Walk Through Darkness

by David Anthony Durham

  William’s eyes darted between Redford and Dover, sharp on each. Everything about the free man’s educated tone aggravated him: the brevity with which he shot down each proposal they made, the way the corner of his lips dipped before he spoke, the manner in which he explained the hard facts behind things as if to a young child. Even the way he held his teacup—the angle of his wrist and pauses in his speech during which he drank—seemed an insult. But what choice did he have but to sit and listen and try to learn enough to get some control back? He lowered his gaze and glared at the teacup.

  “Anyway, I’ll find it for you,” Redford concluded. “This does pose problems of its own, not least the financing of such an adventure. We might be able to gain the support of some of the faithful, but you know how these things are—the fewer that know the better.”

  “You say we have to head to Canada,” William said, his voice fighting for a composure he didn’t feel, “and maybe you’re right. You let us on think on it a bit. Meantime I’ll work. I’ll pay our own way.”

  The other two shook their heads in unison.

  “That wouldn’t be advisable, not unless it was work that I secured for you,” Redford said.

  Dover agreed. “It’s best you just stay hid somewhere. No use bringing attention to yourself.”

  William lifted the teacup and deposited it untasted on the glass tabletop. Dover’s words were simple and reasonable enough, but he felt a sting at the backside of them. Did he embarrass her? Was he so useless? Must he just hide and rely on the good will of others? The moment of connection he had experienced when they reunited was gone. It had only been a few hours, but the intimacy between them seemed to have faded completely. “Don’t see why I can’t just work. That’s one thing I know how to do. If I could keep my wages it wouldn’t be long fore …”

  “Before you were chained and on your way back to massa.” Redford said this with a touch of sarcasm, but, having spoken it, he changed his tone. He adjusted his glasses, looked from William to Dover and back again. “What I’m trying to say is that you’re daily in danger. Perhaps I should explain to you the current laws of our land. You can’t be expected to understand them. William, there are many good men and women in the North. I don’t doubt that there are a few in the South as well, although they stay largely silent. The Christians of the North abhor slavery, and we are doing everything possible to see it overturned. But, the powers in Congress over the last few years have followed a policy of compromise. The Congress, and the President, want nothing so much as to keep this union of states together. As such, they’ve capitulated to the slaveholders, not so much because they share like minds, but because they see the denigration of the Negro as the lesser evil compared to dissolution. Do you understand?”

  Dover said, as if translating, “They made a law that says the North gotta send slaves back south.”

  “Exactly,” Redford continued, inching forward to resume center stage. “Anyone, anywhere in the United States is required by law to respect the property rights of slave owners, even here in the North. Law says that if you’re a white man walking down the street one day and deputy yells for you to grab hold of the Negro standing beside you because he’s a fugitive then you are required to lay your hands on the man. Before the new fugitive law an escaped slave wasn’t exactly safe in the North, but he could live with some measure of security. He could live a decent life up here, marry and own property and get into business. Some even wrote of their histories and had them published. But the new law has emboldened the slave masters. They come up here and snatch men and women out of the lives they’re creating for themselves and take them back into bondage. We abolitionists have fought this at each juncture, but each year the government bends further back upon itself. They capitulate, capitulate, capitulate. It’s a dire situation. You can’t trust anybody, and yet you’re forced to trust somebody.”

  William stared at his teacup. Thoughts moved behind his eyes, thoughts different than those he spoke. “So you telling me that freedom’s just a lie.”

  Redford cleared his throat and adjusted his posture. He reached for his tea. Holding the saucer just before his lips, he said, “No, it’s not that simple. But, truth be known, we’ve married ourselves into a union with criminals. None of us are safe for it. We all live in constant fear. I’ve never been a slave, but I know there’s no difference between you and I save the location of our birth. And even that’s scant protection. Good brothers and sisters that were known to me personally have been kidnapped and taken into bondage. A man can labor all his life in the freedom of the North, but if a scoundrel takes hold of him he cannot utter a word in his own defense. That is why we must solicit the favor of honorable whites. It doesn’t make one comfortable, but it is a necessity. And with Dover’s condition …”

  Noticing the downturned expressions on the couple’s faces, he leaned forward and touched Dover on the knee. “But, listen, I will do everything in my power to help you. You have my word on that. Both of you.” He promised to begin working on their behalf in the morning. For the time being, he proposed that William stay with him. He would see about securing a safer place for him to hide and would look into a way of getting them to true safety. It would not be easy, he said, and it would not be cheap, but all things were possible if one were willing to put actions in line with beliefs. That was what gave the champions of liberty strength, and, thank God, it was one weapon that the slavery interests could never truly raise against them.

