Katy Smith - Free Men

I step back through the water, watching the light from guns and the sides of knives, watching the shoes of strangers dance around each other, slide into the sand, kick at other men’s legs. The heavy man is on his bottom, the cot pulled against him for a shield. The Indian’s arm coddles the neck of the dark-eyed man, like they were brothers, choking. Someone young is slashing at Bob with a knife, and Bob is cringing back. He lifts his gun and beats the other man on the head with the barrel. I am walking away from them, from their heat. I need them to live. The gun in my hand is loaded.

The black men are in the trees. I can see their shiny eyes. They wait to see who will win and claim them. Wait to see if in the loudness of the killing they can step back into the deeper night and take themselves. Someone’s bullet passes near my head, a fast exhale, soft, and I sink. I let my body dip down. Chest, neck, chin. Only my eyes above cool water. My shirt is slow and billows out. My pants cling. I ask someone to watch my brothers. I close my eyes and let my knees collapse. My face sinks below. My hair floats away from my face. Sounds like armies marching. Sounds like towns on fire. I hear a high yell that clutches in a gargle. I open my eyes beneath the water.

My father floats past upon his back, feet bare. His mouth trails whiskey. In his hand a wooden gnarl that is my soul. A flock of crow women soar smoothly through the water. Their robes wide as wings, their mouths open like fish. Behind them walk a thousand dead. Heads open, guts untwirled, their blood turning the water dark. I think I must be dying, to see this march. Anne swims before me. Her eyes surprised. She circles her legs slow to stay in place. Her dress rivering around her body, the blood floating up in strands like smoke. I say how perfect her face is, that she is the woman I loved before I knew what a woman was, in all the darkness of my youth, there, do you see my father floating past, how little like a woman he is? All the shapes I hungered for, and none were mine but you. My words come out in bubbles. Her hands on her belly. I say I never touched a piece of earth but I thought of her. All my life. But listen , she says. Eyes wide. She cannot hear me. I reach my hand for her. It is you now , she says, not me. Her mouth opens slow. Her hair floats in fingers toward me. It is always her. What can I do but fail to reach her again, again. There is nothing of me left. I squeeze my eyes shut. My heart is hot as simmering fat.

The first time she came to church. The yellow of her hair, the blue of her dress. She was a summer sky. She would rest the soft of her hand on my cheek. Her murmur. When she was fully mine and I rode home on the horse that now was dead, she’d spot me from the window and whistle like a jenny wren. A bird that flew into my hands. My body could not be loved, I thought. I thought, until she put her arms around my neck. The water comes in at my cracks. Finds my heart and cools it. Water pumping in my heart until the beast of grief I’m riding drowns. Our son was just a shard of her, and I could not put him down. I should have put him down, crawled over to sew up the holes in my wife, saved the holy heart of me. I was mistaken. I was a mistake. She was the one of all.

You cannot cry at the bottom of a creek.

I am almost empty. Am almost stripped to nothing.

I wait below the water until the sounds still. It is too dark for anything worth seeing. None of these men are killing for women. None have killed their wives. Love is not above this water, and there is only sin beneath. Minnows. Some find my legs inside my pants and pick at my hairs. Kiss me. I wish for a fish to swallow me. To hold me in its belly the way she held my child. I want to give up my senses, one by one. To lose the taste of her. Forget the feel of her scalp on my fingers. How long does it take to drown?

I hear a man shout Cat!

Cat!

Someone wants me.

I taste the water one more time. Then I let the little current push me up. The dark has settled, the moon white again. The fat man, the young men, the brown men lie in blood. The black men roped to a tree. The horses still tied in the brush, fluttering. The night smells like smoke. Bitter. Bob and the Indian rummage in sacks. They empty out silver. A thousand extra moons. I crawl up wet on the bank, the gun wet in my hand. I thought he was a killer , I hear Bob say of me. He groans through his teeth, one arm clutching the other. I lean down to touch the fat man’s face. How did they find him behind his cot? His heavy body soft. Rude to treat it so. They slide the money back in bags, shuffle through the other packs for food and bits of scrip. Bob one-handed. Even in no light, moonlight, I can see their hands shaking. This was not the plan.

I sit by the fat man and wait. I can tell by his eyebrows he wasn’t cruel. Wasn’t a bad father. I put my fingers beneath his. Lean down to check his breath, but there is none. I am almost sad, but I remember there is no justice. God takes, or man takes, what he wants. Heavy gentlemen, and wives. Girls. Soldiers on both sides. I don’t want to see the other bodies. Just this one. The Indian said he was from Carolina, where I’m from. I wonder did he have a father with a still, did he not see the ocean till he was old, did he know a boy who went to war and never came back. Did he love. He is on his back, one hand by his side, the other reaching far out as if to say Help or Stop . His legs bunched up. Eyes half open and sleepy. I close them so as not to see their blue. I cross his hands on his chest. I stretch out his legs. I take off his shoes. He is not in his nightshirt but all his clothes, for it is March and cool and he was shy among all these men. I unbutton his waistcoat that is squeezing tight, to let him breathe. I pat him now like a pet or a donkey. His coat looks warm. I only have a shirt, which now is soaked with creek and crying, and I am still alive enough to feel the cold. I rub the wool. Slip my fingers wet into his pockets.

Inside his coat is a letter, rimmed in red. I save it from his blooming side and wipe the blood away. An address on the front, four lines in loops. Unsent. He has drawn a tree on the back. A little house beneath. A man and woman scratched in beside it. The man and the woman and the house and the tree. Inked hands touching. I wonder if he had a woman and a house and a tree, like I had a woman and a house and a tree. Now someone will be alone, like I am alone. It is my fault for burying myself in water when I could have stood by his cot and saved him. Saved the woman from having lost a man. Who am I to know why the black man and the Indian did what they did. What they needed. I only sit here holding a man’s heart in the night cold. I feel a roll of blood uncurl down my arms. A little aliveness.

They tell me to stand up, come on, their backs heavy with silver. Their hands still shaking. I look up the bank at the black men tied to the tree. They have no faces in the dark. They are not scared, this being the least of what they’ve seen. Of men not knowing what they do. They wait for the next slow turn. We leave them the horses. Behind me, Bob and the Indian are splashing slow across the creek. The minnows scatter. Cat! They want me. Even the Indian waits.

That they call my name, that they have killed these strangers and not myself, that they do not leave me here. What is this country?

There are men killed today, and I am not to blame. The Indian must carry it, who has no town or home. Bob must carry it, who has no wife. Or if he does she is weak or cruel, else he could not have left. This I know about my brothers.

I put the wet red letter in my pocket. I will eat it if I am hungry. If not, and when have I been hungry, I will find a man to carry it. He will bear it to Carolina, where Anne too lies waiting. Her body still on the bed, my hands still red with the blood I didn’t touch. Our child, the flower of us, waiting. If God is watching, let him quiet that blood shed with this blood saved and sent.