Walk Through Darkness

by David Anthony Durham

  She’ll be easy to get, the fat man said, like picking fruit.

  And my nigger? Humboldt asked.

  Nobody answered.

  Come on, boys, one of you must’ve heard something by now. What the hell am I paying you for?

  None ventured an opinion on this. They admitted that they’d heard nothing of the fugitive. The red-haired one did offer a special piece of information, a secret beaten out of a poor sailor late one evening. Apparently, an Irish sea captain had agreed to transport a load of fugitive slaves to Canada. They were not sure of the exact details as to when and where the smuggling was to take place, but more could be learned, more could definitely be learned.

  Let’s do this then, Humboldt said. He told them that he had booked passage on a schooner heading back to Annapolis in a week, so they had seven days to accomplish their goals. He divided the men by their particular strengths and assigned them missions. Some would keep an eye on the bitch. Others would spread themselves through the city, dredging the scum of the place for their particular form of gold, socializing with the niggers if need be. Some would seek out information on this smuggling operation and others, including Morrison, would search the gaols for any niggers who couldn’t prove they were freemen. Humboldt himself would contact the authorities and ingratiate himself to them and make it clear that their mission was of the highest order, one intended not just for their personal gain but also to rid the city of dangerous black fugitives.

  They don’t like niggers here anymore than we do, the planter said, though you’ll rarely get them to admit it. If we do this here work right we’ll be homeward bound with a boatload of niggers and each of you richer for it. This was met with a murmur of approval. That’s right, he said. You mighta thought I just had it in for that one boy. And I do, but we might as well make this whole thing worth our while, right?

  He asked the men what they thought of this and they thought plenty; all save Morrison, who had thoughts of his own. These he kept to himself for the time being.

  FIVE Sometimes, when the air was just right and the breeze blew toward him, William could smell the city. He was never sure which fragrances would reach him and was never confident of their authenticity, but they came to mark the passing of the days as surely as the sun’s progression. In the mornings it was the dry flavor of smoke, a crisp scent, fleeting, washed clean by the evening’s dew. As the heat of the day grew the city gave off a more noxious aroma. The reek of sewers floated out on a rising tide, a stench thick and heavy like a liquid. When he awoke from afternoon naps he many times believed himself still posted behind the Carrs’ home, still sleeping in the city’s hidden places, cloaked in that old hunger. And as day gave in to night, he would swear he could smell someone’s supper, tendrils of scent that drifted up to him undiluted and taunting.

  Though his provisions were modest, he was better prepared for his exile than he had ever been before. The sack he had carried out from the city contained bacon and salted whitefish. He had cornmeal biscuits from Anne’s, a few loaves of flat bread and a jar of boysenberry jam, sickly sweet stuff that seemed to enter and exit him in roughly the same consistency. He portioned his food out frugally, as if measuring it for a stay much longer than Redford had projected. The bacon was precooked as Redford cautioned him against starting a fire. He ate it with mouthfuls of bread so hard that he moistened them before chancing his teeth against them. He filled his water jar at a stream a little distance behind the enclosure. This trip, made in the early morning and again after sunset, became his only routine of exercise.

  His third morning in hiding, he awoke and recognized that summer was fading. The air was crisp in a way it had not been for months, the sky high-clouded and grand in its girth. A breeze stirred the trees and set a few, yellowish leaves to flight, thin golden shapes like palm prints twisting and flipping. For some reason they reminded him of fallen soldiers, but from whence this comparison came he was unsure. He spent the morning entranced by the natural world, watching dramas lived out in other forms than human. A tree of a type he didn’t recognize dropped its hard fruit. Each time he saw the balls fall to the ground his heart leapt. Strange that he would find excitement in such a thing, and yet he was not alone. Squirrels were fast upon the fruit. They snatched it up in their forepaws and attacked it with a fervor that made William curious about its taste, though not enough to tempt him from his shelter.

