A Different Drummer Read online

  Dewitt Willson kept his word; he set out after the African again. He tracked and trailed him for another month all over the state. Sometimes they’d come pretty close to getting him too, but not quite close enough. They’d come on him and his band, which they managed to thin out and keep down to twelve or so what with killing and capturings, and have a battle, but the African’d always wriggle out some way. One time they thought they had him trapped with his back to the river and he just turned around, dove in and swam it underwater. And you know some fellows can’t even throw a stone that far. They could never get their hands on that auctioneer’s Negro neither. He was always around, holding the baby while the African fought, looking at what went on out of them money-filled eyes which gleamed under that green derby. Yes sir, he still had the derby, though nothing else, was dressed now like the African in one of them long, multi-colored sheets.

  Dewitt was changing again, doing the same things he’d done before he collapsed, not talking to anybody, not even to himself now, moody and silent all the time. And so it went on, the African raiding and freeing slaves, Dewitt Willson catching up with the band and taking most of the slaves back and killing more, keeping the African’s men down to twelve or thirteen, and the African and the auctioneer’s Negro never getting caught.

  Then one night they was camped a little north of New Marsails. Everybody was asleep except Dewitt, who was sitting on his horse looking into the fire. He heard a voice behind him, what seemed like it could-a been the voice of the auctioneer’s ghost, but wasn’t. “You want the African? I’ll take you to him.”

  Dewitt turned around and saw the auctioneer’s Negro standing there, wearing his sheet and his derby; he’d got into camp without being heard or seen.

  “Where is he?” Dewitt asked.

  “I’ll take you to him. I’ll go up to him and slap him on the cheek if you want it that way,” said the Negro.

  So Dewitt went. He said later he wasn’t sure he’d done the right thing following that Negro because it could-a been an ambush or a trap. But he said, too, he didn’t think the African’d do something like that. Some of the men with him said Dewitt was crazy enough by that time to do anything to catch the African, would-a gone anywhere with anyone to get him.

  So Dewitt roused his men, and they rode out after the Negro. They didn’t have to go more than a mile before they came into the African’s camp. There was no fire and the Negroes, maybe twelve, was lying on the bare ground with no cover, sleeping. Right in the middle of the clearing, his back against a huge rock, the black baby across his knees, sat the African. He had a cloth over his head and set up in front of him was a pile of stones, which he seemed to be a-mumbling at.

  Dewitt Willson couldn’t figure out why no one’d warned the African, how come he’d been able to sneak up on him, and leaned down to the Negro and said: “Why aren’t there no guards? He knew I was right close by. Why aren’t there no guards?”

  The Negro smiled up at him. “There was one guard. Me.”

  “Why’d you do this? Why’d you turn on him?”

  The Negro smiled again. “I’m an American; I’m no savage. And besides, a man’s got to follow where his pocket takes him, doesn’t he?”

  Dewitt Willson nodded. Some folks said he almost turned around and went back to his own camp and wanted to forget all about catching his property this way and then come back in the morning when the African would be gone and chase him until he caught him fair and square, because it seems like after all those weeks of chasing the African through the woods, after all that time of following his trail and thinking maybe he’d get him this time and finding he didn’t any more have him than a dwarf has a chance of being a professional basketball player, after all the sweating and riding and bad food and hard sleeping, he’d come to respect this man, and I reckon he must-a been a little sad that when he finally caught up with his property it was because some fellow the African’d trusted would turncoat and lead the white men into camp. But the other men didn’t feel that way. They wanted the African any way they could get him because he’d been making fools of them and they knew it and they wanted an end to that.

  So the white men circled the camp and when they had it surrounded, Dewitt Willson called out for the Negroes to give up. The white men lit torches so the African could see he was ringed by fire, horses, and men with rifles. The Negroes jumped to their feet and right away saw it wasn’t no use, since all they had was African weapons, and they threw them down on the ground. But the African bolted up on top of the rock straddling the baby and made a full circle taking stock of what he was up against because he was alone and he knew it, since by then all the Negroes had scattered into the bushes or were standing around like they’d never seen him before and didn’t know him from a third-century Roman Catholic Pope.

  There he stood on the rock, alone, glistening in the fire, almost naked, his eyes just hollows of black. Then he stepped down. Someone raised a rifle.

  “Wait!” Dewitt shouted. “See if we can take him alive. Don’t you understand? That’s the point. Take him alive!” He was standing up in his stirrups waving his arms for attention in the firelight.

  Some fellow took this to mean that he should be a hero, and thinking he could run down the African, raced his horse straight at him, but the African just grabbed the fellow off the horse’s back like you might catch a ring on a carousel and popped his back over his knee like a dry wishbone and tossed him aside.

  “If you shoot, aim for his limbs,” Dewitt was yelling.

  Someone from the other side of the circle fired, and they could see the bullet go right through the African’s hand and dig into the ground near Dewitt’s horse, but the African didn’t seem to connect the report with any pain he might-a felt in his hand, didn’t even wince or move. Someone else shot him just above the knee and blood ran down his leg like a ribbon.

