Jesmyn Ward - Sing, Unburied, Sing

There’s so much Jojo doesn’t know. There are so many stories I could tell him. The story of me and Parchman, as River told it, is a moth-eaten shirt, nibbled to threads: the shape is right, but the details have been erased. I could patch those holes. Make that shirt hang new, except for the tails. The end. But I could tell the boy what I know about River and the dogs.

When the warden and sergeant told River he was going to be in charge of the dogs after Kinnie escaped, he took the news easy, like he didn’t care if he did it or if he didn’t. When they named River to keep the dogs, I heard the men talking, especially some of the old-timers: said all the dog keepers were always older and White, long as they been there, long as they remembered. Even though some of those White men had been like Kinnie, had escaped and then been sent back to Parchman after they’d been caught fleeing or had killed or raped or maimed, the sergeant still chose them to train the dogs. If they had any talent for it, they were given the job. Even if they were flight risks, even if they had done terrible things both in and out of Parchman, the leashes were theirs. Even though they were terrible, dangerous White men, the old-timers still took more offense when they knew Riv would be their hunter. They didn’t like Riv taking care of the dogs. It’s different , they said, for the Black man to be a trusty, with a gun. Said: That’s unnatural, too, but that’s Parchman . But it was something about a colored man running the dogs; that was wrong. There had always been bad blood between dogs and Black people: they were bred adversaries: slaves running from the slobbering hounds, and then the convict man dodging them.

But River had a way with animals. The sergeant saw that. It didn’t matter to him that Riv couldn’t make the hounds hunt Kinnie. The sergeant knew there wasn’t another White inmate who could wrangle those dogs, so Riv was his best bet for training them, for keeping them keen. The dogs loved Riv. They turned floppy and silly when he came around. I saw it, because Riv asked them to transfer me out the fields and over to him so I could assist him. He saw how sick I was after I got whipped. He thought if I were left to my despair, my slow-knitting back, I would do something stupid. You smart , he said. Little and fast. He told the sergeant that I was wasted in the fields.

But I didn’t have River’s way with the dogs. I think some part of me hated and feared them. And they knew it. The dogs didn’t soften to silly puppies with me. Their tails stiffened, their backs straightened, and they stilled. When they saw Riv in the dark morning, they bounced and yapped, but when they saw me, they ossified to stone. River held out his hands to the dogs like he was a reverend and they were his church. They were quiet with listening, but he didn’t say anything. Something about the way they froze together in the blue dawn was worshipful. But when I held out my hand to them, like Riv told me, and waited for them to acclimate to my scent, to listen to me, they snapped and gurgled. Riv said: Have patience, Richie; it’s going to happen . I doubted. Even though the dogs hated me, and I still got up when the sun was a dim shine at the edge of the sky and spent all day hauling water and food and running after those mutts, I was still happier than I had been before, still lighter, almost, maybe okay. I know River hasn’t told Jojo that, because I never told River that when I ran, it felt like the wind was sweeping me along. I thought the wind might pick me up and hurl me through the air, buoy me up out of the shitty dog pens, the scarred fields, away from the gunmen and the trusty shooters and the sergeant up into the sky. That it would carry me away. When I was lying on my cot at night while River cleaned my wounds, those moments blinked around me like fireflies in the dark. I caught them in my hands and held them to me, a golden handful of light, before swallowing them.

I would tell Jojo this: That was no place for hope .

It only got worse when Hogjaw returned to Parchman. They called him Hogjaw because he was big and pale as a three-hundred-pound pig. His jaw was a hard square. His mouth a long thin line. He had the jaw of a hog that would gore. He was a killer. Everybody knew. He had escaped Parchman once, but then he committed another violent crime, shooting or stabbing someone, and he was sent back. That’s what a White man had to do to return to Parchman, even if he was free because he had escaped; a White man had to murder. Hogjaw did a lot of murdering, but when he came back, the warden put him over the dogs, over Riv . The warden said: It ain’t natural for a colored man to master dogs. A colored man doesn’t know how to master, because it ain’t in him to master. He said: The only thing a nigger knows how to do is slave .

I wasn’t light anymore. When I ran to fetch, I didn’t feel like I was racing the wind. There were no more firefly moments to blink at me in the dark. Hogjaw smelled bad. Sour like slop. The way he looked at me—there was something wrong about it. I didn’t know he was doing it until one day we were out running drills with the dogs, and Hogjaw said, “Come with me, boy.” He wanted me to follow him to the woods so we could run the dogs up trees. Hogjaw told River to run a message to the sergeant and leave us to the drills. Hogjaw put his hand on my back, gently. He grabbed my shoulders all the time, hands hard as trotters; he usually squeezed so tight I felt my back curving to bend, to kneel. River gave Hogjaw a hard look and stood in front of me that day, and said, “Sergeant need him.” He looked at me, tilted his head toward the compound, and said, “Go, boy. Now.” I turned and ran as fast as I could. My feet running to darkness. The next morning Riv woke me up and told me I wasn’t his dog runner anymore, and I was going back out in the field.

I want to tell the boy in the car this. Want to tell him how his pop tried to save me again and again, but he couldn’t. Jojo cuddles the golden girl to his chest and whispers to her as she plays with his ear, and as he murmurs, his voice like the waves of a calm bay lapping against a boat, I realize there is another scent in his blood. This is where he differs from River. This scent blooms stronger than the dark rich mud of the bottom; it is the salt of the sea, burning with brine. It pulses in the current of his veins. This is part of the reason he can see me while the others, excepting the little girl, can’t. I am subject to that pulse, helpless as a fisherman in a boat with no engine, no oars, while the tide bears him onward.

But I don’t tell the boy any of that. I settle in the crumpled bits of paper and plastic that litter the bottom of the car. I crouch like the scaly bird. I hold the burning scale in my closed hand, and I wait.

We got to leave the windows down because of the smell. I done used all the napkins I had shoved in the glove compartment to clean up the mess, but Michaela still look like she been smeared with paint, and she done rubbed it all over Jojo, and he won’t let her go so he can clean the throw-up off him, too. I’m all right , he said. I’m all right. But I can tell by the way he keep saying it that it ain’t all true. The part of me that can think around Michael knows what Jojo is saying ain’t true. That he ain’t all right, because he’s so worried about Michaela. Jojo keeps looking over at Misty, who is half leaning out the window, complaining about the smell ( You ain’t never going to be able to get that out , she said), and I expect him to look mad in the rearview like he did earlier when Misty complained. Instead, there’s something else there, something else in his wide-open eyes and his lips that done shrunk to nothing.