by Aaron Gwyn
Night was coming on. When I glanced up through the tree limbs, there were stars.
The sky dimmed down and the stars shone like nails. My horse blew and Cecelia’s pony turned and looked back toward the road. I shifted Robert to my other hip and squinted into the trees and Cecelia seemed to float up to me out of the dark—no noise, just the shape of her getting closer until she was standing right there.
“Woman!” I hissed. “Good God Almighty.”
“They’re gone,” she said.
I shook my head. My nerves were frayed down to nothing.
“Don’t you ever do that again,” I told her. “What would’ve happened had they seen you?”
She just stared at me. The whites of her eyes seemed to glow.
“They didn’t see me,” she said.
* * *
We couldn’t risk a fire that night and had to content ourselves with a cold camp, sharing a few corn-dodgers between us, the last of the larder that Thurza Smithwick had sent me and Robert. I had no idea how we’d reprovision. If it hadn’t been for the fear of being hunted, I would have taken my rifle out and barked a few squirrels, a doe if I was lucky, but as things stood, I didn’t dare announce our presence.
Lord, how I wanted a drink! The ache for it kept me tossing all night, and come dawn, I left Cecelia and Bob in their bedrolls and went out to reconnoiter. It was daft of me to’ve ever taken us along the Shawnee Trail. Or up any thoroughfare, for that matter. Now I charted a new course for us, deciding to angle northwest across the prairieland. That was my notion, at least. It would be easier for McClusky to spot us on open ground, but not nearly as easy as spotting us on a wagon road. I knelt at the tree-line, staring out over the pastures, watching the stars fade.
I was moving back through the woods toward camp when I heard Robert screaming. The sound stopped me dead. Then the shock lifted and I took off sprinting, fast as my cracking knees could carry me.
The picture that presented itself when my companions came into view was a terrible one: Cecelia down on her knees in front of Robert, talking to the child, trying to settle him. For his part, the boy was backed up against a tree swatting at his mother, trying to fend her off.
And Cecelia—you ought to’ve seen her face. The night before, it’d been grim as a phantom’s. But seeing her boy’s terror, she looked haunted herself.
I rushed up and stepped between them; I might as well’ve gotten between a wildcat and her cub. A murderous rage filled Cecelia’s eyes and I saw her hand disappear into a fold of her ragged dress. It occurred to me she might be reaching for her knife.
“Here, now,” I said, “what’s all this?”
She shook her head and pointed to Robert. “He woke and missed you. I was only trying to calm him.”
“It doesn’t seem to be working,” I said. “Could you stand over yonder?”
“I’ll not be told what to do,” she said. The venom in her voice would’ve dropped an elephant.
I drew a breath and released it.
“I’m not telling you,” I said. “I’m asking if you’ll help me get him soothed a little.”
Her eyes caught sunlight and flashed at me, but then she backed over to where the horses were picketed.
I turned to Robert. When I knelt to speak to him, he clambered up into my arms and got a hold round my neck that liked to choked me. His cries cut off and he was just a trembling little body.
“There,” I said, “Duncan is here.” I laced my arms around him, palmed the back of his head and stood.
He slacked his grip on me enough to lean back and look me in the face. We eyed each other a few moments, his pupils very wide, green irises the color of jade.
“You’re all right,” I said. “There’s a lad.”
He drew back a hand and slapped my face.
Then he did it again. But before I could chasten him, he burst back into tears, hugging me with one arm, slapping at my shoulders with the other.
“You left!” he screamed. “No, no, no, no no!”
My eyes welled up and my throat thickened.
“You left!” he shouted, fussing at me the only way he knew, so angry that the skin under his fingernails had turned red; so glad to see me he couldn’t help smiling. Like sunlight in a rainstorm.
What must he have thought, waking to find my empty bedroll beside him? Surely, that I’d forsaken him forever.
“Shhhhhh,” I told him, “Duncan loves you. Duncan won’t leave,” saying it over and over like a spell.
The two of us clutched each other and wept like abandoned babes. And weren’t we, though? Hadn’t Sam deserted us both? No fault of his, but faults don’t figure into feelings. All we knew was that if there was any family left, the two of us were it.
I turned and glanced at Cecelia over Bob’s shoulder, expecting to see a look on her face that would’ve split my skull like a hatchet.
But the tears came down her face as well. She made no attempt to wipe them, just let them run.
For she was one of us too. All three of us had been forsaken. All three of us were lost.
CECELIA
—TEXAS, 1847—
And so she followed them out onto that broad, flat pasture where the wind sang constantly in your ears and the sky stretched from horizon to horizon—white and gray and bluest blue. The cedars fell away, there were hardly any trees at all, just a vast sea of grass that waved and rippled as an actual ocean must have done.
