it was how they sang, because they sang as the Tasked did.
I stood at the dock watching them work, hoping one might call out to me, perhaps asking for a hand, and when no one did, I left, and that whole day I just wandered. I crossed the river, passed a cemetery and some railroad tracks, and stopped before an alms-house to watch the indigent of the city gather. I walked more until I stood before Cobbs Creek and a forest at the south-westerly recesses of the city. By now it was late. I had no plan and it was getting dark. I really had no way out, no way to escape the Underground nor the binds of memory. So I turned around, and these were the thoughts that clouded me on my way back to Ninth Street, back to my fate, the notions that kept me from watching as I had been trained to do. Suddenly I was face to face with a white man who seemed to materialize out of the night itself. He asked me something, but I could not hear. I leaned closer, asking him to repeat himself. And then I felt a sharp blow fall across the back of my head. There was a bright flash. Another blow. And then nothing.
* * *
—
When I awoke I was, once again, chained, blinded, and gagged. I was in the back of a drawn cart and could feel ground moving beneath me. I cleared my head and knew exactly what had befallen me, for I had heard all the stories. It was the man-catchers—Ryland’s Hounds of the North—who’d gotten me. They were known to simply grab colored people off the street and ship them south for a price, with no regard to their status as free or in flight from the Task.
I could hear them laughing with each other, doubtlessly counting up their haul. I was not alone in the cart. Someone near me was weeping, quietly—a girl. But I was silent. I had wanted out of the Underground and now I had it. There was some small part of me that felt relief, for I was, at least, returning to the Task I knew.
We rode for several hours, across the back-country roads. Ryland, I reasoned, would like to avoid towns, toll-roads, and ferries, for as sure as we feared Ryland, Ryland feared the vigilance committees, allies of the Underground, which stood watch for man-catchers who sought to drag freedmen down. We stopped to make camp and I felt rough hands around my arms—I was pulled along for a moment and then tossed to the ground. “Take care, Deakins,” I heard one of them say. “Damage that boy and I’ll damage you.” This man, Deakins, propped me up against a tree. I could move my fingers but nothing else. I was listening to their voices, attempting to calculate their number, when I saw a brightness through my blindfold. A campfire. The men gathered around and traded their small talk. I now counted four voices, and from their words and general commotion, it became clear that they were eating. Their last meal.
I never heard him approach and doubtless neither did Ryland. There was the crack of a pistol shot—twice—a scream, a struggle and then two more cracks, then a bit of whining, like a child’s but not the child I’d heard in the wagon, another crack and then nothing for a moment. And then I heard someone rummaging for something, and again I felt hands upon me. The click of a lock and the chains loosened. With a furor that shocked me, I pushed the hands away as well as their possessor and pulled off my blindfold and gag, and by the fire-light I saw him—Mr. Fields, Micajah Bland, regarding me with the most stolid and unmoved face.
I stood and leaned against the tree to settle myself. There were two others, bound and manacled as I was. Bland worked quickly, moving among them. I looked away and saw four bodies on the ground. How do I explain what happened in that moment, the blinding, unconscious rage I felt? It was as if I had been lifted out of myself to behold the scene. And what I saw was me kicking one of the corpses with all the power I could muster. Bland came over to stop me, and I pushed him away again and kicked the dead man—Deakins perhaps—even more. Bland did not try to stop me