“Up dat oak and down dat ribber,
Two overseers and one little niցցer.”
-from the song Roaring River
The last words written by Solomon Northup, who toiled for twelve years as a slave on the Red River, before his mysterious disappearance
The Mad Man’s Launch
Scrawny Clay Evenstar had no time to mourn the man he had looked to for everything. He did have the notion that he should thank his spirit when they meet in heaven, for having killed half or so of their pursuers. In fact, Clay would prefer to think that Captain Josiah Evenstar yet lived atop his daughter’s grave, where Mister Oswald Murray and he had fallen covering their scamper down to the launch with the Mad Man.
I will try and fight like you, Captain, or how you would fight if you were Scrawny Clay.
Clay steadied the tiller with his left hand as he grasped their only weapon, the very shovel they had used to bury Blue Baby Beth. He was all but worthless on the oars, so had been ordered to ‘repel boarders’ by Mister Eager, who pulled at the oars with Fat Sam, Slanty Hoover, and Pea-brain Harvey. The launch ploughed through the swells as the small waves slapped the planks and the spray wet his floppy sailor hat, which he had right grown to like, and was glad he had it on his head just now.
It will not count much against a blow from one of those wicked swords they clutch between their big, flat teeth.
The naked, round-headed red men swam silently some fifty yards behind them. They were mighty strong swimmers, having dived right into the surf and swum it even better than the crew of the Blue Baby Beth could row their heavy launch. He kind of admired the hard-working little men who hunted him just now with the strangest manner of silent determination.
What manner of men are you?
Why you look like Indians without the horses and hair feathers.
The launch crashed through a swell and lurched into empty space, giving him that queer feel in his belly he had gotten back in the day when Fat Sam had pushed him on the swing. This type of thing had given him seasickness the first week out from home, but was now nothing more than the thrill of a boy on a swing. They were about a half mile out toward the ship, their beautiful little Chesapeake clipper sloop. The sky was dark gray above, and a lurid red above the seaside hill where most of what remained of his family now lay. Down on the water it was half dark already, and when the distant red hint of the falling sun stopped glowing over that fateful hill, they would be in the dark.
He looked back at the clipper and saw that Jonah Heel had lit the stern lamp, and that he was readying the swivel gun, the ship's only weapon other than the stern cannon. She was not a fighting ship, but a sailing one. He could also see Mickey Durst, the acrobatic rigging monkey, a nasty little Irish boy who had fought for pennies in barrooms before being hired by Captain Evenstar. That was it, the entire crew that waited. The rest of them were all jammed into this launch rowing for their lives with the insane filthy white man curled up around his black bundle, still clutching that sword with his good hand.
Clay looked back down at the tall, torn-up remnant of a rich white man curled in the bowels of the launch. To his horror the man met his gaze with wide, haunted—no, hunted—eyes on fire with some deep fear. His eyes then seemed to bug out and he croaked, “They come, tireless, feet slapping in the night, trotting through the hot day—they come! I ate it. I ate it, I tell you! Dick, you damned white niցցer, I will have your name, your name, and your gypsy vengeance!”
The man glared bug-eyed at Clay as if he were this white-black-Gypsy man he ranted about, clutching the sword maniacally and pointing it at Clay. Mister Eager then stomped on the man’s shaking wrist with his hard heavy boot—stomped three heavy times, until there was a cracking, as if of kindling being snapped before Mistress Evenstar's fireplace on a crisp December day, and the crazed man groaned. Even his groan was in that haughty English tone that Clay had learned to hold suspect in the Azores and Lisbon. The man’s wrist was clearly broken on both sides, yet he clung to the sword hilt. So Mister Eager’s cruel foot came down one more time on the fingers, and with a popping and a groaning the blade fell beneath Sam’s wide rear end.
Mister Eager then snarled at Clay, “Pick it up boy, and belt it. If you lose that shovel, you need to be able to lay to. We have to keep rowing. If we stop we will be swamped by those little swimming rats o’ hell! Pull, you stupid bastards!”
Clay grabbed the blade and slid it behind the length of braided twine that held up his trousers. It was no longer sharp if it ever was, but was darn right pointy. He then propped the shovel over his shoulder and worked the tiller with the left hand while he crouched on one bony knee. Mister Eager seemed to approve, “Clay Evenstar, scrawniest goddamned marine on the seven seas. Boys, you believe Clay is saving you, then just keep rowing like sluts on Sunday morning!”
Slanty gave his irritating cackle. But they all pulled harder, trying their best to keep pace with Mister Eager.
The sea mist that splashed Clay's scrawny back and narrow face seemed to him to be the coldest tears the world had ever shed.
