A blue cloud of smoke rose through the woods farther ahead, and I went in that direction but found nothing, not even embers, not even a clearing. Then I heard Henry’s voice.
Damn, Shoot. You done it now.
I spun to the sound and saw him standing just a few feet away, laughing at me, pushing his hat back on his head. I went to him. I clung to his waist, but after a few minutes I found that I was only clinging to a tree. A snake slithered across my foot. I reached out and grabbed it just below its head, then squeezed the breath out of it while its body thrashed and curled around my arm and finally stilled.
“He seem ’bout half-dead,” I heard a woman say. “Where you say you find him?”
“Down by the river in the rain, holdin’ on to a dead snake,” another woman answered.
“Snake? What kinda snake?”
“Cottonmouth.”
“Cottonmouth? Lord. He bit?”
“Naw. He jest got that wound in his shoulder.”
“He walk up here?”
“Barely. Leanin’ on me, but we made it.”
I heard movement, and then the crackle of a fire.
Sup. Sup always stoking the fire, always cooking the cush-cush and the hoecakes. Good old Sup.
“What day you find him?” the voice said.
“Thursday.”
Thursday. Just two more days of work and I can rest. Bell ain’t rung yet. Did I sleep through? Oh naw, Massuh, don’t whip me. Please don’t whip me. I jest didn’t hear it. I jest didn’t hear that ol’ bell.
“Hush now. Ain’t nobody gonna whip you.”
Hands on my chest gently pushing me back down.
And then I was in the river again, and Chloe’s note was unfurling in front of me. But it was a dream. I woke to the sound of Sup stoking the fire, mixing up batter for hoecakes.
Hoecake, Sup. Can I have a hoecake?
“Ain’t got no hoecakes,” a woman said.
I opened my eyes. I was lying in a large bed covered with a blue counterpane. I looked around at dark cabin walls, just like my cabin at Sweetmore, but here there was a wingback chair covered in light blue fabric pulled up to the hearth, and an old Negro woman sitting in it. “He awake,” she said.
And then I saw a younger woman turn from stirring a pot by the fire. She had skin like polished walnut, and her left temple glowed, lit up from behind like a lantern. “What yo’ name?” she asked me.
“Persimmon Wilson,” I heard myself say.
“That quite a name.”
“Persy.” The word scraped like grit against my throat as it came out. It was so hard to speak. “Folks call me Persy,” I croaked.
The younger woman came over and laid a hand on my forehead, and then my cheek. “Well, Persy, you still got the fever. It better, but you still right hot. You want you some water?”
I nodded, and she reached to a table next to the bed, picked up a cut crystal goblet. I tried to rise up but found that I couldn’t.
“Here,” the woman said. She slipped one arm behind my head, lifted me up, and held the goblet to my lips.
“Thank you.”
“Right mannered nigger, ain’t he?” the old woman in the chair said.
“Get some rest,” the other said, and she lowered me back into the bed and set the goblet down on the table. The skin on her temple glowed and flickered and caught the light.
For three days I slept and woke. Sometimes I felt my head held up and broth spooned into my mouth. Other times I felt a cool cloth on my brow. When they were not tending to me the two women talked, and snippets of their conversation floated into my semiconscious mind.
You ought to of let him die, Silla. He jest dirtyin’ up yo’ new bedcloths. And what that out of his pocket? A little noose? What he carryin’ a noose fo’? And what he doin’ with a snake in his hand? I tell you, Silla, you done caught yo’self a witch doctor. He still callin’ that name over and over? Chloe? That it?
When next I opened my eyes the old woman was still sitting in the wingback chair, but now there was a matching chair beside it, and the younger woman sat in it, sewing. “He awake again,” the old woman said.
The younger one put down her work and got up and came to me. She laid one hand on my forehead as she had done before, and as she did so I saw that the glowing place on her temple was a large flat scar, the skin thin and taut, pulling her left eye up a little higher than it should be and reflecting the light of the lamp beside me. “How you feelin’, Persy?” she asked.
“A little weak,” I answered.
She smiled and nodded. “I ’spect so. I’m Silla,” she said, “and this here my mama, Lizbeth. You want you some tea?”
