He was smoking? A.D. said.
Even as the Peabody blazed in the night. Well, by then he was already jabbering to Dr. Alpionaire about you two in particular. He spoke about the way you’d busted in, with how you held a lit torch to his face threatening him the whole while, saying that if he didn’t leave me at once you’d do it, you’d burn it all down. He was hollering for the constable to track you already. For a posse to be rounded up and munitions to be loaded, as if we were all still down on his plantation and some runaways had just taken off, and yet he stopped his nonsense when he saw me. His eyes narrowed as I stepped closer. Leaning down, he looked at my smoldering skin and sniffed me. He sniffed me! Before holding his palms out as if that was it, some appeasement or gesture that meant we were right again, that he had done everything he could to save me.
It was the boy, he said, watching me close. The boy and that nigger. They did this.
No, I said.
Clara? he said then, and straightened himself up to his full height. As if it might straighten out my own recollection, as if it might influence everything I’d ever thought about him that wasn’t true. Clara. He looked at me, his hard eyes imploring.
It was you, I said, YOU, and I must have screamed it for the people carrying their water buckets and hoses turned as if the very night was charged with my voice. They watched dumbstruck then as I swung my fist up to his fat, sweaty face and held the cage there as it seared his cheek and nose and forehead with the thin burned lines that he carries to this day. Marked by his own failure. Marked for all time, and she took A.D.’s hand in her own as she said it, pulling him close. I’ve marked him for you. I’ve done that. Even now he walks the streets of Richmond destitute and alone. His own daddy won’t see him, she said with a grim smile; he is shunned by those who know him and reviled by those who don’t. She was finished, and satisfied with the telling looked up at A.D. who smiled back with a calm leveling smirk that lit his whole face and sent a deep chill down my spine. Turning then, they walked off arm in arm, oblivious to the staccato chorus of the snapping awnings and rain drumming like God’s own percussion with not a soul left ’cept the few coloreds who’d been charged with striking the stage and clearing the street. And me.
XV
The sound that so charged her ~ Over a glazier’s shop ~ Their courtship begins ~ The Honorable Reverend Michael Williams ~ Behind the shadows and pews ~ I finally step forward in the Lord’s house ~ The body swinging in the trees ~ They take what they want ~ Only silence and wind
WELL THE DAYS GREW INTO WEEKS, and the weeks into months, and the fall weather fell upon us and the world slowed down beneath its cold hypnotic eye. I would go for days at a time without seeing A.D. since I knew it was his first time being so young and in love. As for Ms. Clara May, she said she’d heard our song on the radio and stood stock-still to know it was her own name being sung and revered in such a way and that she knew it was A.D. and me playing for she’d made a point of straying near our boiler room door at the Peabody, hoping to gather the courage to knock and ask to sing with us. Or, at the very least, to sit closer to the sound that so enchanted her. But always another student would walk by or she’d see Mr. Vickers fumbling down the long stairwell, and she’d skitter off with the hope of one day getting the chance to ask A.D. about his singing and our songs. But after she’d listened and knowed it was us, she heard tell we was from Bristol, and so she up and headed south to find us. She’d even rented an apartment in the middle of town over a glazier’s shop with the money the Peabody had given her for her fire-licked skin (and other minor injuries, which she’d healed quick enough from; she was always so strong in that regard), and just bided her time. Walking the streets, she’d calculated and remembered street signs and such until she’d just seen us (of all things) take the stage that night. She hadn’t taken her eyes off A.D. since. So I let them be in their courtship for a while, for I knew it was something you couldn’t get in the way of no matter what you tried or wanted for yourself. Anyways, it made sense enough for me to see them so joined for what they’d been through, with always missing each other as if at the opposite ends of life—with him right off the street, and her a decorated student—so now they just needed to be alone for their affections to take hold.
