The Slave Dancer Read online

  I felt restless, and reluctant to return to the room full of brocade, so I took the longest way home, using alleys that kept me off the main streets where sailors and gentlemen and chandlers and cotton merchants and farmers went to make themselves drunk in taverns, and where women gotten up like parrots kept them company.

  My mother, repeating the Sunday warnings of the parson about the sinfulness of our quarter, had asked me to promise her I would never enter a tavern or mingle with the nightly throngs on Bourbon and Royal Streets. By keeping to these narrow byways, I avoided breaking the promise but still had the diversion of hearing from over the rooftops the rumble and rise and fall of men’s voices, the bird shrieks of women, laughter and the shouts of quarrels and the abrupt iron-like strokes of horses’ hooves on cobblestones, as the horsemen set off toward unknown destinations.

  Someday, I might become a rich chandler in a fine suit, with a thousand candles to hand if I needed them instead of three grudgingly given stubs. I imagined the splendid house I would live in, my gardens, my carriage and horses. I was so intoxicated by my vision that I rose up on my toes as though to meet the fate I had invented. What I encountered was foul smelling canvas, a sky full of it, covering me entirely, forcing me to the ground.

  I heard men’s voices. Hands gripped me through the canvas. I was tossed, then trussed, then lifted up and carried like a pig to market.

  “Take up that pipe, Claudius,” a voice growled near my bound head. “He’s worth nothing without his pipe!”

  “I don’t see it,” said another voice in a complaining gurgle.

  I was dropped on the ground, and the canvas loosened around my face. I tried to shout but the musty cloth filled my mouth and I could get no air into my lungs. My limbs were twisted like threads; the miserable candles I still gripped in one hand pressed cruelly against my knee. I managed to spit out the canvas and gulped like a fish out of water. An orange moon floated before my eyes, then a hundred little black dots.

  “Ah, it’s right by your foot, Claudius,” said someone.

  The canvas tightened. I felt myself being lifted and then I knew nothing—for how long I cannot say. But when I regained consciousness, I was on my feet, my head free, supported by a tall man who was gripping my neck to keep me upright.

  “Well now,” said the man called Claudius, “he acts dizzy, don’t he?”

  I twisted my head.

  “He wriggles,” said Claudius.

  “Cast off,” said the other. “I’ll see to him.”

  Claudius pushed me, and I slumped against the other man like a top run down.

  “If you promise not to make a sound, I’ll set you loose,” said he. “Promise now!”

  I nodded. I could not have spoken anyhow. My throat was parched with dust and tight with fear.

  Suddenly I felt the ground move. At the same moment, I realized the three of us were standing on a small raft and that all about us was the shifting darkness of the river.

  I was carelessly unwrapped like a gift no one wanted and forced to sit, my arms clasped about my knees. My captors then ignored me. They hadn’t any reason to worry about my escaping. There was no place to go.

  Poling the raft to keep it off the bank yet away from the swift uncertain currents, the two figures looked like pieces of the night itself. I couldn’t make out their features or how they were dressed. They must be pirates, I thought, out of Barataria Bay. I had heard tales about pirates all my life but had only half believed them. Yet here I was, soon to be part of their pirate lives and pirate feasts. I shivered, feeling truly alone.

  I stared at the black water and thought desperately of my father. I thought of the fate of drowned people and wondered if my father’s bones lay somewhere nearby, white as chalk on the river bottom.

  We were not long on the river but I wish we had been longer. The next part of our journey was on land, and I was made to walk between the two men. The marshy ground gave way beneath my feet and each time my boot sank into it, I waited with horror for a cottonmouth to strike. Sometimes there was a noisy flap of wings when we frightened a heron away from its night roost, sometimes a slither and damp muddy sigh as an otter, belly flat, headed into a pool of fetid water. We marched for several miles and although I was nearly fainting with exhaustion, I dared not ask the men to rest.

  The marshy ground changed to sand. Ahead lay a stretch of water and no longer able to keep still, I asked timidly, “Is this Barataria Bay?”