  Keeping his back to the rock, where the baby was sleeping, he made a full, slow circle, eying them all, eying the auctioneer’s Negro too, who was standing next to Dewitt, but not stopping at him, or showing any anger or bitterness, stopping only when he came to Dewitt Willson and staring at him. They stared at each other, not like they was trying to stare each other down, more like they was discussing something without using words. And finally it seemed like they came to an agreement because the African bowed slightly like a fighter bows at the beginning of a match, and Dewitt Willson raised his rifle, sighted the African’s upturned face, and shot him cleanly just above the bridge of his wide nose.

  It hit him all right, but the African just stood there, and then finally sunk to his knees, and then forward on his hands. He seemed to be melting away, and then suddenly, he looked up with shock on his face, like he’d just remembered something and had to do it before he passed on, and gave a loud wail, and started crawling toward the sleeping baby, his eyes filled with blood, and a good-sized rock in his fist. He raised the rock above the baby, but Dewitt Willson shattered the back of his head before he could smash it down. And so the African died.

  None of the men moved. They sat, disappointed, on their horses because they, each of them, had wanted to go back and say they’d gotten the bullet into the African what had killed him.

  Dewitt Willson climbed down off his horse, walked to the baby, which was still sleeping, not knowing his daddy was dead, not knowing, I reckon, his daddy’d ever been alive. Coming back to his horse, Dewitt tripped over that pile of stones the African’d been talking to. They was all very flat stones, and Dewitt Willson stared down at them for a long time, and after a while he bent over, picked up the smallest one, a white one, and put it in his pocket.

  * * *

  —

  MISTER HARPER was getting hoarse. He paused for a moment, cleared his throat, went on. “Dewitt Willson went back to New Marsails, got his clock, which he hadn’t called for yet, and rode on home, with the African’s baby beside him on the wagon seat, the auctioneer
’s Negro and the clock ticking in the wagon bed, that same clock you saw out at Tucker’s farm on Thursday.” He stopped and turned to face those behind him. “Well, that’s the story and you all know as well as me how that baby got named Caliban by the General, when the General was twelve years old.”

  “That’s right. After the General read that there book by Shakespeare,” Loomis added, sighing.

  “Not a book, a play, The Tempest. Shakespeare didn’t write no books; nobody wrote books then, just poems and plays. No books. You must not-a learned nothing your three weeks up at the university.” Mister Harper stared Loomis down.

  “All right then, a play,” Loomis agreed, sheepishly.

  It was near dinner time now. Several men left the porch. A warm wind blew down off Eastern Ridge. A car, filled with solemn-faced Negroes, sputtered through, going north.

  “And Caliban, whose Christian name got to be First after he got a family and there was more than just one Caliban, was John Caliban’s father, and John Caliban’s grandson is Tucker Caliban and the African’s blood is running in Tucker Caliban’s veins.” Mister Harper sat back, satisfied.

  “That’s what you say.” Bobby-Joe tossed his cigar into the street.

  “Boy, I’ll forgive you for being so damned stupid. You’ll find out one of these days that I’m no fool. You can believe me now or not—it makes no difference to me—but sooner or later you will agree and you’ll have to apologize.”

  The men grumbled. “That’s right.”

  “Now look here, Mister Harper,” Bobby-Joe started very softly, not even turning to face the old man, rather looking up and down the street before him, “Tucker Caliban worked for the Willsons every day of his life. How come he picked Thursday to up and feel his African’s blood.” He turned now. “Tell me that?”

  “Well, boy, a good man won’t lie to you; he won’t tell you something is true if he’s not sure. And I’ll tell you right out I can’t answer your question. I just say Tucker Caliban felt the blood and had to move and even though it was different from what the African would-a done, it amounts to the same thing. But why on Thursday? I can’t tell you.” The old man nodded his head as he talked, looking over the roof tops at the sky.

  They all heard the clomping of old woman’s shoes, then saw Mister Harper’s daughter. She was fifty-five, a spinster, with limp yellow hair. “You ready to come home and eat, Papa?”

  “Yes, honey. Yes, I am.”

  “Will some of you men help him down?” She asked that same question each night.

  “Well now, I don’t reckon I’ll be coming back tonight, so I’ll see you all tomorrow after church.” Mister Harper was in the street now, his daughter behind him, her hands on the high thronelike back, waiting.

  “Yes, sir.” They answered together.

  “Good night then. Don’t get into no trouble.” The wheels creaked the old man away.

  Once Mister Harper was out of earshot, Bobby-Joe turned to the other men. “You really believe that blood business? You think that explains all this?” He thought that once the old man was gone they would not be so kind to his opinions.

  “If that’s what Mister Harper says, it’s got to be part of the answer anyways.” Thomason pushed himself off the wall and started toward the door.

  “Yes, that’s so.” Loomis rocked forward and placed his hands on his knees, preparing to get up.

  “You really think it’s simple as that?”

  “Well, put it this way.” Thomason opened the door, went inside and pressed his nose against the screening. “Can you give a better reason?”

  “No.” Bobby-Joe looked at Thomason’s stomach pressed flat against the screen door. “No, I can’t right now. But I’m thinking on it.”

