Chains of Time

by R B Woodstone

“You heard me,” Warren said sternly, “I’m through. That was my last high. I’m just standing out here enjoying it till it wears off.” Warren removed his baseball cap, shook the rain from its visor, and stuffed it into his back pocket.

  Now that Warren’s face was visible, the girl gave him a look of surprise. “You old,” she told him.

  She was right, Warren knew. Most of Akins’s clients were probably other high school kids. Warren was only twenty-four, but he looked thirty or more and as tired and worn as his clothes. He caught her scanning him up and down as if he were a vagrant, and he threw a warning at her: “You ought to get out of this business while you can.” He straightened his jacket and pulled himself up taller. “And stay away from people like him,” he added, gesturing toward Akins, “or you’ll end up looking like me.”

  The girl answered, “I don’t need you to tell me what to do.”

  Akins opened his mouth as if he, too, had a tough comeback for Warren but then thought better of it. What came out was considerably less combative. “People like me? My product’s been good enough for you for the last year.”

  “Well,” said Warren as he turned away and ducked back under the awning, “it’s not good enough anymore.” The rain had started to come down hard again, but the two teenagers stayed in the downpour, still visibly out of sorts.

  “Whatever,” cried the girl, enunciating the word with a harsh hand gesture toward Warren. “Enough with you.” Then back to Akins: “What was that before—some kind of magic trick or something?”

  Akins was shaking his head as if trying to remember something. “I don’t know. It was like hypnosis or some shit. I felt like his voice was inside my head…”

  “I’m telling you,” she answered. “That whole family. The older one’s like this big giant, the girl’s a weird little mute freak, and that skinny middle one—he’s like a magician or something.”

  “Yeah,” said Akins. “All of them.”

  “So what are you gonna do about them?” asked the girl.

  “Same thing I told him I would. Gonna get my .38 and just wait for him after school. Maybe I’ll wait for the whole family—all three of them together. Just pop ‘em all.” He formed his hand to mimic a gun, the thumb twitching with each sound effect he made with his mouth. “Ptow! Ptow! Ptow! Take out the whole Kelly family with one clip.”

  Warren turned his head at the sound of the family name. “Who?”

  “The Kelly family,” said Akins. “They’re these strange freaks at school. Skinny Terry and his giant brother and his little mute-freak sister. I’m gonna waste all three of them.”

  Warren approached with quick strides, his fists clenching. “Kelly,” he said, “is my last name too.” He grabbed Akins by the lapels of his jacket and walked him backward until Akins collided with the streetlamp that shone down on them. Their faces lit, Akins’s eyes grew wide while Warren’s eyes felt like slits.

  “Don’t you mess with me,” Akins blustered. “You hurt me and my boss will…”

  “I don’t give a damn about your boss. You just told me you’re gonna kill my brothers and my little sister.”

  The girl was making odd, frightened sounds, but she didn’t move. Akins struggled in Warren’s grip. He hurled a punch at Warren’s jaw, connecting but doing no damage; Warren barely flinched. He only slid his hands up from Akins’s lapels until they fastened on each side of the boy’s temples. Instinct was taking over, and Warren was letting it.

  “You can take my shit,” Akins begged as he struggled in Warren’s grip, pushing and kicking to no avail. “You can take the crank and the horse—all of it!”

  “I told you,” said Warren in a monotone. “I’m through with that stuff. And I’m through with you.”

  “You hurt me, and…they’ll kill your whole family,” Akins warned. “My boss…”

  Warren could feel the blood pumping in his chest, moving faster, rushing toward his hands. He could feel the eyes begin to glow, become iridescent, the way they always did. Akins swung wildly, but his punches had no effect. Then the burning started.

  Sparks crackled from Warren’s hands, tiny lightning bursts against Akins’s forehead. Akins’s hair stood on end as Warren’s hands began to glow. Warren tried to close his eyes. He wanted to let go, to turn away, but he couldn’t. Akins screamed as the crackling lightning rose from Warren’s hands, enveloping Akins’s head in a red and yellow light.

  “Stop it,” shouted the girl. “Stop it! You’re gonna kill him!”

