Wash

by Margaret Wrinkle

  There’s a spot we like on the far bank in the shadow of a big tulip poplar down in an old storm. Silvery trunk throws a shadow big enough to hold us. Hard dirt and dry grass to lay on. Sometimes we talk and sometimes we don’t. It depends.

  But once I wrap my hands around her middle, my thumbs touching over where she breathes in but light, my fingers nearly meeting in back but light, and her looking over my shoulder at the stars cupping down round us but light, once I get my hands on her to where I can feel her breathing in and out, opening and closing my grip but light, that’s it.

  Pallas

  Sometimes it’s not about all that. Lot of times, it’s just sitting quiet, him and me. Visiting whether we’re talking or not. Watching the sky turn, curled up next to our log by the pond.

  We talk about now and we talk about then. Once in every long while, we’ll talk about time to come, but we keep ourselves real careful about that. Most times, we stay right with where we are and where we’ve been. Talk about this person and that one. Both here and gone. About who did what and who said what, and sometimes it’s funny and sometimes it’s like walking into a wall.

  He tells me about his mamma. His mamma and her bumping smack into his daddy and then never seeing him again. He’s handing me pieces of his story like food and I’m holding each one real careful, memorizing the way it looks before I tuck it in my mouth. Enough times of us meeting up, I know all about his mamma’s mamma and his daddy’s too. I take his family for mine, like happens when you don’t have much of one yourself, and I’m glad to feel them close.

  As for me, he can look at me and see a lot of what happened before Phoebe found me. He feels the rest of it from the way I can turn to dead weight in his hands, with my eyes gone empty, just staring over his shoulder. He can guess most of it because the words of a story matter less than the shape and feel of it.

  I tell him some about Phoebe teaching me, but mostly my story comes when I scan the woods we’re walking through. I’ll stop short to kneel down with a plant and he’ll wait quiet, knowing I’m watching for Phoebe’s hand moving through the leaves. He stands there, ready to fall back in step with me when I’m done.

  He likes that I’m not scared. Go everywhere and by myself. Make my own little money too, even though they don’t hardly ever call me to tend to white folks, except when it goes bad fast with no white doctor close enough to fetch. That’s when they send for me, but they already waited too long and there’s nothing I can do. Leads them to say they never believed in my medicine anyway. But I know how to hold myself steady and Wash does too.

  Around here, you got to hunt to find what works for you. And if you got even a little sense, you learn to keep what you find to yourself. So we stay careful. We sneak and we go otherwise. He says he’s not about to let anyone see his heart. Says sure as you know it, somebody will come after me just to get back at him. But I pat my knife and tell him not to worry.

  ∞

  It is late. Dark presses against dawn as Wash makes his way home from meeting Pallas at the pond deep in the marsh. He takes the road because it’s quicker. He rounds the next to last bend with his mind so full of Pallas that he forgets to pay his usual close attention. The soft dirt on the road muffles the sound of hoof beats and the wind trying to bring rain swirls in the trees, drowning out the faint jangle of bits and spurs.

  Wash and the small band of tired patrollers come face to face so fast all Wash has time to think is how trouble never seems to come when you are ready for it. He calculates whether he has time to jump off to the side of the road but with this drought, the horses will hear him as soon as he steps into the dry grass. If there were less moon or if the patrollers were on foot, Wash would have a slim chance of them walking right past him.

  But the horses snort to smell him better and start tossing their heads. His fingers close on the worn piece of paper in his pocket. Wash has his hand out, holding the folded pass by its corner, before the four patrollers have pulled their horses to a complete halt. They are startled too, but excited to have stumbled across some action at the end of a long quiet night.

  The man closest to Wash bends from his saddle to take the pass. He shakes the paper from folded to open then hands it over to the one who can read. The other two patrollers crowd their horses closer, anxious and eager, like hounds quivering to be loosed on the scent. The one who can read holds the pass in a patch of moonlight. His voice is rough and halting even on the shorter words.

  He has my permission. Leave him to himself.

  General James Richardson.

  There is both familiarity and disrespect in the way Richardson has written the pass that sets the men on edge. Somehow it feels to them that Richardson is bossing them around from way up on the bluff where they know he sits drinking and reading by the fire in his study. None of them have been inside his house but they have all heard about it.

  They yank their agitated horses around while they debate about what to do with Wash even though they already know the answer. The way Richardson has worded the note means they won’t be able to get any reward money from treating Wash as if he were a runaway. Still, they bicker.

  Wash waits. Head up, eyes down. Working to hold on to the sweet in his mind from Pallas and ready to get home. But he knows better than to let on. Standing there waiting, Wash walks that fine line. Don’t be challenging but don’t call up the thunder in them by showing weakness.

  The story Diamond told him the other day flashes across his mind. They had run into each other not too far from where Wash stands now. Diamond had told it so funny. Told him how he got double crossed by that crazy broken down white man of his. Said he handed the patrollers his pass like he always did, thinking it would fix things like it always did and he could get on his way. Said he was as surprised as anybody when they read it out loud. Said that crazy white man of his had written beat the tar out of this nigger, right there on what he thought was his pass.

