The black swan (19 page)

"Surely that has not become an abolitionist society!" Zoe said, aghast.

"Certainly not, but some of the women sew clothing and provide food for the fugitives. I'm the only woman who hauls them, though,"

"But if you were revealed . , . wouldn't you go to prison?"

"Quite possibly, or perhaps hang if the wrong people caught us," Leona said briskly. "But you're thinking like a Deep Southerner, Zoe. Not all of the South is so bound to the slave system as are the big cotton states. There are a lot of abolitionists right here in Wilmington. Many of us think slavery will die out as the ground becomes too poor for profitable cotton and cane crops.

"Times are changing, Zoe. Garrett and I believe the fugitives should be helped now. We are in the right place to do something. From here we send them to Philadelphia or New Jersey overland, or to New York and Canada by water."

"Slaves are taken by ship?" Adam asked.

"Yes. It is the best and safest way, but as you can imagine, it's not easy to arrange for a ship to carry such a cargo."

Zoe's eyes fastened anxiously on Adam. She shifted the subject away from ships. "Oh, Leona, it is all so dangerous, and it is wrong. You have no right to take these blacks. They belong to someone—"

"Fiddlesticks! They're people. They shouldn't be owned by anyone."

"Aunt Leona, when did you start doing this?"

"On our wedding trip we stopped in Cincinnati. Garrett knows Mr. Levi Coffin, and I met him there. They call him the president of the Underground Railroad, you know. He just laughs about that. He is so kind, Adam, such a warm, gentle person. While we were taking supper with him and his wife, several fugitives came to his door. Garrett and I

talked with them. I knew then that I wanted to help these people so they can have a better life. Do you realize what being in bondage does to an intelligent human being? Cruelties to the mind go far deeper than whip cuts and starvation."

"You must have freed our family slaves and never told me," said Zoe.

"Yes, I did. You remember about twenty years ago, when Nat Turner murdered all those people up in Southampton County? In North C'Lina that rebellion caused a big change back toward slavery again, but now I believe not more than one family in four owns slaves here. When Clay was alive, we talked about letting ours go, but he was from Mississippi and just couldn't bring himself to do it**

"So you and Garrett are abolitionists," Adam said. "Wait'U I tell Tom."

Leona's eyes twinkled. "Tom already knows. He's going to work with us."

Zoe sat straighter, her nostrils flaring. "Adam, I don't want you involved in this! Leona paints a very glamorous and noble picture. But Leona is always persuasive when she wants things her way."

Without a smile Adam said, "You've always told me to think for myself, Ma. This is something I'll have to consider."

Zoe sighed. Her worried eyes remained on Adam's face.

Adam said, "I want to talk with Tom about this."

With an attempt at lightness, Leona said, "We might even get you interested in this, Zoe."

"I never would be. Never."

"We have two contacts in New York, Mr. Isaac Hopper, and a gentleman you most likely recall, Mr. Roderick Courtland. Do you remember meeting him the summer before you married Paul?"

She shook her head violently. "No—^I don't remember him at all."

"How could you forget him? Then, you don't know he never married?"

"Stop your matchmaking, Leona!"

Leona looked truly surprised. "Matchmaking?!"

"Yes! I don't want to hear any more about Mr. Court-land!" Zoe began pacing back and forth.

Adam stirred uncomfortably. "Excuse me, Aunt Leona. I'm going to find Tom. Thanks for taking me along.*'

As she followed Adam out into the hall, Zoe glared at her sister. In a low voice she said, "Adam, this has gone far enough."

He looked at her with calm stubbornness.

"We simply cannot stay here. You must find us a house, Adam. Any kind of house, but outside Wilmington."

Adam burst into a relieved laugh. "Big sister's bossing you around?" ^

"Don't tease me," Zoe said edgily. "You don't know how Leona can be. Garrett will be back with our things any day now. Adam, I just want to be settled. We're getting involved in too many frightening things lately. Please. Just find us a house."

The following day Adam and Tom began a flatboat trip of several days down the Cape Fear River to its opening into the Atlantic. They passed Orton Plantation, with its bountiful gardens in lush bloom. At the remains of Brunswick Town they stopped to explore the ruins of dwellings and shops untenanted since the Revolution.

"Don't b'lieve your ma would like livin' here, Adam," said Tom.

