Walk Through Darkness

by David Anthony Durham

  SEVEN Morrison found the runaway in a dank cell in a sheriff’s gaol outside of Frederick, Maryland. The black man’s captors laughed at his timing, for, they said, he was gonna hang like a side of beef in just a couple hours’ time. Morrison asked if he could speak with him anyway. They debated this for some time, but in the end didn’t see the harm in it.

  We worked him over a bit, the sheriff’s deputy said, but he’s still got a tongue to talk.

  It was hard to see the prisoner at first, but his breathing betrayed his presence, a moist rasp that befitted no human. As Morrison’s eyes grew accustomed to the dim light he realized the state the man was in. He sat on the bare stone in the corner of his cell, naked from the waist up. His chest and shoulders glistened with a gooey substance only vaguely understandable as blood—for there was so much of it and the white man was unsure of how the man might’ve come to be covered in it so. He kept one arm at rest in his lap, though even the faint light betrayed the break that lamed it. The man’s face was another puzzle altogether. One eye had been pounded till it had swollen shut; his nose was flattened across the bridge; holes had been punched through both of his cheeks, giving the impression that his tormentors must have shoved some long object clear through them. There was a swollen, sickle-shaped scar on his forehead. But this, at least, was an old wound.

  The tracker could think of no easy way to begin this. He knew that men so close to death were the hardest to lie to. He didn’t try. He asked him what he knew of the fugitive he was pursuing. The black man said nothing. Morrison described the man as he had been described to him, by appearance and temperament and history, and asked if he had been with the coffle heading south.

  The black man offered no response.

  I’m not out to do him harm, Morrison said, if that’s what you’re thinking. He and I have business … But it’s not quite as you’d imagine.

  Why don’t you go on and get? the man said. He clamped his teeth at the pain and kept his voice level in its malevolence. He locked Morrison in the gaze of his good eye, an orb the same color and reddish hue as his skin. I’m fixing to meet my maker. Ain’t got time for you.

  Morrison thought about this. That’s a lonely place to be at, isn’t it? he said. Seems too big a thing for most men to face, being that most of us are cowards.

  Hell, yeah, it’s a lonely place. But what do you know bout it? Go on and get. I ain’t telling you a thing.

  Well … All right then. I’ll leave you in peace.

  Whatchu know of peace? You don’t know peace. You ain’t never gonna know it. You gonna sleep with the Devil, but you ain’t never gonna get no rest. I wouldn’t trade places with you if I could. Ain’t nothing more I want from your world. You wanna do something for me? Then put the barrel of that there rifle to my forehead and end this. Otherwise go on and get.

  They’ve been hurting you that bad? Morrison asked.

  A decent man wouldn’t believe it.

  And they’re not done yet, are they?

  The black man looked through the bars at the white. This land contains a great evil, he said. You part of it?

  Morrison hung his head and considered the question. He didn’t lift it to answer but instead stared at the black stones of the floor. He told the captive that in his youth he had inflicted his will upon many of God’s creatures. He had killed more than his share of beings, including other men. But with age he had become more and more haunted by his actions. The souls of men were troubled by violent deaths. They stalked at the backside of his mind’s eye, always near at hand, voices calling for him to repent and quit such actions. He had done just that some time ago, but the voices had never left him in peace. They had become his own and he could not escape from himself. He concluded that he might indeed harbor some of that great evil within himself. He took no joy in this possibility, and if he could see a way to distance himself from it he would take it.

  The black man was silent through all of this. When the other finished, he said, Killing and evil is two different things. The Angel of Death is a warrior of God and his is a holy mission. You understand me?

  Morrison nodded that he did. But he didn’t think he could oblige the prisoner his request. That’s a lot to ask a man, he said.

  The black man was silent for some time, studying this sentence from all its different angles and then rejecting it. He told him to be damned then, be damned and do it away from him. Go on, get.

  Morrison stepped blinking into the light of midmorning and walked toward the tree under which the hound sat. The dog rose when the man reached out to touch her head. She took a few steps in the direction she figured they were apt to take, but she turned back as the man did not follow. The hound stood looking back at him. The man contemplated the ground for some time, then lifted his gaze and took in the square and the hangman’s platform at the far edge of it and the people milling about beneath it. He studied the mirth on their faces and their animated talk and the way they shared pulls from a whiskey bottle and the way a young boy snapped out a whip under the direction of an encouraging chorus. He looked down at the ground again. He motioned the hound back into the shade and bade her stay put.

  He strolled into the crowd of men and shared a pull of whiskey when it came to him and made conversation. He asked what they had planned for the accused and this is what they told him. It was to be an afternoon of many amusements, to begin at noon. It would include whippings. It would include beatings. They would lay out the man’s various limbs and take turns breaking them with a sledge hammer. They would urinate on his face, pour tar down his throat and they would cut off his fingers and bait them on fishing hooks. When all that was concluded, they would hang the man in keeping with the court ordered punishment for his crimes of murder, insurrection and treason. And they would do all this before an audience of the county’s Negroes, so that they would see and understand the order of things and would never mistake which people God had chosen as his favorites. Morrison turned down the whiskey when it next came back to him.

