Langston looked up at the man. “Please do,” he said.
“You won’t hold an indiscretion against me?” Douglass said.
“Men of your attainment are readily forgiven indiscretion,” Langston said.
“You flatter me. And you clearly know to dance with the English language, which is a fine thing indeed. Alas, here comes my indiscretion. Your name rings a bell. Langston Cane. Were you born in Canada, son?”
“I was.”
“Did your daddy join up with John Brown?”
“Before she died, my mother mentioned that possibility to me. But I don’t know if it’s true. I was just a year old at the time of the raid.”
“Well, young Cane, if you had any doubts before, you may dash them now. I knew your daddy. He was traveling with John Brown just two months before the raid. We spent the night together in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Brown and I had a lot of talking to do. Your father had a fine sense of humor. Some might have called him flippant, although I found him refreshing. True, he was not entirely serious. He had a huge appetite. He was a good man. I’m sorry he died, son. I’m very sorry about that.”
“You believe he participated in the raid?”
“I met him, son. He was on his way with Brown to their secret farm in Maryland, just a few miles north of here.”
“I have read a detailed book about Harpers Ferry, but I did not see my father’s name mentioned.”
“You have to realize that the event was bathed in chaos. It electrified the nation. People panicked. The specter of mass insurrection was raised. Not every name was recorded. Many people were killed, many more than recorded. I mean no disrespect, but some bodies were thrown in unmarked graves.”
“After his arrest, wouldn’t John Brown have named my father?”
“John Brown was not a man to betray his followers.”
“Are you sure, Mr. Douglass, that my father died?”
“Many men died in that raid, son. Many more than were written up in the papers. White men and black men. If you never heard from your daddy again, it’s safe to assume that he died in the raid.”
Young Cane said thank you, and lowered his head. I stood, and put my hand on Langston’s shoulder, and explained that this was a most trying moment for the lad, given that he had a valedictorian speech to deliver.
“Buck up, son,” Douglass said. “You’ll be fine. You’ll do well. Look me up one day.” Douglass walked to the door and turned. “Whatever you do, son — don’t you go on up to Canada, now. We need you right here in the United States.”
Douglass chuckled and left the room. He spoke to the assembly soon after. I have captured the essence of his remarks.
There have been critics of John Brown, and they have been vociferous. They have proclaimed him a lunatic, an ideologue, a madman, and a military idiot. They have underlined the lives lost in the raid, and the lack of tangible results.
Twenty years ago, millions of your brothers and sisters still toiled in the sun, shackled and dehumanized, their freedom stolen, their spirits crushed. Let me remind you that their sweat and their blood produced a huge portion of the agricultural output of this land. They were whipped and mutilated so that white people could smoke pipes and wear cotton clothing and eat bread. Today, twenty years later, you — their children — have completed an education at this fine college. If you think that John Brown’s work was of no tangible benefit, think again, my friends. Cast your minds back over the last twenty years.
John Brown, a madman? Mad, no. Obsessed, yes. But how could one not be obsessed, to overthrow a system that ruled with whip and chain? Obsessed, yes. A zealot, yes. And I say three cheers for that. John Brown’s zeal in the cause of my race was far greater than mine — it was the burning sun to my taper light. My friends, much has been made of my accomplishments in life. But my accomplishments, next to John Brown’s, have proven meager in the extreme. I could live for the slave, but he could die for them.
During a pause in the graduation ceremonies, I visited young Cane again in his dressing room, where he was attending to his suit. I saw him combing his hair, and I noticed his hand trembling. This surprised me, for although he was no match for Douglass, Cane was a skilled and confident orator. But he would not meet my eyes. I lifted his chin.
“Mr. Shoemaker,” Cane said, “a man has just been to see me. He has just slipped away.”
“What man? Who is he? Has he done you wrong?”
