Rosa set a few broke-neck sardines and hard-boiled plantains in the middle of the table. Wasnt so much havin a meal as sufferin enough to get us through to lunch. Demas was actin like nothin was different. Like he was always expectin to get stabbed in the back by his children. He smiled in Rosa’s face, still slept one space over from Jeremias, laughed when François tossed his head and pretended to be Eve in front of the lookin glass.
Made me wonder if I knowed him at all.
It was near high noon when I seent a wagon kickin up dirt. Demas was still workin on the bells when he sent me to the house to tell Rosa to start puttin out lunch. It was all but empty inside since Jeremias had took the boy to see his other grandparents.
Sun wasnt out that day. Wasnt no wind in the air either. I member cause it was the breeze that always got me through them days workin with them bellows. And that day, I couldnt hardly breathe. I was so tired that I aint notice that the wagon wasnt on the road no more. That it cut through the fields and the driver was walkin up to the stable.
“Ive come about my order,” Grayson said, with his lip real tight and angry.
Demas aint tell me this but I knowed he aint make that first set a bits right. I knowed the second they was fitted in some African mouth and that African man walked a mile, that that metal that was supposed to hold his tongue in place was gonna come flyin out. So I was at the ready. Tryna get Demas to hear me while he banged the third bell into shape. He had told Padre José he never made no bells. That he was nervous they might not ring like they should. Padre told him he didnt much mind how they sounded so long as people come to Mass when they heard em.
“Ive come to pick up my order,” Grayson said to Demas.
I was damn relieved. At least I was til I seent Demas look up, wipe his brow, streakin his farhead black and squintin like he aint knowed the fella.
“I have come to collect my order,” Grayson said once more.
Demas dropped his head back toward the bell, and the mare, Martinique, let out a lil air that sounded deep like a growl. “Sir, I told you I would not be able to—to take that order.”
Grayson looked to me, like to ask if Demas had lost his damn mind. And Imma tell you that I wasnt so sure he hadnt. I guess I knowed all along that Demas was that kinda big-in-the-chest man, that he had to bottle up all them lil undignities that I swore sometimes would choke him. But that day when I seent him speak like a man who aint care no more, I got scared for him. I knowed the world wasnt tryna make no room for no Demas kinda man.
“Pardon?” Grayson said. “I was clear I needed two hundred more, was I not?”
“Sir, I said when you were here last that I c-could not take the order.” Demas glared at the bells like to tell Grayson they was the good Christian reason he couldnt finish his order.
“You used my metal for church bells?”
“The church supplied its own metal, sir.”
“You shouldve used what they provided for my order. First in, first out.”
Demas had this look on his face. Like a big dog told he couldnt bite a lil dog.
“I have a buyer expecting those fasteners,” Grayson said.
“Sir, we can have them ready by next week. The supply ship was a month late, but we have the materials now,” I told him.
Grayson wasnt lookin at me though. “I need them by the morrow.”
“My daughter is marrying tomorrow, sir. I need at least tree days.”
“And Imma bring them to your place so you aint gotta pick up,” I added, tryin like hell to get Grayson to focus in on me and not on Demas and his aint-care-no-more face.
“Tomorrow,” Grayson said.
“I cannot agree to that, sir.”
“‘I cannot agree to that’ is akin to saying no, isnt it, you bloody boon?”
“I cannot say,” Demas said to him.
“I cannot say, sir.”
“I cannot say sir.”
Grayson was like a geyser. You ever seent one of em? Water shootin straight into the sky like the earth aint want it no more. You could think it lovely, but it could scare the dickens outta you if you aint know what was comin. And we, for sure, aint knowed it was comin.
When Grayson turnt to leave, I thought that Demas had gotten mighty lucky. I made a note to ask Demas later why he just didnt say yes and put us to work through the night. Lookin back now, I think Demas mighta fooled himself into believin that him and Grayson was the same kinda man. Mighta fooled himself into believin Grayson was a man at all. That was how it always happens. Thinkin men is men when sometimes its just evil lookin like a man.