One cool morning, they forded a wide, muddy river, the horses stepping slowly, wading water that came to their fetlocks, their knees, their barrels. She thought that maybe the animals would have to swim. Could horses swim? Lord knew she couldn’t. She called to Lammons, but the man didn’t hear her over the sound of rushing water. He clutched Robert in one arm and held his reins and rifle in the other. He looked like something out of a dream: half-man, half-horse, the mists swirling around him, the entire surface of the river steaming.
She slipped her wet feet out of the stirrups and wrapped the reins around her hand. Honey blew two jets of vapor from her nostrils, thick as smoke.
Do not drown me, she thought, then felt the pony step on something solid and they began to climb. She gripped the reins tight; the horse stepped up and up. The two of them came out of the water and walked over to Lammons who was sitting his horse, dripping in the sun.
The man looked at her with gray, glittering eyes, the skin seamed like leather at their corners, his coal-black moustache grown out over his lips and his lean face furred in silver. He began to laugh.
She was still unsettled from the crossing, didn’t see what was funny.
Lammons picked Robert up, turned him around and sat the boy on the saddle, facing him.
“How bout that?” he said.
Robert was giddy too, though he couldn’t have understood why the man was celebrating.
“Bird!” he squealed, and she glanced back and saw a heron gliding over the river, skimming the surface on extended wings, then coming to rest on its long legs beside the shore.
“Bird,” she told Robert.
“Caw, caw,” he said, mimicking a crow.
“Caw,” she said, and that made him giggle. She began to giggle too.
Then a great hunger possessed her and she had to touch him. He wasn’t an arm’s length away.
She leaned over and put her hand on his knee, a little knob covered in homespun. Just the feel of him would be a feast. She could live on it.
But as soon as he felt her palm, he snatched his leg away. The joy left his face.
Don’t cry, she thought. Please don’t do it.
He didn’t, only cast her a scowl that cut right through her.
Lammons was already trying to catch the moment and steer it. He said something cheerful to Bob, but she didn’t hear what it was. She’d already kneed Honey into a walk, t
urning her back on Robert, not able to look at his face, not wanting him to see hers.
She trotted along the bright sand past the willows, birds scattering from the branches and fury humming inside her brain. Finally, she drew the reins, fetched up and sat the horse, thinking, I only wanted to touch you, little monster. I just wanted one touch.
Anger had such heat to it. She closed her eyes and felt its blood-light on her face.
But after a while, the feeling turned on her and twisted. The heat drained away and there was only the numbness of shame, shame like filth on her skin, cold and stuporous.
Davy’s face flashed in her mind. She shook it away, but then there was the Spaniard, staring with his lidless eyes.
I won’t take fault for them, she thought. I did what anyone would do, what they would’ve done to me. How is it any different?
She thought, It’s not a bit different.
And then she thought, Neither are you.
* * *
When she got back to the river she saw Lammons had picketed his horse and was sitting in the red sand beside a clump of blackberry bushes. He had a little mound of the berries cupped in one hand and was feeding them to Robert.
Or rather, Robert was feeding himself. He’d reach over and take one out of the bowl of Lammons’s hand and put it on his purple tongue. She didn’t think she’d ever seen the boy so happy as he was this very moment, squatting next to Duncan Lammons, eating blackberries a stone’s throw from America.
For they’d left that country now, or its States, anyway. The river they’d crossed separated Texas from these Indian territories and for the past few days that’s all Lammons could talk about.
She sat her horse, glaring at the man.
I left America already, she thought, and it snuck up and surrounded us. What makes you think it won’t happen again?
Maybe that was just the bitterness churning up in her, watching Robert eat from Lammons’s hand.
To be separated from your own flesh. Like your arms ran off and left your body.
Lammons waved her up. She walked Honey over and slid from the saddle, letting the reins hang down.
“Get some of these,” he said, offering her the berries.
She squatted beside him and took several. They were ripe and very sweet. She was surprised the crows hadn’t already picked the bushes clean.
Robert stared at her. She saw that his teeth were stained and his tongue was nearly black. He reached for a berry and then she reached for one. Their hands touched, his tiny finger wiggling.
Warmth shuddered through her body, very different from the warmth of rage. She wanted to fetch him up and kiss him all over. She wanted to bite the chubby flesh of his arms.
They camped that night several miles north of the river, and when the stars came on, Robert was already asleep. She sat with Lammons while he stacked kindlers and then set them alight with his flint and steel.
The fire blazed up and the sun sank; she could feel herself sinking with it. Lammons was watching her through the flames. Very still. Very quiet. He reached to stir the coals and embers popped, sparks swirling up and dying.
All the bright things of this world swirled and died.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he said.
Why would I want to talk? What part of you could understand me? Never a slave nor widow nor mother.
She was silent for a long time, dropping lower inside herself.
Despair isn’t just a word, she thought. It’s a place you go like a crypt or cellar. A place within a place, tight as a coffin.
She said, “I’ve been running since I was just a girl. Did you know that?”
Lammons shook his head.