  Harry Leland

  THOUGH IT WAS well past ten that Thursday, Mister Harper, Bobby-Joe, and Mister Stewart had not yet appeared. Standing on the porch, a little apart from the others, peering from under the torn brim of his straw hat, Harry was waiting for his boy, Harold—the men called the boy Mister Leland—to turn the corner into the Square, and run (he always ran when he wasn’t riding) down to Thomason’s. That morning before they left for town Harry’s wife had told him to visit Miss Rickett. “She’s down with a broken hip, Harry, and she likes visitors. Don’t come back here and say you-all didn’t go by.” He had only nodded—thinking: Let the boy do it; I’ll send the boy over. That woman gives me the willies. I can’t see how Marge can’t know about her and what she does. But I know she wants a screwing and I ain’t about to give it to her. I’ll just send the boy—and so thinking, nodded again.

  They had ridden the mile in from their farm, his boy in front of him on the saddle-less horse, between his extended arms, and when they reached the General’s statue in the center of town, he pulled Deac up, and told the boy to get down. “You don’t have to stay too long, Harold. Just go and say, ‘How do, Miss Rickett. My ma and pa heard you was feeling poorly and sent me by to see how you was doing.’ ”

  Harold had just stared at him. Harry knew what he was thinking, and answering, did not lie. “I know I’m supposed to go by too, Harold. But I don’t feel like it. You can go in and come right out. If I was to go, I’d have to stay a-visiting until sundown. So you do this favor for your pa. And if she asks for me, tell her I had some pressing business by Thomason’s. Okay?” Still Harold did not move, continued to look up at him out of live gray eyes, like bits of a crushed, powdered, broken gray bottle. “I know, Harold. I don’t like her neither. But I’m older and know more about her that I don’t like.” The boy nodded then—Harry liked that—with an expression saying he knew and understood and would go alone to save his father the hardship because his hardship was only a boy’s and his father’s was that of a man, larger and worse. Then he turned and started west up Lee Street.

  Harry had sat the horse and watched him, in his blue overalls and horizontally striped blue and white T shirt, which, with the long sandy hair—like his own—that obscured his ears and shaded his gray eyes gave him the appearance of a miniature prison escapee. Harry had watched him until he turned the corner, then he rode on to Thomason’s.

  But now, standing on the porch, listening to the aimless grumbles of the men talking (Mister Harper was not there to give their conversation form and scope), he began to feel guilty: It’s like I sent my own son into a she-lion’s den. The boy got more guts than me. God knows, I should be able to keep a forty-year-old bitch with a broken hip at arm’s length. But I sold my own boy out. When he gets back, I’ll buy him something. He leaned against a post, his post; it did not have his name on it, but no one else used it; he took no part in the talk, continued looking up the street toward the General, waiting for the boy to turn the corner.

  Through his denim work shirt and jacket, he felt a fleshy hand on his shoulder. “Where’d you send Mister Leland, Harry?” It was Thomason, his best friend among the men, an apron tied high around his chest like a dirty white strapless evening gown.

  “Sent him up to Miss Rickett’s. She’s—”

  “You don’t have to say it. Don’t you think he’s too young for that?” He was grinning broadly. “Seems like he wouldn’t be big enough yet to fill that. Some of us can’t hardly fill that.”

  Behind them, the men laughed.

  “At least, I ain’t fallen so low as to ever need to want to fill that. So I, for one, don’t know nothing about its dimensions.” He pushed his elbow back, hitting Thomason in the ribs, then laughed. “Leastways, that’s why I sent him. I want to keep her away from me.”

  “But ain’t you afraid for him? You trying to bring him up decent, ain’t you?” Thomason’s alarm was exaggerated.

  “She won’t bother him none. Maybe give him something sweet.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about! And take him in her arms and say he should come back in six years and when he’s as big and good-looking as his pa she’l
l show him something real special!”

  The men laughed again.

  “Awh, shut up!” Harry, not really angry, turned away and looked up the street again. And then he saw the boy turn the corner, running.

  “Here he comes.” Thomason clapped Harry’s shoulder. “A-running. I reckon she didn’t get him this time. But then that boy runs everywhere. Still, he got too much spunk left.” He turned away and backed to his space against the wall.

  The boy had now come opposite the store; he stopped, looked up and down the street, then toward the Ridge where something seemed to arrest his attention. He took one more look and ran furiously across the street and hopped onto the porch. “Papa, a truck’s coming.” At the same time he reached out and pushed something into his father’s hand: three long, tapering, mud-colored cigars.

  “Where’d you get these?”

  “Miss Rickett give them to me and said they was for you and asked you to come by and see her sometime.” He paused, looked down toward the edge of town, as if expecting something to appear. “A truck’s coming.”

  As the men behind him burst into laughter, Harry took the cigars and slid them into his shirt pocket. He turned to them. “She ever send you fellows any presents?” He pretended great pride.

  “Papa, I seen a truck coming. It was—” And then the truck had appeared behind him, large, black, square, its back heaped high with white crystals that shifted and glistened in the late morning sun, air squeezing its wheels to a standstill and small bits of its cargo falling to the pavement with the sound of hard breakfast cereal in a bowl.