Katy Smith - Free Men

“Did you shoot the men?” I ask again.

He is wedged into the base of the tree, his tied hands up by his shoulders in a limp prayer.

“Are you the one who has no mother?”

When I lie down, I turn my back to him, knowing that he will be up for most of the night with nothing much to look at but my own form, and though I have been watching him without compunction for two days, the reverse causes me some unease.

THE MEADOW WHERE the woman lives is quiet. The bits of flesh have been pulled from the poles, no doubt causing mischief to the carrion eaters who found them. But with the dead beasts have gone the living, and even the usual snuffle of hogs in the surrounding woods has been stilled. We do not knock at the door but walk on, and if she is at her window I will never know.

I wonder if she was a dream, if she was equally a dream to these men, if somehow we’re embroiled in the same illusion that necessarily exists when men step beyond the bounds of their countries. I could visit her again and ask directly those questions that would prove whether she’s a soothsayer or a prophet, demand that she reveal the truths I’ve been tracking since I first left Paris, ask what in God’s name is liberty if we are all bound to step only where our ancestors have, but she would merely crawl beneath that fragmented quilt and jangle rings at me that probably every man thinks are his mother’s.

Cat never asks me what our destination is or why we’re retracing their steps, nor does he pick up his legs and flee in a mad dash to north or south, deep into the woods and beyond my reach; I don’t know that I could catch him if he did, being a decade older and not as desperate. Occasionally he hums — or murmurs, although it sounds musical. Where am I taking him? Back to Seloatka? I’m merely taking him with me, as the black man and the Indian did. There is value in a quiet companion; he makes one consider anew one’s own monologue.

That night, when I ask what role he played in the murders and he greets my inquiry with further silence, I tell him that I too have killed a man. (Many, actually, on behalf of my employers, but only one on my own account, and I consider there to be a difference.)

“He cooked bread for the king, and we loved the same woman. I assume you understand how that is; that love prompts one to act in unusual ways. No? Well, I had not received a great deal of affection in my life and saw this woman as perhaps a unique opportunity to rectify that. Duels are a matter of honor, and so my actions were justified. I felt slightly queasy when I saw the man’s body, for there was some blood, but it was instantaneous and no one blamed me. I recovered. But death is not the most satisfactory solution to a problem. I understand that you may be feeling some guilt at what you’ve done, and this is to be expected. Even when we believe we’re in the right, we have a voice within that knows better; some call it God. Are you religious?”

“Where is she?” He does not look at me, but bends his head down to his wrists, where he sucks the sweat from the rope. “Your wife.”

I feel a shiver of fear, unaccountably. If I believed he was a murderer, shouldn’t I always have been afraid?

“France. I was tired of home life, and she was unfaithful.”

“Will you go back?”

I picture the door opening, her slim figure poised between two steps, her black hair mid-swing. With her husband gone, she must rarely put up her hair, or wear all her petticoats, or powder her face till it’s white. What is her expression upon seeing me? Does it approach gratitude? My bags make a dark sound when they fall to the marble floor. Nothing belongs.

“I have not decided,” I say. I remember my notes. Is alert when others speak of women. “Can I assume, being a man, that you were also wronged by a lady?”

He lifts his head, almost in accusation. To be perfectly frank, I cannot imagine a woman loving him, though his features are regular and he has a trusting, open demeanor. There is simply no fire in him, and if men do not present a little danger in the dance between the sexes, then what’s the good of them? The craftier I’ve been, the more girls have offered their favors; they, like us, merely request some adventure in their lives. Cat, for all his murdering, exhibits a meekness that only a sainted woman could endure. But he did several nights ago mention a wife. Perhaps he once had some wealth and she married him out of greed and pity, and the moment a soldier rode through town, she hopped his horse and bade farewell.

“Bless them all,” he says and, closing his eyes emphatically, turns away.

I try not to record speculations in my notebook — only observations and fact — but I hope one day some other man will tell the stories.

I have tethered him close tonight, calculating the distance between a fully stretched rope and my own blanket so that they are separated by no more than two feet. This is a trial to determine whether, given the opportunity, the white man will gravitate toward any other sleeping body, even that of his captor. As I prepare for sleep, Cat at a distance by his anchoring shrub, I crowd my mind with questions and concerns so as to ensure a shallow rest. I think of the citations I will need to prop up my writing, of the overdue missive to my wife and what this one should say, of curiosity itself and whether it is fundamentally noble, representing as it does man’s taste for knowledge beyond his sphere, or whether it undermines the simplicity of daily life and breeds displeasure. With these clunky gears in motion, my mind is too unsettled to fully abandon me, and every half hour or so my eyes flick open to gauge the placement of my prisoner. Mostly he is awake, of course, lying on his back and scanning the heavens, but close to dawn I feel a new warmth, and there he is, finally asleep, coiled like a crawfish at the farthest stretch of his rope, two feet from me. The poor fellow is an unwitting magnet. At this proximity I feel new concern for his comfort — is he warm enough without a heavier coat? Are those lice causing the scabs around his hairline? So this is what the black man must have felt, this dependency that turns the heart. But any repeatable experiment only verifies a biological trend; there is nothing personal or mystic about a man’s desire for closeness.

WALKING FOR SUCH distances invariably leads to intimacy; if I had not already known it from watching the three men I was following, these days with Cat have proven it. In the mornings he asks to be given some privacy, so I walk him on his lead to a thicket, tie his rope anew, and then allow him fifty paces of distance for his evacuations. He calls me after he has covered his shit with leaves, and we proceed. When the sun has warmed the afternoons, we share the same canteen of water, and any belch or flatulence on the part of one man is heard, without comment, by the other. We stride across land that belongs to neither of us and in this vacuum of possession blooms some primitive fellow feeling. If a panther were to leap from a high branch and tussle my prisoner, I suspect that I would rush to find a heavy stick and beat the creature ruthlessly and when the white man was free, I would attempt to address his wounds. And to all this effort I would go though my intent, unchanging, is eventually to kill the man. I cannot explain this logic, though I make a note of it.

“Tomorrow we’ll find the road again,” I say, over a measly supper of dried ham and meal. I did not pack sufficiently; or rather, I failed to have a sufficient sense of my own susceptibility. But every time I start to squirm at the indulgence of trailing these men so long, I merely glance at my fattening notebook and swallow my half share of salt pork without complaint.

“Are you prepared for your fate?” I ask. “I expect we’ll take you back to Hillaubee for the execution.”