In any case, I had my own path to follow in those days, and my own chores to do. Now that I finally found myself alone without A.D. dragging me off on some other quest for names or faces or some lost song, I set to fixing up my broken-down home. I needed to plaster up holes and lay brick and stone to make it habitable before the cold came in and the snows hit hard in the upper ridge dusting it all like stardust and a crystal wonderment. O I did love to walk amongst that magic wonderland at dawn, traipsing through the stillness of the ridge thick with snow as the sun glimmered through the towering tree boughs. Just thinking about all that delicate beauty made me miss my Annie and Lucy girl, and so when I wasn’t rebuilding our house, I visited with the Honorable Reverend Michael Williams, and beseeched him and his congregation for any information about my family. I reckon they never in their whole lives imagined they’d see me again, even if the reverend didn’t seem too surprised.
ISAIAH HARDY, HE SAID, IN HIS DARK RASPY voice that third Sunday after service. I’d finally built up enough courage to speak to him and to show myself from behind the shadowy pews where I’d hid the past two weeks. O it had been nice enough to find out from Ms. Clara May that they weren’t looking for us in Baltimore, not for the arson and general dishevelment of the Peabody. But I still couldn’t be sure they weren’t still looking for me in Bristol. Not after what I’d done to that old Hackett fellow, the one I’d killed for my sweet Annie, stringing him up in the woods for all to see, and it haunted me. It did. To know I had to leave right after it, as if my own life were ending. Never to see them again nor touch them, nor to lose the feeling of loving them the way I had, and to know that I could not go back for them ever, not for all the world. And then for all those years to feel pursued and lost from them like a dog really, or worse, made me struggle now to speak, to stand up, to find out what had happened to them, and reclaim some broken piece of me. To finally put to rest that past pain.
(Though I should say right here that that old Hackett fellow never haunted me in the least. Not since he’d only got what he had coming. But the ghost of my old life sure did. It was still there in my mind, calling me, beseeching me, because I’d listened to it return each Sunday as the Honorable Reverend Michael Williams sermonized, as the thoughts and feelings rose above me as atop a wave, before carrying me off in their sweet current.) Because he certainly had a way of talking, of shaking his hands in the light of the steeple amidst all the music and thunderous amens of the people crowding the aisles, that it felt as if I’d never left in those moments. That all the intermingled years had been but a blur. A dream. A terrible nightmare that I could finally erase. For the most powerful and vivid memories of my wife and baby girl came back to me in those moments, so that I could still feel Lucy in my arms, holding her in that same pew. Or, I’d recall watching Annie’s soft brown profile next to mine: her brown wicker hat atop her head, her round cheeks moving as she whispered her prayers along with the reverend, and it made me shy that first Sunday. And a little bit scared the next. To know what I had to do, to finally change my way of running and hiding after all those years and step forward from behind my long, sad face, which I’d hung like a mask till then before me, wiping it most perpetual with a white handkerchief. Or shading it with my hands, so that the ones who might remember me wouldn’t, and the ones that couldn’t remember me, wouldn’t suspect nothing when I finally did step forward, showing my helplessness at last. After I’d got my courage up and walked out amongst them at the end of service, remembering all the while how I used to be part of it, the community, for I knew then I could ask him about my family, and where they could have possibly gone.
The Honorable Reverend Michael Williams, I said and shifted in my boots. Hello, and I looked at my hands. They
were long and hung at the end of my arms, for I couldn’t think of any other place to put them or what words to conjure after all those years of running. The pews had hushed to an eerie silence behind me, and as I took another step forward, I seen not a few familiar faces shade their eyes and squint to place me in their minds and then shake their heads to know it was me for sure, remembering at last what I’d done. Though with a soft subtle movement, that was it. He shook his hands, as if doing nothing more than straightening the bone cufflinks he always wore, and the whole congregation stepped out much quicker and quieter into the cold autumn sunshine. Then it was just us—in the lord’s house—me and the reverend, eyeing each other.