  He had seen no other people as yet, but when they came they did so in a gaggle. Picnickers appeared in the quiet hours of midmorning. He heard their carriages pull to a halt along the distant road, first one, then another and, eventually, four in all. From these they poured forth and swept up the hillside: men who folded their jackets and went about in vest tops, with sleeves rolled up on their pale arms; women in white dresses, parasols in one hand and hand fans in the other; children of every size and height, swarming between the older folks like puppies at play. They came with baskets of food, with lawn chairs and quilted blankets and the tools of gaming. In a matter of minutes they had transformed the field into a grand playground. The various individuals secluded themselves into the groups that fit them best. Thus the men of a certain age stood puffing on pipes, watching the younger men and boys at play, while the women saw to the food and kept the children near at hand. There was a contingent of the elderly who sat in the shade at the lower edge of the field, the women with the great folds of their dresses circling them, men with their bowler hats atop their heads, fixtures as permanent as any God-given accoutrements.

  William watched them through the cracks in the wall, his face close to the boards. His heart thumped in his chest. He barely moved for fear that his tiny noises might somehow be overheard. And yet he was entranced, for he had never spied on the world of white people so. He watched them with a lopsided, squinting vigilance that shifted from one eye to the other. He could only hear them occasionally, some shout or exclamation, a head tilted in laughter or the pop of a bat against the ball. The sounds were muted, off-timed, so that the noise trailed behind the action that had created it. It was like spying upon the workings of an artificial world, images of bliss framed for the view of a single eye, sight and sound imperfect in its rendering.

  The morning had passed into afternoon before he noticed the young couple strolling away from the others. The man carried his hat in hand. He was smartly dressed, sporting a jacket despite the heat, with prominent, if youthful, sideburns stretching down to his jaw line. The girl, who was taller than her companion, displayed a fan in the same position as the man held his hat. Her strides timed their motion, each step a gracious effort that kicked her skirt out and slid her forward behind it. They moved away from the rest of the group and climbed up the grassy lane that led to the carriage house.

  William cast about him for someplace to hide. The floor was strewn with objects, boards and yellowed newspapers and miscellaneous pieces of debris. Tall grass sprouted along the edge of the walls, and shadows obscured the room’s corners. But none of it seemed to provide adequate cover. When the couple was close enough that he could make out their voices, he opted for the only escape he saw. As in the pine forest a couple of months ago, he leapt upwards. He grabbed onto one of the exposed structural beams and swung himself up into the tangled mass of beams and shadows up there. He scrambled as the couple talked just outside the door. He froze when the door creaked open, stretched out along the length of a beam in the near corner, wrapped so entirely in cobwebs that he had to breathe gently to keep from sucking the threads in.

  The couple entered, tenuous, shading their eyes and waiting for them to adjust to the light. They left the door open and situated themselves just inside it, taking some measure of shelter and solitude, but not daring to venture too far from propriety. The young man set down his coat for the girl to sit on. For himself he brushed clean a spot in the dirt, the very spot that William had been the moment before. The girl wondered if they would be missed, but the other said not to worry. They were just out for a walk. Nobody cou
ld fault them for that. They’d done everything honorably so far, he said, and soon none would be able to fault them for anything.

  The girl’s features from above had a porcelain quality both in shape and texture, beautiful, yes, but so frail as to put that beauty’s value at question. William caught brief glimpses of her eyes, and from what he saw he concluded they were a watery blue. “Yes,” she said, pouting as she did so, a thin pretension at reprimand. “Let’s just see that we don’t get ahead of ourselves.”

