Wash (20 page)

But I was lucky. I came to my knowing early. Some folks never do figure it out.

After Eli knocked me in the head, it took a long while for me to get back on my feet. My mamma worked double time on the smocking Sissy passed on to her and those Thompson boys started getting some good coin for my mamma’s stitching. They sold her christening dresses as far as Baltimore and New York. Talking about how dark she was and how they liked seeing the pale of fine cotton finally shining some light up into her face.

My mamma kept her mouth shut, humming her growing up songs to herself and pulling her needle and thread through that cotton. With me courting trouble, Richardson locked up in that prisoner of war camp in Canada and those boys not about to spare somebody to carry us all the way out to Tennessee, life was getting tight.

It was her trying to find out about Richardson that riled them. It was her looking at the ground like she didn’t have a thought in her head when they talked to her, but then hovering close to each and every visitor, all quick and slick, trying to get some kind of word. That’s what got under their skin. They saw she was aiming to get us gone from there. Before I led em straight to killing me was what she told me. Trying to keep me alive. At all costs was what she said. At all costs.

It killed em to be feeding me while I was down so my mamma split her cornmeal and fatback with me but it wasn’t enough for her to begin with. If Rufus hadn’t carried us those strips of squirrel and possum and coon he snared then snuck smoked while he made his charcoal out in the woods, I doubt I’d ever gotten back at myself.

Soon as I did, I went right on back to his shop ready to pick up where I had left off. Trouble was, I couldn’t really see straight anymore. I could see a thing plenty well. Even two things at the same time. And none of it was blurry. But I couldn’t always tell how close something was. Or how far away.

Wasn’t too much of a problem. I’d stretch my hand out towards an edge and stay ready to grab ahold of it whenever I got to it, acting like I knew what I was doing, so nobody caught on to what I was seeing and what I wasn’t. But in that shop, you got to set a piece just right then send your hammer down on that one right place at just the right angle, telling the metal which way you want it to go. You need to be able to see your edges clear.

Started out fine that first morning back. Felt good to be back in there with Rufus. All the jobs lined up on the wall. The sound of the fire. No talking till nearly lunchtime.

“Trying to keep you out of trouble.”

“Trouble came to me, didn’t it?”

He nodded and that eyebrow went up, “Right straight for you.”

I knew Rufus was worried about my seeing from the way he acted. He tried to start me out slow and easy but I wasn’t having none of it. I went right at it because I needed to know too. Started in on that ax blade he’d been saving for me to finish. But soon as I missed my first strike, Rufus was quick to stop me and put me on a different job. I knew he’d been watching me out of the corner of his eye the whole time, ready to jump in before I had too much chance to see what the trouble was.

I’m standing there holding my ax blade with my tongs, looking at it laying there on my anvil, watching it cool. I’m looking at that first wrong dent I made with my first wrong blow on my first morning back when Rufus turns and wraps one hand round my tongs right below where I’m holding em. Then he holds out his other palm for me to give him my hammer. He steps between me and the anvil, saying why don’t you find that other blade I finished yesterday and see does it need oiling.

I stood there looking at that big old back, watching his hand lifting my hammer up and letting it drop, watching him finish off my piece. Smoothing out my blade. After a minute of me standing there behind him, Rufus stopped, like he could feel my stillness. Then he threw a look over his shoulder, saying well if you don’t want to oil that blade then go carry me in another load of charcoal.

When I looked at the charcoal bin and saw it was already full to overflowing, that was when the mad rose up in me like fire roaring from the bellows. I knew better than to grab his shoulder and turn him to me so I stepped round from behind. I stood facing him across that anvil where he had laid my ax blade cooling. I was mad with him for treating me like I didn’t know nothing, like he could keep anything from me, like I wasn’t even grown.

“What the hell do you think I don’t know? What you think I can’t see?”

Rufus tried to turn away but I followed him, circling round, trying to stay in his face. But he kept turning, making me bark up at him like a hound that’s got something treed.

“What you gonna tell me about how to do now? Huh? Huh?”

I’m good and yelling now and Rufus stopped turning away from me. He laid my hammer down then he let go the tongs and my cold ax blade fell to the floor, jangling and clanging. He turned towards me, slapped me across my face and told me to shut my mouth. I knew how close he was by how his shape filled my eye but then he went blurry from tears welling up. I don’t know how long went by before anything happened.

All I know is after a while, I heard my teeth chattering together, loud as bones being played inside my head. I remember trying to stop the sound by clamping my jaws shut, but soon as I’d draw another big breath, they’d start up again. I couldn’t clamp down hard enough to keep my teeth from chattering and still breathe at the same time.

Next thing I know, Rufus has me pulled close. One arm wrapped round my back real tight with the other elbow resting on my shoulder, making a fist that’s falling real light, over and over against the good side of my head.

Rufus had pulled me to him once or twice before when I was littler and he was proud of something I did or tickled by something I said. But this was different. Those other times had been easy and relaxed. He’d grab me and then turn me loose right quick, moving on to the next thing.

This time was different. Rufus stood so still he felt like a block of wood. His arm wrapped tight round my back felt like a board trapping me and I started to panic. I’d never wanted to get away from him before and my head didn’t fit under his chin anymore. My ear was right next to his cheek and I heard him say something sounding like I’m sorry, but so soft I’m still not sure whether it was just him breathing. I looked over his shoulder at his shop wrapped warm round us, knowing there was no place in it for me and wondering what the hell was I gonna do now.

I just waited for him to drop his arm so I could go. Soon as Rufus loosed his grip, I turned and headed for the door. That’s when I saw I had to duck to get through it. Tall as Rufus all the sudden. Guess I’d been laying there growing all that spring while my mamma was healing my head.

