Mattie grew heavier, and much older after the second and third births. Her hands were full, and from me she expected prompt and regular delivery of food and other necessities. “I know you’re with other women,” she said to me a year before I left. “I know, because of the way you don’t look me in the eyes, and because of the way you don’t rub up against me in bed any more, and because of the way that you seem to be doing a chore, forcing yourself to get through it, when we are doing it in bed. Don’t leave me, Langston. Our boys need you. Colored women and men have been torn apart for as long as they’ve been on this continent, but it doesn’t have to happen to us. Look at me, Langston. Look at me.”
We joined the A.M.E. Church. I went, sometimes, to make sure the kids kept still in the pews. I didn’t care much for the preacher, or for the others in the congregation. Matter of fact, I didn’t care a great deal for black people in Oakville. They tried too hard to be like white people. They worked as long and as hard as they could. They didn’t change jobs unless they had to. They didn’t move their bodies or let themselves laugh in public or show any signs of wanting sex. They looked trapped, and they made me feel trapped.
In The Voice of the Fugitive, I read about colored people being seized in northern states under the Fugitive Slave Act and dragged back down south. I read about Negroes being beaten up and lynched on the eastern shore of Maryland, and about Frederick Douglass talking up a storm against slavery.
In Canada West, there was a lot of talk about the abolition of American slavery. Word went out among colored folks that some white man from the States wanted to round up black folks in Chatham and talk about setting free the stolen people.
His name was John Brown. He was tall and lean and gaunt and gray haired. A beard grew off his face like a violent crop. He walked so fast you had to double your step to keep up, and he talked like a church minister. He talked more like a black man than any white man I had met. He gesticulated with his hands and walked while he talked. He swore us all to secrecy in a one-room secret meeting place in Chatham in May 1858. We met on a Saturday and a Monday. The man didn’t want to meet on Sunday, which he said was the Lord’s day. We did a lot of talking — more than I cared for — but behind all this talk was a man burning to act.
He spoke with each of us individually. When my turn came, he said: “Are we agreed that slavery is a sin against God?”
“It’s a sin against man,” I said.
“God comes first. It’s a sin against God, first, and man, second. Are you with me on that point?” “I hear you.”
“Good. We can work together. You’re a man of intelligence, that is immediately apparent. But do not let that intelligence render you impassive. Will you join me?” “I will hear out your plan.”
“Your decision must rest on what is right. On the ineluctable course of action for a God-fearing man. Do you have a wife and children?”
“I do.”
“Good. You are a serious man. Are you prepared to leave them, if need be?” “I will consider it.”
“I have fathered twenty children, many of whom have predeceased me. Each one to do so has taken a piece of me into the grave. But I have no fear of death. I am prepared to die tomorrow for the freedom of the American Negro. You must be, too, if you choose to join me.”
I didn’t hear many details at the Chatham meeting. Brown said he was going to strike a blow against slavery. He said he would free Negroes from the plantations and lead them in his fighting force. He moved many of the black men in Chatham to tears. They had never seen a white man speak with such passion about hard abolitionist action. My own eyes remained dry. John Brown had never lived on a plantation, and he didn’t know colored folks. He assumed it would be easy to get thousands of Negroes to throw down their shackles and take up arms under his direction. Like I say, he didn’t know colored folks. They would take one look at him and declare him mad.
Our Chatham meeting ended. John Brown went away. Over the next year, I often wondered what had become of his plan.
