I sat on the nearest bench and waited. Flies lit on the plate of food I was carrying, but because of the wax paper covering, they flew away, disappointed yet alive. On the floor beside me there was a crust of bread with butter, a mother layer of mold forming along the edges, a fat caterpillar inching towards it. Across from the station stood a large tree I couldn’t recognize, bark falling away from its side, leaves glistening in the new moonlight as if they were wet, bursts of seeds glowing silver on the tips of the branches. Every other second there was a rustle of wind, but nothing appeared. No tufts or leaves fell. Those were the only ghosts, I told myself.
* * *
In the nighttime shadows aboard the Dawn Lightning, I wasn’t sure if Lanah smiled at my return. Trails of moonlight flickered through the windows. My seat was still empty, waiting, with both Lanah and Divinion laughing at something Carvall must have said, although he wasn’t laughing himself.
“You made it!” Divinion announced with enthusiasm. I wondered if he was wearing a different tie.
“Your brother-in-law gave me a ride,” I said as I returned to my seat next to Carvall, who said nothing, and Lanah, who—I could tell now—did give the slightest smile after all. I placed the plate of food in Carvall’s lap, which he accepted without breaking his gaze toward Divinion.
“Of course he did,” Divinion proclaimed with a confidence that bothered me. “You’re family now.”
“I hope he’ll be all right. After he dropped me off there were these cars...” I began.
“I helped him buy that Plymouth back in ’43,” Divinion said.
I tried again. “There were other cars...”
“He’ll be fine. Always is,” Divinion said.
I settled into my seat. Something told me not to believe whatever he said next; as he started into his story about how he’d loaned Ryland the money, I closed my eyes and let the evening pass into night, clutching my belongings tighter all the while, protecting what little I thought was still mine. In the new darkness the train had a rhythmic clatter that lulled the mind into its own silence. There was a slight drizzle outside, so I found syncopation in the raindrops and fell into a deep sleep that seemed like drowning. I saw myself sinking farther and farther into the darkness, my arms and legs above me as I descended without air or relief, all of which I found calming. I prayed that this was how my daughter had felt on her descent. Later, I could hear Lanah and Divinion whispering in the distance, but in order to make out the words I would have had to ascend from the calm in which I found myself, and right then the effort hardly seemed worth it.
* * *
Then there came a harsher whisper in the night, and as I came awake, head slumped, my gaze fell on the empty dinner plate, where flies now collected on the morsels and gristle that remained; I couldn’t tell if the plate were cracked at all. When I raised my head I saw Carvall muttering, staring straight ahead at Divinion. At first I thought I was a trespasser into their late-night conversation, but Divinion was fast asleep; still, Carvall stared at him with an intensity usually reserved for violence. I’d seen eyes like that before. I thought about interjecting, but from the change in my breathing Carvall must have noticed that I was awake. His eyes met mine for a second, and I crafted a quick smile.
“The food was good, wasn’t it?” I said. “Divinion’s family was very—”
Carvall interrupted. “What does he know, huh?”
“I’m not sure I...”
Carvall jerked his head at Divinion. “What does he know?”
I looked over. “I’m not sure.”
“Thinks he knows so much about everything. He don’t know shit.” I let Carvall pause for as long as he needed. “I can’t stand niggas like that. No good, no account...”
“His brother-in-law...”
“I wanted to stop the train for you. Tell the porters to slow a minute, give you some time. You walking alone? The crazy white folks in that country? I would have stopped the train for you.” He lifted his smallest finger so slightly and pointed it at Divinion. “But he said it wouldn’t do no good. That no white conductor was going to stop no train for a nigga, any nigga. But I would have tried.” He paused again. “Niggas like him. They never try. They’d let us all drown so they can sniggle and tell stories about it later.”
“I think...”
“I can tell you ain’t like that.” I wanted to ask how. “You and me, we’re cut different. But look at him. Got his little cotton-and-corn money and now he thinks that makes him something. He’ll learn. A thousand niggas just like him.”
I waited a moment. “His family thinks...”
