Balm (19 page)

H
EMP DID NOT KNOW WHAT TO CALL WHAT
happened to him in the middle of the night. Not dreams or visions. He actually traveled in time. Looking down at himself, he considered the wide peak of hip before taking flight and moving over state lines. A snaking river, bean-shaped lake, branches of railroad. The prairie, trees, hills of bluegrass, a red house sitting on the bank of a creek. An old man rocking in a chair on a covered porch.

Stalks that grew tall as trees, men waiting for the cool of fall when they would take up the hooks, hacking as near to the ground as possible, careful not to curl the tools back into their legs. A swift chopping sound. The crack of hemp stems in his fingers, the brush of fiber, the weight of the hackle, dust clogging his eyes and nose, sun scorching his neck. The stalks left in the field to rot long enough for the casing to soften, until the ritual gathering of them into stacks for drying time.

Come daytime, Hemp's two selves merged again into a new world
where the shapes of things eluded him. He could not read, was not a learned man, and it unsettled him that the world did not work as predictably as the planting seasons. He knew how long a hemp crop took to mature, how to measure the lift and droop of a leaf. But he was rattled by the tolling courthouse bell, the rails, the telegraph, unnecessary things interrupting God's order, and though he no longer feared being pressed back into slavery or listened out for the fearsome howl of dogs, he still looked over his shoulder, saw things that were not there. He lived in a house not much better than a slave cabin, and thought with dread that, perhaps after all, free and slave were not so different.

Gracefully, he carried the body that reminded a white man of an animal while he listened to men speaking in languages he had not known existed. Omnibuses rattled. A horse urinated, steam from the hot liquid rising into the air. The man nudged the horse with a dusty boot. A paperboy yelled on a corner, waving a crumpled paper. Another child sold coal out of a dirty sack. No one saw Hemp, despite his size. In Kentucky, he would have been stopped by now, a white man calling out to ask his business. In the cupola above, a lookout yelled that a ship was approaching. The street shook, the city bracing for new arrivals. Hemp descended a leaning board, took twenty-five steps, turned left, then right.

As he walked through the city he thought for the umpteenth time of their last meeting, how he had insulted her. When Madge walked inside, wiping the wet snow from her forehead with the back of her arm, Hemp had been tempted to do it for her, still not understanding why this woman meant so much to him. She had not erased the ugly as Annie had done, but she did cause him to skip thoughts. The men he lived with were all out working, so he had cooked for Madge in the small house. He lit the fire and unhooked the frying pan from the wall. While the oil heated, he dredged the gizzards in flour. He took up two ears of corn from a basket in the corner and ripped off the husks. He
picked off a worm, dug out the rotten kernels with his fingernails. The bitter smell of frying gizzards filled the house, and he opened a window. Children clucked in the alley, and a rock crashed into the window. Their chatter turned to wailing, and he shut the window to keep out the noise.

When the gizzards were browned, he scooped them out with a spoon and put them on two plates, grease puddling underneath.

“Let me wash up,” she said.

He took the bowl outside and refilled it. She rubbed her hands together.

“The corn ain't fresh,” he said.

“I've ate worse.”

She dried her hands.

“Sit down,” he said gently, placing two plates on the table.

“That hotel should've made you waiter 'stead of letting you go.”

He poured water out of a pitcher, feeling simple, more at ease than he had in weeks. He knew she was worried about the turn their friendship had taken, and he was hoping to make it up to her by cooking this dinner. But he could not deny his selfish reasons, either. He wanted to taste that feeling Madge gave him—not asking more than he could give, freeing him from the hard love that bound him to his wife. Annie had scraped the ash from his elbows and knees with a rough stone and then rubbed oil on all the raw places. Madge, with her dark eyes and flash of smile, gave something different—a spiritual thing. Their connection began because she lent him an ear, but it was sustained by an easy give-and-take. He had lain with her twice now because it was naturally what a man did, though it had been a sin, as big a sin as he had ever committed.

