Balm

by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

  “I thought God didn’t make mens like you no more,” she said.

  Horse looked at the ground. Annie’s voice was low, but it rose through his ears like a message coming from the grave. He knew his face was streaked with dirt and sweat, and he could smell himself. He faced her open heart feeling soiled. He had asked for a word, and now he had none to share. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, her feet had disappeared. He lifted his chin and saw her skirt thin until it vanished.

  “You give me a piece of myself back.”

  “My scalp.” It was all he could say as he lifted his eyes, watching her disappear right in front of him. Nothing was left but her head, her dark eyes. She reached into the back of her hair and pulled something out—the comb he had made her.

  “My scalp,” he said as she pressed it into his hand.

  Later, Horse would remember how he’d stood in the dust left behind by the coffle, thinking: So this how it feel. There had been too little time with her, and it baffled him how he let her and Herod live on the farm as long as they had without him seeing that she was the one who would bring him back to life.

  He should have said more. What he’d wanted to say was, Joy, woman. That’s what you give me. You my joy. Instead of My scalp.

  Maybe he was the dumb horse Mister thought he was.

  The next day, Horse cut his finger badly with a knife. At night, the three husbands spoke quietly about their chances of escape. Harrison brought in men with guns who took turns on night patrol around the property. Horse held on to a faint hope that the women would remain close by, their skills with hemp rope keeping them from being sold down the river. The husbands begged the housemaid to find out where the women had been sold. To them, her reading skill was akin to magical powers, but her searches turned up nothing. She had no way of finding out the information every husband on the place was after.

  By fall of that year, Mr. Harrison was bedridden, and the men had ceased working. The hemp was not yet hackled and the fibers full of hurd when the first two of them ran off. The rest of them, save Horse and the housemaid, marched off the farm in clear daylight. While the woman continued to empty the old man’s bedpan and cook up the meat that remained in the smokehouse, Horse slept alone in the loft he’d shared with Annie, hopeful that his wife would return.

  He stayed on for two more years, until one morning the housemaid delivered his breakfast with the news that the old man had passed in his sleep. She wanted to go to the camp where some of the men had gone to enlist, up near Nicholasville, and she begged Horse to travel with her as her husband so she could seek refuge. They were promising free papers if he joined the army. Besides, she did not think they would survive the winter. There was no food left. Horse looked at her, noting that somewhere along the way she had lost her beauty. Her eyes sank into her face, and the skin peeled from her cheeks. He did not want to leave, but she needed his help and he had already failed a coffle of women. He marked the moment: first, he would bury the old man; second, he would take the woman to this camp. He had not cared for Harrison at all, but being righteous was a step toward becoming a man.

  THEY KEPT CLOSE TO THE ROADS, staying just out of sight until they reached the cantilevered bridge over the river. Beneath them, the river swelled into white peaks, then dove forward in a relentless march south. He took her hand as they crossed a bridge. They came upon a village of white tents, neatly arranged in eight rows of four. At the head, a band of men sat around a fire. Horse approached, but one of them waved his arm and pointed in another direction. Horse took the shivering woman’s hand. Come on. Positioned at the foot of a river, the land drew up into steep, stone gorges. On one end, the river palisades protected the camp; on the other a stretch of forest ended at Hickman Creek. In front of a gable-roofed building, a group of colored men drilled in a neat military step. Horse stopped to watch, openmouthed. A white officer barked an order, and the men turned, their feet perfectly aligned.

  My land, he whispered.

  Horse sent the woman off to look for his wife while he waited for a turn to enter headquarters. A lit stove in the corner warmed the room, but Horse rubbed his hands together anyway. At the sound, the white officer looked up from where he was sitting at a table. Horse froze.

  “Name?”

  “Horse, sir.”

  The officer put down his pencil.

  The soldier standing behind him spoke. “Sir, this is not the first one. We have been asking some of them to think of suitable names.”

  “Horse? You got another name you go by?”

  “Ain’t never been called nothing else, sir.”

  “Well, is there something you’d like to be called? You are enlisting as a soldier in the federal army. We cannot call you Horse. That would be . . . unpatriotic.” He paused. “Do you understand me?”

  The officer behind him snickered.

  Horse hesitated. He believed his wife, Annie, and her daughter, Herod, might be somewhere out in that sea of huts and shanties. If he changed his name and people called him anything but Horse, Annie would never be able to find him. He hesitated.

  “But Horse is my name, sir.”

  The men glanced at one another.

  “How about George? That’s a fine American name. Or how about your master’s name? Most of the slaves are taking their masters’ names.”

  Horse thought of the soldier’s suggestion. Whenever any of them were away from the farm, they knew they belonged to the Harrison Hemp farm. Surely that would leave enough of a clue for Annie to find. Still, the thought of taking his master’s name saddened him. Already, he could sense the inescapable reach of the old man’s arm, a hand on his back that would follow him into his new life.

  “I reckon Hemp Harrison’ll do,” he said, twisting the clues just enough to make the name his own.

  “Hemp? Why don’t we just call him cotton?”

  Another snicker.

  “Hemp ain’t much better than Horse,” the officer seated at the table said, but he wrote the name anyway.

