different directions, manacled together, they created a gibbering tangle of prostrate and floundering black flesh.
For the whites in official control, this was problem enough to loose a tide of anxieties that translated into physical force-which served only to intensify the confusion and the fear. There were also their own concerns to deal with. What had emerged out of the blue was odd enough to make even the most tough-minded of them drop their jaws and entertain the flickering conclusion that Mule Christian may well have hit the nail on the head (which had been a part of Lloyd’s intention from the start).
The uncertainty flashed like flint in a caved-in mine and triggered a series of incidents of localized violence that turned into streetwide turmoil. Whips cracked, horses bucked, a carriage turned over, at least one firearm was discharged-to no effect, except to heighten the hubbub. And Mule Christian managed to break free. How he did it no one in the confusion saw, but while the overseers were busy trying to regain order and the loiterers were scattering like mice-the drunks and larrikins rolling over themselves in stupefaction-Mule Christian broke free of his chains and stood tall on the steps of the courthouse staring at the sky, waiting for the salvation that he knew was coming.
Brookmire had had all his attention riveted at the end of his spyglass, staring at first with pride, then shock, and then abject devastation. Something in the course of events in the sky convinced him that things had not only gone very wrong, they were about to get much worse, and a finely tuned instinct for self-preservation sent him scurrying down from the courthouse.
There were too many other things to take interest in: ululating slaves, shouting foremen, barking dogs, wagon smashups, and the risk of being trampled-and above all else, above them all and closing fast, a magical marionette of an angry bird boy descending to wreak vengeance or enact some revelation.
The truth, however, is that if Brookmire had managed to maintain his poise and position he might have become aware that he was being scrutinized himself-from two different rooftops and two very different points of view. He would have observed that when the commotion began other men who had not been seen before appeared below and began taking charge. It was one of these men, moving with practiced skill, who hustled Mulrooney into an alley, where he woke up hours later lying in a masonry wheelbarrow with a taste in his mouth like copper wire.
By the time Lloyd overshot the courthouse and made his attempt to bring himself around to land, there were not that many people left on Fourth Street to see it. A subtle but relentless force had been unleashed to quash the slave upheaval and coerce the potential witnesses from the scene. Only Mule Christian seemed immune to these efforts. Whip leather slashed across his shoulders, but this just served to encourage him into the middle of the street, where he braced, with outstretched arms, forming a tiny post-noon shadow in the thoroughfare, as Lloyd whisked down and toward him.
Lloyd tried to swerve, which spoiled the stalling power he tried to call on-his vision blurred, his reflexes jangled. He had a faint greenish flash of his sister’s face-she who had never had a living face. A rush of doom and shame whooshed through him, and his wind-filled wings ripped away as he tumbled headlong into the dark man who stood before him with open arms.
Even if Brookmire had still been at his station and watching then, he would have found it impossible to say for sure what happened next. For a few seconds, an ancient cart nag stood draped with the remnants of Lloyd’s parawing. Cudgels thudded. A broad-brimmed hat lay mashed in the street. And toppled at the foot of the stairs was the auction podium, a ledger book trodden on the ground beside it. But no one saw what happened to the boy or his flying harness. Mule Christian, the most expensive field nigger on sale, had seen a miracle coming for him out of the sky, and he had stepped forth to embrace it.
CHAPTER 5. Fleeing from Grace
PERHAPS IT WAS A KIND OF BLESSING THAT MULE FOUND. HE WAS certainly released from bondage. There was no pain. His neck snapped on impact. In giving his life, he cushioned Lloyd’s fall and the little giant from Zanesville rose out of the wreckage of the giant black man in the hot Missouri sun, like some part of Mule Christian that had lain hidden all the hard years of his life.
Lloyd managed to gain his feet for a moment and then crashed for true. The brick facades, the courthouse dome, Mulrooney, Brookmire, thoughts of his mother, his father, and his ghost sister-all swirled into a spiral that seemed to take him with it, and he remembered nothing more at all until the agitated face of Schelling yawned down into his like a pit that had learned the art of looking back.
Smelling salts were applied, hands groped and tugged at him, voices were raised and then stifled into whispers, stars-or things like stars-seemed to whiz past his head. He glimpsed his mother-or glimpsed her smell-his senses muddled. Then there was cold water and warm candlelight. He remembered one man with a face like a snapping turtle and a tall, thin white man cradling him into a passageway of dirt behind two shuttered buildings… the aroma of pumpernickel bread.
Every so often he regained enough coherence to imagine that he was still flying, higher and higher up to heaven to meet his dead sister, who waited in the dandelions at God’s feet, flying a kite with his face painted on it. Then the face on the kite would change. It would be his father, bright and ebullient as he once was ages ago back in Ohio. Then the image would change again, into the mangled bodies of Urim and Thummim. Someone stuck a rag down his throat to keep him from biting his tongue. Fragments of memory haunted him: the sight of Mulrooney’s hat in the crowd… skiffs along the esplanade… the mirror burn of Brookmire’s spyglass.
It was nightfall by the time Lloyd regained full consciousness. He was out on the water, in a larger version of the kind of boat that Schelling had used to take him to meet Mother Tongue. A tallow candle beamed out of a battered lantern hanging on the side of the pilothouse. His mother was there, looking perplexed and horrified, chattering and sobbing over him in her gumbo accent, any fussy white pretense stripped away. To his profound shock and relief, his sack of personal things lay beside him on the deck, tied up tight just the way he had left it stuffed inside his excuse for a shuck pillow back at the mission house. He longed to claw it open to see if Mother Tongue’s eyes and the Ambassadors’ box, and the precious letter from his uncle, were safe in hiding. Everything came back.
His body ached, from his skull to the legs that had slammed into Mule Christian. The slightest movement brought back sickening waves of falling. Along with Schelling, there were two large black men, but not the same men he had met before. His stomach felt like a mess of cogwheels and syrup. He wanted to throw up, but nothing came out of his gullet. The dark, thick air was hot and still, and smelled of wood smoke and river muck.
The joyous power of the wind came back to fill his smarting bones. He saw the city laid out beneath him… the ineffable experience of flight… then the shadows rose up to snatch him-the accusing face of the showman-and at last he did vomit, over the side of the boat, his bile mingling with the Mississippi as the launch chugged upriver.
Silently, his mother sidled over and put her arm around his shoulder. He realized that he was wearing some other boy’s clothes. Whose? And what had become of Brookmire? Rapture crooned sad nonsense words in his ear, as she had done when he was wee. Why did everything go so wrong for them? Was he cursed? Would there ever be a home full of peace and belonging? Schelling scowled at him. The boat churned on.
They were headed north to the junction of the Missouri River, hugging the shore. In about two hours, they had melded into this other flow and arrived at their apparent destination, a clutter of what in the dark looked like drying sheds and some sort of chandler’s warehouse at the end of a sagging pier. The boat docked and up on the bank a hound moaned. A hard-looking white woman in a plain black frock appeared, carrying a bear rifle. With her was what Lloyd first thought was a boy, perhaps the boy whose clothes he was wearing. The lad hoisted at arm’s length the kind of lamp Lloyd had seen dangling on the bows of the fishing boats, but when the couple got closer Lloyd saw that he was in fact a midget-with a tight dried-apple face that rose up out of dirty flannel like the head of someone who had drowned. The pair spoke not a word.
“Where are you taking us?” Lloyd asked Schelling.
The humpback cast a glance at him, like a chunk of gristle to a mutt.
“You will stay here the rest of the night, then be on your way tomorrow.”
“Where?” the boy queried. He tried to reckon the number of days since he had last seen his old patron, but the midget’s face distracted him.
