Black Canaan | Page 3

all we know. Ridge come out of the woods
early one mornin' and knocked at Cap'n Sorley's door. Cap'n says he
was the color of ashes. He hollered for the Cap'n for God's sake to let
him in, he had somethin' awful to tell him. Well, the Cap'n started
down to open the door, but before he'd got down the stairs he heard an
awful row among the dogs outside, and a man screamed he reckoned
was Ridge. And when he got to the door, there wasn't nothin' but a dead
dog layin' in the yard with his head knocked in, and the others all goin'
crazy. They found Ridge later, out in the pines a few hundred yards
from the house. From the way the ground and the bushes was tore up,
he'd been dragged that far by four or five men. Maybe they got tired of
haulin' him along. Anyway, they beat his head into a pulp and left him
layin' there."
"I'll be damned!" I muttered. "Well, there's a couple of niggers lying
back there in the brush. I want to see if you know them. I don't."
A moment later we were standing in the tiny glade, now white in the
growing dawn. A black shape sprawled on the matted pine needles, his
head in a pool of blood and brains. There were wide smears of blood on
the ground and bushes on the other side of the little clearing, but the
wounded black was gone.
McBride turned the carcass with his foot.
"One of them niggers that came in with Saul Stark," he muttered.
"Who the devil's that?" I demanded.
"Strange nigger that moved in since you went down the river last time.
Come from South Carolina, he says. Lives in that old cabin in the
Neck-you know, the shack where Colonel Reynolds' niggers used to
live."
"Suppose you ride on to Grimesville with me, Esau, "' I said, "and tell
me about this business as we ride. The rest of you might scout around
and see if you can find a wounded nigger in the brush."

The agreed without question; the Buckners have always been tacitly
considered leaders in Canaan, and it came natural for me to offer
suggestions. Nobody gives orders to white men in Canaan.
"I reckoned you'd be showin' up soars," opined McBride, as we rode
along the whitening road. "You usually manage to keep up with what's
happenin' in Canaan."
"What is happening?" I inquired. "I don't know anything. An old black
woman dropped me the word in New Orleans that there was trouble.
Naturally I came home as fast as I could. Three strange niggers waylaid
me-" I was curiously disinclined to mention the woman. "And now you
tell me somebody killed Ridge Jackson. What's it all about?"
"The swamp niggers killed Ridge to shut his mouth," announced
McBride. "That's the only way to figure it. They must have been close
behind him when he knocked on Cap'n Sorley's door. Ridge worked for
Cap'n Sorley most of his life; he thought a lot of the old man. Some
kind of deviltry's bein' brewed up in the swamps, and Ridge wanted to
warn the Cap'n. That's the way I figure it."
"Warn him about what?"
"We don't know," confessed McBride. "That's why we're all on edge. It
must be an uprisin'."
That word was enough to strike chill fear into the heart of any
Canaan-dweller. The blacks had risen in 1845, and the red terror of that
revolt was not forgotten, nor the three lesser rebellions before it, when
the slaves rose and spread fire and slaughter from Tularoosa to the
shores of Black River. The fear of a black uprising lurked for ever in
the depths of that forgotten back-country; the very children absorbed it
in their cradles.
"What makes you think it might be an uprising?" I asked.
"The niggers have all quit the fields, for one thing. They've all got
business in Goshen. I ain't seen a nigger nigh Grimesville for a week.

The town niggers have pulled out."
In Canaan we still draw a distinction born in antebellum days. "Town
niggers are descendants of the houseservants of the old days, and most
of them live in or near Grimesville There are not many, compared to
the mass of "swamp niggers" who dwell on tiny farms along the creeks
and the edge of the swamps, or in the black village of Goshen, on the
Tularoosa. They are descendants of the field-hands of other days, and,
untouched by the mellow civilization which refined the natures of the
house-servants, they remain as primitive as their African ancestors."
"Where have the town niggers gone?" I asked.
"Nobody knows. They lit out a week ago. Probably hidin' down on
Black River. If we