Red River

by Lalita Tademy

  “Keep going,” Sam shouts. “Get back to your line.”

  The man adjusts the straw hat on his head and gives Sam a blank return look. He doesn’t move. Sam assumes he is sick, from sun or something catching. His eyes are glazed, barely registering.

  “What the use?” the coppery man says to Sam. He looks neither defiant nor sick, just defeated.

  Sam quickly closes the distance between the two of them and yanks the man upright by his arm.

  “We gonna hold them off,” says Sam. He shakes the man, harder than he intends, fighting through the limp resistance to make a connection, to break inside of the man’s despair. “But only if we ready. It take us all to put up barricades before nightfall.” Sam’s attempt at encouragement sounds weak, even to his own ears. There have been too many days of endless marching or riding around the confines of the town limits, muscles straining, listening for any noise, head pounding, attempting to reassure others when there is less and less justification for optimism.

  The man’s watery eyes find Sam’s. “They gonna bring in white men from parishes all over the state and pick us off like ticks from a dog,” he says.

  “We getting these ditches ready for the troops when they come,” replies Sam.

  The man is clearly unconvinced, but something in Sam’s manner cows him enough to make him rise up, slowly, shuffle back to his place in the line of sweating bodies, and pick up his shovel again.

  Men, women, and children pass back and forth between Smithfield Quarter and the courthouse with sacks, building materials, food, and provisions. There are hundreds of colored men around the building, from its front double doors and beyond, stretched across to the Pecan Tree. They dig trenches, stack mud-filled bags as breastworks, gravely practice loading and reloading, and drill with rifles, pistols, and shotguns. Drilling is no longer for show.

  Sam trudges back to his own place on the line, not quite able to cast off the deep well of resignation in the copper-colored man’s eyes. More and more of the men are coming under its spell each day, each hour.

  They make good progress on the barricades. Levi returns to the courthouse midafternoon with a wagon full of supplies, including a large stash of miscellaneous metal, some shiny new and some rusted salvage. The military man relieves Sam and resumes his oversight of the preparations, walking the length of the breastworks, ordering the addition of more sacks to build up the height by a foot in one section and extend the length toward the river. In the main, Levi seems satisfied. He has them unload the scrap from the wagon for deposit at selected spots along the earthworks, pulls several men from the line, and sets them to the task of building makeshift cannons from parts scavenged from the countryside and the general store. They take an old steam pipe and cut it into threes, plug one end of each piece, drill vents, and mount the homemade artillery. A brief, heavy rain kicks up at midday and drenches them through, turning dirt to clotted mud. No one stops to seek shelter.

  By early evening, the barricades are almost finished, a crude, wavering line about three to four feet high with trenches behind. Sam seeks out McCully, standing outside under the Pecan Tree with Spenser and Israel Smith. There are always at least two men posted on the roof during daylight hours, but now there are four. McCully comes down and checks in every hour or so, instead of keeping the long solo watches he maintained in the beginning.

  “Israel seen hundreds of white men at Summerfield Springs,” says McCully to Sam, catching him up on the news.

  “Levi took a few of us to scout,” says Israel, ready to repeat the story he has told over and over for the last half hour. “More white men than you can count. Guns, horses. Even a cannon.”

  “What you do?” asks Sam.

  “We get out of there. Fast,” says Israel. “Levi in with Sheriff Shaw now. There more of them than us. White men not from here mixed in. Some men recognize White League from Sicily Island.”

  “If troops don’t come soon, won’t make no difference,” Sam says in a soft voice.

  There is silence among them.

  “Tell me about your school,” McCully suddenly says to Sam in the cocksure, bold voice he used before his brother was killed. “How that school laid out in your head?”

  “What the school got to do with anything?” asks Sam. “White men gathering at Summerfield Springs. May be none of us getting out of here.”

  “I’m starting to think the colored school what really matter, outta all this,” McCully says.

  “These is scary times,” says Israel. “Sometime I don’t know why we here.”

