Bootney leads Farewell through the gate, smiling with barely contained elation. “She have a nice high step,” he says. “This horse and me, we’re gonna do big things. We’ll make you proud, Mrs. Fenton.”
“Where do you live?”
He points south. There is a colored settlement down the river road. He says, “Do you mind if I cut through your back field?”
She hesitates. It would save him about a half mile. The back field is where her wilder horses are, some grade, some Thoroughbred.
“All right,” she says. He is getting his way in everything. It’s for Richard she is doing this. She shivers. Her coat is soaked through.
Bootney looks out to the back field. He swallows, his Adam’s apple jumping in his lean throat, and asks, “Have you seen the deer your horses be with?”
Deer sometimes graze in that back field at dusk or dawn. They and the horses keep a careful, tolerant distance. “What of them?”
“One of your stallions,” he says. “He been with a doe.”
It’s an old Negro tale, that deer and horses copulate.
“I seen them,” Bootney Sims insists. “The doe have a baby now. She keep it close to her. It have the head of a deer, mane and legs like a horse.”
Nelle will not address this talk of mating. “Close the back gate after you go through.”
“That little horse fawn is mighty pretty, and it belong to you, I reckon.”
“Be on your way now.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Fenton,” he says. “Farewell and me, we in the winner’s circle.” He grasps Farewell’s mane and hoists himself onto her back, and they walk away.
Showing off, to ride bareback. Well, sidesaddle is much harder. Nelle has ridden sidesaddle on horses that would break Bootney Sims’s neck. Yet he and Farewell move so gracefully together that she is stunned. Bootney is not the same man, Farewell not the same animal, as they were alone. In Bootney’s voice there was savor. Nelle used to feel that sense of anticipation when she was young and journeying, or when a horse showed promise, but she hasn’t felt that way in a long time. Could this pain in her heart be envy of a Negro, his head full of dreams, riding off on a plug?
Bootney’s cap dips as he and Farewell reach a low place in the field, and then they top the rise and are gone. She dashes rain from her eyebrows.
Has she won this time, or has Richard? Until this moment, she had planned to tell him how Bootney must have spied on her, waiting until she was alone, then cornered her in the garden, begging and badgering. But she won’t say all that. She’ll just say, “I changed my mind,” and let Richard wonder why.
* * *
“It’s not possible for animals of different species to breed, is it?” she asks Richard.
“Horses and donkeys make mules,” he says. “They’re usually sterile.”
“I know that,” she says, exasperated.
“Dogs and wolves,” he says.
“They’re close to the same kind. I mean, oh, cattle and deer. Horses and deer.”
Richard sighs, putting his hand to his heart so briefly, she might have missed it. He says, “There are legends about goats and people. Of course it’s not true. Lions and tigers, I think they can breed. Different birds and such, and then you get hybrids. Most critters stay with their own.”
She is not reassured. They are seated at the breakfast table. She has a full plate, but Richard wanted only toast and coffee. She says, “Who are the whites in Bootney Sims’s family?”
“There’s a white Sims family in Gordonsville. In the old times, his people belonged to them. There was a dalliance by one of the sons.” It’s the kind of question Richard normally enjoys, knowing genealogy as he does. He bursts out, “Don’t act like coloreds and whites are different animals. I don’t approve of race-mixing any more than you do, but they’re people, not dogs.” He nods toward the kitchen door, reminding her that Philip and Edmonia are nearby.
“I didn’t mean that. I had changed the subject.”
What will widowhood bring? She is being swept along by change, as she was when she was growing up and starting her own life apart from her parents and brothers. She was on the brink of mystery then, and it was scary but lovely. She wants that again. She wants to feel what Bootney Sims felt when he led Farewell through the gate.
* * *
In October 1900, Nelle was seventeen, traveling with her family. The Scotts were returning by ocean liner from South America to Philadelphia, by way of Cuba. Nelle explored the ship with her brothers Russell and Charlie. Their brother Victor kept to himself, mooning about an actress he was in love with, a married woman back in Philadelphia. Their mother, Ida, strolled the promenade deck with women she had befriended, a group of shell collectors whom their father, Thaddeus, referred to as “your mother’s gang of thieves.”