  But Warren couldn’t stop. It was too late. It had been this way since he was a teenager. Once started, the current wouldn’t break until it was spent. He felt Akins’s body shudder, twitching and spasming with each lightning surge. He tried to let the boy go, but his hands felt soldered to Akins’s head as the sparks flashed and receded, holding firmly until the tremors slowed and Akins’s weight felt heavier and heavier. Then, when Akins’s eyes rolled back and smoke began to emanate from his still body, Warren’s hands finally opened and released the boy. Akins fell to the street without a sound, a lifeless heap. Even in the rain, the stench of burnt flesh was thick in the air.

  “Oh my God,” the girl murmured, her hand to her mouth, “oh my God,” more rabid with each repetition, “oh my God.” She backed up slowly, unable to scream, but she finally found the will to turn and run.

  Warren lifted his hands, which were still bathed in a silvery haze. He was breathing hard. He shook out his hands, squeezed them into fists again and again, but the glow wouldn’t fade fast enough. “Damn,” he mumbled. “Can’t...”

  He looked down at Akins’s unmoving form. He crouched and leaned in toward the dead boy’s face. “No,” Warren said, his voice so warped that it didn’t sound like his own. “No...” His hand brushed against Akins’s hand. It was cold though the boy’s body still smoldered. Warren did a quick survey of the area. There was no one around. No cars. No people. No one except the girl had seen anything. His high was fading, and the paranoia was starting to set in. He felt his heartbeat quicken as he thought about what he had done. Murder. He had committed murder. He had killed someone.

  He could feel the sweat started forming all over his face, coming again and again even as the rain washed it away. “No,” he repeated. “No…” He glanced again for onlookers. Not a soul. He was about to move away, but then, frantically, he reached into Akins’s inside jacket. “Where is it?” he asked, fumbling and shaking. Finally he found the large, clear plastic baggie in a zippered inner pocket. He knew what was in it. He could feel several smaller baggies inside the larger one. Some tiny paper envelopes, too. There were pills in some, marijuana and cocaine and crack in others. And vials of heroin in others. Akins always had the heroin. He called it “horse,” a word that lots of street kids used, but Warren never would. He respected horses too much, loved them. He was raised to. He didn’t respect heroin, but he did need it.

  He snatched three of the smaller envelopes and stuffed them into his own jacket packet, inadvertently spilling some of the pills and powder over Akins’s body. Most of the pills rolled down the body and landed on the sidewalk. The powder collected in a small clump over Akins’s chest. For a moment, Warren stood there watching as the rain turned the little cocaine hill into a puddle of gray mud. He thought of a day he had spent at the beach once with his parents and his two brothers. Carl Kelly had played tirelessly with his three sons—building sand castles, dunking the boys in the water, throwing a football—while their pregnant mother watched from beneath an umbrella. Warren wondered when things had gone so wrong. He nodded his head in sorrow and then turned and stormed off, his footsteps resounding like hooves on the damp pavement, echoing across the Harlem night.

  Eleven

  I may have slept for days. Perhaps only hours. I can’t be sure. It’s dark again. The curtain surrounds me once more, but it’s different somehow—smaller and rounded at the top. I can feel the boat rocking, but the rhythm is choppy and short, as if we’re in the midst of a gale. Everything�
�s changed, though. There’s the smell of nature here: trees and grass and plants and animals. And animal manure. The sound and scent of the ocean are gone, replaced by a clip-clop song that is lovely, melodic, familiar. I’ve heard it in my visions.

  “Yah,” a man’s voice calls, accompanied by the snapping of a rope. A horse whinnies in response, and the clopping grows more furious. The boat rocks sharply, but I know that it’s not a boat. I’m in a carriage. By the hoof beats, I know that there are at least two horses pulling it. I’ve seen horses only in visions—this notion of beasts of burden is still unfamiliar to me—but I know I’ll come to love them, and I feel safer now, knowing that I’m among them. After all, we have so much in common: we both ran free once, only to be forced to labor at the will of others.

  We ride on through the night. The scents of North Carolina are so familiar, so pleasant, though I know they shouldn’t be. The fields are rich with the aroma of corn and sesame, almost masking the pungent tobacco fragrance that we’re approaching. I almost feel guilty that I love these scents, for they are America’s scents. They are not mine to love.

