Rafe (3 page)

The mortally wounded Creek staggered back and clawed at the hilt as if to draw it from his body. Instead, he turned it viciously in a suicidal grip. His face contorted in silent pain as the blood gushed freely from the gaping wound and he pitched forward, dead.

Rafe straightened as he heard the scream from behind him. The remaining brave, his shriek of rage echoing hollowly from the walls, launched himself through the air, knife in hand, hate and revenge burning in his eyes. Rafe responded with the only weapon left to him—his hands. His right fist, a massive bony club, struck out like a serpent and met the Indian's face, the left hand simultaneously blocking the swinging knife arm arcing from above. Rafe felt the blow up to his shoulder blade, his right hand and arm instantly numb. The Creek's airborne momentum was abruptly shattered with a loud crack as face bones crumbled and splinters drove into his brain. Dead already, the wrenching snap of neck bones followed, and the Creek collapsed to the packed earth, his head twisted grotesquely back.

Rafe the victor, blood streaming from leg and back, stepped away from the dead men and flexed his fingers as the feeling and searing pain returned to his arm, shooting its length in great spasms. Cheers and curses from the blood-sated watchers above broke into his consciousness, but he forced himself to keep his eyes and face down to the dead sprawled to either side of him. Then slowly he turned and walked to the looped chain being lowered into the pit. Praise rained down on him but he remained as mute as the clay-smeared bronze corpses crumpled behind him. As always, only one man would leave the pit alive.

Ezra smiled graciously to
Monsieur
Bernard, and offered in his most pleasing and infuriating tone to bury the dead braves for the losing landowner. The Frenchman handed Clayton a sack of gold coins and muttering something about letting them rot where they lay, gathered his retinue and stalked off toward his horse. He mounted and rode off furiously, leaving his followers scattered behind.

Ezra waved languidly to his rival's back, then turned to face the pit in time to see Rafe step from the platform. For a moment their eyes met and held. Master and slave. Rafe sucked the blood from his bruised knuckles. Ezra sipped Jamaican rum from a flask of pounded gold.

2

The pitbucks crowded along the western wall of the compound fence, their black faces sweat-shiny and attentive to the sudden shouts of the whites crowded around the pit sunk into the small knoll some two hundred and fifty yards away.

“Wha' happen, Jomo?”

Jomo, battle-scarred veteran of almost as many bouts as Rafe, lifted himself up the final foot or two of the rough pole wall and hooked his elbows over the points. The height of the wall, almost twenty feet, put him at about the same level as the crowd, but he was still unable to see, of course, into the pit.

“Tell us wha's go'n on, Jomo,” another black asked, his voice a husky whisper. “Can yo' see anything?”

Jomo spat between the posts. The rough tree bark afforded him little purchase and he was forced to bear the weight of his squat, powerful body with his arms and vise-like grip alone. Muscles knotted along his shoulders and neck. “Don' see nuffin'.” He punctuated with another spit. “Don' never see nuffin' from up here 'til they carries 'em out. Dat's de way it is. But Ah climbs and looks anyhow.”

The guard left behind for compound duty finished his circuit of the outside wall and began another. His name was Booker, but everyone called him Boo. He hated the name. Approaching the west wall, he could make out Jomo up near the top. Racing from the corner to a position underneath the black, he unslung his musket.

“You escapin', nigger?”

Jomo looked down at the raised musket. Chances were the guard just might be lucky enough to hit him at that range. He put more weight on his left arm, shifting as far as possible behind the stake. No sense in making too good a target.…

“I didn't hear you answer, nigger.”

“Ah's jes tryin' to watch dat ol' fight, Boo.”

“My name's Booker, you som'bitch. Mistah Booker. You hear me?”

“Yassuh, Boo. Ah sho 'nuff does.”

“Get your black ass off'n that tree bark. You know you ain't supposed to be up there.”

The other slaves stepped back to make room and Jomo loosed his grip and shoved off to the rear, dropping lightly to the ground. Boo thrust his musket part way through the six-inch spacing between two of the thick trunks. “I could blow your head off, if I wanted to, boy. Can get me some nigger brains all over the ground, if you got any. You call me Mistah Booker like you're s'posed to. You got that?”

