The next morning Obed and I return to the woods armed with a small digging spade, hoping that we did not just dream the grave. Today I am wearing my mourning costume, for I am going to mourn the African sleeping under that mound. Children titter along the way and ask Obed why I am wearing a Halloween costume when it is long past Halloween.
“It ain’t no Halloween costume, you little asshole,” says Obed. “My man here is an African shaman.”
“You don’t talk like that to children,” I admonish.
But the kids don’t seem to mind. They laugh and one of them asks: “What the fuck is an African shaman?”
He is not offended at all but promises to explain to them next time.
Well, the grave is still there. And this time we are able to find the headstone with ease. After scraping the mud from it the crude inscription becomes clear: Here lies Niall Quigley — Slave Owner, Slave Trader, Slave, Slave Stealer, Professional Witness. Died: 1875.
“Who was Niall Quigley?” I ask.
“The first Quigley,” says Obed.
“I wonder why they buried him like an African.”
“What they wrote here is bull, man,” says Obed. “My great-grampa was no slave owner. He was no slave trader either. They got it all wrong, man. There were no slaves in Ohio.”
“We’ll know when we mourn the man,” I assure him.
We kneel at the mound and I teach him new mourning wails. They are like the sound of a coyote, he observes. I combine them with groans and moans and sacred chants of my own invention. Obed follows faithfully and together we are able to muster a two-part harmony at one time, and a call-and-response at another. Our mourning transports us to another place; another realm; another time.
6. White Slave
The story is told by the mound and the white chicken and the headstone: Niall Quigley lost everything he owned in the gambling dens of County Tipperary, Ireland. After serving time at the Bridewell for some fraudulent transaction aimed at recouping his losses, he traveled steerage aboard a vessel to the new world where he hoped to start a new life. He endured the rough seas in crammed and filthy conditions. Some of his fellow passengers fell sick and perished, and were thrown overboard. He was determined to survive the voyage, and when his provisions ran out — passengers in steerage provided their own food — he stole from others. Even after a beating that left him all bloodied and tattered for most of the journey, the thought of the great fortunes awaiting him in America sustained him.
When we meet him for the first time in the gaming dens of New York he had not made the fortune, but like any decent white man he had a slave of his own. Ownership of this particular property was a source of great mirth at his haunts, not only because New York was no longer a slaveholding state, and hadn’t been one for fourteen or so years, but also for the fact that Quigley was a lowly Irishman. In the eyes of his fellow citizens he was not of a much higher breed than his property.
He won the property in a card game — a toothless scrawny African who would not fetch any price at the slave market in any of the slaveholding states. Even those who had offered to buy the slave before he became Quigley’s property had only done so for the good-Samaritan purpose of putting the poor creature out of its misery by shooting it dead at a target practice.
Quigley walked around the dirty streets of Five Points with his slave on a leash around his neck, and used him to beg as a “performing Negro.” But the fellow did not have any talent at all and people laughed at his attempts to sing and dance. His venture into some variation of tap dance was pathetic. Five Points citizens had seen better. After all, Five Points invented tap dance, although they didn’t call it that in those days. They called it “buck and wing” or the Juba Dance after the great “Master Juba” Lane whose nimble footwork of African rhythms combined so expertly with Irish clogging to create magic.
“What kinda Negro is this who can’t sing and dance?” people asked as they walked away, with their fingers trying in vain to stop the atrocious sounds from polluting their ears. The kinder souls put a coin or two in Quigley’s hat and fled to the bordellos in the tenements as fast as they could.
The partnership’s only bane was the band of ragamuffins who played cruel tricks on the performer and disrupted Quigley’s business. One day they set fire to the tattered seat of the slave’s pants for better entertainment than his performance was able to provide. He ran up and down the street screaming. At first Quigley enjoyed the sight and laughed. But when he realized that the pants had really caught fire and there were some flames he dived onto the fellow and rolled him on the ground. The ragamuffins ran off laughing.
That night in the church basement they shared with rats — courtesy of a kindly Methodist minister — Quigley took the leash off his slave and broke out laughing as he cleaned his scorched buttocks with cold water and lye soap that was never meant for human skin but for laundry.
“You son of a bitch!” said the slave. “You let them do this to me.”
“You saw I didn’t let ’em, you ninny!” said Quigley still laughing. “But you must admit it was damn funny.”
“I’m gonna do it to you one of them days and you tell me if it’s funny.”
The fellow was not able to sit for a few days. But the show had to go on. Every day they went out on the streets to perform, and then to the taverns to partake of the good life. Once in a while they went to the bordellos and Quigley treated his slave to more good life with either the Negro or Irish prostitutes; those who were so destitute that they accepted any customer.
It was at the bordellos that Quigley was struck by a brilliant idea. There were many stray white children in the street. Abandoned by women of the town. Some not quite abandoned but neglected by mothers who had to spend days and nights servicing customers. These children had to fend for themselves in the streets or even follow their mothers’ profession before the age of ten. At night Quigley discussed the welfare of these children with his slave. There could be good business here.
“All we need is to transport ’em down to Virginia,” he said.
“And then set up a house for orphans for them down in Virginia,” said the slave with a sarcastic chuckle.
“Sell ’em as slaves, you ninny.”
“I ain’t gonna kidnap nobody’s child,” said the slave.
“We lure ’em, man, we don’t kidnap ’em. We promise ’em a better life and jobs and the like.”
“Who’s gonna buy white slaves, you ninny?” asked the slave.
“Oh, they buy ’em all the time! You call ’em mulattos they buy ’em. No questions asked. They know pretty damn well they ain’t no mulattos. I hear Irish girls make excellent slaves as if they had nigger blood running in their dear li’l souls.”
It was easy to capture stray Irish and German girls in the streets of Five Points and other New York slums. When Quigley could not sell them at the House of Reception on West 13th Street because of the competition of more professional slave traders, he loaded them on a wagon and drove for days to Richmond, Virginia. He invested a lot of resources in treating the children very well, feeding them the kind of meals they would never even have dreamed of in the streets or at their bordello homes, and made sure that their clothes were clean even though most were tattered. The reason for this generosity was that healthy-looking slaves fetched a better price. But also it helped to keep the girls from ever thinking of escaping. If the journey to the South was this comfortable, what of the life that awaited them? Only a foolish girl would even think of escaping from such a prospect.