  “We here for the best reason there is, so our sons don’t have to be,” McCully says. “You got to get shed of here, Sam. They’s big things you meant to do. You got a plan.”

  “We all got plans, McCully. We all got the same need to get clear of this.”

  “You wrong. Most of us just squeezing by, trying to keep going, set up enough room for ourselves. You got in mind moving us all to the fore. Tell us about the colored school,” McCully demands.

  Sam starts to protest, but on the Saturday night before Easter Sunday, what else better is there to talk about than a vision of the future?

  “We get one room, maybe two, not too far in the country,” Sam begins. “All colored children be welcome. Parents pool whatever we get our hands on, lumber, stove, coal for winter, chairs, tables, paper, pencils. We find us a teacher with book learning for words and figuring, pay what we can. Just ’cause we can’t read don’t mean our children got to end the same way. We scrape together enough to buy books for the sharing, and we set aside the time for our children to go to that school, even if we the ones got to work night and day in the field our own selves in their place.”

  “That’s right,” McCully says. “I want to be the first you ask if anything need building.”

  “Me too,” says Israel. “Count me in.”

  The weather turns crisp into the night, with a kick to the wind that whistles through the courthouse while the men try to sleep. About an hour before sunrise comes the unmistakable creaking of multiple wagons approaching, and then sounds of people on the front steps. The flicker of a lantern cuts through the darkness on the other side of the small chest-height window near the front door. Sam is midway between sleep and wakefulness, and he tries to block the picture that springs to his mind, the clear vision of a mob of angry white men with drawn guns bursting through the double doors, come to storm the place. Maybe the troops from New Orleans have worked their way upriver to relieve and rescue them. He grabs his Enfield.

  The guard posted outside challenges in a deep voice, and in response, there is a higher-pitched answer. The front door groans open slowly, and a strange procession enters, bringing inside the coolness of the night air at their backs. The intruders carry two lanterns, wicks turned down low, whispering orders to one another, keeping their voices quiet in deference to the sleeping men. They are mostly women, some garbed in Sunday best, fresh collar or scarf or ironed apron, as if they’ve come to church meeting. There are a handful of older boys and girls, maybe twelve to fifteen years old.

  Sam relaxes his grip on the rifle as soon as he sees that it is their women from Smithfield Quarter and The Bottom. Women weave through the courthouse rooms, looking for the men who belong to them. One farmer startles when his wife touches his shoulder, and, still groggy, fumes and sputters, angry that she has not only come inside the courthouse but brings their baby with her. Conversations begin to roll through the courthouse, like a series of clattering runaway wagons, and build in volume. Lucy Smith has found Israel already, and four of them, Israel, Lucy, and their sons, form a frozen tableau of anger and supplication. Lucy, David, and Noby have their heads bowed while Israel whispers fiercely and gestures. Polly has come too and crosses the room toward Sam, followed by Green and Jackson.

  “Not a word,” Polly whispers to Sam, pressing one of her stubby fingers to his lips while her gaze sweeps the room, absorbing the scene, taking it in.

  “Papa.” Jackson runs
to Sam, stopping just short of his father. “We here to be with you, Papa,” Jackson says, his breath short and quick, the smooth, defined angles of his dark face eager.

  Sam’s two sons stand before him, anxious to be men.

  “What can you be thinking, woman?” Sam says to Polly.

  Polly comes so close Sam smells the stubbornness on her. “We hold Easter Sunday service at sunrise,” Polly says. Her tone preempts negotiation. Sam knows her well enough to know that she has already made up her mind. She points to other women making similar explanations to their men.

  “This a man’s job, Polly,” Sam says. “You in the way.”

  Polly’s angular face forms a hint of a smile. In this hard and dangerous time, Sam has almost forgotten Polly’s smile. It doesn’t seem appropriate.

  “In your way?” Polly says. “I pick or swing a hoe almost good as you in the field, Sam Tademy. We been side by side for a long time now.”

