77 pages • 2-hour read
Song Yet Sung
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Chapters 18-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 18 Summary: “the double wedding rings”
In Cambridge City, a crowd of whites gleefully watches “Ducky,” a bedraggled black man, performing in the street, quacking and jumping. People toss coins for the town fixture, “one of those lovable, mentally bent slaves whose master had died long ago and left him to his own devices” (244). After the crowd disperses, Ducky causes Clarence to overturn his wheelbarrow, making Clarence curse and the whites nearby laugh.
As Clarence picks up the fallen goods, Ducky bends down to help, their heads shielded from onlookers. Ducky’s crazy look turns into a steady gaze and he hisses to Clarence, “Blacksmith trouble coming. Right now. Grey horse” (245). Clarence loudly tells Ducky to get away, then sees Stanton riding on a grey horse, heading to the blacksmith.
Liz is hiding in the deep hole underneath the blacksmith shop. Feeling worse than ever, she cannot stop wondering about the meaning of the song the Woman with No Name sang: “The song floated in and out of her consciousness: Way down yonder in the graveyard walk. Me and my Jesus going to meet and talk…Thought my soul would rise and fly…” (246).
Liz experiences strange sensations. She feels a kind of clarity, as if she can see and hear everything in the world. She can feel the fear in the whites who come to the blacksmith shop and is overwhelmed.
Falling asleep, Liz dreams of thousands of black people at a meeting, watching a boy on stage, filled with rage and speaking “with the rat-tat-tat speed of a telegraph machine, he preached murder, and larceny, cursing women savagely and promising to kill, maim, and destroy” (248). Liz dreams that she floats above and sees inside him, back through his previous generations, to the face of someone she loves.
Liz snaps awake, knows instantly that she needs to flee, but cannot reach the trapdoor. She throws a bucket at it, making a muffled sound when the blacksmith is greeting Stanton. As Stanton speaks to the blacksmith, hammering sounds continue in the back of the shop, so the blacksmith says that his boy must have locked himself in a cabinet. He excuses himself to go look.
Stanton says he will come along and the hammering stops. Uneasily the blacksmith says that the boy must have freed himself. Stanton chuckles and pulls out his gun, telling the blacksmith to bring Liz out. The blacksmith feigns ignorance, then refuses to move when Stanton threatens him.
As Stanton cocks his gun, the blacksmith backs down and tells him to look in the cabinet himself: There is nothing to see. Eb runs into the shop, saying that Joe sent him. Angry and frustrated, Stanton asks if Eb is working with the blacksmith. Eb denies this and says that he has been standing watch as instructed, though the “ducker” who quacks bothered him and he had had to chase him away.
The reader learns that while Ducky was being chased away, Clarence slipped into the blacksmith shop, got Liz out of the hidden space, covered her with oysters in his wheelbarrow, and carted her away.
Chapter 19 Summary: “the woolman meets patty”
The Woolman can sense that the white man is coming: “He rolled himself in the swamp mud to give him the odor of the very swamps and forest he’d trusted and known most of his life” (256). Jeff Boy is safely in his camouflaged hut, miles away from people.
In a tree near the Indian burial ground, the Woolman sees a group of riders: Patty Cannon, her men, and Wiley on foot. The Woolman hangs down from a branch with his knife in his teeth.
Patty is preoccupied, thinking about all the money she owes and her lack of slaves to sell. Suddenly there’s a slight noise. Odgin is on the ground with a knife in his heart. Patty is pulled off her horse and sees Hodge riding away.
Patty is a strong wrestler, but she cannot compete with the man who has appeared out of nowhere. The Woolman almost snaps her neck, but his hand slips. Patty manages to bring up her knife and stabs the Woolman, who releases her and grabs the hand holding the knife.
Wiley jumps on the Woolman and knocks him down, enabling Patty to jump on top of him. Despite being wounded, the Woolman grows stronger, which frightens Patty: “It was her first chance to see her attacker, and she was glad she hadn’t seen him before, because she might have turned and run” (260). Viciously they fight; the Woolman breaks her knife arm and begins to choke her.
Just as Patty begins to lose consciousness, the Woolman releases her. Wiley has thrust Patty’s knife into the Woolman’s back, and the Woolman runs away. Patty thanks Wiley. She thinks that he is a fine specimen of slave and will probably be very valuable, but she tells him that he can work for her and she will treat him as a freeman.
Wiley gets on Odgin’s horse and tells Patty that she can find her own way back. As Wiley decides whether to chase the Woolman, Patty offers to help, promising Wiley part of the reward. Wiley responds that he is going home. He hopes that she makes it back, because she can attest to Wiley’s story about who stole Jeff Boy: “Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. White folks’ll know I ain’t lyin’ if you get back” (264).
Chapter 20 Summary: “the song yet sung”
Denwood sees Constable Travis House and Herbie Tucker arguing outside the Sullivan cabin about a woman who died in the Cambridge City jail. Concerned, Denwood asks Mary if it was the Dreamer, but it was someone else.
Denwood thanks Kathleen for letting him sleep in her barn. Kathleen makes him feel ashamed of looking rough and chasing a slave: “He tried to decide whether it was his own knowing conscience that made him feel ashamed or if the sight of her was awakening something that had already been inside him” (268).