  When Morrison appeared once more before the cell the black man closed his good eye as if the apparition might be a trick of his vision. But upon opening it again nothing had changed. Thought you was gonna leave me in peace, he said.

  The white man extended his upright palm into the cell. Thought you might care for a chew, he said. The other man stared at the tobacco with his good eye. He looked to the white man’s face then back to the twist, so dark against his translucent palm. He licked his lips and reached out and took the stuff up with his fingertips. He nodded, a gesture like a thank-you but not quite.

  Morrison nodded back. He produced another twist from his other hand and took a bite out of it. He chewed and looked for someplace to spit and then did so, covering the spot with his boot. If you don’t mind I’ll sit a while, he said. As the man voiced no answer, objection or affirmation, Morrison leaned his rifle against the wall and lowered himself onto the stool once more. Just give me a minute to get used to the idea. Go ahead and taste that tobacco, and then we’ll get on with it. You’ve got my word on it.

  The black man shut his good eye and lifted the tobacco gently to his mouth.

  EIGHT The scent was strong in his nostrils, sharp, head-clearing. There was movement around him. Hands worked over his body. Someone’s hip pressed against his side. A damp towel lifted from his forehead and the air touching his wet skin brought a new cool. There was a hymn, sung low, sweet and painful both, from deep within a woman’s throat, which grew alternately louder and softer as she worked. And beyond her were walls that sometimes groaned and settled and a ceiling upon which steps could be heard. And further beyond were street sounds, carriages and voices, a dog that barked in clipped, high tones. There was a clock that told the hour, but he knew this was far away. He wasn’t sure just when he had become aware of these things. It seemed, in fact, that these things had always been around but that he had only recently noticed. They hadn’t mattered before. But now, for some reason, they did.

&n
bsp; It was a strange feeling, remembering his eyes, recalling that he could open them, that there was a world to be beheld and they were the tool for it. The first thing he saw was the blurred, fleshy underside of an arm, bare to the skin, smooth, a hue like stained chestnut, dotted with freckles the size of poppy seeds. This arm was the entirety of his view for a few seconds and then it was gone. His sight flew upward into space, settling on the ceiling, unpainted boards with water stains radiating out from a few points like ripples in a pond. He stared at these for some time, not thinking about that arm or its owner, just focused on the grain of the wood and the manner in which water distorted it.

  The humming stopped. “Thought you would find your way back,” a voice said. At first, the voice seemed to have nothing in common with the hymn. It was solid where the tune had been ethereal; it had a matter-of-fact good nature so different than the melancholy of those notes. William didn’t turn to the voice, and yet he was strangely prepared for the face that appeared before him. She was a colored woman, her face the same freckled complexion as that of her arm. Her features were weighty and generously rounded, not crafted for beauty and yet pleasant to look upon. She smiled, her teeth uneven and spaced with gaps but somehow merrier for it. “Yeah, you back for good this time.”

  She turned away and left him staring at the ceiling. He wanted to follow her, but he had forgotten how to turn his head, forgotten that such a movement was a possibility. Instead, he listened. The folds of her fabric as she moved, her flesh rubbing against the cotton, the dribble of water into a basin, a sound that he knew was that of a soft, wet cloth being squeezed between two hands. They were lovely sounds, and he realized he had been hearing them for some time.

  A door somewhere slammed shut, the vibrations of it echoing through the house. The woman dropped the cloth into the basin, stood with it and moved away. William followed her with his eyes. The room was tiny, little wider than the cot upon which he lay, and the woman had only stepped away a few feet. She turned her attention to a small, dim window toward the far end, high up at the junction with the ceiling. She peered up at it, head craning side to side at something he couldn’t see. “That girl’s just now leaving the house,” she said. “I knew it. She’s gone and lost that job. I knew it by the way she wouldn’t look at me straight. She’s back to peddling her backside. Told Russell as much, but he said what’s it matter long as she pays the rent.”

  The woman clicked her tongue off the roof of her mouth and turned back toward her patient. “Lord, William, if I didn’t need them tenants to pay the rent I’d clear the house of them. Here I am trying to keep a decent home and they each and all got other things on they mind.” She moved back toward him, her legs rubbing the side of the cot, metal basin balanced in her one hand. She sat down on a small stool, set the basin on her lap and dipped her fingers in for the wet cloth. “Bet you still a little cloudy, aren’t you? You had a fever, William. That’s all. Little yellow fever or something kin to it, but you done pulled through just fine. You ain’t out of the fire yet, but the worst is behind you.”

  The woman’s words resonated in his head, bouncing around and, at first, difficult to grasp. He had to force his mind to order them and narrow them down to a simple sentence. “I had a fever …” The woman agreed that he did, a damnable fever that she had been fighting for three days now. She went on talking, though he lost the direction of her words and had to close his eyes and try to start over. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I’m your angel of mercy in a time of need. Least I’m trying to be. Name’s Anne Murphy. You call me Miss Anne and I’ll answer to you.”

  He opened his eyes. “How’d you know my name?”

