Wash (5 page)

Said it made her feel like she never could catch her breath good. That’s when I used to hear her laugh a little. Saying no wonder they can’t never see what’s right in front of their face. There’s nowhere for your eye to travel. Nothing like a straight shot nowhere.

I can see what she means, with everything growing so thick and right up on you all the time. Makes me glad for those few open places you come across sometimes. Like the trees need to stand back and get a good look at each other. A little clearing with grass growing thick and shiny. Some place for the moon to shine down on. Give you time to see somebody you come to meet walking towards you.

Course all these thick woods, that’s my cover. Easier for me to get from place to place when I need to. I’m like my mamma in that my eye likes to travel but I’ll always need some edges to skirt whether I like it or not.

The way Pallas first showed me the lay of the land between her place and mine made me feel like I’d never seen it before. She brought her hands together at her waist, cupping them to make a bowl and then letting them fall open. Her palms rose up, making a small flat place, showing me how the hollow after that second ridge between us shallows out towards the slough. Then she pointed with one finger to a place on her other palm, showing me where the slough narrows to a creek mouth.

She was standing off to the side of the path in that high necked dress she always wore. I remember watching her hands move and trying to hear what she was telling me. But all I could see was her stepping inside that stall at Miller’s place on that very first Friday they sent me over there. Long waisted, narrow like a gourd. Wearing that same dress. And pale, with those smoky gray eyes that keep you looking even when they make you wonder which white man she got em from. Had her hair drawn back and covered for being too good.

She came in so quiet and silky, she shifted the way that place felt to me. But something about her made my palms itch that first evening. It was the skittery way she acted once I started looking at her. Made me mad at first but she was right to watch out about me. She was right.

She tilted her head to draw me back to what she was telling me. Smiled and said just wait for her near those three big sycamores at the edge of Richardson’s place and she’ll lead me the rest of the way. She knew I’d never find it the first time. And if I think somebody saw me turn off the road, then veer towards my right hand till I hit some deepish water, and walk up against the current a ways. Pull out on the mud flats and wait. She’ll find me.

Me and Pallas, our minds see alike. Two night birds, right on each other’s tail, swooping then banking. Most of the good best time we spend is at night.

Most folks is scared at night and that’s fine with me. Day’s got me pinned down till I can’t do much without everybody knowing. But once the sun starts to slide, with everything falling into blue so you can’t tell one thing from the next, that’s when I start waking up. Night is when I get me to myself. Most nights at least. Now that Richardson’s starting to come down to my barn later and later, I stay careful.

But most times I just want to get to Pallas. I cut straight through and she does too. I know the back way now, like a body laid out in front of me. Dip down to a ribbon of boggy strip cutting through the bottom. Then that big white oak with a thick hairy X of poison ivy vining up it. Swing wide round the stand of crab apple that draws the wild hogs, wade across the creek right by the deepest bend in case I need to hide in that cave where the bank hangs down.

Where I catch up with Pallas best is at the little pond behind the marsh. After a hot day, the night I walk through to get to her has pockets of cool scattered in the warm, just like that pond. And me and Pallas, we step straight out towards the middle of it.

Cool mud comes up between my toes, then water warm as breath and soft, rising round me so smooth the world falls away. Walk out till it licks my neck and then one last step. Can’t see her but I feel her behind me while we stand there cooling off. Not much moon. Night sky curves round us like a bowl. Tip my head back, see more stars. Stand there till I get myself still and calm.

There’s a spot we like on the far bank in the shadow of a big tulip poplar down in an old storm. Silvery trunk throws a shadow big enough to hold us. Hard dirt and dry grass to lay on. Sometimes we talk and sometimes we don’t. It depends.

But once I wrap my hands around her middle, my thumbs touching over where she breathes in but light, my fingers nearly meeting in back but light, and her looking over my shoulder at the stars cupping down round us but light, once I get my hands on her to where I can feel her breathing in and out, opening and closing my grip but light, that’s it.

Pallas

Sometimes it’s not about all that. Lot of times, it’s just sitting quiet, him and me. Visiting whether we’re talking or not. Watching the sky turn, curled up next to our log by the pond.

We talk about now and we talk about then. Once in every long while, we’ll talk about time to come, but we keep ourselves real careful about that. Most times, we stay right with where we are and where we’ve been. Talk about this person and that one. Both here and gone. About who did what and who said what, and sometimes it’s funny and sometimes it’s like walking into a wall.

He tells me about his mamma. His mamma and her bumping smack into his daddy and then never seeing him again. He’s handing me pieces of his story like food and I’m holding each one real careful, memorizing the way it looks before I tuck it in my mouth. Enough times of us meeting up, I know all about his mamma’s mamma and his daddy’s too. I take his family for mine, like happens when you don’t have much of one yourself, and I’m glad to feel them close.

As for me, he can look at me and see a lot of what happened before Phoebe found me. He feels the rest of it from the way I can turn to dead weight in his hands, with my eyes gone empty, just staring over his shoulder. He can guess most of it because the words of a story matter less than the shape and feel of it.

I tell him some about Phoebe teaching me, but mostly my story comes when I scan the woods we’re walking through. I’ll stop short to kneel down with a plant and he’ll wait quiet, knowing I’m watching for Phoebe’s hand moving through the leaves. He stands there, ready to fall back in step with me when I’m done.

He likes that I’m not scared. Go everywhere and by myself. Make my own little money too, even though they don’t hardly ever call me to tend to white folks, except when it goes bad fast with no white doctor close enough to fetch. That’s when they send for me, but they already waited too long and there’s nothing I can do. Leads them to say they never believed in my medicine anyway. But I know how to hold myself steady and Wash does too.

