It was my young Eli watching me that burned like salt in the wound. He came down to my canal even when he knew he shouldn’t, played in that dirt pile until he was covered in mud, and then stood beside my cage, thinking he knew better than me at seven years old. I was torn. I wanted to watch him find out otherwise even as I wanted to protect him from the rip and tear of it.
Eli
That was the first time I walked away from my daddy while he was talking to me and I liked it. I did. I used my dug out root like a step to climb that bank, then I slipped through that wall of reeds and walked until I couldn’t hear him anymore. I left him behind and it felt good. He never should have yelled at me.
I went straight to our swing. I swung by myself at first, feeling the mud dry tight on my skin, then Pompey and Smart came from the quarters. They wanted to climb up and stand with me like we always did. The three of us could get that swing to go pretty high by leaning way back and then way forward, using our weight. So that’s what we did.
They kept asking me how’d I get so dirty but I wanted to go higher. Everything felt different and I couldn’t get high enough. I looked at Pompey’s dark brown hand holding the rope right next to mine and seeing that made me want to let go. I told them to stop but they wouldn’t, so I leaned way back and used my foot to push Pompey off the swing. I said I mean it and I left a muddy footprint on his back. He landed on his feet but he looked at me funny and took Smart back to the quarters with him. I called after them, saying fine with me, that’s just fine with me. And it was.
When I lay in my bed that night, that ring mark was all I could think about. It wasn’t the man’s grip on my legs or me scrabbling in the mud. It was that ring mark worn shiny against the dull gleam of the rest of his arm. Worn shiny from reaching through the bars and reaching through the bars and getting stuck at the same place every time.
Even while I was lying in my own bed, I wondered was that man out there right then, sticking his arm between the bars till it got stuck then twisting it some more? Like my sister twirls her finger in her hair and twirls it till it’s good and snarled, then my mother works at the knot, asking her what is she so worried about and can’t she see she’s ruining her hair, until my sister wails I don’t know, I don’t know, and my mother yanks to untangle it.
That worn shiny ring mark looked so naked compared to the rest of that man’s arm, looked to me like that one Ibo had finally taken off a bracelet he’d been wearing his whole life, and I started to wonder what his neck looked like under that collar. It was a slippery feeling, as slidy as when that man was pulling on me, and I didn’t like it one bit.
My daddy sold those Ibos after they dug that canal but we lived forever on the edge of something worse happening without ever knowing whether it would or when. We never talked about any of it but I guess I was mad at my daddy for never knowing enough and always acting like he did. And for never being able to make that slipslidy feeling go away. I swore to myself I would get rid of it for good.
Wash
That day came just like my mamma worried it might. A road leading right straight to me on a late winter day, after we’d been at Thompson’s big place almost two full years. Don’t know how I dodged it that long. And I was doing exactly like they told me to, but they started messing with me anyway.
Rufus had put me out of his shop for asking too many questions. Told me not to come back till I learned to mind. Sent me to help Pompey and the fellas shore up the old tobacco barn. Made me mad at first but by midmorning of the second day, we got a real rhythm going. Joking and laughing but getting it done.
Then everybody falls quiet. Here comes Mr. Eli needing to see for himself and everybody’s supposed to stop and speak. Somebody told him making his people look him in the eye and greet him might make us mind better. He’s always hunting him some improvements, but most times, all they do is slow us down.
So here we are, standing round stopped, with the day moving along and every single one of us with something we want to do once we get through with this job. I can see he wanted to step inside our circle while it was still a living breathing thing but now it’s gone. He’s heating up cause he can’t quite get us to bend to him and he can’t see why. And here comes Campbell headed cross the field but it looks like he’ll be late like always.
I stepped up in Mr. Eli’s face on the wrong day is what I did. I should’ve known better. I did know better but I went on ahead anyway.
I was picking up on everything. On the little man trying to be big, trying to be a peacock swaggering but didn’t have no tail, and all us standing there looking at the ground, waiting for him to go back to the house, until he starts needing to make somebody mind. Wants to make sure he still can and wants to make sure we see him do it.
And who was the one fool blind enough to get caught looking right at him? Who was the one fool dumb enough to try moving things along by turning back to work, raising my hammer over my shoulder and bringing it down with a great big whonk over and over and loud?
I hear him step behind me and say well would you look at Wash lifting that hammer like he thinks he’s a big man with his mamma still his shadow. I know he’s about to start in on me good. I’ve seen him do some of the other fellas this way, and I seen the fellas just let it rain right down on em. Looking at their feet like they ain’t never seen em before. Standing real still, trying to wait for it to quit.
Seemed to me all that humble pie and yessir and nosir made those two Thompson boys feel bigger and bigger, especially the little one, till he had to tan him some hide to let the steam off. But I wasn’t gonna give him that. No sir.
I caught myself pointing this out to him using that careful way his own daddy taught me, sitting on the porch of his rickety old house through those long quiet days on that island. I should have known better than to talk about his daddy but there I was. Me. Tugging at my cap and telling him how it was.
