Stanton’s gaze cut from Patty to Joe, lying in the muddy, swampy water.
—It ain’t no use to him, Patty said coyly. If you love him so much, g’wan over there and bury him with that fifty dollars in his pockets, or whatever he’s got.
Stanton’s hands fell to his pocket knife and the thought of what fifty dollars could do.
—It won’t bother you? he asked.
Patty had already turned her back to him, grabbing her horse’s reins and turning him around. Do what you wanna, she said. I’m gonna burn my way out this hellhole and find this nigger wench and git my money outta her. And God help that cripple waterman if I catch up to him.
She grabbed her horse’s saddle and, broken arm and all, pulled herself up and guided her mount through the muck towards the old logging trail, leaving Stanton to flip Joe’s body onto its back so he could rifle through the pockets and his socks in the pouring rain.
—I won’t be long, Patty, if you wouldn’t mind holding a second, Stanton said.
Patty kept going, not even bothering to glance over her shoulder, ducking her head as her horse picked its way slowly through the swamps under the thick, wet cypress trees.
G’wan and dig in his pockets all you want, she thought bitterly. She hoped Stanton did a thorough job of it, because the way things were going, she decided, there was a good chance that Stanton himself would soon fall to earth as worm food. And she would have no problem picking him clean. So everything would work out. It made a nice, neat circle.
Four miles away, in a cove in a rocky outcrop just beyond the Indian burial ground, Liz slept beneath her jacket, curled into a ball, protected from the rain by the rocks overhanging.
A gust of chilly air awakened her, and she opened her eyes to see the Woolman standing before her, his eyes beckoning her but bespeaking nothing.
—You slept all night in that? she asked, nodding to the pouring rain and the beach where he’d lain the night before.
He mumbled something unintelligible, then nodded for her to follow.
She tried to rise but could not. Her legs were cramped and her head was burning with a new kind of pain. She was exhausted and feeling worse. Her chest felt as if it were going to break apart. There was something wrong inside her. Deep inside. She needed to be inside somewhere, anyplace where it was dry and warm.
He held his hand out and she grabbed it, pulling herself to her feet. The Woolman’s palm felt like flint, scratchy, hard as iron, as if it had never touched anything soft. She suspected he had never lived inside anywhere. She judged that his wounds were still bothering him by the way he moved, slowly, deliberately, sometimes holding his arm, but despite his obvious discomfort he was the most sculpted living creature she had ever seen.
Standing before him, she looked at him dead-on.
—Who are you? she asked.
He shook his head as if to say, No answers, then took a few paces and nodded at her to follow. She complied.
He led her through the trees to what seemed to be the mouth of Sinking Creek, but it was a false mouth, for the creek bent into a body of water that seemed to be a calm pond. He led her around the edge to a small thicket of brush marked by a tiny stream, which within several yards grew into a small stream, then a larger one, then around a bend, and before her the Choptank River yawned into the wide-open expanse of the Chesapeake Bay.
—No wonder nobody could find you, she said.
She knew who he was now. Before she’d had some doubt, but now there was none. She followed him around the tiny bends and through the high marsh grass.
—Woolman, she said to his back. But he did not respond. Woolman, Woolman, Woolman.
He ignored her and pushed on. Not more than a quarter of a mile farther she realized there was water on each side of them. The tiny sliver of land was less than a half mile wide. She imagined that if the view were not blocked by woods and marsh grass, she could see both bodies of water on either side of it. The Woolman worked his way through the high grass to a small cove, shielded from Sinking Creek by a projection of rock that rose up above it. From a distance it appeared as if the entire piece of land was part of the next cove, Cook’s Point, which jutted out into the Choptank. It was an extraordinary hiding place, one that even the most experienced hunter or waterman could miss because of its tiny size and location. Even from a few yards away it appeared only as an outcrop of rock.
She followed the Woolman around the outskirts of that outcrop, whereupon a tiny cabin made of sticks and wood with a thatched roof appeared, neatly blending into the rocks, marsh, and trees that surrounded it.