  “Lake Borgne,” said Claudius without turning to look at me. I was given a sudden push from behind. “Keep moving,” ordered the other man. “We have a long sail before us.”

  His words filled me with a new fear. I had by then resolved that I would somehow be able to escape from a bayou settlement of pirates, but a long sail? I nearly cried out, nearly begged them to let me go! We came to the edge of the lake and there I saw a small boat, a kind of fishing smack I’d seen on Lake Pontchartrain.

  Claudius lit a lantern and held it up over my head. I looked at the two men. I could see their nostrils, their teeth like rows on an ear of corn, each hair of Claudius’ black beard, pock marks, warts, scars, the very liquid of their eyes. I covered my own face, scattering bits of soft wax over my hair, all that was left of the candles for the sake of which I was surely to be killed.

  My hands were snatched away and held tight.

  “Don’t you remember a man who gave you money?” asked one of the gaping mouths. I stared at his big face. “I’m about to do even more for you,” the teeth clacked. “I’m going to take you on a fine sea voyage.” He released my hands and placed an orange in them. Then I remembered his voice and his face.

  It was a sailor who only that afternoon had given me two pennies to play him a martial tune down near the fruit stalls by the river. As I played, he had stuffed three oranges in his mouth, one by one, spitting out skin and pits and letting the juice run down his huge chin. It was with those pennies I had offered to buy my mother the candles she needed.

  The Moonlight

  I strained to see the shore we were leaving and when, at last, it melted into the darkness, I was overwhelmed with sleepiness. But it is hard to settle down in the bottom of a small boat. It curved where my back didn’t; I was in danger of decapitation from the wooden arm to which a sail was attached, and which swung unexpectedly from side to side. And when I thought: Here is space to stretch out in, I found I needed grasshopper legs to make room for my head, or else a turtle’s neck I could pull in to make room for my legs.

  I suppose I dozed now and then during that long trip. At times, the water seemed only a dense shadow which we skimmed across to avoid falling through. The men spoke in undertones about nothing familiar to me. The sail, a three-cornered patch of whiteness, swung over my head. The little boat groaned and creaked. The water tapped ceaselessly against the hull like a steady fall of rain on a roof.

  Hours passed with nothing to mark them until in the east the sky paled ever so faintly as though a drop of daylight had touched the black. I wanted to stand up, to stretch. But when I started to my feet, Claudius’ voice rang out so loud I was sure he would be heard on every shore. “Sit down, boy!”

  We passed a small island. I saw the glimmer of a light in a window—only that solitary, flickering yellow beacon. I felt hopeless and sad as though everyone in the world had died save the three of us and the unknown lamplighter on the shore. Then, as if daylight was being born inside the boat itself, I began to make out piles of rope, a wooden bucket, a heap of rusty looking net, the thick boots of my captors.

  “There!” said the big-jawed man, pointing straight ahead.

  And there was our destination, a sailing ship, its masts looking as high as the steeple of St. Louis Cathedral, its deck empty, a shape as astonishing on the expanse of dawn gray water as a church would have been. Across its bow were painted the words: The Moonlight.

  I was hauled up a rope ladder from which I dared not look down, and no sooner had I reached the deck when from being
so stiff and tired, I fell flat on my face. At once, my nostrils were flooded with a smell so sickening, so menacing, that it stopped my breath.

  “He’s not standing well,” said Claudius.

  “Then we must stretch him,” said the other, waggling his chin.

  I breathed shallowly. Despite my fatigue, I sprang to my feet and stood there quivering, my head bent back so that I faced the sky. The smell persisted but it was weaker the farther my head was from the deck. Perhaps the two men, who were tall, didn’t smell it at all.

  “Maybe he swims better than he stands,” said Claudius.

  “We’ll test him in a barrel of vinegar,” said the other with a broad grin. Then he placed my fife to his lips and blew mightily. His cheeks puffed out but he could make no sound.

  “You haven’t the gift, Purvis,” said Claudius.