A month after meeting John Brown, I took a ferry to Niagara-on-the-Lake, one Saturday, and then paid to ride on a team of horses along a path up river to Niagara Falls. I had heard that a Frenchman named Blondin would be doing stunts that day, and I wanted to see him. I met a colored woman on the boat, who was going with two friends to see Blondin, too. Her name was Jean. Young woman, straight back, full but slim butt, smooth skin, eyes unwrinkled, earthy laugh. This woman was from Hamilton. On the boat, I bought her tea and crumpets — white folks’ snacks, but that’s all they served. Her friends let us alone in Niagara Falls after we watched this Blondin fellow carry a man on his back while walking on a tightrope two hundred feet over the Niagara River. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, with that man on his back out there. And I couldn’t help thinking that people had been trying for centuries to kill black folks, so I sure wouldn’t help them along by trying to kill myself on some thin rope over a raging river. Maybe that was the difference between black and white. Colored people had rubbed shoulders with death, and wanted none of it. This Frenchman named Blondin had obviously never been whipped within an inch of death, in his younger days. He felt the need to tempt the very fate that I had run from. I watched his every move out there. I put a dollar in a hat being passed around for his benefit. I made note of the fact that posters said he would be returning next summer for even more amazing stunts. And then I made off with Jean. She told her friends I would escort her back.
We got ourselves a room in an inn. And we went at it in the afternoon, and again after dinner, and again in the morning. We did it with her on all fours. We did it standing up, or with me standing, holding her from the waist down as we rocked. We did it on the bed, with me lying on my back, and Jean pumping up and down in a frenzy. And we did it long and slow and smoothly, in the usual way. We hardly talked. We laughed some, and shouted out, and let ourselves holler in the moments of ecstasy, and, finally, we took a wagon ride back to Niagara-on-the-Lake and the ferry back to Oakville.
Jean shared a home in Hamilton with some other young women. She had no family nearby. I started traveling from Oakville to see her, from time to time.
We had the longest and the wildest nights I have ever known. I did not love that woman, and I can’t believe that I ever would, but now, in my final years, I can say that I never had that kind of sex with any other woman in my life. We humped in the morning, we humped in the afternoon, and we humped at night. We humped on weekends, or late or early in the day — whenever I could get away. We shoved aside food to hump in the middle of meals, and we humped at the height of her bleeding.
I made up some lie about living in a rented room in someone’s house, and not being able to take her there. This went on too long. It went on until the inevitable happened. I seemed bent on ways that would ruin my life, and I didn’t seem to have the power to stop it. I wasn’t drinking. I wasn’t fighting. I wasn’t courting death over the Niagara River. But I seemed to want to destroy the conventions of my life. So we kept on, Jean and I, until she began to talk of marriage. She began to insist upon it. I said I couldn’t do that. She shouted, and argued, and I shouted back at first, and then grew silent. Silent because I knew I would leave her soon.
“You seduced me,” she said. “You have acted like my husband. You bought me food, helped with my rent, took me out, treated me like a wife. So marry me.”
“I’m already married.”
“That’s a lie.”
“I am married and have three children in Oakville. I will help you if I can, but I can’t marry you. We are going to have to break this off. Take this. I have to go.”
“Ten dollars. What am I to do with ten dollars?” “I have to go now.” “Go then. Go. Go.”
Jean came after me a week later in Oakville. She served notice with the A.M.E. Church that we were married, and that she had learned I was married to someone else, and that she wanted my assets and money to support a child I’d left her with. I knew of no child.
/> I didn’t tell Mattie. I could hardly look at her anymore. I played with my children more than usual. Langston, our third boy, was a year old. He had been walking since nine months. He liked to jump up and run into my arms when I came into our home. I love you, baby, I whispered in his ear. I’m sorry for what’s coming. But you’ll make it. Look at those thick, fat thighs of yours. Look at your hand speed, the way you catch my nose so well. You’ll make it without me, son. You’ll have to.
That same week, as if to save me, John Brown came to Oakville. He had heard of the work of Captain Robert Wilson in ferrying fugitives across the lake, and came seeking financial help and men for his mission. He asked to meet with the captain and with his two most trusted Negro associates. The captain summoned Paul Williams and me. The three of us met with John Brown in Captain Wilson’s study.
Brown, who didn’t remember me, asked the captain to close the study door. The captain complied, and produced a bottle of whiskey and four small glasses from a shelf behind his desk.
