The minister across the aisle reached out and tapped the porter’s back. “Hey, son,” he said, as quietly as he could, “were you just talking about a little flask?”
In one fluid series of movements, the porter withdrew the curved flask with his right hand and unscrewed it with his left and poured unstintingly into the minister’s cup and screwed the cap on and slipped it back inside his vest.
“Will fifty cents do?” the minister said.
“Fifty cents will be just fine,” the porter said, taking two thick coins and dropping them into his vest pocket. The same pocket, Langston noticed, that his tip had fallen into.
“I’m on my way. You want that bag down from the rack, soldier, just let me know.”
As the porter turned to walk away, Langston studied the ridge of fat on the back of the man’s neck, and his jacket, which was the color of running blood. The porter walked past a few old men, some women and children, and a few soldiers, colored every shade from high yellow to ebony.
A woman got up and walked down the aisle. Her skirt stopped at the back of her knees. Langston watched the working of her brown calves. He swallowed. He remembered, with revulsion, one of the last things the sergeant had said in the waiting room. When you’re through visiting my sister and yours, Private, I authorize you to find yourself a good clean whore — it won’t do you any harm. Not any harm at all.
Langston stood up and retrieved the bag and sat down with the weight on his lap. He opened it. Not wide enough to see inside, not wide enough to risk the chance of anybody else seeing inside or even seeing him paying too much attention to the bag.
Just wide enough to put his left hand into the dark hole and to feel the cold metal barrel of a.45 automatic. And, beside it, the cylinder of a revolver. And, probing under it with his fingertips, Langston touched the tips of two magazines for bullets, and the ribs of a grenade. He drew in his breath and shut the bag.
He sat for five minutes, thinking. He grew conscious that the minister was looking at him. Finally, thinking of his own father, Langston turned to face the man.
“Do you know Jesus?” the minister said.
“No.”
“Will you take a Bible?” The minister held out a Bible in soft cover.
“May I keep it?”
“Yes.”
“Actually, may I have another? For my sister?”
“I have only two with me, but if you will use them, I will gladly share them with you.”
“Thank you,” Langston said, taking the second. He reopened the bag and laid the Bibles end to end, on top of the guns. He laid them flat and forced them down enough so he could close the bag with the strap. A door yawned. Langston heard two loud and unworried voices, male voices that didn’t mind at all if everybody listened, coming in from car twelve. They were talking about baseball.
“Soldiers, have your papers ready,” a voice called out.
Langston didn’t have to look. He knew one voice belonged to the conductor. What an obsequious lackey, calling out for the military police officer, hoping something would happen, something to tell his friends later. A soldier found AWOL or in some other violation of the rules.
“Military officer on board. Soldiers, have your papers ready.”
Langston knew better than to lift his head and look. They would see him looking, catch his eyes in that fleeting and vulnerable instant before he let his chin drop.
Langston heard them stop the first soldier.
“Your papers, please,” said the military officer. He sounded like a Harvard man. Like the kind of student Langston had met in inter-university debating competitions before his induction. They might have sat across from one another. White boys from Harvard on one side, black boys from Lincoln on the other. “Thank you,” said the officer. Now his voice drew nearer. He talked again with the conductor about the Baltimore Orioles. Something about how Baltimore needed a major league ball club and ought to get one after the war. The Orioles were playing the Newark Bears that night in Oriole Park. The conductor was going to the game. A baseball game, Langston thought. A baseball game! How liberating, how far from war and soldiering and military cops and lawyers’ bags would be a good seat with a bag of popcorn and a cold can of beer at an Orioles game in the unrelenting heat of the August evening. Just as good would be the same cold beer at a home game of the colored Elite Giants. “EEE-light, DEE-light,” the fans would cheer after every broken fastball and stolen base. For baseball, Langston would willingly stand up and clap. He would never do it for the American Army, which considered black soldiers good enough to die, but not to eat with and bunk with whites. But for baseball, and for the home-run hit, sounding like a pistol shot and making the ball arc up up up in complete defiance of gravity — yes, absolutely yes, Langston would stand up for that.
“Papers, please.” Now they were about three seats ahead of him. “Thank you.” The two men moved closer. Langston heard the conductor blow his nose twice, pause for a moment, then blow it again.
The military police officer stood in the aisle next to Langston. The conductor came up beside him. Langston looked up in measured diplomacy. He saw the military man, a corporal, who was ten or so years older. Star-like wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. Brown hair studded with gray slivers. The face of a man who might let a few things by. Out of the corner of his eye, Langston noticed the minister watching him.
“Your papers, please,” said the MP.
Langston handed them over.
“Thank you.”
That was easy. The military man was about to move on.
“Say,” the conductor said. “You’re not supposed to have your bag on the floor. You’re blocking the way to the other seat. Put it up on the rack, boy.” Langston said nothing. The conductor sniggered. “Private, I mean.” To the MP, he said, “He’s the one I was telling you about.”
Langston did not drop his gaze or turn his head. He allowed the military man to look at him steadily. The country dog strategy, he reminded himself. Look at it straight, reveal nothing, lock your fear in your feet, keep it there.
