“Massa Swille! Massa Swille!”
“What is it, you infernal idiot,” says Swille, scolding the man who bears a remarkable resemblance to himself, in fact, could be a butterscotched version of him. Cato is trembling, his silver platform shoes fixed to the floor, the carnation in his lapel twitching.
“Now what do you want? Speak up. I don’t have all day.”
“Massa Swille, I found out where them sables is hidin. 40s and them.”
“You what?” Swille says, now on his feet, staring at the man.
“Them sables, they hidin around the great lakes.”
“Good work, boy. How did you find out?”
“This girl I went to General Howard’s Civilizing School with. She … she got a job at Beulahland Review, and they gettin ready to publish his poem ‘Flight to Canada.’ In the poem he refers to our women in a most anti-suffragette manner. She said she smuggled it out and let some of her friends in the New York Suffragette Society read it, and she say they told her to burn it. They have meetings on Fourteenth Street in New York, she say …”
“Would you cut the trivial details and tell me where those rascals are?”
“Emancipation City. She say that she was fixin to play like it never came in and when he called up there asking about it, she told him that all the editors were in conference, or that they’d gone for the day. She was too late, Massa Swille, because the mens hab already writ the rascal that it’s comin out in a forthcoming issue. There’s nothing she can do about it now.”
“Which kink wrote it, Cato?”
“Raven Quickskill. The poem say that he has come back here to the plantation a lots and that he has drunk up all your wine and that he tricked your wife into giving him the combination to your safe. And he say he poisoned your Old Crow. And to add to the worser, Massa Swille, he say somethin cryptic. Somethin about … Well, I don’t precisely understand, Massa Swille, but he say somethin about your favorite quadroon giving him some … some ‘She-Bear.’ What on earth do that mean, Massa Swille?”
“Skip it, Cato. Nothing your puerile Christian ears would be interested in.”
“Oh, thank you, Massa Swille. Thank you, Massa Swille. The part about Canada is just done to throw you off his trail. That nigger ain’t in no Canada. There ain’t no such place; that’s just reactionary mysticism. I never seed no Canada, so there can’t be none. The only thing exists is what I see. Seeing is believing.”
“Call out my tracers, my claimants, my nigger catchers and my bloodhounds. Arm my paddyrollers. Call Maryland!”
Cato begins to run around the room, until he bumps into a bust of Caligula, Swille’s favorite hero of antiquity, and knocks it to the floor.
“Look what you did, you idiot. Busted one of my objets d’art. Never mind. Do you have a copy of the poem?”
“That I do, suh. That I do. I was clever enough to have a Xerox made. And if you ask me, it don’t have no redeeming qualities, it is bereft of any sort of pièce de résistance, is cute and unexpurgated …”
“Spare me the cotton stuffing, Cato. No one’s interested in your critical abilities and you know what they did in the old days to the messenger who brought bad news.”
“But, Mr. Swille, you sent me to school for that. To be critical about things. They gibbed me a Ph.D. Don’t you remember?”
“I do, Cato. [Calmer] I hear the slaves calling you names, vilifying you. Don’t pay any attention. Jump over the broom with any of the tar wenches you see.”
“Yes, sir! Thank you, sir! Thank you also for giving me such a good education. I knows the Bible by heart. I knows things like ‘standards,’ and how to pronounce ‘prolegomenon.’ I caught some of them praying to them old filthy fetishes the other day; they seemed to be habbin a good time too. I called in the overseer, and he give them a good flogging. That he did. Whipped them darkies. And last week I told them slaves: no more polygamy. This savage custom they brought from Tarzan country. They’s allowed only one woman, suh. I told the women anyone they see with another woman they can shoot. I armed the women slaves. They’ll keep order. They’ll dismember them niggers with horrifying detail.”
“So you’ve just about ended this heathenism, eh, Cato? Their ethnicity.”
