Pete Hamill - Forever

That Saturday night, the mobs were larger, moving everywhere in their purging fury, and searching homes and shops and workplaces. Cormac suggested to Mr. Partridge that they rent a horse and move books and documents somewhere north, out of the city, to hide them, wait a few weeks, and then return when the mobs had gone quiet.

“I’m afraid you’re right,” he said. “I’ll go for a horse.”

Off he went, and then Cormac heard a mob coming down Cortlandt Street, and looked out and saw Kongo. Stones and bottles were smashing around him. He saw Cormac but kept running. Cormac grabbed the sword and stepped outside as the mob rushed by the shop.

Kongo was down, his skull bloodied. He was bent into a small target, hands covering his head, while the whites kicked at him, cursed him, jammed the blunt ends of poles into his ribs, trying to get at his balls. They were screaming fecking cannibal and goddamned savage and black bastard .

Cormac broke through, holding the sword.

“Enough,” he said. “Let him be. If you kill him, you’ll all be charged with murder. I’ll make certain of that.”

They backed up, wary of the sword, scrutinizing Cormac’s bearded face. One jittery-eyed man with glossy black hair shoved a hand inside his coat.

“You Oirish bastard,” he said. “You’re one of them, ain’t you?”

Another rushed from the side holding a club, and when he raised it Cormac knocked him down with a punch. Then they started poking at him with the poles and bats. Cormac ducked and bobbed, and glimpsed Kongo’s eyes in the light of a torch, angry and cold, in a sitting position now, thinking of what could be done. One man lunged with a pole and Cormac cut it in half. Another made a thrust with his own crude lance and Cormac sliced it clean an inch from the man’s hand. Then Michaels, the old constable, pushed through the crazed men, his lantern held high.

Not another kick, you lot. Away with ye.

His severe tone was enough to stop them. Cormac stood back a few feet, the sword hanging loose behind him, out of sight. The whites consoled themselves with a simple fact: They’d captured an African. The constable told four of them to remain, to help him bring Kongo to a holding pen, and the rest turned and went off toward the waterfront, chanting words Cormac couldn’t fully hear, brave as any mob. The constable reached down, bringing thick twine from a pocket, and lashed Kongo’s hands behind his back. Kongo stood up. He said something in Yoruba, and the constable clubbed him across the brow.

“He was thanking you, Mr. Michaels,” Cormac said.

“For what? I wish they’d killed him.”

Kongo was bleeding from a deep gash in the back of his head and from a rip above his right brow. The sight of blood encouraged one of the four men. He stepped forward and kicked Kongo in the groin. And then smiled as Kongo doubled over, refusing to utter a sound.

“You must have balls of iron, nigger.”

Kongo spat some blood.

“Let’s try it again,” the man said.

Cormac stepped forward, now holding the sword for all to see. They looked at him in amazement. Michaels paused. Kongo stared.

“Release him,” Cormac said.

Nobody moved.

“I said, let him go.”

“You’ll be hanged for this,” the constable said.

“Perhaps. But you’ll be dead.”

The constable looked anxious. Then one of the whites rushed from the left side, a club raised high. Cormac cut the club in half and then smashed the man’s face with the wolf-bone handle of the sword. But he didn’t see the man on the right. The man who fired the pistol. The sound was very loud. Pain cut through Cormac’s left shoulder. Above the heart. He thought: I’ve been shot in the back. Cormac turned, bleeding from chest and back. He pivoted. Swung the sword down, cut into a meaty thigh, and a fat man holding a pistol fell in a gush of blood and high-pitched wailing. The pistol clattered on cobblestones. Another man drew a sword. Cormac wobbled, losing blood front and back, a red film falling across his eyes, but even a feeble swing severed the swordsman’s hand from its wrist. The man yelped in shock, gripping his forearm, fell to one knee, rose in panic. The constable ran after him, and so did the others. They only wanted to fight if they were winning.

Cormac sliced through Kongo’s ropes. The walls of shuttered houses seemed to bend forward, then back, tottering like drunks. He saw three moons in the sky. From the distance, he heard an unseen chanting mob. The voices getting louder. Thinking: Get the bag of documents. Thinking: Get the horse. As he heard shouts for blood and death.

And then he was on a horse. Lashed to Kongo. His blood seeping: into Kongo’s body. As Kongo’s blood seeped: into his own. He felt the sword lashed to his bleeding back. There was a worn saddlebag behind him. Slippery with blood. He was up on a great horse. Under a red moon. The horse knew the way. This sleek black horse. A horse called Thunder.

They galloped through farms and forests.

He was a long way away, drifting in silent seas. The air was wet. But the wetness had no form, no edge, no shore. He went out and returned, went farther, soaring through wet, empty galaxies, and returned through watery voids where all was the color of emeralds. And then went out again on the dark, cold tides. He had no body. No bones or flesh and no warming blood. He saw nothing but the emerald water, and dreamed no dreams, and longed for nothing. He did not want food or flesh, and no part of him moved, and yet he was moved through the silent seas.

And then came awake on a bed of hay and thatch on the floor of a cave with a high granite roof. Pain gave him back his body. He was pierced in back and chest, and when he tried to rise it was as if a spear were lodged in his flesh. His mouth felt as if he had eaten sand. The wetness had been replaced by the parched, coarse touch of his tongue upon the roof of his mouth. I’m so dry (Cormac thought) that my blood must all have drained away.

He moved his fingers against one another and then into the sandy earth upon which he lay. His fingers felt swollen, as if his hands were made of thumbs, but they could touch and feel. His eyes moved from roof to side. He saw the worn leather satchel of Mr. Partridge a dozen feet away. He saw his sword lying upon a thatch mat that made it seem almost sacramental. He tried again to rise, but his body refused the command. He could smell a fire burning somewhere, but his teeth clacked against one another in the cold.

Then he heard footsteps, bare feet on sandy earth.

And from some dark place, Kongo appeared above him. He was wearing a white robe. White horizontal bars were painted on his cheeks. He squatted and took Cormac’s hand and stared into his eyes.

“Good,” he said.

“Hello, Kongo,” Cormac said, thinking: My voice is coming across a very long distance.

The African smiled without showing teeth.

“W-where are we?” Cormac said, his teeth still fluttery with cold. “You’ve been dead for nine days,” Kongo said in Yoruba. Cormac thought: He speaks Yoruba to me and I understand each word.

Kongo went somewhere out of Cormac’s vision and returned with a cup.

“Drink,” Kongo said. “All of it.”

The African held the cup to Cormac’s mouth, and he sipped a cold, bitter liquid. Cleansing. Cooling. It seemed to flow through all of his body, and although he could not yet move without pain, his senses were returning. One thing he sensed was the presence of someone else in the cave. When he finished the drink his mouth tasted of lime. The juice of emerald fruit. He tried again to sit up, rose a few inches, and saw a brown gullied scab above his heart. His back felt tightened by another scab. He turned to his side, and pain surged through him, making him gasp.