Walk Through Darkness (30 page)

T
EN
William lay still as Dover took her turn silently reading the note. He stared up at the ceiling, his eyes once more engaged by the water-stained circles on the wooden beams. No matter how long he stared they seemed always in the process of expansion, each ring echoing outward, a moment captured in stillness, hiding motion even as his eyes imagined it. He lost himself in the contemplation of it, watching the ceiling, thinking of a pond, the undulations of a smooth surface disturbed by a rock, a stone that was in his own hand. He saw himself winding his arm back and tossing the stone, followed its arc through the air and down into the center of the ripples that had somehow formed in anticipation of its fall. It was a memory of sorts, though whether from reality or dream he was unsure.

Dover’s reading was no better than his was. Doubtless she did not comprehend the letter in complete detail, but when she lowered the note to her lap and met William’s gaze her face indicated that she had grasped the greater portion of it. There was no surprise on her features, no sign of anxiousness, no questions. Her façade was composed, held firm by a resolve William wasn’t sure how to read.

“Now you’re the one looking strange at me,” he said, not speaking his mind but needing to say something.

Dover shook her head. It was a simple movement, but one that shamed his inconsequential gripes to silence. With it she hushed all the nonsense he might wish to speak. “Let’s not waste words,” she said. She didn’t hold up the note, but nodded her head in a way that made it the subject of her speech. “This is your momma talking to you. She put herself down on this paper
and now she’s talking to you from the grave. She’s doing from that side what she never could in this one. She’s just brought your father to you.”

William had seemed almost lulled by her words, but at the mention of his father he awoke. “I don’t know anything bout that man. I don’t care what that note says. My mother told a lot of lies in her life. Could be that’s just another one.” He tried for some sort of firmness, but he couldn’t muster it. His words faded toward the end of the last sentence, his lips doubting them even as he spoke them.

Dover heard this and answered gently. “You never did your mother justice. Ever since I’ve known you you had things to say against her. You tried to forget bout her, wanted me in to fill her place in your heart. Don’t deny it. Think bout it. Live with that for a while and see if I’m not right. But don’t fight this, William. Don’t pretend it ain’t real. You don’t have to take this all on at once. Let’s us just do what we have to tonight and let tomorrow come in its own time. Let next week come and the week after that. You got all the time you need to get to know him.”

William glanced at her and away. He began to speak but then bit his lower lip between his teeth and pressed down till it pained him. “She shoulda told me,” he said. “She was all the time talking about him … about my father. About the other one, I mean.” He lost the train of his words and met the woman’s eyes again. None of it was clear. His head was a muddle of thoughts and emotions, memories and the melancholy they always pulled in their wake. Putting it into words just made it worse. “She shoulda told me,” he repeated.

“She did,” Dover said. “That’s what she done. Just took her time about it. Just made it so that the message came with the messenger and not before.”

They both heard the knock upstairs on the front door, the footsteps moving to answer it, the quiet tones of conversation, and then the more solid tread of a man’s boots.

“That’ll be the coal man,” Dover said. “Guess it’s time.”

“I need time to think,” William said, his eyes up on the ceiling, following the footsteps, watching the dust knocked free beneath the footfalls.

“But you don’t have time,” Dover said. “This night could set us free. You know that, don’t you? That man, Andrew Morrison, he’s the one sent to help us. He’s the one. I don’t know what sort of things he’s done in his life, don’t know who he is or just why he’s come. But he has. I don’t need to know everything bout him. I can see what I need to in his eyes, and in his actions.”

The young woman scooted closer. She leaned over William as best she could and blocked his vision. “You’re beautiful, William, and you’re strong. Thing is you don’t always know just what and how to use that strength. I used to think I knew best. Wanted you to rage at the world. Wanted to use your anger as a weapon.” She held one hand out before her mouth, her fingers trying to draw the words out of her and present them just right. “But that’s not the only way. This ain’t about forgiving him, not tonight, at least. Remember who wrote this note. Nan wrote it, and whatever was done between them she believed that he deserved the chance to set it right. Now I’m asking you a big thing, a harder thing than rage. But I need you to have the heart to trust her. To believe that something impossible might be possible. Ain’t that what this note’s telling you? Ain’t that what Red-ford was trying to teach us?”

William had closed his eyes as she talked. He opened them now. They were red and full of moisture, unsteady and flickering. When he spoke he didn’t answer her question but addressed something else altogether. “I didn’t believe her,” he said. “All them years I thought she was lying. Thought she was just like any nigger woman and I was just a bastard who didn’t have no father.”

“Well, that ain’t the first time you been wrong,” Dover said. She smiled. “And it won’t be the last.”

The door to the cellar opened. Voices slipped down to them. The stairs creaked.

“You gotta decide now,” Dover said. She reached out with one hand and wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes, delicate with the moisture, taking it from him and lifting it to her lips. “Your momma’s come back to school you. You gonna honor her this time?”

E
LEVEN
Morrison’s lungs burned in his chest. His legs were each a pedestal of torture and his lower back became the center of him, pain radiating from it as if a great spider was clasped there, sucking the life from him. But he didn’t slacken his pace. He moved through the alleyways as if he knew them by heart, trusting his legs, stumbling at times, once falling hard upon his kneecaps, once knicked across the forehead by some protrusion he hadn’t seen. Initially, the other men were close behind him, but he took a circuitous route, around warehouses and through back lanes, under a gated fence and through a market just awakened. He ran past the startled merchants—an old man in a frenzy, limp canine in his arms, wild eyed with grief or anger or resignation. Before long the gunfire faded. The only sounds were those of his feet and voice, his breathing and the slow rasp of the hound.