Madge crunched into her ear of corn, speaking as she chewed. “I think that doctor like you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Driving is good work, Hemp.”

He kept his mouth full so he would not have to think of what to say.

“And your cooking ain't bad, either.”

“You need something else?” he asked, though little remained.

She shook her head, and as she picked corn from her teeth he resolved to make her a pick. He thought of all he'd taken from women: Annie and the ones he'd bedded before her. Now that he was free and able-bodied, he intended to pay his debts.

She said to him, “I got something to tell you. I'm going back to Tennessee.”

“Tennessee?”

“To be with my womenfolks.”

A grain of corn threatened to lodge in his throat.

“This thing we got between us ain't right, Hemp, and you know it. You got to look for your wife, and I'm in the way.”

“You roped me.”

“Now don't talk like that.”

“You tricked me. You knew I thought you was Annie.”

“You didn't have no fever that night.”

“I was sick, and you was supposed to be healing me.”

“You lied to me about Annie's girl.”

“What?”

“Hemp, what happened between you and that girl?”

“I told you.”

“The widow say you and her did something—”

“Goddamn that woman!” He knocked a chair over. “Nothing, I swear it. I kissed her. That's all. I ain't proud of it, but it happened. It ain't my problem that white woman don't believe me.”

Her eyes reddened and she looked down. “I'm sorry, Hemp.”

His voice was hoarse. “You ask me about the driving work like you ain't come in that door aiming to destroy me tonight.”

Their chests rose and fell together.

“You got a man down in Tennessee, don't you?”

“A what?”

She was crying, and he looked up at the ceiling because he could not stand it. Above him, a string of web hung limply as if something had flown by and broken it.

E
VEN AS HE WAITED FOR NEWS
about Annie, Madge stayed on his mind. One thing was for certain. If he found Annie, he would have to leave that root woman alone for good. As he followed the doctor into the man's office, he could not stop shaking. He believed Annie was alive, but he was beginning to think white men were not miracle workers, that maybe even Jesus was not white. It had been a month since they began their search, and Hemp's belief had waned. He desperately needed to know where the righteous path lay—to the left or to the right. If Annie came to Chicago to join him, he would have to tell her about Madge. He would have to be honest. He had not anticipated how his rising feelings for the girl would affect him, how she confused and muddled his head.

“Do you have news?” the doctor asked as soon as they walked in the door of the man's office.

Peter stood when Michael approached the desk. The cat was no longer caged. It crouched on the edge of the desk, its head turned toward Michael, blue eyes wide with suspicion. It made a sound like a dog's growl in the back of its throat, as if ready to spring.

“Michael, my friend, please have a seat.”

Michael looked uneasily at the cat, refusing the offer. “Just tell me. Any news at all?”

“Can he excuse us?”

“I'll be outside, Dr. High-yul.” Hemp closed the door softly behind him.

“How are you feeling, Michael? When is the last time you saw a doctor of your own?”

“Peter, I can emphatically tell you there is nothing wrong with me. Now get on with it.”

Peter twirled the inkstand on his desk.

“Did you find the woman?”

“I truly don't understand why you feel it necessary to engage in this behavior. This scheme of yours is comical.”

“Is she dead?”

“Michael,” he said, his tone gentler, “I will repay your money.”

“Of course you won't repay my money. You've already extended yourself. Now tell me what you found.” Michael's breath was ragged. The cat jumped off the desk and disappeared.

“You have a reputation, and so do I. Surely you won't be marked as one of those radicals.”

Peter lowered his voice.

“What on God's earth are you talking about?”

“I hear you are . . . that you have been consorting with . . .”

“Consorting?”

“That woman on Ontario Street. The woman who speaks to the dead.”

“Oh, Peter.”

“You will lose everything, Michael. You might even have to leave the city if you continue along this path. It's ruinous. Think of your career.”

“Good God, man, what business is it of yours?”

