The black swan (25 page)

"Put your arms around me and forget all you're thinking. We're just taking a day and playing that tune hasn't passed."

She looked up into his eyes, the one part of him that had not changed. They were still as clear and startlingly blue as they had been when he was a boy. She stared at him, as though by remaining locked in his gaze, she could chase the present away and go with him wherever he wanted to take her.

As Adam rowed the small craft down the creek, it became easier for her. With a very good contralto, she began singing and miming "I Wish My Captain Would Go Blind" and tossing flowers at Adam, slowly becoming in heart the gamin Johnnie Mae, who had taught him loving was not always the same or as joyous as making love.

It was sunset before he brought her back. He stood at the mooring, holding her hand. Her cheeks were flushed, and she looked happy.

"Oi be a-sayin' farewell to ye, Adam. Be ye ever in need, Oi be here fer ye, but Oi be thinkin' this be the last Oi'U see o' ye."

"It is the last time.*'

"Why did ye come, Adam? There weren't no need."

He touched the broken cairn with the toe of his boot "A special time between a man and a woman should be marked for the memory."

"Aye. We made such a marker."

"Yes, but in the years I've been gone, I've learned that what has a good beginning needs also a good ending. There can be no true ending that is not in the nature of the beginning."

Johnnie Mae smiled. "Ye be a good man wie yere tongue, Adam Tremain."

"Then we'll rebuild the tryst stane."

"Aye, we will." She knelt on the soft, damp grass, gathering up the scattered remnants of the stones.

It was nearly dark when they finished. Johnnie Mae leaned forward, kissing him on the cheek, then ran off toward the path to the cabin. At the bend she paused, looking back for a moment. "Ye munna fergit to place a token, Adam. God be wie ye, Cap'n Tremain."

Adam was far down the meandering creek when Johnnie Mae came back to the creek bank. In the light of a new-rising moon she took his ring from under the cairn and held it in both of her hands as she stood staring at the swimming hole, hearing laughter and seeing sights that had happened six years before.

For Zoe, Adam's return was something she had dreamed of and then found herself unprepared for. Adam, in her parlor, filled the room with a masculine presence both potent and exciting. He eclipsed everything around him by his size, the blackness of his hair and moustache, and the air of command that had become as much a part of him as his twinkling eyes and ready smile. She found herself tittering nervously and wanting to call her own son "sir."

As soon as Adam went upstairs, Zoe wrote a message to Leona and Garrett. Periodically she would stop and listen, her eyes fastened on the ceiling. His footsteps on the floor above made her shiver in excited memory. She put her cool hands up to her flushed cheeks. It was impossible that Adam as a man could bring back so sharply those warm, love-filled days of the summer before her marriage. She found herself longing for his father as she hadn't done in years.

She gave the note to a young black boy to deliver to Ledna, pressing a penny into his hand.

With great relief Zoe received Leona's reply that she and Garrett would be coming to stay for three days. Tom and Angela would come with them. She hurried to tell Mammy of their guests. With people in the house keeping her mind on what was at hand, perhaps the look in Adam's eyes and the deep, rich sound of his laughter would not make her think so often of the man from whom Adam had inherited those eyes and that voice.

But with Adam sitting across from her, talking easily of the great houses he had seen and visited in Brazil and the beauty of the Canary Islands, Zoe became increasingly conscious of the feel of her clothing against her skin, her smile and manners, the way she looked through his eyes. She found herself giggling, then losing track of the conversation. She couldn't believe at her age it was possible for her to act like such a simpleton. It was not reason enough that Adam had the same crackling, electric sexual vitality as the only man she had ever loved. The door to her memory had been thrown wide in the first few minutes, and she found it far more difficult to close than it had been to open.

Leona, Garrett, Angela, and Tom stood on the stoop. As Zoe opened the door, both men complimented her, and Leona stared as though she had seen a ghost.

"Come in," Zoe said, her smile broad. Her voice was tinged with happy laughter that bubbled up unwanted and unexpected. "Would you care for some liquid refreshment, Garrett, Tom?" She was nearly dancing around the room as she flitted from one of them to the other. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright.

Leona continued to study her in silence. Then she said, "Zoe, I declare, you look like a young girl." At that moment Leona's attention was distracted. "Oh, my stars! Zoe! This can't be him!"

