Just last year, Molly lost the fifth girl at three weeks. Pallas was one county over when it happened but she tells herself she would have tried just as hard as with anybody else. And she knows better than to say one single word about it to Wash. If he wants to tell her about walking all the way over there for the funeral then deciding at the last minute to watch from well back in the woods, that’s up to him.
But Pallas can be hard for Wash because her first instinct is too often a turning inward to a place where he cannot follow. When she gets gone from him, he tries to tolerate it by reminding himself he has that inside place too. Mena had made sure of it. He used to know how to find it on his own but that was so long ago he’s almost forgotten. Until Pallas came along.
Just in time to call his remembering up in him before it disappeared completely, buried under all that has happened to him since. Even that first week, watching her moving around that hot sticky cabin tending him then sitting down for a minute with herself, his own remembering had started to come back to him. Like hearing an echo.
All those endless days on the island. How he used to walk way out into the soft still water of the sound before curling into a ball so he could sink to the bottom and lie there, lightly bumping against the sandy floor, tugged by the drift and pull of the water but barely. Held for those few long moments, balancing between his body’s relentless desire to rise and breathe the air of this world and his spirit’s hungry hunting for a dimly familiar grace and ease.
So he understands Pallas. He does. The only difference is that Pallas does not need the sound or even a pond, and she can stay longer than anyone he’s ever known. And it’s easier to envy her this gift than to remember how he’d once had it himself. Feeling her slip through his fingers opens a wanting door he needs kept shut. When he starts to feel left behind, he panics and a blind rage can well up in him.
He tries to turn and walk away. Climb down the steep bluff to the river running deep and wide under the overlook. Slip into the water just between dusk and dark when nobody can be sure exactly what they see. Water’s cooling fast and the current is too strong for him to drift quiet and still on the bottom like he used to but he has found ways to make it do.
He strokes out into the middle then turns to lie flat on his back with his toes pointing downstream, tipping his head until his ears go under. Breathing shallow, keeping just enough air to hold himself up. Even though he’s being carried downstream, if he closes his eyes to the branches passing by overhead, he can recapture that old familiar stillness of water all around him and the drifty float of disappearing.
He never knows how long he’s been gone until the swim back upstream but usually, it’s long enough so the strained pulling feeling of Pallas slipping through his fingers starts to ease. Long enough so the tingling in his hands of wanting to grab her and pull her to him, of needing to jerk her out of that trance of herself, of wanting to slap her if only to shatter that world to which he has no access, long enough so all that starts to fade away.
Somewhere in midfloat, Wash comes back to himself by realizing he’s been gone. After letting a few more sycamore branches pass by overhead, glowing pale against the dark sky, he turns over, slick and lithe as an otter, to swim upstream against the same current that has carried him down. His hands take hold of the water, his feet kick hard and strong and regular. Moving steadily against the current soothes him, making him glad to be in this body in this world. Working, pulling, breathing, getting somewhere. Then he picks his way up the faint path through the dark, brimming with the pleasure of knowing he has once again pulled himself back from the brink.
For a good long while, Wash manages himself pretty well, hanging on to what Mena taught him and letting Pallas remind him. He makes small altars in hard to find places and leaves offerings whenever he can. Always careful to make it look like an accident. Just some junk.
He buries most of his gifts to make sure they won’t be found. Buried this last one right in back of the barn where it’s close by and he can call on it. Once the weeds grow tall enough, he’ll leave offerings on that nondescript patch of ground. But never anything that would be seen as such. Always something that could have landed there anyway. A curved paring of horse hoof taken from the pile left after the last trimming.
As Wash sets that dull gray arc nipped from Bolivar’s hoof among the tall weeds, he gives thanks for having made it this far. Then he asks for help in holding himself together as he covers the miles ahead. Maybe even with some of that horse’s ease and grace in the doing. And that piece of hoof lies there undisturbed, letting the weeds grow around it, calling no attention to itself because it could just as easily have been carried there by one of the dogs seeking a quiet place to gnaw.
And Wash makes talismans and wears them like Mena told him. Collect up treasures to strengthen you and speed you on your way. Say your prayers over them and wrap them tight. Keep them with you. Take care of them and they will take care of you.
This last one he made, he included a small swatch of dark glossy hair from the young bay gelding’s tail because he wants to remember to carry himself like that horse does. High and light but easy with some spring and a long swinging stride. Wash likes the way Bolivar switches his tail in pleasure whereas most horses switch theirs only when irritated, so he takes a few strands of Bolivar’s black tail and tucks them in the small leather pouch along with everything else before he sews it up tight, says his prayers over it and pushes it deep into his pocket.
But it only takes that one time when his pocket has worn a hole without his knowing it yet. He’s at Grange’s barn and done for the day. As he steps back into his clothes, his talisman falls down the leg of his pants. Lands right there next to his foot on the dusty floor of Grange’s barn.
Wash is still moving slow and before he can grab it, Quinn kicks it out of his reach. Shakes out his dirty handkerchief and bends to pick it up. Rolls it onto the square of cloth with a stick and then collects up the corners. Even Quinn knows not to touch someone else’s talisman.