Peter was silent, and Michael realized he had done nothing to find her. He slowly buttoned his coat, passed icy respects on to Peter's wife, and left the office.

Hemp searched his face expectantly as he came out into the street.

“Hemp . . .”

He did not know what to say. He realized, sadly, that the relief of the man's burdens lay somewhere out of reach. The poor man would have to settle for this: a silent shaking of the head, a shame-filled and reddened face. Briefly, Michael wondered what his younger brother would have said at that moment.

“We shall try again. Don't give up hope.”

The driver turned his back. A cool wind pulsed through the sun's warmth.

“Take the carriage back and stable the horse. I'll walk,” Michael said, waving him off.

Hemp turned the horse around and headed toward the bridge leading to the western district of the city. Michael watched him as he drove off. He wiped his brow as he started to walk.

A man called out, selling feather dusters.

Not all the feather dusters in the world can rid us of our dirty past
, Michael wanted to say to him.

W
HEN
H
EMP GOT TO THE CHURCH
, the reverend was on the roof. The wind tore at Hemp's jacket as he looked up.

“Give an old man a hand!”

Hemp climbed the ladder, feeling for the ridges on each side. He pulled his body over the edge of the roof. The reverend helped pull him up.

“See that board? The wood ain't no good.”

Hemp's hat flew off and when he lunged for it, he almost slipped. The reverend grabbed him by the coat. “You trying to kill the both of us?”

Hemp flapped his arms. He picked up a hammer and pried loose the faulty board.

“You don't need that finger?” the reverend said.

Below them, a fight broke out in the street. They could not see it, but the sounds of a jeering crowd rose.

The reverend moved down the side of the roof and descended the ladder. “Cut it out now. In God's name, cut it out!”

A nail pricked Hemp's finger. He licked the blood. A pigeon perched nearby, watching him. He thought it might want a drop of his blood, too. When its stare did not waver even as a gust picked up, he thought it might be a messenger, Herod returned.

When Hemp finished repairing the board, he left the pigeon on the roof and stored the ladder under the building. Inside the sanctuary, he saw how much the church was thriving under the deacons' care. Fresh paint. Sanded pews. A piano with all its working keys. Even the hole in the roof was now fully patched. But the sight of the freshened sanctuary failed to cheer him.

“Son, you bleeding? I see you really was trying to lose a finger.” The reverend swept dead bugs from the windowsill into his palm.

“Here.” The reverend passed him a narrow strip of shirt cloth.

Hemp moistened his cracked lips with a swipe of his tongue.

“My wife better with a hammer than you.”

Hemp erupted into laughter, tucking the wrapped finger into his chest as he bent over. The emotion folded him in two, and the more he laughed, the more he could not stop. “Oh-hoh!” He broke into another fit. Laughter like cries.

“Son?”

“Oh-hoh!”

Within his laughing fit, he somehow croaked out, “The doctor couldn't find her.”

The reverend propped the broom against the wall. Rubbed his hands together. Nodded slowly.

“Go home, son. Go home.”

“What now?”

“Just go home and rest. Go on now.”

Hemp did as he was told. In front of the rented house, he gazed at the square of swept dirt, the cracked pot of fern, the faded curtains at the window, an empty washtub in the yard. She had not roped him. She had merely picked up what Annie left behind.

H
E PASSED THROUGH A NARROW ALLEY OF
shanties, walking toward the noise. Men bellowing. Boots stomping. A rail hanging halfway off the porch of a house. Inside, one man furiously plucked a banjo while another stood over him strumming a fiddle. Hemp tried to sit down, but men danced into his legs. The crowd cleared the floor and formed a circle. Someone drummed on what sounded like a wooden block, and a man emerged and stood in the middle of the circle, tapping his stick on the floor. He bent forward and then backward and then forward again, circling his torso before he lifted a leg high into the air. The dance was dizzying. Hemp swigged whiskey from a dirty cup. In the corner, two men spooned grub into bowls. The room reeked with the vinegary smell of boiling pigs' feet.