He talked through choked breaths as he ran, whispering courage into the hound, telling her the things they would do together in the future, the great hunts, the wide open spaces, the freedom. She had strength in her yet, he said. She would pull through yet. He cajoled her to stay this side of death. He ordered her to do so. And then, in his fatigue and pain and grief, his voice choked with sobs. He paused in an open, wooded area at the edge of an avenue. He would not have chosen the spot, but emotion grabbed at him in gasps. It took all of him to fight them down. He lowered the hound to ground and studied her wounds with more care. She had been slashed in one long stroke from under her ear down her shoulder. The gash was thick with blood, deep enough to have cut
through muscle and cartilage, the lower end flashing glimpses of ivory. It was a horrid wound, but it was not the one that threatened her. There was another mark, barely an inch wide, the only small sign of a stab wound. The knife must have punctured a lung for the hound’s breathing came both from her mouth and in a strange rasp out of her chest cavity itself.

Morrison flung off his jacket. He held the material in his hands as if he might shred it, but then tossed it down and tore off his own shirt. He ripped the garment down the back, making two halves of it. He knelt down with them, testing them against the wounds, trying to measure the hound and best bandage her. And then he realized he didn’t know how to bind such wounds. They didn’t fit together neatly. He needed help. He bent and, still shirtless, heaved her into his arms again. She groaned as she came to rest against his skin. Her eyes opened and rolled up at him. She growled and seemed not to recognize him. She kicked her hind legs, but as they found no purchase in the air she gave up. The man ran on, talking again, explaining that he was taking her to help. This was too much for him. He had gotten her in over her head and he was sorry for it. He would still see her to safety, he promised. He would carry her all the way. She could trust him still. He would run with her, but not from her. He wasn’t that type of man anymore.

He was upon the meeting area before he knew it. He strode into the corner of the square and paused, casting about him. The sky was an opal blue now, lit to the east with a pink hue, smooth and delicate like the inside of some seashell. But it was too quiet in the square, too normal. The façades of the homes stared out, each a face of window-eyes and door-mouths. At first glance there was no movement save that of pigeons sweeping down from the roofs and stirring bits of rubbish as they landed. For a moment, Morrison was taken over by the ringing fear that this was it. It had all come to this. To nothing. He was alone in the world, even more so now that he had killed she who had been so faithful and since those to whom he had tried to make amends had spurned him.

Then he saw them.

The covered wagon was there at the far edge of the square, some fifty yards away. The coal sled was drawn up near it, and the young immigrant
was helping Dover into the back of the wagon. Morrison could not see William, but he knew immediately that he was there, resting beneath the cloth covering. They were all there. He began to stumble toward them across the square, under and through the great oaks that shaded it. Midway across the others saw him. Dover’s face peered out of the wagon and a moment later William peeked out as well. Their two dark faces watched his progress. The old Scot trudged toward them, tired like he had never been before, with the limp body of the hound cradled in his arms, thinking that here before him was all the family he had in the world.

E
PILOGUE
From the hull of the ship cries are heard. The crew looks one to another and, like superstitious men, they say nothing. The cries are crazed howls at the edge of life and death. At times they are moans so deep they seem to be protests from the tortured spine of the ship itself. Other times they are sharp-edged and raw and cut through the sea noise like talons through flesh. But all of these sounds come from a single woman. They are the cries of a life-giver, and the emotion behind them silences all the crew with newfound humility. The boat rocks through it all, for the motion of the world and its seas do not pause to mark the arrival of any one creature.

The woman in the berth below has a rhythm of her own and it comes to her in defiance of all else. She feels herself splitting, feels a great, great pressure, as if her body contains all of creation within it and she can hold it back no longer. She pains but in her own way that pain is pleasure, for she believes that this baby will be born into a world without masters. Nobody within miles and miles and miles will lay their hands upon this child in ownership. She pushes, not for the first time, but this time, for a moment at least, the boat’s rhythm is one with the woman’s. She
pushes, and the boat leans to aid her. She grits her teeth, and the boat holds its breath upon the back side of a wave. The woman hisses a curse at life, and the boat begins its downward slide. Before it ends, the child slips forth into its father’s arms. The newborn is slippery and moist, flesh soft and gray. Air hits the child’s face like a shock and all is silence.

The boat creaks as it begins to ride the next swell. The men on the deck are battered by the wind and they hear nothing save the roar of air and water. And deep within the silence lingers long, long, long. The father stands trembling with the joy and fright. He doesn’t know what to do and stands awed until the white man speaks in his ear and instructs him with knowledge that comes from he knows not where. This old man who never thought of himself as a father—who took life often but never knowingly gave it—seems as adept as any midwife. He checks the babe’s mouth and nose. Deeming them clear, he pushes the father’s hands, and therefore the baby, toward the mother’s breast. In these moments the Scotsman feels something he has not felt before and that is the grand bliss of life. And also beneath it is a sadness that he doesn’t wish to address at that moment. The mother takes the child in her arms, the cord between them still pulsing. The moisture on the babe is a great bloody filth and yet it is her filth. She would happily lick the child clean, no different in this devotion than the hound who watches the scene from the edge of the cabin.

The baby wakes from her brief stupor and plays her part in this drama as she knows she must. She lifts her head and opens her mouth and cries the trauma of birth. She cries for the wonder she has just awakened to and for the wonders yet to be found. She cries with the voice of all those who came before her and who live on within her. She cries, as do they all, each of them in that small chamber, overcome. They cry another baby into this world.

As do we all.