Chapter Seven

A yellow boy with a nose as flat as a plate stood in the center of a sagging tent of contrabands, singing. “I see the angels beck’nin, I hear them call me ’way; I see the golden city, and the everlastin’ day!” It was a potent, magical voice, higher and richer than a white man’s, with a timbre seasoned like Virginia, by warm weather, days of rain.

The other contrabands, with eyes shut and feet stamping, came in on the chorus. “Oh, I’m gwine home to glory; Won’t you go along with me, Whar the angels beckon, an’ the Lord my savior be?”

Crouched together behind a thicket of blackberries outside the tent, Laurence, Woodard, and Pike listened to the roar and pulse of the hymn. Soles slammed the earth, calves bunched, and spines twitched like trees in the wind. A woman Laurence had seen bowed over her daughter by day had her arms raised, mouth open, drinking the air. He wondered if he would ever see his runaway among them, dancing on his crippled foot.

“See, it ain’t the devil’s work,” whispered Woodard. “They’re good Christians.” They watched together behind the veil of thorns and hard green berries, Laurence sucking at a scratch on his thumb, Pike swaying as the song sped up and the dancers began to spin and leap in tight, convulsive bounds.

At first, a lone woman with the waistless, oblong torso of a bathtub began to call out hoarsely. It sounded like she was being strangled, but she stood alone in the circle of dancers, her head flung skyward. Then a second woman joined in, her own garbled speech directed toward the earth. She moved in stiff, jerky steps and pointed her thin arm at the fire, as if she glimpsed in it a creature that would leap out and devour them all, and only she could keep it at bay. A man with a grizzled beard started hissing and popping like the fire itself, and then he fell to the ground and lay there, rigid, his eyes open, drinking the stars.

Laurence was afraid to look at his companions, afraid he would see in their faces his own dubious envy of the overtaken slaves, or, worse, that they would understand more than he. But when he heard beside him a soft echo of the contrabands’ hymn, he turned, to find Pike singing, his hands cupped around the blisters on his heels where his too-large boots had worn the flesh away. Although the boy seemed unaware that he had joined them, his sweet, eerie soprano rose from the thorns and bloomed into the night above. The contrabands danced on, undisturbed, and Laurence heard something in the way Pike’s voice echoed the sway and jerk of their bodies, something he knew he had not heard before, and he understood suddenly the fear at the root of his fascination. This war would change them all, the dancers and the watchers, the soldiers and the families that stayed at home. They would never be the same again.

Finally, the singer ran out of verses and the song came to a swelling close. The afflicted ones fell to the ground in a heap. Silence filled the air, and Pike slumped, exhausted, against Laurence’s right side.

“Gaw,” he whispered. “Their hands look like the dark got rubbed off from holding things.” Laurence could feel Pike’s heartbeat thumping through his bony ribs, and he shifted to let a small channel of air flow between them.

“Cotton,” Woodard affirmed. “It will tear a man’s hands to shreds. I read that somewhere.”

“It isn’t cotton,” Laurence hissed, irritated. “They’re born that way. The babies have it, too.”

“Shh,” Woodard said, and pointed. Another man stood in the center of the circle now. Narrow-hipped and with a regal lift of head, he petitioned the Lord to remember the days when they had nothing to eat, and no time to sleep from working all day in the tobacco fields, when they had been kept out in the frost and snow, and suffered in every way imaginable. The Lord would smother his enemies, said the petitioner; the Lord could help Mr. Linkum win.

“Mr. Linkum,” said Pike. Disgust flooded his voice. “He can’t even say the name of the president right. Gilbert says they ain’t human, really.”

After all they had seen and heard, this comment angered Laurence, and he cuffed the boy on the neck. “Think for yourself,” he hissed.

But Pike had been precariously balanced to avoid any contact with his blistered heels, and the light blow knocked him into the thorns. He gave a sharp cry. The contrabands turned in its direction, the hum of agreement dying out on their lips. In a matter of moments, the men and women vanished one by one into the mouth of dark beyond the fire. Laurence blinked and yanked Pike back by the collar. He had been gazing so long in the direction of the blaze, his eyes were blind in the near blackness.

“Goddamn it, Pike,” Woodard said. He could never effectively pull off cursing, and he sounded like a schoolboy practicing the language of men. “You had to scare ’em off, didn’t you?”

“He didn’t meant to—” Laurence began, attempting to explain his own action.

“I didn’t mean to,” said Pike, interrupting him. “I just fell.” He was less than a foot away, but still Laurence could not see him. He stared until the boy came in focus. Blood welled into a long scratch winding down Pike’s cheek, and he wiped it with the heel of his hand, refusing to meet Laurence’s eyes.

Never before had anyone been afraid of him, and the thought made Laurence feel sick and triumphant at once. He watched a moth take off from a leaf, its ugly gray body aiming for the light of the contrabands’ fire.

“Well, that’s all we get, ’cause of you.” Woodard punched Pike lightly in the shoulder. “The show’s over.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Pike repeated. The blood had left black streaks up his wrist. He did not rub them away, even after they all stood up and began to walk back toward the tents, stumbling over roots and fallen branches, not knowing which was which until the branches snapped and the roots held fast.