  He was ordered to live in the colored soldiers’ barracks, while the woman was sent down to the tents with the other women and children. In exchange for his service, he would receive his certificate of freedom. As he walked to the barracks, he hopped over a puddle, the reality of freedom almost too much to believe. He stood outside the building, watching as colored men joked with one another. Laughing! This place was no place at all. It was some cruel trick, like the first touch of crazy when the stomach had been empty too long. He could not describe what he felt. He tossed the images he witnessed back and forth in his mind like pinecones as he sought to put a feeling to it—it was not a word, but a melody. It was like . . . a push of air beneath a wing, a twitch of muscle in the breast.

  He began to think of all he would do once he found Annie. Build her a house. Plant her a garden. Suddenly, his feet stuck to the ground as he realized that without Annie, freedom meant nothing. Nothing at all.

  Rather than enter the barracks, he made his way down to where the women camped. A girl directed him to a shanty where two old women stood throwing wood onto a fire. They took his hands from him, rubbed them until they were warm. Their dry touch soothed him and he never wanted them to let go. What’s your name, baby? God bless you, they said. They told him they knew nothing of Annie and Herod, but he should feel free to take a look around. He walked slowly back up the hill, still mulling over the word free.

  In the day, he drilled. In the evening, he checked for new arrivals. When nothing came of his search, he joined the men sitting around the stove in the mess hall. Their talk shifted between high and low. They spoke of the sickness raging through the camp, one man recounting the day’s death tally. When they spoke of the children, a few cried openly. The families of the enlisted men had not been granted freedom, but they came to the camp anyway. To the dismay of the white officers, thousands of women and children had arrived seeking shelter, and just months before, hundreds of families had been forced off the grounds in freezi
ng temperatures. Many of them had died, and Horse knew that even this long-awaited freedom was not enough to ease their pain.

  The men were still eager to march, however, boasting of the Fifth U.S. Colored Cavalry trained at Camp Nelson that had gone off to fight at the Battle of Saltville in Virginia. Even Horse could not help but share in their patriotism. The sight of men who had been enslaved their entire lives dressed in uniform made him draw up his chest.

  He continued to ask around for Annie, fearing that they would call upon him to fight before he found her. The flow of families in and out of the camp dwindled, and he no longer anticipated the new arrivals. He met a man who had passed through the Harrison farm and reported that the quarters were deserted. Horse was glad to know Annie had not returned there, but he did not know where else to look. Still, he made up his mind to leave and go look for her.

  After saying farewell to the housemaid, he moved north through the palisades, alone, carrying only a canteen, a tin spoon, and his leather roll of carving tools in his sack. His supply dwindled. He downed birds and possum with rocks, using his drawknife to slice them open. He walked nearly fourteen hours a day, staying close to the river, tracing its snaky outline through the state, and when the sun reached its highest notch in the sky, he whispered his thanks that it was not the middle of winter or summer, the spring temperatures mild enough for foot travel.

  At the end of the week, it began to rain and did not stop for three days. He looked for shelter as he wrapped his shirt around his head, tying it into a knot at his neck. Once the rain let up, he carried on. A sticky humidity soaked him all over again. He hung his clothes from a tree to dry and squatted naked on a rocky riverbank, warming his backside in the sun. He stumbled as he dipped a toe into the water’s cool. He stepped back onto dry land and put a palm against his brow. North of him, he thought he saw the chimney of a cabin. He followed the sight until he found it. Deserted. He rummaged inside the house, finding nothing of value save a dull little knife to add to his pack. Out back, he discovered a footpath, and he took it, making sure to keep the river in his view, climbing the hillier parts until he was walking along a cliff so steep that he dared not look below.

  He began to come upon other travelers, colored men and women, children. He asked everyone he met about her. He knew he was traveling north, but he was still confused. The names of towns he did not recognize made him feel he was out of Kentucky and in some other country. Each day, he did not stop searching until the setting sun had turned the hues of flowers and the final shadowing of their blossoms was lost in the black of night. He learned to appreciate a fuller moon, the cover of its whitish glow.

  One night, he camped with another man who was also looking for family. The man had a fishing pole, and the two of them leaned against a rock, each man silent in his thoughts. Horse noticed that the fish upriver were the same he’d fished down near the Harrison farm—silvery trout and perch and the little goggle-eyed ones that changed color with the angle of light. They dried the meat in the sun, stored slithers of chewy flesh in their pockets. Corncrakes swooped as Horse filled his canteen from a brook before eyeing the land for a suitable spot to sleep by nightfall. His stomach troubled him, so he climbed up into the neck of a tree, its rooted trunk rising into a spray of arms that cradled him. As he napped, he dreamed of Annie. Soft arms and thighs and the loose folds of a belly that warmed him.

  In the morning, the two men parted ways.