  The wrinkles of the woman’s forehead creased with amusement. “I know your name cause you told it to me. Told me all sorts of things. I won’t even embarrass you by recounting them.” She set the damp cloth in place across his forehead, just far enough down that the ragged edge of it cut the upper portion of his vision. The sharp scent of vinegar—that’s what he had been smelling. “Naw, some a what you said I’ll just keep to myself. You’d die of shame I told you half the things you rambled on about. Course, I am gonna help you find the lady of yours. But we’ll talk about that when you’re stronger.”

  William started to protest. He felt for the cloth and would have pulled it away, but the woman clucked an admonishment with her tongue. That was enough to still him. More than that even, the sound eased him, reminded him of something which he didn’t try to place but which was a good thing. He lay back, and was asleep by the time the woman pulled the door fast behind her.

  In the days after he regained true consciousness, William pieced together the events he had missed during his illness. Yellow fever was one of the many maladies rampant during the summer months. Anne explained that it had ravished Philadelphia just before the turn of the century like some classic plague of the Middle Ages, nearly halving the population. It had never been as bad since, but it flared up often, always during the hottest months, always without explanation. Anne had found William in an alley near her home and recognized his symptoms. She couldn’t explain what had prompted her to take him in, except to say that she figured he was somebody’s son. She had two boys herself and just did as she prayed others would do if one of her lot was in trouble. She hid him away in her cellar and nursed him through three days. He went in and out of consciousness, sometimes aware enough to converse with her, other times so far gone that he soiled the cot without noticing. She put aside all notion of propriety, bathing and caring for him as she would her own kin. William remembered almost nothing of this time, and Anne joked that that was fine, as a man might get embarrassed if he did recall such things.

  The ordeal left William so feeble that he couldn’t stand for a week after waking. Most of his time was spent in solitude, staring up at the ceiling and listening to the world outside the cellar window. At night, Anne’s sons and her boarders returned. He was never sure just how many people lived in the floors above him, but he began to recognize certain voices. There was the short, polite speech of a young man who left early and returned late, and the deeper voices of the workmen who stomped into and out of the house. Their boots shook free dust particles that floated down on him, catching in his hair like dandruff. Children’s voices came in a clutter of sound, intermingled with the quick patter of their feet. The girl Anne had speculated about had a strange cadence to her speech, beginning each sentence forcefully but losing steam as she spoke, the end of her statement dribbling away above him. Anne’s eldest son had a rich, baritone voice. Her younger was shriller in his speech, quicker. Neither of them bore much resemblance to her, a fact William noted when one or the other of the boys brought him food and water. One was dark-skinned and short. The other was light of complexion, with wavy hair like that of a white child. They were the only others to care for him, and, as far as he knew, none of the boarders even knew of his existence.

  Anne emptied his bedpan daily, something never commented on, just a chore she attended to without complaint. She shaved his scraggly beard with her own hands, her handling of the blade precise and without hesitation. It was strange to feel the air on his chin again, to finger the smooth, sensitive skin. Anne said a clean face suited him, his features being strong as they were and best viewed without disguise. Patches down his jowls and on his upper lip were remarkably pale next to his suntanned features. Anne commented on this, but William only shrugged and looked boyish and uncomfortable, nervous as if he were standing before her unclothed. She left the blade for him to use as he wished, and she brought him a replacement shirt. Though it was not new it was embarrassingly clean and well kept when compared with his own. Before parting with his old garment he plucked the medallion from the inside of it and slipped it in the pocket of the new shirt. He did this secretly, unwilling to explain the action to Anne.

  Anne was also true to her promise to help find Dover. William didn’t see most of her efforts, but she brought back word that she had se
nt an army of friends in search of her, using the Carr name as her primary reference point. She spoke to chambermaids as they hung linen to dry, to cook staff at the back doors to kitchens, over slatted fences and in alleyways and church pews. She sent inquiries out through colored coachmen and chatted longer than usual with the coal man. He was a grizzled man who had long sought to court her. He knew the back streets of the city and promised to find out what he could. Though her sources brought back many intimate details of the city’s white citizens, no strong lead was forthcoming. The first Carr family they discovered was of very new money, with ties across the Atlantic. As far as she could learn, they had no female children of marrying age. The second family was not of the appropriate station to match William’s descriptions; the third was a rambling group of dockworkers whom she likewise dismissed.

  As the first week passed into the second Anne questioned him further on this family he claimed Dover was with. Was he sure he had got the name right? Did he know the white girl’s given name, or, better yet, her father’s? She tried to get him to remember something, anything else they could go on. She even asked him if he was sure they were from Philadelphia. Each of these questions left him ringing with doubt. He had emblazoned the Carr name onto his brain. He had formed it in his mind every day since he had heard it uttered, but as soon as he took that doubt on board nothing seemed as certain as it had before. He had never written it down, never spelled it out. He had never heard the woman addressed by that name and had no real proof of its authenticity. And that last question nearly floored him. Might he be in the wrong city? He searched back through that distant conversation with Kate and tried to see the words her lips formed. Even if he was not mistaken, Kate might have been. She knew little of the geography of this country or of the difference between Philadelphia and Providence, New York and Boston. If this city was just one of many, his search might have no ending.