"Dat's him all right, Miz Leona!"Mammy beamed. "He be a fine ol' man, jes' like Ah allers knowed he be."

"You're my woman, Manrniy," Adam said cheerfully, putting his arm around her shoulders.

"Ah ain't no sech a thing! Ah's yo' Mammy!"

Leona laughed. "Come sit with me, Adam. I want to hear about your travels. And don't you dare leave out one bit of gossip!"

Tom looked on this man he loved, as his daughter, Angela, shy with a newly awakened ten-year-old's femininity, moved closer. Affectionately Adam took her hand, including her in his magical circle of being. As she Hstened to his stories of far-off places where kings and queens and princes walked on red carpets and knights rode to the tournaments amid the trumpeting and colors of pageantry, her eyes glowed brightly on the warm presence of her own

knight. There was no one on earth she'd rather love than Adam.

Adam was Angela's escort to dinner, when Mammy, caught up in his aura as wildly as the others, appeared in the doorway with a new apron and a crisp, starched white tignon covering her head.

"Suppah is suhved," she announced in stentorian tones.

It was a gay meal, filled with more talk of the years that had passed. Garrett and Leona told about the activities of the Underground Railroad and the warrish temper of the Southern people.

After coitee, Adam rose. "If you'll excuse us, ladies, the gentlemen will retire to the study."

"They always run off to hide," Leona complained.

There was a companionable silence in the study as each man mulled over his own thoughts and sipped his brandy. Adam smiled at Tom. "So, Garrett has you thoroughly m-volved in the Underground now, has he?"

"Up to my eyeballs. Why, aside from Seth an' a few of the swamp people, I hardly see a white face for days at a time."

"Tom's cabin is a safer place to keep the blacks then our house is."

Tom glanced at Garrett, then grinned at Adam. "What we need is some old tar who's not afraid to put his neck in a noose."

Adam played with his cigar, turning it in his mouth, his teeth showing brilliant white as his smile grew. "I know of one, maybe three."'

"Three! Who?" Tom sputtered.

"My last port before I came home was New Orleans. Captain Ben West and Captain Beau LeClerc are taking you up on that offer of a visit you extended them years ago, Tom. They'll soon be heading for Smithville."

"By God!" Tom breathed. "Garrett, they're the salt o' the earth—sea too, I guess. Damn!"

"These are the two boys you grew up with, Adam?"

Tom was hopping excitedly in his chair. "Wait'll you meet them, Garrett. We'll be takin' slaves out by the score. These three haven't got a fearful bone in their bodies."

Garrett looked concerned. "A man can hang for stealing a slave or inducing him to run."

"Don't discourage him before he's gotten started, Garrett."

Adam smiled. "Set your mind at ease. You're not leading us astray."

Garrett asked in a musing voice, "You like the sharp knife of fear cutting at you, do you, Adam?"

"Not the fear, but the challenging of it I'm ready to begin whenever I can get a ship."

Tom looked impishly at Garrett. "Is it time to tell him?"

"Tell me what?"

"We've got a ship for you, Adam, a kind of gift from Tom and me."

"My God, you've left me speechless. A ship!"

"A steamer. Garrett an' I don't know ships. We're not sure of what we've got."

Adam still had his dazed look of incredulity as Garrett explained. "You'll take the darkies to the north shore of Long Island. Rod Courtland will meet you there, and then he will see to them. The first trip will be nothing but a trial run. Tom and I will be your only passengers."

Adam still did not understand. "Rod Courtland?"

"Yes. As I once told you. Rod Courtland and I went to school in Boston together. The years have fled, but the friendship has remained steadfast. You and Rod will set the schedule of trips when you go up there. He will help you set up a legitimate merchant trade between New York and the Southern ports."

As they talked, the business matters were cleared away one at a time. There were four partners in the shipping venture: Garrett, Tom, Roderick Courtland, and Adam. The profits would be divided evenly among them, and Ben and Beau would be paid according to Adam's own means.

"Well, it sounds promising," Adam said. "But I am certainly the weak link in this outfit. It's your ship, your capital, your goods."

Garrett said gravely, "Don't underestimate the seriousness of your part, Adam. In effect this will make you a criminal in the South and a smuggler in the North. You'd be quite a prize for a few interested parties to capture and turn over to the South."