“Sure,” Langston said. His voice tripped on the word, making it sound like su-uhre, as if he hadn’t awakened fully, or had something to hide.
Langston stood and bent over and grabbed the bag in two places, down low and higher up, and did his best to lift the weight slowly, casually, as if it weighed nothing, nothing at all.
The military man had moved on, but the conductor stood to watch. “That thing looks heavy. What you got in there?”
Langston ignored the conductor and lifted it steadily. He had it at shoulder height now and stood in the aisle, prepared to heft it up onto the rack.
“Private, what’s in the bag?” This was the military police officer, turning around and looking at him again.
Langston pushed the bag onto the rack, making it look easy. Perhaps, he thought, being smooth and effortless would diminish the truth of the conductor’s words. Langston turned fully around to acknowledge the corporal and, in doing so, caught the upward gaze of the seated minister. His own father was the only church minister Langston knew who spent Sunday evenings playing poker.
“Bibles,” Langston said.
Langston didn’t stare at the MP. He let the man stare at him. He opened his eyes and looked gently in the direction of authority, allowing his pupils and irises to be devoured on inspection.
Langston made his voice sound humble, but confident, alert but not over-educated, certainly not college-educated. “I have a small stack of secondhand Bibles, donated by the army. My sister volunteers at the Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Baltimore, Corporal. When the army heard of it, they offered these Bibles.”
The officer looked at Langston, then up at the bag, then back at Langston.
“Let me see.”
Langston brought the bag down and placed it on the seat. He opened it quickly, wide enough to make the black Bible covers visible.
“Very well. Good day.”
“Than
k you, Corporal.”
“And Private?”
“Yes, Corporal.”
“I take it you’re leading a Christian life?” “Yes, Corporal.”
“You’re a model for your community.”
“Thank you, Corporal.”
The military police officer turned and walked back out the car. Langston saw the minister nod and smile and sip his Coke.
Langston smiled back, confident that the man would say nothing, and ask nothing. He wondered what the sergeant’s sister, or whoever she was, would do with the grenades and the guns. Probably store them some place safe for the sergeant. So what would the sergeant do with them? Sell them for profit after the war? Hide a gun in every drawer? Make people like Langston’s sister go to bed with men at Fell’s Point?
Langston disembarked at Penn Station on Charles Street in Baltimore. He stood in the shade of the station overhang, with the bag on the ground by his boot, waiting a few minutes for the white passengers to get into taxis, hoping he could get one after they took all that they needed. The minister who had given him the Bibles came up next to him.
“Son, you can’t get a taxi at the station. Where you going?”
“To see my sister in Fell’s Point.”
“I’ll show you where you can get a cab on St. Paul Street.” Langston thanked the minister, and walked a block with him. As they separated, the man pressed a dollar and a business card into Langston’s hand and said: “Get a good meal, be rid of your troubles, and drop by my church if you can.”
Langston thanked him again, and took a cab to Fell’s Point. He got out on Broadway Avenue and walked south toward the wharf. He had been there once before to take his sister to see the Elite Giants. That was before she got in trouble. Or before anybody knew about it, anyway. He remembered the neighborhood. He remembered the Kicking Horse tavern. Mill’s flat was only a block away. Italian and Polish women were selling tomatoes and sausages from sidewalk stands. In the glare of the afternoon sun, it didn’t look like a street where his sister could catch syphilis or get her retina detached for refusing to sleep with a white trick. Langston walked out on a pier. He passed three fishing boats. At the far end, Langston got down on one knee, opened the sergeant’s bag, removed the minister’s Bibles, strapped the bag shut, and stood up. He placed one foot on the edge of the pier, looked over his shoulder as if to follow the flight of three gulls inland, opened his palm, and let the sergeant’s bag drop into Chesapeake Bay.
I brought my father another coffee. The sun was growing hot on our back porch.
“So tell me, Dad, did you break contact with Mill because she was a prostitute?”
“No. Not entirely. She certainly kept her distance from the family when she was one. But later, we didn’t talk because she was angry I had married white and I was angry that she was making an issue of it. We sort of dug our heels in and never let up.”
“And one other thing, Dad. How did the army sergeant deal with you when you got back to the base from your leave?”
“He didn’t do anything. He barked a lot. Gave me a lot of grief with extra duties. But there was nothing he could say. Luckily for me, I was transferred out of that camp a month or two later.” My father looked me in the eye and smiled. “That’s enough about me. Let’s talk about you, now. What are you doing in Baltimore? What are you really trying to accomplish?”
I took a breath. “I’m trying to write our family story. It’s turning into a novel. It’s hard for me to admit that I’m trying to write one, because I’ve failed at everything I’ve taken on, and I couldn’t bear to fail at this, too.”
He placed his hand on my knee. “You’re not going to fail, son. You’re a Cane. Just get back to Baltimore and find out what you need to know and write that book.”
Aberdeen Williams was released after two days in the hospital. I went to see him. He gave me some good advice about how to dig up more on Langston Cane the First. He said Robert Wilson, the schooner captain, probably kept diaries. Probably kept business records. He said I should try to find them.