It was hard to admit he could stand, a free man chewing a dried piece of beef in a crowded room full of at least a dozen more free men, and still be sad. The smell of urine flushed the air. He loosened his shirt
at the neck, felt for his money to make sure it was still there. Lustful men, dead-eyed women, a floor sticky with drink. He stumbled out into the cold. Air clamored into the gap of collar at his neck. He had no sense of direction, ambled aimlessly. He would never be a respectable, even without the yoke of slavery. The ties of unrighteousness bound him. He licked his lips. Spat on the ground. Walking into the wind, shoulders hunched, hands in pockets, he dragged his feet over the dirty road. The drink slowed his thoughts, numbed him, but he could not forget. All he had ever wanted was a house of his own, a chance to love and protect and provide. He had harbored a vain hope that despite slavery's dominion over him, he might one day rule his own household. The reverend preached on it once—used words like
contract
and
legitimate
—and Hemp had struggled to comprehend. But when he boiled it down, it amounted to this: he was married once and that wife was taken from him, his happiness dissolved in one heartless stroke. He did not understand all of these fancy words, but he knew well enough the effects of them, their power over a man's life, this eating away at his heart. If the path had been open to him, he reckoned he might have become one of those men who make the laws. Instead, he was left to suffer at the behest of others.

What, then, was manhood for the colored? And what was freedom if even God did not possess the authority to answer a man's prayer?

A boy glanced at him, hurrying past. Hemp knocked over a cart, the wheel cracking against the sidewalk. The door to an abandoned store swung open and he kicked it, the wood splintering.

“Hey, what you doing over there?” a voice called from across the street.

He threw his head back, barely able to suppress all that threatened to erupt.

A cluster of men were pushing their way through a doorway, and Hemp hemmed his body behind them, driving them through the
opening with a grunt. On the other side, a long alley ended where a man collected payment. He glared at Hemp, cast a warning eye at two nearby louts. Hemp dropped a coin on the table and proceeded inside. The room was large, framed by timber walls beneath a beamed ceiling. Two gas lamps hung from ropes suspended over a square pen, eight feet in diameter and five feet deep. The floor of the pen was brushed clear, the dirt packed down. Men handed their bets through a windowed opening, then filed into three rows of staggered benches on all four sides of the pen. The more well-clad gamblers jostled for the closest seats. Hemp climbed into the highest row, his back to the wall. A cockeyed man, hat askew, clambered up beside him and clapped Hemp's shoulder. Men filed into the room until there was barely air to breathe. Smoke curled upward, fading into the ceiling. Hemp undid another button of his shirt and coughed, a taste of kerosene on his tongue.

Movement at the doorway caught the crowd's attention, and Hemp turned with them. A line of men entered carrying cages. One by one, they lowered the cages over the walls of the pen, and a wave of darkness spread across the floor, the chirps of vermin winding into screams. From far-off, Hemp heard the bark of a dog, a hollow aarfing sound. A man emerged, the dog tucked beneath his arm. He placed it on a high table. The dog was white with brown markings on its face and chest. It wiggled its snout in the air, sniffing. The cur's owner calmly rubbed the dog's head. The timekeeper stepped up into a box and raised a hand. When he lowered the arm, the man dropped the feist inside the box. It landed on its feet, crouching.

The canine took seconds to decide upon its first victim. It pounced, baring its teeth into the neck of the nearest rat, leaped for another, dispensing of each one in a single vicious bite. The rats sensed the feist before they saw it, but it was already too late. One of them fled, pushing into the horde of scrambling rodents. The feist caught it, long tail dangling from one end of its mouth, a tiny triangle of head from the other.
The dog flung its head to the side in one motion. The rat dropped. The cries of the men rose, their teeth bared, balled fists pumping. The dog caught another rat and then another, snapping them as they ran by. In the corner of the pit, the rodents huddled. One of them separated itself from the pack, and the feist went for it, barely missing its neck. The rat turned, planted its teeth into the dog's cheek. The dog yelped, dropping the rat and pinning it beneath his paws before gnashing it. It chewed, eating a piece of the mangled rodent. Loose flesh hung from the dog's face. Hemp leaned over and vomited. No one noticed, the odor of his sickness mixing easily into the foul scent of blood and animal excrement.

