The Eden Hunter (25 page)

The canoe sank a few miles past the headwaters of the Apalachicola, its hull busted by a collision with a log. Samuel dragged himself onto the east bank and then began walking south atop high bluffs that looked down onto the big river. Three days later the land flattened into pinewoods, and upon reaching the first
of the negro farms he was captured by Garçon’s Choctaws. That he had made it so far was one miracle, yet another was that he should arrive the very same day that Kau would be planning to leave. He offered these up to his friend as proof of God’s mercy, explaining that perhaps it was not too late for him to be saved. To be saved all one must do is believe. Such was the appeal of Christianity to a man born a slave.

 

SAMUEL WAVED HIS finger at him. “I think thas what’s off about you,” he said. “That you weren’t born no slave. That ain’t all you ever knew.”

Kau only nodded. Though he remained doubtful of a heaven in the sky, he had amended his own opinion on the subject of hell in the three months since leaving Yellowhammer. He had seen enough now to believe that, yes, there was a hell. But not an unknown hell, not a thereafter hell. A hell right here in the pinewoods. He had come to believe that in this hell-life he was paying for sins perpetrated in some better life before, things he had no memory of doing but that must have been evil indeed.

Still, he could guess Samuel’s reply to that. “Thas all jus fine,” Samuel would say. “But what about all the evil you doin here?”

 

IT GREW LATE. Beah had returned to the tent, and Samuel had given her the bed. Now she was asleep and snoring.

Kau sat with Samuel at the table. A candle burned between them, but because it was hot and still in the tent the flame did not flicker or even waver. He put a choice to the old man—Samuel
could leave with him or he could stay. “But I’m hopin you gonna come,” he said. “I really am.”

Samuel coughed into a yellowed handkerchief. He spit again and wiped his chin. “You told me I was a coward. You recall that?”

“It was wrong sayin that.”

“No, no. You was right in a way. I spent too much of my life thinkin on things. Not doin nothin.” Samuel laughed. “But all I know of dreams is that things never come about the way you see them in your head.”

“I spose.”

“So then a dream ain’t nothin but a chance erased. You wanna stave somethin off then go on and picture it.” Samuel rubbed his hands together quickly and then slapped them. “It won’t happen. At leas not the way you seen it happen.”

Just then Xavier came into the tent. He stared at Samuel, and Kau stood to introduce them. “Xavier, this here Samuel.”

Xavier was wearing osnaburgs and black boots. He had his canvas haversack slung across his shoulder, that and his longrifle. “
Sí
,” he said. “I have heard already.”

“Hey there, boy,” said Samuel.

Kau spoke: “I think he comin with us. Yes?”

“Yes,” said Samuel. “Yes.”

 

NOW HE SAT with Xavier at the table, and they let Samuel rest on a blanket spread across the dirt floor. They would leave just before dawn, and so to stay awake they spoke in whispers. Samuel had
begun to snore in rhythm with Beah, and finally Kau came around to asking about the girl Juaneta.

“You know her?” asked Xavier.

“Only some. We met up once.”

“I could probably show you all about her if you truly want to know.”

“I do.”

Xavier blew out the candle. “Then follow me,” he said.

 

THE FORT WAS asleep save the on-duty sentries, and a man was guarding the entrance to Garçon’s tent. The sentry grinned at Xavier. “They in there,” he said. “But be careful now.”

Xavier nodded and gave the sentry some tobacco, then they were allowed to venture around to the narrow gap of space between the wall of the fort and the backside of the tent. From within the tent Kau heard the murmur of a man speaking. Xavier pointed to a walnut-sized hole in the canvas and mouthed a single word: “Look.”