“Ain’t nobody touch your stuff, though. I made sure of that. I told them: ‘He’ll be back. He’ll make it.’”
I wanted to ask what stories Divinion had told about me while I was away. Maybe he’d told them that I wanted to stay behind. Maybe that I would be happier there, without them. Maybe that they, and the entire group heading north, would be better off without me. Maybe that I’d metamorphosed into something else during that dinner—something beautiful, perhaps, or frightening. I wondered how they saw me now.
“They left me there, too,” Carvall said.
“What do you mean?”
“In the war I was with a whole bunch of niggas like that—one of the only fighting forces, but still a bunch of niggas. We were ambushed one afternoon in this thick, black forest with these thin trees, and cold everywhere. The shooting started before I could even see anything, just splinters and ice and then I felt this warmth and wetness in my side. Then the pain hit, and I was on my knees before I knew it. I heard more bullets, screams, shattering. I fired a few times at these German soldiers—just pale, gangly German children running towards us, so small in the trees’ shadows—and I’m sure I killed a few of them, and I didn’t care. The whole war was white people killing other white people but there we were. Then I remember this cold feeling spreading through me, with my fists pushing through the frost on the ground until the dirt beneath wrapped around my fingers. Then I was falling forward. Then nothing.”
Carvall held his breath for a while, as if easing the memory upward through his throat. “I can remember a few more screams, then silence, and when I opened my eyes I saw a few of my company walking away, some wounded, but walking. I reached out.” He took a long breath. “I reached out, cried out to them, and those niggas. Those niggas looked at me for a minute and then turned away as if they couldn’t be bothered to help me. As if I were worse than the enemy. As if I were nothing at all to them. No brother. No friend. Not even a man. Just dirt. Nothing at all.” I thought of asking whether he was sure they truly saw him and knew he was alive, but this was Carvall’s truth; who was I to pry it away from him? He swallowed. “We should all be something to someone, whoever we are. I believe that.”
I watched the tension in his body release and then slowly return as he spoke again. “When I woke up the second time it was night. Quiet. I turned myself over and saw these big holes in the sky, between the clouds, where there were no stars at all. No moon. I heard no footsteps. No one else breathing. I was scared to breathe myself, but I took in this big gasp of air and nothing happened. No voices. I was all alone.” He swallowed again. “They left me. My friends and fellow soldiers. They left me there like the other corpses. Those niggas...”
This time he squinted even closer at Divinion. “Laughing at me. Back at the barracks drinking cheap wine and laughing at me. And I wanted them all dead. Black and white. I wanted every Kraut and every yellow man to kill all of them, then each other. I wanted to yell and cry out but I wasn’t sure who else was around. I wanted to stand up but I was too scared to move. So I stayed like that the rest of the night, and the next morning I rose to my knees and looked around. Some of my friends were there—dead, eyes staring in all directions, haunting me to this day—and German boys as well, some of them almost ten years younger than we were. Th
ere was still a ringing in my ears, and I tried to stand, pressing my hand against the closest tree for balance, but that pain in my side returned and I dropped to my knees again, then my back, watching that clear sky.”
At this Carvall bowed his head, wiped his brow, and then stayed so still for a while that I thought he’d fallen asleep, but eventually he went on. “I watched it turn to night again, but I wasn’t dead. I crawled a bit to steal a canteen of water from one dead man, a crust of bread from the satchel of another, but I always returned to the place I’d been shot, the place my blood collected, to rest. Like I’d left my soul there and I had to return to it. I slept there, cold, for another night. Waiting.”
He squinted as if fighting against tears that would burn should they reach his skin. “Waiting to die. Waiting for someone. I was waiting in the grass and frost and dirt, with all of those rotting bodies. In the mud I couldn’t tell what was water and what was blood. What was my own spit, blood, the water around me. Everything tasted like salt. And then I just started yelling because I wanted to hear my own voice, because I didn’t care anymore if I lived or died. I wanted someone to either save me or kill me and I didn’t care which. I yelled in English and in what little German I knew. I yelled for hours until my voice gave way. Then I started crying until I drifted away again.”