Found out later, those Thompson boys called Rufus up to the house that same night Eli hit me. Told him to pick out some other boy for his shop. Said I was coming up too much trouble. Said only a born fool would keep putting me in that shop with him and all those locks and shackles and keys. They’d send me so far out in the fields I wouldn’t hardly remember Rufus or Cleo or none of em.

He’d stood there on the porch nodding, saying lemme sleep on it. Telling em he’d pick somebody in the morning. Trying to buy himself some time till Cleo could hand him the name of some boy she knew wouldn’t get on his nerves too bad.

Wasn’t till later when Rufus told me how he stood there saying to those boys, mmmhmmm and yessirrrrsssss, all slurred like that, letting em think he was drunk and hearing em laugh at him when he stepped off the porch. Said he even felt drunk and dizzy too from trying to smother being mad at em for taking me and ruining me so easy. Said he was so mad, he barely had enough juice left over to make his mouth and his face do what he needed em to do till he could walk away from that house.

Said all he knew was he wasn’t seeing things too clear himself anymore and he needed all the help he could get. Wasn’t too long after that when Cleo got sold and Rufus started going downhill.

∞

There is no particular thing that leads Cleo by the hand toward poisoning those Thompson boys that summer after Eli hit Wash. Life has started to get better instead of worse after some of old man Thompson’s friends pay a few calls, telling those boys they need to stop having these troublesome incidents with their negroes. Reminding them that Eli still needs a wife and make no mistake, people talk.

But every time that overseer Pickens steps over the line, one or another young man comes to Cleo in her hospital, asking for poison, talking about what he’s going to do to that overseer man. How he wants to stand up there in the doorway of Pickens’s house, watching him lying on his floor jerking and drooling, pulling his furniture down around him. Cleo just shakes her head.

“No you ain’t. Not in a million years. That won’t fix nothing. Knock him down and it’ll be somebody new. Use your head now, use your head.”

Those are the things Cleo says and she means them. But there’s always a deeper layer, running underneath all the reasoning and the making sense. It is this deep down layer that leads Cleo’s mind through thinking about poisoning those Thompson brothers. About them dying and being gone. Stopping them from talking about her the way they do.

Her everyday mind knows it doesn’t make any sense. Knows she can usually find a way to make things all right. Knows she wants to keep seeing Rufus coming through their cabin door, earning enough money to buy them both before too long. Knows there’s some other white man who would come in even if she did somehow kill all these here. She knows this and she tells it to herself over and over but that underneath part is not listening.

It isn’t anything specific. Just a rise in the river. Given a certain amount of rain within a certain time, a river will jump its banks and there’s nothing anybody can do.

As Cleo goes about her work in that little hospital, she sees how to do it. She watches herself in her mind’s eye, grinding those medicines into some kind of poison with her mortar and pestle. The cool of the stone bowl warmed by her hand cupping it. She feels the give and crunch of the medicine as she grinds it down. Even turns her head to the side so as not to breathe any of its dust.

Rufus always tells her she best be careful where she lets her mind go because it remembers and holds the tracks of every step. And he’s right. All that running her mind over it she does just to get herself through the day starts adding up and spilling over. Like Rufus says, even when your mind wanders, it’s going someplace, and all that traveling adds up. Builds momentum until you got to go somewhere and do something. Cleo just stops stopping herself, that’s all. Once she lets herself grind up the poison, it’s already done.

All it takes is one pass through the kitchen where Hannah has left the fire untended to carry a dish into the dining room. When Cleo looks down into that cookpot and sees those chunks of good meat in it, she goes ahead because she knows none of hers will get any. Pours her powder into their stew with a couple of stirs and walks back out the door. All of it as smooth and easy as a dream.

It isn’t until later that night when it hits her. Sitting with Rufus on their bench, leaning against the far side of their cabin, she hears herself telling him what she has done. The words drop from her mouth like marbles in a steady clinking rush to fall still in the dust at their feet. She says it so casual, mixed in with other things about her day, that Rufus does not hear it right at first.

“Maylene had her baby and we named him Early because he was. Justice finally broke his fever and recognized me. I poisoned those Thompsons that was at the table tonight.”

Rufus sits there, warm and easy next to her. Relaxed. Thinking about going fishing with Wash. Digging for worms. The rock of the boat. But now there is something nagging at him, like a bug in his face he needs to swat but his hands are busy.

It takes him a long while to turn and look into her face and in that time, Cleo sees she has taken her life and broken it with her own two hands. Then Rufus is on his knees on the ground in front of her with his arms wrapped around her hips and his head and shoulders in her lap. She looks down onto the back of his close cropped head and she watches it tilt back and forth, feeling him saying to her no. No. All without making a sound.

She cups his head in her hands, asking God to please wake her from this dream, but God is nowhere to be found. She lets her hands be soft and heavy on Rufus’s head, smoothing his brow toward his scalp. Waiting for lights to start coming on in the big house. Seeing now there is no way every one of them got enough poison to kill them all.

Rufus lifts his head to look at her as he rolls back off his knees onto his haunches, not even asking her what will they do now, knowing she does not know. He moves onto the bench to sit next to her again, letting what she has told him come in on him anew. Feeling himself cut open on a blade so sharp that he does not yet feel pain. Only a sudden breeze, cool on the wetness of laid open skin.

He lets his head fall back and rolls it side to side against the rough wall of the cabin. He is holding her hand. He feels the edge of the cornering strip on the window and he raises his head off the wall only to let it fall harder and harder against the edge of that strip until he can feel something besides the echoing empty space of Cleo not being right here by him and with him.

“You got to go. They’ll tell.”

“Nothing to tell.”

“Road leads straight to you.”