Dozens of rats lay still in the pen, and though their colors varied from brown to black, they were indistinguishable in their sameness. Blood stained the floor. The feist leaped leftward, dashed rightward. One rat charged, running straight at the dog. The dog dispensed of it with one quick bite. The other rats ran in circles, unsure what to do. There were still dozens of them alive, and it occurred to Hemp that had they risen up en masse against the feist they might have killed it. The dog was not much larger than the rats, but what it lacked in size it made up in cunning intent. The rats had not figured out they were the hunted until the rug of dead began to spread before them. The animals hushed. The gamblers screamed at the feist, leaned forward lustily over the walls of the pen, urging it on, their envenomed faces a mix of glee and hate. Even from his place in the back, Hemp could see the tiny doomed eyes of the rodents, flitting this way and that.

The dog paused, lifted one paw and then the other, pacing, as if figuring out its path through the muck. The white of its coat had darkened; its muscled haunches shook. It peered wearily over at its owner. Hemp read an obscenity on the man's lips. The feist drew up, turned, pushing on for a final spree, and in one gracile leap, a primordial howl escaping its lips, it pounced again. When there was no more movement,
the timekeeper yelled
Time!
and the dog was lifted out of the pen, its owner hugging it.

Men waved their arms fiendishly; others applauded, their coarsened hands making sounds like drumbeats. Hemp moved to escape, pushing his way through the crowd until he was outside. Feeling that he had barely crossed some jagged border, a bluntish pain thundered in his head. His feet lifted, and he ran toward home, tilting his face up to the black, starless sky as he scurried along this bottom, this road of the unblessed. He wiped his forehead with the back of a hand. It would take many washes to cleanse himself of the wretchedness he'd just witnessed.

When he arrived at the little rented house, an unknown man, some stray given shelter, slumbered in his bed, so Hemp reclined in the chair, resting his eyes, praying for the mercy of morning. Yet the vision of that carnal scene haunted him throughout the night, its clamor of baleful cheers, and he barely slept.

I
N ONE SMALL SECTION
of the timber yards that stretched along the south branch of the river, the third deacon from Hemp's church was in charge of the castoffs. Rotted, infested with worms, or otherwise ruined for use, the deacon salvaged what he could and threw the rest into a pile for burning. Hemp had visited the yard once before when he asked the deacon about a job. He tried to remember his way to the man's section, walking through row after row of identical straw-colored stacks of white pine twice as tall as a man. Lumber wagons rolled by, the fine dust of wood clouding the air. A man swung open the doors to a warehouse, revealing furniture makers at work. Hemp peered inside, not finding a single colored face among them. In a smaller building beside the furniture factory, a half-dozen men hoisted up the lid of a newly built piano. Hemp found his friend not far from those buildings,
perched on a stack of unplaned logs, a pair of leather guards over his hands.

“That you, Deacon Harrison?”

“It's me.”

“We ain't got no work.” The man glanced around.

“I come to see if you got something you can let me take.”

“I know you work with wood and have need of it, but I can't give you nothing.”

“Just a scrap. Rotted or whatnot. I don't care. It's just for carving. I don't need much.”

The deacon hesitated, then pointed. “That there is the pile. Dig out what you need, but be quick about it and get on your way. I got six mouths at home.”

“I'm sure grateful. See you on Sunday.”

The deacon touched his broad-brimmed hat and went back to work.

