There was a noise in the hallway. Morrison pulled his hands from his face. His gaze shot over to the closed door. He waited and listened and let one hand come to rest on his rifle. There followed a rattle of chains and the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor. Men’s voices came through the wood and Morrison recognized a few of them. But whatever it was they were attending to had their full attention. They passed the door without opening it and their sounds faded down the hallway
My brother and I had an awful fight soon after, Morrison said, continuing his tale. Only brothers can fight like that. As close to him as I was he was part of me, but he was a part of me that I’d just as soon see dead. He must’ve felt the same. It was an awful brawl. Morrison studied the floor below him and let something pass unsaid. I ran away after that. Just ran and spent years out west, hunting, trying to forget. But you cannot forget such things. You can only relive them, again and again. Relive them till you’ve lead the same sorry life a thousand times, and watched yourself make the same sorry mistakes a thousand times. That’s been my punishment, and I doubt God could’ve thought of any better one.
The tracker uncrossed his legs and stretched them out and then crossed them again. He took his head in his hands and dug his fingertips into the rough skin of his face. He thought, for a second, that he might reach into his eyes and tear them out. He would tear them out and squirm forward and offer them, the bloody orbs, to the woman who sat before him. Perhaps then she would look at him and see him. And if she didn’t, then at least he wouldn’t see her indifference. But then he shook off this thought too, for it was no less self-indulgent than all the sadness he carried in himself. He was embarrassed by it, and he wasn’t yet finished saying the things he must.
Last year I got a letter, he said.
It was from that woman, his brother’s woman. It took a year to find him, hand delivered by a man he barely knew and only met by chance. She wrote that she was about to die, and she had some things to say before she went. After his brother’s death she had a child. She had loved him from the day she first felt him inside of her, and on the day of his birth she had gone crazy, she slipped into a mad love that had never dimmed since. She had seen her son grow into a good man. She said that every day of his life she had watched over him. She had prayed for him and cast spells for him and been at his side even when he was far away from her. She had helped him on, for she believed she owed him that much for bringing him into the world. She had thrown the weight of love over his shoulders, and, despite the distance she saw growing between them, she knew she had created a good man. She said she had done the best job she could and that she would die proud of that much. She had told the boy of his father many times, so that he would understand that he came from two trees.
Well, she wrote some of that, Morrison said. Parts of it at least. Other parts might be my own thinking. Anyway, it was that note that brought me back. His words trailed off. He mumbled something under his breath, something in that strange, other tongue of his, and then he composed himself for the moment to come.
That woman’s name was Nan, he said. Don’t know if you ever met her but you know of her. She was William’s mother. Her … Her husband was my brother, Lewis. My younger brother. I haven’t been tracking a runaway. Don’t you think that. I’ve been hunting my kin.
The black woman finally raised her head.
TWO The men knew their work and addressed it with relish. They beat William to the edge of consciousness, focusing their blows on muscle, beating any strength out of him. He tried to fight them but from the first blow it had been too late. They chained his hands and legs and dragged him through the streets, stones wearing his knees ragged and bloody, a spectacle for the evening’s pedestrians to gawk at. He had a notion that they were taking him to be lynched, but this was not what they had in mind.
They paused before a decrepit building, an old gaol perhaps, but one that no longer had an official function. They spoke briefly to the boy on guard there, then opened the door using William’s head as a battering ram. They tossed him down a flight of stone steps, kicked him along a hallway and into a cell where they rearranged his bonds for a new purpose. His wrists and ankles were bound with iron cuffs, fastened so tight they pinched his circulation and left his extremities numb. Each cuff was attached to the wall by a short chain, and he hung supported partially by his own outstretched arms and partially by his legs. Around his neck they fastened another oval of iron. This was attached to a rope which ran up through a staple in a ceiling beam and down into the hand of a tall, toothless man who grinned when William’s eyes touched on him. He nodded a greeting and then hung his body weight on the rope. It went taut up through the staple and pulled William erect, the iron cutting his breath short and pinching his arteries and stretching the muscles of his neck. The man hung there so long that William grew lightheaded. His vision clouded with moving spots. He felt the vertebrae in his neck groaning against the pressure and thought that he might die this way and suddenly realized that he could accept that. Death would end this, and, above all else at that moment, he wanted this ended. He knew he was leaving Dover, but how much could a man do? How hard must he try before he was allowed to give in? The notion of death seemed so complete that he stopped straining against the chains. He was weak. He could take no more. He asked the living to forgive him. He would meet them on the other side …
Conscious again, he still hung in his biblical posture, breathing heavily and looking at a black world and slowly realizing that his eyes were closed and that the blackness was in his mind as much as in the world. He realized he had not yet passed away and remembered his wish to do so, although that wish seemed far away now. He had no idea how much time had passed, but it felt like a great deal had. He opened his eyes and took in the room for the first complete time.
It was a jail cell, dank and windowless, carved entirely out of the living bedrock. The walls were made of the earth’s stone itself and gave him the impression that he was far below the surface of the world. A row of bars ran across the far end. The gate was ajar, as was the door to the hallway beyond, although he knew these portals were not open to him. Two torches protruded from supports along either wall. They cast a somber, fluttering light and blackened the ceiling with smoke that escaped through cracks in the ceiling.
