Wash (15 page)

Rufus stayed busy, him and Cleo both. He got himself hired out all over the county, so he’d been places and seen the world, on top of him being saltwater even longer than my mamma. But he was different from her too. He showed his African when it worked and hid it when it didn’t and, on account of that, he made her mad at first. But Rufus looked past that and straight into her face. Said she looked too much like his auntie for them to stay crossways with each other.

She’d sit by his fire while he waited for Cleo to get home and they’d trade words. One by one, pointing first at something close by and then farther away. Pebble, crate, cookpot. Wind in the leaves. She’d give up her word for it and then he’d give up his, both of em pleased when their two words echoed each other. They spent hours that way and it softened em both. I’d sit there listening, following em as far as I could go. I’d see my mamma make a shape with her hands and I’d try to call the word up in my own mind, then I’d hold it real careful till Rufus gave up his.

It felt good to reach down through the new sounds of this place to find my childhood still laying there underneath. My mamma worked all my life to build a world inside my mind and then here came Rufus. Proof the world she’d built inside me was a boat and might even float.

Once Rufus took me into his forge, I was good and hooked. So much to learn, felt like I wouldn’t never touch the bottom and all of it linked together. He had all his jobs lined up on the wall where he could see em hanging there. That wall of his held everything from brands to gates, hinges and latches for all sizes, chains and shackles and padlocks. Andirons and pails of nails. Stacks of blunt, squared off rods sat waiting for him next to a bucket of horseshoes.

That overseer Pickens was forever sticking his head in the door of our shop, hollering about what he needed and did Rufus have it ready yet. Rufus would just step closer to his forge and work his hammer faster, sending bright bits of metal flying in a bigger and bigger arc till they landed on Pickens’s sweaty pants leg or shirtsleeve, biting him hot and harder than a horsefly. He’d lean his face towards Pickens, squinching it up like he was trying hard to hear over the roar of the fire and the ringing of the hammer and the sizzle of me dunking cooling metal deep in the quench bucket. Then Rufus would shake his head like it was too bad he couldn’t stop to hear what Pickens was trying to say because he was in the middle of a big job.

But I couldn’t stay out of trouble whether I tried to or not. Folks were always trying to put me up on top of the heap or else push me off it. And those Thompson boys kept after me, coming down hard, saying they needed to knock me into shape. They was testing me. See was I tough and quick enough for em to fight me. They’d meet their buddies out in the woods, setting their best boys against each other for bets. Lots of drinking and big talk but the stakes stayed real high out there and I didn’t want any part of it.

Rufus didn’t mind when I started coming to his shop nights too. He knew I was trying to stay out of the way. He’d be sitting there with a candle and a cup, forging pieces that didn’t make no sense to me. Not till one evening, when that saltwater man from a couple of places down the road walked over to visit his wife. Man barely set foot inside before his eyes fell on the piece Rufus was making and he lit up, talking a mile a minute, never mind we couldn’t catch a word of it. And stayed in the doorway like he didn’t want to come too far inside.

Rufus just watched the man awhile. Then nodded at him, tipping the unfinished piece towards him so he could see it close before turning back to stoke the fire. It was one of those birds sitting at the top of a long staff. Those saltwater negroes loved those birds, even though they acted scared to touch em. Before Rufus got through making one, they knew what it was and they’d stare so hard, looking hungry to run their fingers along its wings.

I knew there was a story there but I knew just as well not to ask. But something about that man in his shop that night made Rufus decide to show me. He held the staff by its base, tipping that bird on top towards my temple and raising his eyebrows to ask can you see it?

The man knew exactly what Rufus was trying to show me and he stood there smiling with his arms wrapped round himself. Rufus stayed calm but the man twitched with wanting me to guess. Seemed like we stood there forever till Rufus started talking.

“This bird is your head. Your mind’s eye. Sit on top and see from on high. Both this world and the next. When life gets tight, remember this bird and you know how to go.”

Rufus straightened the staff, looking at me, asking do you see? And I’m nodding.

I thought about what Rufus was telling me. I knew about having my heart tied to another world. My mamma holding all her people in her mind’s eye so strong till I saw em too. She had taught me how to move between that world and this one, no matter how hard I’d tried to leave that hoodoo behind when we first landed at Thompson’s place, back when all I wanted was to be like everybody else.

Rufus called me back into myself and just in time. Reminding me I could leave this new place whenever I needed. Whenever things started to heat up, I could just go. Like that bird. I could lie in the tall grass and let the island ponies graze closer and closer. I could float outside the waves and I could feel my mamma’s eyes warm on me. Old man Thompson’s too. Felt good and doing it saved me more than once.

Whenever those Thompson boys honed in on me, I’d make my mind into that bird carrying me to the ocean with its roar steady and mounting. Took the edge off whatever mess they had for me that day, reminding me of a bigger world. I got so good at not letting em get to me, I stumbled into a whole different batch of trouble. They needed me beat down and scared looking, not all peaceful and full of ocean inside. Rufus spoke real sharp to me about that.

“Show em only what you want em to see. No more, no less.”

He told me God gives every single one of us this bird, but some folks don’t pay no attention to theirs. He said using your mind’s eye to keep track of what you’ve had and lost is what makes it good and strong. Lets you see farther.

Made perfect sense to me because my mamma worked it like that. But not everybody was that way. Most folks round here called that old stuff conjure. Just some crazy saltwater African mess and stay away from it. For most of em, that other world was too far away. Never close enough to see it clear but always close enough to stay spooked by it.

Those that was scared of my mamma and Rufus, they grabbed up that Bible like it was going to save em. Save em from themselves is all it’s going to save em from and not much else is what my mamma said. Said only thing to save any of us is remembering this world here is not the one you came from and keeping your own pictures strong and fresh.