“He asked me if I was Langston Cane, son of Matilda and Langston, born in Oakville, Canada, in 1858, in a home on Church Street. No person in this world, save yourself, knows both the name of my mother and the place and date of my birth. He said he is my father. He asked if I could recognize him. I said I did not, for my father had left home when I was an infant. He was a dark-skinned man, darker even than I. He looked old, and weak. Silver hair. His voice had no power, although he spoke with eloquence. He was most evidently literate. He asked if I could forgive him, and told me not to judge him, for there were things I could never know. He gave me a document. This one, here. He said he wrote it. He said it would explain some things. He said that I should preserve it, and share it with those who might want to preserve his record of things past. He said he was profoundly satisfied to see that I had done well. That it lifted an awful weight from his soul. He said he had seen posters advertising that Frederick Douglass would be speaking, and had read, as well, that I would be valedictorian. He said he was sure that I was the same Langston Cane that had issued from him.” “What else did he say?”
“He asked of my mother. He asked of my brothers. He wept, for a moment, when I told him of their fate.” “What was his appearance?”
“Shabby. Old clothes. Of poor means, although he had a pocket watch.”
“This is an elaborate hoax,” I told the young Cane. “People will go to amazing lengths to pull the wool over your eyes. Did he ask for money?”
“No. He gave me these ten gold coins, and he said he wished he could give me more, but that he had little more to give, and that I was plainly on the road to success in life. He said he would listen to my delivery, from the audience, but that afterward, he would be gone. I should not see him again, he said, for he had no right to be a lodestone around my neck. He put his hand on my shoulder, and he left. He had difficulty straightening his left leg. He had a limp.”
“Shall I find him? Shall I have him detained? He is an impostor. How outrageous to disturb your peace at this critical moment!”
“Let him go. He was a strange man, but he meant me no harm. He had love in his voice. I shall find my peace. Give me a moment, Mr. Shoemaker. I shall speak, and I shall not disappoint you. I should never have come this far, had it not been for your assistance.”
I left the room. Cane recovered in time to deliver his speech. He spoke of the need for friendship between people of all races, and illustrated his point by describing the relationship between John Brown and Frederick Douglass. He spoke of the need to rise above racial hatred, and of the need for colored people to take their full place in America. Cane received a rousing ovation. He and I didn’t speak again of the stranger. He will do well to forget the intrusion. One must not allow fools and impostors to derail one’s mission in life.
Chapter 21
ANNETTE FOUND ME IN THE CAFé, amid teacups, a dessert plate, the remaining crumbs of a hamburger, and papers scattered over the table. She touched my arm and sat down. She smiled, which was generous, since she’d had nothing to do on this trip but watch me work and help me out at Storer College. She started to speak, and it must have been apparent that I wasn’t listening. I was watching her mouth, reddened with lipstick. I was imagining her mouth against mine. Could I love this woman? What about Ellen? No. It was time to forget Ellen.
“Earth to Langston Cane, Version Five. Earth to Cane, Version Five.”
“Sorry, Annette.”
“That fellow at the Harpers Ferry museum called. He has something for you. But the museum closes in fifteen m
inutes. Want to run over there?”
“Yeah. Let’s go. How’d you get down here?”
“Took a taxi, so as not to lose time.”
I stood and kissed her.
The Harpers Ferry museum archivist was named Alan Perry. He told Annette and me that it was generally accepted that John Brown had twenty-one men with him on his 1859 raid. However, there was some academic debate about whether Brown may have had a few more men. At least one of his raiders had stayed in Harpers Ferry in rented premises. Others might have stayed elsewhere. Still others may have stayed at the farm Brown rented outside town, only to back out at the last minute. Therefore, Perry said, it was hard to be categorical about how many people took part in John Brown’s raid. Possibly, the raiders had included Langston Cane, of Canada. Because there was no independent verification of his claim, scholars have tended to leave him out. What claim? I asked.
Perry said that several years ago, museum authorities had come across a brief, handwritten memoir. In it, the author — Langston Cane — claimed to have taken part in the raid — to a degree. Harpers Ferry hero this man was not. Perry handed me a photocopy of the memoir.
