High as the Horses' Bridles: A Novel

by Scott Cheshire

  “Seems like a fine dog,” the man says, a deep and croaking voice.

  Orr looks up past the wagon wheels, past the horses’ shoulders, their silver blinkers, to the dark man sitting in the seat.

  “You’re a negro,” he says.

  “And you’re not blind at all.”

  The man climbs down from the seat and wipes his pant legs clean. He stands straight, stretches backward, and yawns. The biggest man Orr’s ever seen. The man arches his back as he yawns. His thick and shining chestnut arms are raised and rearing.

  Orr steps back. “Not my dog.”

  “Don’t matter.” The man’s hairline is far back on his head, and his hair is round and cut short. He wears a black silk neck cloth and a silver ring on his pinky finger.

  Orr says, “What do you want?”

  The man bows some. “Your folks around? Maybe some water for my team?”

  Orr looks back at the canebrake, how he can see right through it, no cover. “My daddy’s right inside.”

  The man turns for the house. “Maybe you could you make us acquainted.”

  Orr picks up another stone, a larger one from the ground.

  “I’m no dog, son. Put it down.”

  “My daddy’s around. By the river.”

  “I think maybe we did this wrong.” He loosens his neck cloth. “You know some negroes, don’t you?”

  “My daddy says you all are good workers even when you got no choice.”

  The man laughs. “True enough. You a hard worker?”

  “I am.” He calls to the red dog coming back from the river. “Come here, dog.”

  “Whose dog then?”

  “Lots of dogs. Live all over, I guess. Some negroes live upriver in a small house. My daddy helped build it, and then he gave them a pig.” He looks up. “Your face looks like a black cherry.”

  The man laughs. He looks at the back of his right hand and puts the hand behind his head. “Guess I do.”

  “I mean the color of cherries.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “I’ve seen some look more dark.”

  “Well my daddy’s the color of blackberries. And I just had me a handful back there, so no harm.” He points back toward the wood, and then leans against the fence. “What’s your daddy look like?”

  “How do you mean?”

  The man waves away his question. “What’s your name?”

  “Orr. Orren Laudermilk.”

  “That’s a good name, Orr.” The man puts out his hand. “I’m Cotten.”

  Orr throws the large stone toward the river. “My father looks like that.” He points to a shagbark hickory, bark layers draped like hairy shingles, and a white ring cut in the flesh. “Can’t get his face clean no matter what.”

  Cotten laughs and wipes the back of his neck. “And where am I, exactly?”

  Orr takes a half step forward. “Woodford. Where’d you come from?”

  “Back east. Headed for Lexington.”

  “You came too far west.” Orr pulls at the shirt sticking on his fevered skin. “We can take your horses to the river.”

  “You’re a good neighbor.” Cotten begins unhitching the team. “You looking pale. You all right?”

  “Just tired.”

  “All right.”

  Orr narrows his eyes, thinking on the man.

  Cotten says, “I bet you’re wondering what I’m doing out here. Fine wagon, no white folk.”

  “Ain’t my business.”

  “That’s true.”

  Orr touches a horse’s head. “You whip your horses?”

  “I have never whipped a horse in my life.”

  He looks at the man, his neck cloth hanging loose, and his smooth face. His eyes. Orr says, “I don’t hate dogs.”

  “I know it,” Cotten says, unhitching the team. He rubs the horses’ heads.

  “Soon as I threw it I wished I hadn’t.”

  The big man looks at the dog. “Dogs don’t lie. It’s people you can’t tell mean you harm.” He pulls the team from the wagon, and they lead the horses to the river.

  * * *

  Back inside the house, Cotten points at the ham, and then to his own self. “I’m starving.”

  Orr says, “That’s what it’s for,” and looks at the pot fire. He feels a surprising fearlessness with this stranger.

  “Smells good. Ain’t had a real meal all day.” Cotten pulls a pink piece from the hock, chomps and swallows.

  “You free?” Orr picks at the ham. “Out here alone, no white folk.”

  “We all free.” Cotten wipes at his mouth with his sleeve. “Just most don’t know it.” Picks more at the ham.

  Orr nods. “I guess.”

  “And most of us ain’t free at all.”