Did I tell you that there wasnt no sun that day? That it was the first time we didnt all meet in the house for a cup a somethin or a lil morsel of bread to start off the day? That I was supposed to be gettin married the next day to a real good woman and that me and Rosa had come to a place where we just set down all them feelins that was between that kiss, and we was all gonna make do and make a life there, together? And that it was all undone that day?
Eve screamed first.
When me and Demas rounded the corner, Grayson had Rosa by the hair. He was draggin her down them porch steps and both Eve and Rosa was givin him a fight. A helluva one. Nails, fists, feet, pummelin him til he got real real mad and stomped Rosa on the head with his boot. She fell still. And Eve threw herself over her sister. And the next stomp was more vicious than the first. Landed on Eve. At the side of her face. Her cry was so loud it liked to funnel the blood right outta me. I was almost to them when I seent Demas, who come through the house, set himself on the bottom step aimin that rifle. I ran and took it from him, knowin well what could happen to me if I used it, and knowin even better what could happen to Demas if he did. I ran up behind Grayson who started in again on Rosa. I beat his head with the end of that musket. I membered once askin Demas how he made that rifle. Strips of iron hammered round a rod, “heatin and beatin,” he said, laughin. Then his face fell and he told me that the Governor had took his special lathe and his fingers wasnt so easy with the rods no more.
Grayson fell down clutchin his head. I smashed his hands til they turnt tongue pink. The lusty fingertips of that girl, Violence, had returned, and it felt goddamn bloody delicious. Like hot meat and gravy. I wasnt that lad with his Pa no more. I aint have to pretend to like the way it felt when I heard the crack of fine bones. Now I had to pretend that I aint like it.
Demas musta seent the delight I was takin in the beatin. “Let him go,” he said. “Let him get on his feet.”
I stepped back from Grayson and let him stumble his arse back onto his wagon seat and after he drove off, I turned to Demas, feelin the heat of my own breath on the tip of my nose. “There aint no goin back, is there?” I said.
Demas shook his head. “He will come again soon. And he wont be alone.”
XIV
Isle of Trinidad
1
1815
It was past suppertime. Behind the house the Northern Range loomed and wound, tinged in a bile-colored light, making shadows of the only land Rosa had ever known. Sheets that had been hung with the same wooden pegs that once pulled Rosa’s nostrils into a narrow line now lay against the stiff air, as Rosa, seated on the ground beneath them, waited.
Papá had wiped the blood from her brow, but still Rosa’s head throbbed and her vision remained smoke white. She could not stop the tremors that made her jaw sputter, could not stop worrying about what might happen next. Fat-Gyal-Hen, in her cage, watched Rosa with watery black-roe eyes, pecking the grille as Rosa crawled toward her. The hen smelled of musk, salt, mildewy fur, and her speckled feathers were like white potato mash hiding droppings. That man with his red face and the way he threw her to the ground so hard, and Eve pouncing him and Papá not coming quickly enough—Rosa ran it over again and again in her thoughts. Fat-Gyal-Hen looked to Rosa as if expecting her to speak, so Rosa told the hen what Papá had said in the house while he bandaged her head and reset Eve’s jaw: “You will have to go away.”
She did not think he meant the sort of go-away Rosa had had in mind. Not the kind where she pretended she was leaving only to have Papá beg her to stay, not the kind where she went on an adventure of her own making. It was the sort of go-away that terror, in its no-ripples-in-the-water, no-footprints-on-the-shore, brought to bear on wrong-bodied, wrong-minded women.
What had Rosa done to bring such rage? The man, Grayson, had had no restraint, no hesitation, before running onto the verandah to attack her. His hands had landed with such force across her face and back and neck that she’d seen him rise off his feet after each blow. She remembered screaming out for Eve and hearing Eve running toward her, the sucking sound of Eve losing her breath as the man unchained a violence that she and Eve both knew to be reserved for men; a man’s violence that made Rosa feel like a weak and vulnerable, pitiful and disgusting woman. A violence that made Rosa hate the body that had accepted it, hate the body that had wailed beneath it, the body that ripped and bled and bruised and pained and ached; a violence that made Rosa resent everyone who could not stop it all from happening.
