Katy Smith - Free Men

The Creeks shared a common room with several other traveling Indians, and I permitted the negro to have a cot in my private quarters so that I might question him further about the events of the preceding night. I could tell that he was either rattled or naturally taciturn, so I began by inquiring about the details of his life, hoping to ease him into conversation.

“And how long have you belonged to the chief Seloatka?”

“I don’t belong to him.”

“But you have lived in the Creek nation for some time as a slave. Were you born here?”

“No.”

I was undressing at this juncture and asked him politely to fold my clothes, which he did with some haste. He was back on the floor beneath his blanket before I was quite in bed, so I had to fetch my own candle and pull down my own sheets. I am fairly self-sufficient in the Indian towns because there is a shortage of domestic help, either feminine or indentured, but being once again in a civilized room with a proper bed and a negro who refused to assist me made me peevish.

“You seem to have quite a bit of freedom,” I said, once I was in my sheets and enjoying the softness of the mattress, however lumpy. “I would think many of your black brothers would be envious.”

“I have no brothers.”

“Well, in a figurative sense, of course. And guiding parties of travelers must give you many opportunities to study your fellow man. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were also wiser than the average negro.” I laughed softly so he could catch on to my good humor, but he did not respond. “At the very least, you must be observant. Can you not remember any other details about the men you saw that night?”

Was he already asleep?

“I know it must have been a shock to witness the gruesome deaths of four innocent Englishmen and their servants — perhaps you were even pretending to be dead yourself — but surely you must have seen something of their faces.”

“It was dark.”

“Ah. Were you frightened?” The candle was guttering down — the proprietor in his cheapness had given me only a stub — and I was beginning to question my wisdom in inviting this surly man into my room. “You would not be sorry to see these men brought to justice, would you?”

“I’m showing you the way, aren’t I?”

“You are hardly cooperative.” The candle went out. I plumped my pillow once more and pulled the quilt to my chin. “It would be reassuring if you were to give some indication that you have the same goals as the rest of this party.”

“You’re here to catch the men. I want to catch the men. They took eight hundred dollars worth of silver and didn’t offer me none.”

I UNDERSTAND FEELING cheated in life.

The death of a mother such as I had was not an occasion for great grief. I inherited the manor in Thin-le-Moutier, still a half-haunted place to me, and promptly sold it to a cousin, taking my fortune with me to Paris and knocking about the city, investigating all the pleasures that a country upbringing denied me. The more I saw, the more I was curious: the depravity, the stench, the sweep of carriages riding high above the muck, the mansard roofs with dormers jutting out like eyes. It was all very ugly and grand, but as a young man privileged with money, I found myself still pacing a narrow path. My driver would not take me to a tavern unless paid extra, and then my attire drew such glances that there was no hope of silent study. I tried to pick up dialects so I could eavesdrop on discontent, but I understood nothing. I wandered the city with a ready system of classification, but few scenes would let me near enough to dissect.

Some called me idle, but I toyed with a genuine sense of purpose. I wanted to prove that there was a sublayer to humanity that was common across the classes, and that no matter the station one was born to, some universal concern made one recognizable as a man as opposed to any other beast. I suppose I believed in this not because I felt pity for the poor but rather pity for myself: I wanted to belong. Oh, to be embraced by those who shunned me, and to prove my mother wrong for keeping me locked up and out of sight of all that was roiling in the world. If I could only find that common marrow — I vacillated between thinking it was grief and thinking it was love — then I could propose a new system of laws, a twist to justice, a revision of education that would lead, one day, to the end of wars. The end of walls.

This was the age when men thought such things.

But being young, I was also easily dissuaded. What little I saw merely confirmed my assumptions about my country; it was old, and nearly rotten. I retreated from my philosophy and allowed myself to be a noble, adopting what might be considered a typical schedule. I invested some of my fortune in schemes, I learned how to shoot pistols, I drank until I was drunk enough to throw scarves from my window at women on the streets, all of which was accompanied by the laughter of a dozen other rakes. And just when I thought I was immune to feeling, I fell into something that resembled love.

She was soft-throated and already engaged to a boulanger in the king’s service, but she had a pedigree and a lively eye, and had been sent to the city by her kin to find a match. He wasn’t her equal, and I told her so. A cousin of hers was a friend of mine, and she still enjoyed dancing, so we would find ourselves often in the same debauched rooms of the wealthy. There are men who love girls solely for their beauty and who think little of the endless days beyond that mask, the days that require conversation and good humor and sympathy, so it is hardly surprising that the state of marriage in France is dismal. Our parents cannot speak to each other and soon we won’t be speaking to our wives. But though she was beautiful, I flattered myself that I saw deeper than that, though what I saw was wit, and this has no relation to kindness.

Her betrothed soon learned of my attentions and sent me a neatly written challenge via a sous chef in the pastry kitchen. It smelled faintly of anise, and I accepted. In the ensuing duel, his became the first life I took, and far from damning my soul, the act won me her. Small and dark, an eel when she wore my sheets. She ribboned her black hair around her bird-like head, and when I unwound it after the candles were snuffed, it fell flat as bowstrings. We felt no compunction.

The night of our wedding, I wondered what my mother would think of her; I felt unmoored in the happiest sense.

But days turned to months, and life resumed an ordinary course, which is to say we breakfasted late, bought more mirrors than were necessary, and hired carriages to take us a quarter of a mile.

The canker that I began to nurse perhaps first bloomed on the night the peasant woman came to our door. My new wife and I had moved to a small villa beyond the city to bear children and collect servants, to build flower beds for others to tend. The poor, whom I once approached in the dirty inns of Paris, were here quieter and better fed. We saw them through the gaps in the garden, though every season the yew hedges that my wife planted grew taller. The peasant said her husband’s leg had been caught beneath the plow and the manager was absent, and though she needed my assistance there was terror on her face: not of her husband’s plight, but of me, of my position. I did not take the time to wonder if fear could be the human sublayer. I rushed to the field, summoning a few other men, and while we displaced the plow she stood some meters distant, insistently looking away — at the dark hay fields beyond, at the stars, at her wooden shoes. When her spouse had been rescued and the damage was seen to be minimal, I tried to inquire after her children and the condition of her dwelling. Her immediate need having been met, she refused to speak any more to me. The pair hobbled away, ashamed or proud. I let her go back to her life with her uncounted children, and I saw my home for what it was: still an empty room, boarded-up and bare, nothing to be seen.