Lizbeth chuckled to herself. “Massuh left it behind.” She stood and took a fancy cup and saucer off the top of a polished dresser, and then poured from a kettle into it, and brought it to me.
“Here, baby, let me sit you up,” Silla said. She plumped the pillows behind me and helped me prop against them. A jab of soreness coursed through my right shoulder as I moved. I winced and lifted my left hand to it. Turning to look, I found bandaging there, neatly wrapped, clean and white except for one small spot of yellow blooming through the cloth. Lizbeth handed me the cup and saucer and I took them delicately, their diminutive size nearly swallowed by my hands.
“Mama dressed yo’ wound,” Silla said.
“Look like you got shot. Bullet went right through I reckon, but that wound nasty. Full of pus. Smell to high heaven.”
“Where am I?” I asked.
“You on a plantation called Sou Sou,” Silla answered.
“Does your master know I’m here?”
“Jest listen to him. He talk like a white man,” Lizbeth said.
“Massuh gone,” Silla answered. “He done run off from the Yankees.”
“We free.” Lizbeth laughed and pointed at me. “You free. You lucky you alive too. Silla done found you by the river with a snake in yo’ hand. What you doin’ with a snake in yo’ hand?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who done shot you?”
“My master. He shot me and I fell into the river.” I took a sip of the tea. I was surprised that it was sweet. “You have sugar?”
“Five hundred and thirty hogsheads of sugar,” Lizbeth said. “Molasses too. Massuh done left it all behind. Now where you come from? Who yo’ massuh?”
“Wilson, of Sweetmore.”
“I heard of it. That where Jeff the fiddler wife live. Sally her name.”
“Mama, let him rest,” Silla said. “He ain’t up to you askin’ all these questions.”
“I jest want to know what he doin’ with a snake in his hand and a noose in his pocket. I tell you, Sill, you done caught yo’sef a witch doctor.”
“He jest a sick man,” Silla said. “Now leave him be.”
“How sick was I?” I asked.
“Mighty sick, child.” Lizbeth again. “Mighty sick. Yo’ skin like fire.”
“I ’spect you need you some food. I made a stew. I get you some.” Silla went to the hearth and dished out a ladle full of steaming stew into a china bowl, into which she plunged a bright silver spoon.
“Are you the only ones here?” I asked.
Silla nodded and handed me the bowl. “Now hush up and eat. You ain’t had nothing but broth since I found you. They’s meat in that stew. Eat up.”
“What day is it?”
“Lord, I don’t know, child. That bell stop ringin’ us out to the fields, I done lost the days in my head.” Lizbeth chuckled and plopped herself down in her chair again.
“Wednesday,” Silla answered. “I done found you on Thursday. You been gone out fo’ near a week. Now eat, and rest. You ain’t well enough fo’ a social yet.”
Wednesday today. Thursday when I was found. It had been Monday when we boarded the boat. I counted in my head. Ten days. Ten days since I last saw Chloe.
“Who Chloe?” Lizbeth suddenly asked as if she had reached into my head and pulled out the name.
“Mama!”
“I jest askin’. Save the man’s life, I reckon I got a right to know who he callin’ fo’ in his sleep.”
“My wife,” I answered quickly. “Chloe’s my wife. Wilson took her across the river to Texas and shot me and left me to drown.”
“Nothin’ these white folk do surprise me.” Lizbeth shook her head. “But I reckon you best fo’get ’bout her. She over there and you over here.”
“Over here?” I asked.
“Where else you be but over here?”
“I think he wantin’ to know what side of the river he on. Is that right, baby?”
I nodded.
“You lucky to be on the New Orleans side,” Lizbeth said. “You on the side with the Yankees.”
“Our massuh took everyone to Texas too,” Silla said. “We run off and hide in the swamp. Come back after they gone.”
“Got Missus china and beddings. Tea, sugar, meat. Chairs.” Lizbeth ran her hands along the blue fabric upholstery of the chair she sat in. “Fine chairs. Comfortable.”
“Food gonna run out soon enough,” Silla said. “We sittin’ pretty now, but it ain’t gonna last fo’ever.” She nodded at me. “We share what we got. You eat up now.” Silla waved her hand at the bowl I held. “You still weak.”
