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A tall, thick-necked black woman, with cheekbones as big as a hog's, wearing an ankle-length gray dress, rose to her feet, her eyes fastened on Abigail.
"This the one?" she asked Flower, nodding at Abigail.
"There ain't... there isn't a better white person on earth," Flower said.
"Some white mens from Baton Rouge has talked slaves into running and turned them in for the bounty," the older black woman said.
"You're Flower's grandmother?" Abigail said.
"That's right."
"I don't blame you for your suspicions. But we don't have much time, ma'am. You must trust me or otherwise return to your home. You have to make that decision now," Abigail said.
Flower's grandmother picked up her bundle in one hand and took the hand of a little boy in another.
"The paddy rollers are scared of the Yankees. They was looking along the river with lanterns," she said.
"Then let's be gone," Abigail
said.
They walked single file back down the coulee toward the river, the sparks from the fire in the field drifting over their heads. A thunderous clap of lightning struck in the trees, and behind her Abigail heard an infant begin to cry. She stepped out of the line and worked her way back to a teenage girl who was walking with an infant not over three or four months old in each arm.
"Cain't carry them both. I gots to go back," the girl said.
"No, you don't," Abigail said, and took one of the babies from her.
The line of people splashed ankle-deep down the coulee toward the sound of the river coursing through the willow trees in the shallows. Then they heard someone snap a dry branch off a tree and throw it angrily aside with a curse, as though an object of nature had deliberately targeted him for injury. A balloon of light burst out of the tree trunks and flooded the bottom of the coulee.
"Tell me y'all ain't the most bothersome bunch of ungrateful pea brains I ever seen," a voice said from behind the lantern.
His name was Olin Mayfield. He had a jug head and a torso that looked as soft as mush. He wore a slicker and a slouch hat whose brim had gone shapeless in the rain and an army cap-and-ball.44 revolver on his hip. When the light of his lantern swung into his face his eyes were as green and empty of thought as stagnant water in a cattle tank.
"No, I ain't gonna hit you. Just get your worthless asses out of the ditch and follow me back to the quarters. Colonel Jamison is gonna flat shit his britches," he said and he laughed. he carouched down to pull a woman up by her hand.
Then he stiffened, his nostrols swelling with air, as though the odor of a dangerous animal had suddenly wrapped itself around him. He rose from his crouch, turning, hoisting the lantern above his head, and stared straight into the face of Jean-Jacques LaRose.
Abigail watched the next events take place as though she were caught in a dream from which she could not wake. Olin Mayfield's expression shaped and reshaped itself, as though he could not decide whether to grin or to scowl. Then he gripped the heavy Colt revolver on his hip and pulled it halfway from his holster, his lip curling up from his teeth, perhaps, Abigail thought, in imitation of an illustration he had seen on the cover of a dime novel.
The knife Jean-Jacques carried in his right hand was made from a wagon spring, a quarter-inch thick, reheated and beveled down to an edge that was sharp enough to shave with, mounted inside an oak handle with a brass guard. He thrust the blade through Olin Mayfield's throat and extracted it just as fast.
Mayfield's mouth opened in dismay as the blood drained out of his head and face and spilled down his chest. Then he slumped to his knees, his head tilted on his shoulder, as though the trees and sweet potato fields and the empty wagons in the rows had become unfairly torn loose from their fastenings and set adrift in the sky.
His lantern bounced to the bottom of the coulee and hissed in the stream but continued to burn. Then the entire band of escaping slaves bolted for the shoreline and the gangplank that led onto Jean-Jacques' boat.
Abigail was at the end of the line as it moved past Olin Mayfield. He lay on his side, his mouth pursed open, at eye level with her, his hands on his throat. When she looked at the twitch in his cheek and the solitary tear in one eye and the froth on his bottom lip she knew he was still alive, unable to speak or to fully comprehend what had happened to him.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
She gathered the infant she was carrying closer to her and dashed after the others.
AN hour later the rain stopped and the sky cleared and Abigail stood in the darkness of the pilothouse and looked out on the vast moonlit emptiness of the river and the black-green border of trees on the banks and the stump fires that smelled like burning garbage. She wondered if any sort of moral victory was possible in human affairs or if addressing and confronting evil only empowered it and produced casualties of a different kind.
The slaves had at first been terrified at the slaying of the paddy roller, but once they were in a new and seemingly secure environment, hidden inside the cargo hold or under the canvas on deck, the fear went out of their faces and they began to laugh and joke among themselves. Abigail had found herself laughing with them; then one man in the hold found a splintered piece of wood from a packing crate and hacked at the air with it, pretending he was executing Olin Mayfield. Everyone clapped their hands.
What had her father said? "We will do many things in the service of justice. But shedding blood isn't one of them." She drew a ragged breath and shut her eyes and saw again the scene in the coulee. What a mockery she had made of her father's admonition.
"You still t'inking about that man back there?" Jean-Jacques said. A palpable aura of rum and dried sweat and tobacco smoke rose from his skin and clothes.