  Diamond said he knew he had gotten sideways with the old man about something or other but he thought he fixed it. Told Wash he guessed he hadn’t fixed it after all. No, he hadn’t. Said they tore him up but good. Said he gave that possum a run for his money, playing dead to beat the band, but said he was careful to take some fists and feet first. Can’t play dead too soon or they’ll catch onto you. So he had stood there and took it for a little while before he let himself fall. Lurched and tipped good before he let his knees buckle. Hit the road like a sack of potatoes.

  Even with his face still swollen lopsided, Diamond had made Wash laugh telling that story. Wash had squatted there in the shade of that hot afternoon, leaning his low back against the trunk of a big maple, watching Diamond act it out for him, tipping and lurching as if to fall in the dirt. Not actually falling this time, staying standing this time, but showing Wash just how it happened so he could picture it.

  Diamond says uhh to show how his breath sounded coming out of him when he hit the ground and Wash shakes his head. Rubs his palms down his thighs, smoothing his coveralls, muttering mmmm mmm and letting his mouth curve down into Mena’s slight grin. It was funny watching Diamond tell it. Beat the tar out of this nigger. Then both of them laughing a little and shaking their heads in the shade.

  Wash stands here now, on this same road on the night of a different day, waiting on the patrollers to let him go home. Standing so still. Waiting for his piece of paper back. Working on keeping his face solid and flat, trying not to let the corners of his mouth twitch down from thinking about Diamond. Trying to stay quiet and smooth and slick, leaving nothing else for them to read.

  The men gradually accept that they can’t interfere with Wash. Richardson already knows who is on patrol, where and when, or else he can find out easily.

  “Like a damn hawk.”

  “Up on his high horse.”

  Wash breathes a long careful sigh, relieved that the tension has shifted away from him, but he stays on the lookout for some sign telling him he is free to go.

  “Get the
hell on home, goddammit.”

  It’s the man who first took his pass. He jerks his hand in the direction of the Richardson place then goads his horse back to the center of the road. The reader drops the pass as he turns to follow. The small piece of stiff paper falls slowly, taking forever to hit the ground. Glancing first off the man’s thigh and then off the horse’s sweaty flank, winging down to land in the dusty road amidst all the hooves.

  As soon as the horses have cleared out, Wash dips for his pass, careful not to turn his back on the men even as they ride away. He folds the paper into its worn creases, slides it deep inside his pocket and heads for home, remembering not to go too fast and not to go too slow until he rounds the bend. Once out of their sight, he gets off the road for good.

  Wash follows a small stream running between the two steep ridges. Cuts past the old spring on trails he knows from running Richardson’s traplines. As he comes through that last stand of pines, the path forks. Right toward the house and left toward the barn.

  Before Wash heads for the barn, he looks down the right fork at the house. Candles flicker in the upstairs window. Richardson is still awake. Still sitting in his study. Wash finds himself thankful the moon has set, making it too dark for Richardson to see him crossing the open meadow. Too late for the old man to come down to the barn and start talking at him.

  Wash slips into the barn’s small side door then climbs his ladders to settle into the hay with his blankets but he’s too wound up to sleep. He lies there trying to calm himself after his run in with the patrollers. He has long since learned he must manage his mind. Think about Pallas. Don’t think about the men on the road. Seek solace wherever he knows he’ll find it. Step inside his story. As far into the past as he can fall.

  It was Mena who taught Wash how to travel like this. How to use his mind’s eye to keep his pictures bright and strong and close. Make himself a world to live in. It was Mena at first and then later, Rufus in his forge at Thompson’s place. These two worked hand in hand to carry Wash far enough into this knowing for it to stick.

  Soon as Wash can manage to call Mena and Rufus to mind, he sees them. The darker the barn the better. Mena as lean and quiet as her own grave until she finds herself deep inside a story. Then her hands flutter lightly inside her stillness. Unless somebody else walks up and then she’s back to smooth as stone. Acting like she can’t speak English. Rufus looks so much like her they could have been siblings except he’s thicker and wider, like Wash. Gruff on top but soft underneath. Or at least he used to be.

  Wash needs to take care which memories he visits and when. Some always work while others tend to turn on him. The trick lies in remembering which ones are which, remembering to choose and then talking himself into it. Steering his mind, just like he’d been taught. It was this knowing that Mena used to make it across the water with so much of herself still in one piece.

  Soon as they put her on the ship, Mena dropped down into that trance of herself, trying to stay safe. But she dropped so far and stayed so gone that after several days, the women could not get her moving around like she needed to be. The captain thought she was sick. Saw her as fading too close to dying and wanted her thrown overboard before she infected the rest with whatever disease he decided she had.

  That one crewman had her hanging over the edge, ready to drop her, before the situation came all the way through to her. As the pain of his beefy hands gripping her skinny shoulders made its way to her from across a great distance, she slowly became aware of the weight of her own body. She felt the space between her and the water pulling down on her and realized she’d better find some way to show herself to him or he was going to let her go.