“I need to get across the river.”
“You ain’t gettin’ ’cross no river,” Lizbeth said. “Rebs over there. Yankees over here. You free here. You jest another nigger slave over there.”
“Chloe. I have to find Chloe. I have to get her away from him.”
Lizbeth snorted. “Ain’t none of our people in the right place no mo’. Fo’get ’bout that gal. Look after yo’self.”
Silla laid her hand on my chest. “Mama’s right,” she said. “Now eat up.”
I did not argue. I had no strength for arguing. I needed to get well again for the trip across the river, but the food lodged in my throat and I had to force every bite. My teeth were sore and the meat hard to chew, but I ate and I swallowed and I kept it down, although the knowledge of what they’d said made me feel sick, as if a black bile ponded in my stomach. Chloe on one side of the river and me on the other. Ten days apart.
Over the next week, I could barely get out of bed to relieve myself, and I did not rest easily. Each night I felt myself tossing in that sea of bedding, and I heard myself moaning, and I woke more than once, calling for Chloe. But Chloe was not there, and Silla was.
She changed the bandages on my shoulder each night. The wound still wept a bit, but Silla pressed the pus out and bathed it with brine. Once she ran her fingers lightly along the scars on my back and asked, “Wilson do this?”
“Had it done,” I told her.
“That the way of it,” Silla replied, touching the scar at her temple.
Gradually I got well enough to go outside and sit in one of the wingback chairs pulled into a patch of sun. And then well enough to walk a bit around the empty quarters, and then to explore further afield, the barns, the big house, the river. As I stood on the banks of the levee looking out over the river, I wanted to cry. I wanted the release of tears spilling down my face, but too much had been wrung out of me for that. Making a life with Chloe seemed hopeless now. How could I ever get across the Mississippi River? How could I ever get to Texas, and once there, how could I ever find Chloe? I stood still, staring out over the water. A Yankee gunboat came into view. The men on deck waved to me and I lifted my arm and waved back, the ache in my shoulder almost gone now.
I moved into the cabin next door to Silla and Lizbeth. I plundered the big house and dragged furnishings into my new home: a feather mattress and a bedstead nearly as large as the cabin, a dresser crammed beside it, two chairs with backs curled like question marks pulled up to the hearth. I found a quilt, dishes, cutlery. I found stockings and shirts and britches, boots to replace my ruined shoes. I found a room in the big house filled floor to ceiling with shelves of books, a ladder that rolled along on wooden wheels to help in reaching the topmost ones. In this room was a large table with chunky legs, and on it spread a map of the United States and its territories, or what had once been the United States. It was two countries now, torn by war.
It was raining the day I noticed the map. I lit a lamp and set it on the table to see by. The rain pattered softly in the trees and thrummed on the porch roof. On the map, I traced my finger from Virginia, along the James River, and then out to sea and down to New Orleans. From there I ran my finger up the river to where I estimated Sweetmore to be, and then across the Mississippi, to the other shore, and west across the rest of Louisiana and on into Texas. My finger trawled that state, from the perimeter to the middle until finally I had touched every inch, and somewhere in all that, my finger had touched the land that Chloe was on.
I turned the flame of the lamp up and looked more closely at the rivers. Were I to go looking for her, these would be my greatest obstacles, I thought. The Red River, which flowed into the Mississippi, was something I could avoid if I crossed below it. But the land between the western shore of the Mississippi and the border of Texas was mapped with rivers, and along the Texas border there was a river called the Sabine, and beyond the Sabine more fingers of water crept across Texas like veins. I leaned closer and read the names of the few towns in Texas that were marked on the map. Liberty, Houston, Port Caddo, Fredericksburg, and above Fredericksburg, an arm of Texas that seemed empty of everything, and across this patch of nothingness one word, written in capital letters. COMANCHES.
The map was large, too large to fold and carry comfortably in my pocket, and so I tore out the states of Louisiana and Texas, and this swatch I did fold and put into my pocket where it nestled against the little noose.
I held the lamp aloft and wandered along the shelves of books, finally selecting one and then snuffing the light. I had taken to reading to Lizbeth and Silla each night after we shared a meal, and eventually, perhaps it was inevitable, Silla followed me to my cabin and lay with me in my large featherbed.