  Orr chews slowly. “What’s in Lexington?”

  “Going to see a man named Clay. We write letters. I don’t suppose your daddy keeps any whiskey.”

  “You particular about your whiskey?” He’s proud to use the new word he learned.

  “Can’t say I ever been.”

  He turns his back to Cotten and walks behind the pot fire. “My father’s not here. Not really.”

  Cotten lets out a hoarse snicker. “I know that by now, boy. You afraid I’m gonna take you and eat you all up? Put you in the oven? Come on now.”

  “My father keeps his whiskey on the window.”

  Cotten stands and rubs his hands on his pants. “Whew, too long on that wagon.” He pushes aside the curtain and takes the bottle from behind. “All the way from South Carolina.”

  “Is that your wagon?”

  “Man I work for.” Cotten takes a pull from the bottle and his face contorts, his torso bends like from a blow to the ribs. “Lord!” He sets the bottle on the table. “Mister Bill Langley. I’m just renting.” He takes another pull.

  “My daddy says Kentucky did God’s dirty work for him and made whiskey on the seventh day.”

  The man throws back his head, mouth full of whiskey and silent with laughter so as not to lose a drop. He wipes at his silk cloth, checking for a spill.

  Orr comes out from behind the pot fire. “He let me taste it once.” Just thinking about it makes his stomach wrinkle. “Most negroes around here ain’t like you.” Orr looks at the floor, and then back to Cotten. “You ever killed anything before?”

  Cotten shakes his head. “What for?”

  Orr shrugs his shoulders. “What’s a circus?”

  Cotton considers the question. “A place for making people happy.”

  There’s a sound of quick breathing at the doorway, the red dog, half inside. Orr pulls a piece of ham from the hock, and throws it to the floor.

  Cotten goes on, “We got horse shows and tricks.” He takes another swig from the bottle.

  Orr takes a piece of ham for himself. “You gonna work for a circus in Lexington?”

  “No, sir.” The bottle dangles from his fingers. He looks upward; Orr follows his gaze to the rafters, but sees nothing. “Can you read some?”

  Orr nods. “My daddy teaches me from the Bible.”

  “That’s a good book.” Cotten clears his throat. “I guess you-all Christian, then?”

  “My daddy says God ain’t particular, and no one gets to tell you what’s what.”

  “I like your daddy.” Cotten takes another piece of ham. “I don’t subscribe to nothing neither. Where’d your daddy go to?”

  “North.”

  “What for?”

  “Merchants. And for salt. He’s selling luck jars and soap. Should be good with all them wagons going up.”

  “I seen all them. Got stuck in the middle of some taking up the road.” He waves away all of what bothers him. He puts the cork in the bottle and sets it behind the curtain on the ledge. “Your father heading for a camp meeting?”

  “What exactly is a camp meeting?”

  “Like a big church meeting.”

  “You going to a camp meeting?”

  “Never took.” Cotten c
oughs. “Where’s your ma at?”

  Orr hesitates, not used to the question. “She’s dead.”

  Cotten coughs again. “Well, I’m real sorry.”

  Orr fans the pot fire. Puts his hand by the heat until he can’t take it no more. “Where you think a dead person goes to?”

  Cotten shakes his head, and stands. “Can’t say.”

  “That’s what my daddy says.” He barely touches the stove and pulls away his finger. “I saw my mother. On a wagon. Yesterday.”

  “Well, you never do know.” Cotten sighs. “How far north your daddy go to?”

  “Maybe two hours.” Orr looks back through the doorway. “You know about Heaven?”

  Cotten looks at the bottle on the window, then back to the boy. “How old are you?”

  “Twelve and a half.”

  Cotten looks like he’s either itching for another pull of whiskey, or maybe wishing he hadn’t gotten started. Orr turns away from the doorway and looks back at Cotten, at his eyes paying close attention. Cotten says, “If people knew what free is, they’d live it. Not all slaves are slaves. And not all free are free.”

  The sky in the doorway is darker. Orr feels the blade in his back pocket. “I can show you how to get to Lexington.”

  Cotten tightens his neck cloth. “I’d appreciate it.”

  “Only one road. And I bet we pass my daddy on the way.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about you coming. People see you alone with a strange nigger, we’re bound to find trouble.”

