Beneath Ceaseless Skies #171

by Spencer Ellsworth

  Northup says: What in Heaven’s name are you going on about?

  The beasts! The creatures! Already they have killed a man—

  Killed who? Northup asks.

  Your man, they killed your hired man, I saw the body myself.

  Northup says: You forgot his name already.

  Chambers says: It’s hardly important.

  Northup stands up and stalks out of the room. Chambers hears him in the pantry, stomping around, glasses and crockery rattling and knocking. After a while it get quiet and he comes back with a bottle and two glasses.

  He hoists the bottle and says: Don’t usually indulge, but this is not a usual circumstance.

  He sets the bottle down hard on the parlor table. The top-heavy Argand lamp there cants and steadies, and its train-oil reservoir tilts a shadow across the wall.

  Armagnac hors d’âge, he announces. You might say the good stuff. Dutch merchant whose son I went to school with gave it to me—oh, years ago. Dead now, I imagine.

  He pushes the cork out with his thumb and pours. He hands one glass to Chambers, who tosses it back and falls into a fit of coughing. Northup swirls his own glass thoughtfully, gazing into the amber whorl, then lifts the glass to his lips and sips noisily. He smiles, and sets the glass down.

  Survival seem likely? he asks Chambers.

  Winded, hand pressed to his chest, Chambers nods.

  More? Northup asks.

  Chambers shakes his head.

  Northup takes another sip.

  Pleasure is the principle pursued here, he says, not mere intemperance.

  He continues: Now, as for our friend in the lake. Been there long as I’ve been alive. Longer, maybe. Plenty of time to wreak all the havoc a soul could fear, if havoc was wished for. If my understanding’s good, we’ve as long again to go before any hope of rescue. Yes, rescue. Don’t be a fool, Chambers. Sit down.

  Chambers has leapt to his feet and is heading for the door.

  Northup says: I’m no more an enemy than I’ve ever been. Which is to say, I hope you see, hardly at all. Sit down.

  Chambers stammers: They—they’ve—you have—

  Northup says: There is no “they,” Chambers. There’s only the one. Sit down.

  Chambers is fumbling at the door, which Northup has had the foresight to latch.

  Northup goes over to him, puts his arm over his shoulder, and brings him back to the chair. James, James, he says. Sit down, old friend, he says. Have another brandy.

  He pours. Chambers sips this time.

  He sets the glass down and comes out with: Tentacles! You put your hand in—

  But he can’t complete the thought, his mind just veers away from the recollection.

  Northup says with an air of great patience: He recognizes me by taste. Can’t see too well out of the water. Of course he’s got good eyes, and up close he can see very well indeed, better than us probably, but at any distance.... Which is also how you managed to surprise him with that oar.

  Chambers says, How long have you—?

  Northup says, Many years. I spend a deal of time on the water, you know.

  Yes, Chambers says. About that....

  Northup lifts his eyebrows at him.

  Chambers says, It might seem a little awkward, to deal with your former student as an officer of the law—

  Not at all, Northup murmurs.

  But duty is duty, and I know what mine is.

  Chambers takes another drink. Northup refills his glass.

  Chambers says, Now, I know you did not kill him. Yes, I know that because I know you. And you say the... the...

  Visitor, Northup suggests.

  The—visitor—has not have killed him, whatever I might believe about it. I accept your word on that point. And yet I have a body that’s washed ashore, and even a dead Negro requires an explanation.

  He half-drains his glass.

  Not a mark on him, he adds. Good stuff, this.

  Yes, Northup says.

  Well, Northup says.

  Truly, you didn’t know? Northup says. And all this time, James, I thought you were looking the other way.

  Looking away? From what? When?

  Now it’s Northup’s turn to drain his glass. It was a placard, he says. That I saw in Erie City. I mentioned it to Amos, casual like, that one George Cramer was offering two hundred dollars reward for the whereabouts of a certain Nebuchadnezzar, not a name I knew. Can you believe it, I said. I thought it preposterous. But he flew into a panic, wouldn’t listen to me, threw his belongings into a bundle and out the door. I—

  He refills his glass.

  You remember how cold it was this past winter. He determined to walk across the ice. It was foolhardy. He wouldn’t heed me, and the ice proved, it seems, less sound than he believed. He must have drowned, and without any help or hindrance from our visitor. Who I can’t doubt was not even aware of his presence above him.

  A long pause. The firelight flickers on the ceiling, orange and gold laced with shadow.

  Chambers says, You go to Arkwright on Tuesdays?

  Northup nods.

  Chambers says, I believe it likely that the jury will return a verdict of death by misadventure. He lowers his gaze, and adds: Even without your testimony.

  Northup says, Thank you.

  But he adds: There is a class of people who, accustomed to the manipulation of power on behalf of themselves and their friends, grow to believe that that power is theirs as an aspect of the natural order of things. Soon they do not care what it takes to perpetuate their power; whatever it may be, they will do it. You are not like that, Chambers. But take care that you do not become so.

  There follows a passage of time punctuated with the purl of poured liquor, the clink of glasses.

  Eventually, Chambers says: Rescued?

  Northup says: Yes. He comes from a long-lived race but all he can do here is wait.

  * * *

  X.

  He calls himself Jonah now, a story so terrible that he’s never told it to anyone because no one could believe it. Amos Walker was never his name; that’s just what he called himself to strangers, a name for using on the long road northward. He chose for himself the name Jonah, from the Bible, and the surname of a man who had been kind to him. The name he was given at birth—not by his mother—nor had he ever known his father—was, he’s come to understand, a cruel one, and contemptuous. And a mouthful, too; even his own mother called him Nebs, his childhood friends Nezzer. Just the one name, like an animal.