  “This different,” Sam says. “Hundreds of white men gathering up in Summerfield Springs. People seen it with their own eyes.”

  “No safer on the farm than here, with things as they is,” Polly says.

  “Where the other children at?” Sam asks. “L’il Sam, James, Angeline, William?”

  “I left the youngest with neighbors. Jackson pestering every day to come back since leaving town early this week. I do believe if I hadn’t brung him, he woulda found a way to come to you of his own accord.”

  “You all belong home.”

  “Home where you is, Sam. We decide on that long time ago. And those two boys old enough to fight for what’s theirs.”

  “They not yours to decide for,” he says.

  Sam has never forced a claim of his greater right to Green and Jackson because they are from his blood and not hers, and she has never treated them as anything other than being from her own body.

  Polly sways slightly, and on her face is an expression like the first questioning look from a doe after a hunter strikes home. Disbelief and understanding all wrapped up in one moment. But by the time Polly brings her eyes up to meet his, she has already recovered herself. She realizes she isn’t mortally wounded and brings herself back into the fight.

  “Me and the boys staying till after church service,” Polly says with cool crispness.

  The pinch to her lips and the determination in her stance remind Sam how much he has come to depend on this woman.

  “Polly, you don’t understand.” Sam lowers his voice. “They might could come down on us anytime.”

  “I understand fine,” says Polly. “You think I don’t know what the men in Summerfield Springs capable of? You the best thing ever happen to me, Sam Tademy, but you not the first thing. Least you got guns here.”

  Polly touches Sam slightly on the arm and presents him with one of her smiles, meant to soften and reassure him, but the warm curl of her lips can’t ease the gnawing at either his stomach or his heart. “We come to make Easter Sunday service soon as the sun break, and then we go home directly after. I promise,” she says, gathering the boys to her. “It’s not like this the first time we got trouble.”

  “Blood gonna spill, Polly,” Sam whispers. “How many times you gonna make me get my family clear?”

  “We ain’t clear long as you in here, Sam.” Polly seems ready for more argument but pulls back. “We got the need to spend this little bit of Easter Sunday with you,” she says. “The others thinking the same. We here now, and we gonna hold service outside and hope the sun chase away some of the cold.”

  Sam nods, resigned. “Sooner we praise Him, sooner we get you away from here,” he says.

  Sam remembers the first time he ever saw Polly. She was alone, on foot in Alabama, same as him, heading west, with not much more to help her along on a journey than attitude. She carried nothing. Not food, not utensils, no shoes, no extra clothing, and it was clear she was hungry. Her old homespun dress, dark and colorless, shapeless and torn, frayed to shredding at the collar and worn through at the elbows, looked like it was being held together by sheer will and grime. Her hair was matted, a wild snarl around her head. He couldn’t tell how old she was, exactly. Sam’s stolen glances in her direction sometimes convinced him that she was in the late part of her teens, but when the light changed, he was just as sure she had seen the better half of her twenties. There was no innocence in that face, but yet it wasn’t hard.

  She traveled in parallel to him for twenty-six hours before they spoke one word. When Sam stopped to eat and feed the boys, she stopped too. Sam had precious little, but he had managed so far to keep them going by trapping small game, a possum or squirrel, and occasionally a wild rabbit, and he was confident he could catch more each day. He found it almost impossible to continue to ignore the woman who shadowed them, who sat and stared hungrily as he made a fire and roasted their supper of squirrel, but anything he gave to her meant less for his children. She didn’t ask, and he didn’t offer, until the next day when he caught a possum and halted to roast his good fortune. Again, when he stopped, she stopped, off to the other side of the dirt path they both followed.

  “Dangerous, a woman traveling alone,” Sam commented. “Some men up to no good on the road these days.”

  “You asking me to join up with you and your boys?” the woman asked.

  Sam was surprised, both by her suggestion and by her forwardness. He was uncomfortable trying to sort out the rest of his reactions. She was much younger than he was, and filthy, but even through the grime caked on her face and the shabby, torn clothes, Sam could tell she was pretty, in a girlish way.

