Kathleen saw Wiley striding quickly towards the cornfield, then breaking into a trot. She followed him, walking briskly.
—Where’s that coming from? she asked, her face creased with alarm.
But Wiley was gone, running full speed now for the cornfield, sprinting like a madman, leaving the women, who broke into a run far behind him.
Wiley got there before Kathleen and Mary had even cleared the front yard. He ran directly into the pine grove behind the cornfield, then into the thickets and bog that lay behind it. Kathleen cut into the cornfield, panic blowing into her lungs now. Mary fanned in the other direction towards the creek.
Kathleen stomped through the corn, breaking the stalks as she went.
—Jeff? Jeff Boy? she called.
She stopped at the end of the row when she saw the hoe lying on the ground, then looked up at the grove of pine trees where Wiley had ascended. She watched him crash into the thicket out of sight. She ran to the spot where he had just disappeared into the thicket and was about to push into the thicket herself when she looked down.
What she saw made her gasp.
There was a hole in the earth. A big one. Man-size, where someone had obviously lain in wait. Two dead muskrats lay at the edge of it, along with Jeff ’s dog Lucky, his throat slit. Around the hole were several thick pine branches, which someone had obviously used to camouflage himself. She collapsed to her knees, pushed the dead dog aside, then, kneeling on all fours, dug at the hole with her hands, as if the boy would turn up beneath it.
She dug for a few seconds, came to her senses, leaped to her feet, and ran to the north side of the grove, smashing into the north side of the thicket, knowing Wiley had gone in on the west side. Whoever fled west would certainly run out of land that way and hit Sinking Creek, she knew. Wiley, she hoped, would cut off that route for anyone going that way. She heard him call out Jeff Boy’s name several times, and in the cone of confusion she could hear someone else screaming hysterically and yowling like a coyote, and only after several minutes of running through the thick swamp, the stinking quagmire of mud and yellow earth pulling at her feet and hands, did she realize that the screams and yells were coming from her own throat. She tripped over a large root near a small swampy pond, fell into it, choked on black water as it gurgled down her throat, then rose again, climbed out, and ran until she hit Sinking Creek. She waded into the creek until the water reached her chest. She scanned both banks, then backed out of the water until it was knee-deep and ran parallel to the bank, the world a spinning morass of blinding, grabbing, gnarled roots and cypress tree inefficiency. There was no time, she sensed, but the swamp in its dripping, weepy confusion would not let her move faster. She staggered on, blinded with panic and rage, until exhaustion took over, and she hurtled to earth, only to feel a pair of strong hands pick her up.
It was Wiley. He appeared badly shaken.
—You seen him? she said.
—I’ll git him, Wiley said. You go on back to the house and get some help.
—What could it be?
—Might be a bear that snatched him, is all I can think of.
—God Almighty. Wiley, ain’t no bears out here!
But Wiley was already splashing across the creek now, his back to her. He trotted into a deep grove of thickets, which swallowed him for a second, then he reappeared on the other side. He yelled over his shoulder through the vegetation, G’wan for help, missus! We ain’t got time for hollering!
—Where’s Amber? she called out, then realized she was alone, for she’d sent Amber to town, and the sound of Wiley’s running feet had already disappeared into the bushes.
Wiley plunged through the underbrush and pushed towards the Indian burial ground and the smaller parts of the Blackwater Creek that led towards Sinking Creek and Cook’s Point beyond it. He did not know where Amber was, but he knew one thing: if he ever got out of this, he would never speak to Amber again. His whole life, he felt, had gone to pot in five minutes. He was terrified, not just for Jeff Boy, but for himself. The wrath of the white man was about to drop down on them like a hammer because of what was unfolding here—he knew that for certain—and there would be nothing Miss Kathleen could do to help him. It was Amber’s fault, monkeying around with the gospel train and the Dreamer, whom Amber had confessed he’d harbored out by the Indian graveyard for five days now. The Dreamer had called the Devil into Amber’s head, and now they’d all suffer. It was a mistake, he realized, to introduce her to him. He should have left her on the road.
