Rafe (9 page)

Cat had only eleven fights to his credit, but nevertheless had most of the other pitbucks cowed. Deceptively thin and fragile, the slight, trim youth possessed amazing speed and everyone in the compound knew it. Five of their previous number had known it, too. Little good it had done them. Now they knew nothing. Speed or no, he prudently avoided direct confrontation with Jomo or Rafe. Caution with these two was advisable, for though the pitbucks were forbidden under threat of twenty-five lashes to fight among themselves outside the pit, one or two, in the last year, had been discovered dead in the morning. No one knew who had killed them. No one dared assume it wasn't Rafe or Jomo.

“The mamba has no strength, yet he is a hunter of hunters. Such a foe is dangerous and deadly,” Rafe's father had said. Cat was like the deadly black snake of the African sun-baked soil. Quick beyond belief, with a razor-sharp, slim, double-edged stiletto in each fist, Cat did not need great strength. “When the mamba strikes first, there is no strength in the world to save you.” His father's words brought a twinge of fear to the big man but he forced it from his mind. Fear was not a good feeling to carry inside. It was an enemy and did not help a man stay alive, especially in the pit. A slow smile crept over his face, for Rafe had seen death claim every manner of victim in his brief lifetime. Even a black mamba.

“Yo' leg heals, N'gata?” Jomo sauntered up and squatted down beside Rafe.

“It will be strong enough, never fear, Jomo N'gata. I will be able to give you a good fight when we meet within the circle of clay.”

Jomo grinned lopsidedly, a length of sugar cane protrading from his mouth. He spat a wad of chewed fibers into the dirt at Rafe's feet and answered in plantation English, “Ol' Mistah Clayton ain't goana put his two bes' pitbucks agin each oder, N'gata. No suh. He know de value. Yo' and Ah done brung him plenty gold. He ain't goana lose it none by killin' de one ob us.”

“I have seven more fights, Jomo,” Rafe continued in the more dignified old language. “Ezra Clayton's going to have to give me a gun, wagon and woman. The way I see it, come that last fight and he's going to be sitting in that white house, wondering how to get out of giving me all that. Giving me freedom, most of all. Now who,” he paused, breaking brutally into compound talk, the sounds harsh and uninviting, a threat in themselves, “who best got de chance ob takin' me, Jomo? Who got de chance to take de number one man ob Mistah Clayton's pitbucks?”

Jomo's eyes narrowed. His face became incongruously cold and loaded with menace, an expression Rafe had seen on the smaller man only when he was in the pit and lusting for blood. “I reckin' de number two man gots de bes' chance o' takin' de number one man. I reckin' one ob us goana hab to kill de oder.”

Rafe nodded impassively, looked straight before him as Jomo rose with simian grace, his face hard and unfriendly. He spoke in a chillingly threatening tone as if shrugging off like a cloak any previous friendship he had felt for Rafe. “Yo' get yo' laig healed, nigger. Ah doan wants to kill me no cripple less'n Ah has to.”

“I will bleed on your grave as befits a brave warrior,” Rafe returned formally in the age old challenge of warriors. But Jomo had already begun to walk away. Rafe sighed. It was hard to drive away N'gata Jomo, but they must not become too close, must never depend on each other. For he was certain Ezra Clayton would match them. First he would have to contest Cat. Surviving that, Jomo would be next. Rafe rolled so the sun could hit his shoulder. He would kill them both, yet found himself dreading the confrontation with Jomo, for the two men were brothers, like it or not. But Rafe wanted his freedom. He knew that. And he would allow no one to keep him from it. “What a man truly desires he will get,” his father had told him. Rafe unconsciously moved his head up and down in silent agreement, then started the flexing regimen once again, gritting his teeth against the throbbing pain which would grow less and less each day until he was once again ready to kill.

Dusk. They were late. An afternoon shower had tired the mare and occasioned a stop to raise the calash. The next three miles seemed more like double their number, for the combined sand and reddish clay stuck to the wheels, weighing them down with sticky muck.