Besides, she knew how it went. Said those folks will wave that Bible and quote you your sinfulness, but when that baby gets sick enough to die or when that mind starts to go in a young person, then here come those Christians, hunting them an African, asking can she fix it.

So I knew that faraway gone look Rufus got whenever he was seeing some place in his mind’s eye, and I stayed real quiet whenever it came over him. I knew he was headed for a story. Sometimes just shifting in my seat was all it took to call Rufus back from where he’d gone and then he’d shut right up, acting like he was giving away some inside part of himself he never meant to show.

One night, he’s picking out the pieces we’ll use the next day, telling me about each one. Saying metal comes all kind of different ways. Each piece holds good and bad inside, both at the same time, and it can go either way. Just like us. Saying each piece holds a record of every single blow. Just like us.

I looked round that nighttime shop and every piece looked the same to me. All of it dirty and dusty and I remember starting to wonder. Maybe deep down underneath, Rufus is crazy. Then he leans to dig in the scrap heap and turns to me, holding two pieces of a broken file, one in each hand.

“Look here at what happens to hard.”

I finger the jagged teeth of the file, then its broken edge.

“Plenty hard when you use it right. But breaks easy. You see?”

And I’m nodding while he’s rummaging for a different piece of metal.

“Now, this piece. Wrought iron. You can knock it to hell and back before it breaks.”

In the time it takes for Rufus to say those words, he’s hammered the piece into an L shape over the edge of his anvil with only three blows.

“So soft it’s weak. Shows every stroke but gives and gives before breaking. And lasts.”

Rufus stops to look at me and sees me working to remember what he’s telling me.

“Look at people and watch how they do. You know old Juba, wandering round, crazy and jabbering with nothing to eat but what we give him?”

I nod.

“Juba’s like this file. He came in too hard and he let this place break him in two. Now he’s wandering the scrap heap. Juba’s how you know hard ain’t enough. When you start to find yourself getting bowed up, and I know you will, I want you to think about this file.”

He’s leaning forward, holding a piece of the broken file in each hand, waving them a little, bringing the two broken ends almost to touching. I’m sitting there on the bench and I can’t take my eyes off those two jagged edges of that broken file, looking like they’re trying to kiss across the space between em.

He’s asking me do I see? And I’m nodding, yes I do, till he says good and tips his cup up.

∞

Most of the rest of the people on the Thompson place steer clear of Rufus, even though they are not exactly sure why. All the little ones hear are warnings. You best be careful about that smith. But when the children ask be careful how, nobody will say.

Most people remember only what their parents tell them, not the whole of things. And if their parents don’t know, or don’t remember, then there’s nothing to tell. Sometimes even knowing and remembering won’t help with the telling because so many of the words are gone. All the stories they need to tell well up in their throats, choking them. And they are so tired and there’s no way to explain it. Africa was another world and it hurts to try stretching their own minds around it any more, much less the minds of their children, so they say just stay away from him.

These countryborn children cannot see their own saltwater fathers when they were young, poised on the cusp between child and man, standing naked and awed into silence before the head smith during initiation, feeling the rumbling sweep of his incantation swirling around them, his careful hand on them and then his more careful blade. Death draws close during circumcision and it is the smith, with his sacred chants and his cut made with the knife he has forged, who makes this boy a man on this day. It is the smith who has his hand on the latch of the gate between this world and the next, because everybody knows this boy can never become an ancestor unless he has first died to childhood and been reborn a man at the hand of the smith.

As these saltwater fathers look helplessly into the uncomprehending eyes of their countryborn sons, it feels like too much to explain. Too much to have lost. So these fathers can only watch Rufus, so strong and steady as to seem arrogant, with his assured place, his shop and his cabin and his wife, and resent him. They cannot see his lineage or its source so they cannot surrender to it. Then these fathers tell their own never-to-be-initiated sons to stay away from that blacksmith because he’s a damn conjure man.

So Rufus is a priest with no church and no followers. He has little of his leverage left and he uses it carefully. He knows it’s best not to need anything from anybody and he isn’t too good at hiding his opinion on that.

When Wash came along, Rufus started to wonder whether he could put all he knew inside this boy’s head. What Rufus will come to see is that Wash carries inside of him a bowl into which all manner of things can be poured because this is how he has been raised. Even before Wash started to turn away from Mena, she saw it would be Rufus who picked up where she left off. She could have been jealous but instead she gave thanks for him.

Rufus turns to teenage Wash sitting next to him on that bench in his nighttime shop. Takes hold of the lanky boy’s face by the jaw and turns it toward him. Looks into Wash’s eyes hard, hunting to see what kind of man will this boy make. Wash does not flinch and Rufus feels his heart open.

Soon enough, it’s Wash’s second winter on the Thompson place. One of those clear cold days when the world falls so quiet it feels empty. Wash has gone for a load of charcoal when the Thompson boys come to the door of Rufus’s shop, saying they need an R brand.

Eli’s in the lead as always, talking before he steps across the threshold. Telling Rufus to drop whatever else he’s doing so they can help their neighbors get a handle on this latest spate of runaways. Saying how they might even make themselves some money. Talking about how an R brand leaves no doubt. Eli steps close.

“You see a negro you don’t already know, and he’s wearing that R brand on his cheek, then you know for sure he’s run off. You can collar him right that minute and you’ll get some reward money for sure.”

Rufus knows it’s the excitement as much as the promise of cash that has Eli agitated. Bounty hunting other people’s negroes is something Thompson never would have stood for, but this is the next best thing. Eli tells Rufus to make them an R.

“Do it like the other brands but make it nice. Put a leaf on the stem.”