Katy Smith - Free Men

The cousin kept her through the sorrow. More men asked for her. She prayed on her knees morning and night until she was thinking not of their twisted legs but of their happy eyes and all they did for her and all their love for her. God told her that love was living yet, and she believed him. And then she tried to be better. (Though she was already so good.) By the time she came home to Dorchester an orphan, like I was an orphan, she was looking for me. Wanting to share her luck at having been adored.

“Do you not still think of their bodies?”

“Their bodies were not what I loved.”

“Do you blame yourself?”

“For what?”

“They wouldn’t have died had they not been coming for you.”

“That isn’t how life works.”

“It is; they were coming for you, and they died.”

“If they hadn’t loved me, they may have died long before.”

“You don’t know.”

“But you don’t know.”

“God is supposed to know better.”

“He does. I am happy again, and now I have you.”

“You could have been happier.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“Where is the doll?”

“I buried her.”

But when the fever came to Dorchester, she did not want to run away, did not want to climb in a carriage with her son in her belly, because an inkling in her said it was worse to sit in a cart than face the plague, that if her mother and her father had not moved they would have lived, and though she swore this wasn’t so, I know how the mind cripples and gnarls around loss. We stayed. Slept in our cabin while neighbors died. Waited for her aunt to die. Death and waiting. She wanted myself as a father to be like her father, her like her mother. She told me of their games, I thought of their bones. I wanted to carry that guilt, except she didn’t carry it. Thought it was her fault, but It’s not my fault , she said. And it wasn’t.

And it wasn’t the plague that took her either.

THEY HAVE TOLD me the plan. The gun looks broken in my hand. I offer it back to them, but Bob presses it to me. He knows my life is just a thin thread, and wants to save me. Why do strangers give me food and guns? It is supposed to be night, and they are supposed to be sleeping, and we will sneak in like weasels and slip things from their bags. Bob will get the guns, the Indian will get the money. Or whoever is closest. I am told to look for food if I want something to look for. I do not. I am told to use the gun to save them if they need saving. I need saving. The creek is louder now, my wife. The bank spreads out. The water is between us. They have crossed with their horses and settled on the other side. A sandbar cradles the bodies of the men. If the river had a tide we could sit and watch them wash away. I have sat and watched so many things, my legs are criminals. The white men rest on cots, hands draped over the side, brushing sand. The bags are under the cots, behind the hands. The brown men sleep on cloths beside them. The sky is high here. The black men sprinkled like pepper in the far brush. Near the horses.

We stand next to small trees. Our breath goes in and out. The first time I saw these golden flowers I thought of her. I pick two. Thin trumpets. I wonder why they don’t close up at night. Of all the pretty things that go away in darkness, these do not. All these men in a clearing, waiting, all these flowers. Nothing moves except my hand. I rub the flowers, back and forth. My breath in and out. My wife waiting for me to put down my son and save her. Who will find their bodies? Her aunt is gone to heaven, and her husband here. They slipped away, one by two, and I could not move. Could not hear through the loudness of myself. A night passed, and when the light came I kissed my son by the hearth, once, and kissed my wife on the bed, once, and walked through the door and through the garden and down the road and out of Carolina. I left the door open. We’re all bodies waiting.

Bob reaches out. Brushes my arm with two fingers. His head tilts across the creek. Toward the sand, the men in their scatter. I shake my head. He nods. In the dark, he glows like coal. Everything about him warm. He wants me to want to do this. The Indian on his other side is cold. His eyes straight out, not down, not at us. If I made guesses, it would be that he has no family, moves only because he tells himself to. No loyalty. Not like Bob, who once he loves would not leave. I, who have lost wanting, wonder what men want. I shake my head. If my legs were not criminals, I would slide down into a squat, but they are bound to do bad things if left alone, so when the black man and the Indian creep one foot by one foot from the brush into the water, I creep behind them, not liking to creep, not wanting the gun in my hand, not knowing where to put it. It isn’t mine, and they would be angry if I lost it. It is a scalpel that my master won’t let me touch, that I don’t know how to use.

The night bugs are rattling. The air tastes sweet. We time our steps so that the water past our knees sounds like wind. The creek pulls on my legs, begs them to buckle. What fishes are beneath us. To get to land, I think of nothing at all. Empty out. Slow steps. No thought. When we are on sand again, our legs between cots, I clutch at Bob. His skin jumps. I can see stars through his eyelashes. He crouches beside the heavy sleeping man and lifts his gun. As he bends and then rises, my hand on his shoulder goes with him. The Indian stands over the white body of the man with dark eyes, the one who froze him on the path. The one who is some woman’s father. He waits for him to answer an unasked question, but the man is asleep. The Indian takes his musket. They slip their hands between the white men’s hands, putting gentle fingers on the bags. Listening. One goes clink . They both stand straight, nod through darkness. Nodding to say, We three will be the same person in this instant . I shake my head. I am not ready to be one with anyone but her. I let Bob go and go slow in backward steps, back to the water. Listening for her voice.

I see them drag out the bags. A rustle on the cot. An arm drawn in. I stop. We hold our breath. A turning.

A slow world turning.

The fat man starts up first. His shout like a muffled dog. The men are awake. God damn it. I had said no.

The sand scrambles. They are up now, sitting, standing, crouched, all the men who are kin to those coins. Arms crooked, knees bent. Moving like someone lifted the rock that was hiding them. The moon floating in the creek lights their jaws.

Somebody shoots. Bob’s gun explodes. The horses in the trees kick against bark. The shadows of the black men slip below bushes. What was I to do? Was I meant to use this gun? They are moving fast, and I am slow. I step again backward. My feet are in the creek. I look at Anne, her eyes surprised. Her calling to me from the red sheets. Asking could I save her. Her straw hair wet against her cheek. I’m waist-deep in water now. I must be too thin to see, because everyone is shooting but no one is shooting at me. I still have a gun in my hand. It says nothing. We are quiet. A young man runs toward me, fleeing, but the dark lights up again with powder and he skids, wavers. His body crumples on the sand. His ankles in the water, bobbing. Too late for a boy to finger out that bullet. He would be dead on any slab. There are empty spaces while men reload their muskets. Is this what war was like? Shots, and then noisy grabbing. Their breaths heavy, their hands reaching out to clutch hair, to smash in noses. Cries like birds. They look for their knives. Bob and the Indian shoot again. Now I can’t tell man-shout from gunshot. The moon on the creek is red.

For two nights now, I’ve slept near a body, first one and then two. I fell asleep while they were talking because they were not talking to me. But when it was still and dark I woke and watched them. I crawled to their sides. The black man boneless, loose pile of limbs. Skin dirt-colored. Not any dirt, but what you find when you scuff off the top layer of rot, dark, and dig an inch down to where it’s dry, where it’s brown and orangey and sheens if you spit on it. I brushed his arm, the skin beneath the arm hairs. His body flopped so open, like it once had a wife and was glad now to be free. I wanted to scoot him back together. Make him make room for somebody. I could not touch the Indian, though I smelled his hair. Watched his tattoo to see if it would move. If a breeze brushed the blanket off, he’d snatch it close again. Hated his skin to be uncovered. These men and I, we had not hurt each other. I smiled and then felt guilty for it. I sat deeper in the trees to wait for a rat or a deer, but nothing warm walked by. The woods were cold. The fire was out. I found my spot again, not too close, and closed my eyes. Do not let me dream of her , I begged. I was too afraid to sleep. I took the shoes of the other men, holed brown boots and leather slip shoes, and wet them from my mouth and smoothed them clean with the tail of my shirt. There .