Hemp propped a flat piece of hewed wood, the driest he could find, onto his shoulder and walked home. He set the square of wood down in the yard and brought out his leather pack of tools. He took the stone from his pocket and oiled its belly. He picked up a chisel and ran its back against the stone, sliding it back and forth until the edge was flat and smooth. He sharpened the curved edges of his gouges and the long point of a parting tool before stropping them on a length of horsehide. The edges of the tools sliced sharply against his finger, so he lined them all up within arm's reach, wedging the piece of wood between his knees, and went to work. He used a bow saw to carve out four points, measuring out the horizontal arms so they would match. The surface of the wood was not smooth enough yet. Clouds covered the moon, and he lost his light. That was enough for the night. But the next evening, and the next and the next, after driving the doctor all day, Hemp carved the surface of the wood, tapping softly on the tip of a chisel with his mallet. The extra gouges he had bartered into his
possession since coming to Chicago granted him more control, and he used a veiner to smooth the delicate edges of flowers. Although Annie had not recognized the shapes of petals the way Madge did, she had always grown ecstatic at the sight of color in an unexpected place. He carved out a narrow point at the bottom and placed the finished cross beneath his bed.

On a late August morning, Hemp rose well before sunrise and began to walk. When he first started driving for the doctor, the man had patiently taught him the layout of the city's center: Water and Lake and Randolph and Washington and Madison and Monroe. In the other direction, Franklin and Wells and La Salle and Clark and Dearborn and State and Wabash. Softly, Hemp had repeated the names to himself as he followed the man's directions. Beyond that, Hemp had learned to chart the river's arm and legs, the lake's gentle curve, the railway's stretch of tracks. That morning, he chanted softly to himself as he walked, an unlit lamp swinging from his right hand, the cross in his left, his hat pulled low. He followed the lake south along its western bank, marking the streets and taking note of anything irregular so that he would be able to find his way back. He walked for three hours, keeping to the side of the road. He had only been to the cemetery once, when a church member died, and he had traveled on the family's wagon. He could not name the street, but he was certain he would recognize the stretch of grassy park. When he found it, he lit the candle inside his lantern, making his way into a remote corner. He put one foot in front of the other carefully, stepping through newly turned dirt. After his eyes adjusted, he found a clear, hard spot beneath a tree, and he was about to thrust the cross into the ground when he had a vision of it being removed from that place. He moved again, settling upon the flat side of a sloping hill. He pushed the cross into the ground, leaning on the back of his hand with the weight of his body. He squatted beside it and placed the lantern on the ground. He could see the petals of the flowers, no particular species,
just a spray of wildflowers, not unlike those that glittered on the Illinois prairie. Annie would have loved it. She would have blown the dust off and patted his hand in appreciation.
And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh
. Hemp rose, one foot sinking into the ground. The clouds passed and a slice of moon peeked out at him as he walked away.

After leaving the cemetery, he went straight to the widow's house, passing the boats on the canal, crossing the bridge into the northern district. He walked straight to the stable where he found Richard working on a lame horse. The deacon looked up and Hemp did not waste words.

“I got to find her.”

And somehow, the wiry man, whose hair was growing whiter by the day, knew Hemp was talking about Madge, not Annie.

“Ain't God something? She due back any day.”

“Due back?”

All this time, the path of righteousness had lain right in front of him. Past houses, down streets, past the firehouse, the bordellos, Gambler's Row, across a patch of dirt, over a washtub, into a one-room house with three sunken beds, rusted pots, a tub with a slow leak, and an alley that never quieted, God had found him. Hemp walked the streets, his vision clearer than it had been in months. Something flew toward him and he batted it down. A bird. He reached for it to see if it was hurt, but it flew away, its wings fluttering ecstatically. He felt for Annie's comb in his pocket.

Mr. Heil had tried to find Annie, had failed, and Hemp had resigned himself to the fact that if white men couldn't work a miracle, no one could. But Madge was headed back, and he had a feeling this was it—a miracle of his own making. It was about time, too, because he was finally ready to take off his walking shoes and climb into his chariot.