Kau pressed his face against the canvas, centering his eye on the peephole so that he was looking into Garçon’s private quarters. He saw a camp bed lit by a collection of oil lamps. Garçon was in uniform and pacing. Three naked girls sat on the bed—Juaneta and her twin sisters—and they were close enough for him to see beads of clear sweat on their smooth brown skin. Ramona held Juaneta’s right hand, Marcela her left. Garçon was lecturing Pelayo’s daughters in Spanish and they were listening. He finished his speech, then
slipped behind the curtain that kept his quarters shielded from the rest of the tent. When he came back he was carrying a chair and several strips of bright cloth. Garçon sat down in front of the three girls, and they went to him without a word. Juaneta removed the tricorn from his head and Ramona sat in his lap, straddling him in the chair as Marcela stood beside them and watched. The girls set about unraveling his braids, brushing them out one at a time before retying them oiled, exact, and perfect. Garçon spoke to them as they worked, saying more Spanish things. Juaneta’s small breast passed close to his face and he lashed out snake-like with his tongue, sliding it across her dark nipple so suddenly that she gasped and then giggled. Garçon rotated the girls, and Juaneta climbed onto his lap as they all traded places. She now had the stunned eyes of a doll, all three of them did. They moved as if in some trance.

The girls had taken up the strips of thin cloth, and they were tying Garçon’s ankles and wrists to the chair when Kau turned away from the peephole. He looked around for Xavier and saw him farther down the wall, staring through a peephole of his own and rubbing his crotch. Kau crept over and when Xavier heard him coming he rocked back, embarrassed.

Kau spoke into his ear. “I’m goin,” he said softly.

Xavier nodded but stayed where he was.

“Don be long.” Kau turned, but then he stopped and went back. “What all he tellin them?”

“
Dios mío
.” Xavier made a big circle with his hands. “Everything,” he whispered.

 

HE OPENED THE flap to the tent and saw that the candle had been relit. Beah was awake and talking to Samuel at the table. Her face was wet with tears, and Samuel was holding her hands in his own.

Kau stepped into the dim space and the two of them went quiet. Finally Beah stood and went to him; he saw that some of her effects were laid out across her bed.

“You really got a place we can go to?” she asked.

He nodded. “You comin now?”

“Yes,” said Samuel. “She comin.”

“That right?”

Beah took him by his chin and forced him to look up at her. “Why you didn’t tell me all you done? You done some bad things, too.”

“Hell things, you mean.”

“Yes, hell things. Jus like me.” She kissed him hard on his lips until Samuel said, Oh my, and she pulled away. “Come and help me pack up,” she said. “We need to be leavin.”

H
E WIPED ISRAEL’S longrifle down with an oiled rag while Beah collected her few possessions, and when she was finished she came and sat with him and Samuel at the table. Together they all waited, and in the last dark hour before false dawn Xavier finally returned to the tent. Kau told him that now Beah would also be joining them, and Xavier shook his head but was quiet.

They made their way to a porthole cut into the north wall, and Xavier was the first to slip outside the fort. Kau passed him their belongings, and then Beah struggled her big body through the porthole as well. For a moment he thought that maybe she would not fit but somehow she did.

Samuel was next. He passed Xavier his top hat and then leaned forward. Xavier dragged him outside, and Samuel began to mumble
and pray. Kau could hear Beah trying to calm the old man. “Please keep quiet now,” she told him. “Don fuss.”

After Samuel was through Kau turned and saw that a soldier had crept close and was watching him. The man raised his musket to his shoulder, and they stood staring at each other. He had splotches of white on his face and his neck. The sentry looked twice behind him, then jerked the barrel of his musket toward the porthole. “
Vayate
,” he said. “
Ahora
.”

 

HE WADED ACROSS the moat and joined the others. The sturdy funeral canoe still sat beached on the shore, and they loaded their things and pushed off. Kau heard a whistle as they pulled away. He looked and saw the faceless figure of the sentry standing alone atop the artillery bank, his thin arm held high and waving. Kau answered back with the warble of a redbird, then gave a farewell wave of his own and looked away, focusing on the wide and shining river that lay spread out before him.

 

THE CURRENT CARRIED the canoe south, and he sat in the bow, watching in the dark for logs as Xavier steered from the stern. Samuel and Beah slept hunched over between them. Earlier they had all agreed that it would be wise to quit the river before full sunrise, and so when the sky began to bleed red Xavier put to the western shore—the wilderness shore—and Kau woke the others.

