A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [121]
In the afternoons the singing of the work-gangs in the fields came to him, and as it had on the breast of the river the music took him by the bones. Lying in the thickets with the gnats dense around his head, drawn by the scent of the rum on his hand as he bandaged it, and of his sweat, he listened to those voices and thought, This is the music of my home.
“Ana-qué, an’o’bia,
Bia’tail-la, Qué-re-qué,
Nal-le oua, Au-Mondé,
Au-tap-o-té, Au-tap-o-té,
Au-qué-ré-qué, Bo.”
African words, not even understandable by those who sang them anymore, but the rhythm of them warmed his tired blood. He wondered if Madeleine Trepagier’s girl Sally had felt anything like this, running from her mistress—running to New Orleans.
Probably not, he thought. She’d fled with a man and had had his promises to reassure her: his gifts and his sex to keep her from thinking too much about whether he’d keep his word, from wondering why a white man would suddenly get so enamored of a slave.
If she hadn’t been in the Swamp three days ago, he thought—with the tired anger that seemed to have become a part of his flesh—she would be soon.
On the Saturday he met Lucius Lacrîme.
He heard the tut of hooves, the rustle and creak of saddle leather, at some distance, but the woods were thin. He turned and headed inland, not fast but as fast as he dared, seeking any kind of cover that he could.
Thin with pines on the weak soil, the woods here seemed as bare of cover as the ballroom of the Salle d’Orléans.
The hooves were near and he knew they’d see him for sure if he kept moving. He crouched behind the roots of the biggest tree he could find, wadding his big body down flat and small to the earth and tucking the dwindling bundle of blanket and food between belly and knees. He’d feel a fool if they saw him, hiding like a child behind a tree.
As if, he thought, feeling a fool was the worst thing that would happen then.
“… Wench over to the Boyle place.” American voices, quiet. “Cooks a treat, but ugly as a pig.”
“Put a bag over her head, then. Christ, what you want for a—You there! You, nigger!”
Every muscle galvanized as if touched with a scientist’s electrical spark, but he forced stillness. A trick, a trap …
Then another voice said in bad English skewed by worse French, “You talkin’ to me, Michie?”
“Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you. You see any other niggers hereabouts? Lemme see your pass.”
“That ain’t him, Theo, that’s just old Lucius Lacrîme. Got a place hereabouts.” The hooves were still. January heard the chink of bridle hardware as one of the horses tossed its head. “You seen a big black buck, Looch? Headin’ toward the city, maybe?”
“Not headin’ toward the city, no, sir.” Lucius Lacrîme had an old man’s voice, thin and slow and almost sing-song, a broken glass scritching on a rock. “Big man? My nephew he say there somebody holed up someplace along Bayou Désolé. Big man by his track, and black my nephew say, but wearin’ boots like a white man. That be him?”
The woods were so still January could hear the far-off boom of the steamboats on the river, four miles away, and the ringing of an ax. Bridle hardware jingled again, this time sharply, and a horse blew.
“That’ll be him,” said the man who was fastidious about the appearance of cooks. “You know Bayou Désolé, Furman?”
“I know where it lies. Bad country, peters out in a swamp. Just the place a runaway’d hole up, I guess.”
The hooves retreated. The voices faded into the mottled buffs and blacks of the early spring woods. January didn’t raise his head, knowing in his bones that Lucius Lacrîme still stood where he’d been.
In time the