If the lighting was medieval in design, the men who occupied the room were no different. A fat man leaned against the opposite wall, twirling his fingers through the hair of his chest and studying William with a proprietary interest. There was a dark-skinned man that William at first thought to be a Negro, but soon realized was not. Though his skin was dark, his mannerisms and deportment were not at all like a black man’s. And there was one other, a teenager who stood toward the far end of the cell, naked to the waist and as bony as an alley dog. The tall man still grinned. He held the rope in one hand, tugging on it occasionally as if he were testing a fishing line.
The fat one was the first to speak. He stepped close to the captive and spoke low and secretive. “We got your woman in the other cell,” he said. “Didn’t know that, did you? Caught her just as easy as we caught you. Had a good time with her too. Felt up every last part of her. Put my hand on that belly of hers and felt that little one kick. Can you believe that? Little nit tried to give me cause.”
William didn’t respond.
“Answer when you’re spoken to,” the dark man said. He popped William on the jaw with a clenched fist. William’s head stayed rigid against the blow, and the man pulled his fist back. He twisted away, cursing and holding his wrist clenched within his other hand. “Goddamn the hardheaded son-a-bitch.”
“Damn near busted your hand,” the tall one said. “Him with intent, too. I wouldn’t stand for it.”
“Should break his jaw, is what you should do,” said the teenager, in a voice that was both high-pitched and syrupy.
“Could do that,” the fat one said, “or we could leave him hang and go in the other room and work his
woman over some more. Could bring her in here and let him watch.”
This idea met with a chorus of approval from the tall man and the teenager, but the dark man ignored it. He still rubbed his wrist, but he moved back close to William. “He ain’t got no idea the kinda things I could do to him.” The other men agreed to that, and the dark man went on to describe just the type of tortures he had been known to use in the past.
William tried to block out his words. He tried to think past them, to rise above them. But it was hard. The man spoke with such relish. He spoke of faces mutilated and tongues cut out and limbs amputated by ax blade. He said a man wouldn’t ever be any good at his work if he didn’t take pleasure in it. And, the dark man said, he was damn good at his work and found within it an ecstasy rarely duplicated in any other legal amusement.
“You hear me now, boy? Scared yet? You got a right to be. That’s the only right you do got, the right to be shit scared. You know what I got a mind to do?”
“What?” the teenager said, a tremble in his voice as if he were the one being questioned.
“Geld him.”
“You can’t do that,” the fat one said. “Humboldt’d tar your hide if you ruined him.”
“Humboldt?” William muttered, the single word enough to clear his head.
The dark one cocked his arm back to punch, then thought better of it. “I ain’t gonna ruin him, except as a stud. I won’t even draw that much blood. Just a couple quick cuts is all it takes. I’ll give his nut sacks to Humboldt for a tobacco pouch.”
But the other men would not agree to this. No broken bones, the fat man said. No open wounds, nothing that could kill the bastard or leave him lame. They argued among themselves, devising competing tortures for William, comparing past experiences and theories of the pain. William heard the words in the background and knew they were speaking of him, but he was detached from them. They weren’t nearly as important at that moment as the realization that this was all Humboldt’s doing. That man had reached his hand out across the water, across state borders, across the time that separated them. It was all for nothing. Dover was in his hands. The complete import of it all was too much. It hit him like a mighty fist and left him reeling, breathless.
The dark one finally acquiesced. “Tell you what we’ll do … You want to pain him without damaging his value then you gotta be creative. First give him a pull, Walt.”
He nodded at the tall man, who jumped on the rope, lifting William’s rigid body taut and fighting, muscles striated with rage, arteries like worms burrowing through his skin. But this could not last for long. He passed out. When he woke seconds later, he felt the man’s hands on his body. They unhitched him from the wall and spread him face down across the floor and found new eyebolts to fix his chains to. The dark man sent the teenager away with instructions. While he was gone they placed wooden blocks beneath William’s shins, propping his legs up so that his bare feet angled toward the ceiling. He tried to fight them, but the men just laughed at his efforts. His body was weaker now than ever, bruised deep like tenderized beef, clipped here and pinched there and pressed flat against a floor of amazing cold, damp that seeped up from it and into him.
The teen returned with a dowel, about an inch around and five or six feet long. William saw him walk in with it held loose in his fingers, a dandy with a walking stick, satisfied with himself.
“Okay,” the dark man said, “that’ll do nicely. Let’s have some fun.”
THREE The woman stared at Morrison. Her gaze, now that she gave it to him, was more than he could bear. Eyes of a caged cougar, a creature who should not know him but one that seems to. He took off his crumpled hat and held it in his lap, awkward. He sat trying to think what to say next, feeling he had not fully explained himself, knowing he had not told the entire tale, afraid of the unspoken portion for it changed everything, cast everything that he was or claimed to be in doubt. And doubt was not what any of them needed just then. He looked back at her, as earnest as he could muster, but she seemed to see through it. She suspected him of greater crimes than he had confessed. He was holding back and she knew and her eyes were hooks pulling more from him. He looked down, his hat rumpled within his own fists, his hands large and monstrous. He put it back on again and forced himself to meet her gaze.