 

THEY DECIDED THAT he would venture inland to scout for danger while the others waited by the river. He began loading the longrifle
while Xavier concealed the canoe with armfuls of cut palmetto and long moss. Beah had taken up a push pole and was using it to fish moss from the cypress trees. He watched as she pulled at one big tangle and a large bat came tearing out from within it. Beah screamed into her fist as the disturbed bat dropped low, almost to the ground, then went flapping off into the daylight to search for some new roost.

 

FOR THE FIRST time since his day in the dome swamp he found himself walking alone in the forest. A horse path ran north-south through the pines, following the river from a distance. He checked the trail for sign and saw that it was riddled with the fresh tracks of both shod and unshod horses. He considered the tracks and decided that they should make camp farther to the west—staying well clear of the daytime comings and goings that seemed to be required of men preparing for battle. He leapt across the path, careful to leave no prints of his own in the dry dirt.

He heard the horse before he saw it, a drumbeat rolling down on him from the north. He lay flat in a palmetto grove with the longrifle, watching as an Indian in a black turban blew past, bareback on a brown and white pony. The rider had the reins clinched in his teeth, and a loose end of his turban streamed behind him like a banner, mingling with horsetail. The pony continued on but in its wake a cloud of dust had lifted, refracting the light that came glinting through the high green pines. Kau rose up and again jumped the path. The forest quieted and he turned for the river, off to gather Samuel and Xavier and Beah.

 

THE INDIAN HE had seen was a Lower Creek, Xavier figured. Hurrying to bring some news to the American ships.

 

THEY HIKED INLAND for at least a half mile. Xavier led and then came Samuel and Beah. Kau followed with a bough of cut pine, sweeping away what tracks the others had left. The sun was well up when they finally stopped and he caught up with them. They were standing in pure pine forest, a flat savanna of wiregrass and longleafs.

A warm wind blew and the trees sang their whispery song. It was very hot now. Xavier had stolen bread from the fort, that and some salty strips of dried meat. Kau passed his canteen, and they ate clustered beneath the shade of a stunted pine. Eventually Xavier and Samuel left to find shade of their own, and Kau laid himself down beside Beah, listening as the two men arranged their bodies under whatever particular shadow that they themselves were chasing.

 

MIDDAY. HE AWOKE to a feeling that something was out of balance. He left Beah sleeping and went to check on the others. A short ways off through the wiregrass he found Samuel on his back beneath the trunk of a fallen longleaf, the top hat perched over his eyes, a blanket from Beah spread out beneath him. The old pine was held up by only a few rotting branches, and Kau wondered how Samuel could ever have fallen asleep there—knowing that at any moment those branches might break and the tree would collapse like a dead-fall, crushing any deer or bear or freed slave foolish enough to seek shelter underneath.

Nearby, hidden among palmettos, he found the flat nest of pine needles where Xavier had bedded down through the morning. But Xavier was gone. No Xavier, no haversack, no longrifle. No blanket, even. Kau cut for sign and found tracks leading east toward the river. He bent two thin saplings to mark this spot, then went back to wake Samuel and Beah.

 

BEAH WAS PACING around the stunted pine when he returned. She saw him and threw up her arms. “You off and left me,” she said.

“Xavier gone.”

A ray of sunlight split through the pine branches and settled on Beah’s round face. She shielded her eyes with the flat of her hand. “Gone?”

Kau pointed toward the river. “He done snuck away.”

“How come?”

“He say somethin to you?”

Beah shook her head. “Nothin. He took the canoe?”

He knelt to collect his saddlebags and the longrifle. “Don know,” he said. “Come on.”

 

SAMUEL WAS STILL asleep in his suicide shelter beneath the dead pine. Kau asked Beah to ease him out from under there, then he set off through the wiregrass alone. In soft and sandy places Xavier’s boots left clear tracks that had just begun to crumble at their edges. Kau compared the progress of their deterioration against one of his own small footprints, and decided that Xavier had only been gone a few hours at most. He checked the prime on the longrifle. Xavier
was a free man free to leave and go wherever—but to take the canoe from them would be something altogether different.

At the horse path he saw that Xavier had turned to the north, back in the direction of the fort. Kau quit the trail and went to the river. He found the canoe as they had left it and looked up at the sky. The sun had just begun its slow fall west. Kau closed his eyes but still saw orange and red and yellow.