I spent two more weeks in Oakville. Time enough for three more calls from Mill, asking when I was coming back. Time enough to hear from Yoyo, who called from a pay phone to ensure that I was returning to Baltimore. Time enough to take a knock on the door from the reporter Mahatma Grafton. He wanted to know if I could ask my father if he would agree to discuss the police reaction to the Watson kidnapping. I helped set it up for him. My father agreed. Mahatma Grafton got a big front-page story out of it. He called to thank me. I told him I might call on him one day to return the favor. Mahatma reminded me to give his card to Yoyo. I promised that I would. He said, as well, that he would mail me a small envelope to take back to Yoyo. I was welcome to open it, he said. It would contain some money and a letter from Hélène Savoie, one of Mahatma’s colleagues at the Toronto Times. I said that would be fine with me.
I spent most of my time in Oakville hunting down details on Langston Cane the First. I spent a week at the Oakville library. It had a box of materials on Robert Wilson. I went through every page of it. Nothing of interest to me. Then I went to the Oakville Historical Society. They had sixteen boxes of documents about people who had lived and died long ago in the town. I spent three days going through the boxes, and found nothing. As I was preparing to leave, an assistant told me that there were three more boxes in the basement. I tore into three new boxes marked Capt. Wilson. I had to weed through trinkets, newspaper clippings, and programs from local dances. In the second box, I found a diary. I read the first twenty pages. I could make out almost all of the long, looping handwriting. Wilson had brought seventeen fugitive slaves across Lake Ontario, up until 1858. He had wanted to bring over more, but feared capture. He was acquainted with the American Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which allowed Southern slave owners to recapture fugitives in the Northern free states. He feared that American authorities would impound his boat, and perhaps jail him, if he were found out.
Wilson kept records of financial assistance provided to the fugitives. He noted that, “To a man, they have all been profoundly grateful for services rendered. Most have remained in Oakville, for there is much work here in the shipyards, and they can count on my assistance. All have attempted to remunerate me, after finding work.”
I read on. There was a lot of family business, shipping records, and so forth. Exports of oak staves had dropped considerably because, as Wilson wrote, “Oakville is devouring its oak trees in a mad rush for American capital.” I pushed ahead to 1859. The year of John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. I knew that Langston had skipped town in August, and that Brown had raided the Harpers Ferry arsenal in October. I started scanning Wilson’s diary entries for the month of June. Nothing. July. Nothing. But I hit gold in August. I found new information about the history of the United States and Canada.
August 5, 1859
I must rig up my schooner. Several shipments to be made. Will be extremely busy. A strange man asked to see me. He was tall and gaunt and had hollowed cheeks and a long beard. He looked to be in need of a square meal. He declined to give his name. I told him that I had urgent business to tend to. He gripped my hand — and he had a vice-like grip.
He said, “Sir, I am aware of your assistance to the Negro fugitives. I have great admiration for your work. We must talk in utmost confidence. Could you bring the most trusted Negroes to the meeting?”
He came to my residence at nine p.m. We retired to my study. Paul Williams and Langston Cane were waiting there. Two fine Negroes. Two of the finest I’ve helped across the lake. I closed the door. The Negroes and I sat. The guest paced the room like a cat.
“My name is John Brown,” he said. “I am a servant of God. My life is devoted to the destruction of slavery, one of the greatest evils in my country.”
The Negroes fidgeted. They were uncomfortable. Paul Williams cleared his throat and would not look at this John Brown, but Langston Cane cast his eyes frequently on the man.
“I am gat
hering men of vision and daring, including some of my own sons. We are preparing to attack slavery and its perpetrators. We will attack a strategic location in Virginia, in a land of verdant hills, near the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers. Surrounding the area is a large slave population that will revolt at a moment’s notice. My men and I will attack when the time is right, and take to the Appalachian Hills. Dozens, if not hundreds, of Negroes, slaves, and freemen, will join us on the day of the revolt. We will have pikes for those who do not know rifles. We will retreat to the hills, and move south, liberating plantations, amassing quickly an army of Negroes and God-fearing white Christians. We will overtake and crush slavery.”
Paul Williams expelled an enormous breath and stumbled to the door. He had trouble opening it, his hands were shaking so. Brown looked at him, waited until Williams was gone, and continued.
“Gentlemen, I need assistance. From you, Captain Wilson, I must request financial help. But any aid that you provide must be considered a gift. It will not be within my means to repay any loan. We need provisions, sir. Weapons, horses, carts, any number of things. And you, Mr. Cane.”
I wondered if the Negro Cane would also run from the room. But he didn’t run. He licked his lip once, and pulled on his ear, but he looked John Brown in the eye.
“What is your occupation, sir?”
“I am a rat catcher and a stone hooker, sir.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I catch rats. And I hook stones — slabs of shale — from the lake bottom, and I sell them for house foundations and pathways.”
“Very well,” Mr. Brown said. “What do you say? I must not tarry.”
The Negro Cane held his words. I stood and cleared my throat.
“I sympathize with your goal of ending slavery. But I think you’ve got a bolt loose. You can’t overtake the United States government. They’ll hunt you down, and they’ll hang you. Langston, don’t get involved in this nonsense. If you join this man, you’ll never see your family again. You will die young.”