One said, “It’d be nice to have what they have.”
And the other said, “I know that man.”
“They’re rich, is all, and surely more of the same at home.”
“It was her father.”
“We’ve just been talking about how to get on with these empty pockets.”
“She who never knew her father, and there he was. Sitting there.”
“We can guess what use they’ll make of it; I’ll tell you what. Spend some on liquor and some on whores and some to buy a safe to put the rest in.”
“Damn him who made her, and damn her.”
“Are you listening? Now’s the time, we’ve got a chance. Been given it.”
“Men abandon, and women ruin.”
“Stop muttering. Plenty of fine folk in the world, I’m just guessing these aren’t them. You had your money stolen, right? Who’s to say this isn’t it?”
“The world is not so circular.”
“Damn wrong it’s not circular! Wake up!”
And all I was saying was no, no, but silently. I knew the circle of the world, and it had sharp edges.
They made speeches with closed ears. One kept pulling at his pants, fingering at the scruff on his cheek, the other picked at a spot on the earth till it was clean of leaves. They did not know they did this. Our wants were greater than their wants, is what was figured, and our hearts better. Between fiddling and neatening, they judged themselves. But how did they judge the others? Those men who passed never told us who they loved. This is a lie, I said, or did not say. I did not want the money. Nothing left in the world must be given to me.
I am trying to clean myself. I am walking so many days away from the woman and the boy and even the horse that died beneath me so that I will come to a place where I am reminded of nothing. Am empty. The first two days were crying. The third was burning need for her, to touch her again, her face, to bury her. The shame at not having buried her. I turned back. Walked a few miles back. Why didn’t I put them in the ground? Because if she is not below ground, she is not fully dead. I could not put dirt on her white body, though it is worse to have left her. I know. Turned around again. On the fourth day I had cried all the water out of me and so the world went hazy. My mouth stayed open, my eyes lost their blink. This was close to empty. Then I thought how good it was that she was gone. Peace now, Anne and boy. I was not meant to be a father. I hurt my wife, I would have hurt my son. Yes, better they are sleeping.
I was not walking for penance until I was. Forgive me, clean me, save me. Everything I knew of myself I had to break. Love was all I knew of myself, so I would let this go. What had it brought me? Go away, heart and need, flee. When that was gone, I would be blank, and then — then could I die?
This I kept asking.
But I am poorly trained. The first sleeping man I saw I held to.
I should have let the man with the mule take me. The one who asked if I had killed. Yes yes yes. Can no longer count the times. So what if I wasn’t the one he was looking for. I too have sins to pay. I sat there in my home, on every chair a flower, and held my son in my hands while my wife lay on her bed, my son blue, my wife red. I could not move, and neither lived.
I am needing to be alone, but wanting these men to never lose me.
After the dark had settled on the path, they nodded. The Indian worn down, or the black man wanting to see his own courage. Decisions made that would’ve been dust if we’d been fewer than three. We turned to trace their steps, always turning on this path, walked, are walking, and now we crawl up from the trail in silence. The black man stops his chatter. We creep, and I creep because I have given up, would follow anything alive, am waiting to see what God does to me. Have been waiting for eight days.
South from South Carolina, west from West Georgia. I rode with nothing but my fear and ghosts riding behind. I rode the horse until it dropped. Left it by the trail, a dead pile, wishing I could crawl into its deadness. I hid from men until it came to me that I could not kill myself. My hands could not kill one more thing. My arms missed holding. I was weak. I found a black man sleeping, his knife in a sheath, and I took that knife so when I crouched above him to feel his warmth, he would wake to something ordinary. A highway robber, or a man pretending to be. The black man brought me to an Indian, and here we are, after a day, creeping like brothers.
Never had a brother, but a wife. Soft. My loves were lost to me before they even lived. My son in my hands, his own young brother who I never saw. His mother crablike on the bed, red sheets swimming her. I could not leave one for the other. I was alone for all my life and then there was one and then there was two and myself frozen to the floor, my son in my hands, and I hadn’t the strength to move. Strength, courage. Courage, muscle. I didn’t have muscle to move. I was given too much. Now the world fixes itself.
I don’t know where I am, some miles above Florida, but it smells like home. Part salty. Small palms. The air goes on forever. In the dark, the pine spindles under my feet feel like the pine spindles of Carolina. I have lost the best part of me and the earth makes no difference. I want no money. If I do one more wrong thing and God is watching, I will explode into fire.
Have always had men watching me. Been plagued by them. My father, my priest, Sterrett, the minister. Saying move just so on this narrow path or I will hurt you. Not the minister, but he passed his rod to God, and there was punishment enough. God worst of all. I have found more men to watch me but they are poor at it, for they are drawing me down a bad path, and never having led, I do not know how to save them. I cannot save them, who am so rotten. Clean me, save me.
Eight days on the road and I never asked for food. Never looked for water. A woman on a farm saw me and gave me a jug to swallow. A child held out a cake. I shook my head, but the child would not drop its arm. I took the cake and it watched me eat. Eyes like stars. I fell asleep in a horse yard behind an inn and when I woke a carrot had rolled before me, kicked in the night by a mule. I ate it. Tried to throw it up, but it clung inside. When it rained, I opened my mouth. I passed a slave in Georgia without a shirt. He leaned on a fence by the road, his mouth working on some tobacco. He asked me if I knew his master. I shook my head. If I needed work. I shook my head. If I was from these parts. No. He laughed and said he’d give me supper if I wanted, but his master was out, wouldn’t come back any time soon, maybe wouldn’t ever. A line of slaves stood in the trees behind the field. Two of them were dancing. He saw me looking. He had a gun slung on his back. You hardly a white man, he said. Pulled an apple from his pocket, rubbed it once along his bare arm, his arm that was too dark to show whether there was blood on it, and passed it over the fence to me. I ate. I could not throw it up. I walked eight days and tried not to live and kept living.
Grief carried me here but now is tired. Is sliding me from its shoulders. I cannot hold on because my hands are broken. I am a spoiled man. I cannot live without someone’s warmth against me. Cannot become alone again. After all this, I am my father. My mouth as spiked and sour as his. My want has brought the end of me. These hands have burned a girl alive, left a hundred bodies bleeding on the slab, killed my own and only hope. Now when they grasp a branch to pull my body up the bank, I think the branch will turn to ash.
We are away from the path now, quiet. Our feet like doves in the leaves. The sweat on my lip tastes like her lips.
“Are you sure?” one says.
“This is your plan,” the other says.
“We do it together, right?”
“We take the bags, guns if we can, and walk out.”