I sit by the fat man and wait. I can tell by his eyebrows he wasn’t cruel. Wasn’t a bad father. I put my fingers beneath his. Lean down to check his breath, but there is none. I am almost sad, but I remember there is no justice. God takes, or man takes, what he wants. Heavy gentlemen, and wives. Girls. Soldiers on both sides. I don’t want to see the other bodies. Just this one. The Indian said he was from Carolina, where I’m from. I wonder did he have a father with a still, did he not see the ocean till he was old, did he know a boy who went to war and never came back. Did he love. He is on his back, one hand by his side, the other reaching far out as if to say Help or Stop. His legs bunched up. Eyes half open and sleepy. I close them so as not to see their blue. I cross his hands on his chest. I stretch out his legs. I take off his shoes. He is not in his nightshirt but all his clothes, for it is March and cool and he was shy among all these men. I unbutton his waistcoat that is squeezing tight, to let him breathe. I pat him now like a pet or a donkey. His coat looks warm. I only have a shirt, which now is soaked with creek and crying, and I am still alive enough to feel the cold. I rub the wool. Slip my fingers wet into his pockets.
Inside his coat is a letter, rimmed in red. I save it from his blooming side and wipe the blood away. An address on the front, four lines in loops. Unsent. He has drawn a tree on the back. A little house beneath. A man and woman scratched in beside it. The man and the woman and the house and the tree. Inked hands touching. I wonder if he had a woman and a house and a tree, like I had a woman and a house and a tree. Now someone will be alone, like I am alone. It is my fault for burying myself in water when I could have stood by his cot and saved him. Saved the woman from having lost a man. Who am I to know why the black man and the Indian did what they did. What they needed. I only sit here holding a man’s heart in the night cold. I feel a roll of blood uncurl down my arms. A little aliveness.
They tell me to stand up, come on, their backs heavy with silver. Their hands still shaking. I look up the bank at the black men tied to the tree. They have no faces in the dark. They are not scared, this being the least of what they’ve seen. Of men not knowing what they do. They wait for the next slow turn. We leave them the horses. Behind me, Bob and the Indian are splashing slow across the creek. The minnows scatter. Cat! They want me. Even the Indian waits.
That they call my name, that they have killed these strangers and not myself, that they do not leave me here. What is this country?
There are men killed today, and I am not to blame. The Indian must carry it, who has no town or home. Bob must carry it, who has no wife. Or if he does she is weak or cruel, else he could not have left. This I know about my brothers.
I put the wet red letter in my pocket. I will eat it if I am hungry. If not, and when have I been hungry, I will find a man to carry it. He will bear it to Carolina, where Anne too lies waiting. Her body still on the bed, my hands still red with the blood I didn’t touch. Our child, the flower of us, waiting. If God is watching, let him quiet that blood shed with this blood saved and sent.
March 12–17, 1788 Winna
MY MASTER’S SPANISH wife is stretched beneath an open bedroom window, her fat feet propped on the sill so when the wind comes it goes straight down her skirts. I wait in the door until she decides to see me. My husband, who was not of my picking, has been gone more than a week. Someone finally thought to fetch me. She raises a hand, fidgets her fingers. I come over, stepping around the noisy spot where the floor is weak, and sit on the stool that puts my head about at a level with her raised ankles. She plops them on my lap.
I’m the good kind of slave, the kind that doesn’t talk too much or think. I start digging in, my thumb fiddling against the rough ball of her foot. I pull her skin hard enough so it won’t tickle. The bottom of her toes have caps on them, husks or horns that come to a fine edge. When she’s off on her topic and not paying attention, I run my fingers along them because she can’t feel. This time it’s my husband.
“José’s already had a letter from the Creeks; not there.”
“Mm.”
“Out nine hundred dollars, José. He’s a strong man, yes? Which one is he?”
I think of some way to describe him. I don’t think she’d know what a handsome black man is. “Six foot,” I say, “and then some.”
“Scars?”
“Not that you’d know to notice.”
“It does not matter to me, him missing. But José, of course.”
“Me neither.”
“He was a fool to lose the horse. Came right back to where it should. So we know, without a horse, either he is dead or run off. The trail is not that dangerous, so my guess is he went shoo. He say nothing to his wife?”
“He’s not much for talking.”
“Of course.” She frowns, then giggles and jerks a foot away.
I say sorry and lift it up again.
“You ever do this for him?”
I stop, my fingers laced between her toes.
“No, I think not. I wonder why a man run off and leave his lady, and here you go. You don’t serve him well.”
“I served him two babies.” I move up to her ankles, ringed in fine black hair.
“But love, no, that’s not in the bed.”
I cannot tell a white woman, however swarthy, that I do not love my husband, even if it isn’t true. “We get along fine,” I say.
“Mm, yes,” and she closes her eyes, dropping her fat round head to one shoulder. “You want to ask about José, but you are shy.”
I am not shy. I am very practical. I started off in the fields and I worked my way to the kitchen. And then into the house and up the stairs until I got here. The Spanish lady blabbers, but she doesn’t whip, not much. I don’t mind hearing about another country, or even my own country, because whoever it belongs to now surely won’t keep it long. This woman, her head lolling around her neck like an orange about to drop, can name her kings as fast as she can name her husbands. When I’m tired of listening, I just think about other things.
“We talk little,” she says, “but when he visits the bed we say very much. He even likes my horny toes. Like you.”
I glance up.
“If these lands did not belong to me, I think he would like mis piernas less. But who says this is no good? Foolish are the ones who wait, who pine, who say, ‘Is this how you feel?’ If love is not one way, it’s another. Frente al amor y la muerte no sirve de nada ser fuerte. Eh?”
“I agree,” I say.
“But here you are waiting! You Africans think too serious about everything. Think about you, not him. See what I do. Do I let José show me which way? No, no. I make commands.” She draws one of the curls from her head beneath her nose until it is straight, then lets it spring back. “But also do not let them go far, because the rope is shorter than you think and they will be off if you blink too long. Oh, I see. This is your case. Well, it is from being serious. Loving is very push-pull like that.”
I pretend not to hear. Her toenails are grown too long.
“You think he comes back?”