  Orr pours water on the pot fire until it dies to embers.

  “You’re looking tired.” Cotten touches his forehead. “And you warm.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Cotton laughs. “Betting you don’t take no for an answer.”

  Orr waits for him to leave so he can follow behind, but Cotten excuses himself, nods, and extends his arm through the doorway, after you.

  They gather the horses and lead them to the wagon. Cotten hitches the team.

  Orr climbs into the seat, and feels again for the blade in his pocket. He watches the hogs and pigs sleeping in the yard as the wagon rolls on through the grass. The black sow’s rump swings as she walks to the trough. Maybe that one. Seems right to pick out the oldest. Maybe not so afraid after all of the kill, of picking one, and having to kill.

  * * *

  An hour north along the river, Orr says he’ll walk on no matter how far, and Cotten should just go east because he’s bound to find his father on the road. But Cotten won’t hear it. So they ride on along the path, over the limestone worn smooth by the herds of long-gone buffalo. They climb the crest of a tall wooded knob as a dumb white moon watches over them. They ride roughly over the grassy rise, the river going dark alongside them, until a field opens out below them surrounded by a wood. Fire lights smearing yellow trails in the distance. They ride closer to a wash of noise.

  They ride through the field, as the night gets less dark in the lamplight out by the tree line. They ride past large rocks along the hill, where curious locals watch and bear witness to what appears to be a vast gathering filling up the field. Wagons in the field, littering the hill and the woods. There are voices, a rising din of shouts from the crowd lit up by a bonfire. The wash of noise grows, as they get closer, soon filling up the evening like the sound of a rushing waterfall. They see hundreds of horses standing there by the trees. On a short wooden stage, a tall thin man stalks back and forth before the crowd, hands flailing. The sound of the crowd is even louder in the corner of the field, where they make a strange wheat waving in the night breeze. Pink hands waving, and white hands, and the negroes in the back make a dark place, their forearms moving along in waves. They all move in the shadowed field, a spreading swath of smoke movement in the lamplight, the candlelight, and the bonfire beside the forest. Whiteheads fly to the tallest trees now dark in silhouette. The Appalachians hold sway in the east.

  “That’s my daddy’s wagon!”

  Cotten pulls on the reins. “You sure?”

  Orr jumps down from his seat. “That right there. And that’s our bag.” He jogs over to a wagon and grabs at a bag, pulls out a bar of soap, and shows it like a prize.

  They tie the team to a stump.

  Cotten says, “Better stay close,” as they venture into the crowd.

  They walk by lean-tos and shelters made of bundled sticks, and by cloth tents pitched at woodside, by children sleeping in straw beds and infants feeding at breasts, napping in their woolen blankets. They walk in among the army of readying people, who press themselves ever closer.

  Some sit still, consumed by a sober worship, but most move about, declaring aloud a commitment to the High Holy Spirit. They watch a youngster make exhortations from his father’s shoulders, filled with the Spirit of the Lord, never too young for salvation. A magic maker performing tricks, dancing on eggs unbroken and telling futures. The leather-dressed men with rifles on their backs speak to all who might listen. An older woman, about his daddy’s age, waves at Orr and Cotten, singing out “Glory, glory, Hallelujah! Glory, glory, Hallelujah! Sing with me, boy. I sing with God, and He says He likes my voice!” Orr can’t help but smile. And other women sing prayers and poems, and listeners are bewitched by these women—by women! She swears she speaks to God direct! Orr sees the white preacher on the clapboard stage—the young man insisting on a truth, a new truth that you know in your heart was placed there by Christ, and your sinful nature needs his election, swearing, “You will hear my voice, because this mouth is God’s mouth, and none other’s. Never will you need the mouth of another to claim your stake in the Lord! God’s eyes and ears hear you, see you, He knows you and your soiled soul.” And the listeners cannot keep still. This blood is boiling over as they quiver and fill up with the Spirit, and they rock against Orr and Cotten. Cotten takes hold of Orr’s hand.

  “The Holy Fire is too hot for any standing still!” says the preacher onstage.

  Orr watches the people shake and wave in the clearing. It frightens him.