You’re old, he said, and stepped from behind his tall pulpit, a cracked brown Bible in his hand. Much more so than I would have thought.
It’s been seven years, I said, and touched my gray stubbly chin and sideburns, before leaning against a pew. Seven long ones.
Seven ones of sinning? he said. Or seven on the bright side, on the side of redeeming?
I have no redeeming in me for that man, sir. Never will.
He looked on me then in a silence so long I thought we’d slipped into a seam of time itself, something held out only for the dead. Something awful and lonesome where life outside had ceased altogether. But then after some imperceptible shift in his mood, or thinking on me perhaps—or maybe just because the light had shone in a brighter burst through the upstairs windows as the clouds raced past—he moved again. Raising his Bible, he set it behind him on the pulpit before turning toward me with a water pitcher in his hand and two small glasses. He motioned for me to come forward, and as I did, I watched him pour the two glasses before handing me one. I was most considerable dry. More so than I thought possible standing before him, seeing his gray eyes and the deep lines in his cheeks reach down and down into his flesh, as if to touch his soul perhaps, marking everything he did inside him with their time. The lines. Lord, I hadn’t thought I’d see the lines again, and gulped the whole glass in a rush and then held the glass in my hands as he sipped slow and steady and wet his thick brown lips, before setting his glass back on the pulpit. Hackett, he finally said.
Yes, sir. Hackett’s his name.
And his people come to me the very next week after they found the body swinging in the trees, and even the people above Hackett come—the overseer above the overseer. They come unto me and even touched me in the house of the lord. For they said I knew you and what you’d been planning and so they stayed and scared off the congregation on a Sunday when we were all set to pray. Even the men I thought might help me in a time such as that were sent away, and it was only me and them. All those white devils in the house of the Lord talking and conspiring about you. You alone, son.
I shifted in my boots to hear the hurt in his voice. I still had the empty glass in my hand and looked at it, bowing my head. A few last drops still rested in the bottom, and as he waited for me to say something, I shook the glass to make the drops quiver around the edge, but I couldn’t make anything budge. Hell. I breathed then to steady myself, but could still feel the shaking in my arms, and I had to move them again just to feel free of the moment and awkwardness and shame. Well, I’m real sorry about that, sir. I never meant to harm you, nor your church.
Not to harm me? he said. Or my church! and reaching out, he took the glass from me and slammed it on the pulpit next to the pitcher. You kill a white man and think no harms gonna come to no one else? To the ones that know you?
But you knew that man, sir. You knew what he done.
Yeah, I knew him. I knew what he was. Everyone did, and he took the wire-rimmed spectacles from his face, wiped his eyes with his big black hand, and set his spectacles back on his face. But you didn’t have to hang him, boy. Not after he was already dead.
Didn’t they hang enough of us over the years? Didn’t they drive us down into the ditches with the hogs?
Lord, lord, he said and bowed his head as the darkness of the clouds slanted in as if to take away every last hint of daylight and goodness. They take what they want, Isaiah. You know that. They always have. Always will. It don’t matter what. They take it and use it for their own need and the lesser amongst us be damned. It’s been like that forever and always will be. Even if it’s not them doing it, it’ll be someone else. Someone else to fill the gap. Someone else to do the deed. So I suppose you were the next one to do the deed, taking Hackett’s life, even if he was a miserable sonofabitch to begin with. Even if his own people knew it. But that day they come in here, they watched Annie and Lucy as they left the front steps. They were gathered on horses and in a few Model Ts cause I guess they meant to chase after you, even with you having a week’s head start. But there must a been something about Annie that moved them. Some quiet sense. That way she had of looking down and never breaking her silent concentration with her beauty. She was beautiful, and I had a mind to follow them, your wife and baby girl, but that woman had a head on her even if you didn’t. Some say she’d already used her savings for train tickets and never did say goodbye. Never said a word. I thought I’d hear from her long before you. Thought it would be a letter here, a letter there. Something from her people up in Brunswick, Maryland or Oneonta, New York, but all I got were your letters and that money you sent. All that blood money you thought would a buyed back your soul. He’d stepped within a few inches of my face. The big black bulb of his nose was level with mine. Breathing his sour breath on my cheek. The tips of his boots touching mine. Did you think you’d get it back so easy? And so quick? Well? Did you?
