The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead Page 0,75

life, save for the fourteen hours Homer was his property. Why not? she asked. “What for?” he said. Ridgeway was riding through the outskirts of Atlanta—he’d just delivered a husband and wife to their owner, all the way from New York—when he came upon a butcher trying to square a gambling debt. His wife’s family had given them the boy’s mother as a wedding gift. The butcher had sold her during his previous stretch of bad luck. Now it was the boy’s turn. He painted a crude sign to hang around the boy’s neck advertising the offer.

The boy’s strange sensibility moved Ridgeway. Homer’s shining eyes, set in his round pudgy face, were at once feral and serene. A kindred spirit. Ridgeway bought him for five dollars and drew up emancipation papers the next day. Homer remained at his side despite Ridgeway’s halfhearted attempts to shoo him away. The butcher had held no strong opinions on the subject of colored education and had permitted the boy to study with the children of some freemen. Out of boredom, Ridgeway helped him with his letters. Homer pretended he was of Italian extraction when it suited him and let his questioners sit with their bewilderment. His unconventional attire evolved over time; his disposition remained unchanged.

“If he’s free, why don’t he go?”

“Where?” Ridgeway asked. “He’s seen enough to know a black boy has no future, free papers or no. Not in this country. Some disreputable character would snatch him and put him on the block lickety-split. With me, he can learn about the world. Find purpose.”

Each night, with meticulous care, Homer opened his satchel and removed a set of manacles. He locked himself to the driver’s seat, put the key in his pocket, and closed his eyes.

Ridgeway caught Cora looking. “He says it’s the only way he can sleep.”

Homer snored like a rich old man every night.

—

BOSEMAN, for his part, had been riding with Ridgeway for three years. He was a rambler out of South Carolina and found his way to slave catching after a hardscrabble sequence: dockhand, collection agent, gravedigger. Boseman was not the most intelligent fellow but had a knack for anticipating Ridgeway’s wishes in a manner equal parts indispensable and eerie. Ridgeway’s gang numbered five when Boseman joined, but his employees drifted off one by one. The reason was not immediately clear to Cora.

The previous owner of the ear necklace had been an Indian named Strong. Strong had promoted himself as a tracker, but the only creature he sniffed out reliably was whiskey. Boseman won the accessory in a wrestling contest, and when Strong disputed the terms of their match, Boseman clobbered the red man with a shovel. Strong lost his hearing and ditched the gang to work in a tannery in Canada, or so the rumor went. Even though the ears were dried and shriveled, they drew flies when it was hot. Boseman loved his souvenir, however, and the revulsion on a new client’s face was too delectable. The flies hadn’t harassed the Indian when he owned it, as Ridgeway reminded him from time to time.

Boseman stared at the hills between bites and had an uncharacteristically wistful air. He walked off to urinate and when he came back said, “My daddy passed through here, I think. He said it was forest then. When he came back, it had all been cleared by settlers.”

“Now it’s doubly cleared,” Ridgeway responded. “It’s true what you say. This road was a horse path. Next time you need to make a road, Boseman, make sure you have ten thousand starving Cherokee on hand to clear it for you. Saves time.”

“Where did they go?” Cora asked. After her nights with Martin, she had a sense of when white men were on the brink of a story. It gave her time to consider her options.

Ridgeway was an ardent reader of gazettes. The fugitive bulletins made them a requirement in his line of work—Homer maintained a thorough collection—and current affairs generally upheld his theories about society and the human animal. The type of individuals in his employ had made him accustomed to explaining the most elementary facts and history. He could hardly expect a slave girl to know the significance of their environs.

They sat on what was once Cherokee land, he said, the land of their red fathers, until the president decided otherwise and ordered them removed. Settlers needed the land, and if the Indians hadn’t learned by then that the white man’s treaties were entirely worthless, Ridgeway said,