Katy Smith - Free Men

At noon they sit down in the brush and pull food out of their sacks, which is oddly domestic for men on the run. In the noise of chewing I am able to approach closely enough to pick up a little conversation.

“How is it?” the white man asks.

The black man rubs his upper arm and nods.

The Indian passes a cloth bag of parched corn to his left and each man takes a handful.

“What was the best thing you ever ate, Cat?” the black man asks.

The white man’s smile is shy. “My wife had a garden,” he says.

“She was a fine cook?” The Indian spits out a kernel of corn, which without boiled water must be painfully hard.

“No,” the one called Cat says.

“I had a ham once, or part of it at least, that my mother stole from the master’s kitchen on Christmas — told him the pig wasn’t near as big as he thought it was, which is why there weren’t more cuts. It wasn’t hot, but lord it was juicy. I wrestled my brother for the last piece and lost, but that taste sat in my mouth for days.” He runs his tongue across his upper lip. “There’s good moments and bad moments.”

“Not good men and bad men,” Cat says.

The others seem surprised, as if they were not accustomed to the white man speaking, or at least not speaking philosophically. He reaches out a hand and pats the black man’s knee.

“As we get worse, you seem better,” the Indian says.

“No. But even the people we love can fail.”

“Who’s failed? Us two? Or you? Don’t start spouting forgiveness like you’re some kind of saint, because that bounty hunter’d say otherwise.” He turns to the Indian. “I told you, didn’t I? Said there was a blue-eyed man wanted for murder, and seemed to think Cat was it.”

“Was he?”

“What do you think?”

They look at the white man, who seems unconcerned. He apparently said his piece.

“You’re not getting off from this,” the black man says. “We all did it.”

They halt again at dusk in a broad meadow, congregate around something in the weeds. They stand so close together it almost looks as if their arms are linked, or they are praying. The distant figure of Cat moves behind the black man, whom I now know to be Bob, and after a further pause, all three move back onto the main path, the white man casting a last glance at the spot in the prairie. A half dozen sandhill cranes fly up near the tree line like some ancient species.

WHEN THEY STOP for the night, I stop well behind them. They make a fire to cook something and although the flame is small, I am surprised that the Indian lets his guard down to this extent. I am too far to hear any of their whisperings, but an hour after they settle for the night, I creep closer. The slave’s snoring bursts through the underbrush. From behind a holly, I look at each in turn. Oh, to always see man when he is unaware of being watched. Their faces give away so much: the black man, though he snores through an open mouth and his arms and legs are flung wide, has a furrow to his brow that interrupts his sleep, causing him occasionally to flip and moan; the Creek’s face is stone, is sadness, and he is tucked tight beneath a blanket so that his hands and feet are not exposed; and the white man — he is awake. His eyes are open and flit back and forth, as if watching meteors, but the sky is cloudy and he is heedless of my presence. I could take him now, but that would answer none of my questions. He does not look as ferocious as I’d imagined, but there are bloodstains on his cuffs, so I assume he took the lead in the killings. They are universally unkempt but oddly trusting. What guarantee do these men have that one of them will not steal the money from the others?

I crawl back to my camp and sleep as light as a bee, which is to say in dozes, and hardly at all.

ON THE SECOND day they are beginning to slow; Bob has an injury that is making his steps uneven, and the others attempt to keep pace. If I did not trust in my own stealth, it would be almost unfathomable that they hadn’t yet felt my presence. I have moments of wanting to step hard on a branch, or throw a walnut, just to enter into their sanctuary. I should have roped their wrists by now, but they are leading me like a tide, deeper into the west.

Last night I found a blister on my heel that had bloomed into a pink bubble with the same sheen as mother-of-pearl. I pricked it with my knife to let the pus out and made a pancake of wet leaves that I stuck between the skin and my stocking. All these years of walking and I am unaccustomed to blisters. My feet have traditionally been as sturdy as my psyche. I am glad I stopped the Creeks from walking with me on this spur, for in such moments I have a small fear that something within me unravels. But a blister is a natural growth, an obvious outcome from hard walking in springtime.

When the men turn north at a large dead oak, I pause. I did not expect any movements that would point to a coherent plan. So they are not aimless wanderers; do they head for the camp of some ringleader? Is there an architect of the scheme that will explain the miscellany of these particular individuals? Are they merely men-for-hire, without the free will that would justify my own justice? No, I will catch them regardless. If there is a man orchestrating their actions, he will simply be folded into the guilty. The Indian is leading them now through the tall grass in this unburned territory between rival nations. It’s he who knows the way.

Just as I resolve to follow, they stop. The white man and the black man are turned toward each other with some intensity. My body is behind a young sassafras, one of the last bits of cover on the edge of the field, and my eyes peering out are dark enough to look like nothing, though no one glances my way. After a moment of apparent speech, the black man’s arm explodes outward, punching Cat in the shoulder, the sound of which reaches me a half second later, and the white man falls back a step, his whole body in a convulsion of surprise.

This is it, the moment when they will fall to pieces, a rotten structure like all the other rotten structures that men have built from Europe to the New World. What misguided faith I had in them, if faith is even an appropriate term to describe my hunger for these men to be unlike others. In any country in the world they could not subsist together, yet here they were, wandering in a polite clump through woods that belonged apparently to no one, ignoring all the reasons to strike out on their own, to take the money and fall back into their segregated homes, for even America has rules. Their initial act of violence, of course, has voided any rational sympathy, so by all rights they should crumble now, should abandon the inexplicable amity of the past few days, should permit me to stop wondering. Let me capture you and put this to rest.

I take my musket off my back.

But when the black man walks on, shaking his arms in frustration, the white man follows him, and then the Indian.

Damn them.

BY NOON THEY come to a house in the woods. I sit at a distance and wait for whatever might happen, and in this moment I am admittedly content. The Indian knocks at the door.

IAND MY MOTHER and her kin belonged to the Wind clan, which is why our people so often led the others. My mother told me this story when I was young and still went to sleep in tears. In the time when everything was born, the Muskogee awoke in a fog cloud. They had been asleep for centuries, buried in mud and mist. In this new world, they reached out with tender fingers, for they could not see their own noses. They clutched at mushrooms growing among damp roots, stroked the flanks of passing deer. Scratched at the ground until squirrels burrowed into their hands, curious for nuts. The people in their blind search lost each other, but calling out only drove the animals away, so they kept silent. After years of grasping in the fog, a strong wind rolled through the forests with the scent of mountains and blew the mist out in wisping bursts. The first people to see each other in the new clarity were my people, and they called themselves the Wind clan. We led the others from the white cloud, and we lead them still. This is your responsibility, my mother would say, kneeling as she kissed my nose and smoothing my damp cheeks with the side of her thumb.