Free Canaan's Tongue by John Wray Page A

thin, bright-eyed or stony-faced, made no difference to me at all. I looked for signs of children, and if I found any I moved on. If not, I stayed. Sometimes I was traveling for religion—; sometimes I was peddler—; I could have told them anything I liked. By the second or third night the men would start coming round and I’d bring out the idea and let it loose. Once I started I worked quick, pausing only to sleep, so that by the time word reached the big house I was back out on the river. I learned that early, about the quickness. I had marks on my back and on the soles of my feet to keep me mindful. By the end of a week—if I’d stayed that long—the marks would begin to itch and I’d light out within the hour. But not before I’d looked in on each of the men I’d struck. Not before I’d left each of them a token.
    Often as not a woman would be waiting for me when I called, sitting with her arms crossed in the middle of the room, mute and blank-faced as a cinder. My man would be sound asleep beside her, half-covered by a quilt, or hid behind a dirty sack-cloth curtain.
    “The wind’s up, auntie,” I’d say to the woman.
    “Then get you gone,” she’d say. “Gone back down under the river.”
    “Get him roused, auntie,” I’d say. “Wake him, or I’ll take him tonight.”
    “I’ll wake the marse, that’s who. I’ll wake his hounds.”
    I’d say nothing, looking at her as I might at a cow laid in the middle of the road. It was always the same. After another stretch of dullness she’d get stiffly to her feet and walk out of the shack without a word.
    I was sixteen years old when I began as a striker, reckless and full of bluster—; I was caught on my very first strike. A foreman and two boys tied me to a fence-post with a length of hemp and laid into me with a switch for a while, but their hearts weren’t in it. They’d heard of the Trade by then, heard of it and feared it, and they had little regard for the master of the house. He came down himself after a time, looked me over indifferently, then dismissed his men. I could smell his anise-scented breath as he examined my cuts. I can’t abide anise to this day.
    “You a right fortunate little coon,” he whispered. Then he cut me loose. I learned later he was one of our share-holders.
    Once the husband, or the son, or the lover of the cinder-faced woman was roused from the bed, I’d refuse whatever hospitality was offered—a slice of cold scrapple, perhaps, or a wedge of boiled yam— then press a silver ring into his palm, holding it there until his fingers closed on it. I’d remind him that he must have the ring on the first finger of his left hand when my associates came for him, and that they’d come for him within a fortnight. Then I’d have him repeat what I said word for word.
    “If you don’t have that ring, they’ll shoot you in the belly,” I’d say. “These aren’t patient men.”
    And he’d look me in the face at last, sober and respectful, and swear to me he understood. I did my work well—; I did as right by them, each one, as I was able. Not a one of the niggers I struck failed to turn out for his rendezvous. Not a one of my strikes was wasted.
    I began to build a name for myself, in circles. But the more I grew inside that name the tighter it became, and the more I wanted to slip out of it like a cicada from its shell. I was bigger than my name already, and I knew it. I was not yet nineteen years of age.
    THE REDEEMER HAD BEEN PARTIAL to me from the start, and had talked to me long and lovingly about the Trade—; in reality, however, the sum of what I knew could have fit into a pipe-stem. One afternoon, when I was sitting with him in his quarters, he leaned back in that high-chair of his and sucked musingly on his pipe. “You’ve been a capital striker for us, Oliver,” he said finally. “Capital.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    He squinted at me then. “What’s that you’re wearing?”
    “Broad-cloth, sir. A