The Widow of the South (28 page)

Then she walked into the room, and I knew it was me. She and the preacher held their arms around each other and whispered for days, until they both turned to me. The preacher smiled. He was small and wore glasses. He was pale like he hadn’t ever been outside, and when he came toward me, his glasses quit reflecting the light and his eyes looked dark, almost black. He smiled and wiped his brow and stood in front of me. I was almost his height, but not quite. He told me to turn around, and so I did, but not before looking at my father one more time. My mother stood over him, closing his eyes tenderly with one hand while she pulled something out of his pocket. After I turned away I saw nothing.

But I heard the angel again, and the angel had another message. He said, “A fornicator, or covetous, or an idolator, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner: with such a one, no, not to eat.” And then he said, “But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen?” I heard the scrape of a shovel and saw my mother throwing dirt on the face of my father, who was lying in a hole. The yellow dirt filled his eyes and the wrinkles of his face until he was only something shaped like a man, and then he was nothing at all. The preacher stood by my mother and read from a book.

I felt ropes on my wrists and legs, and I could see the preacher and my mother, when the wind wasn’t blowing and blinding me with dust. I heard a voice, and I didn’t much care whose it was. “For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.”

I watched them ride away. My mother said, “Good-bye, my love,” and I thought I heard her laugh. I slept for a long time, maybe days. Then another angel came and untied me. He told me he was only a messenger and could not explain. Or else he said, “I don’t understand. What the hell has happened here, goddammit?” That part is never very clear in my dream. The last thing he says to me, after untying the ropes that bound me and kept me from getting up, is that I should go find my aunt and live with her.

That’s when I wake up. My aunt, I remember, never asked me why I’d come to her.

The next morning I awoke behind the tavern with my cheek resting on the ground, staring into the face of the Negro not ten feet away. In his sleep he looked younger, like a boy. The sight of his collar and his chain made me want to throw up, and I stumbled off to the edge of the woods and retched. I walked back and looked down on him. I had a simple thought that came to me quickly and which I could not ignore. I would not let anyone, even a Negro, be bound in my presence. Where was this Negro’s mama? His daddy? Who did he have? He’d been abandoned. I ain’t weak-minded enough to think he
was
me, but I knew he was enough like the boy I’d been that I couldn’t let it go like that.

The mistake I made was thinking I could sort things out all rational-like. I should have broken that chain right then. I was a fool.

Forrest arrived that next morning and created a stir. Some of the men shouted cheers and stamped their feet and called for a speech. I’d seen the man a couple of times and knew that he was no spontaneous speechifier. After a few moments, as Forrest dismounted and tied his black horse to the rail in front of the camp office, the shouts and talking died down. The men were seeing him truly for the first time, and I knew he weren’t what they expected. He got down slowly, and the only thing that came out of his mouth was a few loud, painful, wet coughs. He was skinny and completely gray. He was a tall man, but he looked short because he was so bent and twisted up. His eyes were red and watery, but there was still a little fierce in them, and so I knew better than to help him put up his horse. I was waiting for him at the doorway and stepped aside when he shuffled in.

That day we spent going over the books, papers everywhere. I had good handwriting, which was about the only useful thing I’d ever picked up as far as education, and I’d got taught pretty good by the previous clerk how to fill in the numbers and line ’em up. I didn’t know much, but I knowed about money. There weren’t much, and I could have told him that at the beginning and saved him the trouble, but he wanted to see everything for hisself. Wanted to see what every man was paid, wanted to see every dime we’d spent on timber and rails and spikes and tools. We toured the camp so he could see these things for himself, to make sure no one was stealing nothing. All day I waited for a moment to ask him my question, the one I’d begun to think up that morning out back of Twist’s place. When we returned to the office, he sat down and pulled out a flask and rummaged around for a tin cup. He did not invite me to join him, and he didn’t invite me to talk to him, either.