The dirt where Rosa lay next to Fat-Gyal-Hen’s cage felt cool against her sweaty torso. She thought of Eve, only a half hour before, taking Papá by his scarred hands, begging him to allow the family to remain together. “It is too much of a risk,” he’d said. The plan was for Jeremias to take Eve and François away, north along the coast to someplace safe. A place from whence Eve might one day return home.
Not everyone would be as fortunate.
Eve’s wailing had sent Rosa into the backyard. Rosa could still hear Eve through the side window, shuffling about, setting her things into Mamá’s Martinique valise. Fat-Gyal-Hen pecked at the grille again, ready for her post-supper scraps, and Rosa wondered what would become of the hen after she left. Scrawny-Gyal-Hen. Dead-Gyal-Hen. Rosa would not think of what would become of Papá until she turned to see the mass of land that she would always call home wither into a thin line of green on a sea of blue.
CREADON RAMPLEY
Isle of Trinidad
1815
I aint never birth my own dream. I dont know if anybody ever had a dream of his own. I think we go about livin life lookin forward with other people’s eyes. Like maybe shared dreams is what makes us human.
I think I wanted to share a dream with Eve and Demas and Rosa in Trinidad for as long as I could stand to. I think I wanted quiet Sunday lunches, evenins on the porch, cacao nibs, coconut trees, and a stable of virile horses. I think I wanted to learn how to be a proper man. A brave man. A man scared men dreamt of becomin. I think I had took the dreams of every person I ever knowed and set out a life to reach for. And I almost had it too.
I told Demas that the only hope he had of gettin outta trouble was to say he aint knowed me good. That I was a drifter who beat Grayson without any promptin. It wasnt much of a plan but Grayson was comin back and I had to give Demas a fightin chance.
Demas looked the way he did that night his wife’s brother come to take the horses. Big strong body, frail egg eyes. His hair was white like meltin snowflakes on a massif and thin like a cobweb. I could prolly tell you that life was harder for men like Pa than it was for Demas. Pa aint have no verandah and hot teas, no daughters cookin him meals. I could prolly tell you that life was harder for men like Meleanos too. He had scalpin Indians to deal with and thievin missions thinkin a ways to get rid of him. But I cant pretend to know the kinda toll that Trinidad life took on Demas. You see, me and Pa and Meleanos, we could all just pick up and go when we wanted, where we wanted, how we wanted, but Demas, Demas aint have that kinda choice. He had to make good where he was and make good the first time he set out to do so cause Negroes aint get more than one go. Demas knowed that, and I come to know it as I listened to him tell me what he wanted me to do, how he was passin his “go” on to me.
“Where to?” I said.
“Set her in a place where she—she wont have to run.” Demas pushed his palm into his chin, his lips thinnin as he frowned. He had to know no place like that existed. Not for Rosa.
“I only know one place. Where I been. And you aint never gonna see your girl again if I take her there.”
Demas already knowed this. It was in them frail egg eyes. It was why he had them frail egg eyes. He was choppin off his own legs and hopin to make em go.
“Rosa needs a land. All people must have a land,” he said. “Help her find her f-footing. She can make her way. I know she will.”
Demas aint knowed what he was askin cause he aint knowed what kinda place I left behind. How hard life was there. How hard it was gonna be for Rosa lookin the way she did, bein the way she was, to live a life worth livin.
Goddamn impossible.
I told him no. He give me his family Bible, told me his wife woulda wanted Rosa to have it. I told him no again. “I never asked anyting of you,” he said. I didnt like how it felt, him pleadin with me. He aint owed me nothin. I owed him everything.
“You aint got to ask me no more,” I said. “I put you in this place. And Im real sorry bout that. Imma take Rosa anywhere you want me to if she wants to go.”
XV
Isle of Trinidad
1
1815
Rosa helped François onto the wagon to sit beside his father as they waited for Eve. The boy had been crying. Rosa supposed it was the first cry of many to come, as she returned to the house and brought back bread with fresh sweet butter for him to take on the ride. When François opened the cheesecloth, he smiled down at Rosa, and she was certain the next time they met that François would not remember her face. But Rosa believed she would remember his, though later his features, in her mind, would become Victor’s.
