Katy Smith - Free Men

“I have caught a group of six before. It’s a matter of picking them off individually, which is not at all difficult if you retain the element of surprise. An element, I might add, that is dependent on noiselessness.”

“We can be quiet.”

“In this instance,” I say, “you must trust that it will be easier if I am unaccompanied.”

“He’s right; we’ll wait on the trail for you. Stay at a tavern till you bring them back, or need us to come fetch the bodies.”

“But what about your horse?” the third man asks. “Isn’t he noisy?”

I rest a hand on my horse’s mane. She’s a fine one, with pale flanks and golden hair, and is patient with the type of saddle I prefer. Uncomplaining, like the best kind of friend. I think of a man to compare her to, but the closest friend I can name is the little cat that spent a summer in my mother’s garden. I am not unlikable, nor misanthropic. Why, then, can I not name a soul to whom I would write real letters, or for whom I would lay down my life? The need for companionship must not be the link between all men, because I have lived thirty-six years without it, and I am still healthy.

I scratch behind her ears and pat her twice on the neck.

“You’re right. They don’t ride horses, and neither shall I.”

“Speed is important,” says the first Creek.

“We’ve caught up with them significantly. And without eight hundred dollars on my back, I can walk much faster than they.” I dismount and hand the reins to the second Creek, who of all the men seems to have the most sense. “We passed an inn just to the north; one of you wait there while the others return to the creek to carry the bodies back to the hunting grounds. I should return within the week.”

They watch me unload my pack, tighten my boots, and strap on my musket. I feel a frisson at the image of a man striking off into the deep forest, hunting the human temperament.

MY FATHER WAS the first woman I knew. His hands split the knots in my hair, folded me on a straw bed, spooned me soup. Belted me, caned me, hided me. He never touched me but to hit me. I was not afraid of him in any way but this. He slept by the day fire and cut sticks at night into beasts. Twisted things, not cows or lambs. Vermin. When he had enough, he’d bury them by the walnut. The dirt around it barren, poisoned by the falling leaves. Bits of his soul, he’d say. The darkness put to rest. With each one, I thought, Ah, no more pain . Buried well. Except he never stopped carving. The wood turned into rats eating their own legs, snakes split two-headed, spiders with a dozen arms. After a heavy rain, their spasmed faces peered from the walnut roots. I’d stumble on them playing, hide in the cabin till the wet leaves covered them again. They were never buried deep.

We lived in tree country, had anybody asked. Trees all over. Ice in winter, too hot in summer, bugs. Cracks in the wall so big my finger found the outside. My father sometimes there and sometimes not, though which was worse. He looked like a smudge. Like someone had run a finger down his face while the paint was wet. I only came close when he was sleeping. I’d sit long enough for certain, then crawl into him. Lift his deadweight arm over my little self, my knees tucked in. Just for warmth. A small bear pressed into its mother bear, careful for claws. I knew when he was waking because he did nothing quiet, and I was by the far wall before he could see.

“You always up,” he’d say.

I would never sleep if he didn’t.

Eating was him finding food, tossing the bones to me. He had a gun, all men had guns, and some days he’d be gone till dark and come back with fat birds and others he’d sit at the fence and blow holes in the post. Our posts so weak with all that woodpeckering they’d come down at the tail-flick of a wild hog. But when he pointed the gun at food, he’d bring it home and pluck it or skin it and roast it and eat it and at the end he’d throw the gristle to the corner where I was always sitting, waiting, never not hungry. I was little, even for a little boy.

I don’t know when I knew I was his son, or if he ever knew.

He didn’t speak but in growls. The times he wasn’t shooting, or drinking, or asleep, he spent remembering. Or that’s what I thought. Sitting that long, staring at nothing. That’s when he’d dig into the wood with his knife. I didn’t know the words to ask him what his mind was on, what kind of blackness led to such blackness. Guilt wasn’t something I knew of. The drink loosened him up, caused him to spill himself, but his loudness then, those words, had no sense. There was a she and sometimes a knocked her head , just in anger and he was sorry, always sorry when he drank. What she he killed I didn’t care, for he was all the parent to me.

My father sometimes danced. Wild nights, men would gather, men I’d never seen, and my father, who was my mother, would jerk his heels up and slap the floor. His arms flailing above his head, his beard trembling. One man in the corner with a fiddle, the rest with whiskey mouths. The house would shake and I would watch from the walnut, never knowing what a woman was. One night I saw a black man there, elbows bent, feet shaking. I thought he was a warm wonder. There was no violence in that violence. Only noise that washed hard over me, like a belt on my back. If asked what was a woman, I would have said likely just a man I’d never seen.

What did I know that I was waiting for word of them?

There were soft apple spots in my father. He took me once in spring to where the flowers grew. So many trees, it was hard to find the space to bloom. But in the meadow they spread wide. Between eating berries he wove a crown for me, clover knotted in thistle. I wore it and saw my joy in the dirty smudge of his face, and we were boys at play in a field. I pretended to be a bird and swooped, and he pretended to be a mouse and cowered. There was a creek and we fished our toes in it. Clear blue, the sky, the creek, the blue-eyed grass. I reached for his hand, not knowing where I had learned the want, and he was still. A moment, my short fingers tucked in his. And then he was up, shaking off his watered feet, breaking the knots in his hair. Back to the meadow, where we shared a block of cheese he’d bartered. Just cheese, its skin sweaty like ours.

He carried a flask with him, was never flaskless, and he drank himself into a nap, and when I saw him sleeping I slept too, though not too close. I felt the sun suck away the wetness on my creek feet, brown my cheeks. I watched the fireflies inside my eyelids. A spine from a thistle leaf dug into my ear. I wouldn’t have taken off my crown that day, not for money. I spreadeagled into the green grass and pulled my body close again, swam out, swam in, fists full of broken leaves, me a happy fish. I didn’t dream because I had no memories.

I slept too long. He was already awake. The flask was empty when he threw it at my head. He told me to get up, but he was pulling at my feet, which made it hard. He took my hand — his fingers finding mine! — and dragged me to the creek. I was in the creek, and he was scrubbing at me, angry, yelling about dirt, about how no one looked after me. I saw this was true. Who would have looked after me? He kept scrubbing. “Not mine,” he said, though I was his, and he left me floating while he went to puke into the bushes, and when he came back, wiping the yellow foam off his mouth, he grabbed the back of my neck and I was under, the whole water was my world. I thought he was cleaning me, setting me to rights, but he wasn’t moving. I didn’t move. I didn’t move until I couldn’t breathe, and then my arms and legs flew out, frog-like, kicking, kicking. This made the water dusky so I couldn’t see the minnows or the green muck. Just the shadows of my arms. And then the fireflies came back into my eyes, and it was black and gold in flashes. My father’s fingers locked into my neck, not moving, still. I breathed again, and it was water this time, and my lungs filled up heavy, sinking me. My skin was dirty, and he wanted to make me clean.