“What does that Leer have to do with Leechfield?”
“Oh, man, that’s his runner.”
“I don’t get it.”
“They pardners. You see, Leer takes photos, and they sell them around the country. It’s a mail-order business they got. You’d be surprised how many people enjoy having a slave for a day even when they can’t touch them. They say that one of them Radical Republican congressmen even sent for one. Leechfield has come a long way. Use to be nothin but a chicken plucker. That Leer brought him into the big time. First they started out in Tennessee. Leer would pretend to be Leechfield’s owner, and he’d have Leechfield dressed up in black cloth pantaloons, black cloth cap, plaided sack coat, cotton check shirt and brogans. And he’d sell Leechfield during the morning and then he’d kidnap Leechfield at night, and then would repeat the same routine to a different buyer the next day. Man, they made a fortune in the nigger-running business. That’s how they got the money to come up here.”
Quickskill rose.
“You leavin?”
“Yeah, I got to go.”
“You upset about Leechfield?”
“Yeah, a little. The slaves really used to look up to him.”
“Well, be careful, Quickskill. Swille ain’t going to spend all of that time chasing us. He’s busy. How’d he find out we were here, anyway?
“It’s my poem. You don’t understand.”
“You got to be kiddin. Words. What good is words?”
“Words built the world and words can destroy the world, 40s.”
“Well, you take the words; give me the rifle. That’s the only word I need. R-i-f-l-e. Click.”
13
BOOK TITLES TELL THE story. The original subtitle for Uncle Tom’s Cabin was “The Man Who Was a Thing.” In 1910 appeared a book by Mary White Ovington called Half a Man. Over one hundred years after the appearance of the Stowe book, The Man Who Cried I Am, by John A. Williams, was published. Quickskill thought of all of the changes that would happen to make a “Thing” into an “I Am.” Tons of paper. An Atlantic of blood. Repressed energy of anger that would form enough sun to light a solar system. A burnt-out black hole. A cosmic slave hole.
Here he was at a White House reception. All of the furniture in the room is worth more than he is. It seems to be sneering at him. The slave waiters look him up and down and cover their grins with their hands. He isn’t in the same class as the property. Is there a brotherhood of property? Is he related to the horse, the plow, the carriage? He had just passed the reception line. Shook hands with Lincoln.
Lincoln whispered a rhyme to him that was popular among the slaves and that had fallen into the mouths of the Planters. Generals of the Union had captured it as contraband, and now it was being uttered in the highest circles in Washington:
“If de debble do not ketch
Jeff Davis, dat infernal wretch
An roast and frigazee dat rebble
Wat is de use of any Debble?”
Raven exchanged nervous smiles with the President, and after he passed he heard the President whisper to an aide, “How did I do?”
Lincoln was uggggly! An uggggly man. The story was that Mary Todd Lincoln had become furious at his carryings-on with Mrs. Charles Griffin, who had inspected the troops with him, the incident that got tongues to wagging and made Mary furious, but how could she be jealous of Abe, poor ugly Abe? Why was he doing this? Inviting artists, writers, dancers and musicians to the White House?
Quickskill couldn’t forget the telegram: “For your poem ‘Flight to Canada,’ a witty, satiric and delightful contribution to American letters, we invite you to a White House reception honoring the leading scribes of America.”
Walt Whitman was there. He had written a poem called “Respondez,” in which he had recommended all manner of excesses: lunatics running the asylum, jailers running the jail. “Let murderers, bigots, fools, unclean persons offer new propositions!” And now, here he was as Lincoln’s guest in the White House.
In the same poem he had written: “Let nothing remain but the ashes of teachers, artists, moralists, lawyers and learned and polite persons.” I guess he was talking about himself, Quickskill thought, because there he was, as polite as he could be, grinning, shaking the hands of dignitaries.
Whitman had described Lincoln as “dark brown.” Whitman was accurate about that. He stood in the corner for most of the party, sniffing a lilac.
There were a couple of anti-war scribes that Quickskill recognized. They were from New York. There was a large anti-war movement in New York. In fact, New Yorkers were seriously considering a proposal to secede from the Union for the purpose of forming a new state: Tri-Insula — Manhattan, Long Island, Staten Island. Some of the New Yorkers were cussing loud, dropping their ashes on the White House rug and picking fights with people.
Raven felt woozy. The night before, flying down to Washington, he had shared a little ale in one of the taverns down on Vesey Street frequented by the anti-slavery, or “free,” crowd. He hadn’t gotten much sleep.
He clutched his stomach where the pain grabbed him. He began to sweat all over. It must have been the rich lunch they had thrown for the visiting “scribes,” as they called them. He was never too hot on French food. He could even eat slave-ship food: salt beef, pork, dried peas, weevily biscuits. But French food always made him sick.
Lincoln’s wife Mary was wandering about the room. She was dressed in a white satin evening gown trimmed with black lace. Some military man was escorting her. She shook hands with writers coolly. Todd Lincoln tapped him on the shoulder. It was Todd Lincoln. Rumor had it that he was a bigger lush than his old man.
“Anything wrong, Mr. Quickskill?”
“Oh, nothing, Mr. Lincoln, I …”
“You know, I enjoyed the poem ‘Flight to Canada.’ You really laid that Swille planter out. Such wit. Such irony. You’re a national institution.”
“I … I …” He was about to collapse.
“Something is wrong?” Todd hurried over to where Lincoln was discussing something with Mathew Brady and whispered in his ear. They looked over his way. He was trying not to make a scene. Lincoln said something back. Todd returned to Quickskill.
“Dad said you could lie down in his bedroom. He never uses it anyway.”
“You mean the Lincoln bedroom?”
“Sure, think nothing of it.”
14
IT WAS SIPPING FROM a glass of wine and listening to the radio. Some new group with a fife, drum, flute. A lot of snare — rap-a-tap tap. Nice. It puts the glass back on the rosewood rococo-revival table. It is lying in the bed that matches the table. It feels better, and now its head is swimming, not from the sickness, which has left, but from the occasion. It is lying in the President’s bed, just as in “Flight to Canada” it bragged about lying in Swille’s bed. The poem had gotten it here. The poem had placed it in this place of majesty, of the great, talking and drinking with the creative celebrities of the country.
The poem had also pointed to where it, 40s, Stray Leechfield were hiding. Did that make the poem a squealer? A tattler? What else did this poem have in mind for it. Its creation, but in a sense, Swille’s bloodhound.
It put its hands behind its head and was lying in the soft pillows and clean sheets. There was a noise in the hall. It heard one man talking loud, and the other in a high-pitched squeaky voice — the President.