crowd had run head-smack into an even bigger crowd, a-coming down the road from Frogmore way. And all of us were turning off the road and heading into the cypress swamp down a little narrow track, between a lightning-burnt stump and a honeysuckle thicket.

  I knew this way well. It was the track to the praying ground, where the colored folks on that part of St. Helena met to have their Christian worship, f
ar from white men and their devilments. What there is bout a colored church service that so riles up the white trash, I didn't know then and I don't know now, cept maybe they hate to see us going straight to the true Master, you know, and skipping the middleman. Now I'd heard tell that some who worshipped the older ways, the African ways, met at that there praying ground, too, but I don't know bout that. All I know is, there were a powerful lot more people making their way through the swamp that night than I ever saw at Christian service before, and didn't no one seem to be missing a step, either. They's all kind of secrets between neighbors, I guess, even on a tee-ninchy island like this.

  When you walk on a track through the swamp like that, the black mud sucks at your feet like it wants to keep you around, squinch squinch squinch, and every step fills with a little water like a spring welling up. Musta been a goodly number of people gone on before, like I said, cause that track was a pure loblolly by now, like a hog wallow. And there wasn't nothing to listen to but the bullfrogs and the zingers in the weeds and the squinch of our feet, cause once we got in the swamp good and proper, didn't no one do any talking. I'd lost track of Maum Hannah and Fuss-X and everybody else. There was just that squawky woman's narrow butt ahead of me, and her man Cephas a-breathing heavy just behind. Fuss-X had had some company at the dispensary that day. We hurried on, one right behind the other, cause it was too narrow a passage to walk otherwise. But when we went over the little plank bridge that meant the praying ground was nigh, I heard somebody up ahead a-talking low. Her voice got louder, meaning she was staying put while we went ahead. It was a high-yaller gal, right pretty, and she was wearing a tight little shake-baby dress, like you don't expect to see at no praying ground—though I now know a man might pray for it, yes indeedy, pardon me, ma'am. She was standing on a cypress knee to get taller, and waving us on ahead, all the while peering back the way we'd come, with a glance now and then into the trees and bogs to each side.

  “Take foot in hand, people,” she said. “He gone start without you. You think he ain't got business elsewhere? He's a busy man, and no mistake. Come on, now, big man.” She put her hand on my shoulder to push me along, and I felt all warm where she'd touched me, but was too young, you know, to know why just yet.

  “Don't you be studying bout her,” said Mr. Cephas into my ear.

  “Don't you,” his woman said, looking round. “Step it up, now. We most there.”

  Just then the path went between two big cypresses, and the woods fell away, and the earth firmed up and started to rise a little, and that was the praying ground. Some said it was where the Indians had scraped up enough dry earth to bury their dead folks, away back centuries before any other color man had lived on this island. Two or three pine-knot torches here and there gave all the light there was, but I could tell there was a mess of people ringing the little hill, a hundred or more of ‘em, all shuffling and muttering together, men and women and old folks and a few younguns, too. All of ‘em colored people. I wondered how many were free and how many of ‘em slave—ain't no way to tell, just by looking, is there? No, not to this day. But some were so ragged and dirty and wild-haired that I figured they weren't just in the swamp for a visit. I stopped studying bout the crowd when I saw that on the little hill that was the middle of the praying ground was a little rickety table holding an oil lamp, and sitting on a chair behind the table, talking to an old woman standing there, was the strangest-looking white man in Christendom.

  He musta been nearbouts seven feet tall, from the way his knees was drawn up a-sitting there, and his arms a-waving around looked each as long as that, with hands on the ends the size of hams. He was as shackly built as the table, as skinny as an old swinge cat. His ears stuck out like the fice's, and the hair of his head and beard was as bristly as a hog's, and his eyes was sunk way back in his head like snake holes, and he had the widest mouth I ever saw. He laughed at something said to him, with his head rared back and his pointy knees up against his chest and his arms wrapped around them, and I thought the corners of his mouth gone meet in back and send the top of his head a-rolling into the marsh. You ever seen a chicken get up and run around when its head is gone? Well, I felt like this fella coulda done the same. It was like he wasn't put together solid, like regular folks—they was just stuff stuck on here and there, a beaky nose, a gangly arm, and if any of it was to come unstuck, well, it wouldn't be no crisis, he'd put the pieces in his carpetbag to sort out later. He was dressed all fancy in a black swaller-tail coat like he was ready for the cooling board, and as big as he was, the man he'd got the suit from musta been two sizes bigger. While I stared at him, he stood up—and up, and up—till the Spanish moss tickled his beard, and as he hugged that old woman like a bosom-friend, I saw his left shoulder was higher than the right one, and as he stepped around the table he lurched bout as crazy as old Fuss-X did. A slapped-together mess of a man, he was, and then the old woman turned to step back into the crowd, and Lord God! It was Maum Hannah, a-talking with the man himself like they were old relations. Cause I knew who he was, all right. When his splintery face passed above the oil lamp, I knew him from the illustrateds we put over the walls in winter. Besides, I knew there wasn't but one white man who could draw half of St. Helena to him through the dark bare-handed and alone.