The sight of Jeff Boy’s dog dead had sent him into a state of frenzied, shocked panic. He was so frightened, he could barely keep his breath. He was afraid to stop running lest he turn around and run right into the deepest part of the Blackwater and drown himself in it. It wasn’t just the matter of the dead dog that terrified him, either. It was what he’d seen in the grove of pine trees.
It was only a glimpse, but it was enough: He saw a man, a colored man, tall, muscular, dark, wild-looking, more like an Indian than a Negro, nearly naked, with treetops pinned into his burgeoning, wild hair, who ran faster through the bog than he’d ever seen a man run. Wiley was sixteen, lithe and strong like his late father. He was one of the fastest teenage boys in Cambridge City. In town he often ran races against other boys his age and could beat even the fastest ones just by running what was for him an easy gait. But he could not run like this man, who tore along with the speed of a flying ghost; his feet sprang across the marsh as if they didn’t touch the ground. He moved as if he were flying, zipping through the trees and bushes like a breath of wind, his arms and legs flickering like butterfly wings as he leaped and dodged across the uneven swampland, leaping through the tiny creeks, muddy puddles, and thick cypresses like an antelope. He was a good distance ahead of Wiley, several hundred yards, gaining ground at each step, but he slowed at a creek where the embankment was too steep for him to easily maneuver, and Wiley, running and tumbling through the marsh at top speed, gained ground for a moment and got a good look at the man before he leaped out of sight.
And in that moment Wiley saw something that made him gasp.
Under one arm Wiley saw—he whimpered like a child when he saw it—a tiny white figure, the sight of which made him nearly faint. Jeff Boy, his arms flinging wildly, stuck under one of the man’s muscular arms like a loaf of bread. Whether he was dead or alive, Wiley could not say, but he knew that death would follow that little boy now wherever he went, for the rest of his life, whether the rest of that boy’s life was today or a hundred years from now. The boy was cursed because of what was transpiring today, at this moment, at this time, and someone—and not just a dog—was going to pay dearly for the abduction of this child. Wiley was sure of it, and the thought made his knees weak.
It was fear that pushed him onwards; it shoved a surge of energy into his legs and he ran as he’d never run before, and incredibly, he managed to keep the man in sight. The man crossed Sinking Creek well ahead of him, but Wiley saw him slow a moment to dodge a large cypress that had fallen on the opposite bank, and Wiley thought he’d heard, to his utter relief, as the black figure vanished out of sight for the final time, a shriek of terror from Jeff Boy.
It was just a yelp, an irritated Ow, but that fleeting sound was enough to give Wiley hope and send a fresh wave of naked terror cascading through his insides. That same shriek of terror, he was sure, would emerge from his own lips once the white man got hold of him. There would be no getting around it, for no one would believe him if he told them what he had just seen—which he did not plan to. For who would believe him when he said a spirit had taken Miss Kathleen’s son? Who would take his word that a devil had claimed the life of a white boy, just as it had claimed the life of his master Boyd and his pa out on the Chesapeake? No one. The white man blamed who he wanted to when he wanted. One colored looked just like another. The sins of one caused the suffering of the many—that was the rule of the world. That had been the story of his ma and pa’s life, and he expected
the tale would be no different when his name was on the dot. Maybe Amber was right to plan their escape to freedom, but it didn’t matter now. They would blame him. And Amber. And Mary. Even many coloreds would not believe him if he told them he’d chased the Devil himself. It was only because of his mother that he ran in the direction of the man now. He would accept the consequences, he decided. He would lie on the matter if need be. Just so she’d be spared.
He ran on, but the figure had disappeared. He could see nothing ahead now, but he ran for a good ten minutes more, splashing into the chest-high waters of another creek, then splashing out again. He fell, hawked, spat water, and ran on. Distress dripped off him like raindrops. Every hope he had, every dream he had known, fell away like the water that dripped off his soaked ragged pants onto his knees and ankles, which were showing. Because of the Dreamer. She had bewitched Amber. She had brought slave stealers among them. And now she had called on a demon to claim them, one by one. Jeff Boy was the first, he thought bitterly as he climbed down to another creek, sloshing through the water, slapping away a water snake, fighting back his own tears. There would be more.