Kathleen stops Denwood before he rides away and asks him to look for Jeff Boy. Denwood is too nervous in her presence to speak so he nods. Overwhelmed with unexpected emotion, Denwood rides away quickly.
Meanwhile, Clarence is transporting Liz to a delivery point in a bungy, looking like “a leader of men” (274). Liz wants to repay Amber, though she fears that she has brought him trouble. Clarence agrees, saying that someone will be blamed for Jeff Boy. She should pray for her purpose, but with all that Liz has seen, she does not believe in God anymore. Clarence counters: “Don’t matter […] He believes in you” (277).
Liz falls asleep with the words of the Woman with No Name’s song in her ears and sees a vision. Amber is in trouble and they must go back. Clarence firmly says that that is impossible, so Liz threatens to jump from the boat. Clarence tells her that it does not matter what she does or wants—God decides if Liz stays in the boat or is thrown out.
When Liz protests that this talk is crazy, Clarence replies that this is a war and he is a soldier in the army of the Lord: “The colored man’s chosen, see. Chosen by God to be free in His kingdom, and if you want to go on to reward before the rest of us, why, go ahead” (278). Until it’s his time, Clarence will stay and live by the code, which is his Bible.
Her visions of the future have shown Liz that there is a part missing from the code. Clarence does not need to hear about her dreams of children in outlandish situations.
Liz has had one dream different from the rest, and she now understands it. It is about another dreamer, in front of thousands of black and white people, at a great camp meeting. A black preacher speaks so powerfully that people weep and beg him to go on. The preacher grows so inspired that he reaches into the past and shouts a song from their own time, the one the Woman with No Name had sung.
Liz recites the song. Although the Woman did not know all the words, Liz heard them in her dream. These words changed the whole world: “Free at last. Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last” (281). Liz explains that the code tells the future, for everybody.
Clarence is impressed and thinks perhaps she is the Dreamer. Liz replies that the man in her dream is the true Dreamer and he is “sitting in somebody’s tomorrow” (281). Clarence asks if that Dreamer’s kin is nearby, but Liz does not know. Liz is doomed, her life not worth saving, so she has to go back to fulfill her purpose. Clarence spins the bungy around and starts rowing.
Chapters 18-20 Analysis
A major revelation arrives in this section of the book. Liz has been puzzling over the song that the Woman with No Name sang while in Patty Cannon’s attic, the first words that crept into Liz’s consciousness as she came out of her coma. The song keeps running through Liz’s head as she hides in the space beneath the blacksmith shop and she cannot parse its significance. As Liz talks with Clarence in the bungy, it finally dawns on her what the song means. She has dreamt of a black preacher in front of thousands of blacks and whites, who are all so moved by his speech that they weep. Clearly this is a reference to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., an idea that is confirmed when Liz recounts his famous words, “Free at last. Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last.”
The song that the woman sang is an African American spiritual, called “Free at Last.” In Liz’s dream, she sees that the preacher is so consumed with the spirit of the crowd in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 that he pulls the song out of the past. The old Woman had sung the first part of the song, and Liz hears the true Dreamer himself speak the second part. Together, they form a third part: a future that is changed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
Liz does not fully see what her purpose is, but she knows that it has to do with this future Dreamer, who is the descendant of someone of her time. Others in her dreams are also connected to the people around her. For example, the rapper she saw in her dream in the blacksmith shop appeared through “the generations and generations of who he was, and where he’d come from […] It was someone she loved” (248): Amber.
Liz’s revelation trumps the rules of the code. For Clarence, the code is a version of the Bible, a series of rules to live by to ensure the survival of the black race and to demonstrate adherence to God. Clarence is a determinist, convinced that every action by man is predestined, set in motion by the hand of God. Liz’s vision, however, of what the “song yet sung” means and who the singer of the song will be means that the code is about the future rather than present—it is the singer of the song who matters, not the song itself.
Another theme in these chapters is the difference between private and public personas. Liz can sense the thoughts and feelings of people in the blacksmith shop, seeing the inner fears of the white customers, “as if they were bluffing and, despite being white, if only someone would call their bluff, they would surrender their inferiority” (247). This intense fear does not jibe with the commanding outward behavior of white men that she has always known, so being able to feel their fear terrifies her. This kind of white bluffing plays out when Wiley helps Patty thwart the Woolman’s attack. Afraid of Wiley, Patty puts on a veneer of brashness, offering Wiley a job as if she has the upper hand, which is as absurd as the idea of white superiority itself: Patty has a broken arm, and Wiley has her gun and Odgin’s horse.
Denwood offers another contrast between interior and exterior. He has spent years living with a reputation of being a rough alcoholic and fearsome slave catcher. When he meets Kathleen and finds himself suddenly attracted to her, he wishes he were a better man. Meeting Kathleen has awoken his conscience and has made him aware of his loneliness: “[L]ooking at her had tapped open a vault in his insides that had for too long been locked tight, and further secured by years of travel, being alone” (268).
The examples of Ducky and Clarence show that maintaining a false public persona can be a survival technique. Ducky acts like an imbecile in order to spy on whites, who overlook him. By being outlandish in public, Ducky is invisible in situations where important information may be gleaned. Similarly, Clarence hides his strength and determination behind a shuffling, innocuous exterior, so that no white man would ever suspect him of being a major conductor of the gospel train. This is an age-old strategy among the powerless to make the powerful underestimate their intelligence and fortitude.
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