Saying here we go, trying to get the side of this barn shored up so it won’t fall in on nobody, saying it shoulda been done right the first time and you’d think they’d see the sense in letting us get on with our business. It was the gospel according to me and it was feeling good. Being right was feeling good moving all through me and looking him in the eye felt good too and seeing his mouth fall open.
Somebody ran to get my mamma but she was nowhere near enough to help me. I was too far gone already. The quiet grew and stretched till it was a live thing between us, moving and breathing, and into that quiet went all the staring and the muttering of the rest of everybody, standing round watching.
Most dangerous thing you can do is make a man feel weak but I didn’t know that then. He had to do something. He couldn’t let it go. My hammer getting snatched out of my hand and coming down out of that big blue sky up against my temple taught me that, and I been looking at the ground ever since.
I don’t remember it from happening but I’ve been told it enough times till I can see it for real. That hammer coming down, not the claw or the head, but the side. I was somebody else’s nigger after all.
Lucky for me I had that cap on. Kept it from digging a hole right into my head, but didn’t keep it from making this dent. Fool that I am, I turned my head and looked straight at him while my knees buckled. Not that I was seeing him. I was probably seeing bare willow branches crisscrossing blue sky.
It was quiet with a breeze that day. Nobody moved. I went down like a rag doll, they said. Landed on my belly, cheek to the ground, hit side up. My dark cap turning darker. Catching the blood seeping and I’m staring across rough winter grass with one eye swelling shut.
I lay there and he stood over me with my hammer hanging from his hand. Everybody else was watching their feet, waiting for those two Thompsons to move off so they could see about me.
Only blessing was, my mamma didn’t make it to me till after they were already gone back to the house, saying they needed to send for somebody from Richardson’s place to come carry these troublesome negroes home. Too bad he w
as still locked up in Canada but he needed to send somebody to fetch us. Wrap us back up in cotton the way their daddy had, or else let them go ahead and beat us into useful. Said the last thing they needed was to owe Richardson a bunch of money for two dead negroes.
I was in a trance was what I heard. Laying there with my cheek flat to the ground. My bottom eye was open, staring and blinking, but slow. The top one was swelling shut by the time my mamma made her way to me. She was breathing hard from running fast. They stood up from round me and let her come inside their tight circle. First thing she did struck em odd. She laid down on the ground, right alongside me, facing me. Said she had to see could she look into my one eye.
They said she talked to me in that old tongue of hers, running up and down but smooth. Talked to me steady and low before she ever touched me. Somebody said it sounded like she was washing me with her voice, dipping it in cool water and laying it on me to bring the swelling down. All before she ever touched me.
She said I looked like I was seeing her while she was talking over me and I must a been. I do remember bare willow branches moving cross the sky when she finally let em roll me onto a tarp so they could carry me inside. But she made em wait till she was through talking to me, through talking to me and laying hands on me both, and that took a while.
They told me how she laid there, down on the ground with me. Face to face. Laying her palm on my cheek so light, her fingertips touching the edge of my cap. Then she took her hand from off my face and laid it in my palm. The hand that was trapped under me when I fell. How she turned her other hand so she could slide it palm up under my free hand where it lay out in front of me, palm down on the grass. And she stayed steady talking like water pouring.
Before she was finished, she reached down to lay her two palms on the soles of my feet, talking to my mind and my spirit, telling em to stay with my body, telling em not to leave me. Then she cupped one hand over the top of my head but not touching it, just talking to that space in between, while she ran her hand real close along my back. All the way to my tailbone and then back up. All without touching me. I don’t know how close I was to leaving but I do know, after everything she did, I was in this world to stay.
They rolled me onto the tarp and carried me way inside the back of the barn where those two boys don’t hardly ever go. She took my face in her hands to look in my eyes. Said open em wide as you can now, then you can close em. That’s when she saw my good one was trained right on her but this other one was looking over her shoulder.
Keeping an eye on things she called it, grinning at me a little while she doctored me. She said she wasn’t worried, but she was talking too fast and shiny bright. Everything still worked, fingers and toes, and she said I’d always carried too much in my eyes anyway. Maybe it’d be easier for everybody now that I could only use one.
I think she was hoping to herself this wandering eye of mine might finally look after me.
Eli
All I was trying to do was make everybody do right. Knock my house back into plumb. But when I lifted that hammer up over my shoulder into the quiet of nobody seeing me yet, time slowed down to molasses, and I heard myself wondering why won’t folks just do right.
Then I heard my daddy forever telling me, remember now, every time you lose your temper, you lose your money. That right there was when I saw I didn’t give a damn about the money because I had plenty of it and what I was hunting was my temper.
But once I looked down at Wash lying on that cold ground with his temple stove in, once all those men I’d played with as a child stepped back from me forever without even moving, I hated my daddy more than ever for being right right right all along.
∞
Wash
That was the first time death drew close. Taught me a lot and then kept on teaching me. It’s still teaching me, even now, after all this time.
My mamma told me how it would be. Said we’d hover close just like our people did. But it takes time to let this knowing catch up with you. Lots of time.