The end of the wet road was a relief for all, especially the panting mare. Steve stopped the gig on the first ten yards of dry earth—it was as if a line had been drawn—here it shall rain, here stay dry—and turned the mare loose to drink in the ditch and crop some needed grass while he scraped the mud from the wheels. Crissa got out and walked back and forth, stretching her cramped legs and back, shooing away battalions of mosquito lions whizzing dizzily about her. Black, blue, green, even red and yellow, they seemed to come in every color of the rainbow. There were mosquito lions in Boston but they were called dragon flies and were rare. She tried to convince herself they wouldn't really bite.

A half-hour passed; little was said. Steve, sweating profusely, lowered the calash again and hooked up the tired mare. They set off again, thankful for the slight breeze caused by their movement. By the time they came to Claytonville, afternoon had given way to an evening marked by piles of red-rimmed gray cumulus clouds rearing to the west. The next day would be nice.

Claytonville had grown. The sign said over a hundred souls and reminded Crissa yet again of the havoc Ezra Clayton had wrought with her father's name. Claytonville. An ugly name, tasting of rusty metal left too long in the rain. Again the question. Why, how, had her mother permitted this? “It's grown,” was all she said.

“Two general stores, a smithy, an apothecary, a barber and surgeon, a tavern and a …” Steve paused, at a loss for the right word, “… gaming house. And the church.”

Crissa shot a glance at him. A church? Then why wasn't Steve the preacher? But she had vowed to stay silent.

“It'll be dark when we get there,” Steve offered. “I'm glad I sent a rider ahead.”

“You should stay the night, then.”

“They gave me two weeks to come get you. I have to get back. I'll sleep in Claytonville and be back by noon tomorrow. Besides, it's your homecoming. They'll want to see you. Not me.”

“Steve.…”

“Don't worry. I'll see you next weekend.” He clucked to the mare, urging her into a halfhearted trot.

The lights of Claytonville were soon behind and they were once again in open country, broken now by few trees and no lights, for there were no small farmhouses here. All was part of Freedom Plantation, part of the inheritance she had come back to claim. Steve brought the gig to a halt at the top of a rise. “There it is,” he said matter-of-factly.

And so it was. Fitzman's Freedom. But she could tell little, only that lights blazed in windows to welcome her back. Home.
Home again, home again, jiggity jog
… “Oh, papa, I wish you were here,” she whispered. “I wish, I wish…” But John Fitzman wasn't there. He lay buried with his ship at sea, three points south of east, ten leagues from storm-tossed Cape Hatteras. She reached for the only hand nearby, clasping Steve's fist as it clutched the reins. “It's beautiful, Steve. Don't you think so?”

Steve grunted in reply. Crissa paid no heed, only leaned forward in anticipation as the mare headed for supper and a rubdown.

And suddenly a flare to the right. A knot of pitch ablaze and held high by a dark figure. The mare shied violently to the left, only to be startled back to the right by another flare, followed by an unearthly yell.

“Steve! My God! They've …” but she broke off as Steve raised his voice to join the din.

“Hallooo the house…!” he called, turning to her with a grin.

As on signal the roadway in front of them blazed as torches were fired to light their way. As they passed, the bearers ran onto the road behind them until, when Crissa looked back, they had formed a twinkling magic procession. Steve, laughing aloud, cracked the whip and the mare broke into one last, frightened stumbling trot, down the last bend and past the edge of the pecan grove—
PaPaw, I'm home. I'm home
.—and onto the path leading to the house. No sooner had the gig stopped than a Negro was at the mare's head. Steve leaped from his seat and ran around to Crissa's side and offered her his hand. For a moment she couldn't move, only sit and stare. The house was immaculate. Not a broken step, not an unpainted board. Steve took her hand to break the spell, and before she knew it she was leaping from the gig and running for the broad steps to the gallery. Halfway up the stairs the front door opened. A stranger stood there, arms outstretched to receive her. It was her mother.

The clock was chiming eleven when she finally ran out of stories. All about her the house was silent. Micara nodded sleepily in her chair across the room from her. Ezra sat perfectly still, legs crossed, eyes fastened on her. The chimes ran their course, stopped. “My goodness. I've been talking for two hours solid. I'm afraid I quite forgot myself, mama.”

Micara's head jerked back in a losing battle against sleep.