  Dover parted from William with a quick kiss. The sensation of her lips on his lingered long afterwards, not the touch of them, but the memory, the knowledge of their absence. He spent a sleepless night on the floor of Redford’s sitting room, lying straight-backed on a quilt thrown over a woven rug. It was more luxurious bedding than he was used to, but slumber proved difficult. Nothing was as he had imagined it would be. He had found Dover, but instead of resolution he discovered a new host of hurdles thrown up against him. He tried to sort them out, to deal with each issue separately and thus move forward. But he couldn’t approach a single question without an array of laws and politics flying in like a flock of crows, insatiable and raucous. And behind all of these machinations were more troubling doubts. Dover was as he remembered, and yet she was different also. She was as determined as before, but now she had the will to put her plans in motion. It was she who led him through the streets, who brought him to this place of shelter, who knew the city and the ways of the North. He felt like a child beside her, not like a husband, or a man soon to be a father. And what of Redford and his strained familiarity with Dover?

  William was still awake when the new day lightened the room. Redford left him alone with instructions to rest himself, to keep the curtains drawn, to be as quiet as possible and to answer no caller save for Dover herself. He slipped outside briefly and returned with a bucket of water sprinkled with lye soap. William should feel free to wash himself. It wouldn’t make for a proper bath, he knew, but he hoped it would suffice until he had the time to pump and heat enough water.

  Alone, William rose, brushed and folded his bedding and set the quilt in a corner. He ate a breakfast of a hard, white cheese, sliced thin and topped with a preserve that Redford had set out for him. He had at first thought little of bathing, but alone with himself he became conscious of his body. His own odor floated heavy around him. The grime from his vigil coated him, leaving him feeling like he hadn’t bathed since he began his journey. He stripped naked and stood in the tiny nook beside the stove, atop dry bits of kindling that stuck to the bottoms of his feet. He was pale beneath his clothes, a honeyed tone several shades lighter than his suntanned face. His skin seemed thinner than it had been before, stretched taut across muscle and bone. It was an awkward bath. He scooped up handfuls of the milky water and rubbed his flesh, trying all the time not to splash outside of the tiny wet circle beneath him. Eventually, he dipped his whole shirt in the bucket and used it as a wash cloth. He gave special attention to his back. He ran his fingers
over his ridged scars, tracing the whip marks on his shoulders and upper arms, although unable to reach the layered welts that stretched down his lower back. He knelt and scrubbed his shirt within the bucket, then tossed in his trousers, which he washed carefully for fear that they would disintegrate. The water was no longer white when he finished. He hung the wet clothes over the wood stove and stood in the center of the room as if he planned to wait that way until they dried.

  His eyes roamed over the writing desk on the far wall. It was so neatly arranged, quills and paper and letter opener all in their assigned places. It reminded him of a child’s desk from long ago, a memory he had not recalled for some time. From there his gaze roamed over the titles of the bookshelf, words that his mind registered complete but without meaning, as if he was pronouncing the words of a language he didn’t understand. He stepped forward and trailed a finger over the spines of the old volumes. Without noticing that he was doing so, he placed his fingertip atop one of the books and pulled it toward him. He turned and moved absently about the room, flipping through the book page by slow page, feeling the brittle paper against his fingertips, smelling the musty fragrance that, once again, conjured distant memories. He still didn’t try to decipher the words, but simply let his eyes drift over them, drawn toward them with a pull he could neither reject nor acquiesce to. He marveled at how strangely right the book felt in his hands, like a tool long absent but never forgotten, a face remembered, an apple cradled in a palm.

  He wasn’t sure how long he stood staring at the ink and parchment, but he was startled when he caught sight of himself in the floor length mirror at the other end of the room. He stared at the man there—a naked creature with a book opened in his hands—with all the shock he would have shown if he had stumbled upon a stranger in that posture. He snapped the volume shut, feeling like he was intruding into another world, some sort of museum into which he had wandered uninvited.

  TWO A storm awaited the clipper at the mouth of the Bay. The ship took the waves at an angle, cutting into the ramps of water so that the lip of some crests spilled across the deck. Water surrounded the craft like a boundless mass of moving flesh. Each time he looked upon it Morrison discovered anew the great beast upon whose surface they intruded. Salt was all about him, in the water and in the air, in his clothing and dripping down from his hair, that black-gray cap plastered to his skull. The captain urged him into shelter, but Morrison remembered the damp internals of ships all too well, the smells down there and creaking breath of it, cramped beams bowed with the weight of the sea pressing against them. No, he chose to face the beast with his eyes open. He stayed on deck, sitting cross-legged near the midpoint of the ship, with the hound close at his side.

  Around him the crewmen shouted one to another, their words whipped before the wind, portions of commands and entreaties, calls only half completed and more urgent for it. He heard them and felt all the elements at war around him and understood his tenuous position within all this motion. But still he didn’t abandon the deck. Closing his eyes, he grabbed the dog about the collar with one hand and twined his other within a coil of rope secured to the deck. He let the spray wash his face and tried as best he could to empty his head of all thought. He pushed away his memories of his first Atlantic voyage, of all the death he saw in the hold of that decrepit ship. He beat those images back, but in their place other memories materialized and would not be denied. Visions played upon his eyelids like silhouettes cast by candlelight, and it was here that he saw the woman’s face again, beautiful and dark as it had been all those years before.