They really get all of them? she asked.
Not the question he feared but still one that made him cut his eyes. She’s strong, he thought, but then a black woman would have to be. He told her what had happened, the fugitives all caught, the freeman aiding them dead. Only William had escaped them, though they were doubtless hunting him as they spoke.
The woman listened to all of this and was quiet for some time, her face a mask to Morrison. He couldn’t read her emotions, though her silence now was different than before. It wasn’t directed at him. It was no longer a weapon but was something sadder. Where is he? she asked.
Was hoping you might tell me.
But she wasn’t sure. He might’ve gone to Redford’s, she said, but she couldn’t know for sure. That had been the plan but plans were a thing of the past. This news came into Morrison and sat at his center, a weight, though he didn’t tell the woman. He needed to move delicately, aware that her confidence was a gift he might lose at any moment, each word she had spoken a jewel he hadn’t expected. But they had so much to do.
Well, he said, Let me see about those chains. If you don’t mind we should start by getting you out of here. He moved a little closer, easing the woman with his palm, as one might approach an unknown dog, hand outstretched for her to scent or bite either one.
The woman didn’t acknowledge his gesture. She lowered her eyes and said, They won’t let you take me.
I didn’t aim to ask permission.
They’ll kill you for trying.
They wouldn’t be the first to try. He was close to her now, near enough to touch her, to smell her at the back of his throat, her blood congealed but not yet fully dry. He lifted her wrist chains and turned them over, studied how they were strung together and weighed the lock in his hand. I’d say there’s nothing for it but I get the key from that boy out there. He said this matter of factly, a statement of the obvious, something clearly within reason.
But he never got to hear the woman’s response. A noise distracted them both, indecipherable for a long moment, then gone, faded to silence. Then it came again, clear and complete, the sound mixed with the rush of blood to Morrison’s head. A scream, and a scream again. The yells were muffled by distance and mangled by its passage through corridors and through the cracks in the door and all the more horrible for it. They came in gaps, spaced unevenly. Each silence worse than the scream itself for Morrison knew it was coming, knew that whatever action caused the scream was occurring or about to occur, knew that for all his horror in the hearing there was somebody out there feeling that horror and shouting to the world.
The woman’s eyes drifted toward the wall, not as if she might see through it, for they glazed unfocused, but as if she had forgotten ocular sight and saw instead with her ears. That’s him, she said.
Morrison didn’t ask her whom she meant. He was up in one motion, legs spinning beneath him, single arm sweeping out and coming up with his rifle, strides flowing one to the next and he was at the door. He put his ear against it and listened a moment and then cracked it open. Air rushed in dank on his face and tainted. The corridor was empty and sounds of pain came clearer now. He spoke from the corner of his mouth, telling the woman he would be back directly. It would be all right, he said. He would see to it. She should just wait here and he would be back and they’d be on their way. He paused there as if waiting for her to respond. But she didn’t, and that was that. He stepped into the hall, pulled the door shut behind him and began to prime the rifle.
FOUR Each time the dowel smashed into the base of William’s feet it was as if long needles had been driven into them, up through the flesh and bone of him, through his thighs and groin and into his torso. The pain wa
s incredible, blinding, complete, driven home to the center of him, where it beat slowly, dissipating breath by breath until the next blow. And then the whole thing over again. And again. This torture like no other in that it didn’t dim with the passage of time, each blow was like the first and again, despite himself, he wanted to die and be free of it. He tried not to cry out. He didn’t cry, not voluntarily. Pain shot through him and wrenched open his mouth and spewed out. He had been beaten before but this was impossible. Each man got only so many blows. He heard them arguing over turns, each one keen to give it a shot. He had long ago closed his eyes, but he opened them again when a hand grasped his hair and pulled his head back. The dark man, his face close, moisture dotting his nose, black hairs on his chin, each strand not curly but bent, twisted. He asked him something but William could not make sense of it. Part of him knew he should listen but the greater part was beyond that, was thinking, what could he do to get them to kill him? What words would enrage them so much they’d release him? But he could think of nothing and the man’s face spoke on, mouth moving, words unheard.
Then his face pulled away and William saw past him to the door. A man stepped in and stood for a moment framed within it. He was a gaunt man, graying in his beard and in the coarse hair that stood out from the side of his head, beneath a beat up, mangled excuse for a hat. His face was severe, eyes quick in their business, which was to take in the room as if doing inventory, counting each man in turn, measuring the size of the cell and coming to rest, after this quick survey, upon William himself. He held a rifle in one hand, pointed at the ground.
“What’s going on here?” he asked, and with his words William could hear again. His voice was deep. He moved words about his mouth like they were stones, but at the same time there was something melodic in his pronunciation.
The dark man leaned in close to William. He didn’t answer the old man’s question but expressed great mirth at his arrival. He said the old fellah had just had himself a ride. He asked the man to confirm this. The old man did not, but the dark one didn’t notice.
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