Part 19 (1/2)

He struck the chain off his arm as soon as he was far enough from habitation that the hard clang of the mattock head on the shackle wouldn't be heard-or he hoped it wouldn't be heard-and carried the iron half of Friday before he decided the drain on his strength wasn't worth the possibility that he might need it. He buried it under a hollow log.

He kept close enough to the rear of the plantations to follow the line they made, the line of the river that would lead him eventually back to town, but it terrified him. He guessed Peralta would be offering a large reward for his capture-Big black buck, it would say. Runaway. Runaway. And there were always patrols. In older times there'd always been coming and going between the plantations and little colonies of runaways-marrons-in the woods, but heavier settlement and the death of the rebel leader Saint-Malo had put a stop to that. Sometimes he heard riders in the woods and hid himself in the thickets of hackberry and elder, wondering if he'd been sufficiently careful about keeping to hard ground, wondering if he'd left some sign. He was surprised how much of his childhood woodcraft came back to him, but he knew himself incapable of navigating, once he got out of sight of the thinning in the trees that marked the fields to his left. And there were always patrols. In older times there'd always been coming and going between the plantations and little colonies of runaways-marrons-in the woods, but heavier settlement and the death of the rebel leader Saint-Malo had put a stop to that. Sometimes he heard riders in the woods and hid himself in the thickets of hackberry and elder, wondering if he'd been sufficiently careful about keeping to hard ground, wondering if he'd left some sign. He was surprised how much of his childhood woodcraft came back to him, but he knew himself incapable of navigating, once he got out of sight of the thinning in the trees that marked the fields to his left.

In the afternoons the singing of the work-gangs in the fields came to him, and as it had on the breast of the river the music took him by the bones. Lying in the thickets with the gnats dense around his head, drawn by the scent of the rum on his hand as he bandaged it, and of his sweat, he listened to those voices and thought, This is the music of my home. This is the music of my home.

”Ana-que, an'o'bia, Bia'tail-la, Que-re-que, Nal-le oua, Au-Monde, Au-tap-o-te, Au-tap-o-te, Au-que-re-que, Bo.”

African words, not even understandable by those who sang them anymore, but the rhythm of them warmed his tired blood. He wondered if Madeleine Trepagier's girl Sally had felt anything like this, running from her mistress-running to New Orleans.

Probably not, he thought. She'd fled with a man and had had his promises to rea.s.sure her: his gifts and his s.e.x to keep her from thinking too much about whether he'd keep his word, from wondering why a white man would suddenly get so enamored of a slave.

If she hadn't been in the Swamp three days ago, he thought-with the tired anger that seemed to have become a part of his flesh-she would be soon.

On the Sat.u.r.day he met Lucius Lacrime.

He heard the tut tut of hooves, the rustle and creak of saddle leather, at some distance, but the woods were thin. He turned and headed inland, not fast but as fast as he dared, seeking any kind of cover that he could. of hooves, the rustle and creak of saddle leather, at some distance, but the woods were thin. He turned and headed inland, not fast but as fast as he dared, seeking any kind of cover that he could.

Thin with pines on the weak soil, the woods here seemed as bare of cover as the ballroom of the Salle d'Orleans.

The hooves were near and he knew they'd see him for sure if he kept moving. He crouched behind the roots of the biggest tree he could find, wadding his big body down flat and small to the earth and tucking the dwindling bundle of blanket and food between belly and knees. He'd feel a fool if they saw him, hiding like a child behind a tree.

As if, he thought, feeling a fool was the worst thing that would happen then.

”...Wench over to the Boyle place.” American voices, quiet. ”Cooks a treat, but ugly as a pig.”

”Put a bag over her head, then. Christ, what you want for a-You there! You, n.i.g.g.e.r!”

Every muscle galvanized as if touched with a scientist's electrical spark, but he forced stillness. A trick, a trap... A trick, a trap...

Then another voice said in bad English skewed by worse French, ”You talkin' to me, Michie?”

”Yeah, I'm talkin' to you. You see any other n.i.g.g.e.rs hereabouts? Lemme see your pa.s.s.”

”That ain't him, Theo, that's just old Lucius Lacrime. Got a place hereabouts.” The hooves were still. January heard the c.h.i.n.k of bridle hardware as one of the horses tossed its head. ”You seen a big black buck, Looch? Headin' toward the city, maybe?”

”Not headin' toward the city, no, sir.” Lucius Lacrime had an old man's voice, thin and slow and almost sing-song, a broken gla.s.s scritching on a rock. ”Big man? My nephew he say there somebody holed up someplace along Bayou Desole. Big man by his track, and black my nephew say, but wearin' boots like a white man. That be him?”

The woods were so still January could hear the far-off boom of the steamboats on the river, four miles away, and the ringing of an ax. Bridle hardware jingled again, this time sharply, and a horse blew.

”That'll be him,” said the man who was fastidious about the appearance of cooks. ”You know Bayou Desole, Furman?”

”I know where it lies. Bad country, peters out in a swamp. Just the place a runaway'd hole up, I guess.”

The hooves retreated. The voices faded into the mottled buffs and blacks of the early spring woods. January didn't raise his head, knowing in his bones that Lucius Lacrime still stood where he'd been.