They left Brunswick's alluring deepwater harbor, going on a few more miles. Then, spread out before them on a beautiful estuary was a homey little town. Lining the waterfront were trimly built houses with two-story galleries and widow's walks. Around them bloomed yellow and red gaillardias and sea evening primroses. Groves of live oaks gently nodded their glossy leaves.

Adam, sweating in the late-summer sun, felt and smelled the ocean breezes cooling the air. "I think we've found the place, Tom."

They spent the day in Smithville, talking to townspeople, fishermen, laundresses hanging clothes, sun-browned children running barefoot in the sandy dust. Adam fell in love with a stately shingled house, two and a half stories high, with a widow's walk that looked out far beyond Bald Head over the billows to the curving horizon.

Their nearest neighbor served them supper and bid them stay the night.

Next morning Tom said, "Seems like we got you settled. Now I Want to go look at this Crusoe Island I heard about yesterday. That sounds a lot like what I got in mind for my new place."

"Where's that?"

"Oh, a few miles up Green Swamp. Fisherman said he'd take us there. Said to bring our guns against bear."

They crossed meandering streams of dark water and tangled swamplands thick with otter, muskrat, beaver, and herds of deer. Crusoe Island was an elevated knoll, not properly an island at all. As they approached the tiny community, more than a hundred hounds set up a baying and barking.

"Bear hounds," said Caleb, their guide. "Lots o' bears in here. They break into the smokehouses and the stock pens and raise a merry hell. Have to clean 'em out ever' so often."

"What do people live 'way back in here for?" asked Adam.

"They's three stories told. Seth, he sez his kin were pirates that tried to raid the river settlements an' come back in here to hide. Winnabow's people lived along the coast, and when the white men come, they made the Indians go into the swamp. Ol' Jean, he claims he was a Frenchy doctor under Napoleum, an' he he'ped a bunch o' prisoners get away. Napoleum wanted him fer that, so he run for Haiti an' then come here. He's an awful old man, must be past eighty. But you take notice, all them folk look alike, sturdy-set an' towhaired, with pink cheeks like a English woman. I took ship to England as a lad, so I recollect them Englishers well."

With Caleb as their entree Adam and Tom were welcomed with a reserve that soon bloomed into cordiality. The very nature of the settlement at Crusoe Island, spanning entire lives kept secret from the world, fitted Tom's desire for a place offering undemanding companionship with others who had their own reasons for living in isolation.

Before bedtime Tom had promises of help in raising his cabin. The men of the community, shy of strangers but overcome by curiosity about the man with the scarred face and bent body who wanted to join them, gathered in Seth's cabin to talk in their odd-sounding north-of-England accents and to pass the stone crock of white lightning from mouth to mouth.

As the night dropped abruptly and the candles were lit, Adam's head began to reel. He had had wine before, and liquor as well, but this stuff laid a fiery path all the way

from the back of his tongue down his gullet. But he sat on the floor, leaning against the chinked wall, and sipped at the crock each time it passed him.

The candles stuck in their saucers were guttering, and he could hear the voices around him singing, in meltingly sweet harmony,

Enraptured I gaze, when my Delia is by.

And drink the sweet poison of love from her eye.

After a time somebody laughed. "Lookit the boy thayer. Bin struck by lightnin'. Johnnie Mae I Hi I Want you to pack 'im up t' loft."

Adam raised his head from his chest far enough to see dusty bare feet topped by what seemed to be excellent legs and a calico skirt that didn't even cover her knees! He shut his eyes in embarrassment.

The girl laughed, a low throaty sound. "Gimme yere hand, boy. Oi got to carry ye up ladder."

Adam, scarcely able to understand her dialect, raised one hand and let it fall. Then he felt himself pulled to his feet and slung over a strong shoulder. He opened his eyes. The floor was retreating from him in foot-long jumps. The candle disappeared from view, and he was dumped, not ungently, onto a hammock slung from a low ceiling.

Hands touched him, rubbed him in places where hands shouldn't be even when it felt good. Adam moaned faintly and again heard that soft, throaty laugh.

The hands went away. "Ye be'n't a boy," said the voice, with satisfaction. "Ye be a man, a bi-i-ig man."

Her words echoed in his ears as the lightning took him ojS to sleep.