There was a ruckus outside. I went to the window and looked out toward the tavern and saw a crowd of the men standing around the nigger while the Gyp ran around him, poking him with a stick always just out of reach of the prisoner’s grasp. Forrest was watching me.

“What’s that sound? Ain’t they working?”

“They got a nigger chained up behind the tavern, General.”

“They do? Hmm.”

He went back to his flask and picked up the books again.

“General Forrest?”

He didn’t say anything. I think he knew what I was going to say and didn’t want to hear it, but I said it anyway.

“It ain’t right, General.”

“You damned right about that. This railroad should be
making
me money.”

“I mean that nigger.”

Silence.

“General, it ain’t right to have him chained up like that. It’s illegal. That boy ain’t done nothing.”

“He ain’t done nothing? Nothing?”

“They say he tried to steal a chicken.”

“Well, then.”

“But there ain’t no chickens.”

He put the book down and took a swig. He stared up at the ceiling for a while, cocked back in the chair, and let his legs stretch out in front of him. Then he fixed those red eyes on me.

“I don’t got the time to be worrying what every damned fool does with a Negro. If they happy, and they do my work for me, then I’m happy. I ain’t fooling with that.”

I was losing my chance. I knew he didn’t want no problems with Negroes on his railroad. Everyone knew he’d got hisself mixed up with the Ku Klux. I’d read the newspapers, and I knew he was doing everything he could to try to get people to forget that he was the wizard, or some such shit. I knew he didn’t care whether that nigger lived or died, but I also knew that his reputation had been bad for business. Folks didn’t really mind niggers getting their due for getting above themselves, as they said, but the rich ones and the politicians who gave out the money for railroads didn’t want to be the one to dirty their hands at it, or to be doing business with those who did. People were almost as afraid of the Ku Kluxers as they were of free Negroes roaming the country. That’s what the paper said. So I took a chance.

“What’s gone to happen when folks find out we got a nigger chained up like a dog at one of the Memphis & Selma camps?”

Now he stood up, and this time he weren’t bent over like an old man, and I could see why men had followed him. I’d have been too scared not to.

“All right, then.”

I didn’t know what he meant, but I followed him outside, down the steps, and over to the tavern where the Gyp was still running around like a fool with that stick. Forrest walked right through the middle of the crowd, which parted like a stream around a rock. He stood in the middle of the circle, and the Gyp stopped running and stood stock-still. Even the Negro paused and waited to hear what the man would say.

“Mr. Cashwell has told me that he wants this here nigger freed. I myself don’t care much about it one way or the other, but I
do
know that if the fool who chained this sumbitch up gets me in trouble for it, I gone to come back and put a bullet in that fool’s goddamn head. Seeing as how that would make a mess out of my railroad camp, and seeing how Mr. Cashwell has volunteered to solve my problem by freeing this nigger to go run off to wherever his people run off to, I’m gone to deputize Mr. Cashwell to free this nigger if he sees fit. And that’s the end of my problem.”

Well, the crowd didn’t like that much, I could tell, but only one of ’em would say anything about it. Twist stepped out of the crowd.

“That there nigger stole one of my chickens. I want my compensation.”

Forrest got a coughing fit right then, and he bent over and hacked out a gob between his feet. When he stood back up, he took a second to get his bearings again.

“You shut the hell up, little man. Don’t ever talk back to me.”

Then he walked right back through that crowd, got onto his horse, and rode away toward Memphis.

Well, that wasn’t the end of
my
problem. I knew I had only a few seconds to do what needed doing, before the men could fix themselves on me, so I walked forward as quickly as I could on my aching stump and unhooked that collar.

“Run like hell,”
I whispered.

The other men didn’t know what to do first, there was too much going on. Some were watching Forrest ride off, others were watching the nigger run into the woods, and I hoped that I could get back to the office without getting stopped. But Twist jumped in my path, just as I got clear of the crowd.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going, nigger lover? You done fucked up bad.”

The other men started to close around me, and I could smell their sweat and feel the heat of a hard day on the tracks drifting off ’em. I saw the Gyp go for his rifle, which was leaning against the chicken coop.