Neither one says a word. All Quinn does is cut Wash one sharp look before he turns toward the house for the banknote so they can head home. As Quinn passes by the fire circle in Grange’s quarters, he tosses his dirty handkerchief with Wash’s talisman tucked inside under Anna’s big bellied cook pot. The smell of burning hair slams into the smell of her soup and she cries out, digging amongst the logs with her big poker, but the fire’s too hot. Wash’s piece is already gone.
That piece of himself he’d put together so carefully, choosing each element for its symbolic correspondence to qualities he knew he needed, weaving his prayers and his breath and his spirit throughout the mixture, then wrapping it up tight in leather and keeping it with him. Feeding it and being fed by it in turn. That piece had been not just a part of him but it had also been him. Himself. The thought of it being manhandled by Quinn, even through a cloth, is almost worse than its being burnt up in Anna’s fire.
Wash swears he’ll never make another one. No matter what his mother said. After that day, he uses stones. Smooth ones. Picks them up from places he’s been. Rubs them between his fingers when things get bad, sets them down once he can breathe easy again.
And when the wagon carries him across the next bridge, he sits up to toss the pale gray stone ringed with dark circles that he’d picked up on his last trip to see Pallas over the rail. He listens to it fall, then settles back down into the flour sacks lining the wagon bed, just like that stone settles down into the riverbed to lie shoulder to shoulder with all the rest. This way, he can think about that stone when he needs to and nobody can take it from him.
Wash
It was pitch dark on that new moon right before All Souls’. I’m sitting up in my loft after another fight with Pallas and I knew I was forgetting. All the now kept coming at me so hard and fast. Sneaking up on my bad side, just like that hammer. Threatening to knock my story right out of my hands.
I sat there trying to remember what I knew
about how to keep things straight between this world here and the one inside me. I heard Rufus talking about his grandfather and then I saw him clear as day in all that dark. Standing so close he’s looming over me, tipping that staff till his forged bird on top nearly touches my temple, telling me over and over, what you need to do is.
I knew if I could stay inside my mind’s eye long enough, I’d see my mamma too, picking and choosing all careful just like Pallas does, and I’d be able to remember what I’m supposed to do so I’ll always have someplace to go. Someplace peaceful and green. Full of thick woods where old man Thompson leaves us to ourselves and the deep sand on the narrow path stays cool under my bare feet.
Long as I can manage to hang on to my own story. Steer my mind away from all the mess people talk about me. Follow those turtle tracks across the mud flats to meet Pallas at the pond. Keep my touch on her so light she can’t quite tell if it’s my breath or my mouth. Look into all the faces of these children of mine coming up all around. Picture them grown up strong and walking around in the new world they will make.
I knew what to do to make it through in one piece. But enough nights having to listen to Richardson talking at me in this barn, enough days having to head out in his damn wagon, and I stayed a threat to lose my grip. Right about now, on this one night, all I could see was my mamma dragging her African like some heavy logs and letting go was starting to make more and more sense to me.
But then Pallas’s face flashed into my mind. She’s standing there all drawn up inside herself, with her bottles and packets lying broken and scattered on the floor, and she’s as far from me as if we’d never met. Then I hear Rufus telling me how Juba stayed too hard till he broke. I can see the jagged edges of that broken file trying to kiss across the gap and I’m sitting in that small hot shop watching Rufus come apart all over again.
That’s when it came to me. This is what Rufus did. He let go of making sure his mind stayed a place. So I dove back inside my story. Trying to hang on to everything I knew was true for sure. Working to keep my mind a place. That house of remembering I keep having to make and remake to give myself somewhere to stand and see out from.
But no matter how many sweet spots my story holds, it carries me right towards the mouth of the devil and more than once. I may go back hunting peace, but once it’s loosed, my story starts rolling through me with its full force whether I want it all or not. Don’t matter why I started in on the telling, it just wants to move.
Happens to all of us. Pallas and Richardson too. You either tell your stories or else they tell you and it’s hard to know the difference sometimes.
Richardson
I sat up in my study on that same All Soul’s night, but I never intended to seek solace in my past. Solace should lie in all I had accomplished and accumulated. The past was merely an arena in which I’d either triumphed or been thwarted.
I had just finished logging a slew of new dates in Wash’s book and I was burning the last letter of request when my Lucius came through the study door I’d forgotten to close. As he stepped across my threshold, I was so startled I nearly spilt my drink. He looked so much like my younger self that watching him walk towards me through the last of the rising smoke gave me vertigo.
I slid Wash’s book underneath my blotter as Lucius held an old lesson notebook out to me, asking what’s this? I took the battered notebook from him and lay it open without asking why he was still up. I didn’t yet knew about his rift with Emmaline and was surprised he was coming to me instead of going forever after Wash.
When he stepped in closer, I remember being struck by a strong urge to put my arm around his narrow waist. Pull him close. I managed to resist the urge but found myself grateful when he laid one hand on the back of my chair and the other on the near corner of my desk, then bent to look over my shoulder so I sat almost within the circle of his arms.