In Brazil, Thaddeus had contracted malaria and nearly died. He was treated at a hospital in São Paulo and recovered his robust health. The episode led Russell, Nelle’s oldest brother, to declare he would study medicine when he returned to the university. This announcement came as a relief to Ida, who worried loudly about Russell’s lack of ambition and Victor’s pursuit of the actress. Russell was brilliant and easy with people. Victor was bad-tempered and fault-finding, the most like their mother, Nelle thought.
Having had her first love affair in Brazil, with the doctor who treated her father, Nelle had decided she was too old for supervision. She believed her father understood this. Her mother never would. Even Russell, at twenty-three, gave in to their mother’s demands for a moment-by-moment account of his days. Charlie was thirteen, shy and powerless. Only Nelle and Victor, who was twenty-one, defied their mother.
One day, a sailor approached Nelle, Russell, and Charlie and said, “Hey, I’ll show you something. C’mon.”
They couldn’t resist. They followed the sailor. He was small and tough, his forearms green with tattoos, Nelle noticed. He vanished into an opening on deck.
“He’s gone down a rabbit hole,” said Russell cheerfully.
Peering into the hatch, they found a ladder. Russell knelt, grasped a rung, and disappeared below.
“I’ll go before you and tuck your dress around your ankles, Nelle,” said Charlie. He meant: so nobody could see up her skirt. He was her favorite brother. Russell would not think to offer that kindness, and Victor would trip her.
The sailor was waiting belowdecks. Nelle was out of breath from the descent because her corset was so tight. It was exciting to follow the sailor through a cramped maze of bunks and hammocks. They were in the sailors’ quarters, she realized. The air was close and foul, with a stench of chamber pots and sweat. The whole place creaked and swayed. She ducked under damp garments that dangled from a clothesline. Tacked to a post was a photograph of a naked woman lying on a bed, arms over her head.
“Hey, Eddie! You feeling any better?” the sailor called out.
A form stirred in one of the hammocks, and a muffled voice answered, “No.”
“He’s been sick all week,” the sailor said to Nelle and her brothers. To the man he said, “You need to get out in the fresh air, Eddie. Climb the rigging. You want anything?”
The man groaned. His shape in the hammock was that of a chrysalis, or some prey wrapped by a spider in its web. “Water,” he said.
The sailor went to a sink on the wall, turned a tap, and drew a cup of water. A hand reached up from the hammock to take it.
“What do you want to show us?” Nelle asked. She didn’t want to linger near a sick person.
“Over here.” The sailor gestured to a long, deep bathtub. A wooden lid lay across the top. The sailor lifted it off. The tub contained water and a large, viscous lump.
“A jellyfish?” asked Russell. “An octopus?”
“A squid,” the sailor said, “and he glows in the dark.”
As Nelle’s eyes adjusted, she discerned a faint light within the creature’s body. She made out tentacles, a head with a parrotlike beak, and protruding eyes. The
longer she looked, the more luminous the squid became.
“He’s just a baby now,” the sailor said. “He’ll get bigger.”
The squid’s glow intensified, its lights like bright buttons flashing down the length of its tentacles, its globular body phosphorescent.
“He’s electric,” the sailor explained. “It’s how they find each other and catch food, down deep. When I change the water, it’s full of green sparks.”
Suddenly the water darkened, and the squid vanished. Nelle gasped.
“He squirts ink when he wants to change places,” the sailor said. In a few minutes, the water cleared enough for them to see that the creature had retreated to the other end of the tub.
Charlie asked, “May I touch him?”
“He’ll sting you till you scream. He’ll grab you and squeeze the life out of you,” the sailor said, raising his hands toward Charlie’s throat.
Charlie flinched, looking so young that Nelle felt a rush of pity.
“How did you catch it?” Russell asked.
“You wouldn’t believe what turns up in fishing nets,” the sailor said. “Last week, we caught a mermaid.”
