Any Known Blood by Lawrence Hill

Author:Lawrence Hill [Hill, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9781554685080
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1997-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

“Has this man completely lost it?” Eric Small asked.

“The ideas are interesting,” Langston said.

Rose stared at her husband. “Not you, too?”

“I’m not saying I believe it. But I’m not ruling it out.”

“I can’t believe this,” Small said.

“Is your grip on history so unerring that you can dismiss a theory without investigating it?”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Small said.

“No. But do you want to know how to get Aberdeen Williams off your back? He’s a little smitten. If you ignore him, he’ll just keep writing letters. What you want to do is defuse him. Send him a letter, thank him for his observations, and say that you’ll give them due consideration.”

“Due consideration,” Small said. “Nice euphemism for the garbage bin.”

“Well, say what you want. But thank him for his letter. That ought to satisfy him. Tell the mayor to do the same thing.”

The next spring, Ab asked Langston if he had time for a long chat. They walked along the waterfront, passed the ice-cream store, and got a cone each. They asked for single-dip cones, but received double-decker scoops with chocolate sauce on top. Payment was refused — Ab had done some work recently in the back of the store. They started walking in town, but people kept stopping them to talk. Finally, they walked west on Colborne, crossed the bridge, continued on to Kerr, and headed south to the water reservoir. There was a walking path around it, about a third of a mile in circumference. It was abandoned. It was a beautiful evening. There were no bugs out yet. It was early May, and no people were in sight. They walked around and around the path.

Langston had feared, initially, that Ab wanted to talk about his obsession with the Negro discovery of America. But he didn’t.

“When we met,” Ab said, “remember how I surprised you by saying that I knew your grandfather had lived in Oakville?”

“I do.”

Ab said his own father had been born in Oakville, and that his grandfather — like Langston’s grandfather — had come to Oakville as a fugitive slave. What is more, they had been brought across the lake by the same schooner captain, a man named Robert Wilson.

Ab spoke of how his own grandfather had earned his living, and of how Langston Cane had earned his living — and a very good living at that — as a rat catcher and a stone hooker. He lifted shale off the bottom of Lake Ontario and sold it to people who wanted to lay foundations with admirable, solid, flat, inexpensive rock. Ab said he had heard these and other stories directly from his grandfather, who had lived till 1915.

Langston asked why Langston Cane the First had left Oakville.

“This is what I wanted to talk to you about,” Ab said. “You have opened my eyes to world history. You’ve helped me see the history of the Negro peoples of the world. I feel I must tell you something of your own family history. If you didn’t get it from me, you wouldn’t get it from anyone.

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