  The young man nudged her on the shoulder, more like one childish companion to another than like suitors, but it was clear that’s what they were. They talked of the life they would have together. The young man spoke in the largest of gestures, of deeds that encompassed years of labor, of their beautiful home, of the work he would do to fund it, of the important man he would grow to be. The girl spoke far fewer words, but in her quiet affirmations were dreams just as large. She counted their children and gave them names. She designed their rooms and appointed their colleges and designed their careers. They would have a garden in the French style, she declared. They would not be so stuffy as to forbid the children from playing in it, and the girls and boys would be educated equally. He said they might have to see about that, but she asked just what was there to see about? Nothing, he said. He tried to explain, but the girl didn’t let him. She struck a posture of indignation and talked of the equality of the sexes. Different in temperament, she said, but little different in substance, partners in God’s plan, neither one nor the other of use alone. He did believe this, did he? He did acknowledge the progressive thinking newly at work in the land, didn’t he?

  The young man’s head dipped to one side. His eyes fanned up and across the beams in which William roosted, but they never paused to pick him out from the background. “Yes, love,” he said, in a tone of such patient resignation that it was obviously practiced, this whole discourse a joke between the two of them.

  “Good,” the girl said. “I wouldn’t dare sell myself into bond-age to a man without a liberal mind. Lord knows what would become of me if I did.”

  William held his perch long after the couple had departed. The picnickers gathered up their provisions and climbed back into their carriages and rolled away. But he still clung to his beam, motionless save for the quiet bellows of his breathing and progress of his tears, tracks burnt down his cheeks and staining the wood that supported him. He didn’t know when he began to cry, when he lost his fear and found a great sadness instead. He felt a fool when he roused himself and climbed down from his roost. He wiped at his face, unsure why his eyes betrayed him, wondering at his weakness.

  It wasn’t until later that night that he dreamt again of that sadness and awoke with the realization of a suspicion long held. It was true; there were people on earth who lived an entirely different existence than he. The gap between them was unbridgeable, far greater than just that of master and slave. Even if he were granted all the freedoms of the nation he wouldn’t fully understand how to use them. Though he be allowed to speak he would have no voice. He would never be able to debate the finer points of a French garden, or dream the colleges of unborn children, or be so confident as to imagine an entire lifetime shaped by his own inclinations. There would always be parts of himself that he hated. Those of privilege would never be able to understand him and neither would he know himself. If there was a creator, then he had shaped the world this way, with some men chosen above others as the most beloved. For some reason this reminded him of his mother and suddenly he missed her. He remembered all the days in between and in remembering he felt the pain of them condensed. He pulled that old pendant from his shirt pocket and fingered it, pressed it to the flesh below his Adam’s apple and held it there. He wished himself a child again, with her again, so he could hear her speak, knowing that he would believe her now in a way he hadn’t before.

  She had understood the world differently, and he wished for even a piece of that wisdom, a small sliver to see him forward.

  When William was eleven he had been hired out to a caulker on the outskirts of Annapolis. He was allowed to live at home that year and made the trip to work at the start and close of each day. He had, at this time of stirring adolescence, begun to place some walls between himself and his mother. There was a frustration growing within him, and, as he didn’t know yet where to direct it, Nan received the brunt of it. But he was new to these feelings. The boundaries were unclear, both in location and in purpose, and his allegiances were still, at the core, those of a child in need of his mother.

  One evening he met four slave boys a few years older than he in an alley near the wharf. He knew the boys and they knew him and neither cared for the other. They were each of them blacker than he and though this made little difference to their mutual slavery it made a great difference within the unfocused minds of youth. They blocked his path and one shoved his shoulder and another asked him if it was true that a gang of Irish sailors had raped his mother? William said that it was not. He tried to pass. They blocked him again, changing tack and suggesting other sources for his parentage, individuals known to them all and despised. The most lascivious of overseers. An old man in the latter stages of syphilis, who roamed the docks mumbling to himself, lice ridden and cadaverous. A harelipped youth famous for rubbing himself against the backsides of Negro girls. This latter would only have been a few years old at William’s conception, but the point was clear enough. They were all white. They were all filthy, and so, they were saying, was his father. And, by extension, was his mother.

