Song Yet Sung by James McBride Read Free Book Online Page A

were fronted by marshy grass and swamp. It was a good mile or two through that muck to the safety of that thick forest. She’d have to swim across the river, then wade through the muck and high grass of the marsh in open daylight to get to that safe cover.
    She turned back and worked her way into the forest behind her, sinking up to her ankles in the muddy swamp until her feet hit solid earth. She was exhausted now and could move no farther, so she found a thicket of branches and lay down again among them. This time she fought sleep, afraid to dream, knowing that night was coming soon and that would be the time to move if she could, but her fatigue was so great she could not resist, and she closed her eyes again.
    When she did, she heard the sound of moaning.
    She was not sure if she was dreaming or not, for she didn’t trust her mind anymore. Lying on her right side, shivering with cold and feeling feverish, she turned on her other side, her eyes squeezed tightly closed.
    â€”Two-headed or not, she said aloud, I will put this out of my mind.
    She heard the moaning again.
    â€”G’wan now, she said.
    Then felt, rather than saw, the image in her mind of someone deeply troubled.
    She sat up.
    â€”Lord God, I’m starving, she said aloud. I’m hearing what I ain’t supposed to hear. I’m seeing what I ain’t supposed to see. Help me, God.
    She heard the moaning again.
    She looked around. Then listened again.
    Sure enough, it was real. A thin, weak cry.
    She crawled on her hands and knees and followed the sound deeper into the tiny patch of thicket. She peered through the thicket and saw, in the fading sunlight that sliced through the thick branches, a thin black boy of about seven years.
    He was lying on his side, his ankle and foot clamped in some kind of muskrat trap chained to a tree. His foot, she saw, was blistered and swollen almost beyond recognition. He was nearly naked, save for a flinty calico sack worn as a kind of dress that covered his middle. He was soaking wet, having obviously been there for at least a day or two. He had the wildest crop of hair she had ever seen, matted and thick, growing in every direction. He appeared to be dying.
    The sight of him made her draw in her breath.
    â€”I can’t help you, she said to him. I can’t help myself.
    She rose to leave but could not. She dropped on all fours next to the boy and looked at the device.
    The trap was metal and wood, a crude clamp of some kind, made to trap muskrats. The boy had obviously wandered into it somehow. She gently lifted it from the ground and tried to twist open the jaws. The device would not give.
    â€”Lord, she said aloud, but that I would have the strength of a man to pull this thing free.
    The boy gazed straight ahead, his eyes staring horizontally at the ground, not moving, moaning softly.
    She pulled at the device harder but could not free him. She rested. She was exhausted. She tried again for several minutes, yanking and pulling at the conglomeration of springs, wood, and metal, but the device was a newfangled creation that would not come loose. Finally she collapsed from the effort and lay there, her hands clasping the device, and closed her eyes, resting.
    As she did, she had a vision of the future again, but this time not of men but of machines, mighty machines that lifted great objects high into the air, machines that could spin windmills powerful enough to spray water at forces and speeds beyond anything she had ever seen; machines with long rubber snout-like metal pipes that twisted steel and bent iron—pipes that were flexible so that they coiled like snakes, loosing great energy, pushing water through pipes, spinning wheels with enough force to throw a horse against a wall, making rigid things flexible, bending giant items in ways beyond what seemed imaginable; machines that worked like a force of God.
    She awoke with a start. This was something new: a dream with an answer. She