  And she did it while he was watching her. She came back from where she’d been, just like she was swimming up from deep underwater, until there she was, looking right at him from inside her own eyes. Seeing her do this unsettled him so much, he almost dropped her anyway.

  It was the way she stared at him. She was barely out of her teens and slight enough to seem younger but her eyes hooked him. Not grabbing or desperate but so focused on him it was like she bound herself to him to keep him from dropping her.

  He drew his hands, with her still in them, toward his chest. Just as the tops of her feet knocked against the outside edge of the ship’s gunwale, it caught up to her what had almost happened. She saw it all. His hands opening. The outside of the ship rising past as she fell down through the air. Water coming up at her fast.

  A shiver ran through her so strong that he did lose his grip but by the time she fell from his hands, there was no more water under her. The smooth hard deck caught her where she sprawled. She scrambled, ducked and ran, stumbling and falling, in amongst the rest of the women brought up for air, trying to look scared enough and enough like the others so that one crewman would forget what he knew he had seen.

  After that day, she opened her mouth for the food and she let the women walk her around. She wasn’t trying to do what some were trying to do. Holding their jaws clenched until the captain ordered enough teeth broken to force feed them. Mena was just trying to make it through in one piece.

  But once she had dropped inside herself like she’d been taught, it was easy to get distracted. That deep peaceful place was so quiet and soothing that she started wanting to stay there, running her fingers across all that was familiar, forgetting about the life up on the surface she’d left behind. Until that one crewman yanked her back with the grip of his pink chapped hands.

  Mena never meant to leave this life. She just lost track of time. From the very beginning, she had carried a strong sense that there was something waiting for her.

  And sure enough, once she got here, there he was. She bumped against him as they were being transferred from boat to pen, or from pen to pen, she was not sure which. Each of them trapped in their own slow jerking line while being marched in opposite directions. All hurry up and wait, with most everybody keeping their eyes down on the dirt or on the back of the neck in front of them.

  It was when their two lines pressed close together at the narrow part of the alleyway that they were pushed into one another, knocking shoulders. When the whole of both lines got hung up for a minute. Just for a minute. Enough time for them to step away from each other and look up.

  Her eyes move from his feet to his face. It is like she is seeing herself made into a man except bigger. After all that ripping and tearing and chaos, after this whole parade of people she does not know and has never seen before, here he is. Somebody who knows her and knows her parents too. Somebody who knows exactly where the path behind their village bends to meet the creek in the shade of that big mangrove.

  They can read their stories in each other’s face. She knows how he looked before he shot up, before his voice dropped and before his muscles began to lap over each other under his smooth skin. Before his family sent him inland to stay with relatives, trying to keep him safe. And he knows how she was set apart from the beginning.

  And now here they are, moving past each other in long crawling lines to pour into adjoining pens with the fence between them worn rickety and loose where it meets the brick at the back corner, and nobody paying any attention at night because there’s another wall circling the whole compound with broken glass jagged along the top.

  Wash

  My mamma was quiet but she had a pull to her. When I was little, her draw was real strong. Any gap between us was too much. She’d drag me to her till I was snugged right up against her, curled in the small of her back or the crook of her legs, and I didn’t fight it neither.

  But sometimes, her pull went to push and you couldn’t get a grip on her no way. She had roots grown so deep, she’d be here in body but gone someplace else in spirit. Once she started dipping down in her own well, she’d get so gone till all I could reach for was where she used to be.

  Guess we should have been glad she still had her inside place, but mostly what I felt was jealous and left behind. But she was right to keep it
to herself. Wasn’t enough to go round anyway. At least let her have her peace instead of us fighting over it, tearing it to scraps and none of us having any.

  Course I didn’t have any of this figured out back then. All this I’ve come to since.

  There was no getting next to her when she got gone like that. And reaching for her just made her feel farther away. I remember sitting there, trying to hold myself steady till she came back close enough to where I could get at her. Just sitting there, rocking and telling myself everything I knew for sure.

  Times like that, I felt like I was drifting with no ground under my feet. Like something might snatch me right up and I’d be gone from this world. So when she did pull me close, I’d nestle in, feeling so far from those other times I’d just about forget, till I’d hear that one little tug in the back of my mind telling me watch out. Telling me pay attention.

  You see these women round here steady stitching all these little scraps together to make one big piece? That’s what I’d do inside my mind whenever my mamma let me lie close against her. I’d stitch myself right tight to her.

  And I remember it all. Seems strange for a grown man to keep so many bits and pieces from being small, but it’s a house I’m building for myself with a roof of remembering to put over my head. Something to lie under and hear the rain falling on at night. I take what I have and I make what I can with it. Some of it is edge and some is smooth, but I take it all and I use it to make me a place big enough to get inside.

  She’s who taught me that. But some days, she had to work to show me. Some days I wasn’t even looking, much less seeing. Especially after we got took off that island. Seemed like I could hear her better so long as we were out there on our own under old man Thompson. But once those two boys of his carried us over to his big place, there was no telling me nothing.