“Where is she? Can we see her?” Charlie cried, though Nelle knew he was too old to accept such things as true. Was he mesmerized by the sailor and the creaking, swaying strangeness?
“The Captain kept her for himself,” the sailor said.
“Have you ever been shipwrecked?” Charlie asked.
“Yeah, for a whole month, off Greenland. We ate seagulls and fish. It wasn’t so bad till we ran out of water and had to drink our own piss.”
A lie, Nelle thought.
“It could’ve been worse. We could’ve run out of stuff to eat, except each other.” The sailor laughed, showing brown teeth.
Charlie said, “Do you mean… would you have done that?”
“Would you?” the sailor asked.
“I don’t know,” Charlie said.
“If you had to, you could.”
Nelle stepped away from the tub. She was angry at this boasting little sailor and angry at Russell and Charlie for standing there, transfixed.
The sailor called out, “You okay, Eddie? We’ll arm-wrestle again soon, right?”
No answer from the hammock. The sailor replaced the lid on the tub.
* * *
That evening, in the dining room, Nelle and Charlie examined a saltwater aquarium that contained brilliant tropical fish. Charlie glanced toward the table where their parents and Russell were finishing dinner. Victor was not with them. He ate all his meals in the bar.
“Mother’s eye is merry,” Charlie said.
Nelle laughed. “Mother’s eye” was their secret naughty joke, the only way they acknowledged the disfigurement.
Charlie pressed his finger to the aquarium, and a tiny seahorse bobbled over. Charlie had grown taller on the trip, but his flushed cheeks were still as tender as a baby’s.
“Did you know, Nelle,” he said, “the deep ocean is called the abyss. I read that in a book Papa gave me. It says there may be an even deeper part that goes down for miles. A hadal realm.” He shuddered. “Like Hades.”
A waiter offered a tray of sweets. Nelle took one happily. There was to be a ball that night. Men she had known only since the ship left São Paulo had begged her to dance. She would wear a beautiful coral necklace her father had bought her from the shipboard store.
Charlie stared into the aquarium. “Eddie is dead,” he said.
“Who?” asked Nelle, startled. “Eddie who?”
“The man in the hammock. While we were down there, he died.”
Nelle gaped at him. The dark, smelly quarters of the sailors, and the talk of cannibalism, must have scared him. “That man was sick,” she said. “He was resting.”
“Eddie drank the water,” Charlie said, “and quit breathing. It happened when we were talking about shipwrecks.”
“He was alive!” Nelle said. “We heard him speak.”
“That was in the last few minutes of his life.”
Nelle said, “This is nonsense, Charlie.”
“I heard his heart stop,” Charlie said.
* * *
Nelle asks Richard, “Do you think any of our boys will want to run Fairfield?”
They made their wills years ago, leaving everything to each other, and when both are gone, their sons will inherit equally. Richard has made Nelle promise to allow Iris to remain at the house. Nelle agreed, but privately decided that if she and Iris survive Richard, she will make some other accommodation for Iris. She can’t bear to live with Iris forever.
Richard says, “Our boys have scattered to the four winds. When you and I are gone, they’ll sell the place, unless one wants to buy out the others.”
“Barrett, maybe?” Nelle says. He is the tough one, and suddenly he’s the one she can’t wait to see. He packed a collapsible motorbike onboard his merchant marine vessel and rode all over Poland, Belgium, and Italy, writing her about his adventures. He’s the only one who ever stood up to her, declaring after a whipping she gave him when he was fourteen, “That’s the last time you’ll ever hit me.”
Richard says, “Barrett’s an engineer. He can’t do that and farm too. Well, he could, but it would be hard.”
“Maybe if two of them went in together,” she says. Oh, it won’t happen. The boys’ wives would feel buried out here in the country. Nelle rarely wants to go farther than Culpeper, she who traveled the world. When did her world become this farm?
“Would you like to go to the picture show?” Richard says.
Films are shown at the general store at Raccoon Ford in summertime. A traveling salesman brings a projector and reels of movies. Admission is a quarter.