I asked how it had come to the museum. He gave me a copy of a letter to the West Virginia Historical Society, from the Reverend Langston Cane — my great-grandfather — of the Bethel A.M.E. Church in Baltimore, dated 1919.
Dear Sirs,
As I am getting on in life, I am passing along a document that I received in Harpers Ferry in 1879, from a man who claimed to be my father and who claimed to have the same name as myself.
This man somehow knew that I had been born twenty-one years earlier in Oakville, Ontario, Canada. He even knew the name of the street where I had lived, and the name of my mother. He claimed to be the man who had deserted his family in 1858 — the year of my birth.
My mother, deceased some fifty-three years ago, told me that my father, Langston Cane senior, had left our home to take part in John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry.
I have no idea whether the man who came to see me was indeed my father, or had done the things he claimed to have done in this report. I read his narrative and found parts of it blasphemous and immoral. I had no desire to share it with my family or to investigate further. Nonetheless, I must state that elements of his alleged flight from slavery and of his life in Oakville — most particularly the business of rat-catching — coincide with stories passed on to me by my mother. Some of these stories I have passed on to my own children.
On the day that he approached me, I was about to deliver my valedictory speech at Storer College, and I was too absorbed by my prospects in life to give his story serious consideration. These days, however, I am nearing the end of a lifetime of work, and I tend to believe his claims. But I don’t know for sure. At any rate, all my life, I have kept the matter from my own family, and have simply said that my father was rumored to have died a hero’s death at Harpers Ferry.
Not wishing to play God with history, however, I am forwarding the document. I leave questions of its veracity to your judgment.
Yours sincerely,
Reverend Langston Cane
Bethel A.M.E. Church, Druid Hill Avenue, Baltimore
The museum was about to close, Alan Perry told me gently.
“Have you read much about John Brown’s raid?” I asked.
“Ten or so books and some scholarly articles.”
“Have you ever seen Langston Cane’s name mentioned in the context of the raid?”
“Other than in the document I’ve just given you, no. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t there. Just remember — amateur genealogists always like to discover royal blood in the family line. They’re never happy about royal screw-ups. This document does not necessarily reflect positively on the narrator, who, if he is to be believed, was your great-great-grandfather. Don’t take it personally. You’re not responsible for what someone wrote and did 140 years ago.”
I thanked Alan Perry. As we went out, Annette told me to give her a lift to the hotel. “I know you want to pore over that stuff, so go ahead. But I don’t feel like keeping a bed warm for you. If you’re too tied up to spend this evening with me, camp out in Yoyo’s room tonight.”
“All right,” I told her. I dropped her off. And I went straight to another quiet, decently lit, not-too-crowded restaurant, holding a memoir written by my great-great-grandfather in 1877.
Three days later my mind was still teeming with the unforgettable people and events of Langston Cane the First’s remarkable story.
Chapter 22
I WAS BORN IN VIRGINIA IN 1828. I will not say that I was born a slave, for I do not care for the word. I was born free, but a tobacco plantation owner named Jenkins stole my freedom. My mother and I and others in our situation worked for him, and for Thompson, his overseer. Thompson was an ignorant mass of a man, quick with his foot to your backside, and just as quick with the whip.
My father was sold south when I was a baby. My mother was sold to a plantation ten miles away when I was five. It took two men to drag her away. From time to time, in the summer, at night, when the moon was full and the sky clear, my mother would come to where I lay on the floor and wake me up. She always said she had been walking half the night and couldn’t stay long. She would cry, and hold me, and cry some more. I would stay still, or tell her to stop weeping. It causes me great shame to say that, on the third visit, I told my mother I hated her. She came twice more. But then she didn’t come again. Months later, someone told me she had been sold south. I said I didn’t care.
I worked in the fields by the age of six. I had been kicked a few times, but whipped only once. The whipping consisted of one light lash, and I was warned it was only a trifle. I took the warning to heart, because that one light lash lit my back on fire.