  He looked toward the spot where we come in, and so I looked too, and I saw that shake-baby gal step into the torchlight a ways, and nod her head. And then I looked back to the mound to see him looking straight at me, and it was to me that he began to talk—yes! Looking straight at me the whole time. That's how come I remember what he said so clear. And could he talk, Lord! I believe his tongue was hung in the middle so it flapped both ways. And I didn't stir, nor no one else in the praying ground nor no creeping flying thing in the swamp, nor nothing in the heavens and the earth, while that man said what he had come to say, in a voice that was like the voice in my head when I talk to myself, just that still and true.

  “My friends, I thank you for coming out tonight, to harken to a tired old man who ain't got much time. I'll be as quick as I can, cause I know we ain't the only folks abroad this night.

  “Now, I'll be frank with you folks, they's some in Washington a little surprised, a little disappointed, too, that once I made my Proclamation, and freed the slaves, that you all didn't take off and go, and tell Mr. Ravenel to pick his own cotton, wash his own clothes, cook his own victuals, and nurse his own babies, and put everything in a grip-sack and swarm up North as thick as cowpeas, throwing off the paterollers like flies off a bull, and leaving the Sesesh with nothing to fight for but taxes and Mr. Calhoun's weevily wig and some turnips a-rotting in the ground. Cause what has slavery give you? Piggin to eat and oyster shell, that's what it give you—you know that better'n me.

  “And I admit, I sorta felt this way for a while myself. But Mr. Douglass, he talked some sense into me. He said, first of all, they's some colored folks down here what ain't slaves, whole islands of ‘em, sometimes, working and scraping for the money to buy their family free, cause free ain't free and it ain't cheap neither. And next of all, he said that free or slave, this is you all's home, same as Mr. Ravenel's, and who's to say you got to leave it, any, some, or none, just so's you all can be free? And Mr. Douglass asked me, how they gone buy a train ticket, or hire a room to sleep in, if they ain't got nothing but chicken-change? Counting railroad ties ain't a living. And Mr. Douglass also said, it ain't like Mr. Ravenel gone kiss you all goodbye and suit up his best buckboard and curry his best horse and feed you a dinner of chicken-bosom and hang a Joe Moore round your neck and say, Y'all take good care now, and make sure'n send me a pretty postcard when you get to Philly-Me-York!

  “And finally Mr. Douglass said to me, even a fly on a bull spills some blood. Whose blood you willing to spill? Yourn? Your mama's? Your baby's?

  “And the last thing that Mr. Douglass said to me was, Huh!

  “And so I saw that Mr. Douglass was right, that just cause y'all are free don't mean you all can act free, no
t yet. Shoot, God thought you were free all along, and that didn't sway Mr. Ravenel none. What's Mr. Lincoln next to God?

  “And so I studied it and studied it, and thought it was a pretty bad fix, and I took me a bottle of Five-X over to General Grant's tent—you didn't know the grades went up to Five, did you? Up North they do—and he sipped that good Five-X and sucked on his big cigar and he studied and studied and then he said, Well, Mr. President. If those poor colored folks can't come to freedom, I reckon freedom's just gone have to come to them.

  “And so I'm here to tell you, friends, that freedom has come to Chattanooga, and freedom has come to Atlanta, and freedom has rolled down to the batteaus a-bumping the salty docks of Savannah, and freedom gone come rolling through St. Helena Island any day now, and that sound you been hearing off to the west ain't no gunshoot, friends, it's the angels of Bethlehem a-shouting hallelujah.”

  Now through all this, folks been busting out with an Amen here and a Yes, Lord there and a Praise Jesus yonder, and as they give him back that Hallelujah ten times over we all heard a rumbling toward Savannah, like thunder, and everybody went ooo-o-o-oh, sorta low.

  Now at about that place in his sermon he started to look sorta swimmy to me, and I saw it was cause my eyes were tearing up, and burning. I sneezed a couple times, and wiped my eyes on my sleeve—cause that rag in my pocket seemed too good to use any such a way—and then I noticed the blue smoke a-curling all around my head. Then a hard old clawy hand snatched my shoulder up tight, the fingers wrapping round my long bone like it was a clothes iron, and in my ear Maum Hannah said: “Young coon for running, but old coon for cunning. Boy, you are mine.”

  “Now, Maum Hannah, now listen, I'll tell you what happened, I—”

  “Umph, umph, umph,” she said. “I'm gone shake you like a gourd, boy. I'm gone whup you till Shiloh come.”