The Woolman led her inside, bending to gather several pieces of firewood that were stacked in the corner while she stood in the entrance, squinting her eyes, adjusting them to the dark interior.
She saw something in the middle of the room. A table. She squinted further and finally stepped aside so that the light from the doorway could illuminate the room.
What she saw made her gasp.
There, his head resting on the table, sleeping, his arms tied to the sides of a crudely made chair, was a white child.
—Lord in Christ, she said, turning to the Woolman, who was busy piling firewood in the center of the room. Whose child is this?
At the sound of her voice the child stirred. He lifted his head up and stared at her, wide-eyed.
—Can I have a drink of water? he asked.
denwood meets the woolman
The morning fog lifted minutes after Denwood and his prisoner emerged from the hollow of the giant oak to start their search again. He considered it a good sign. The two men mounted their horses and followed the wall of the Indian burial ground towards Sinking Creek. The rain came as they expected. It was pouring, a day to stay indoors. But Denwood pressed onward because he had the notion, based on experience, that if the rain held him up, it held up his prey too. The Dreamer, he knew, would not get far in this weather, whether she was lying to in town or already in Delaware. He doubted she had gone that far. Amber was lying about her whereabouts, he was sure. He would have to find a way to use that to his advantage. For the time being, he’d use the day as he had promised, to find this missus’s boy. It was his redemption.
Amber followed without comment. He had a terrible feeling, once he’d left the blacksmith’s, that the Dreamer had indeed gone. He tried his best to vanquish her from his mind. His consolation was that if the Gimp found Jeff Boy dead or alive, the authorities might take pity on him. He tried not to think on the rest of it, the implications of it, if Jeff Boy was dead or the Dreamer was found alive and made to confess. He was accustomed to having no control. Still, he realized he was manipulating the situation to his advantage to try to save his own skin. The thought shamed him.
They left the Indian burial ground, having found nothing, and followed the stone wall west towards Sinking Creek. When they reached the creek, Denwood led the way across, then halted, swung around, and peered at Amber. What’s past here? he asked. How far does this piece of land reach?
Amber regarded the other side of the creek, a swamp dark with mysterious foliage and uncertain terrain.
—Don’t know, he said. I never been this far out. The Choptank’s just over yonder. He pointed towards the north, over the treetops they faced. It can’t be much further than that crop of trees just yonder, he said.
—Let’s look, then.
Amber followed the Gimp, whose horse carefully picked its way through a patch of wooded swamp. After a few moments Amber was surprised to see the swamp open up to a flat beach surrounded by projecting rock. Beyond it lay the end of Sinking Creek, which emptied into a pond that he could see served as a kind of false mouth, for on the other side the creek thinned to a small trickle but ran along farther, opening up again beyond the woods and flowing into the Choptank River and, beyond it, the wide-open Chesapeake.
—Well, this is the end, Amber said. We turn back now?
—Naw. We keep going.
—Nothing’s left here, sir.
We out of land now. Just that bunch of rocks there.
Denwood nodded at the high grass of the beach, a mixture of sand and marshy grass. Look there, he said.
—I don’t see nothing.
Denwood rode over to the grassy mound, dismounted, and leaned against the rocky outcrop.
The mound was actually the top of a crown of rock that protected the land below it. Just a few feet below, shielded from the rain, were several drops of what appeared to be blood, a calico sack, and a piece of hemp rope, tied in three knots. What’s this mean? Denwood asked.
Amber wiped his face with his hand to get the moisture out of his eyes and off his brow, but he was actually fighting to keep his emotions in check. The sack belonged to Liz. It was impossible for her to be here, unless she was…magic or a demon. How could she be here? He decided it was impossible. The rope don’t mean nothing, he said.
—I ain’t got time for your fibbing, Denwood snapped. Do it mean something or not?
—Means there’s two folks missing, Amber said. And it means don’t go west, for there’s trouble that way.
—Which one is it?
—Depends on the situation, Amber said.
—Well, what’s the situation?
—I don’t rightly know, sir. I know just as much as you. I never been beyond the Indian burial ground out this way. Somebody launching a boat to make a run north, I reckon they’d not use this place. It’s too hard to get to in a hurry. I don’t know how the current runs in the Choptank out here. So I don’t know what the situation is.
