I see them drag out the bags. A rustle on the cot. An arm drawn in. I stop. We hold our breath. A turning.
A slow world turning.
The fat man starts up first. His shout like a muffled dog. The men are awake. God damn it. I had said no.
The sand scrambles. They are up now, sitting, standing, crouched, all the men who are kin to those coins. Arms crooked, knees bent. Moving like someone lifted the rock that was hiding them. The moon floating in the creek lights their jaws.
Somebody shoots. Bob’s gun explodes. The horses in the trees kick against bark. The shadows of the black men slip below bushes. What was I to do? Was I meant to use this gun? They are moving fast, and I am slow. I step again backward. My feet are in the creek. I look at Anne, her eyes surprised. Her calling to me from the red sheets. Asking could I save her. Her straw hair wet against her cheek. I’m waist-deep in water now. I must be too thin to see, because everyone is shooting but no one is shooting at me. I still have a gun in my hand. It says nothing. We are quiet. A young man runs toward me, fleeing, but the dark lights up again with powder and he skids, wavers. His body crumples on the sand. His ankles in the water, bobbing. Too late for a boy to finger out that bullet. He would be dead on any slab. There are empty spaces while men reload their muskets. Is this what war was like? Shots, and then noisy grabbing. Their breaths heavy, their hands reaching out to clutch hair, to smash in noses. Cries like birds. They look for their knives. Bob and the Indian shoot again. Now I can’t tell man-shout from gunshot. The moon on the creek is red.
For two nights now, I’ve slept near a body, first one and then two. I fell asleep while they were talking because they were not talking to me. But when it was still and dark I woke and watched them. I crawled to their sides. The black man boneless, loose pile of limbs. Skin dirt-colored. Not any dirt, but what you find when you scuff off the top layer of rot, dark, and dig an inch down to where it’s dry, where it’s brown and orangey and sheens if you spit on it. I brushed his arm, the skin beneath the arm hairs. His body flopped so open, like it once had a wife and was glad now to be free. I wanted to scoot him back together. Make him make room for somebody. I could not touch the Indian, though I smelled his hair. Watched his tattoo to see if it would move. If a breeze brushed the blanket off, he’d snatch it close again. Hated his skin to be uncovered. These men and I, we had not hurt each other. I smiled and then felt guilty for it. I sat deeper in the trees to wait for a rat or a deer, but nothing warm walked by. The woods were cold. The fire was out. I found my spot again, not too close, and closed my eyes. Do not let me dream of her, I begged. I was too afraid to sleep. I took the shoes of the other men, holed brown boots and leather slip shoes, and wet them from my mouth and smoothed them clean with the tail of my shirt. There.
I step back through the water, watching the light from guns and the sides of knives, watching the shoes of strangers dance around each other, slide into the sand, kick at other men’s legs. The heavy man is on his bottom, the cot pulled against him for a shield. The Indian’s arm coddles the neck of the dark-eyed man, like they were brothers, choking. Someone young is slashing at Bob with a knife, and Bob is cringing back. He lifts his gun and beats the other man on the head with the barrel. I am walking away from them, from their heat. I need them to live. The gun in my hand is loaded.
The black men are in the trees. I can see their shiny eyes. They wait to see who will win and claim them. Wait to see if in the loudness of the killing they can step back into the deeper night and take themselves. Someone’s bullet passes near my head, a fast exhale, soft, and I sink. I let my body dip down. Chest, neck, chin. Only my eyes above cool water. My shirt is slow and billows out. My pants cling. I ask someone to watch my brothers. I close my eyes and let my knees collapse. My face sinks below. My hair floats away from my face. Sounds like armies marching. Sounds like towns on fire. I hear a high yell that clutches in a gargle. I open my eyes beneath the water.
My father floats past upon his back, feet bare. His mouth trails whiskey. In his hand a wooden gnarl that is my soul. A flock of crow women soar smoothly through the water. Their robes wide as wings, their mouths open like fish. Behind them walk a thousand dead. Heads open, guts untwirled, their blood turning the water dark. I think I must be dying, to see this march. Anne swims before me. Her eyes surprised. She circles her legs slow to stay in place. Her dress rivering around her body, the blood floating up in strands like smoke. I say how perfect her face is, that she is the woman I loved before I knew what a woman was, in all the darkness of my youth, there, do you see my father floating past, how little like a woman he is? All the shapes I hungered for, and none were mine but you. My words come out in bubbles. Her hands on her belly. I say I never touched a piece of earth but I thought of her. All my life. But listen, she says. Eyes wide. She cannot hear me. I reach my hand for her. It is you now, she says, not me. Her mouth opens slow. Her hair floats in fingers toward me. It is always her. What can I do but fail to reach her again, again. There is nothing of me left. I squeeze my eyes shut. My heart is hot as simmering fat.
The first time she came to church. The yellow of her hair, the blue of her dress. She was a summer sky. She would rest the soft of her hand on my cheek. Her murmur. When she was fully mine and I rode home on the horse that now was dead, she’d spot me from the window and whistle like a jenny wren. A bird that flew into my hands. My body could not be loved, I thought. I thought, until she put her arms around my neck. The water comes in at my cracks. Finds my heart and cools it. Water pumping in my heart until the beast of grief I’m riding drowns. Our son was just a shard of her, and I could not put him down. I should have put him down, crawled over to sew up the holes in my wife, saved the holy heart of me. I was mistaken. I was a mistake. She was the one of all.
You cannot cry at the bottom of a creek.
I am almost empty. Am almost stripped to nothing.
I wait below the water until the sounds still. It is too dark for anything worth seeing. None of these men are killing for women. None have killed their wives. Love is not above this water, and there is only sin beneath. Minnows. Some find my legs inside my pants and pick at my hairs. Kiss me. I wish for a fish to swallow me. To hold me in its belly the way she held my child. I want to give up my senses, one by one. To lose the taste of her. Forget the feel of her scalp on my fingers. How long does it take to drown?
I hear a man shout Cat!
Cat!
Someone wants me.
I taste the water one more time. Then I let the little current push me up. The dark has settled, the moon white again. The fat man, the young men, the brown men lie in blood. The black men roped to a tree. The horses still tied in the brush, fluttering. The night smells like smoke. Bitter. Bob and the Indian rummage in sacks. They empty out silver. A thousand extra moons. I crawl up wet on the bank, the gun wet in my hand. I thought he was a killer, I hear Bob say of me. He groans through his teeth, one arm clutching the other. I lean down to touch the fat man’s face. How did they find him behind his cot? His heavy body soft. Rude to treat it so. They slide the money back in bags, shuffle through the other packs for food and bits of scrip. Bob one-handed. Even in no light, moonlight, I can see their hands shaking. This was not the plan.