Wash

by Margaret Wrinkle

  I’d sit there for a long time, sipping and looking round the walls lined with hooks full of jobs done. Running my eyes across all the brands for horses and cattle hanging on the wall. Then Rufus has one of em in his hand. A real small one and he’s digging in the dirt floor with the tip of the staff. He’s bent forward so the letter on the other end waves near his shoulder, up by his ear, and I’m laughing a little.

  “You’d think they’d get sick of seeing their own damn name everywhere.”

  “They stay so blind. Can’t see a thing if it don’t have that name written on it.”

  “What’s the one you got? Lemme see.”

  Rufus holds the smallest brand by the middle of its short staff. He twirls it end over end from his shoulder till the letter points straight down, hovering over the dirt floor. But I still can’t see it. He leans forward, lowering the letter real careful and slow, laying it onto a smooth soft spot in the dirt floor where it’ll take, then grinding it some before he lifts it. I’m looking at the pattern in the dirt but I don’t recognize it.

  “What’s that one?”

  “That’s a R for runaway. I was working on it that day I put you out. Sent you over to Pompey, but you had to show off how you know best. Trying to be a big man. All you got was knocked in the head. Coulda killed you myself.”

  It was more than I’d ever heard Rufus say at one time. And I’m quiet, remembering driving my mamma crazy with my Rufus says this and Rufus says that. And I remember getting stronger and taller. The feel of the morning sun on me that day when I told those Thompson boys what I thought. That hammer coming right out of that bright blue sky down on the side of my head. The long darkness after that and then being sent to the field.

  All of it felt like it happened to somebody else. Like that old me was somebody else. Different from who I was now. Rufus felt me drifting and he pulled me back to him.

  “You left me. You up and left me with that squirrelly fool Cicero. Can’t shut his mouth to save his life.”

  I’m shaking my head, smiling. I can see Cicero down here in this shop, standing on Rufus’s last nerve.

  “Bet you keeping your mouth shut for the both of you.”

  “Mmm hmmm.”

  Seemed funny to me. Rufus and me sitting there talking like two men, when it wasn’t too long ago I was a boy and only way I could see Rufus was looking up at him.

  “What’s the rush, little man? They make a man outta you soon enough. Few good whippings, they knock the boy right from you, am I wrong?”

  I’m shaking my head no.

  “I’d a made you a man but you didn’t have time to give me the chance, did you?”

  And I’m shaking my head, no, I guess I didn’t.

  “You got too busy.”

  “Mmm hmmm.”

  “And look at you. You a man now and all you got is time.”

  “Pretty much. That’s pretty much it.”

  We sat there, drinking and watching the candlelight falling across those Rs Rufus kept making all over the floor at our feet.

  “Now you hearing me, hear this.”

  I lifted my eyes to look in his face.

  “If that day ever comes when I need to lay this R on you, you best know this my name I’m laying on you. You belong to me and always will. Even when you too hardheaded to see it. You mine. You hear me?”

  “Yessir.”

  We sat together for another long while after our drink was gone. Then Rufus stood up and I followed. He knocked the brand lightly against the workbench to get the dust off, then twirled it back end over end so he could hang it with the rest. Took the candle and opened the door, nodding for me to go ahead.

  Once we both stood outside, he turned to lock the shop up, asking me over his shoulder, when we going fishing? I headed off my way, calling back to him, Sunday evening. And he headed off his way, saying see you then.

  That hammer set me back some but I was still too big for my britches. Still starting mess and hearing my mamma less and less. Pretty soon, she stopped jerking me back from life and started getting that faraway look more and more. Seemed like I heard Rufus better for awhile, but I started losing him too. It wasn’t his drinking, it was what he was trying to tell me.

  Used to be, Rufus calling me down was the only thing could make me do right. Used to be, Rufus saw straight inside me and the things he told me about the world made sense. But the more beat up I got, the more grown I thought I was, and the less I heard him.