  The carriage makes a sharp turn. “Ho,” calls the driver. “Whoa.” The horses slow and stop, and so do I—finally stationary after so long. No swaying of the oceans, no rocking of the carriage. The driver and another man jump to the ground from the perch. The canopy above me peels back, and the curtains open. I expect to see Van Owen and his men, ready with whips and weapons. I’m mistaken. There are a dozen men there, staring at me. But they’re dark-skinned like me. They’re clothed like white men—shirts and pants and shoes—but their eyes are filled with both pity and revulsion. Perhaps some of them remember how they looked and felt when they first arrived here. Perhaps some of them were once even my own people. For most of them, however, America is the only home they’ve ever known, and they’ve never even seen an African in African dress. They were born in captivity. Born slaves. To them, I probably look like a savage—a reflection of their past.

  “You see, witch?” Van Owen says from a distance, though I cannot see him. “You see—I’m smarter than you are.” His voice is calm and even and slow. Gone is the bark in his tone when he was the captain of the ship, ordering scores of sailors. Now we’re on his soil. He steps from the shadows, the only white man among a sea of Africans and African descendants. He’s dressed all in white again. I wonder if he was the on the wagon with me, or if he came by some faster method and has been here awaiting my arrival for some time. Are there trains yet? The visions are so confusing. In my head, I see airplanes in the skies. No, I tell myself, that’s another time, another generation. “You see, Amara,” Van Owen goes on, “I’m not going to let you touch me or anybody my color. I’ve seen firsthand what you can do when you touch someone, but I don’t think you’re about to hurt one of your own.” He tilts his head and smiles coyly, though convinced that I don’t understand his words. “Are you?”

  The African men—the male slaves—are confused. They see how I’m dressed—the rags of West African wear, the beads in my hair. They know I must have just arrived in this country, and so they can’t comprehend why their master is expending such resources on me—and why he’s speaking to me in English. I pretend I’m seeing them for the first time—that I don’t know all of their faces and what will happen to them over the years that I’ll spend here with them.

  Van Owen orders the oldest slave, Harry, to take me to the small shack at the end of the row of slave dwellings. To tie me up and leave me there on the cot. Harry points, and I walk in front of him. I already know the way to my cabin. My legs are stiff from the ride. It hurts to walk, but I don’t show it; Harry already feels bad enough about his assignment. He averts his eyes from my naked torso, even as he applies the ropes as his master instructed. Before he closes the door to leave me there alone, he turns back to me, his eyes registering embarrassment more than anything else—as if he’s ashamed to be the first African American I have met, ashamed of his powerlessness, ashamed for all of us. His hands are meaty and worn and dry as sand. There’s a scar on his forehead that must be decades old. He’s an old man who has seen so little joy in his time. He has never seen Africa. He was born a slave in America, and he will die a slave in America. I can see him months from now, swinging from a tree by his neck—his punishment for helping me. Death follows me like a shadow.

  The shack is a damp, one-room hut that reeks of mold and tobacco seed. There is one dim light from a failing oil lantern. The floor is the earth itself, with worms and dead grass and hidden crickets chirping. Beside the bed is a musty tan throw rug—a withered hand-me-down from Van Owen’s mansion. It’s covered in dust. In but a few days, I will have this place livable. I’ll find I even enjoy beating the dirt from the rug. Now, though, I wait propped up on the bed, leaning against the wall with my hands tied behind my back. My heart quickens at the sound of footsteps outside. The door rustles as it opens.

  “Well,” says Van Owen, “I trust you find your new home to your liking.”

  I don’t answer. I stare back into his eyes with a century and a half of hatred.

  “What’s the matter, witch? Don’t you have any African curses to hurl at me?”

  I don’t even blink. He nods his head back and forth like a scolding schoolteacher and shuts the door behind him as he steps inside. Then he approaches the bed.

  “You look mighty pretty there, all tied up, waiting for me the way you are.” His voice is as easy and calm as his words are rife with unspoken threats. “You wanted me to come in, didn’t you? You were hoping I’d come.”