I looked at him feeling nothing but the silence of my Annie, the silence of the words she never spoke to no one, not even to the reverend, and the pain of it all. Annie’s pain and shame in having to walk amongst them with her head bowed and embarrassed. Walking amongst those that were her own community, her own people, and not getting anything back from them by way of sympathy or compassion, and it sent a shiver down my spine. I had a sudden icy feeling then for the reverend, too, like he must have had for me, for the words rose cold and slow from me, and even to this day I would not take them back if I had to. I might only add to them and make them harsher and colder. Well, the money was for them, sir, like I wrote. Or didn’t you look after that, neither? Hiding away from folks here, making them feel ashamed when all they need is some help from you. When all they need is some—
You son of a . . . He was furious, but caught himself and bowed a moment whispering some invective or curse—I can’t rightly say—though the redness of his rage shined in his cheeks and I’d never thought this was how it would go. I never thought a man of the cloth would hate someone so in his own church, someone who’d come before him with the most honorable intention. But he’d composed himself enough to spew at me again. I damn well know what you wrote, he said. I read it, didn’t I? You just lucky Hackett’s people didn’t give a damn about him, neither. O they put up a show. Had too. Couldn’t have a town full of niggers running around killing and carrying on. But then of course the company come in and bought up all that land anyways and it amounted to nothing. They still haven’t planted it. Supposed to be surveying for minerals. Manganese or something. But then they got bought up, too. I don’t know. Don’t care neither. He’d stepped back from me. There were steps behind the pulpit, and I could hear him stomping down them, still cursing my name before breathlessly stomping back up with a big white envelope in his hands. An envelope he thrust at me huffing from the exertion of stomping around so furiously, and on the lord’s day at that. Then without another word, he pushed me so forcefully in the chest I almost fell sprawling against the pews and rows, but righted myself enough to put my hands to the front doors pushing them aside. Then we were out on the steps in the cold autumn light, the wind scattering leaves and bits of paper at our feet.
But I still have to know about Annie, sir. I still have to know if you’ve heard from her, if you know anything.
There’s nothing to know, he said. She gone. She gone and to
ok that baby with her and you can’t come back here no more. Not after what you brought me. Not after all that worry. This here’s the last of it and then I will be done.
Done with what?
With you. With it. With all the darkness you brought down upon me. It will be done and I will be free. I know it. Here, he said, and pushed me again, pushing the envelope tighter to my chest before turning with a quickness I hadn’t thought possible in a man that old, shutting the doors and locking them, for I could hear the heavy bolt slide in the cold brass slot.
But I’m here alone, sir. Alone, I repeated the word but couldn’t hear his loud stomping boots no more, and thought he was still there, still waiting on the other side of those doors. Or praying maybe to be done with me for good—and so I banged on the door and shook the handle just to rile him for what he’d done to me—for throwing me out. For raging on me with his eyes and words and guilt about what had been done to him, when it sounded as if he hadn’t even been hurt in the slightest, just inconvenienced whilst all my family and life had been lost, just as much as Hackett’s had been lost. Though at least I’d been loved, at least I’d been respected, and had lost that much more in the bargain. Reverend? I said. Reverend, what would your god say about you now? What’s in your heart? But there was only silence. Only silence and wind and then my hands tearing open the envelope to find what he’d left me, what he’d needed so desperately to give me. I had to sit down then to see it, to finally realize what it was—the sum total of the ninety-two letters I’d sent in the seven years since I’d left—$538 dollars in cold hard cash.
Purchase Page 12