“Put that rifle down, boy, and the rest of you step back. You heard the general. The man had permission.”

Jerrod had his pistols out, one pointed at the Gyp and the other in the general direction of the crowd. He stood between me and the office. Thank God I’d made one friend at least.

“You all get back in that saloon and drink and forget all this shit. I been known to use these pistols. And I don’t even like any of you-all.”

Twist wasn’t giving up that easily.

“To hell with you, Jerrod. Cashwell is a nigger lover, and he owes me. He has disgraced me.”

Jerrod strode up to the little saloonkeeper and put one of his pistols to the man’s head.

“And I’ll disgrace your brains all over this ground if you don’t get back in that swill shop of yours.”

I didn’t stick around to hear the rest of it. I went as fast as I could toward the office, went inside, and barred the door behind me.
What the hell am I going to do now?
I looked around for my things, and I realized I didn’t have much except for a blanket and a Bible. I was wrapping them up together when I heard a knock on the door. I didn’t have a weapon except for an old axe in the corner, and I grabbed it.

“It’s me—Jerrod.”

I let him in. He took his broad-brimmed hat off his head, pushed his greasy black strands from in front of his face, and put it back on. He fixed on me with a queer look.

“You’re going to need more than that axe. Goddamn you’re a fool. Why the hell did you do that? Weren’t none of your business. What you care for a nigger anyway? You made a mess, boy. They in the tavern getting liquored up now, but that won’t hold ’em long. They gone to come for you. You got to run.”

“I know.”

“Then, git. I’ll stay behind for an hour or so, guard the road and make sure no one come after you. Then I’ll catch up. I’m sick of this railroad shit anyway. Which way you gone to head?”

“I don’t know. East, reckon. Toward Franklin.”

“Franklin?”

It just came up in my head like that, without thinking. But as soon as I said it, I knew that was the only place I would go.

“You deaf?” I said.

“Least I ain’t a gimp like you. Franklin it is.”

“Where’ll I meet you?”

“I’ll find you.”

Jerrod rode out of camp with me for about a mile or so, glowering at anyone who dared look at us. Then he pulled up, went into the woods to set up an ambush, and waved me on.

The next day Jerrod caught up to me while I was breaking camp and dousing my fire. He looked tired and happy.

“Shot me one of them bastards, but only winged him. They turned back after that. They had a noose, looked about your size.”

I thanked him and stoked the fire again. I’d caught a couple brim in a creek nearby and was going to save the other for the road, but I roasted it up by wrapping it in wet grass and burying it in the coals. Jerrod’s face went dark after he was done eating.

“You made an awful mess, Zachariah. I didn’t like what they were doing no more than you did, not that I’m a nigger lover, but I also knew better than to do
that
. What the hell did you think was going to happen?”

“I don’t know.”

He spit on the coals.

“They killed the nigger, you know. I heard one of ’em talking about it while I tracked them up the road. Put a railroad clamp around his neck and threw him in the river. They were looking for you and found him hiding in the woods not half a mile from camp. Didn’t know where to go or how to get there, I reckon.”

That’s when I knew I’d never go back to living like that. I had tried to make order of it all, and out of my order had come the killing of a man I had meant to save. There isn’t no pain like knowing that, picturing a man at the bottom of a river paying for my mistake. Jerrod was right. I had been stupid to think I could interfere in the doings of men like that.

I wasn’t like any of them men, and I don’t know how I got that way. But it was true. I didn’t know what kind of man I could be if I was not one of them, but I knew that there had been one time—
one
time—when I’d been showed a different man in myself, and that was when I was with Carrie McGavock. She would know what I should do. What I
wanted
to do was to take her away and love her like I knew I could. That’s what I’d always wanted. That’s what I’d never stopped thinking about, sitting in all those saloons and work camps in all those little forgotten places.
She
was always there. I stayed away because I knew I didn’t deserve her. But now I needed her, and that was something real powerful.