  My visions are like memories—distorted and jumbled. In my mind, I can see him on top of me, his hot breath on my neck. But we’re dressed differently. It’s daytime in the vision, but now it’s night, so perhaps I am safe.

  “Oh, don’t worry, little witch. I don’t think I’ll take you tonight.” He emphasizes the word take, saliva spraying from his mouth as he says it. “I just came to talk to my new girl in her new home.” He sits beside me on the bed and crosses one of his legs over the other. Even his boots are white, and so clean, as if the soles of his shoes evade the dirt on the ground. He swims in mire and yet remains unstained.

  “You know,” he continues while staring at me, his pale eyes boring into mine, “I was thinking how lucky I was to meet you. You and your betrothed. Y’all have given me a gift of sorts. A strange and precious gift, the likes of which no white man since Jesus Christ has been the recipient.”

  Alone with me, his voice, rich with that odd, aristocratic accent, is softer, yet still grating to my ears, and I find I have to struggle just to make out some of his words, even though I know most of them before he says them.

  “Yes, I am a man blessed. Your betrothed—the one who threw himself into the ocean yesterday and got a bullet for his trouble—he gave me this.” His gaze goes to his hand, which he holds up between our faces, waving it back and forth as if passing it through water, the fingers trailing slowly behind like the tail of a kite. His head blocks the lantern so that his features and expression are hidden in shadow for a moment. Then I hear that eerie hummingbird sound, and Van Owen’s fingertips begin to glow. Soon, his entire hand is covered in crackles of tiny lightning sparks that dance across his knuckles. As quickly as it started, the lightning dims and fades. He exhales and smiles and turns back toward me. “That’s what I got from the boy witch. Now let’s us see what I got from you.”

  His hands stretch toward my face, cold fingers gripping me on opposite sides of my head, just like Kwame did to him at the wedding. He closes his eyes. I try to pull back, but there’s nowhere to go. Behind me is the wall. Van Owen is in front of me, and to my side, and all around me. I close my eyes, trying to shield my mind from his as he tries to tear into my thoughts. Outside, a blue light flashes, and I open my eyes again. And I scream.

  Twelve

  Marco Fenelli was sleeping in his easy chair when he heard the shouting and the pounding.

  “Mr. Fenelli? Marco? Ope
n the door...”

  Marco bounded to his feet and instinctively reached for his gun, but there was no gun strapped to his shoulder. It hadn’t been there for many years.

  “Marco,” the voice came again. It was Terry. Marco’s back was stiff and his walk uneven as he tried to rush to the door. His wrinkled bathrobe, tied around a yellowed tee-shirt and long-out-of-style gray suit pants, felt loose on him. I’m shrinking, he thought to himself. God’s punishment.

  “Marco, come on. I can hear the TV. I know you’re in there.”

  “Hold on, kid,” said Marco as he undid the four locks and opened the door to the sight of the breathless teenager. Terry burst in and raced through the tiny apartment and into the kitchen to drop his two tattered grocery bags. “Where’s the fire?” Marco asked as he checked the hallway before locking the door. He counted the locks aloud as he turned or slid each one.

  “You’re not gonna believe it,” said Terry, as he strode toward the center of the room. His hands were shaking. His eyes were wild and intense, bouncing from wall to wall and back to Marco’s tired eyes.

  As Marco passed the mirror, he stroked the two days’ growth of beard on his chin. His skin was a craggy, pale olive color, and he turned quickly from the reflection. He shoved the previous day’s clothing from a stiff wooden chair and offered the chair to Terry, but the boy was not ready to sit. “What happened? Did you hear from Warren again?”

  Terry nodded yes but held up his palm to deflect questions. “Yeah, Warren’s been around—Jerome and I gave him some money—but that’s not it. Today was the first day of school, you know. And you remember I told you about Akins?”

  “The bully, yeah.” Marco sat in a torn, vinyl-upholstered chair and raised a comb to his slicked-back, thinning gray hair. He noticed the almost empty wine bottle he had left at the foot of his chair and thought of trying to conceal it from Terry, but there was no need. His drinking was no secret. Terry, after all, had been delivering Marco’s wine for more than a year.