Dead water - Barbara Hambly [77]
January grunted thoughtfully. “I wonder if Weems knew that.”
At Davis's table, Kyle Outliver—even more verminous and bedraggled-looking than when he'd tried to lift Sophie's skirts a week earlier—was explaining that most of his fellow deck-passengers had been awake playing cards. . . . No, they didn't know what time they'd quit, but it was before the boat had gone over the bar. No, all the boys wasn't together playing all that time. Some of 'em crawled off to sleep behind the crates, or to have a smoke or take a piss or whatever—it wasn't his look-out what they did. Who'd played? Him and Sam Pawk and Cupid and Billy Earthquake most of the time. . . . No, they hadn't heard nuthin', 'cept Johnny Funk's snorin'. . . .
“An' you fartin' ever' time Cupid took money off you,” retorted Johnny Funk, a bear-like man with one ear bitten off.
“Either Weems didn't figure it out,” said Hannibal quietly, “or he had some information that we don't.”
Leaving Hannibal to follow the proceedings as Davis systematically questioned the deck-passengers—who seemed to have mostly gotten drunk and fallen asleep before midnight, as usual—January descended to the lower promenade to look for Rose. He found the niches among the sheltered wood-piles empty—niches considerably enlarged now because of the amount of wood burned at Vicksburg and Horsehead Bar—for all the inhabitants of the stern were bunched along the starboard rail among the male slaves, watching while Mr. Molloy rowed the skiff away toward what looked like a murky, bubbling tributary stream that broke the wall of trees.
“He ain't really gonna try and take this boat through there, is he, 'Rodus?” asked a boy in Gleet's coffle of the tall, slim Fulani who stood at his side.
“'S'a matter, Lam?” joked an older man to whom the boy was chained. “You ain't anxious to get to Memphis?”
“We could probably do it.” 'Rodus narrowed his eyes to watch the skiff maneuver through the sluicing curtains of rain. “See what he got there, that rope with the markers on it? That's a lead-line, to measure how deep the water is back there.”
“That's the thing he didn't use yesterday tryin' to run over that bar,” added Mr. Roberson's white-haired valet Winslow, and everybody laughed.
“What's goin' on up there, Michie Ben?” asked 'Rodus as January moved along the rail to search for Rose among the spectators. “They figure out anythin' yet about that poor buckra that went overside?”
And January heard in the young man's voice the false note of assumed casualness. Well hidden, of course—blankittes were always complaining that slaves were habitual liars, not seeming to make the connection between the necessity to tell whites what they wanted to hear and the fact that whites could flog or sell the speaker if they didn't like what they heard. As a child, January, with his open and innocent face, had been the champion liar on Bellefleur—something that hadn't saved him when old Michie Simon went on a tear with the rawhide.
Now he scanned the faces of the men chained along the wall, and he saw in all of them a wary and desperate interest.
He said quite quietly, “Colonel Davis askin' questions. I think he means to question everybody on board, probably you included.”
“Us?” The boy Lam looked scared, and put a protective arm around the younger brother chained at his side. “Why us?”
“What would a dressed-up buckra like Weems be doin' down here that time of night?” asked 'Rodus in a tone of such complete calm naturalness that January would have bet money they'd seen something, knew something.
And with an almost audible click, like the sound of a key in a lock, he heard Souter's voice again: a nigger gal singin' to her pickaninny