Chapter Twelve

Tom began to live in Green Swamp, a guest in Seth's cabin while trees were f eUed and readied to build his own. Adam w^nt back to spend a day now and then helping with the logging. He got to know some of the men. Most of them weren't talkers, but those who were spoke in such an in-

comprehensible dialect that he missed half of what they said. There seemed to be no women around. If Johnnie Mae existed, it was in a drunken dream long past

"Of course there's women, Adam," said Tom. "But they're backward females. They're just now beginnin' to come out when I'm around."

"Who was it carried me up into the loft that first night?'*

"That was one of 'em. Strong as an ox. I've seen her pack loads that would stagger a man, an' she's not even breathin' hard."

Adam asked casually, "Is she pretty?"

Tom laughed. "She's not up to your caliber by a long shot"

At last the house in Smithville suited Zoe. She wanted to move immediately. Six Negroes were hired to man the boat with its load of furniture to the Tremains' new house.

That night Zoe and Adam had their last festive dinner in Leona's dining room. They sat up late, unable to talk enough to get it all said before the sisters would live twenty miles apart.

Zoe, exhausted, was both saddened and exhilarated at the prospect of her own home. Leona followed a deeply entrenched habit of giving advice. Adam wanted desperately to talk to Garrett alone, to get his carefully formed opinions on slavery, abolition, and emancipation, and what might happen if all the slaves were freed at once.

But Garrett was tired. Only courtesy kept his eyes open and his attentions fixed on his guests. When the tall-case clock in the entry hall struck midnight, he gave Leona a significant look.

Good-nights were said, lamps left on the hall table were lighted and taken upstairs and one by one blown out For four hours the house slept.

The knocking was so urgent it woke everyone. Adam heard Garrett's heavy tread on the stairs. Soon Leona followed. Adam lay drowsily listening, cozy under the sheet in the black stillness before dawn.

He had drifted back to sleep, when the door to his room was flung open and Leona was shaking him. "Adam! Adam, wake up!"

He came bolt awake. "More fugitives?"

"Yes! The worst mess I ever saw! Get your clothes on

as fast as you can, bring your rifle, and hurry out to the carriage house!"

There were five of them, blacks with eyes rolling and nostrils distended with fear. Two were women. One man was lashed to a horse, barely alive. All were covered with swamp muck. All had wounds bleeding in red runnels down their arms and legs onto the dirt floor. They babbled incoherently to Garrett.

Adam stood rooted with revulsion.

"Hitch the horses, Adam," Garrett said. He and Leona were working over one man with a terrible gash on his arm. "Four horses. Use the dray and put the grays in the lead. Lay out the tarpaulin in the dray bed. Get blankets. You're riding with me."

Adam hitched the horses with difficulty. The smell of blood made them uneasy and fractious. Hysterical keening from one of the women, on her knees praying, made Adam's skin creep. He tried to calm the biggest gray. All they needed in this ruckus was for the excited horses to shove everything through the closed doors of the carriage house.

One of the men, his arm heavily bandaged, came up to him. "Ah hoi' de bosses. Ah's a groom." He pointed toward the keening woman. "Kin you he'p Jane, Mastah? Big Mose was her man."

"Adam, help me get this man into the dray," said Garrett Adam helped lift the slave free of the gore-covered horse. Jane suddenly issued a bloodcurdling scream, pointing to the door.

"Oh, mah Lawd, it's Mose's ghos' come to git me! Oh, Lawdy Lawdy Lawdy—"

"Great Scott!" said Garrett. "Leona, shut her up!**

Adam, who had nearly dropped his share of the burden at Jane's outcry, looked over his shoulder. His mother's hair was sleep-fluffed around her pale face, her long white wrapper flowing around her. "What in heaven's name—** she blanched at the weirdly lit sight.

"You like slavery, Zoe?" Leona asked grimly. "Here it is!"

Zoe shrank toward the door, her hand trembling against her mouth.

Jane kept screaming, "It de Debbil! De Debbil!" until Leona slapped each side of her face. Then she held Jane

close until the senseless noise became words and the sobbing ebbed.

"Mose, he daid. Missy!*' Jane cried. "We runnin' thoo Green Swamp, an' de dog make to tree Mose. Mose he kick dat dog, an* dat ol' dog he catch Mose laig an* tear he laigl'*

In a confused babble the story tumbled out from the others—a tale of horror and death as the terrified slaves had fled the catchers and their dogs, with Mose sacrificing his own life so that the others could make free. In the melee the slaves had killed two of the catchers.