“Before our deliberations, gentlemen, may I entice you with a shot of fine Irish whiskey?”
Paul, a churchgoing teetotaler, shook his head. A shot of whiskey would have done me just fine, as I liked how it warmed my throat, but rarely spent money on such luxuries.
“Mr. Wilson,” Brown said, “would you mind putting the spirits aside until my departure? With no offense to you, or your hospitality. But I’ve come to speak of life and death. Of slavery and freedom. So I ask that you not trivialize this moment with such libations.”
Captain Wilson raised his bushy black eyebrows. Most of his red hair had fallen out since I had met him nine years earlier. “As you wish,” he said quietly, placing the bottle to one side. “Since this is my whiskey hour, and since you wish to rush the point, I will ask you to get to it.”
John Brown began pacing the study. “Gentlemen, I am motivated first and foremost by the burning need to remove that which is utterly offensive to God.”
“Meaning?” Captain Wilson asked.
“The bondage of men. It is a blight upon our great nation.” “Your great nation,” Captain Wilson said. “We are on British soil, here.”
“Correct,” Brown said, “but surely we are not insensitive to the outrages of slavery. Canada West, after all, is only a quarter century removed from slavery.”
“Mr. Brown,” Captain Wilson said, “I beg you not to patronize me in my own country and in my own home. Your earlier entreaty notwithstanding, I am going to pour myself a shot of whiskey and drink that whiskey as I see fit, as this is my home and this is my whiskey hour and I have worked harder than you might imagine to allow myself that comfort.”
“I wouldn’t want the success of this meeting to turn on one shot of whiskey, so please, good man, go ahead. This is your home.”
Captain Wilson downed one shot in a flash, and poured himself another.
Brown said he had a plan to strike at slavery in the heart of the United States. From men such as Captain Wilson, he would need financing for arms and for provisions for a small army of followers. From men such as Paul and me, he would need the stout hearts of those willing to die for the cause.
Spittle flew from Brown’s lips. The study rang with his words. He scared the wits out of my friend, Paul. Captain Wilson asked how many men Brown had at his disposal, and how many arms they possessed, and how, precisely, they intended to topple the institution of slavery. Where would they strike, and how would they withstand the might of American gunpowder? John Brown danced around these questions.
My friend Paul bolted from the room. He’d been moving and itching in his seat since the conversation had begun. John Brown observed him run out, paused to consider the fact for a moment, and tried to continue. But Captain Wilson spoke first.
“I have heard enough. Cane has his own mind, so he will speak for himself. But I say no. Not on your life. I join your condemnation of slavery. But you speak in the absence of specifics. Rhetoric alone will not save you from American firepower. You’re living in a fantasy, and you don’t even know it. I believe you’re mad. You won’t have a cent of mine, and if you are finished, I will ask you to leave.”
“I am but an instrument of God, and I ask that you do me the justice of focusing on my ideas and my project, rather than your perception of my state of mind. Mad or not, I have amassed support from men of means and from men who are prepared to die for what is right. In the final analysis, good Captain, God will not judge me on the grounds of madness. He will judge me for what I have done. Thank you for hearing me out, Captain. I have heard of your fine work helping fugitives escape to Canada. Carry on. I bear no anger or malice toward you. I wish you and your loved ones well.”
“Fine. Let me show you to the door.”
John Brown stepped outside. I nodded good night to the captain, and followed Brown into the warm August night. He told me where he would be staying, and indicated that he would be leaving at dawn.
He clasped my hands as we stood on the street. “Kiss your loved ones, and tell them you’ve chosen to strike a deed for God, and that you’ll be back in due time, if He is willing.”
Mattie had left me a note on the table. “The constable was here, asking for you. And the town has today served notice of suit. Please wake me. We must talk.”