Jomo grinned broadly, his thick lips parted, revealing bashed and crooked teeth. “Mastuh Clayton wouldn't be appreciatin' no guard killin' off his prized pitbuck niggers, no suh. Ah think he'd take dat unkindly, Boo. Maybe eben put ol' Boo in dat pit wid Rafe hisself. You like dat, Boo?”

The guard flushed, his face an angry red. His finger tightened on the trigger, but he didn't fire. Eventually the barrel wavered, then withdrew from the wall. Boo pressed his face into the opening. “You jus' keep off'n that wall, nigger, or I'll take the cat to you. Mistah Clayton don't mind the cat none. He don't begrudge his niggers their whippins!” With that, Boo stomped off, trying to leave the area before he could hear them snicker at him. He couldn't move fast enough. “I'll show 'em. Goddamn their black asses … I'll show 'em,” he murmured.

No sooner was Boo out of sight than a muffled roar from the crowd filtered through the wall. The blacks hurried to the sunken tree posts which delineated the compound. The poles were placed a little less than six inches apart and were all at least twenty feet tall. The bottom fifteen feet had been stripped clean, leaving a shiny surface devoid of finger- or toehold. The top five feet were still covered with bark, loose and crumbling now, too dangerous to trust with one's full weight. As if escape wasn't difficult enough, the final foot of the posts had been pared down and fitted with sharp, iron-capped points, rusted now, hot in summer, cold in the winter. The man who would chance blood poisoning on the rusty caps was brave indeed.

Jomo was such a man. Standing on one of the younger Negroes' shoulders, he was barely able to get a grasp on the smooth trunk and hoist himself up. Feet wedged between the rough bark and elbows around the lethal points, he could see the crowd moving away from the pit, clustering in small groups and exchanging money. The fight was over. Two men at the winch turned the handle slowly, hauling up the winner. He could see M. Bernard's party as it galloped away from the small, awkward figure of Clayton. He couldn't tell if the lord of Freedom was smiling or not. Jomo would have felt more confident in Rafe's victory if he had not seen the two Creeks as they had been led to the arena. One Indian was enough, but two.…

Jomo scanned the edge of the pit closely, searching for some sign of Rafe. He knew Rafe well, was probably closer to him than anyone else. The two might have considered themselves friends in another time and place, but at Freedom, Jomo knew only too well, a man you called friend one day might be facing you in the pit the next. Better not to have friends. And yet … he and Rafe were the two best fighters old man Clayton had. It seemed unlikely he'd pit them against each other.

“What yo' see now, Jomo? Is dat big nigger walkin'?”

“Don't seem fair, sickin' two on him. An' Injuns at dat.”

“Injuns is fast an' mean,” a third voice explained. “Yo' mark my word. Dey take de measure a' dat Rafe. Yassuh. Dey sho 'nuff cut dat nigger down to size.” A touch of the wistful tinged the speaker's voice. A thin, wiry youth with eleven fights behind him, he and Rafe had had trouble between them for some time. Cat hoped to hell Rafe had been wounded. It would slow him up some if they ever had to fight.

A burred head rose slowly out of the pit, followed by Rafe's huge form. Jomo watched, happy in spite of himself, as his almost-friend stepped laconically from the chain onto the boards lining the edge of the pit and stood there facing old Clayton like he owned the little man. “Jes' shut yo' mouf, Cat. Dat nigger jus' step out, mean and big as ebber he was. Looks like dey blooded him, but he standin' and puttin' one foot in front a' 'nother.” And with that pronouncement, Jomo bounded back to the compound floor and headed for the gate, followed by his fellow slaves.

Rafe walked alone, the closest guard, Decater, some five paces behind him. The walk back to the compound always affected him deeply. Every time he crossed toward the unlikely tree-barricades, conflicting emotions raged in his breast. Each time he had just killed, and today he had killed twice. Except for the occasional white, he didn't enjoy the deaths he inflicted, saw them as a waste, as crimes against himself.
The sun was high overhead now, filling the air with bright heat
. Each time the scent of blood and sweat and fear mingled redolently, following him out of the pit and hovering around him in a grim miasma that clouded his senses.
Dust puffed from under his feet and caked his ankles and calves
. Each time the remnant of his own fear tucked itself away in his gut, waiting for night and sleepless tossing, waiting for a woman, perhaps, who would take it from him, dilute it with sweat and desire.
The distant swamp echoed a violent chorus of predator and prey
. Each time raw elation surged within him, for it was only during the walk he finally recognized that he was, in truth, still alive.
The guard behind him coughed and spat
. Each time the sight of the looming wall ahead and the gate designed to close after him filled him with a sense of dread, for he then remembered death always waited.
A cloud sliced the sun. The afternoon rain would be on time
.