“That I’ve done, suh. It was mighty helpful of you and Barracuda to end all them cults and superstitions and require that all the people follow only the Jesus cult. That make them work harder for you, Boss. The women especially be thrilled with the Jesus cult. They don’t ask no questions any more. They’s accepted their lot. Them other cults, Massa … there was too many of them. Horn cults, animal cults, ghost cults, tree cults, staff cults, serpent cults — everything they see they make a spurious cult out of it. Some of them kinks is worshipping the train, boss. They know the time when each train pass by on the railroad tracks. Leechfield even had a cassarette, Massa Swille.”
“A what?”
“One of them things you talk into, and your voice come back. Boss, even with my liberal education, it looked like magic. I was skeered. But I didn’t show it.”
“Oh, you mean a cassette.”
“That’s the one; it sure is the one, Massa Swille. The nigger was having runners going from village to village carrying messages refutin me and my Biblical arguments. I found them cassarettes and throwed them into the river, Massa. He was just confusin everybody. I’m glad that old Leechfield is gone.”
“Good, son. I mean—”
They freeze and stare at each other.
“Oh, figuratively, Cato. Only figuratively. I call all my sbleezers son. Now, Cato, I’m giving you new responsibilities. First, I want you to send in the Nebraska Tracers. Try to reason with them. Honey them with saccharin and seduce them through flowery, intelligent proposals.”
“Yessir, Massa Swille. Yessir. It sound like an exciting prospect.”
“And if they don’t go for that, I want you to permit the bloodhounds to sniff Xerox copies of that poem. The way you find a fugitive, remember, is to go all the way back and work your way up to him. That poem has trapped him once and it’ll trap him again. Now you go to it, Cato.”
“Yessir.”
“Hustle, Cato, hustle.”
“Yessir.” His arms thrown out in front, his heels kicking his behind, Cato rushes out of the door and knocks over Uncle Robin, who’s been listening through the keyhole; the glasses of Scotch he has placed on the tray tumble to the floor, spilling on Cato’s white shoes. Cato’s monocle drops to his chest. “Now look what you did, old splay-nosed rascal,” he says angrily.
“I’m sorry, Mister Cato, but I thought maybe you and Massa Swille would like some ’freshments.”
“ ’Freshments, ’freshments. When are you going to learn? Refreshments. How are we goin to gain acceptance if we don’t show that we know Dr. Johnson and them.”
“There’s some spot remover in the kitchen, Mr. Cato.”
“Oh, all right. And don’t get smart, either, just because Harriet Beecher Stowe came down and taped you. Ha! Ha! She didn’t even use your interview. Used Tom over at the Legree plantation. What did she give you?”
“She just gave me a flat-out fee. I bought a pig, a dog and a goose with it.”
“Ha! Ha! Eeeee. Ha! Ha!” Cato stands in the hall and slaps his head. “One of the best sellers of all time and you only received pig money. You are stupid, just like they say, you black infidel.”
“Yessir, Mr. Cato.”
Cato, whistling, skips down the hall toward the kitchen. Uncle Robin stares after him. A stare that could draw out the dust in a brick.
8
ABOUT A MILE FROM the Great Castle are the Frederick Douglass Houses. This is where all the Uncles and Aunties who work in the Great Castle live. Inside a penthouse, in one of the bedrooms, Uncle Robin and Aunt Judy lie under the covers of a giant waterbed, watching TV. It is twelve o’clock midnight. Their children, whose freedom they’ve bought with their toil, are “Free Negroes” who live in New York. They send their parents money and write them letters about the good life up North. Robin and Judy know about the North from the conversations they’ve heard at the Swille table from visitors. They know that the arriving immigrants are molesting the Free Negroes in the Northern cities. They know that Harriet Beecher Stowe characterized the worst slave traders as being Vermonters. They know a thing or two and are proud of their children. Even though their children chastise them about their “old ways” and call them Uncles and Aunts and refer to themselves as 1900’s people. There is a bottle of champagne on the dresser. Robin and Judy are sipping from glasses. A panel of newsmen is discussing the Emancipation of the slaves.