  I kept running into the swamp and started staying longer. Making sure Pickens knew I wasn’t going to let him jerk me round. I’d come back and get more work done in one week than most did in two, so they put up with me. But even then, seemed like trouble kept coming right for me. Like I was calling it. Like it was saying to me, you will not leave me.

  Rufus kept telling me, play dead whenever those boys try to mess with you. Play dead, like a piece of hide those dogs fight over, and sooner or later they’ll leave you alone. He tried telling me it was my thrashing and jerking, trying to get away, that brought out the mean in em, but I wasn’t having none of it. Big tall Rufus telling me play dead like a possum. Telling me bend down when I ain’t never seen him bend down. Didn’t seem right.

  He kept trying to tell me how life don’t work how I think it do. And the very first thing I need to let go of is how things oughtta happen instead of how they do happen. Told me I was hogtying my own self, but I wasn’t having it. One day, I looked into his face and told him, I’m getting tired of hearing you tell me what you need to do is.

  That was the day when he saw I wasn’t hearing him no more. And that was the day he got through with me. He folded right back inside himself, nodding at me to say all right, you go head on then.

  After that, I felt him loosing his grip on me and all of us. He drank more and more but he never got sloppy. He just got gone. I went down there to sit with him every now and then but he sat stiller and stiller. Didn’t make his own pieces in the evenings anymore. Told those saltwater negroes to go back to wherever they came from. Said he didn’t have nothing for em.

  He got so he’d talk when he never did talk much before. Used to be, he’d hold it all inside his head. Used to be, Rufus was like he had a whole world inside him, stocked with whatever he needed and enough to go round for everybody. But once he started to go downhill, all that started to change.

  Now that I look, I can see there were signs. But back then, I wasn’t reading em. Not yet. Just seemed to me like one day, Rufus stopped living in his mind like it was a place. He started talking out of nowhere, telling me every thought he had, like telling it was the only way he knew how to make it real.

  That’s when I saw what had always drawn me to him. Up until that day, he had always carried himself. He didn’t make you do it. That’s why he was easy to be with. Well, not anymore. Pretty soon, he was talking more to feel himself breathing and he was long past hearing anything I had to say.

  And he talked and talked. Talked about Cleo and not knowing if she was alive or dead. Talked about how he ain’t got the same give in him. Said he’d been took too hot too often till no amount of temper can set him right.

  When he made me look at what he had forged that week, seemed like it wasn’t nothing but chains and shackles and padlocks and I knew he was done helping me.

  ∞

  It is early spring of his third year on the Thompson place by the time those boys drag Wash home from his hideout in the swamp. He’s been gone nearly a month this last time. The trees haven’t leafed out yet but his hunger made him careless. Somebody saw his smoke and turned him in for a dollar.

  Campbell steps down off the porch to hand a coin to the skinny white man who brings the news while Eli goes to get the wagon. Neither brother knows this is the same man who had chased their father’s third son to drowning in the lake years before. Thanks to him, they have Wash back by midafternoon, lying tied in the back of the wagon, still unconscious from that last kick.

  Eli tells Rufus wha
t needs doing, saying be sure to call us when you get ready.

  Mena has spent the morning filing the edges of Rufus’s R brand. She tells him to press hard but quick. Says she wants it to go clear through the skin. Cut it like a knife so she can stitch it closed. There’s no way to hide a burn so she wants him to make a cut. A quick hard kiss and then let up is what she keeps telling him. She has ruined his R brand by filing it down like this and he’ll have hell to pay if they look too close before he has time to make another one.

  Rufus sits on a stump by the fire, balancing the stem of his brand across the toe of his boot. He lifts the stem end to send the letter down into the heart of the fire then pushes it down to lift the letter from the flames. Seeing if it’s hot enough yet and not too hot. Takes longer to heat in the open fire pit in front of his shop but there isn’t room enough inside to lay Wash out.

