Walter Williams - The Rift

He set about the task.

*

Jason gazed at the woman's body lying beyond the fence. One-eighty-six, he thought. Murder. Stars eddied in his head. He could feel his breakfast surge in his stomach, and he swallowed hard.

He crouched on his heels on the grassy earth and looked at the body. He had seen so many bodies, he thought, bodies drifting down the river, blasted by bullets in Frankland's camp, bodies whimpering life away like Miss Deena, now this woman one-eighty-six'd by the guardians of this prison. The world was probably paved with bodies.

And not just the world, he corrected, but the universe. Sometimes stars blew up.

His throat ached, the pain greater than yesterday. Awareness of the precarious fragility of existence filled his mind. The woman had thrown her own existence away, deliberately tempted death by walking into the lane of death outside the camp. People said her name was Nora. Nobody seemed to know her last name.

Half her name, forgotten already.

Jason had not seen the killing. When Nick, Cudjo, and the others began to argue their various plans back and forth, Manon had firmly drawn Arlette and Jason away from the circle and brought them to a place where they could sleep under one of the cotton wagons. Manon also made a point of sleeping between Arlette and Jason, keeping them apart during the night. Her determination made Jason smile quietly in the darkness as he drifted to sleep.

The shots had torn Jason from sleep. Manon, beside him, woke with a cry, and Jason, in sudden fear, had put his hand over Manon's mouth and whispered “Be quiet!” in an urgent voice. He could see the starlight glimmering on her eyes as she submitted.

Don't let them hear you, don't let them see you, don't become a target. A child, powerless by nature, knows these rules by instinct.

Nora had disobeyed the rules and died.

What did you die for? Jason thought at the corpse. Life was a flash in the darkness, brief enough without throwing it away. Life was the only thing life had.

A modest aftershock trembled in the earth for a moment, then passed. Jason looked away from the corpse as he caught movement in the tail of his eye, Arlette walking toward him. That's what you die for, he thought with sudden certainty.

You die for what you love.

Jason rose and kissed Arlette hello. He put his arms around her. “How was Nick?” he asked, then winced at the pain in his throat.

“Asleep. I left his breakfast with him.” She looked at the body beyond the fence, then turned her head abruptly. “Let's go someplace else,” she said in a small voice.

There's no place else we can go, he almost said. But he said “All right” instead, and took Arlette's hand as they walked away from Nora, toward the front of the camp. There was an undercurrent of excitement, people meeting in small groups. Jason saw some half-concealed weapons, clubs and knives.

Nobody had included Jason in any of these schemes as yet. He and Arlette and Manon had a rendezvous, a place under one of the cotton wagons where they were supposed to meet in the event of an emergency. Other than that, Jason was at liberty, he supposed, to make his own plans, if he could work something out.

He could still try to escape tonight. Cudjo showed it could be done.

But Nora showed how it couldn't. He had to think about that.

He and Arlette paused in the shade of one of the camp's pecan trees. He kissed her again, looked into her somber brown eyes.

I would die for you, he wanted to say. Instead he tilted his head a little to the left, to ease the pain in his throat, and said, “How are you doing?”

“I'm okay.” She shrugged. “Shots, bodies.” Anger hardened her face. “I'm beginning to understand why you're mad at God.”

“I'm not anymore,” Jason said.

She looked at him.

“The universe is too big to be angry at it,” he said. “It's like being mad at this tree for being a pecan instead of a magnolia. It's a waste of our time.”

She glanced over one shoulder in the direction of the gate. Her eyes hardened. “Is it a waste to hate a murderer for being a murderer?” she said.

“Murderers are different,” Jason said. “They're more our size.”

Arlette gave a little sniff, tossed her head. “They're smaller,” she said. “Much smaller.”

“Yes,” Jason said. He glanced over the camp, the people in their small, hurried groups. “I was surprised that you or your mom didn't talk to Cudjo in French.”

A smile touched her lips. “I think his French was probably as funky as his English. I've learned French French, not Cajun, and probably Cudjo speaks a pretty strange version of Cajun, at that.”

“Captain Joe could have talked to him, I guess.”

“From what I heard of him over the radio, he probably could.”

He took her hands. “I'm glad we had a chance to be together last night, before Cudjo turned up.”

“And before my momma came and separated us.” She smiled.

“I don't think she's looking at us now,” Jason said.

“No. I don't think so.”

They kissed. Arlette leaned back against the tree. Jason pressed himself to her. Her presence whirled in his senses.

“God damn, girl,” said a voice. Jason turned, saw the three boys Arlette had spoken to the day before.

“What are you doing with this boy?” Sekou said to Arlette. “You think his color's catching? You think those peckerwoods won't hurt you, you kiss him hard enough?”

Fury flashed through Jason. He faced the other boys, fists clenched by his side. Then he saw that Sekou carried a heavy stick, just hanging casually against his leg, and that the boy called Raymond had a hammer stuck through his belt, and he took a step back.

“Why don't you mind your own business,” Arlette said.

“It's your business to be with black people,” Sekou said. “You're disrespecting the race.”

“Sisters gotta support the brothers,” Raymond said.

Arlette looked at them. “Even when they're being as charming as you?” she asked.

“We're gonna fight for you,” Sekou said, “so why are you hangin' with the little kid? Jason-” His tone turned mocking. “Jason! What kind of trifling Yuppie-ass name is that?”

Jason considered kicking the nearest one in the crotch and then running for it. He thought that probably some adult would call the situation to order before he got his head beaten in.

Anger flashed from Arlette's eyes. “Why don't you just leave us alone?” she said.

“Scandalous-ass bitch upset, now,” said Raymond.

“Jason saved my life,” Arlette said. “He saved my whole family from a boat full of crazy men. You want some respect, you go do something useful instead of fronting on this crap.”

Raymond looked at Jason from under half-closed eyelids. “You better watch it with the white boy,” he said. “They set up a nigga every time.”

His pulse throbbed in Jason's ears. He felt his toes curl in his Nikes. Getting the range on Raymond's crotch.

“Jason's black enough to be here !” Arlette said. “He's black enough for them !” She flung a pointing finger toward the deputies. Arlette's eyes flared. “He's black enough to die with you !”

The others fell silent. Arlette glared at them for a moment, then took Jason's arm and steered him away.

“‘Scandalous-ass bitch!’” she fumed. “You heard what they called me?”

Jason's mouth was dry. Adrenaline sang in his veins. He'd been a half-second from violence, and it would probably have been violence inflicted mostly on him.

“Thanks for sticking up for me,” he croaked through his injured throat.

“You stuck up for me when it counted,” she said.