Around here, you got to hunt to find what works for you. And if you got even a little sense, you learn to keep what you find to yourself. So we stay careful. We sneak and we go otherwise. He says he’s not about to let anyone see his heart. Says sure as you know it, somebody will come after me just to get back at him. But I pat my knife and tell him not to worry.

∞

It is late. Dark presses against dawn as Wash makes his way home from meeting Pallas at the pond deep in the marsh. He takes the road because it’s quicker. He rounds the next to last bend with his mind so full of Pallas that he forgets to pay his usual close attention. The soft dirt on the road muffles the sound of hoof beats and the wind trying to bring rain swirls in the trees, drowning out the faint jangle of bits and spurs.

Wash and the small band of tired patrollers come face to face so fast all Wash has time to think is how trouble never seems to come when you are ready for it. He calculates whether he has time to jump off to the side of the road but with this drought, the horses will hear him as soon as he steps into the dry grass. If there were less moon or if the patrollers were on foot, Wash would have a slim chance of them walking right past him.

But the horses snort to smell him better and start tossing their heads. His fingers close on the worn piece of paper in his pocket. Wash has his hand out, holding the folded pass by its corner, before the four patrollers have pulled their horses to a complete halt. They are startled too, but excited to have stumbled across some action at the end of a long quiet night.

The man closest to Wash bends from his saddle to take the pass. He shakes the paper from folded to open then hands it over to the one who can read. The other two patrollers crowd their horses closer, anxious and eager, like hounds quivering to be loosed on the scent. The one who can read holds the pass in a patch of moonlight. His voice is rough and halting even on the shorter words.

He has my permission. Leave him to himself.

General James Richardson.

There is both familiarity and disrespect in the way Richardson has written the pass that sets the men on edge. Somehow it feels to them that Richardson is bossing them around from way up on the bluff where they know he sits drinking and reading by the fire in his study. None of them have been inside his house but they have all heard about it.

They yank their agitated horses around while they debate about what to do with Wash even though they already know the answer. The way Richardson has worded the note means they won’t be able to get any reward money from treating Wash as if he were a runaway. Still, they bicker.

Wash waits. Head up, eyes down. Working to hold on to the sweet in his mind from Pallas and ready to get home. But he knows better than to let on. Standing there waiting, Wash walks that fine line. Don’t be challenging but don’t call up the thunder in them by showing weakness.

The story Diamond told him the other day flashes across his mind. They had run into each other not too far from where Wash stands now. Diamond had told it so funny. Told him how he got double crossed by that crazy broken down white man of his. Said he handed the patrollers his pass like he always did, thinking it would fix things like it always did and he could get on his way. Said he was as surprised as anybody when they read it out loud. Said that crazy white man of his had written beat the tar out of this nigger, right there on what he thought was his pass.

Diamond said he knew he had gotten sideways with the old man about something or other but he thought he fixed it. Told Wash he guessed he hadn’t fixed it after all. No, he hadn’t. Said they tore him up but good. Said he gave that possum a run for his money, playing dead to beat the band, but said he was careful to take some fists and feet first. Can’t play dead too soon or they’ll catch onto you. So he had stood there and took it for a little while before he let himself fall. Lurched and tipped good before he let his knees buckle. Hit the road like a sack of potatoes.

Even with his face still swollen lopsided, Diamond had made Wash laugh telling that story. Wash had squatted there in the shade of that hot afternoon, leaning his low back against the trunk of a big maple, watching Diamond act it out for him, tipping and lurching as if to fall in the dirt. Not actually falling this time, staying standing this time, but showing Wash just how it happened so he could picture it.

Diamond says uhh to show how his breath sounded coming out of him when he hit the ground and Wash shakes his head. Rubs his palms down his thighs, smoothing his coveralls, muttering mmmm mmm and letting his mouth curve down into Mena’s slight grin. It was funny watching Diamond tell it. Beat the tar out of this nigger. Then both of them laughing a little and shaking their heads in the shade.

Wash stands here now, on this same road on the night of a different day, waiting on the patrollers to let him go home. Standing so still. Waiting for his piece of paper back. Working on keeping his face solid and flat, trying not to let the corners of his mouth twitch down from thinking about Diamond. Trying to stay quiet and smooth and slick, leaving nothing else for them to read.

The men gradually accept that they can’t interfere with Wash. Richardson already knows who is on patrol, where and when, or else he can find out easily.

“Like a damn hawk.”

“Up on his high horse.”

Wash breathes a long careful sigh, relieved that the tension has shifted away from him, but he stays on the lookout for some sign telling him he is free to go.

“Get the hell on home, goddammit.”

It’s the man who first took his pass. He jerks his hand in the direction of the Richardson place then goads his horse back to the center of the road. The reader drops the pass as he turns to follow. The small piece of stiff paper falls slowly, taking forever to hit the ground. Glancing first off the man’s thigh and then off the horse’s sweaty flank, winging down to land in the dusty road amidst all the hooves.

As soon as the horses have cleared out, Wash dips for his pass, careful not to turn his back on the men even as they ride away. He folds the paper into its worn creases, slides it deep inside his pocket and heads for home, remembering not to go too fast and not to go too slow until he rounds the bend. Once out of their sight, he gets off the road for good.

Wash follows a small stream running between the two steep ridges. Cuts past the old spring on trails he knows from running Richardson’s traplines. As he comes through that last stand of pines, the path forks. Right toward the house and left toward the barn.

Before Wash heads for the barn, he looks down the right fork at the house. Candles flicker in the upstairs window. Richardson is still awake. Still sitting in his study. Wash finds himself thankful the moon has set, making it too dark for Richardson to see him crossing the open meadow. Too late for the old man to come down to the barn and start talking at him.