  He and Mena have mapped it out ahead of time. Soon as they lifted Wash from the wagon and laid him beside the fire pit, they figured exactly where to put it. Together, they held the cool brand to Wash’s cheek. They saw that bringing the R in too close to the side of his nose would make the top of the letter nick his bottom eyelid and the base of it spill onto his mouth. They decided to pull it out to the side. Let the circle of the R loop around the point of Wash’s cheekbone and let the leg of the R run onto the broad flat side of his cheek, toward his ear.

  Wash will only be able to hide it some by keeping his face turned to that side a little but there is no other way. Even the boys will see the rationale in it. They’ll have to anyway. And now here they are, back down from the house. Muttering urgently to Rufus as Wash starts to stir.

  “Put that R front and center so people will see it and know to fetch this running away young nigger back home.”

  There’s something about Rufus right then, either his being bigger than them, or older and more competent, or maybe it’s the way he holds his brand lightly by its stem in his left hand, but when he says slowly and quietly, staring at nothing but the brand, I ain’t putting his other eye out, the Thompson boys fall as silent as everyone else.

  After what seems like a long time, Rufus stands. Takes one glance out of the corner of his eye at Mena straddling Wash with her hands closed around his face tight as a vise. Holding him still for Rufus and telling him to look at the sky. Then she’s looking at Rufus, saying without saying come on, I got him, and she does.

  The R glows orange as it leaves the fire. Too hot now.

  Rufus takes a long breath in and holds it, waiting for the breeze to carry just enough heat off the letter. He wants it cooling down as he lays it onto Wash’s cheek. Has to be just right. Rufus has run this whole thing through his mind. Seeing how to slow time and steady his hand. How to use enough force and not too much.

  All you can hear is the fire. Rufus draws another long breath then lets it out real slow so he can hold himself still. He swings the brand up, holding it by the end of its stem with his left hand, then he chokes up on it good with his right hand as he bends down over Wash. All in one smooth motion. Aiming sure and steady for the small plane of cheek framed by Mena’s splayed fingers, holding her boy’s head tight.

  Careful to make sure the brand meets Wash’s face level with it, not at an angle, which would make the top or the bottom of the letter cut deeper, Rufus lays the light hot weight onto Wash’s left cheek. Then he adds a quick jabbing push. Just to cut through the skin and no more. One quick kiss.

  He feels the give as hot metal slices through skin. Then he dunks the head of the brand into the quench bucket so fast the sizzle lands on top of the murmuring. Wash passes out again, his recoil torquing his whole body except for his head because Mena holds it tight.

  Everybody stands quiet, all eyes glued to the dark S his body makes on the pale dirt. The smell of his having soiled himself rises in the heat of the fire, mixing with the smell of burnt skin, until finally the two Thompson brothers break from this shared trance, twisting sideways to look at the faces ringing the circle, shrugging their shoulders as if to slough the smell off themselves. They cough into their handkerchiefs then hold them over their mouths and noses, muttering all right then.

  But still they linger, as if they hope staying another few minutes will transform their triumph over Wash into one that actually feels like victory. Nobody meets their eyes. The silence begs them to hold forth but something stops them. When they can’t take it anymore, they turn to head back up to the house with Eli calling over his shoulder.

  “All right. Get him cleaned up and back inside. It’s done, it’s over and it’s dinnertime.”

  Wash

  All I remember is everybody standing ringed round me in a quiet circle. And my mamma muttering over me in that old tongue about how she was not going to have me losing my other eye or my mouth, nosir she wasn’t. Said I had plenty else things to see before I’d be anywhere near done with this life.

  Then there I was, back on a pallet in the darkest corner of our cabin, with her fighting to keep me here and me pulling to go. Neither of us believing what they did, with those boys going on about how I’d given them no choice. How they weren’t going to have to worry no more about me running off with this R written on my face. Said I was not their nigger after all and they owed it to Richardson to try and keep track of me. Too many places to run around here, but this R will bring you back home right quick was what they said.