  William swung for the boy nearest him with all the force he could muster. He hit him with a glancing blow across his temple. He kicked another boy hard on the kneecap. But this effort was not nearly enough. Boys becoming men can do damage to each other and these boys did that to William. He stumbled home with his eyes swollen and his sight unsure, one tooth loose, lip busted and dripping red down his shirt. He didn’t want to go inside but instead scaled the house and climbed into the branches above it.

  Nan found him there several hours later. He climbed down reluctantly, stiff and sore, eyes puffy and not just from outward damage. She rushed him inside and took his face in her hands and shot questions at him. He admitted that no, no white men had done this. Nor was it the work of devilish white boys. No master had whipped him on his own authority. No overseer had found fault with him.

  “Nigger boys did this to you?”

  William grunted and tried to twist his head from her grip.

  Nan held fast. “Why they do this?”

  He wouldn’t answer. He didn’t have to. He wasn’t a child, and it was her fault anyway. He wouldn’t tell her a thing.

  And yet within a few minutes he had spilled all. He told her everything, a child a little longer.

  Nan knew better than to hold him to her. She didn’t coddle him. She cleaned his wounds and made him sit and wait as she rummaged in the boxes stored beneath her cot. He had searched them before and couldn’t imagine what she was looking for. But when she turned back to him she held something he hadn’t seen before. It looked, at first, like a dull coin, pierced in the center and hung from leather twine. Nan held it before her and knelt down before her son.

  “This here come from your daddy,” she said. “It was his pendant, use to wear it round his neck. He got it from his daddy who got it from his daddy who got it him from his daddy afore that. Goes back a long way, this here. Your grandfather’s father took it off the body of his dead father. This all he had to remember him by cause he died in one of them wars they had, when white folks was fighting each other way off cross the ocean.”

  The pendant spun as she moved, never still for more than a second. The twine passed through one of the holes but there were four in all, spaced evenly near the center of it. Nan inched closer. William could feel her breath as she spoke.

  “So that old grandfather seen his father die on a field fighting a war. That old boy loved his father like all of them did, but he had to lea
ve him on the field or he woulda died himself. He was clutching on to him trying to wake him from death. Some others pulled him away and saved his life. All he took with him was this here. And that boy grew to a man and had his own chill-run and passed this on. And the next done the same and on like that. That’s a lot of history in one pendant, and that history is part of you. Your daddy would’ve gave you this himself, but he ain’t here to do it so I’m doing it for him. Here …”

  She grasped the boy’s hand and placed the object on his palm. It was warm from her touch, tiny against his palm and light as a seashell.

  “Truth is, them boys beat on you cause they scared of what life planning for them. They scared of they own skin and they probably don’t know they own daddy. Just cause they black don’t mean they daddy loved they mommas. But you know yours did cause I’m here telling you bout him. This pendant yours now. Somebody ask you where it come from tell them your daddy gave it to you. Tell them they best watch out cause you come from a family of warriors.”

  William closed his fingers around the brass medallion. There was forgiveness in the touch between him and the metal. All else was forgotten and for a few moments he was sure of his mother and of his father and therefore of himself. But in the years to follow he began to doubt her story. Before long he disbelieved it, and finally he came to despise it. That pendant was just a piece of brass, hardly a design on it, old and worn and bent from its original shape. It was a trinket with a great fiction attached. He hated himself for ever grasping for it and loathed his mother for spinning such lies. He thought many times that if she were still alive he would flick the piece of metal back in her face. He would let it fall where it would. If she tried to grab hold of him he would spring back and shout his own accusations in her face. He would make her admit that he hadn’t come from any great love, no marriage between colored and white. He was born of lust just like anyone else. She could not wipe clean the sins done to her simply by telling tales to her simple-minded child. He would ask her who his father really was. Their master? An overseer? A drunken Irishman or a gang of sailors docked for only a day and a night? Just tell him the truth, so that he could put to rest the myth of a loving father. Had she been alive, he might have pressed her with all of this. With her death she denied him this satisfaction and this was another thing he held against her.