  “Leave him be,” ordered another voice, and a third man appeared from out of a little door on the deck. He was much older than my captors, and he was dressed in a thick garment that hung from his shoulders like a quilt. “Purvis, Claudius, leave him be,” he repeated. “He’s not going to swim away. Give him his instrument and tell him where he is.”

  The old man hardly glanced at me, and there was no particular kindness in his voice. Purvis, who had taken a hard grip on my wrist, dropped it.

  “Thank you,” I said, wishing I did not sound so timid.

  “Don’t waste your breath,” said the old man.

  “I told you you were going on a sea voyage,” said Purvis.

  “But I must get home,” I cried. While he spoke, I had looked around me. I had no sense of the ship at all or how one should move on it or where there was a place to lie down, the thought of which made me groan out loud.

  “Now don’t give up heart, boy,” said Purvis. “You’ll get home. Claudius and I will see to that. But it won’t be for a bit.”

  “Oh, when!” I shouted.

  “Not long at all,” said Claudius softly, trying to touch my head as I ducked away from him. “With luck, you’ll be back in four months.”

  My knees turned to pudding. “My mother will think I’m dead!” I cried, and ran wildly away from the three men only to collide with a wooden structure of some sort and knock myself to the deck where I curled up like a worm.

  I thought desperately of my mother and Betty in the room with that apricot brocade. I cursed the rich stuff and the lady who had ordered a gown from my mother, and the candles I had gotten from Aunt Agatha. I cursed myself for taking the longest way home.

  The old man bent over me. “You’ve run into my bench,” he said peevishly. “Get up now and behave yourself.”

  I got to my feet. “It’s my mother who’ll be heartbroken,” I said in a low voice, hoping to stir some feeling in him. “My father drowned long ago, and now she’s lost me.”

  Purvis grabbed my arm. “We’ve taken care of all that, boy!” he insisted. “Claudius and me spoke to your mother and explained we’d borrowed you for a while.”

  I knew he was lying. But I was afraid to show him that I knew for fear he’d wrap me up in that canvas again.

  “The wind’s changing,” Purvis muttered.

  “Indeed, it’s not,” said the old man.

  “What do you know, Ned? You can’t tell whether you’re on land or sea anyhow!”

  “I don’t require to,” replied the old man sharply. Then he turned his attention back to me. “I don’t approve of it,” he said. “This taking of boys and men against their will. But I have nothing to do with it. We had got a boy, but he ran away in Charleston just before we sailed. Still, it isn’t my fault. I’m only a carpenter. You might as well settle yourself to what’s happened. The Captain will have what he will have no matter how he gets it.”

  “Who’s on the watch?” inquired Purvis as he pressed my fife into my hand.

  “Sam Wick and Cooley,” answered Ned.

  “I know nothing about ships,” I ventured.

  “You don’t need to, no more than Ned here. He does his carpentering, and can even do surgery if he feels like it. But he can’t tell a bowsprit from a topmast. You’ll only be doing what you’ve done before, playing your pipe.”

  “For the Captain?” I asked.

  Purvis opened his mouth so wide he looked like an alligator, and shouted with laughter. “No, no. Not for the Captain, but for kings and princes and other such like trash. Why, we’ll have a ship full of royalty, won’t we, Ned?” he said.

  Misery made my head ache. I wandered away from Purvis and Ned not caring if they threw me in the water or hung me for a sail. They paid no attention to my departure but went back to quarreling about the wind.

  I couldn’t even feel a breeze. A gull like a puff of smoke flew across the bow. Everything except the dark smudge of shore was gray now, sky and water and dull clouds. It looked like rain. I caught my foot in a coil of heavy chain, and I bumped my shoulder against a mast. Except for the mutter of Purvis’ voice, I heard only the fluttering sound of water about the hull of the ship. A man passed me wearing a woolen cap, his gaze on the horizon.

  There was no one to save me—and I didn’t even know from what I needed to be saved. As quickly as my mother’s sharp scissors cut a thread, snip! I had been cut off from the only life I knew. When I felt a hand on my arm, I supposed it was Purvis come to tease me, so I didn’t turn around. But a strange voice asked, “What’s your name?”