And by now, I’ve had plenty. Drifting out here, watching you all. Trying to tell you what happened and how. Trying to see can I get back inside my life, find me some kind of handle on it. Telling it helps me make my mind big enough to hold it all.
It’s always the dead who got to stretch out to the living. You get so you can read a living man’s mind. See straight into his heart. But what you got to tell him ain’t always what he wants to hear, and the living can be some kind of hardheaded, acting blind to us even when we could save em some real time and trouble. But some things stay slow to learn and I know it can seem easier to slog on the hard way. I remember making that exact same choice myself.
It was hard being a living boy turning into a living man and keep my heart open to the knowing my mamma laid into me. Soon as we landed at Thompson’s place that summer before I turned sixteen, I started having trouble living in two worlds at once. I got tired of our folks dead and gone but still trailing after me.
Used to be, I liked feeling em gathered round me. Used to be, they stayed one step ahead of me, not behind me, and they showed me where to put my foot next.
But once I started growing up, once we got yanked off that island and put with all those new folks who saw things so different, it got harder to live in this world with my heart tied to another one. I decided I didn’t have so much room inside me anymore. I wanted that whole spirit world to fall away so this new world could stand before me, stripped clean and mine to walk through.
It hurt my mamma to see me dropping the knowing she gave me by the wayside. She saw I’d be needing it but she let me alone. She knew how I felt. She even told me so. One of the few times she could get me to listen to her.
Said she’d felt the same way at first when those women kept pulling her aside. Told me how she didn’t want to go, how she wanted to stay in that circle, playing with the rest of those girls, all of em growing up that one big trellis together, vining and twining together like everybody else did.
But she had more room inside and she got pulled out of that circle so those women could give her more knowing to hold on to. And it didn’t matter that the rest of the girls never knew the half of it. Those women told her she best learn to hold on to her own self, all by herself. Build her own trellis. Told her how everybody growing up one trellis all together like that ain’t always good. Said it can make you weak to where you can’t stand on your own anymore. Can’t see clear. Said every village needs some few who can make their own.
My mamma tried to make sure I built mine. One that fit me just right. But back then, what I wanted was to vine up that one big trellis at Thompson’s place, woven together with everybody else. You shoulda seen me. I knew it all. Yessir and nosir and I can figure this better than y’all. Still thinking there was a way to win at this game.
I turned my back on my mamma and on all those spirits she’d cloaked me with back at the sound. I felt em follow us from the island, but I walked on down the road, trying to get away from em. When they kept on following me, I yelled at em like you yell at stray dogs. Told em go home. When they stayed steady after me, I started throwing handfuls of pebbles. Then rocks.
I thought if I could just slip away from this cloud of spirits, then maybe I had a chance to make it through. The way they stayed crowding round me made it harder for me to fit through small spaces, and seemed like small spaces was all we had over at the Thompson place, so I slapped em down. I turned my back and I walked away.
But time made me lucky. I didn’t get too far along that road before God gathered em right back round me with that white boy’s hand bringing my hammer down on the side of my head.
That’s what my mamma was doing when she laid her hands on me. She was wrapping my knowing right back round me, all my spirits and all my stories, everything I’d pushed away. I lay there on that winter grass and I felt em crowding round me again. It felt good and that’s when I started to see.
When you have your people hovering clo
se and flanking you, it’s not simple like it can be without em. But going on without em wrapped round you, it stays too cool and too tender. That’s when I saw I wanted my people gathered close round me every chance I got.
But I was lucky. I came to my knowing early. Some folks never do figure it out.
After Eli knocked me in the head, it took a long while for me to get back on my feet. My mamma worked double time on the smocking Sissy passed on to her and those Thompson boys started getting some good coin for my mamma’s stitching. They sold her christening dresses as far as Baltimore and New York. Talking about how dark she was and how they liked seeing the pale of fine cotton finally shining some light up into her face.
My mamma kept her mouth shut, humming her growing up songs to herself and pulling her needle and thread through that cotton. With me courting trouble, Richardson locked up in that prisoner of war camp in Canada and those boys not about to spare somebody to carry us all the way out to Tennessee, life was getting tight.
It was her trying to find out about Richardson that riled them. It was her looking at the ground like she didn’t have a thought in her head when they talked to her, but then hovering close to each and every visitor, all quick and slick, trying to get some kind of word. That’s what got under their skin. They saw she was aiming to get us gone from there. Before I led em straight to killing me was what she told me. Trying to keep me alive. At all costs was what she said. At all costs.
It killed em to be feeding me while I was down so my mamma split her cornmeal and fatback with me but it wasn’t enough for her to begin with. If Rufus hadn’t carried us those strips of squirrel and possum and coon he snared then snuck smoked while he made his charcoal out in the woods, I doubt I’d ever gotten back at myself.
Soon as I did, I went right on back to his shop ready to pick up where I had left off. Trouble was, I couldn’t really see straight anymore. I could see a thing plenty well. Even two things at the same time. And none of it was blurry. But I couldn’t always tell how close something was. Or how far away.
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