“Be good.” It was all she knew to say, though later she’d realize it hadn’t been enough.
Papá had wound Eve’s bandage from the crown of her head to beneath her chin, so when Eve stood before Rosa, her tears fell in a stiff straight line as though free-falling from a cliff. Eve reached for Rosa’s face, examined Rosa’s swollen cheek and the eye that flickered from the strain of opening in sunlight. Eve set Rosa’s hand in her own and brought it to her mouth to kiss it. Rosa remembered then her big sister’s kisses. She remembered how Eve had oiled her hair, wiped her face clean, scrubbed her neck of dirt all the many days Mamá could not. And so when Eve tried to speak, tried to say something that could embody all that sisters were, all that sisters could never be to each other, Rosa, with the tips of her kissed fingers, traced the lines of her sister’s mouth, willing her not to. Instead, Rosa pondered her sister’s face, her beautiful mouth so much like Mamá’s, and Rosa realized she could not remember a day when she had not resented Eve’s prettiness, her face so much like Mamá’s, and as she stood trying to piece together a tapestry of memories, she now wished to see Eve’s face whole and unspoiled so she might remember it until they saw each other again.
Rosa helped Eve up onto the wagon bench. Eve was unsteady on her feet, still trembling from the scourge that had come upon them so suddenly. Rosa looked to Jeremias, hoping to remind him that Eve needed extra care and that he must play the role of brother and father and mother and sister, but Jeremias did not look down to see her. Rosa thought that perhaps Jeremias understood that anything that rang like affection between the two of them might have rendered everything that had come before as inconsequential; that a goodbye might have made them regret the resentments, all the lost time. And perhaps to Jeremias it was not worth the risk for either of them to contemplate wrongdoing. At least not then.
As they drove off, Rosa was certain Eve would not stop searching for the house in the cloud of wagon dust they left behind, but Rosa could not bear to wait for the wagon to disappear from sight. She returned inside and there, on the floor where Jeremias once slept, Rosa found Papá, on his knees with his head pressed into the tabletop. He wept just loud enough for God to hear him. And prayed for Mamá to watch over them. Rosa did not know if seeing Papá on his knees in this act of supplication
made Papá seem more broken or more whole, did not know if it made her feel more broken or more whole.
Rosa went outside and drew herself again into a ball next to Fat-Gyal-Hen’s pen. The sound of Papá’s footsteps made Rosa’s stomach curdle.
“Come, Rosa.” Papá reached for her hand.
“No, please leave me.” She told Papá that all she wished was to lie back down in his dirt. When she looked up to see his damp face, his eyes swollen, Rosa felt that her heart might never unbreak. She wished to hate Papá. She wished to hate him for Lamec, for Creadon, for Grayson, for DeGannes, for making her love that place so damn much. But there before her stood her Papá, the anguish like a too-thick rouge upon his face, and she felt for him the same wretchedness she felt for herself.
“You’re sending Eve to Blanchisseuse, but I have to leave Trinidad?” The bandage had loosed from Rosa’s head, the corner of it dangled across her left eye, and when she looked up again at Papá, his expression was one of pity. As though she were both hopeless and helpless. “Why didn’t you send Eve away with Señor Rampley? She is his fiancée,” Rosa said. “Grayson won’t be looking for me. He will come for Eve.”
“You don’t know this.” Papá set his hands under her arms and pulled her to her feet. He tucked the end of her bandage into the fold at her forehead, performing the task as if it were a duty, pressing hard against her skin.
“I am sorry, but I won’t go,” Rosa said. “Who will I be away from here? What will I do with that man?”
“He will make sure you’re on your feet and you can be anybody you wish.”
Until then Rosa had not thought Papá serious. But she now knew what he and Señor Rampley had been planning.
“Anybody I wish? I will be the same Rosa. Except I will be lost.”
Book of the Little Axe Page 31