  He gained another footpath and followed it until it thinned and the land rose up before him in a tangle of brush. He used a stick to trudge through it, his fear of snakes turning the wind’s whistle into a rattle. He liked it most when the land opened up before him, trees stacked against hills. He was not ready to give up, but he had been walking for weeks and was beginning to despair that he could not find her. Furthermore, he was lost. He did not know the geography of the state, and if it weren’t for the river, he would swear he had been walking in circles. Wandering slaves, lost just the same as he, peppered him with questions: Where was he headed? What was up ahead? He met a man who told him he had reached a town called Carrollton and would need to jump a ferry to cross the river. Furthermore, the war was over and the president was dead. Had he heard? Horse felt the same confusion he’d felt at the camp. Joy and uncertainty rolled into a phlegmy ball in his chest. Lord, where is my earthly chariot? Ain’t it due?

  Weeks later, when the white missionary found him sprawled semiconscious beneath a tree, the missionary who would eventually lead him to Chicago, Horse’s beard and hair had grown into matted flaps. By then, he was deep into Indiana.

  18

  MADGE AND OLGA HUDDLED IN THE kitchen. Upstairs, the widow slept. It was so early, the sun had not risen yet. Madge had been surprised to find Olga already in the kitchen, chopping onions in the dark. The bitter scent of them hovered over the room. Madge rubbed her eyes.

  “She’s changed,” Olga declared.

  It was true. Three lines drew across Sadie’s forehead. She hunched over when she walked. Her hair had begun to darken. When she spoke, she’d lost the slightly flat sound of Pennsylvania and taken on the nasal ah of Illinois. She walked stiffly, her hips straight. She ate more at each meal, and her waist had begun to fill out so much that Madge had to order new dresses. Even her habits were changing. She no longer picked at her eyebrows when she was thinking. She belched freely.

  But there was something more. It wasn’t in her face, not in the eyes or skin. It was not a stretch to the two servants to believe a spirit could come into the physical world, one layer at a time. Soon James Heil might fill the air, and it struck Madge that they should warn her somehow.

  The German woman usually kept her distance from everyone in the household, including Madge, but now they stood together near the heat of the stove, united in worry.

  “What you make of it?” Madge asked.

  “He’s using her to stay here. And I think it’s wearing her down.”

  Both had felt the presence of the spirit in the house. For Olga, she thought she could sense him looking over her shoulder when she was boiling a stew, as if waiting to taste it. And she did not blame her own ailing memory when a pot appeared where a bowl should be or when a dish cracked while sitting on a shelf. When Madge touched the widow, she felt his presence. She tried not to minister too much to the woman because she hoped to avoid him. Lately, even a whiff of the woman’s odor carried a note of the spirit in it.

  “Who can stop it?” Olga refused to utter his name. Like Madge, she feared this spirit, but not enough to give up her job working in the widow’s house.

  The closest person to the widow, Dr. Heil, was not even to be trusted. He visited the house more than anyone. Not only did he serve as her escort, but he called upon the spirit every chance he got.

  “What can we do?”

  Olga used the term we and Madge took note of it. Even when they spoke of their common household duties—such as answering the door or taking meals up to the widow—Olga never grouped them together. In truth, the woman seldom even referred to her own family in that way—the husband who worked laying bricks, the son who came to walk her home in the evenings. Even the teamwork of family did not lesson the woman’s misanthropy.

  So when she asked Madge what we should do, the healer felt obligated to come up with a ready answer.

  “What about her daddy? He her only family, right?”

  Olga stroked the single dark hair on her chin. “The boy can read and write.”

  “What boy?”

  “Who else? My son.”

  “You mean sign her name? That won’t work.”

  Olga looked at Madge as if she were a fool. “He works at the telegraph office.”

  “Ah,” Madge said. “Tell you what. You get that telegraph and I can get the train ticket. You remember the name? York something? I can get the man to charge it to the widow’s bill. She don’t half look at her accounting no way. When her daddy get here and see for himself what’s happening, he’ll kno
w what to do.”

  “Yes,” Olga said. “It might just take a man to run that ghost off.” Olga pursed her lips and turned back to the onions. She swiped a handful of them into a bowl. The juices released again and Madge was close enough to feel the sting.

  WHEN MADGE RETURNED HOME, she saw Hemp outside the stable sipping from a canteen. It was not the first time she had seen him. He visited Richard every now and then. She had been careful to stay out of his line of sight since that terrible night she’d lain with him. She nodded at him and he looked off distantly as if he did not see her.

  As she cleaned the widow’s bedroom, she leaned her forehead against the window and thought of her family, what it would be like to see them again. Hemp had said that even a bad family was better than none at all. Whenever she tried to imagine never seeing her mother again, a well of hurt threatened to drown her. There were things she missed about Tennessee that just weren’t the same in Illinois, like the Hatchie and her mama’s hotcakes slathered in grease.

  Voices floated up from below, and she turned from the window. At the bottom of the stairs she was surprised to see Hemp emerging from the widow’s parlor.

  “Y’all find her?”

  He stared at her, unable to put into words what Sadie had just accused him of, how she’d asked him not to come back into her house.

  “What?”

  “I’ll let you out,” Madge said, avoiding his eyes.

  He followed her to the kitchen. She stopped at the wide table and lay her hands flat upon it, as if sensing what would happen next. He pushed against her back and breathed into her neck. She smelled the spirits on his breath. He was drunk.