Scott Cheshire - High as the Horses' Bridles

Orr touches a horse’s head. “You whip your horses?”

“I have never whipped a horse in my life.”

He looks at the man, his neck cloth hanging loose, and his smooth face. His eyes. Orr says, “I don’t hate dogs.”

“I know it,” Cotten says, unhitching the team. He rubs the horses’ heads.

“Soon as I threw it I wished I hadn’t.”

The big man looks at the dog. “Dogs don’t lie. It’s people you can’t tell mean you harm.” He pulls the team from the wagon, and they lead the horses to the river.

* * *

Back inside the house, Cotten points at the ham, and then to his own self. “I’m starving.”

Orr says, “That’s what it’s for,” and looks at the pot fire. He feels a surprising fearlessness with this stranger.

“Smells good. Ain’t had a real meal all day.” Cotten pulls a pink piece from the hock, chomps and swallows.

“You free?” Orr picks at the ham. “Out here alone, no white folk.”

“We all free.” Cotten wipes at his mouth with his sleeve. “Just most don’t know it.” Picks more at the ham.

Orr nods. “I guess.”

“And most of us ain’t free at all.”

Orr chews slowly. “What’s in Lexington?”

“Going to see a man named Clay. We write letters. I don’t suppose your daddy keeps any whiskey.”

“You particular about your whiskey?” He’s proud to use the new word he learned.

“Can’t say I ever been.”

He turns his back to Cotten and walks behind the pot fire. “My father’s not here. Not really.”

Cotten lets out a hoarse snicker. “I know that by now, boy. You afraid I’m gonna take you and eat you all up? Put you in the oven? Come on now.”

“My father keeps his whiskey on the window.”

Cotten stands and rubs his hands on his pants. “Whew, too long on that wagon.” He pushes aside the curtain and takes the bottle from behind. “All the way from South Carolina.”

“Is that your wagon?”

“Man I work for.” Cotten takes a pull from the bottle and his face contorts, his torso bends like from a blow to the ribs. “Lord!” He sets the bottle on the table. “Mister Bill Langley. I’m just renting.” He takes another pull.

“My daddy says Kentucky did God’s dirty work for him and made whiskey on the seventh day.”

The man throws back his head, mouth full of whiskey and silent with laughter so as not to lose a drop. He wipes at his silk cloth, checking for a spill.

Orr comes out from behind the pot fire. “He let me taste it once.” Just thinking about it makes his stomach wrinkle. “Most negroes around here ain’t like you.” Orr looks at the floor, and then back to Cotten. “You ever killed anything before?”

Cotten shakes his head. “What for?”

Orr shrugs his shoulders. “What’s a circus?”

Cotton considers the question. “A place for making people happy.”

There’s a sound of quick breathing at the doorway, the red dog, half inside. Orr pulls a piece of ham from the hock, and throws it to the floor.

Cotten goes on, “We got horse shows and tricks.” He takes another swig from the bottle.

Orr takes a piece of ham for himself. “You gonna work for a circus in Lexington?”

“No, sir.” The bottle dangles from his fingers. He looks upward; Orr follows his gaze to the rafters, but sees nothing. “Can you read some?”

Orr nods. “My daddy teaches me from the Bible.”

“That’s a good book.” Cotten clears his throat. “I guess you-all Christian, then?”

“My daddy says God ain’t particular, and no one gets to tell you what’s what.”

“I like your daddy.” Cotten takes another piece of ham. “I don’t subscribe to nothing neither. Where’d your daddy go to?”

“North.”

“What for?”

“Merchants. And for salt. He’s selling luck jars and soap. Should be good with all them wagons going up.”

“I seen all them. Got stuck in the middle of some taking up the road.” He waves away all of what bothers him. He puts the cork in the bottle and sets it behind the curtain on the ledge. “Your father heading for a camp meeting?”

“What exactly is a camp meeting?”

“Like a big church meeting.”

“You going to a camp meeting?”

“Never took.” Cotten coughs. “Where’s your ma at?”

Orr hesitates, not used to the question. “She’s dead.”

Cotten coughs again. “Well, I’m real sorry.”

Orr fans the pot fire. Puts his hand by the heat until he can’t take it no more. “Where you think a dead person goes to?”

Cotten shakes his head, and stands. “Can’t say.”

“That’s what my daddy says.” He barely touches the stove and pulls away his finger. “I saw my mother. On a wagon. Yesterday.”

“Well, you never do know.” Cotten sighs. “How far north your daddy go to?”

“Maybe two hours.” Orr looks back through the doorway. “You know about Heaven?”

Cotten looks at the bottle on the window, then back to the boy. “How old are you?”

“Twelve and a half.”

Cotten looks like he’s either itching for another pull of whiskey, or maybe wishing he hadn’t gotten started. Orr turns away from the doorway and looks back at Cotten, at his eyes paying close attention. Cotten says, “If people knew what free is, they’d live it. Not all slaves are slaves. And not all free are free.”

The sky in the doorway is darker. Orr feels the blade in his back pocket. “I can show you how to get to Lexington.”

Cotten tightens his neck cloth. “I’d appreciate it.”

“Only one road. And I bet we pass my daddy on the way.”

“Oh, I don’t know about you coming. People see you alone with a strange nigger, we’re bound to find trouble.”

Orr pours water on the pot fire until it dies to embers.

“You’re looking tired.” Cotten touches his forehead. “And you warm.”

“I’m fine.”

Cotton laughs. “Betting you don’t take no for an answer.”

Orr waits for him to leave so he can follow behind, but Cotten excuses himself, nods, and extends his arm through the doorway, after you.

They gather the horses and lead them to the wagon. Cotten hitches the team.

Orr climbs into the seat, and feels again for the blade in his pocket. He watches the hogs and pigs sleeping in the yard as the wagon rolls on through the grass. The black sow’s rump swings as she walks to the trough. Maybe that one. Seems right to pick out the oldest. Maybe not so afraid after all of the kill, of picking one, and having to kill.

* * *

An hour north along the river, Orr says he’ll walk on no matter how far, and Cotten should just go east because he’s bound to find his father on the road. But Cotten won’t hear it. So they ride on along the path, over the limestone worn smooth by the herds of long-gone buffalo. They climb the crest of a tall wooded knob as a dumb white moon watches over them. They ride roughly over the grassy rise, the river going dark alongside them, until a field opens out below them surrounded by a wood. Fire lights smearing yellow trails in the distance. They ride closer to a wash of noise.

They ride through the field, as the night gets less dark in the lamplight out by the tree line. They ride past large rocks along the hill, where curious locals watch and bear witness to what appears to be a vast gathering filling up the field. Wagons in the field, littering the hill and the woods. There are voices, a rising din of shouts from the crowd lit up by a bonfire. The wash of noise grows, as they get closer, soon filling up the evening like the sound of a rushing waterfall. They see hundreds of horses standing there by the trees. On a short wooden stage, a tall thin man stalks back and forth before the crowd, hands flailing. The sound of the crowd is even louder in the corner of the field, where they make a strange wheat waving in the night breeze. Pink hands waving, and white hands, and the negroes in the back make a dark place, their forearms moving along in waves. They all move in the shadowed field, a spreading swath of smoke movement in the lamplight, the candlelight, and the bonfire beside the forest. Whiteheads fly to the tallest trees now dark in silhouette. The Appalachians hold sway in the east.