"Each of us has his own reasons for taking risks. Tom knows mine."

Tom cleared his throat. "Shall we take a look at the ship before it's too dark to see?"

Garrett said agreeably, "I'll go see to the carriage, then."

Adam glanced around at the clutter of glasses and cigar ashes and rang for someone to clean up.

"What you want, Mas' Adam?"

"You can clear away now, Mammy. Isn't there anyone else to do this?"

"Yassuh, but dey's a bunch o' wuthless free niggers. Ain't nobody gwine ten' to you 'cep' Mammy long's Ah got breaf in mah body."

"Sure you won't be my woman, Mammy?"

"You get yo' big ol' han's offen me, or mebbe Ah's gwine change mah min'." Her face screwed up into a stifled smile before she burst out in rolling girlish giggles.

Tom watched their teasing with a half-smile. When Mammy left the room, Adam said, "Garrett should be ready. We'd better go."

Tom shook his head. "He knows I wanted to talk to you alone."

Adam sat back down in his chair, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees.

"There isn't an easy way for me to say this to you, Adam. After all the years you'd think . . . but I just never got over Ullah's death."

"Tom, you and I have never had to talk out loud about this."

"There's somethin' she'd want you to know ... an' now she's not here to tell you herself." Slowly Tom got up and went to where he had left his coat. When he returned, he held Ullah's small, battered box of treasures. He placed it between himself and Adam, then lifted the lid so the contents of the box were exposed.

"She kept all the things that meant the most to her in this box." He touched the shells, the clay doll, several pieces of jewelry. "Mostly I gave them to her." He picked up Zoe's letter. "She meant to show that to Angela when she was old enough. Ullah thought maybe a letter from a lady as fine as your mama would help Angela not to be ashamed of her."

"Angela would never have been ashamed of Ullah.'*

"Maybe not, but Ullah didn't know that. She didn't complain, mind you, but Ullah's life, well, she'd been taught to expect the worst." Tom's eyes were watering so badly he couldn't see. His hand trembled as he replaced the letter in the box.

"Tom, we don't need to talk about this. I remember Ullah. I'll never forget her as long as I live. I loved her."

Tom nodded his head with deep swoops. "I know ... I know . , . but see, Adam, you were somethin' special to Ullah. God forgive me, there was a time I was jealous. Right from the very first time she saw you, she knew. She said it was like lookin' at a lake full of white swans an' then seein' a black one. You just know that one black swan was somethin' God made special. She knew that." Trying to impress the import of his words on Adam physically, he clasped Adam's forearm. "She never got to tell you." Tom was crying outright now, and Adam found tears welling in his own eyes.

"Thank you for telling me, Tom. I—"

"That ain't all." He dragged the box nearer to him. With reverential care, Tom took out a package wrapped in gaily decorated paper. Tom held it gently in both of his hands, staring at it as he spoke. "See, Adam, seems like all your life, leastways since Ullah and I knew you, you've been called upon to help her kind, even though you never sought it. But it's like she saw it . . . she knew. Ullah, seems like, knew a lot of things with her dreamin' an' her thinkin'. Around me, she called you her black swan."

He put the package in Adam's hands. "I got this special made for her. I was goin' to give it to her that Christmas." He wiped at his eyes. "You've become what Ullah always knew you would. She'd want you to have this, Adam. Go ahead. Open it It's a Christmas gift long overdue."

Carefully Adam unwrapped the small package. Cushioned among the wrappings, made of hand-blown glass, was a delicate black swan. The light caught in the dark glass, sparkling off the wings and the gracefully curving neck, taking away his breath with his speech as he looked at the miniature piece of art that had represented him in Ullah's eyes. His chest grew tight as he thought of her, remembered the clear oval of her face, the laughing dark eyes that had teased him and cared about him.

He turned the black swan in his hands and tried to see in it and in himself what she had seen. Before him there lay a tapestry of unfinished threads on which was mapped out the many trips he would make from the South with his cargo of dark-faced people seeking the unfettered North.

But that wasn't all. Even though Adam vaguely realized that the slave hauling was but a small part of the meaning of the black swan, he had no way of seeing what lay beyond the next year.