The Slave Dancer (11 page)

The slaves were nearer death than the crew, although what they ate was not much worse than what we ate, and none of us, except the Captain and Stout, who had now assumed the duties of Mate, was ever free from thirst except when it rained. But we could walk the deck. I wondered if, in this circumstance, that was not the difference between life and death. And although Ben Stout could and did increase our misery with his captious orders, there was a limit. There were courts of inquiry to which the Captain would have to answer for unusual cruelty toward his crew—if a sailor had the endurance to pursue justice. If any of us ever saw the shore again …

Our northwestward course was steady except during one violent downpour. Though we were out of the doldrums, Purvis never left off exclaiming at our luck in not having been becalmed for weeks. His voice was fevered; his eyes bulged as he tried to convince me—perhaps, only himself—that it would be clear sailing ahead, only a brief passage now until he collected his wages and his share of the profit from the sale of the slaves.

“I'll never ship on a slaver again,” he would say, over and over again. “Never, Jessie! You see if I don't keep my word!”

I danced the slaves under Stout's watchful eyes. He always found time to observe me at my task. I was determined to show no emotion in front of him. I gazed blankly at the rigging as though I was alone with a thought. But in truth I was so agitated I could hardly make my fingers work on the fife. Despite my intention, I could not help but see the wretched shambling men and women whose shoulders sank and rose in exhausted imitation of movement. They were all sick. I could count the ribs of the boy to whom I had once whispered my name.

It had been some time since the little children had played on the deck. I think they were too weak to crawl or run about. God knows how the slaves slept. I wondered if they hastened toward sleep as I did, for it was only then the hours passed without reckoning.

Once, on a night when Sharkey was making a commotion because of cramps in his belly, I went on deck and looked down into the forehold. I thought they'd all died. I heard not a sound.
The Moonlight
herself was bathed in moonlight. Sam Wick, on watch, passed me without a word. A small pool of yellow light shone near the Captain's quarters. I supposed he and Stout were in there, drinking brandy and eating decent grub. The dark water was streaked with the pale light of the moon. I thought that now I understood the phrase, “lost at sea.”

I had, until that moment, been racing ahead of the ship to the door of our room, to the welcoming cries of my mother and Betty, when all this would lie behind me as unsubstantial as the moonlight. But now I felt no such certainty. A great timidity possessed my thoughts. There was nothing sure on earth except the rising and setting of the sun—and, when the sky was quilted over with black storm clouds and there was no line between earth and heaven, who could tell what the sun was doing?

Did the black people have any idea of what was ahead for them? If the ship made Cuban waters—if we were not overtaken by French pirates out of Martinique—if we escaped the British patrol and the United States cruisers—if they survived fever and flux and starvation and thirst?

“Stay away from the holds, lad,” said the poisonous sweet voice of Ben Stout. “It disturbs them to be watched. You can understand that, can't you?”

As though he cared for what disturbed them! I slunk away toward our quarters, hoping Sharkey had quieted down by now, that Purvis had found something in Ned's old medicine case that had eased him. But I did not get far.

“Wait!” Stout commanded in his official voice. I stood, my back to him.

“I'd like a word with you,” he said, wheedling now. I turned slowly. “I'm concerned about the crew,” he said. “I want them in good spirits. We're well out of the Gulf of Guinea. It won't be long till we reach the trades. There's reason for good cheer.”

“Not for some of us,” I replied.

“There's always loss,” said Stout. “It's taken into account by any sensible officer. But you'll be fine, Jessie. You're young and strong.”

“So was Gardere. So were all the black people who died.”

“Gardere!” he exclaimed and laughed loudly. “Gardere had eaten himself out with rum before you was born. As for the niggers, lad, they're actually better off drownded, if you think about it. Nothing more to worry them. You
could
look at it that way.”

“I'll look at it the way I choose.”

“I like your honesty,” he said softly. “There's no one else I'd trust on this ship. That's why I asked you about the crew's spirits.”

But he hadn't asked me.