The walk today was worse. He had been touched, wounded. His right arm hung limp at his side, the pain shooting its length and then into the muscles of his back. He flexed the fingers, his eyes clouding with pain, then clearing as the fist opened and closed, opened and closed until the pain slowly faded to a dull throb. His back was worse. On fire, it seemed, where the skin lay in a huge flap, the tissue below it exposed to the clustering flies attracted by the warm, drying blood. Twice he shrugged his left shoulder, the constricting muscles sending up the flies in a small brief cloud that resettled immediately. Sweat poured down his shoulder and into the cut, stinging sharply with each drop. He quit trying after the second shrug. Only clear water would keep the flies away, cool the skin and stop the salt flow.

The wound on his thigh continued to bleed freely. The Creek knife, razor-sharp, had slit the skin and sliced cleanly through part of the bulging muscle. The wound bothered him unduly, adding to the welter of emotion and confusion. Could it be more serious than it looked? Rafe had heard of redmen who coated their blades with snake poison. He had killed twelve of
Monsieur
Bernard's fighters over the past three years and the Indians brought the total to fourteen. Bernard surely had cause to hate him and would be happy enough to see Rafe dead no matter what the outcome of the fight. It was a cruel, cheating thing to do, but Rafe couldn't discount the possibility.
Monsieur
Bernard was white.

The gate in front of him swung open. Rafe stopped on the threshold. No voice welcomed him; as always, a ritualistic, expectant silence greeted the returning victor. His eyes slowly scanned the familiar compound. Twenty-four black men, black as himself, stared back impassively. They stood arranged in informal order of rank. Jomo, number one pitbuck in Rafe's absence, stood a little to the front, with Trinidad, Dingo and Cat, the thin, angry one, to his rear and the rest arranged randomly around the compound. The sweet smell of dust and sweat mingled in the air, trapped by the massive walls. In the gum tree over the exercise shed, a mockingbird attempted a complicated melody, breaking off in midstream with an unlikely squawk. The discordant note broke the spell and the men, as if emerging from a trance, shifted positions, relieving tense muscles.

Jomo, all five-feet-eight of him, swaggered toward Rafe and spoke to him in the bush dialect common only to the pair. The words slurred quietly, gutturally, hinting of the dark heat of the old land from which they had been taken.

“You fight good, hey, N'gata?”

N'gata. Not quite brother, more than a friend. It was all one man could mean to another here at Freedom. One cannot kill a brother … one must save the life of a friend. But if the bloody-handed spirits bring the face-off, one can kill his N'gata.

Rafe gestured with his head, nodding back in the direction of the pit. “They too fight good, Jomo N'gata. Those two fellas fast like leopards.” He smiled. The sound of the old talk eased the tension further, soothed the jangled nerves.

“But you kill them two fast.”

“The knife spirit, our blood mother, was good to her son, Rafe.”

“Maybe she favor Jomo, too, this summer,” Jomo grunted, his face twisting in anticipation of the killing he loved.

“The blood mother favors none but the dead, N'gata.”

Decater prodded Rafe in the back with the barrel of his musket. “You two niggers quit that mumbo jumbo and talk like ya' been learnt by Mistah Clayton.”

It was a mistake. His nerves still cat-quick from the fight, Rafe spun about and twisted the musket from the startled guard's hands. Decater grabbed for it and then froze, his hands tiny claws that started to shake with fear. His milky face went even paler as he found himself staring down the maw of his own musket. Rafe, half-crouching, held the gun ready to fire. Behind him, Jomo spoke, the easy voice soothing, calming, repeating the words of Rafe's father. “There is no honor in killing a jackal.”

The old saying had the desired effect. Rafe relaxed, rose to his full height, broke into a contemptuous leer, then tossed the musket at the startled Decater's feet. The gun went off as the small guard jumped into the air. Rafe turned and crossed the yard to the water trough. Jomo and the others followed, laughing in spite of the hollow fear of what the other guards might do in retaliation.