Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

“Owen” he said, still without looking at me, “what I am is tired. My back feels broke from three days and nights up on that wagon out there. Maybe we can talk about these matters later, when I’ve got me some rest.”

I don’t know what came over me then, but my ears began to buzz, and a gauzy, blood-red screen dropped before my eyes. With no conscious intention or desire to do it, I grabbed Lyman by the shoulder with my right hand, clamped my left onto his belt, and lifted and flung him bodily across the room, banging him hard against the stall, causing the horses to roll their eyes in fear and stamp their feet. He slid to the floor, shaken and astonished, and looked up at me with fear in his eyes for the first time ever, which I took in happily almost, accepting his gaze with a strange relief. As if I had long wanted him to fear me.

He said in a steady, low voice, “There’s something gone wrong in you.”

My breathing came hard, although I had not exerted myself — I was very strong, and Lyman, not a large man, had not resisted me. “Maybe… maybe there is. No, nothing is wrong in me. But my priorities… I have to hold to my priorities. This farm, it’s all so shaky. The winter’s coming. You wouldn’t listen.”

Slowly, he got to his feet and brushed bits of hay off his coat and trousers and put his cap back on, restoring his dignity. “I’m listening now,” was all he said.

“Well, we’ve got these priorities. The farm and all. And responsibilities, to the family. To your family, too. You and I, we’ve got to take care of them in the proper way. Then we can attend to the others, to the Railroad and all that. But it’s not like we have Father here for that. Don’t you understand?”

“I understand. Priorities. Responsibilities. I understand those things just fine.”

He moved warily towards the open barn door, facing me all the while, as if he expected me to attack him again. And I was gladdened by his wariness. I knew that in an hour, perhaps in a moment or two, I would surely collapse inside myself with shame and would beg Lyman’s forgiveness; but right then I was determined to keep myself open to these feelings of unexpected joy and to let them flow through me like a cold wind. By attacking Lyman physically, I had released in myself something dark and wonderfully satisfying. It was as if an ice-dam had let go, and huge chunks of ice, a flotilla of logs and fallen trees and frozen debris, were cascading over boulders and cliffs, making a great roar, and I was at this instant thrilled by the sheer power and noise of the flow.

I had done the forbidden thing. I had struck a black man.

I took a step towards him, and he jumped back, nearly out the door of the barn into the yard.

I reached for him, and he jumped again. “Why didn’t you fight me, Lyman?”

He squinted up at me as if he had not heard right.

“I want to know. Why didn’t you fight me, just now?”

“You think I’m a fool?”

“Is it because I’m white?”

He laughed coldly. “No, Owen, it ain’t because you’re white. I ain’t afraid of your skin. I might be afraid of what you got inside your head, though. And I treat any man twice my size with a certain caution. That’s all.”

“Well, it’s over,” I said. I couldn’t apologize, not yet, but I said, “I swear, 111 never do that again.”

He hesitated a moment and stared at me, and I saw that the fear had dissipated somewhat, replaced by something harder, darker. “Maybe so. Maybe not. Time will tell that.” He looked more sad than anything else. He said, “You tell me something, though.”

“What?”

“When you grab onto me like that and toss me down, you doing it because you can. Is that because I’m a whole lot smaller than you? Or is it because I’m colored?”

I was silent for a few seconds but did not look away. “You know the answer to that.”

“Say it, then.”

“It’s not because you’re smaller than me.”

“Right. It’s my skin. You’re afraid of my skin. But I ain’t afraid of yours. Which is why I didn’t fight you back. That’s what we got here. Ain’t it?”

“I can’t lie to you.”

“‘Appreciate that,” he said. “I’m going in now. We can discuss all those priorities and responsibilities of yours later on, if you want. But I got some of my own need tending first.” He turned, straightened, and walked towards the house and went quickly inside.

I saw smoke curling from the chimney; Mary had set the fire, and I could see her through the window at the stove, smiling broadly at Lyman as he entered, and Susan crossing the room towards him with her arms out. The others were probably already up and about, too, and were greeting him, welcoming him home, relieved that he had gotten back from the border safe and unharmed. And I saw that I, who was going to lead them, would now have to follow.

We remained friends, Lyman and I, but only of a sort, for there was now between us a nearly tangible distance, as if we were condemned to carry a long stick together, which connected us one to the other and at the same time kept us strictly apart. Each man was at all times painfully conscious of the other’s presence and, when it occurred, his absence as well. A difficult intimacy; but it was all we had now.

I made no further argument against his priorities or for mine, and whenever he took the horse and wagon and was gone from the farm for two or three days at a time, I barely acknowledged to him that I had noticed. When he returned and had rested, he would come directly to me, say nothing about where he had been, and politely ask where did I want him to work that day. I assigned him to whatever task was at hand, and he pitched himself whole-heartedly into it. But then a few days or a week would pass, and word would come that he had passengers waiting over at Timbuctoo, and he’d be gone again.

I forbade the boys to join him on these runs, causing at first some tension between me and Watson, particularly; he had grown stridently anti-slavery — as a way of asserting his new manhood, I supposed. But he was eventually mollified by my promise that, as soon as we had the place in shape for winter, he and I both would join Lyman carrying slaves to freedom. We’d go back to “the work.”

By the time the snows were falling heavily and regularly and temperatures no longer went above zero and the winds from Canada had begun their scraping howl, there were no more escaped slaves coming our way, and we all, even Lyman, from then till spring, spent our days and nights pretty much inside. By mid-December, however, before the heavy snows and cold hit, we had managed to cut and stack close to fifty cords of firewood, most of which, to Lyman’s and the boys’ credit, came from hardwood trees that they had dropped and trimmed in the forest earlier in the autumn. We finished the cold cellar and the other outbuildings, fenced in the sheepfolds, bred the ewes, did all the fall butchering, ran a short sawdust barrier around the base of the house, and completed half-a-hundred other chores and jobs — all of it done before winter finally descended with its full strength.

After that, Lyman withdrew and spent his days mostly in his blacksmith’s shop, manufacturing ironwork for the farm, everything from nails to fireplace dogs, and I worked alone, too, usually in the barn, where, among other useful things, I built a set of sled runners and affixed them to the wagon in place of the wheels, making a sleigh of it, which enabled us to get quickly and comfortably to church on the Sabbath and into the settlement, where we milled our grain and corn, sold fleeces, leather, and woolen cloth for a little cash money, and visited the few families we still felt comfortable with, such as the Nashes, the Brewsters, and the Thompsons; with the latter, through the connection between their son Henry and sister Ruth, we were becoming nicely linked.