“He was fine for many years, sir, but afore he was out of short pants he stood too close to a church bell and the ringing busted his ears all up. Hasn’t said a word since.” I’m real polite, not knowing at that point how high up church bells are, but the man must not know either because he says, “That right,” like it isn’t every day he sees such a thing, and he spits and turns again and drags that mule right on down the road, the two of them kicking up shoots of dust behind.
I send up a praise to Jesus and study Cat, whose white arms are hatched now with the branch shadows from above, this place we’ve stopped looking more, in fact, like church than trail. His brows don’t even bend, his eyes still as stones under clear water.
“You kill a man?” I ask, and he doesn’t look at me but shakes his head slow, back and forth.
“Not a man,” he says, and his voice is hoarse.
“Well, that’s a relief,” I say and decide not to bully the point, though he is small and blue-eyed and I did first meet him when he was trying to cut my throat. That’ll teach a man to fall asleep on the road. “You from Carolina?” I ask, but this is bullying, which I said I wouldn’t do, and sure enough he doesn’t make a peep to answer. I’ll figure it out in time. If he had a reason to kill some old man up in Carolina, doesn’t mean he’ll go around shooting people willy-nilly. Just because I ran away from one place doesn’t mean I’ll run from another.
I’m all done eating before he’s finished with those slow chews so I clean up our little patch, brushing crumbs from the root hollows like it was a table with linen to keep clean. I told myself I wouldn’t get too wild, wouldn’t lose those things that made me a man, like talking civil and cleaning myself and watching out for the weaker ones. Winna claimed I’d turn back to animal, hunched over creeks like a dog for water and tearing at raw bones, but she never saw I was climbing up from slave, not down from man. I won’t say she was happy being bound on that land, which maybe wouldn’t be fair, but she did see herself as living a life, like anyone else would, which I couldn’t see for trying. Wasn’t a life at all, just a way of dying.
The leaves of the live oaks, fallen last, start rustling up in the afternoon, it still being March and tending toward cool when the sun dips out. In the walking, I’m working my way toward a direction. It’s not as straight as you’d first figure, for though the farm in my head lies between here and where the sun dies, the trail runs north, and my story of still being my master’s man will fade out not many miles farther, and then what face will I put on, what food on my tongue? So I reckon as I walk, and I’m just as glad for the cover of a white man, however stickish and shifty.
Only when we collapse into the evening, color of a mourning dove, and shuffle our leaf piles for pillows a tossed rock’s distance from the road do I think more carefully of the man looking for the murderer, the white man with his mule and his eyes searching. He could’ve been a man looking for me, there’d surely soon be men looking for me, and I hadn’t even been sharp enough to know to be afraid. Of Cat, yes, but not of him. Mingo could’ve said something easy, or maybe Winna gave me up to get better bread for the girls. I’m not a brave man, though I’ve done what brave men do, and if I spoke to myself and was honest, I’d say I haven’t thought things through. I think I can scamper off some-hundred miles and no one’ll mind? No one will come hunting to fetch back their property, what they paid plenty dollars for? I’ll be found and dragged, sure enough, straight back to the cane fields, and when I’m there, all worn out from the dragging, they’ll make Winna watch my whipping and give her whatever bits of me they slice off. I lie down fidgety and in three seconds Cat is snoring and the sky has dressed itself in fast black and a rabbit is thumbing its nose through the scramble of brush between my feet, and I am now fully afraid. I can’t shake the picture of my fingers, one by one, getting lopped off and passed on to my wife, who’s long since disowned me. And it’s not a guess or a what-if, but a firm truth, that I will die if here and now I don’t prevail. And even short of death, what chance do I have without a single coin to pay my way? Am I just going to take that farm for free? My dream grew like a straight tall weed in the dirt around the slave cabins, bloomed as yellow as a hope, and I plucked it and stuck it in my breast patch and carried it gleaming down the road of my deliverance, and now, two days’ hard walk from home, or the opposite of home, my weed is slumped and wilting and through its browning petals asks me what the hell I expect.
A night bird lets out a whistle above my head, its call stretched thin at the end, like someone was squeezing it through his hands. I tuck up my legs tight to my chest, scaring off the rabbit, and know my flower’s dead; only God and his miracles will see me through alive.
The people I have loved aren’t taking this walk — my mother, stolen from me; my brother, who stole himself; my children, who don’t know what it means to steal. My outside eyelids are closed tight, because it’s nighttime and I should be sleeping, knowing what a long walk I have tomorrow and every day after that, but there are some kind of inside eyelids that keep fluttering up and won’t close, no matter how hard I try to squeeze them. Winna’s in my head now, the woman I never loved more than myself, and she’s pointing straight on, away from her belly, away from white sugar, from black bodies, westward, and I am going, if the Lord doesn’t take me first, and I’m starting to think he will.
I WALK MORE timid in the morning. I am almost resolved that Cat will kill me after all, and then I turn my head quick and he’s wiping a tear from his eye or gnawing on the side of his thumb, and if he’s not an idiot then I’m the one fooled. I tell him what the plan is, which is that even though we’re both free and honorable men, with a wink, best that we hide ourselves if ever there’s likely to be trouble. No telling how many bounty hunters are maundering around, or who they’re keeping eyes out for. So instead of pretending to be mighty today, we step a little more quiet and over to one side, in the dip that runs along the trail, so that we can scoot up the bank into the bushes if we hear a horse train coming. The plan is really that I’ll just keep putting feet in a long straight row toward north, hoping I’ll know when the left turn’ll be. I ask Cat if he’s ever been in this part of the world before, and he shakes his head.
“Your home look anything like this?” I try to picture where he comes from, what rocky hills or barren plain gave rise to such a flint of a man, because he’s sure been traveling days. “You ever see a big old stretch of meadow, no trees or anything, with no white folks anywhere near? Maybe west of here? You been west of here?”
He shakes his head.
I don’t push him. Sometimes it looks like he’s been crying for a week and just left off. I keep talking to him, because talking is how to cross over all the big holes in the world.
A shuffling up ahead sends us over the bank, and while we’re waiting there I think, Good thing we lost the horse, which is of course foolishness because if we had the horse we’d maybe already be where we’re headed, and once again Cat strikes me as a useless sort. This close, his smell scratches at my nose, all sweaty and sad.
“You need a good washing.” He doesn’t answer. “Why don’t you stay in these parts and get a bed somewhere? Some place near a river you can splash in? Ain’t you got any money?”
“Not enough to last.”
“So you want to start over, be a frontier man, like me.” I put my finger to my lips, but it’s just a woodpecker flailing away somewhere up high. Always wondered where all the bits go when he pecks that hole. Guess they’re so little they land on leaves and sit there till it’s windy.