“My whole life has been running. I ran north; they caught and sold me. I ran south and they caught me there too. When I came west with Sam I thought my life had finally started; I thought those years we had were life. But even that was running. We might’ve stayed in one place, but it was only a rest.”
Lammons watched her. He nodded after a time.
“When that boy they gave me to was carting me east, I told myself everything was over. All that was left was to get to him—”she nodded at Robert in his blankets—“just get back to him and smell his skin. It didn’t even matter that they’d taken Sam from me because Robert came from him too. So, getting to him would be like getting to them both.”
She paused, tonguing a blackberry seed from between her teeth.
“Now I don’t have either one.”
“How’s that?” said Lammons.
She stared at the fire. It would burn down to ashes and the wind would scatter them and a rain would come and scour this place clean of any sign there’d been a fire at all.
“He won’t let me touch him,” she said.
“He’s getting used to you.”
“He’s not getting used to me. Maybe he shouldn’t. All my life there’s been a beast inside me. I didn’t even know. It took a lot of blood and suffering to peel the skin down to it, but it’s peeled now and there’s no covering it up.” Her hands had started to tremble. She clenched them together to steady herself. “They wrecked me, Mister Lammons. Yes, they did.”
She closed her eyes and tried to breathe. She heard Lammons stand up, shuffle around the fire and sit down beside her.
“Who wrecked you, Suss? It’s no one wrecked you.”
She shook her head. “They might as well’ve killed me.”
“No, no,” said Lammons. “You hush that.”
“It’s true,” she said. “They started in on me from the time I was just a girl. And do you want to know the worst of it? I always told myself they were one thing and I was another. Can you believe I used to think that?”
“Think what?” Lammons said.
“That I was different,” she told him. “That they were monsters and I was a person. That I wasn’t a monster too.”
“I don’t believe that for a second,” Lammons said.
She said: “I thought there were things I wouldn’t do. When I was a girl I thought that. I think I thought that most my life. But do you know what? There isn’t.”
She felt Lammons’s hand between her shoulders, rubbing her back. It felt so good, the touch of someone who wouldn’t harm her.
And here’s the proof of how I’ve been altered. Here is the proof.
Lammons said, “It seems to me that most of what people do comes from the situation they find theirselves in.”
“Yes,” she said, and something about the man’s tone caused her throat to thicken. She felt herself getting blubbery.
Do not start crying, she told herself. Do not do that.
“And,” Lammons continued, “I’d have to say that the situations you’ve found yourself in have got to be the worst I’ve ever heard of.”
Then she did start to cry: the shame and anger turning wet. How she’d hated this man! She had comforted herself with thoughts of cutting out his heart, this man who now rubbed her back with his rough hand and said, “Shush, now. It’s going to be all right. You’re going to be all right.”
“I’m sorry,” she told him, but she couldn’t explain what for. She was sorry to cry in front of him and sorry she’d wanted to carve on him with her knife and sorry her hatred had changed to something she didn’t understand.
She opened her eyes, wiped at them, brushed the tattered sleeve of her dress under her nose.
And then she saw Robert.
The boy was sitting on his bedroll watching her and Duncan, a curious expression on his face, as if he was trying to decide whether he might be dreaming.
She and Duncan stared at him and the boy stared sleepily back. The three of them sat for a few breathless moments.
The fire crackled.
Robert blinked his eyes.
Then he lay back down. By and b
y his eyes closed and he was asleep.
* * *
A few nights later she dreamed of Sam.
She was alone in a vast forest with slave-hounds sniffing out her trail. It was eventide and night was coming on, the sun hissing into extinction in a dark ocean at the western rim of the world.
She stumbled through drifts of oak leaves and down into a dry hollow. She was young again and not. It was Virginia and it was not.
When she heard the hounds baying at her back, she knew they were not tracking her at the behest of some slave-catcher: they wanted her for their own. And if these dogs caught her they’d fill her with their seed and she’d have to bring forth a litter of beasts.
She was not going to lie with a pack of curs, but how would she prevent it if they surrounded her with their gnashing teeth? She considered climbing a tall cedar, but then she would have to live in that tree for all time, in this dark that would last forever now that the sun had drowned.
She went out across the hollow under the limbs of live oaks and beards of Spanish moss. She heard a cry behind her and turned to see the hounds cresting the hill: an enormous pack of mangy brutes with scabs and slavering mouths, popping their teeth and pawing the earth to get at her, beasts well-suited to the coming darkness, this perfect, eternal night.
She started to run, but it was like moving through molasses, and where did she think she’d get to?
Then a shape caught her eye, a magnificent gray wolf winding through the trees, blue eyes in its beautiful face. She knew immediately that it was him; the eyes were what told her, but she’d have known just by the way he moved: slowly, powerfully, stronger in death than he’d even been in life. Stronger and stranger.
The hounds saw him as well. They stopped like they’d struck a wall, or tried to stop, skidding through the leaves, their ears flattened and tails tucked, already scurrying for the brush.
