77 pages • 2 hours read
James McBrideSong Yet Sung
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 15-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary: “speak to the pot”
Amber and Liz are on the bungy, tied up near Cambridge City. Amber worries about having been away from Kathleen for so long and is exhausted from fighting against the choppy waters all night. Liz continues to have terrible headaches and strange sensations, particularly when she touches the sack given to her by the Woolman: “Each time she ran her hand along the last of those five knots, she felt a deep ache, a terrible premonition of something gone wrong” (194). Liz senses that two people are missing.
Liz asks Amber about the code and about the song the Woman with No Name sang to her, but Amber is impatient with what he sees as foolish talk. Amber asks Liz how she knew Patty was coming upon them last night. Liz replies that she does not know, that something is happening to her: “My head’s…not right. I’m seeing things I ain’t supposed to be seeing” (198). Amber says they must keep going to Cambridge City, where the “coach wrench” is—the key to the code held by the blacksmith. When they see the blacksmith, they must not speak directly to him but to address a pot nearby. This way, they will be able to truthfully say they never spoke to the blacksmith if they are captured.
The quiet and lack of oyster boats at the dock unnerves Amber. At the blacksmith shop, the blacksmith places a pot on the ground without looking at them. Amber stands back to back with the blacksmith and they speak in whispers.
The blacksmith informs Amber that people think Amber is responsible for Jeff Boy’s kidnapping. Amber must run immediately and take Liz with him. The blacksmith scolds Amber for having come to the shop directly.
Amber replies that the blacksmith should welcome Liz, since she is the Dreamer, but the blacksmith says that the trouble Liz has caused makes her unwelcome. Amber reminds the blacksmith that Liz is important to the work against the slave trade. Conflicted, the blacksmith agrees to put Liz on the gospel train, though he cannot help Amber.
Suddenly, Amber realizes that Liz had a premonition that Jeff Boy and Wiley were missing. The blacksmith snaps that Amber must turn himself in, before every black person around is interrogated. He adds that the Gimp is also looking for Liz.
Defeated, Amber asks the blacksmith to put Liz on the gospel train, but she defiantly says she is not going. When Liz explains that the Woman with No Name told her about the code, the blacksmith is stunned. He goes to the far corner of the room and reveals two iron rings behind a cabinet—the “double wedding rings” that open a trapdoor, where the blacksmith will conceal Liz. He tells Amber to go home and return within two days. If Amber does not return, Liz will leave on the gospel train.
Amber promises Liz to return. As she grasps his hand, Liz is overwhelmed by a premonition that the next two days will hold great wonder and sorrow.
Chapter 16 Summary: “catching money”
Eb tells Joe Johnson that that Amber is helping the Dreamer and he is in town: He visited the blacksmith, then bought supplies at the general store and is returning with them to his bungy.
Joe wonders why Amber was at the blacksmith if he has no horse; he sends Stanton to question the blacksmith. Stanton protests, fearing Joe will capture Liz without him and keep the money, but Joe orders him to go. Joe instructs Eb to follow Stanton, in case Liz is at the blacksmith shop and Stanton tries to take her in himself.
Joe, Eb, and Stanton ride to where Amber is pushing a barrel. Joe asks Amber where he is going. A smile plastered on his face, Amber claims to be taking supplies back to his “missus,” but realizes the men don’t believe his story that he is bringing back goods to Kathleen after being caught in a storm, and that he wants to help search for Jeff Boy.
Joe asks about the farm where Amber lives—he had heard there is a runaway slave there. Amber’s face remains blank as he says he does not know of one. Joe asks why Amber was at the blacksmith and Amber replies that he slept behind the shop. Joe tells Amber to unload his supplies and come with him to the blacksmith.
When Amber asks politely if Joe is a deputy, Joe gets angry and threatens Amber with his gun, drawing the attention of nearby oystermen. A white oysterman asks what is wrong. After Joe protests that Amber is causing trouble, the oysterman asks Amber by name if this is true. Amber says that he has to deliver the supplies to Kathleen, and that he has to get back quickly since Jeff Boy is missing.
The waterman defends Amber, but Joe angrily says that he suspects Amber of harboring runaways. Anyone helping him will be in trouble also.
The other watermen are not pleased with a stranger speaking that way. One of them asks if Joe is with Patty Cannon, but Joe denies knowing her, claiming that he works for someone in another county whose runaways might be nearby. The watermen relent and allow Joe to lead Amber away.
Amber theatrically confesses as soon as they are alone. There is no need to go to the blacksmith—Amber has helped Liz escape, and he knows he has ruined his life by doing so. Joe must move quickly to catch up with her.
Joe believes him and asks where Liz is. Amber says that she is at the old Indian burial ground. Amber quickly rolls up his left pant leg, then urges Joe towards Joya’s Neck.
Chapter 17 Summary: “spreading the word”
Denwood arrives at Kathleen’s farm after having wasted days on a bad lead. Constable Travis House and his search party are already there. Kathleen opens the door but slams it in Denwood’s face when he says he is a slave catcher.