  It was a plain question, asked in a plain voice. I was startled, as though life had come straight again, and turned to find a tall heavy-limbed man standing behind me. I made no reply at first. He smiled encouragingly and said, “I’m Benjamin Stout and sorry for what’s been done to you.”

  I wanted to ask him why it had been done, but I was so grateful to be spoken to in such a sensible way that I didn’t wish to provoke him. I said nothing. He leaned against the bulwark.

  “How old are you? Thirteen, I’d guess. I was pressed too, although when I was older than you, and for a much longer voyage than this will be. A whole year I was gone. But then, you see, I got to like it, the sea and all, even the hard life on a ship, so that when I go ashore, I get restless in a few hours. I get half mad with restlessness. Though I promise you, there are days at sea when all you want is to be on a path that has no end, a path you can run straight ahead on till your breath gives out. Oh, I’m not speaking of gales and storms and squalls. I mean the flat dead days without wind.”

  “I’m thirteen,” I said.

  “Thirteen,” he repeated thoughtfully. “Just as I said. You’ll see some bad things, but if you didn’t see them, they’d still be happening so you might as well.”

  I couldn’t make sense of all that. I asked him the question that was uppermost in my mind.

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’re sailing to Whydah in the Bight of Benin.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Africa.”

  For all the calmness with which he said Africa, he might as well have said Royal Street. I felt like a bird caught in a room.

  “You haven’t told me your name,” he said.

  “Jessie Bollier,” I replied in a whisper. For a second I was ready to throw myself off the ship. The very name of that distant place was like an arrow aimed at me.

  “Jessie, we’ll shake hands, now that we know each other. I’ll show you to our quarters where you’ll sleep. You’ll get used to the hammock in a night or two. I’ve got so I won’t sleep in anything else, and when I’m ashore, I prefer even the floor to a bed.”

  “Here!” roared Purvis, his heavy steps pounding toward us. “Is this boy bawling up trouble?”

  “Shut your great face,” Benjamin Stout called over his shoulder, then said to me, “He’s harmless, only noisy. But watch out for the Mate, Nick Spark. And when you speak to the Captain, be sure and answer everything he asks you, even if you must lie.”

  Purvis dropped a heavy hand on my shoulder. “You’ve met Saint Stout, I see. Come along. Captain Cawthor
ne wants to see what sort of fish we caught.”

  His hand slid down and gripped my arm. Half dragging me, for I couldn’t match his strides, he took me to a part of the ship which had a kind of small house on it, the roof forming what I later learned was the poop deck.

  “Stand, Purvis,” a voice ordered, as dry as paper and as sharp as vinegar. Purvis became a stone. I twitched my arm away from his grasp and rubbed it.

  “Step forward, boy,” said the voice. I took a step toward the two men who stood in front of the small house.

  “What a fearful runt!” boomed the smaller man. Paper-voice agreed, adding a high-pitched “Sir” like a sour whistle at the end of his words. I supposed from that that the short fellow was the Captain.

  “Your name?” he asked.

  “Jessie Bollier.”

  “Never heard such a name.”

  “It used to be Beaulieu but my father didn’t want to be thought French, so he changed it,” I hastened to explain, recalling Stout’s advice to answer everything I was asked.

  “Just as bad,” said the Captain.

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “Captain!” roared the Captain. I jumped.

  The thin man said, “Address the Captain as Captain, you boy.”

  “Captain,” I echoed weakly.

  “Purvis!” cried the Captain, “Why are you standing there, you Irish bucket! Get off to your work!”

  Purvis slid away soundlessly.

  “So you’re one of them Creoles, are you?” asked the Captain.

  “It was only my grandfather who was from France, Captain,” I replied apologetically.

  “Bad fellows, the French,” remarked the Captain, scowling. “Pirates all of them.”

  “My father wasn’t a pirate,” I declared.

  “Indeed!” sneered the Captain. He looked straight up at the sky, an odd smile on his lips. Then he coughed violently, clapped his hands together, grew silent and stared at me.