“You want me to spy for you?” I asked. Ben Stout looked forgivingly up at heaven. What was he up to? Did he want to discover what Curry mixed with the cabbage to make it taste like swamp grass? Would he like to know that Cooley's ambition concerned fighting cocks? Or that Isaac Porter bit his nails like a man playing a mouth organ? Or that Purvis snored and mumbled in his sleep? Or did he want to know what I thought of him? Was I to spy on myself?

“Take you,” he said. “How are your spirits?”

“I can't answer that,” I said.

“But you must know how you feel!” he exclaimed, a touch of heat in his voice. I was surprised.

“I feel this way and that way,” I said, “but never the way I once did when I lived at home in New Orleans.”

“I want a plain answer.”

“I hate this ship!”
I said with all the force I could, with what little courage I had in the face of Stout's menace.

“Ah!” he sighed. A second later, I saw his teeth gleam. “That must mean you hate me too.”

“I didn't say so,” I said.

“Hatred poisons the soul,” he observed. “It is an incurable ailment.”

“I would like to go below.”

“I've been so good to you,” he continued. “I don't understand your ingratitude. They've all talked against me. I suppose that accounts for it.”

I would say nothing further to him. He stood silently looking at me. I grew uneasy. Something weakened in me. There was a quality about his stillness, his silence, that was like a huge weight pressing against me. I took one step away. He held out his hand toward me. I remembered the slave woman he'd tormented, and I scrambled down the ladder. Sharkey was hunched over himself, rubbing his belly. Purvis shot a glance at me.

“You're as white as salt, Jessie! What is it?”

“I wish Stout was dead!” I cried.

“But he is dead,” said Purvis. “He's been dead for years. And there's one of him on every ship that sails! There's someone makes little dolls of him and sprinkles them with gunpowder and steals along the docks and places a doll in each ship—and when it's out at sea, the doll grows and grows till it looks just like a sailor man, and it takes its place among the crew and no one's the wiser until two weeks at sea when one of the crew says to another, ‘Ain't he dead? That one over there by the helm?' and the other says, ‘Just what I was thinking—we've got a dead man on the ship—'”

Sharkey gave out a dog's yelp of laughter and at that, Purvis grinned broadly.

Whenever I saw a sail on the horizon—which was not often—I would pretend it was a British cruiser not afraid to displease the United States Government by boarding us. I imagined the slaves set free, the rest of us taken to England where Stout would be hanged, and Purvis and I sent by fast ship to Boston. From there, I would make my way home, and one day, in the freshness of a morning, I would open the door and step inside, and my mother would look up from her work, and—

But we were not pursued. And if we had been, it is unlikely
The Moonlight,
with all her sails stretched, could have been captured. Only pirates might take us, French pirates undeterred by any flag, eager to pounce on a tattered dirty little ship with a cargo of half-dead blacks, and a bunch of ailing seamen as hard and dry and moldy as the ship's biscuits they gnawed on.

When, one morning, I could not find my fife, I thought Cooley or Wick, longing for distraction, had hidden it from me. They swore they had not touched it. And no one else had either, said Purvis, because he would have heard anyone sneaking about and reaching into my hammock where I always kept it. But Purvis had been on watch the night before.

I searched frantically throughout the ship. Porter came looking for me and told me I was wanted on deck. I found Stout waiting aft, the Captain standing a few feet away looking through his spyglass at the horizon. There had not been a word between Stout and me since the night I'd run away from him.

“We're going to bring up the niggers, Jessie,” he said. “Where's your music maker?”

The instant he spoke, I knew Stout had made off with the fife.

I was dumb with fear; it rushed through me like heat from a fire.

“He's not got his pipe, Captain,” Stout said gravely.

Cawthorne turned to look at me.

“What now?” he asked impatiently.

“I say, the boy is refusing to play—”

“I'm not!” I cried to Cawthorne. “It was beside me in my hammock last night! It's been
taken
from me!”

“Taken?” repeated the Captain. He scowled. “What are you bothering me with such foolishness for, Stout? And what is this creature howling about? Take care of it yourself, man!” With that, he went back to his spyglass.

“Come along,” Stout said to me. “We'll look for it together.”

I caught sight of Purvis watching us from across the deck. He'd been mixing up a batch of vinegar and salt water with which we sometimes cleaned out the holds. But he'd stopped his work to keep an eye on me. Without even looking in his direction, Stout called out, “Get on with it, Purvis!”

