Free Canaan's Tongue by John Wray Page B

recent cut.” I smiled at him. “They call it a smoking-jacket.”
    “Don’t wear black cloth in the morning, Oliver.” He pursed his lips. “Don’t wear evening-dress, of any kind, on any occasion before six o’clock. The French, of course, wear evening-dress on ceremonious occasions at whatever hour they may occur—; here, however, we follow the English custom.”
    He shuffled some papers about on his desk. He’d said things of this sort to me before, and I wasn’t too put out by them. “The exception is New Orleans, of course. Follow French custom in that city.”
    “I will, sir. Thank you.”
    He studied me for a time. “You’ve never been to pick up any of the niggers you’ve struck, have you?”
    “No sir,” I answered. My throat tightened with excitement.
    He flipped idly through a stack of ledgers. “There’s one by the name of Bosun, not too far down-river. His time is nearly due. Perhaps you and Mr. Kennedy—”
    “Not Kennedy,” I spat out, helpless to keep still. The Redeemer looked up sharply from his desk, not so much in anger as in surprise—; his surprise, however, lasted but a moment. When he spoke it was clear that he knew how Kennedy had found me, and what had happened after.
    “No—; not Kennedy, of course,” he said.
    I said nothing then, waiting for some reference to my disgrace. But instead he struck a match, took another pull from his pipe, and said in an amicable voice—:
    “It
is
strange that it was Kennedy, of all people, who brought you to us. You two are so very disalike.” He looked at me. “Your mother must have been
une femme sans pareil.
”
    “Beg your pardon, sir. I never knew her.”
    He nodded at this, his coy little mouth running over with smoke. “Of course, Oliver. Yes. I mean the woman you were—
indentured
to, when Mr. Kennedy came across you.”
    “Mrs. Bradford was never a mother to me, sir,” I lied. “She was the woman who took me and put me to work.”
    “She did a good deal more than
that,
as I understand it,” the Redeemer said warmly. “She fed you, she clothed you, she taught you to read and cipher—”
    “She’d been a school-teacher,” I answered, cutting him short. I cleared my throat and continued, if only to keep him from saying any more—: “It was more for her pleasure, sir, than for mine.”
    “All right, Oliver—; yes.” He smiled indulgently. “You’d know
better,
of course.” He made a clucking noise with his tongue, the same noise that I’d often heard Parson make. “Mind you,” he said. “I had no school-teachers to give me my finishing, when I was of tender years.”
    “You had Parson,” I said.
    To this day I wonder at my imprudence. The Redeemer froze in mid-puff and glowered crookedly at his pipe, as though it, not I, had spoken out of turn. Then he went on cheerfully—:
    “You looked like the Dauphin himself when Kennedy brought you in, dear boy. I remember it well. All done up in sashes and chenille—”
    “She made good money with that still,” I said hoarsely. “But you know that, of course.”
    He raised his eye-brows. “Why the deuce should I?”
    “Because you own it now.”
    He laughed heartily at this and turned the talk to trifles. We spoke no more about my history, then or after—; but a small, true thing had happened. Out of my shame I’d rebelled, however briefly, and the Redeemer had indulged me.
    Two nights later we set out for Bosun’s rendezvous.
    THE RAFT WE RODE ON was a modest one, little more than tree-stems lashed to a birch-plank floor. The Redeemer and I were the only riders—; I didn’t know, then, of the years he’d spent flat-boating, and was amazed at his skill with the steering-oar and pole. As we drifted, seemingly without effort, just in sight of Louisiana, he pointed out banks, chutes, and snags to me with a confidence born of a lifetime spent on the river. He took particular pleasure, I remember, in identifying the stars. The commonest constellations were