I could tell that returning to that moment was what he’d feared most when starting this story—not the bullets or the betrayal, but the moment when he decided on suicide rather than a future, or more pain.
Here, on this train, we were safe. There was no dirt. There was no time. No one was leaving or pursuing or waiting for us. But I’m not sure how much of a comfort that was.
Because his eyes glistened in the moonlight, as if straining not to close again for fear of sleep, and so the story he carried could keep him awake and alive a little longer. “Lucky for me an artillery regiment came through the next day and picked me up. A white artillery regiment. A bunch of white boys saved me. I’m not sure how they even knew, but in the early morning I felt a boot against my side. I flinched, then I heard someone standing close to me yell that this one was still alive. I stayed with that troop a little while, about a day or two, until they dropped me off because they told me I wasn’t good enough to stay with them. I wasn’t good enough.” He patted his coat pocket. “They gave me this here gun and pointed me in the direction of the nearest base and told me I’d better run or they’d shoot me themselves.” The moon reflected the tears that balanced in his eyes. “So I ran. I had a bullet festering in my side but I ran and they laughed until I turned a corner and they couldn’t see me anymore. A few hours later I made it to that base, then they sent me home. And I never saw that troop or those niggas again. And ain’t nobody call me a hero. Not a single person, Black or white. Then again, I didn’t do anything special. All I did was survive. Seems like that’s all we ever do.”
“Sometimes that’s enough,” I said.
“But for what?” He stared at Divinion even harder than before. “For who? For niggas like these?”
And before I could respond, and with a quickness I’d never seen in him until then, he pulled his Army revolver from his coat, pointed it at Divinion’s forehead, and pulled back the hammer. I froze, feeling every shift of the train against the tracks. I wondered why he’d been carrying it like that this entire time. What else was he afraid of on this journey? I didn’t ask. I glanced around, but no one else seemed to see what I was seeing—or, if they did, they figured it wasn’t their affair and pretended to be asleep, not willing to interrupt their own journeys for the fate of a stranger. Except for the eyes of the little boy, the one I’d seen when I first boarded the train. We stared at each other as I waited for the sound of the gunshot. When I turned back, the barrel of the pistol was touching the center of Divinion’s forehead. Carvall exhaled, and to my surprise he shifted the aim to Lanah’s cheek instead.
“Niggas like these. What good are either of them?” His arm was steady, the gun still cocked, and as the train shifted again, his finger did, too, a slow squeeze bringing the trigger a hair closer to firing.
Then, still calm, he removed his finger from the trigger and decocked the hammer. “Hold this for me,” he said, and handed me the pistol.
I’d never held a handgun before. It was heavier than I thought it would be—an ominous weight, solid in spite of moving parts and chambers, with a finality to it—but I transferred it to my jacket pocket before anyone else could see.
I remember my father once took me up to the mountains to learn how to hunt. We wore our workday clothes, even though it got colder and colder the higher we ascended, frost sprinkling the low branches of the trees. I carried the rifle—one of the better models we sold at the store—cradling it under my arm, as I’d seen people do. When we came across a deer feeding, I pulled the gun from the burlap and handed it to my father, who handed it back to me. He told me to aim, stay quiet and steady, empty my lungs, then my thoughts, and fire. Which I did, grazing the animal in its side as it bolted away. We followed to where it had fallen in the chill mud and ice; it was still breathing, puffs of steam matching ours. My father told me to fire again, to finish it, if only for mercy, but I couldn’t do it. The animal and I stared at each other, the cold wind cutting through our eyelashes, until my father took the gun from me and fired the last shot himself.
Carvall and I found nothing else to say to each other as the night sky cleared and the moon rose to meet our reflections. I expected Carvall to write more letters, scratching pencil against paper late into the night, but he didn’t; he only stared. We avoided each other’s eyes now, distant yet knowing, like brothers more than cousins; neither words nor names were important any longer. In the glass I watched his reflection slowly fall asleep to the rhythm of the train’s movement. I wanted to ask if the midnight confession was the result of something that happened during my absence from the train earlier that night or of something that had transpired between him and Divinion, when the two of them went to the barber shop together. But I suspected it wasn’t just one thing, one argument, one statement, one slight, one memory, one word. We’re human beings. It rarely is one thing.