I wrote out a note for my wife. I said she would soon be hearing untrue allegations against me. Regardless, I explained that I was leaving. I was joining a man who had pledged to destroy slavery. I told her his name, and begged her to destroy the note and to keep the news a secret until the fighting had begun. I left her all the money in my possession, save thirty dollars. I kissed her cheek as I climbed into her bed one last time. Her back was to me, but I sensed that her eyes were open. She knew I was leaving. She had probably heard my quill scratching across paper.
I was not made for Oakville. I was not made for marriage. I was not made for church and children and unwavering employment. I was burning a hole in my own soul by leaving this woman and our children — the children she alone would have to feed and clothe and protect. I hated myself on the day that I left them. I hated myself more than Mattie or the children ever could. But I also felt free. Freer than I’d felt since running from Maryland nine years earlier. I felt intoxicatingly free.
I left before my wife and children woke.
We rode by horse and wagon to Buffalo, and rode on from there to Rochester, and from there caught a train to Philadelphia, and from there another train to Chambersburg, a small town in Pennsylvania, close to the Maryland border. All this took two days, and in that time, I didn’t get to know Brown at all. He spoke only when he had to. He drove in the silence of the dead. He had no sense of humor. A very odd man he was. When we were short on food, he offered me more than half. In our nightly lodgings, he left me the more promising bed. If we met people, he unfailingly introduced me as his trusted and gifted aide from Canada. If thieves had attacked, he would have laid down his life in my defense. But, alone, pulled by two tired horses, or sitting on train seats, he preferred not to speak. He knew nothing of the pleasures of conversation. I sensed that he knew nothing of any pleasures at all.
In Chambersburg, we waited at length in the train station for someone to pick us up. I was hungry. Brown said he wasn’t. I said I was going out to find something to eat.
“No. Wait with me. We are to be met soon. Patience, man. Mr. Douglass is sure to feed us.”
“Are you talking about Frederick Douglass?”
“Would you kindly lower your voice?” he hissed. We were alone, save for the ticket master, in the one-room train station. I repeated my question, in a whisper.
“Yes,” Brown said. “Do you know of him?” “What do you take me for? An illiterate? Of course I know of him. Or do you think colored folks don’t read the newspapers?”
John Brown turned on his bench and stared at me down the slope of his large, long nose. “I won’t dignify that remark with a response,” he said.
Frederick
Douglass showed up five minutes later. He was a short, thick, scrappy-looking light-skinned man with kinked hair that shot from his head like an exclamation. His voice, however, was pleasant to the ear. He spoke with a familiar ease. He spoke naturally, which was refreshing after forty-eight hours with the Ascetic Personified. Douglass shook my hand and said, “Cane. I like that name. I hope, for your sake, that it’s C-A-N-E and not C-A-I-N.” He laughed heartily at his own joke. I liked the man.
Douglass had with him a large black man by the name of Shields Green. The four of us traveled in a horse-drawn coach to a house where Douglass and Green were staying.
“If I know Brown, he hasn’t let you eat for the better part of a day,” Douglass told me, with a clap on the back. “Come join us at the table.”
I downed three bowls of soup, six chunks of bread, and four fried eggs. Brown limited himself to one bowl of soup, a piece of bread, and two cups of water.
Brown began talking as soon as the eating was done. He told Green and me that we were about to hear secret information. Then, turning to Douglass, Brown said that he had modified his plans. Instead of merely setting up mountain strongholds, he would attack the United States’ arsenal in Harpers Ferry.
Douglass laughed and slapped the table. I sensed that I would rather have been working with him than with Brown. “You must have lost your mind.”
Brown launched into explanations. Douglass said Brown would be walking into a death trap. Harpers Ferry was on a spit of land squeezed in between the Potomac and the Shenandoah rivers, and enclosed by the Blue Ridge Mountains. Once Brown and his men had ventured into town, they would be sitting ducks for army soldiers.
Shields Green and I went to bed, and left the two men talking. In the morning, I awoke to find them drinking coffee and talking more. The four of us ate grits, sausages, and eggs. Brown tapped me on the arm and said, “Don’t expect to eat this well at the farm in Maryland.”