I cried the first time, the tears breaking through when I felt the comforting arms of a woman once again. Silla rocked me like a baby. She stroked my neck and muttered softly, “Po’ Persy. Po’, po’ Persy.”
I took from Silla love and succor, solace and companionship, food and nurturing. I took these things, and delivered words read from books, and firewood, split and stacked, and buckets of water drawn from the well and left on the stoop of their cabin. I learned to set traps and snag rabbits for dinner. I baited deer with salt, and learned to make friends with them before I chose one and slit its throat, and hauled it home for dressing and cooking. I allowed the men that passed through, Yankee soldiers and runaway slaves, the occasional planter or former overseer, dippers of water from our well, and I watched them closely to make certain that they left the plantation. I protected Silla and Lizbeth and Sou Sou, and every day I stood on the levee and gazed across the river to the other shore.
April had turned to May while I was sick, and now May turned to June. The air grew stagnant, hot and steamy. I raided the big house once again and stole sheets to hang in the open doorway of my cabin in the hopes of letting in some of the cool night air, but now the mosquitoes found their way inside and whined in my ears all night long. Still, Silla came to me, and each night we went at each other.
I had become rough with her. I gave no thought to her needs or pleasure. This was my brief life on Sou Sou. I did my chores. I read my books. I fucked my woman. And then one night after I had finished my business with her and rolled away to face the wall and sleep, Silla let out one long breath and said, “I ain’t comin’ back no mo’.” I didn’t answer and after some time of silence she asked, “Did you hear me?”
“I heard you.” I turned to face her, and in the faint moonlight that slipped its way between the cracks in the wall of my cabin, I could see the dampness on her face. “Why?” I asked.
She put her arms around me and pulled me to her, trailing her fingers along the ridg
es of scars on my back. “Persy, I done ask you ’bout yo’ scars. I know you got ’em from a whippin’. I know what you was accused of. I know Chloe ain’t yo’ wife. She Wilson’s fancy. I know all that ’cause I done ask you ’bout yo’ scars. But you ain’t never, even once, ask me ’bout mine.” Her hands left my back and traveled to her face. “It like you don’t want to hear my story. Like I jest here to be yo’ fancy. I ain’t no whore, Persy.”
“Chloe’s not a whore,” I said.
“I ain’t say she was. I say I ain’t.”
Silla was a beautiful woman. If I have not described her thus, then I owe you, and her, an apology. Even the scar contributed to all that was Silla, to all that was her beauty, this large flat scar like a large flat rock I remembered in a field at the Surley place in Virginia, a rock that we plowed and planted around, and that I had played on when I was just a shirttail boy too young to work. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Please, tell me now.”
“Kitchen fire,” she answered, without inflection. “I got this goin’ into the kitchen house and pullin’ out a little white baby. Save that child’s life. Chrissy her name. I her gal. Then I too ugly to be a house slave no mo’, too ugly to be her gal. I get put out in the fields.”
“I’m sorry, Silla. I’m sorry I never asked.” I held my hand against my forehead, staring at the ceiling.
“You call fo’ her in yo’ sleep. You call her name. ‘Chloe. Chloe.’ Every night. I cain’t listen no mo’.”
April 2, 1875
I HAVE WRITTEN well into the night. Outside my barred window the pink light of dawn has given over to the white light of morning. Jack, my jailer, told me when he brought my breakfast that I am to be measured for my casket today. I will not be surprised if the newspaperman also pays me a visit, begging once again for my story, and of course, the preacher might stop by, begging once again for my soul. I will tell everyone but the casket maker to go away.
My hand is cramped, my forearm knotted with the effort of unceasingly moving pen across paper for twelve or more hours. I have called to Jack during the night for more ink, more paper, more fuel for my sputtering lamp. I have little time in which to live now, one full day and part of another in which to complete this account. I do not mind dying. Perhaps I even deserve it, although you hang me for the wrong crime. The death of Wilson is nothing. It made my heart glad to kill him. The person I have failed is Chloe, and I cannot die until I have completed her story.
The Life and Times of Persimmon Wilson Page 13