  He shivers and pushes at the door again. It’s firmly shut. Winter had been cold in Virginia, too, of course, but it’s harsher here, more ice, more snow, especially south of the lake. His mind veers away from that thought with a practiced swerve, a neat turn, and he crosses to the hearth and plucks a twist of tallow-dipped straw from a little basket there, holds it to the guttering fire, and breathes on it gently to puff its smolder into flare. It’s colder here than he’s used to—but then it was cold in Pennsylvania, and colder still crossing the ice.

  For a second his hand shakes again and he nearly drops the twist. This won’t do, not at all. He pinches off the crumb of soot crusted to the tip of the wick and presses the little flame against it. The candle stub smokes and catches, brightness rising from its wick like a smile. A thread of smoke bends and wafts. He closes the lantern’s glass door. There. That’s good. Warmth and light. He hangs the lantern up on its hook, its pierced-tin back against the wall, and prods the fire higher.

  He sits down at the little deal table under the lantern, pushed up against the wall, and picks up the penknife. He has a cracked cup stuck full of the right kind of feathers, and he takes one, strips the barbs off with the knife, and plunges the tip into the hot ash under the logs in the hearth.

  No, Canada’s no paradise. His neighbors aren’t as friendly with a colored man as they might be with a white one, for sure, but Americans are worse, apart from a few, and he’s had much to endure. Only for that—bad usage—and h
e’d still be in America, though he does not regret coming here. No, he was forced away. He pulls the quill out and sets to cleaning the end, softened now, with the dull back edge of his knife. Then he polishes it with a bit of brick he keeps for that purpose.

  He’s well contented here, yes, a man now as God intended that he should be—that is, born equal and free, a wholesome law unlike the southern laws that put men, made in the image of God, on a level with brutes. O what will become of my people—for a moment all the sickness of his own thoughts bears down on him—where will they stand on that day? Let the oppressed go free, go free.

  He is staring blankly at the fire, his task forgotten.

  And I will come near to you in judgment, a swift witness against the false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow (his mother was a widow, she never spoke of it but he knew why), and the fatherless (a blankness).

  He looks down at his hands, at the quill, the knife: a choice to be made.

  But he knows that he will not meet those men again in this life; and, indeed, despite his anger, he hopes that they might still repent of their evil, and let their property go free. He does still hope for their salvation, but he does not believe they will.

  He trims the lower third of the quill, twists it round in his fingers, cuts off the tip at a slope, then turns it again and slits it. He nicks the sides and trims them off, tests the tip against his thumb, and trims a little more. Placing the tip on his thumbnail, the knife somewhat aslant, he cuts the end of the nib not quite off, nimbly flips it around, and pulls the blade clean through. He inspects the new pen and, satisfied, lays it down.

  He opens the bottle of ink he bought in town; an extravagance, perhaps, but in the past summer, besides having a good kitchen garden, he raised (for cash sale) 316 bushels potatoes, 120 bushels corn, forty-one bushels buckwheat, a small crop of oats (for the hogs), seventeen hogs, and seventy chickens (whose eggs he sells at the weekly market, while the occasional ailing hen goes into the pot). His rent for his cabin this year is fifty dollars, and next year he hopes to build and so avoid that expense. If he’d known how well he’d get along, he’d have left America ten years sooner.

  He dips his pen.

  Deer, he writes. Is that right? It’s a word, sure, but something about it seems not exactly as it should be. Writing comes hard to him, having been learned late, and his lines frequently blot and his pen breaks and the paper tears and he brushes his sleeve against wet ink; every literate mishap there can be, there is. But he tries: that’s important; he tries, and perhaps he improves day by day.

  He found a route north, and he found a teacher to help him to read, and reading’s easier for him now than ever before, and surely he’ll find his path here too. We are all wayward pilgrims, having lost our names and our friends, and many of us our lives, with little chance, stumbling towards Zion-land; and though we may not know the clear path, still we shall reach our home. Someday. Perhaps someday. Pray that it be soon.

  He picks up his pen again and writes:

  Deer Friend Stutlee

  * * *

  (XI.

  (July 1881. Report of the Signal Service officer at the port of Erie City:

  (At 5:30 in the morning the air was calm. At 6 o’clock, a slight breeze. To the northward a dark cloud appeared like a curtain, and at the same time a rumbling sound and a strong wind. At 6:20, a single, large green wave, about nine feet above the normal level of the lake, with no crest, approached from the northwest with great rapidity. The cloud, wave, and wind seemed to travel together. Soon after the passage of the wave, the wind subsided and the cloud dispersed.)

  Copyright © 2015 Thomas M. Waldroon

  Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

  Thomas M. Waldroon has lived in or near Washington (or, to be pedantic, the District of Columbia) for many years. “Sinseerly &c.” is from a series of preposterous lies—to be collected someday in a book titled Certain Americans—about his ancestors, in this case one of his great-great-great-great grandfathers. Let it be noted that you too, brave reader, can plumb the depths of similar tedium at www.tmwaldroon.com.

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  COVER ART

  “Twisted Mountain Valley,” by Christopher Balaskas

  Christopher Balaskas is an instructor at Infinity Visual and Performing Arts and a freelance traditional / digital conceptual artist. He was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, and is currently based in Jamestown, New York. View more of his work at deviantArt and artstation.

  Beneath Ceaseless Skies

  ISSN: 1946-1076

  Published by Firkin Press,

  a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

  Compilation Copyright © 2015 Firkin Press

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