—What do you know about the Woolman?
—I don’t know nothing about him and I hope not to ever meet him, Amber said.
—You already did, Denwood said. That was him back there who throwed his hatchet at Miss Patty’s man. I’m pretty sure of it.
—Well, good riddance to him. I thank him for that. I hope he never comes back.
—I think he’s got something to do with that child missing, Denwood said.
Amber silently considered the thought. He hoped it wasn’t true, for if that creature who had appeared out of nowhere and attacked Joe was the Woolman, then Jeff Boy wasn’t the only one in trouble. Whatever it was, it had moved at frightening speed. What little glimpse Amber got was enough to tell him that the man seemed more ghost than human and lived more in the swamp than out of it. Not even the Gimp made Amber feel safe from the Woolman—especially not in this weather. The Gimp was a modern man of guns and weaponry. The Woolman was…why, a gun might not do if he was a devil, or an evil spirit. Besides, no gun was certain to fire properly when it was wet. The Gimp was handy and quick when it came to drawing his shooter—every colored knew it—but his bullets couldn’t kill the wind and the trees and air, could they? And even if the Woolman was human, he’d be ferocious to handle, having lived free in the woods all those years and knowing them the way he would. The Gimp didn’t seem to take that into account. Like most white men, Amber thought bitterly, he thought he had the answers to everything.
—We’ll press on to the end of this little bit of land, then take shelter and head back, Denwood said.
Amber silently followed Denwood to where the land flattened and a sandy beach opened up, a tiny patch of woods just behind it. They rounded the rocks and saw a tiny cabin built in a grove of beechwood trees. The place gave the impression of being some kind of exotic island, although close-up there was nothing exotic about it in the least; it was simple and functional. A tiny spring ran behind it. It was, Amber thought, a brilliant hiding place. Any boat on the Choptank could ride within sighting distance of Cook’s Point and would be within five hundred yards of the place, and yet, from one hundred yards, the hut blended into the woods and rock that rose around it on two sides.
As they made their way around the rock, Amber looked at the hut and for a moment thought he was dreaming, for as he stood against the rock in the pouring rain, he saw a figure in the doorway, oblivious to the shearing wind and leaves; he saw the torn blue dress, the arms folded, clasped worriedly across the chest, the worn blue jacket. She leaned against the doorway, tired. Yet, like most things about her person, she seemed to give more to what she leaned on than the other way around, and he had the distinct impression that she was supporting the doorway more than it was supporting her. That was one of her gifts, he realized. She did not know how not to give. He wondered if a person was born with that or grew into that kind of giving.
He wondered about it even as he shouted her name over the howling wind and pattering rain.
She stood in silence, staring at the earth, not hearing him.
He called her again.
This time she looked up at him, then looked up above him, plaintively, fearfully.
Denwood saw it too. He glanced above him at the rock outcrop just in time to see the sky blotted out for a moment, and then something crashed into him from above and knocked him down. He scrambled to his feet and into the open beach, spinning around in time to see Amber and Liz fleeing towards the other side of the rock and a wild, long-haired figure dash towards him with the speed of a mountain lion.
He stumbled backwards in the sand and reached for the Paterson, hoping he’d kept it dry, but the creature—man, beast, whatever on God’s earth it was—reached out and knocked it from his hand with a swiftness that seemed unimaginable. It landed in the sand just a few feet away. Denwood leaped on it, spun on his back, and fired in one motion at the figure flying towards him. The pistol discharged, the ball zinging harmlessly into the air, and then the Woolman was on him.
Denwood sensed but did not see the knife slicing in the air as the Woolman descended upon him. A familiar calm enveloped him, a calm that bespoke the rage that made men fear him and children cry and run at the sight of him when he smiled, which made him even more angry, for he hated the white noise that flooded his ears and drowned out all other sound, detested the abandon he’d known back in the days when he’d fled to the Northwest Territories and drunk his way from one sponge hole to the next, wrestling brutal bastards to the floor and bloodying their faces in towns like Fort Laramie, Wyoming, and Indianapolis, Indiana, just to show them a thing or two about what an eastern shore waterman was made of. C’mon, you pimping, pioneering frauds! he’d screamed. I can take you all, and he’d done it, roaring through taverns with the strength and speed of five men, coldcocking and hammering drummers from one town to the next, for he was on a mission to die in those days.