Mary beckons Denwood into the cabin and asks if he is searching for Wiley. Denwood answers that he is seeking a runaway. When he asks Kathleen for permission to search her land, she orders him out. Denwood feels an attraction to Kathleen and promises to help look for her boy.
As Denwood leads his horse away, Mary comes out and tells him that Kathleen said he could sleep in the barn, to serve as protection from Patty Cannon. Denwood declines, saying Patty is not his concern. Speaking in his ear, Mary says that the one he is searching for is not there, but Mary’s brother Amber may know where Liz is. Mary can get word to Amber, though she will not say how. In return, she wants Denwood to refrain from disclosing that Amber helped Liz. Denwood refuses—he could simply turn Mary in if she does not tell him where Amber is, but Mary firmly says that she would die before giving up her family.
Denwood relents, though he does not like making deals with slaves and free blacks: “It hampered him in too many ways, mostly internally, because in making deals with them, they became more human to him, and in doing so—try as he might to resist the feeling—they became less slave and more man to him” (233). Now he has no choice.
Mary drapes her quilt over a bungy, with the five-star pattern facing the river. Soon after, the mail boat goes by and the two black hands on board note the quilt. When the boat reaches Cambridge City, they head to the general store. Clarence helps them stack barrels and crates, under the watchful eye of the mail boat captain. Loading mail and parcels into his wheelbarrow, Clarence runs deliveries through town, stopping at the blacksmith. After Clarence leaves, the blacksmith gets back to work, striking his hammer in a rhythmic pattern: “The message: Wake up the network. Colored’s gone running. Two of them” (239).
This warning is carried through seven different plantations within an hour. At the eighth plantation, a slave figures out that Amber is the missing slave and tells the black oystermen waiting at the pier. Word travels between oystermen until one realizes that he had seen Amber with a white horseman. His wife asks her “missus” if she can send a quilt to the Sullivan farm. The quilt has a star pattern, with the pattern in the opposite direction from Mary’s and includes a note reading, “Whoeva is fearfull and afraide, let him return and, di-part early from the west of the mounde that is Mount Gilead Judges 7:3” (241).
Mary receives this basket, tied securely with three knots together and two knots tied apart. From the message, Mary knows that Amber is west of the farm, near the Indian burial ground. She goes to tell Denwood.
Chapters 15-17 Analysis
Extraordinary details in these chapters show how the intricate communication system utilized by slaves and free blacks in this area operates. Several whites, such as Denwood, wonder aloud how word of runaways and other news travels so quickly among black people, often faster than a horseman can ride. Spreading news is especially difficult since most blacks cannot read and write, and the seizure of a written note by white authorities could have dire consequences. Therefore, it is essential that the code be a system of cues that are clear to some and unnoticeable by others; whites remain oblivious that communication is happening right in front of them.
For example, when the black boat hands see Mary’s quilt, they carry the message on. They stack barrels of goods five high, then reduce the pile to three. Two knots tie down the barrels, then one hand adds a knot, the other hand adds a fourth, and Clarence adds a fifth knot. One hand then undoes two knots, as if he has decided that only three were needed. They stack wooden crates next, at first three high, with the lettering facing west. One hand adds a crate, then Clarence adds a fifth. Then a hand takes down two crates, secures them with five knots, then removes two. All this happens while the white mail boat captain watches unsuspectingly.
Clarence passes the message to the blacksmith, setting axe handles in rows of five facing west, then removing two. The blacksmith broadcasts the news out: He hammers five rings, then a pause, five more rings, a pause, two rings, a pause, two rings, a pause, three rings, a pause, then three rings. This message—that two slaves are running from the west—is spread from plantation to plantation until a slave who realizes that he saw Amber walking with an unknown white man by the Indian burial ground. A new message is sent back to Mary at the Sullivan farm through what is ostensibly a consoling quilt for Mrs. Sullivan. In the basket with the quilt are five pieces of chicken, with the fifth on the west side, and a Bible verse that encrypts Amber’s location as “west of the mound,” meaning the Indian burial ground.
These chapters put the reader on the side of the novel’s black characters by explaining elements of the code that white characters in the novel don’t know. Liz can see why the Woman with No Name had told her to seek the blacksmith—he is a primary force behind the gospel train. The “double wedding rings” that the Woman with No Name referenced are rings that open the trapdoor in the blacksmith shop, where runaways can hide on their journey to the north. It is also interesting to learn the blacksmith defers to the old Woman’s judgment about Liz.
These chapters offer an expanded character study between different types of slave catchers, and the transformation that Denwood undergoes as he searches for Liz. For Joe Johnson, who refers to his task as “catching our money” (212), the runaways they are pursuing are equivalent to any other source of income. His materialism, obvious from his “elaborate jacket and hat, the expensive saddlebags, the fine boots” (217), makes the watermen so suspicious of his outsider status that when Joe threatens Amber, the white oystermen almost take Amber’s word over Joe’s.
Denwood is also a slave catcher but exhibits some ambivalence. He sees a kindred spirit in Mary and is troubled to make a deal with her as he would with a white person. Identifying with Mary’s willingness to die make shim uneasy; it reminds him too much of his own pain.
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