“Is Iris coming?” Nelle asks pointedly.
“She went to see the neighbors’ new baby,” Richard says.
The trip takes twenty minutes in the car. Nelle drives. She doubts Richard has the strength to steer. At the store, Richard asks the proprietor, Mr. Woodruff, “You got that rat-trap cheese tonight? I’ll have crackers too, and two Cokes.”
“Sure, Judge,” Mr. Woodruff says. “Mrs. Fenton.” He nods to Nelle.
Richard and Nelle seat themselves on folding wooden chairs. Farmers and their wives appear, poor folks, no one from the Fentons’ set. Children clamber up on barrels, vying for the highest spots. A white sheet will serve as a backdrop for the film. The screen door and windows provide ventilation, and an oscillating fan breezes over the audience.
Through the open door, Nelle sees dogs in the yard, mules and wagons tied up at the railing, the red light of sunset glinting off parked cars, a chicken pecking grass. She can smell the river. Kingfishers nest in the banks, and one rushes past the space framed by the door, so fast that Nelle blinks. Down the bluff, the rapids foam and boil. Raccoon Ford is a dying town. When she came to Virginia as a bride in 1907, a ferry still operated here. Now there is only an old footbridge made of rope and slats, suspended high over the river.
It’s hardly possible that she is sixty-two, Richard seventy-one.
The store smells of kerosene. A woman beside Nelle dips snuff from a can and tucks it in her lip. Richard slices the cheese and eats it from his knife-blade with more appetite than he’s shown in weeks. Cartoon characters appear on the white sheet. Nelle sips her Coke. Out in the yard, Negroes gather. There will be a separate show for them. A horse and rider pull up to the railing, and she recognizes the silhouette of Bootney Sims on Farewell. Why is he riding a Thoroughbred around like a nag? She will have a word with him later.
The cartoon ends, and in the silence before the feature begins, she hears other Negroes making much over Farewell. Bootney shows her off, crowing, “Meet the horse gonna win the race!”
Could it be that Nelle was mistaken about Farewell? What has Bootney seen in her that Nelle didn’t? The movie begins, a Western. Indians crouch on cliffs, shooting arrows at cowboys. The Indians’ necks are draped with beads. In a flash it comes to h
er what was missing after her son Gordon and his girlfriend visited: the coral necklace her father gave her long ago. She was lifting it out of its box as Gordon and the woman arrived, their voices rising up the stairs. She set the necklace down and went to greet them.
Didn’t she wear it to that shipboard ball, back when her brother Charlie was attuned to things she could only imagine? Charlie grew up to be a hard Philadelphia lawyer, as if he pushed away the wondering part of himself. As for the necklace, she’ll tell Gordon his girlfriend is a thief. She’ll demand the necklace be returned; she won’t have that woman in her house again.
Her thoughts are interrupted by noise. Out in the yard, raised voices indicate some excitement or argument. The din mingles with the movie’s yells and gunfire. Then comes a scream, an agonizing mortal cry that cuts through the staticky sounds of the film. Richard leaps to his feet and hurries out the door with Mr. Woodruff.
The movie cuts off, and the projectionist asks, “What’s the trouble?”
People rise from their seats and head outside. Children fling themselves toward the door, though their mothers say, “You-all stay in here.”
A woman beside Nelle says, “Your husband’s Judge Fenton, ain’t he?”
Nelle nods.
“He’s good with nigras,” the woman says. “He’ll calm ’em down.” She calls, “You can roll it, Mister.”
In Havana, where the ship would dock by nightfall, they would eat roast suckling pig with black beans and rice, Nelle’s father announced at the family’s midday meal. They would lodge at a hotel where President McKinley’s generals had stayed.
Nelle was hungry. Baked partridge was on the table, and apricots served with pungent cheeses, one with a line of ash through it, the other crumbly and blue, wrapped in dried sycamore leaves. There was plenty of Corvo wine.
Charlie slid into his chair beside her, his face pale.
“Are you seasick?” their mother asked. “Where have you been?”
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