Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [162]
“Liza?”
“Hush, Nathaniel,” she called back to me. “We’ll have time later to talk.”
“I should have—”
“Hush!”
I had spoken too soon, because I saw, as she did, a light flickering up the road far ahead, a light that danced and waxed and waned I hoped against hope it was a phantom lamp, one of those will-o’-the-wisp tricks of the darkish air, product perhaps of swamp gases and the dampness of the hour. But as we approached the light became still, and hovered at just the height it would if it were a torch or lamp held by a man on horseback.
It was in fact two lights, each held by a man on horseback.
“Whoa!” called out one of them as we slowed down on our approach, as if he were talking to his own horse.
“Liza—”
“Hush!” she cautioned me.
“Well, well, well, good evening, Mister Yankeeman,” said the patroller Langerhans, holding up one of the torches. “Out kind of late, ain’t you?” He turned to smile to his two assistants, who nodded back at him, smiling.
“As are you,” I said.
“I’m on patrol,” said the slave-catcher. “And you?”
“Me?”
“Yes, sir,” he said, slurring his esses.
“I’m going about my uncle’s business,” I said.
“In the middle of the night? With a slave girl riding along? And what? Who is that darky sitting up behind her? Wouldn’t be the young nigger we come out to look around for not long ago, could it?”
“He is nobody to you,” Liza said.
“Liza, I’ll take care of this.”
Langerhans made a clucking noise in his mouth.
“Will you?”
“Stand aside,” I said.
Langerhans shook his head, which gave his already rather monstrous aspect in the wavering light of the torch an even more grotesque appearance.
“I can’t do that. I get paid to keep niggers from running off and if I don’t my children aren’t going to eat.”
“She has a pass,” I said.
“Really? And does that boy have a pass, too? Where’re y’all riding in the middle of the night?”
“She is going to visit family,” I said. “North of here.”
“That’s funny. All the family I ever hear about is living north, when all the family I ever know about has gone south.”
“I’ll show you the passes,” I said, reaching into the inside of my coat.
“Slow,” Langerhans said. “Show me slow.”
“Of course,” I said, preparing to pat my pocket as though I had lost the paper, a ghastly empty place swelling in my heart because of the absence of my pistol.
“Slow!” he said again.
In the wavering light of the torch I saw a movement at Liza’s side.
Langerhans saw it too, and made a joke.
“Oh, my,” he said to his men, “do you see what I see? This nigger girl’s holding a pistol just big enough to take off a toe or the tip of a nose.”
The men laughed as Langerhans turned in his saddle.
“But she don’t even have it cocked. Might be loaded, though I doubt that, but it ain’t cocked. If you’re lucky enough to know it’s even loaded, how you going to fire a weapon it ain’t cocked, I ask you that?”
“Liza,” I said, meaning for her to lower the weapon.
Instead she moved her free hand across it and we all heard the sound.
“Lordy,” Langerhans said again, as though he were announcing a show, “looked what she done! She done cocked that weapon! Oh, oh, oh, ain’t she smart? I mean, smart for a nigger bitch!”
“Liza,” I said again, speaking but feeling unable to breathe.
“Liza,” Langerhans said, mocking my voice. “He wants you to put that gun down now. Even if it ain’t loaded.”
Liza in silence kept that weapon level and pointed directly at Langerhans.
“Liza, you hear him?”
Langerhans sounded a bit impatient now.
“Liza,” he said again.
“Liza,” I said.
“Come on, you bitch—” Langerhans reached toward her.
Came a loud blast and flash of light, a man screamed, the horses jumped about, I grabbed Promise’s reins. At that moment my heart felt as though it might break through my rib-cage and fly away like a terrified bird.
“Ride!” Liza called to me.
And we rode.
A second loud bang, and a flash spurred our horses even faster.
I heard a voice, a moan. It