In time the old voice said in English, ”You can come out, son. They gone.” There was a stillness, January not moving. Then, in French, ”You're safe, my son. I won't harm you.” He barely heard a rustle, until the old man got almost on top of his hiding place. Then he stood up.

”Thank you, grandfather.” He nodded to the flattened weeds behind the cypress knees. ”There's not much cover here.”

”They're searching, all around the woods.” Dark eyes like clear coffee considered him from within an eon of wrinkles, like the eyes of a tortoise on a log. He was a middle-size man who looked as if he'd been knotted out of gra.s.s a thousand years ago, dry and frail and clean. Tribal scars like Uncle b.i.+.c.het's made s.h.i.+ny b.u.mps in the ashy stubble of his beard.

”They say they look for a runaway field hand, but no field hand wears boots or needs them.” He held out an arthritic claw and took January's left hand, turned and touched the powerful fingers, the raw welt that the rope had left when they'd bound him. ”What they think you pick for them, flowers?”

January closed his hand. ”No dealer in Natchez is gonna ask about why a field hand's got no calluses, if the price is cheap. Thank you for sending them on.” He reached down for his bundle, but the old man caught his right hand with its crusted wad of wrappings, and turned it over in his bony fingers.

”And what's this, p't.i.t? Do they know you hurt? They'll spot you by it.”

January shook his head. ”I don't think they know.”

The old man brought the bandage up to his nose and sniffed, then pushed at the edges, where the shackle had chafed raw the skin of his wrist. He nodded a few times, and said, ”You a lucky child, p't.i.t. Old Limba, he look out for you. But headin' on back to town, that the first place they look. Stay in the bayous, down the southwest across the river, or back in the swamps. You can trap, fish, hunt.... They never find you.” His grin was bright, like sun flecking off dark water. ”They never found me.”

”They'll never look.” January settled his weight against the tug of Lacrime's hand. ”Not so long as I'm out of their way. Not so long as I don't come back to the city. So long as I don't come forward as a free man, claiming what's mine, they don't care if I'm dead or a slave or on a s.h.i.+p heading back to Europe. Just so long as I don't bother them. And I'm not going to give them that.”

It was the first time he'd said it; the first time he'd expressed to himself exactly what it was that had carried him against the current of the river, that had kept him moving through the long exhaustion of the previous days and nights.

The songs in the field. The blue bead on his ankle. The twisted steel cross in his pocket. They were verses in a bigger song, and suddenly he was aware of what the song was about. And it wasn't just about his family, his friends, and his own sore heart.

Lacrime peered up at him with those tortoise eyes. ”They who, p't.i.t?”

An old man who figured an innocent black man's life was worth less to him than the life of the son whom he believed to be a murderer. The boy who hadn't the guts to go against his father's will.

The woman he'd taught to play Beethoven, all those years ago.

And whoever it was that she would lead him to.

”White men,” he said. ”I'm going on to town. Is there a path you can point me out to get there?”

Lacrime took him by way of the swamp tracks, the game trails, the twisty ways through the marsh country that lay back of the river, toward the tangled sh.o.r.es of Lake Pontchartrain. They were old tracks, from the days when networks of marron settlements had laced the boscages. The old man looked fragile, crabbed up with arthritis and age, but like a cypress root he was tough as iron. He scrambled with bobcat agility through thickets, bogs, and low-lying mud that sucked and dragged at January's boots and seemed to pull the strength out of him.

”T'cha, you get soft in this country,” the old man chided, when January stopped to lean against a tree to rest. ”Soft and tame. The boss men all ask for a man bred in this country, a criolo, instead of one who came across the sea. They all uppity, they say, princes and kings and warriors. When we fought the Dahomies, we'd run this much and more, through the bottomlands by the river, and woe on any man who let the enemy hear him. He'd be lucky if he lived to be brought to the beach and the white man's s.h.i.+ps.”

”Were you?” asked January. They stood knee-deep in water, skimmed over in an emerald velvet whisper of duckweed, the woods around them gray-silent, hung with silver moss, dark leaves, and stillness. More rain had fallen earlier and the world smelled of it, and of woodsmoke from some distant squatter's shack. Maybe bandits, and maybe others like Lacrime.

”Ah.” The old man spat and turned to lead him once again along the silent traces in the woods. ”They took our village, filthy Dahomies. We twelve, we young men, came back from hunting to find it all gone. Big stuff, the stuff of great tales. We followed them through the jungle, along the rivers, through the heat and the black night. And they left what traces they could, our parents, our sisters, our little brothers, and the girls we were courting. It would have been a great tale if we'd taken them back. A great song, sung all down the years.”

He shook his head, with a wry mouth that such innocence could have been. ”Maybe we sang a verse or two of it to each other, just to try it out, to hear how it would be.

”But there was no tale. Not even with my own village was I put in a s.h.i.+p, but with a bunch of people-Hausa from up by the great lake, Fulbe and Ibos-whose language I didn't even know. Young men are stupid.”

He glanced back over his shoulder at January, laboring behind him.

”n.o.body will give you justice, p't.i.t, no matter how much truth you shove down their throats. I'd been better to go north with my friends and look for another tribe of the Ewe, who at least knew the names of my G.o.ds.”

”Did you ever find them again?” asked January. ”Your own people, your family-those who spoke your tongue, who knew the names of your G.o.ds?”

The Ewe shook his head. ”Never.”