  “I asked nothing of the kind,” Sam said. “Just saying that traveling alone ain’t a good idea for a woman. Though it hard to tell you a woman.”

  Sam regretted the last immediately.

  “You think a woman ought to look best she can, a woman on her own?” Polly said.

  “It ain’t safe. Why not go back where you come from?”

  “Never,” she hissed. It was as if her features became indistinct for just a moment. “Never,” she repeated.

  They didn’t speak again for a half hour or more. Sam tended to the boys, getting them bedded down in the woods for the night. The evening weather wasn’t too cold or damp, and tonight his two blankets would be enough. The two boys slept together under the same blanket.

  “What their names?” she asked.

  “The oldest Green. The youngest Jackson,” Sam said. He assumed she gravitated to him because she considered him safer than some of the others on the road, an older man with two young sons in tow.

  “I seen you all struggling, even you, carrying the little one,” she said. “You spare some possum tonight, I help carry the load what you got tomorrow. We take turns carrying Jackson if you want. If you catch game, I find herbs, cook it up, make what you got taste better, stretch out longer. You got a pot, but there’s more could come out of it than you know how to do.”

  Sam wondered what else she would be willing to do for protection or even just a meal. “Ain’t you worried what kind of man I is?” he said.

  She looked directly at him, what seemed to Sam to be through him, into him. Even in the dimness of the moonlight, Sam felt the power of it.

  “No,” she said. “I see two choices. Travel alone and travel with you. And you got food.”

  A little reluctantly, Sam gave her some of the roasted possum he had intended to pack up for tomorrow. She crossed quickly, close to the fire, grabbing at the bony remains of the possum splayed and skewered on a stout branch. It had cooled already, and she didn’t hesitate before gulping it down greedily, not stopping until there was only bone and head left.

  “We walking till I get us clean out the state of Alabama,” Sam said, surprised at himself for sharing this information with the gritty woman across from him. “‘Till I come someplace to stop and raise my children. My name Sam.”

  The woman nodded and smiled, a sweet smile that lightened her face. “Mine Polly,” she said.

 
They just fell in together, as simple as that, and Polly walked beside him all the way from Alabama, step for step. As their walking weeks passed, traveling with his children, they began to shape themselves to each other, seemingly without much effort. By the time they had been on the road for over a month, he had told her of his hopes for the future, his dreams for the boys.

  One night not long after they crossed into Louisiana, the two of them sat by the fire while Polly cleaned out the pot from the possum stew she had made. The boys had already fallen into an exhausted sleep together under their blanket, Green tucked up behind Jackson with his arms wrapped around his younger brother. Sam had come to look forward to the transition time after night fell and the boys were settled, a quiet time that on good days meant a full stomach, a chance to rest his feet, and one-on-one talk with Polly. To Sam’s surprise, he found himself telling her about Green and Jackson’s mother, and how she had been sold away from him the year before, when Jackson was barely two. How he had found her gone one evening when he got back from the fields at dusk, with no explanation. The boys had become part of the plantation, mothered by whatever slave woman was assigned. But then came freedom, and Sam found himself with two small boys he didn’t quite know what to do with. But they were his blood, and he was prepared to kill for them.

  That night, for the first time, Polly shared too, but only her thoughts of a future, not her past. All she wanted from this life, she said, was a good man she could respect and a family of her own no one could take away. Sam remembered how she looked that night, so young and fearless. But she never said anything at all about where she came from or what had happened to her there, even much later, after they had walked through Louisiana for what seemed forever, and Sam had felt the thick, raised scars that charted crisscrossing paths down the center of her back.

  When they met in Alabama, there was frost on the ground in the mornings, but now the days were longer, warmer. Soon the full press of summer would be upon them. It was time to begin a new life, settle down and start living, stop the endless walking, but Sam was afraid to upset the balance he and Polly had together. What if she was far enough from the terrors of her past and didn’t need him anymore? They never really talked about what would happen when the walking was over.