Katy Smith - Free Men

That night, long and smooth, was a single faith. In the morning the light, shifting east, had left. The building was brick again. I slept and snored until a man in vestments roused me. It was Sunday, he said, and time for service. Would I stay? I did, sat in the back while the women and their men filed in. They spoke with a familiar strangeness. Strung together words I knew. They kneeled and stood and sang. I saw one weeping.

After, the man asked if I sought relief. I nodded and he set me many labors. I could now do anything without surprise. There was no blood here but wine, no hardship but the heat. This was a man who smiled and softly. Was I too old for it to touch me? I asked where the wooden closet was, but he said here they did not tell each other sins, only God. He showed me a cabin behind his home and gave me a blanket for the cold. Slaves lived there once, he said, so it smells sometimes still of sadness. I helped him dig his fields in trade for the cabin and the blanket. I earned nothing, but I was not a slave. My body had begged for a refuge, had sought out this field. I was being kept from nothing. I soaked up peace like I had never seen it, and maybe I had never seen it.

We put in crops and cut wood and built a wallow for pigs and bought pigs and went to church on Sunday, though sometimes him and not me. We had a little snow, but soon hot and mostly hot. Some folk thought I was mute, and those liked me best. In a year, he gave me part of his land to farm. The yield being mine to eat or sell. When he met a woman who would be his wife, she asked for it back. He said he’d given it in good faith, it was no longer his to claim. I was surprised a churchman could marry, knowing only the master of the crows, who was only and always alone. But he said everyone has a heart for love. I saw he was blind, but I said nothing. In my new field, all my own, I planted corn. He said it was not wet enough for rice. I planted squash because seeds were cheap but would not eat it, the watery slick, so sold what grew. I planted sunflowers and pretended they were sown wild. Weeds, I called them, and watered them at night. I only visited the man now when he asked. There was a woman in the house, so I was careful. I kept to myself. I knew now to keep to myself, that was how it would be.

Though I was alone, I saw what it was to belong. The minister taught me family, the town taught me town. People moving in circles round each other. Peeling open the neighbor’s weakness and his joy. I was the only one alone, so I could see. Words and touches like bits of light. A man sees a man in the street, a hand on the shoulder, a cap tipped, spark of light. Women knotting the bonnets of babies, more light. All this giving without asking. Myself on the outside, a dark spot, but calm. This was a good place. I had felt no whips. I had not heard God’s rumble. If I stayed here a hundred years, someone would touch my shoulder.

But in between all the goodness, the town was dwindling. I had seen the dying before, but not so many so fast. I stayed on the edges of it. Watched. Tried not to make friends, though most everyone was kind. Fevers here ran swift, and not just among the young. Some left for fear. The fort was falling down that had held the British off, then held the British. A boy threw a crumbled brick through a window of the church. It was left broken. Broomstraw grew where the grains had been, and goat’s rue. It was a plague without a name. I didn’t know the medicine for this disease. Sterrett had left me nothing. As the souls slipped off, I saw the world was pulling in its edges. Was shrinking around me. That soon it would just be me, and then I too would go, and this was not sad. A crab tucking into its shell for the long evening. I dug graves for the victims, held their coffins going down as I had once held hands with the dying. The forty families winnowed to twelve, and five.

And then she appeared.

New to town, orphaned old, ward of a maiden aunt. She was Dorchester born, had gone to the free school where girls were numbered. Had known the town when it jostled. Left before it decayed. She wore the fabrics of the city, had a hat with paper flowers. I saw her first in church.

No, before that. I was a boy and I was dreaming.

Straw hair and eyes a color I couldn’t name. Later she told me blue. She moved in circles in my dream. She had wings. She spoke in words that didn’t sound. She looked just like herself. I was a boy, and when I woke, my shirt was wet with sweat. My father still alive, and I had never known a woman. But she knew me. Had found me as a boy, left me in a marsh with crows for mothers, left me with my hands in blood and gore, led me here to a prairie of religion. The church on a hill, my cabin in a field, my crops in a row. The minister had tempered me. I was ready for her.

I saw Anne in her body first in church. The hat, and a blue dress for her eyes. I didn’t speak, but looked and looked. Sunday next, I had milkweed in my hand. It was summer and all was blooming. As she left on small shod feet, I dropped them in her path. I shook too much for reaching out, for greeting. She smiled and knelt and before her hand touched the stems I fled. Sunday next, she brought the first of the goldenrods and laid them on the last bench. The bench where I sat unseen, having no holeless shirt, no well-soled shoes. Sunday next, she sat beside me, and when we bent to pray I took her hand. She tried to shake me free. I clung harder. With her other hand she pinched my ribs. I scowled and squeezed again. She laughed. She laughed in the middle of a song, so none heard. She told me I had a fine face.

I knew not what to do, so with my bone knife I cut a stick. Cut it like my father, but in place of vermin carved a bird. Took her past the empty fort to the Ashley River. The water settled me. If something happened, I’d thought since a boy, a river would carry me away. We lay beneath the bell of a willow and mingled hands and from my shirt I brought the bird. A wooden wren, a jenny wren, she called it. She told me wishes. She wished a house and fields and a rose garden like a lady, and I stopped listening to wrap her arms about my neck. I sat there, held, while she dreamed, and the river flowed.

I had believed that love was a difficult road. That the beloved would trick you, would tease, would let you burn. Would shoot a musket at your chest. Love was something got, not given. But here she was who looked at my eyes and let her hands be held. When I was weary she moved her hands upon my arms. When I sorrowed, she dug for the roots of it until I’d told her every past lash, every man I’d known. I gave her buds and bread and stones and she gave me surprise and kisses. She had been loved once, cruelly, and me not being cruel earned me her. This is what she said. But earn was not right at all. She came in spite of myself. The iced quick of me was melting. In fall when the birds were on their wings, I asked her would she stay with me forever. She would, she said. I asked her why.

“You’re a good man,” she said. “With such a heart.”

“And we will be like this always.”

“Till Jesus takes us,” she said and smiled.

I said we would have a child. Two, she said. Four, I said. Till we counted to eleven and thought that sounded right. All would live, and all would prosper. She wanted to call them after flowers. I searched for my father’s name, but in my years of remembering, I had lost that. I wanted to name one after my father, I said, and knowing, she never asked what it was. All days were days of sun. My chest was built of bubbles. I kissed her and was nothing but warmth.

I met her aunt when I asked to marry Anne. She seemed not to mind. The aunt was dying slowly. Her eyes were milky and she looked above my shoulder when I spoke. Rubbed my hand and said I had a fate. Fates are almost always good, she said, and smiled toothless. She nodded at my shoulder. She placed Anne’s hand in mine. A fate for a fate, she said.