“I've already looked everywhere,” I mumbled without hope.

“I can't hear you, lad,” said Stout.

“I've looked everywhere!” I shouted.

“Well … I think it's in one of the holds,” he said. “Yes. That's what I think. Someone has taken it and dropped it down to the niggers so's they can play their own tunes.” As he spoke, his thick fingers circled my throat. He pushed me to the forehold.

“You go down there and fetch it up,” he said softly. “You're sure to find it there. Purvis likes such tricks, you know. It would be just like Purvis, wouldn't it? To have dropped it down there? Say you agree with me!”

He gave me a mighty shove and I fell to the deck.

“Hurry, Jessie! It's no good, your resting like that!”

I clung to the hatch coaming. Stout bent down and loosened my fingers. “Just drop down,” he whispered. “They won't hurt you, lad.” He swung me to my feet and pushed me so far I could not but look down. A patch of daylight washed across the twisted limbs of the slaves. I saw nothing that was not flesh.

“Hurry, now!” said Stout. Suddenly, Purvis was at his side.

“I'll look for it,” he said.

“No. No you won't. He must take care of his responsibilities, Purvis. And what do you mean, neglecting your own, and listening in on what doesn't concern you?”

The hope that Purvis would save me had made me go slack. Then Stout lifted me up in the air the way a heron grips a fish, and suspended me over the hold.

“Oh, Lord! Don't drop me!” I screamed.

“You'll climb down as I want you to,” he said. “And you'll look here and there until you find your pipe. After that, we can get on with things.” As he spoke, he slowly brought me back to the deck. I caught sight of a black face turned up toward the light. The man blinked his eyes, but there was no surprise written on his face. He had only looked up to see what was to befall him next. I went down the rope knowing my boots would strike living bodies. There was not an inch of space for them to move to.

I sank down among them as though I had been dropped into the sea. I heard groans, the shifting of shackles, the damp sliding whisper of sweating arms and legs as the slaves tried desperately to curl themselves even tighter. I did not know my eyes were shut until fingers brushed my cheeks. I saw a man's face not a foot from my own. I saw every line, every ridge, a small scar next to one eyebrow, the inflamed lids of his eyes. He was trying to force his knees closer to his chin, to gather himself up like a ball on top of the cask upon which he lived. I saw how ash-colored his knees were, how his swollen calves narrowed nearly to bone down where the shackles had cut his ankles, how the metal had cut red trails into his flesh.

All around me, bodies shifted in exhausted movement. I was a stone cast into a stream, making circles that widened all the way to the limits of the space that contained nearly forty people.

Suddenly I felt myself dropping, and I heard the wooden thunk of the two casks which I had, somehow, been straddling. Now I was wedged between them, my chin pressed against my chest. I could barely draw breath, and what breath I drew was horrible, like a solid substance, like suet; that did not free my lungs but drowned them in the taste of rancid rot. I tried to bend back my head, and I caught a blurred glimpse of Stouts face in the white sunlight above. With what I was sure was the last effort of my life, I heaved up the upper part of my body, but my legs had no leverage. I sank down. I began to choke.

Then arms took hold of me, lifting and pushing until I was sitting on a cask. I couldn't tell who'd helped me. There were too many entangled bodies, too many faces upon which not even an acknowledgment of my presence was written. I peered into the dark.

“You'll find it, boy!” Stout's voice floated down.

I sat without moving. To search the hold meant that I would have to walk upon the blacks. My eyes were growing accustomed to the shadowed corners not reached by the light from above. But my brain slept, my will died. I could do nothing. I felt a soft surge of nausea. I clapped my hand over my mouth as I tried to keep in whatever it was that so violently wanted to come out. Then, through my wet eyes, I made out a figure rising from the throng. It sank, then rose again. In its hand, it held aloft my fife. In the steaming murk, I recognized the boy. He pointed the fife at me. Another hand took hold of it, then another, until a third passed it to the man on the cask who managed to free one hand, take the fife and drop it on me. Someone groaned; someone sighed. I looked up to Stout.