12
QUICKSKILL WALKED THE STREETS. He kept seeing license plates with VIRGINIA on them; they seemed to be following him. He put his collar up around his neck. He put his hands in his pocket. He kept walking against the shop windows, sliding around the corners. He was a fugitive. He was what you’d call a spare fugitive instead of a busy fugitive: he didn’t have the hundreds of wigs, the make-up, the quick changes busy fugitives had to go through; he was a fugitive, but there was no way he could disguise himself.
That’s it, he thought, snapping his fingers—40s would know what to do. 40s lived in a houseboat down near the river.
When he climbed onto the old rusty houseboat, it was dark. He went to the door and knocked.
“Who’s there?”
40s opened the door on Quickskill. He had a shotgun aimed at him.
“Aw, 40s, put it away. We’re not in Virginia no more.”
40s spat. “That’s what you think. Shit. Virginia everywhere. Virginia outside. You might be Virginia.”
All the same he put the shotgun down and took Quickskill inside. “You ought to get your own home instead of watching them for peoples. I got my home. Nothing like having your own home. Don’t have to take care nobody’s plants and they cats or forward they mail.”
“How can a ‘fuge’ have his own home, 40s? Why, I’d be a sitting duck. Swille’s claimants and catchers could find me any time they wished.”
“I got something for them. This rifle. You and Leechfield have nothing but dreams. Your Canada. His ‘show business.’ You writing poems. Leechfield with that Jew …”
“Listen, I’ll have none of that.”
“He is, though. He is a Jew. He call me a Mint, why come I can’t call him a Jew? He call me a Mint, don’t he?”
“But—”
“Don’t he! He call me a Mint, and a black man suppose that’s what I don’t want to call myself. Huh! Suppose I don’t.”
“You sound like a Nativist.”
“The Nativists got good ideas. So do the Know-Nothings. I’d join them if they let me. Matter fact, let me show you.”
He pulled out a hand-spun crude-looking medallion. It was mixed up with symbols that couldn’t possibly go together. Strange letters. What ragged band of Bedlamites could this be? “The Order of the Star-Spangled Banner.” The “S” was backwards and the “Spangled” spelled with an extra “g.”
“They right. Immigrants comin over here. Raggedy Micks, Dagos and things. Jews. The Pope is behind it. The Pope finance Ellis Island. That’s why it’s an island. Have you ever noticed the Catholic thing about islands? The Pope and them be in them places plottin. They gettin ready to kill Lincoln so’s they can rule America.”
With this he pulled out some filthy saddle-stitched rag printed on paper, which looked like the kind of paper towels they have in the men’s room at the Greyhound Bus Station in Chicago. It had the same symbols he had on his old nasty medallion, which germ-infested thing he stuck back into his pocket. The Know-Nothing Intelligencer it was named.
“Why, that’s outrageous,” Quickskill said. “What fevered brain could have thought that up?”
“Okay, you watch it. Lincoln is courtin destiny. Look how he went into Richmond like that. Got to be a fool. Going to Richmond before Jeff Davis was fresh out of his chair. It say Lincoln sat in his chair … sat in Jefferson Davis’ chair, mind you, with a ‘serious dreamy look’ it say here. Now what kind a fool is that? He is tempting the reaper.”
“Listen, ah, 40s, I have to go. I just wanted you to know that Swille knows where we are.”
“You come all the way down here to tell me that? Come here.” He takes Quickskill to the window. “Look up there.” He points to the mountains above the river. “I can hide up there for twenty years and don’t have to worry. If you got caught, you wouldn’t know what to do. Spent too many years in the Castle. I seed you. Sittin at the piano, turning the pages for the white man, admiring his tune. His eyes highbrow. Yours highbrow. Look like twins. If you had to go to the woods, you wouldn’t know what to eat and how to find your way around. You’d eat some mushrooms and die or walk into a bear trap and crush your leg or the elements would get you. No, you let Swille send his dogs, both the four-legged and the two-legged ones. You the one’s going to have to hide. I’m already hidin. You don’t see me, you don’t know me. I’m hidin myself from you right now.”
“I … I can’t understand you guys. You, Leechfield, irrational, bitter. You still see me as a Castle black, some kind of abstraction. If we don’t pull together, we are lost.”
“I’m not going to put in with no chumps. What do you know? I was with Grant and Lee in Mexico. Bof of em. Mr. Polk’s war. They was friends then. We chase Santa Yana’s butt all over the mountains. I was there when they captured—”
“In what capacity, a body servant? Fetching eggs for the captain, Arthur Swille the Second, shining his boots and making his coffee? Oh, look, 40s, I’m … I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. Look …” He puts his arm around him.
“Get on way from me.”
“But …”
“I got all these guns. Look at them. Guns everywhere. Enough to blow away any of them Swille men who come look for me. I don’t need no organization. If I was you, Quickskill, I’d forget about this organization.”
“Why?”
“Cause them niggers don’t wont no organization. You have a organization, they be fighting over which one gone head it; they be fightin about who gone have the money; then they be complainin about things, but when it come down to work, they nowhere to be found. Look, Quickskill, they bring in some women, then it’s all over. Then every one of them want to impress the women. They be picking fights with each other and talking louder than each other, then look over at the women, see if they lookin.”
“There really doesn’t seem to be too much interest in it. Maybe you’re right.”
40s closed his eyes and rocked in satisfaction. “Now you’re talkin, Quickskill. You worry about Quickskill. Leechfield will look after himself, you can be sure of that. Come on, have a drink.”
He went to the shelf and pulled a bottle down. It had a mushroom cloud painted on the label. He poured Quickskill a shot glass. He poured himself one. Then he hobbled around the table on his stump. “Here’s to the emancipation of our brothers still in bondage, in Virginia, Massachusetts and New York.”
They drank. Quickskill’s liquor went down. He felt like someone had just shot a hot poker through his navel. Battleships started to move about inside. Gettysburg was inside. His face turned red. He began to choke and his eyes became teary. 40s slapped him on the back.
“How can you drink this stuff?”
“Jersey Lightning. Stuff is good for you. Make your hair grow. Where you think Lincoln got that beard?”
“Yeah, sure,” Quickskill said, wheezing and coughing.
“What’s going on with Leechfield?”
“He’s doing okay. I just left him.”
“He’s comin up in the world. I saw him in the paper. He had an ad in there. Man, what a con he is.”
“Let me see it.”
40s rose and got a newspaper from a pile over near the houseboat’s one door. He brought it to Quickskill, pointing to Leechfield’s ad: “I’ll Be Your Slave for One Day.” Leechfield was standing erect. In small type underneath the picture it said: “Humiliate Me. Scorn Me.”
“This is disgusting.”
“Leechfield gets more pussy than a cat, Quickskill. Always driving a long boat. Money.”