  There is a passing of the Spirit, unbounded by bodies. There is a heaving, a hurling from inside their souls in the torchlight. Retch any spirit that keeps you calm. Grab others by their collars, and fill yourself with overpour. Get drunk on the Spirit in this place, dance with the Spirit in this place, each one a name and a face before the one true God who grants salvation, the God who knows your every sin, your failings, and who forgives them, who grants mercy, and will be made glorified and will come down to this place soon enough—to this place—and set His feet on American soil. He will walk these hills, returning giant of Jesus Christ, oh Great Man of Original Liberty.

  * * *

  Orr and Cotten start away from the center of the crowd, toward the outer fringes of the great gathering, Cotten’s big hand on the boy’s slender shoulder. But the forest is no less spirited and filled with persons. The horses in half-light are tethered to the trees and their heads are lowered in shadow, drinking from water troughs and bowls. Orr and Cotten make for the back of the woods toward the river and away from the field. Still they are accosted, and handled, beseeched by other exhorters. “Won’t you please show your love for the Lord?” The black folk among them see Orr walking with his negro.

  Cotten says, “Stay close.”

  “Why they crying?”

  “They don’t wanna be here no more.”

  Orr sees mostly legs and bellies, so Cotten sets the small boy on his shoulders. “Look for your daddy, go on now!”

  Orr taps Cotten’s head. “I don’t see him nowhere.”

  “What? Too loud. Keep looking.”

  They shoulder on toward the river, where the trees are darker and the chanting is lower behind them. Thinner trees shake in the wind and look alive. Orr swats at a low branch grabbing at him.

  There is a loud cry, and Orr points that way. “Look!”

  Waist deep in the river water and sloshing about is a wiry and bare-chested man with a wild white beard, his black hat sliding off the
side of his head, almost falling; he’s constantly pulling and setting it straight. The man forces a struggling piglet partly under the water. He laughs and belches. I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Roast! He wrestles with the piglet and pushes the head fully under. The man’s hat falls away and rushes downriver. Some of the watchers cheer, raised whiskey bottles in their hands. But most point, and cry out Blasphemer! as the man grapples with the kicking and pink suckling pig. It slides some from his hands, front hoofs clacking.

  Cotten says, “Let’s get on now!”

  Orr rests his chin on the man’s soft hair, feeling unsure and sick in his stomach.

  Cotten shouts, “We shouldn’t have come so far!”

  “What?”

  “From the crowd. We’re too far from the crowd! No telling what kind of people! See your daddy anywhere?”

  Orr watches the woods unfold in the torch glow, as listeners burst with exhortations right in front of his eyes, making speeches like they’d done so all their lives, garbling words he’s never heard before. Cotten carries him past a small campfire. Clay jugs pass among the fire watchers. An old man, his face red with cackling, hot breath, reaches up to Orr, offers the boy a drink. The old man says, Have a sip! Cotten just waves him aside. They move on further away from the crowd, to what looks like a white blur wavering back in the trees. It’s too high, almost floating, it’s a woman with bright flowing hair. Her golden hair of sunlight hangs long and ribboned with a white rope draped over her shoulders. She’s a ghost in a white gown looking like an angel. A crown of thistles rests upon her head. In one hand she holds what looks like a wand, a crooked stick like a witch’s wand. She holds it high. And the watchers yell out Harlot! whenever the stick falls to her side. The other arm is tied with rope to a tree, her wrist going red.

  Closer now, Orr sees a small stage and chair legs wobbling from under her gown.

  Her hem has all gone muddy, and the watchers yell Harlot! Witch! while she cries out for help. Adulterous whore!

  The white woman goes blurry in the trees, and goes smaller as they move away.

  They head toward the crowd in the field. Orr looks for his father and sees that, now, inside the crowd, there isn’t a crowd, but persons, faces, hands, and eyes. Each one a person, is a piece of the view from way back, high up on the knob. The poor folk and gentlemen, and the young ladies in silken wraps and gold finger rings muddy their finery as they move about and dance in the dirt. A snare drum pounds out a gallop. They raise their legs, dancing, walking and running in place, losing their bonnets and capes, fine hair loosening from pins and snapping back like whips, in enthusiasm for the Lord.