Counternarratives by John Keene Read Free Book Online

spices at all, at meals; a moratorium on singing or celebrations of any kind,
particularly during those hours that he set aside for his ledger books or to read
the Gospel; and the requirement of clothes of a plain nature especially on holy
days, for Pennyman had not been awakened by the preachings of Edwards or any other
deliverer great or small. One morning, after unloading cases of sugar, flour,
molasses, salt, suet, cranberry bread, sweet currants, and apples, and casks of rum,
French brandy, Boston beer, and Madeira wine, Zion began singing aloud one of the
songs he had learned from New Mary to pass the time, when he thought he overheard
one of the shop assistants noting how perverse it was that “music should arise from
a tarpit.” Confronting the man, who peppered him with epithets, Zion could no longer
restrain himself and flattened the man with one blow. A bullet, once fired, cannot
be recalled: Fearing the repercussions of his action, he fled on horse northward to
Boston, tinderbox of liberty. After abandoning his mount in the marshlands near
Boston Neck, he ran until he had reached the famed Beacon Hill portion of the
Tremountain. He concealed himself in a stand of box, waiting for the cover of
darkness before proceeding to the home of a cousin of Lacy who lived in Green
Street, near the Mill Pond. Here and at another safe house run by free blacks he
remained for several weeks, before shipping out without a permit from Hatch’s Wharf
on a clipper bound for Nantucket.
    The sea momentarily opened a new chapter in the book of Zion’s life. He
sailed on a Kittery-based sloop, the
Hazard
, which ventured as far south as
the English Caribbean, and on which he experienced the freedoms and vicissitudes of
the maritime life. Next came a whaling tour, during which he served in a variety of
capacities for a year, enduring an ever-rising tide of depredations that culminated
in his being chained belowdecks, without food or water for weeks, for theft,
attempted mutiny and insulting the honor of the whaler’s drunken captain. Only the
intervention of a galley slave from the Barbados, who held the captain’s affections,
and most importantly, brought him fresh water and salt cod at twilight, saved his
life.
    Liberty
    T he 1770s:
great changes were blowing through streets of the colonial capital. The Crown’s
troops had irrevocably stained Boston’s cobblestones with the blood of Attucks and
others; the promise of freedom sweetened the air like incense. When Zion was freed
by his captain upon return to Sherburne, in Nantucket Island, instead of a duel to
restore his honor, the young man stowed away on a brigantine returning to the port
of Boston. Penniless, carrying on his person only a pocket pistol and several
cartouches he had stolen from the whaler captain’s wares, and finding that both
Lacy’s cousin and the safe woman had moved or been moved from their residences,
leaving no place to stay, for the town appeared to his eyes to have evacuated its
entire black population, Zion grew restless and proceeded to rob a tanner’s store.
He was captured within hours by the Crown’s authorities and confined, pending his
arraignment, to the city prison on Queen Street. After a short period of time, the
under-magistrate discovered that he was a fugitive slave, and returned him, pending
his trial, to Mr. Pennyman, now thriving handsomely with five shops throughout
Suffolk and Bristol Counties. Pennyman determined to get rid of him. His personal
scruples, however, did not permit him to entertain simply manumitting the slave. He
must first earn back his investment.
    After Zion’s conviction and brief imprisonment, he was again returned to
Pennyman, and the businessman ordered him to be flogged for his effrontery, which to
his preoccupied and rigid mind had assumed the character of outright treachery. He
then sent him south to work in a shop in Attleborough, far from the negative
influence of