But this colored man had his own kind of demons at hand and had apparently called on all of them. He fought with the tempered speed and desperation of the untamed, raw slice of wind, water, and shore on which they’d both been raised. Denwood, lying on his back, the discarded Paterson lying on the sand just above his ear as he grappled for his life, felt as if he were wrestling the entire eastern shore and slavery itself, boiled into the broth of this man’s smooth, chocolate-skinned face and steel-like arms, which gripped him with a cold-bloodedness he’d never known before, equal, he guessed, to his own when he, too, was a slave: to money, to power, to drink, and to the ideas of others more powerful than he was. The two grappled like savages, up close, a white man bent on freedom within and a colored bent on freedom without, and as they did, stopping momentarily to adjust their grips and try different holds, Denwood peered into the man’s eyes and saw the ocean they contained. They were the most purposeful pair of eyes he’d ever seen on any man, calm as the curve of a pipe, so calm that the man could have been sitting at a desk at a blab school, figuring out an arithmetic problem instead of trying to kill him, and only when Denwood felt the man’s powerful arm slip from his grasp and saw the knife held high—felt the man’s enormous strength and speed pressing upon him at the same time—did he realize that the wind was against him and he was going to lose. He reached for the Paterson and raised it a second time.
Nearly a mile away, atop their horses in the swampy woods just beyond the Indian burial ground, Patty and Stanton heard the boom of the Colt Paterson echoing through the
pouring rain and halted.
—Where’s that coming from? Patty asked.
—Likely a waterman on the Choptank, Stanton said. The river’s awful close.
—Who’d be oystering today?
—Could be anybody. Somebody waiting out the storm. Got bored and blowed off their pistol.
—I don’t think so, Patty said. That’s Joe’s Paterson barking.
—How do you know? Stanton asked.
—I gave it to him, she said.
She spurred her horse and galloped past the tiny marsh towards the rocky outcrop that faced the Choptank River. Stanton rode hard to catch up.
Among the rocks, a hundred feet from where Denwood grappled desperately with the Woolman, Amber released Liz’s hand.
—You hurt?
She looked at him with such tenderness and longing, her soft brown eyes glistening with raindrops, it seemed as if her entire face were sprouting a thousand tears. At that moment he would have climbed the highest mountain in the world had she asked him. He glanced at the two men struggling wildly on the beach and said, Go straight out past the creek towards the logging trail. Go about a mile up and cut towards the west. Just follow the creek as it widens. About a mile down, you’ll see a canoe there. Tied in the water to a big old birch tree. It’s me and Wiley’s. We hollowed it out ourselves. Got everything you need in it. G’wan now.
—What about the boy? He’s asleep.
—What boy?
—There’s a white child in Woolman’s house.
Amber’s eyes widened.
—God Almighty. You sure? He’s alive?
—He’s hungry and thirsty, she said.
In the open area of the beach, the two men, white and black, fought with deep resolve and ancient bitterness. Denwood, on his feet now, knew the Woolman was wounded, could see it now, the swelling on the left arm, which was weaker than the right, and that encouraged him; but he, too, felt himself weakening. Two shots dead-on and the strength of his adversary had forced him to miss. The Woolman had slapped the Paterson away after his second firing. It was all hands and teeth now. And the Woolman still had his knife. He saw out of the corner of his eye the two slaves watching from the shadows of the rock, and he thought bitterly, Not a finger was raised in my defense, after all I’ve done for you. But what had he done? Raised the floor of hell high enough so that a swamp-bitten, rotten bastard like the one he faced here could rise up and cold-bloodedly kill him? Well. There they stood, leaving him to his own devices, the other one the Dreamer, no doubt. His quarry was close at hand. His money was right there! He would remember them if he survived.