The water was knee-deep and he slogged forward, slower now, frightful and tense, for he had reached the outer parts of their neighbors the Gables’ property past Sinking Creek and towards Cook’s Point, and the realization that he was chasing the Devil hit him and he changed direction and ran back towards the Gables’ house. They would help.
He took two steps, busted through the underbrush to a clearing, and felt a whack as a rifle butt slammed across his face. He dropped like a sack of stones.
Lying on his back, he looked up and saw the figure of a tall, lean white woman on a horse staring down at him, her rifle aimed at his face. With her were two other men.
—Where you going, nigger?
Wiley gasped to catch his breath.
—Missus’ boy’s been snatched! he said.
—Who?
—I swear, Missus’ boy! Lil’ Jeff Boy, he’s been snatched away.
—By who?
—The Devil.
—Well now, Patty said. I thought I was the Devil. Didn’t you, Hodge?
Hodge shrugged.
—Ain’t that what the colored call me? How could I be in two places at once? I didn’t snatch nobody, did I, Hodge?
—Please, miss, Wiley said. A colored devil done it.
—Will you make up your mind, you fibbin’ rascal. First it was a devil. Then a nigger devil. What you doing out here on the Neck without a pass anyhow?
—I belongs to Miss Kathleen!
—I was just there two days past. I didn’t see you. You’s a runaway. Maybe you’re one of them that ran off from me.
—You can check! Wiley sputtered. I’m Wiley.
—I already lost one boot on account of you people, Patty said, reaching into her saddlebag and pulling out a long ankle chain and set of foot locks. I ain’t getting’ rolled again.
sounding the alarm
Cambridge City deputy Herbie Tucker ran a serious poker game with three buddies every Thursday night at the Cambridge City jailhouse. It was a rip-roaring, bubbly, libation-filled event that he looked forward to all week—a toot, tear, and blowout while real money exchanged hands. It wasn’t just the money that Herb enjoyed—he was a decent poker player but hardly ever won anyway—but rather the shell game. Between hands, after everyone had dutifully gotten cockeyed and wobbly from sipping holy water, Herb tossed three identical oyster shells on the table. He tucked a bean underneath one, then scrambled them around, and the player who picked the oyster shell covering the bean won two dollars. Each player got a turn planting the bean, so there was no cheating. Even Herbie had to pick while someone else planted the bean and shuffled the shells. Herb had gotten lucky last winter, picking the winning shell nine weeks straight. His buddies had begun questioning his winning streak, suspecting he was a cheat. Still he won, and it was triumphant business to Herb that they had not yet figured out why.
It was Thursday afternoon, and Herbie had spent a considerable amount of time at his desk, marking the different oyster shells, carefully scraping the bottom lip of each so that he could tell one from another, when a knocking at the door interrupted him. Irritated, he rose to answer. He opened the door.
Before him stood a blathering, sweating Negro woman.
—DevildonestoleJeffBoy! she said.
—Say what?
—The Devil done stole Jeff Boy! she said.
Herbie, a thin, angular soul with the smooth face of a doctor, rolled his eyes and looked at his watch. This was the third major crisis this week. He was, after all, only a deputy constable. Why should this happen to him? The boss, Travis House, had left on business up at Fell’s Point in Baltimore about when Patty Cannon hit town. Surely Travis didn’t expect him to handle all this hell that broke loose, did he?
