Katy Smith - Free Men

We’re getting closer to Winna now, and her voice comes weaving in again, saying if she were going to run, she’d head south to the free towns and the pockets of Florida maroons, not straight into the belly of the Brits, but I said they aren’t Brits anymore and who knows but maybe they’ll be confused now about who belongs to who. Lord knows I asked her to come. Leave the children with the granny, that’s what she’s there for. Winna’s a good woman, even if I can’t quite remember how her face fits together just now, and I think of how to get her out of there, save her skin. I’d buy her if I had the money, and maybe that’ll come once my crops are planted all straight in a row. I don’t try to think of how things would be different if Beck had married me — if she’d be here now, or if I’d’ve been so dulled with love that I’d never have found myself on such a brazen path.

Up ahead, I can hear the Indian asking Cat the same questions I’ve asked him. Who he is, what he’s about, why all the moping around and the following strangers. But more delicate than I did. Like if he turns the right key, all the man’s secrets will come tumbling out. I’ve only known the white man for a day, and I know better than that.

We stop under one of the endless stretching oaks for biscuits. Mother of god, I can hardly keep my knees from bouncing. I’m antsing to get away, to break west, and every little pause sounds like the men with guns are coming, though there’s not a soul yet has cause to be suspicious, other than the two men who sit right here. I say how hungry I am in a dozen ways, but no one is listening, not even my own self. I gnaw on a biscuit knowing my lace cookies are still hidden in the bottom of my sack. I’m holding on to them like there’ll be a tomorrow when I’ll eat them up. Cat is sitting next to me against the trunk, making little patterns in the dirt with his fingernail, and the Indian — Istillicha, he corrected me — is hunched a few paces off, just where the longest branches start to dip down, somehow eating without crumbs. We’ve only passed a few traders; some we’ve let walk right past us, I figure because the Indian can smell from a mile off whether they’re trouble or not, and the others we’ve watched from our perch in the shrubs. Whether we’re walking or sitting, I can’t stop talking, and even though the others seem to need this rest, I ramble on. I don’t even care that I’m giving myself away to two strange-eyed men.

“When I get there,” I say, “everybody’ll know about it. Everybody’ll stop and say ‘Who, Bob? Never have thought,’ and maybe they’ll get to thinking of things on their own power, so as I’ll see them out there one day, plowing a little field alongside mine, and our donkeys’ll greet and we’ll set up on the porches and share water.” All this, though I can’t bear the thought of sharing. The only man I’d welcome on my porch is long since dead.

“And you?” the Indian asks Cat. “What man will you tell these secrets to?” Meaning not just mine but the Indian’s, though he certainly hasn’t given us much to tell.

“Lay off him,” I say.

Cat scrapes up a fingerful of dirt to taste it. “I don’t know any men.”

“You’re sneakier than he is, we want to go talking about sneaks.”

“No sneaks,” the Indian says. “I want to know the risks. What risk is this man. He has no weapon, but he has a tongue.”

“Some fellows are just fellows,” I say.

“You are still young.”

“No younger than you, the way I see it. Just because I don’t tie the man to a tree doesn’t mean—” But I don’t know what it doesn’t mean, because tying Cat to a tree is very much still part of my plan. “I’ve got it all figured,” I say. “So you keep to your own worries.”

“And if he is a murderer?”

Poor Cat, watching all this and not blinking. Just sad.

“Then he’d have done us in already,” I say, not really knowing.

We finish up our biscuits without talking, our eyes moving from one body to the other and back again.

The farther we walk, the dimmer it gets, not because the clouds are congregating but because the trees start standing in closer together, all in a pile, breaking up the daylight. I’ve spent too much time plowing that western field in my head, feeding my donkey gold-rimmed hay while I pat its fat belly with my hand spread out wide, and not enough time wondering about why no woman has seen the same, why no woman has believed in that patch of free land that’s waiting for the man who’ll plant it. Spending a day with two men will make you miss a lady.

Istillicha says there’s a creek ahead where we’ll stop for water, and I’m wondering if he or Cat’s ever had troubles with women. Maybe they too are poor understood and want to rope themselves a mule and come on out, though I’ll ask them to sit on their own porches, all three of us of an evening watching the same sun that sets on my captive brothers set over me.

COUPLE HOURS LATER we stop again, and I tire of stopping, but this place is as peaceful as it comes. We’re about a half-mile east of the trail down a red dirt path and can’t hear any footsteps here, just the gurgle of smooth water as it goes shallow over sand. The bottom’s got pebbles and caught leaves and slippery greens, and the water is sometimes fast and sometimes slow, and I wouldn’t be paying it much attention if it didn’t remind me some of the creek by my old home in Virginia, the one that tickled Primus’s toes. On the red banks are bright yellow flowers on leggy stalks that flop toward the water like they’re thirsty. Remembering, I can’t say there were any flowers by the water when I was young, but that may be because I wasn’t looking. Sometimes things go right through you and sometimes you just want to sit and watch for as long as the daylight lasts. A pudgy bird swings blue over the water, flying low to look for fish. The chirpers that sounded like saws on the plantation now come together like chimes. Everything here has a sweet sound, kind of distant.

I try to slap some water into my mouth, but Istillicha stops me and shows me how to cup it, waiting for the tadpoles to swim out. We’re all a little calmer here, less like strangers.

“I must’ve walked past this two dozen times,” I say, “same as you, but never knew such a nice place was here.” I wipe my hands on my shirt and smile at the way the water still cools my throat. “Where does this go?”

“A few miles down, it falls into the Conecuh.”

I try to sound that out, but let the word go. It occurs to me what a handsome man too this Indian is, and how big he must be among his people. Where is he going all by himself, with not even a horse? I know plenty of Creeks, and I’ve never seen one hang around a black man, showing him the way, passing time. I hope he isn’t looking for a fee.

“How much farther?” I ask. I stick my feet in the water, try to rub the sore out of them. Istillicha looks around for Cat, who’s squatted by a tree and is gnawing at something. I always know where the white man is. Sometimes he feels like a child of mine, another one I’ll have to leave.

“Half a day’s walk, maybe less,” he says, “before the western spur.”

“You can just point me what to look for, you know, and I can manage on my own.” I had to say this to see what he’d say, but something went a little funny in me waiting for his answer. I’d hate to give up a man who knows how to shoot things. First time I get to be alone in all my life, and here I am hoping he’ll stick with me a few hours more.

He’s looking off to the north, still standing, waiting for the sound of something, but after a second or two he looks down and rubs his knuckles in his eyes, digging the tired out. “It’s near enough to some border land with good hunting,” he says.