Counternarratives by John Keene Read Free Book Online Page B

of
bloodied flesh and linen. To celebrate, he mounted Pine’s horse, his own having
galloped off, and proceeded to Cambridge, committing a series of burglaries of homes
and carriages along the way.
    Bounty
    I tems stolen: a bottle
of rum, several pieces of jerky, a tricorner felt hat, nine pounds sterling four
shillings, suttler’s markee, some chocolate, twenty pounds sterling, a flask of
French brandy, a pair of moreen small clothes (which did not fit and were thus
discarded in the Charles), a man’s white linen shirt, a leg of mutton, two weight of
salt pork, eleven pounds sterling six shillings, five pence, a carbine and two
pocket pouches, a magnifying glass, a map of the easternmost British provinces in
Canada.
    Advertisement
    A likely Negro Man aged about 18 or 19 years,
    that speaks very good English
    of great strength and brawn
    sings and plays the violin
    sold on reasonable terms by Mr.
    Ebenezer Minott, trader over against
    the Post Office in Cornhill, Boston.
    (There were no takers.)
    Spree
    A fter settling this
most recent plight with the Middlesex County magistrate, Job Hollis arranged to
place Zion on board a vessel bound for Virginia where he would be sold at auction
and his wildness might finally be whipped or worked out of him. Only under such
conditions would this slave learn respect for the common and hardworking citizenry
in whose colonies he had been fortunate enough to dwell, Hollis reasoned, and if
Zion continued in his ways down there, the penalties would be swift, and ultimate.
Hollis walked Zion, hands bound, the requisite papers pinned to the slave’s tattered
coat, all the way to Hancock’s Wharf, where the South-going vessel was to dock. He
wished the young bondman a safe passage to the southerly port, saying a prayer for
his soul as they stood before the open water. To drown out his master’s voice, Zion
began singing. On this note of defiance, the exasperated Hollis departed. For an
hour or so the slave stood there singing and whistling on the wharf as the bailor
and a customs official sat lubricating in a nearby ale house. When the ship, a
frigate, did not arrive at the stated time, Zion charmed a Dutch whore strolling by
to untie his bindings, whereupon he set off to find the first loosely hitched horse.
As he ran he proclaimed himself free. Under duress one’s actions assume a dream-like
clarity. An unattended nag stood outside a tavern, and off Zion rode.
    After a spree which stretched from the city of Boston west to the edges
of Middlesex County, the slave played his worst hand when he committed lascivious
acts just across the county line on the person of a sleeping widow, Mary
Shaftesbone, near Shrewsbury. Having broken into her home and reportedly taken
violent liberties with her, unaccountably Zion did not flee the town, but entered a
nearby tavern and began a round of popular songs, to the delight of a crowd of
locals and the horror of the violated woman. The sheriff arrested him without delay.
When he realized the notoriety of the criminal he had in his hands, he suggested to
the local magistrate that, although this most recent felony had occurred in
Worcester County, the criminal ought to be returned to the General Court in Boston,
which had the apparatus to deal with such evil. The magistrate responded that given
the current worsening political situation in the capital, it appeared unlikely that
the slave’s crimes would receive rapid adjudication. Mrs. Shaftesbone, demanding
justice, or at least compensation, therefore had word sent to Job Hollis, who was
negotiating the sale of his business in the anticipation of an assault against
Boston’s northern waterfront. The violated widow suggested a cash settlement, with
the proviso that Hollis sell the criminal out of the colonies, preferably to the
French West Indies. Hollis, who still held title to Zion, agreed to this
arrangement, and collected him, now restrained in wrist irons, from the town