  Once my mamma got me back inside, she had some fellas bring a big table and lay me out on it. She poured that liquor down my throat. Then she wrapped my fingers round the edge of the table so I had a grip on something. She made sure somebody held me down hard. I think it was Rufus. She quick mixed something up and I could hear it slapping against the side of the bowl.

  She poured her medicine on me and let it burn. The liquor made me so I could toss the burning from one side of my mind to the other, catching my breath in between. She told Sissy to hold my face tight, squeeze the edges of that burn close together and make sure they meet all along the cut.

  Then she bent over me and sewed those edges shut as much from the inside as she could. I heard her thanking God for that little hooked needle she had from her smocking. I felt my skin tugging but the burning and the liquor and Rufus held me hard and the needle was as sharp as the thread was thin.

  She took her time, laying those edges in just right, smooth outside edge flat against smooth outside edge, curling the soft inside back down where it belonged instead of letting it bloom bright red like it wanted to. And she muttered over me, talking to herself while she worked.

  She kept my face wrapped with poultices to draw the heat from the burn and she slapped some more on there right quick whenever the boys wanted to come look so they wouldn’t see how well she was smoothing their writing off my face. She kept a welt on me. A welt made out of chewed root stuck to my face with shiny sap glistening. Said she was trying to keep the road clear for me, come what may.

  “You never know when leaving may be the right thing and you don’t need that call made for you.”

  I fell into a deep dark place and they let me stay there. Let my mamma tend to me so long as she kept on with her christening dresses. They did try to bring a doctor in there to see about me, but that old white man took one look at my mamma standing in the doorway of our cabin and he turned right round and left, saying boys, I am not your man.

  I’m not sure how long went by, but I know by the time I got back outside, everything was green hot and buzzing.

  Part Three

  Early summer, 1815

  Two days’ ride northeast of Nashville

  When Wash and Mena finally make their way to Richardson’s place, it is midmorning on a beautiful early summer day in 1815, soon after Richardson has made it home from his last war, beaten down and close to broke at sixty two.

  He’d been captured by the British and locked up, just like before. Except this time, he had his oldest son William with him and he thought they might die there. Prisoners of war in a camp
outside Quebec called Beauport. Most of his fellow officers had negotiated early releases and were making successes of themselves as politicians but not one of them could get him back to the battlefield any sooner. He was paroled so late there was barely time to rejoin the fight before the war was over.

  He’s been home for a month and a half but he’s still a good thirty pounds underweight. Lean as he started out, he looks truly hawkish now. His long narrow face has become a place of edges catching light with hollows falling into shadow.

  When he looks down from his upstairs window, he wonders whose wagon is pulling up under his big elm. He has no idea that this hunched figure sitting in that wagon is the same luminous young woman he had bought without intending to down in Charleston during the spring of 1796. Or that the hobbled lump she sits watching over is that boy of hers he had heard so much about in Thompson’s long letters through the years.

  Fine stock, the old man had written. Growing up straight and tall. As careful a hunter as you would ever want and looks right at you solemn as a judge. Quiet and graceful as a cat.

  So what is this sorry broken down pair doing in his side yard?

  He stands up quick and mad but as he comes down the wide stairway, he feels how much time has passed. Each step brings a new ache and pain from sleeping on cold stone for too long. Nineteen years since he last saw Mena and he’s never seen Wash even once. But his own children seem like strangers to him, so why should these two be any different?

  He pauses inside the door with his hand on the latch, trying to brace himself before he swings the door open and steps out, but he’s nowhere near prepared. He stands right next to Mena for what feels like forever but he has to bang on the side of the wagon to make her turn toward him. Looking into her face is like looking down a tunnel.

  He reaches to draw back the burlap covering Wash but Mena’s grip closes tight around his wrist before he ever sees her hand move and her eyes nail his mouth shut. Once she feels the tension leave his arm, she lets it go. As he pulls his hand back, he lets it fall loosely onto the edge of the wagon. She sees he wants to at least look so she lifts the edge of the burlap.