  He had first met her in the spring of his twenty-seventh year. She appeared on his younger brother’s arm, his new love, his partner there for the entire world to see. He nodded to her, wished her well and pretended that he didn’t truly see her. He tried not to notice the slow beauty of her eyes, black pebbles pressed home with an artist’s fingers. They had touched on him so patiently, as if she were taking him in completely, looking to the back of him and turning him over and reading him. He tried not to give words to the images she conjured in him, like that her skin was the texture of the Bay’s sandy beaches, down below the water-line, where the receding tide pulls the grains taut and smooth. He pretended that this was not the perfect hue for human flesh, the color God must have intended. He didn’t let his eyes settle too long upon the fine bones of her neck. And having looked once, he tried to ignore the rich pucker of her lips, the moisture of her tongue, the flesh of ripe fruit. To him she was sin incarnate, and it shot him through with a host of emotions, not least of which was jealousy.

  Alone with his younger brother Morrison berated him. What was he thinking? This woman was not for him. She was marked. She was property. She could never be his equal in the eyes of men or God, not in this nation or in any nation known to civilized man. Had his mother given birth to him for this? So that he might venture from home and singe his blood with that of servants? Had he no shame? He spit the questions out with all the venom he could muster, and he half-believed them himself. He had taken on this country’s prejudices and tried to make them his own as he would make the country itself his own. But for the first time Lewis did not heed his older brother. He listened to his questions and gazed at him and spoke little and cryptically when he did. Who are we to name God’s accursed? he asked. Who are we?

  Through the summer of that year Morrison watched Lewis build a home for the woman. This young one did not seem so timid anymore. He might still be a dreamer and poet, but he had the fortitude to create a life against all advice. He built their strange home with his own hands, with pilfered and salvaged lumber. He took parts regardless of their normal function and shaped them to suit him and created a mushroom of a house, part of a living tree, a thing so odd men laughed in looking upon it. Even Lewis found it humorous, but in a different way than the others. When he led the woman to it he gave it to her with all sincerity. He was like a servant to her, ever faithful, ever laboring, hearing and seeing little of the world except her. This too infuriated the elder brother, though at the time he had misunderstood just why.

  Morrison opened his eyes upon the drenched creation that was the world. How had he and his brother turned out so differently? They were of the same blood, born of the same parents and shaped by the same land. They had been orphans together. Yet one of them had created a version of humanity unique to him. He had found a way to bless his life with love and had pushed all else aside, while the other had turned him-self solely to death. If only that blessed life hadn’t been so short, Morrison thought. If only he had no hand in destroying it. And if only he had recognized that the sin he saw upon that woman was the fault of his eyes, a sickness of his own heart and not a brand upon her at all. He looked down and ran his hand across the canine’s wet back. The dog’s tail thumped the deck in response. The man was grateful for it, more than she could ever know.

  THREE Redford lay the chart across the floor and motioned the couple close. Dover slid from the couch to her knees, though William only inched forward a little, taking his view from a distance. Redford traced the lines of North America with the tip of his letter opener, drawing the Atlantic coastline, the shapes of the states, the border with Canada, and even describing what he knew of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains and the long coastline of California. Dover followed every motion with anxious eyes. She nodded as he spoke, her lips slightly parted, although it was hard to tell whether this was in thought or from the constant strain her body was now putting on her. In posture, William held himself aloof from the lecture, but his eyes were actually as keen as Dover’s, his attention as rapt on the man’s words. He was just determined not to show it.

  “It really snow all the time up there?” Dover asked.

  Redford chuckled. “The climate is harsh, but not as harsh as that. The summers are as mild as you could want. And the land’s rich. This isn’t a matter of trying to pack the Negro off to Africa or Haiti or some such place where they’re likely to die from fever or hu
nger. This is good land, good enough to attract shiploads of Europeans, English and Scots and French. They’re all trying to find a better place, just like you are.” He looked up and smiled at William, who returned the gesture coolly.

  William’s vision slipped past him, on to the map and then away from that to Dover’s knees, her hands folded there, the fingers of one hand resting atop those of the other. “What about all them white folks?” he asked. “If all them white folks heading there they ain’t gonna want us. How’s that gonna be any different than the mess we got?”

  Redford smiled. “Not all white men are devils incarnate. We both know that.”

  “They don’t gotta all be devils. But you put enough of them together and times get thin—then it’s the niggers who gonna lose out. Maybe you don’t understand that like we do.”

  Redford heard this soberly; his smile faded. “I sometimes forget the evil place that you’ve just come from, but I understand that it must have warped your faith in other men terribly.”

  “What?”

  “Look, William,” Redford said, a newly sprung tension trembled at one corner of his lips, “I may live in the North. I may be free, but I’m still a nigger in this country. Don’t propose that I’ve never felt the burden of my race.”

  “You never been in chains, have you?”

  William and the man were facing each other now, standing toe to toe. There was something in both of their postures that hinted at aggression: the tremor on Redford’s face, the way William’s shoulders bunched in toward his neck, as if the words he spoke were pushed up from the muscles of his back. Dover watched them, still seated, her hands held as before but her eyes moving from one man to the other as they spoke.