I thought of my uncle and how long he was alone in the West. I thought of each of his mornings by himself. I wondered how often he thought of my father and what he dreamed our life had become. I wondered if he could be visiting my father’s grave right then. I wondered if, through all the cold nights and lonely meals, he’d ever found the respect and home that he was searching for when he left the island.
I touched my daughter’s picture, still folded in my breast pocket. I remembered my grandmother’s quilt, pulled it from the bottom of my suitcase, and wrapped it around myself for comfort as I tried to drift off to sleep. But a little while later I heard Lanah yawn, and she smiled when her eyes met mine in the darkness. I wondered if she was expecting an answer about whether I would travel with her. I didn’t know how to tell her how close she’d just come to being murdered.
“I dreamt it was morning already,” she murmured.
“What did the new world look like?”
She shrugged. “New.”
Not wanting to stare, I glanced back out the film-coated window. “We still have a while.”
“I wish we could see more stars from here. They are the most perfect little things where I come from. Like crystals dripping from the sky.”
“My grandmother used to say there was no such thing as stars,” I said. “Just holes in heaven where angels fell through.”
“Hm. There we go again, thinking beautiful things need to fall.” She looked down and twirled her wedding ring. “Listen, I have to apologize for my husband leaving you with his family like that.”
The term “my husband” jolted me and put me on the defensive. “I enjoyed my time there.”
“They’re simple.”
“They are very nice.”
“They�
�re nice because they’re simple. That’s all they can be. That’s all they’ll ever be.” She clasped her fingers and stretched her arms above her head. “Black people have to move beyond being nice all of the damn time. That’s half our problem.”
“And the other half?”
“It’s too short of a train ride to get into.” She rested her head on her husband’s shoulder, a sign of ownership and triumph. “I’m just glad I pulled Divinion away from all of that.”
“He’s quite fortunate to have you.”
“Make fun, but I’m telling you: being too yes-um to everybody is our biggest problem. History will prove me right.”
“History.”
“Shit, you aren’t just another one of those Negroes scared of ghosts, are you?”
“I’ve been living with ghosts my entire life.”
She looked around at the people and the baggage that strewed the car. “And look at this graveyard of old shit you’re in now. Sorry.”
Then, with the same confidence Divinion always showed in having made a final proclamation—I wondered which of them had gotten that mannerism from the other—she closed her eyes and drifted back to sleep.
* * *
County after county drifted by, but the moonlit landscape never changed—as if we were hovering. In the quiet, with everyone around me sleeping and all the planets higher in the night sky, I heard the rattle of my lunch tin beneath me and opened it once more. I wasn’t hungry, but I scraped up a few morsels of the dried cornbread from the linen napkin, now translucent with dried grease, and dissolved them on my tongue. I tried to remember where I had kept this napkin in my kitchen. The drawer? A cupboard? Was it something my wife had purchased, or had I?
Now, though, it was just a piece of soiled cloth. I crumpled it and stuck it back in the empty tin, which I closed with a snap that rang through the train car. Still, no one stirred.
I picked up the tin and meandered towards the back of the train, lightly stepping over bodies—children stretched out in the aisles, each clutching their most prized possession as tightly as they could. A breeze washed in as I slid the coach door open, but none of the bodies stirred. I made my way to the next car, then the next, and the next, and as I crossed through each I didn’t see strangers, neither Black nor white, simply contours I’d seen everywhere before, common silhouettes. None of the passengers seemed unfamiliar—or unlovable, regardless of how the years and sun had hardened their faces. These travelers were temporary family. There was comfort in their snores and whistles and shifts and sweat. I stepped over them as silently as I could, moving past white faces who didn’t bother to stop me and porters who didn’t question what I wanted or where I was headed. When I reached the final door, I opened it too and let the wind rush past me. I watched the train tracks slipping away and merging to a point in the distance, while ever-new shadows of trees and hay rose and then dwindled and vanished.
The Salt Fields Page 7