Herbie had several crises at once. Two watermen had shot it out over on Holland Island two nights before, haggling over an oyster bar claim. Shootings over oyster bars—the sandbars at the bay’s bottom where oysters were plucked using long tongs or dredged with long scoops—were nothing new. In fact, squabbles between Maryland and Virginia oystermen were so commonplace that state lawmen from Maryland were allowed to arrest Virginians who trespassed on Maryland’s fishing waters, and vice versa. The Holland Island incident was local, though, and it required a boat to get there. Herbie had nobody to send. The constable’s only waterman, Mousey Sopher, had ferried Constable Travis to Fell’s Point a week earlier and hadn’t been seen since. And while Herbie, like most eastern shoremen, wasn’t a stranger to a sailing bungy, he wasn’t fool enough to set sail in the Chesapeake in anything less than an eighteen-foot dory this time of year. Late winter and spring were dangerous seasons on the Chesapeake, a time when sudden spring squalls could appear out of nowhere and send a boat foundering into fog so thick you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. The fog often appeared like magic in the mornings, billowing across the eastern shore and covering everything in a dripping, freezing embrace. He hated the water altogether. He had no intention of going out to Holland Island to question anyone. Whoever was shot, living or dead, he’d find out their names soon enough. Besides, he had a colored boy in jail to look after. Not that he cared to. The boy was a wild-looking thing, a runaway of some kind, and Herbie had locked him up with a local colored woman who absconded every week, a habitual drunk. The boy was nearly dead when he was brought in, suffering from a leg wound. He spoke no English. He seemed like a savage, fighting and kicking. Jasper Baxter, the local doctor, had made matters worse by insisting on treating the boy. As far as Herbie could tell, from an account of a waterman who had spotted the boy on the day he arrived, the boy had come from out near Joya’s Neck with his father—a monster; a horrible-looking, hugely muscled Negro, with natty hair down to his back. Herbie and several white men spotted the man crouching behind a gate when the boy was found and grew suspicious. They approached him and demanded papers. Instead of producing them, the nigger cut and ran. They gave chase, but that was the fastest nigger Herbie had ever seen: he ran like an antelope, scaling a six-foot iron fence behind the town’s stable in one leap. He flew out of Cambridge like his tail was on fire, and lost his pursuers within minutes. Herbie spent the better part of two days hanging fliers around Dorchester County for any potential owners who could prove the wild boy was their property. So far no takers. He expected Constable Travis would sell the boy soon, the proceeds going to the constable’s office, with a generous portion, Herbie thought bitterly, no doubt going into Travis’s pocket as well.
And then there was the real problem.
Herbie had never in his life met a woman like Patty Cannon. In a town where the most serious offense by women was last year’s fistfight between two women parishioners at Second Avenue Methodist over which night to play bingo and which night to clip paper doll cutouts, Patty was an enigma. Unlike the worn-out, tired-looking whores who occasionally wandered into Cambridge fr
om nearby Oxford, she was beautiful and monied, pleasant and charming, and quite deadly. No lawman on the eastern shore, on either the Virginia or the Maryland side, was anxious to arrest Patty. The last lawman who tried, a poor sap from Caroline County, had stumbled out of her tavern with so many broken bones and missing teeth that his wife had to chew his food for him for the next two years. At a deputy salary of eight dollars a week, Herbie felt, it wasn’t worth it to get his teeth kicked out, not with a wife and three kids to support. Besides, Dorchester County wasn’t like its rich neighbors in Essex County, Virginia, or Prince George’s County outside Washington, D. C., where lawmen made real money. This was Dorchester, home of broke watermen who got their duffs kicked regularly by the Chesapeake, and thus did not need any more reminders about how poor and powerless they were, particularly from free niggers who were becoming increasingly numerous and problematic. As far as he was concerned, he didn’t give a shit if Patty stole niggers in Sussex County or Canada, so long as she stayed out of Dorchester. But now she was his problem, because most folks were not slave owners, and were afraid. They did not mind the Negro problem being an underground problem. But Patty’s presence brought it out into the open. She had been hanging around town for two weeks, walking around like a steer at a sheep ramp. Watermen did not like anybody strutting around their town fluffing their feathers too much. If the Negro problem exploded in the wrong direction with breakouts, revolts, murders, it could cost them, too, in lost fishing revenue, time spent on posse roundups, more taxes for more constables…And what did they gain from it? They weren’t slave owners. The watermen were living on the edge too. Herb wanted her to leave, but of course could not ask, for if she did pull out her heater, she could clear the town faster than a meat market on a Friday, and she seemed to be of no mind to do anything but what she wanted to do. And who would ask her to leave? Him? Certainly not.