I turned my attention to the notebook and recognized William’s younger handwriting immediately. When William was Lucius’s age, he’d spent hours carefully copying his own distilled versions of Plutarch’s stories into his notebooks and then drawing all the scenes with maps marking where they took place. This notebook was mostly drawings. Hardly any writing.
“These are the pictures William drew when he should have been doing his lessons.”
I heard myself sounding snappish and tried to soften my tone as the drawings swam in front of me. Lucius flushed pink from feeling rebuked, which I regretted instantly, but he soon turned back to the drawings, full of questions.
“Who’s this boy and what is this shiny city supposed to be?”
“That’s Theseus and the city is Athens.”
“What about this scary man? Why’s he standing beside that bed?”
“That’s Procrustes, blocking the way.”
Lucius stood waiting for more but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. Not yet. Maybe not ever. All those nights when William was as young as Lucius and even much younger. How he’d come to me just like this. Except he’d climbed right into my lap without even checking first. Somehow, he was the only one I’d ever hugged.
I flipped through the fading pages of my firstborn’s old notebook. And there they were. All those damn crutches William was forever drawing. Bunches of crutches along with cut off feet, lying scattered and bleeding all along the margins. William had latched on to the story of Procrustes and would not let it go. He’d been obsessed with this monster who blocked the road to Athens, forcing travelers to climb onto his rack where he either stretched them to fit or else cut off their feet.
Theseus finally slew Procrustes but William had fretted so about the feet. Said that was too high a price to pay for entrance to Athens, no matter how shiny the city seemed. At the time, I always told him he would feel differently when he was older. But by now, I had begun to see his point.
I felt my Lucius standing so close that night, needing my answers, not just about Theseus and Athens, but about all of us. Who we were. What had happened to us. I felt our stories fluttering inside me, all at the same time, but I could not find where to start or how to proceed from there. Rivers of words and I can’t fit any of them through my mouth.
But I see it all. Thompson’s pale blue eyes water from the stench of our prison boat as he laughs with relief from finally realizing he wants out of this business. Mena’s sharp eyes hook me out of that auction crowd as surely as a fish on a line. Heddy’s wildest girl Charlotte stares at me from the stand, refusing to defend herself, and the skulls of my two scalped scouts glow pale against the dirtied snow. Mary’s fingers wrap around her Bible so worn it’s starting to look grimy while Susannah’s face hovers above mine from within the circle of her hair hanging down, making a redgold room to hold us both.
And this was just the beginning of what I wanted to tell. But I remained convinced there was not enough room for my whole story to fit inside me, along with everything else I needed to believe. Something would have to give and there was no telling what it might be, so I simply screwed the lid down tighter, hoping it would hold.
Lucius waited as long as he could, but then grew restless and turned to go. His heels thudding across the floor snapped me out of my reverie. I called out as he left.
“Shut the door behind you.”
“Yessir.”
Maybe it was Lucius standing there looking so hungry, maybe it was the rivers of words dammed up behind my mouth, maybe it was just that there was no moon. I have no idea. But pretty soon, I’m headed for the barn. I don’t need a candle.
As I stop to speak to the hounds so they won’t bark, I start to wonder whether I’ve worn a trail. I know I should stop. But I can’t.
Wash
I do mess with Richardson and some nights, I enjoy it. He comes to me and when he does, he’s got that gleam in his eye. He looks down to try and hide it but it stays, that gleam he gets from fingering this edge. Everybody knows he ain’t supposed to be coming down here and talking at me like this. Everybody and the devil too.
So I will grant him that.
And he’s finally starting to creep up on some truth. Getting his words on out. Words a man like him wouldn’t be caught dead holding in his hand. Trouble with Richardson is, he wants me to listen to him and not hear him. Both at the same time. He wants me to lift him right up off that hook, but at the same time, he wants me to catch him redhanded.
It don’t make things any easier for me, walking around carrying his stories along with mine, but I’m listening mostly to hear the sound of some truth being spoken, even as I’m hunting to find what part can I use to hit him with. This man who thinks he can speak so freely.
What I say is if we’re gonna speak freely then lets us speak.
Most times, he knows if he can get me hard and in there, then that’s it. Don’t matter much what she has to say about it, she’s still soft and wrapped round me. If I’m lucky, that soft being soft on me will clear out the rest so none of it can get to me.
And Richardson makes sure about those girls. Said he wasn’t going to drag me all the way over to somebody else’s place and then have me not make it. Awkward was what he called it. One place, it’s Binah’s two granddaughters. The younger one coming into curves and the older one flush in love with a new husband.
But everybody needs that dollar and soft will do the trick. When I can manage to unlatch my mind. Just unhitch my mind and let it swing loose. I can’t be hanging on to how I don’t want this. All that’ll do is get me sold down the river or maybe even the islands. Then I’m looking at five more years tops, from what I hear, and cutting cane all the way.
If I can make it far enough down this road, push everything else away, I can stop having to work. The floor of me starts to rise and I’m in my own world spinning and it feels good. It feels good and it’s out of my hands. I’m lost to her and she’s lost to me and most times, I need it like that.
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