The narrowest portion of slough approached in the dim starlight. Dare kicked the horse’s flanks and circled away from the bank, preparing for the jump. As he rode, the motion confirmed his decision, cleared him of all doubts and worries, as motion always did. He saw Daney’s face before him, Caleb’s eyes, he saw his own branded cheek.
As he moved, he felt his skin darken. Perhaps if he moved fast enough and with enough purpose, he’d grow so dark there’d never be any question of it. Then he could walk comfortably among men, his head raised, his whole scar open to the air, then he could lay to rest the ghost of the overseer’s grinning face.
By the time the horse lifted from the ground, Dare was hardly even flesh and blood; he was pure black and free even of memory and time. And when the horse landed softly on the far bank, Dare knew exactly what to do: he would wait for the doctor and tell him that he was leaving the delta, that he would contact him when he could. No matter the wrenching cough from his lead-filled lungs, he was still strong enough to move clear. A slave who had moved clear, who could move, was a free man. And a free man could choose his own place to die.
Dare noted the fire glow on the horizon and slowed the horse. He watched, unsurprised, for five minutes, ten. Once, a long time ago, the crackling fires of a burning nation had been at his back, and almost three years of hard survival had been behind him too. Somehow he had survived the worst of the fighting and the diseases and had even come slowly to a greater understanding of himself and of the nature and purpose of the war. But though he had witnessed many terrible things, nothing ever touched him as deeply as the sight of Daney dragging her daughters and the coffle of women to their deaths. The man couldn’t shake the image the boy had seen; it haunted him more than the overseer’s revelations about his parentage. But the war cured him also of any illusions about seeing the world in so simple a fashion. Blood was well mixed in America, and suffering wasn’t limited to those of a single skin colour, no more than were the nobler qualities—a poor white farmboy, after all, a shy and gentle soul with some learning, had taught Dare to read on the dreary, dull bivouacs of the seemingly endless campaigns.
For he had no intention of failing at the war’s end, that much he knew almost from the moment he marched out of Sharpsburg with a new name. And with that conviction, pressed continually against the image of Daney’s final act, came the desire to prove himself against white men, to better them simply by escaping their traps again and again. Each time he moved on from a place, taking his tinsmithing skills with him, the smell of solder like a shield, he moved farther away from the burning brand that had left the scars of the insulting letters on his face. Now the final move had come, and he was not even sorry for it, as long as he could leave as a free man, with the money his skill and sweat had earned, with the knowledge that he had escaped the closing trap of the overseer’s grin once more.
The fire widened like daybreak down along the river. Dare lightly tapped the horse’s flanks with the heels of his boots and continued on toward the Lansdownes’ cannery. As he rode, shouts rolled up from the riverbank and across the flat ground and died. Approaching the Englishman’s house, he saw a dark shape move against the darkness. At the same time, a dog began barking. The sound chilled him. He dismounted and tethered his horse to a stump, vowing that he would not see the overseer’s grin, not look over from the smell of wet dog to Daney’s iron face above the trader’s wagon, not watch the black flies lift again from the bloodied muzzle.
But before he came close enough to see the live animal, the barking stopped. Somewhere in the dark a horse whinnied low.
As soon as he had made the connection between the fire and the shouts and the horse, Dare sprinted back.
He untethered and mounted, his blood pounding to join the hoof beats that came rapidly his way. He waited until the rider was nearly upon him before he kicked the horse forward and blocked the path. The other rider reined quickly, his head dropping. Dare jumped off his horse and, in seconds, grabbed the rider around the midsection and threw him to the ground. The horses neighed wildly and galloped into the darkness.
The man, pinned on his back, cried, “Who are you? What do you want with me?” His small eyes swam in his doughy face.
Dare pushed his knee down into the man’s chest and placed one hand near his neck. “Who are you working for?”
The man’s eyes filled with knowledge. His nostrils dilated. “My God, it’s you.” His voice shared the horses’ wildness. “What are you going to do to me?”
Dare closed his fingers slightly. The man began to choke. He tried to buck but Dare held firm.
“Who is it?” he said.
“Craig. It’s Craig.”
He could do it this time. He felt the will in his hand but even more in his blood. He tightened his grip. The man gave a gargling sound, like that of a salmon strangled in a net. Dare stared at him. This man had plotted against him for money, he had set a fire and had probably even shot Thomas Lansdowne, and all for money.
The letters on his face burned under the old scars. As if he were still property, still a nigger. But the burning meant slavery; why should it burn? He was not a slave. He had a home, on his own land. He had a place to die free. He pressed down until the man’s eyes fluttered and the choking sounds ceased.
At last he stopped and stood, his chest heaving, the fingers of his hand tingling, his cheek aflame. He could not kill when he was a slave, so how could he kill now? As a free man, a dying man? The idea froze him. He looked down. The man’s jaw worked slowly, his breath came in rasps.
“Please,” he said. “My child…”
The man touched his throat in wonder.
Dare gaped at him, at the naked word on his mouth. “A child?”
“A boy. He’s just nine. Please. I can’t leave him alone. His mother’s gone already.”
Nine? Once he’d been that age too. A boy. A son. Dare tried to look far down into himself, but there was only darkness, a darkness that seemed to pull him in. He felt his body succumb to the warm pressure until he lost awareness of his surroundings. Vaguely he whistled for his horse. It trotted out of the field toward him.
Dare took a step, then looked at the stars. Once he had been both things. The idea was so strange that it stopped him from taking another step. The horse nickered softly, the musk of its damp flesh reached out of the dark. But very briefly a son. And it did not seem he’d ever been a boy. Perhaps, if he had become a father, his own boyhood would have grown clearer to him. But he’d never stayed long enough in one place, and how could he have risked a family, never knowing with certainty the colour he would pass on?
He lifted the well-worn pouch from under his shirt and carefully emptied the contents into one hand. They shone like a constellation, near and farther away than anything. His milk teeth. Not even an ounce worth. And yet what he held was all he really possessed. It didn’t even matter about his name or his skin. Not now. A man couldn’t own them. What mattered was that the blood had to be cool enough for a man to die properly.
The teeth were so light, as light as the past was becoming. Dare looked at the clustered stars. It wasn’t only the Englishmen who could plant themselves in this place. The teeth were as small as the stars; he understood that he no longer needed the guidance of either. With a graceful sweep of his arm, he sowed the teeth into the fields.
A second later, he heard the chilling shout of the past and the present—“Goddamned nigger!”—and whirled just as the near-simultaneous blast of the shotgun struck.
Then the earth rose rapidly to meet him and the darkness, no longer inviting, but cold and unyielding, rushed in.