“I'm afraid your mother's exhausted. She been waiting very hard for you. It's a special day for her—for all of us.” His tone was light, pleasant, even refined. “If you'll pardon me, I'll see her to her room,” he said, rising. “I'll be back down in a moment if you'd like to have a glass of wine with me before you sleep.”

Crissa rose and went to Micara's chair. “Mama?” she called, “wake up.” Micara opened bleary eyes. “Poor mama. I bored you to sleep.”

Micara tried to smile, “No you didn't, dear. I enjoyed listening to you. It's just so late.…” she trailed off, looking about and trying to discover where she might be.

“She hasn't been feeling well lately,” Ezxa said, taking her arm gently. “Will you wait?”

Crissa nodded. “Yes, of course.”

Ezra bowed and escorted Micara from the room, leaving Crissa alone. Suddenly tired herself, she moved about the
large sitting room. There were so many new things to replace the old, familiar objects she had dreamed of for so long. Papa's chair, gone. His pipe rack, gone. The bust of George Washington, the bellows and poker he'd brought with him from Boston so many years ago, gone. “My God!” she gasped, staring at the wall over the fireplace. His portrait gone too?

“It's safely stored away, should you want it,” a soft voice behind her said.

She wheeled to see Ezra standing in the doorway, a glass of sherry in either hand. Did he smile with concealed mockery? Crissa couldn't tell. “I would like,” she said as pleasantly as possible, “to see it back where it belongs.”

“Ah, but then, one must determine
where
it belongs, don't you think?” He walked to her, handed her a glass, raising his in toast. “To you, my dear Crissa. Welcome home.”

Crissa sipped the wine, stared at the man before her. She turned away from him to conceal a slight shudder, looked absentmindedly at the empty space. “I liked my father's portrait where it was.”

“My dear Crissa. You must admit a slight … awkwardness … must you not? After all, there is a new man of the house. I should hardly like to be compared, every day of my life, to the departed John Fitzman.”

“I should think not,” Crissa said, barely audible.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The house looks better than when I left You and mother have done wonders with it.”

“I … we try.”

“I remember arriving in Boston. Almost four years ago to the day. I was to stay in a boarding house—a very proper boarding house run by two of father's maiden cousins. It was early summer here and still quite cold there.” She sipped the sherry. “I was a lonely girl with few friends, given to excessive daydreaming of home. I pictured it as beautiful. The fields, the pecan grove. The house. Then came my seventeenth birthday. I had been in Boston a little over a month. That night there was a new moon. I sat alone in my room and looked out over the city and cried. I thought of home and suddenly saw it as it really was. The house unpainted, the fields half grown to weeds. Mother was poor and, I thought, alone. As was I. I cried myself to sleep.” She looked around the room at the gleaming furniture, dusted and spotless, the sparkling crystal on the sideboard. “It looks very nice now.”

“Thank you. I hope you'll be happy here.”

Crissa looked at him appraisingly. Such a strange man. Warm on the surface, but cold underneath, betrayed by frigid calculation his eyes couldn't conceal. What was it she saw there? Amusement? Mockery? Determination? Contrivance? Fear? Again the shudder passed through her, a whisper of muted predator's wings casting their shadow over her heart. She hid the premonition with a yawn. “I'm very tired. The last few weeks have been trying. Will you forgive me if I go to bed?”

“Of course.”

“You've been very kind,” she said, setting the drink down and going to him.

“It's a pleasure to be kind to one so young and beautiful,” Ezra answered with a slight bow.

Crissa held her hand out and Ezra took it, started to raise it to his lips, then made a half-fumbling recovery when she shook it instead before turning to the door.

“Crissa.”

“Yes?”

“I almost forgot.” The twinkling smile again, hider of secrets. “I've arranged for a … special event to be held in your honor this coming Saturday and Sunday. A welcome home party.”

“It's not necessary, you know. I…”

“Nonsense. We shall, as it were, kill the fatted calf. Even if you aren't the prodigal son.” He paused speculatively, then flashed an ingratiating smile. “I hope you sleep well on your first night home, my dear.”

Crissa gazed at him a moment, trying to ferret out the secret behind the masklike smile. “Thank you,” she finally answered. “So do I.” She left the room in a quiet swirl of skirts. A servant waited in the hall to light her way with a taper.