When I was eight or nine, I was leading a horse to the master’s house when I heard the master ask the overseer if there wasn’t a boy on the plantation who could be trained to catch rats. They were overrunning his barn and getting into his grain bins and leaving droppings all over the place. The next morning I walked up to the master, swinging two brown rats by the tail.
“Massa, wha’ I do wid dese?” I knew how to speak better than that, but that’s how I spoke around the master.
“You kill them, boy?”
“Sho’ nuff. Put out corn biscuit, massa, an’ I jes’ wait an’ wait an’ wait until they come out one after de ubber.” “How’d you catch ‘em?” “Plugged ‘em wid stones, Massa.”
I became the master’s official rat catcher. It didn’t quite elevate me to the status of house nigger, but I got to hang around the barn and snoop in the house. The master didn’t have that many rats in his house. But I planted five or ten dead ones there, to underline the value of my services. I caught them by sitting long hours in the night, hidden from the bait, with good pitching stones at the ready. I’d sit for hours and hours and hours in the master’s house, and soon people stopped asking me what I was doing. They knew I was sitting for rats. I learned to read, that way. One of the master’s sons showed me letters and words, that year, and I picked them up quick enough. I didn’t get to sit all the time. When the master or the overseer, who often dropped in to talk, saw that I was idle, they made me run chores in the house. They made me bring them drinks in the evening from the kitchen. The master liked coffee in the evening. The overseer had developed a taste for hot cocoa. He liked it brought to him steaming hot. And then he would let it sit and sit and sit until it cooled. He would down it fast in long, continuous gulps. He knocked me on the head with a broom, once, when I didn’t serve it to him sweet enough.
I learned to steal from the kitchen, which made me popular with the three old women I lived with. The four of us slept on the dirt floor of a one-room shack. Their men were all sold off or dead, and my mother was gone, so they took care of me and kept me out of trouble.
One evening, as I was sitting on a stump outside the shack, I heard a commotion about the master’s house.
Hilda, the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, ran from the big house. The master chased after her. “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t,” she shouted. She ran our way. She didn’t live with us. She stayed in a well-roofed cabin with windows and a porch. The master had put her there. But she was running toward our shacks. Got right close to us before the master grabbed her by the arm and threw her down.
“Never,” she cried out.
He reached down to hit her.
I was being taken care of, that year, by a woman named Bessie. She had wide hips, and sagging breasts, and bags under her eyes, and she seemed ancient to me, but I doubt, now, that she was over thirty. Bessie mumbled: “That Jenkins no different from any master I seen. He just grunt and heave once or twice, and it’s over an’ done with. Then he order you out his fancy home and don’t even want to look at you till the rutting mood strikes again. That young gal is carrying on like this some big surprise. She knew what was good for her, she’d just play dead and let him git it over with.”
“Git what over with?” I asked.
“You’ll know soon enough.”
Hilda worked in the master’s house. She was an African queen. She didn’t walk — she floated. Her long, muscled legs were as smooth as river rocks. Her back was long and slender, and her breasts lifted straight out and up, and this I knew, for I had spied on her washing. Most of the boys I knew had spied on her washing. Men, too, spied on her. She wouldn’t let any of them near her, for she was sweet on a boy down the road. I had admired Hilda’s face many times. I don’t believe there is such a thing as God, for I have seen too much to believe that He would condone the things Man has done to Man. But if I were looking for a reason to try to prove his existence, I would point to Hilda’s face. Her cheekbones stood sculpted like ripe plums. Her lips were full and quick to smile. She had a laugh that ran across the air, a high, pelting burst of life that made you stand up in the fields. I used to love to watch her wipe the sweat off her forehead and flick the beads off her hand as she walked through the yard. She had shaved her head, she said, so that no man could take her by the hair. Her round scalp shone in the sun, and although it’s hard to think of a bald head as attractive, I stared at it endlessly when her kerchief was off.