Gabriel's Story

by David Anthony Durham

  “Hogg?”

  James stamped his foot in exasperation. He explained that Mr. Hogg was the man they had watched hold forth at the auction the other day. James had come upon him out by the stables that morning and considered asking if he had any work. Before he could make up his mind, some other boy had put the same question to him. James had listened to all that was said, most notably that the man was indeed looking to take a few new hands back with him to Texas and that only general skills were required for the particular openings he had to offer.

  “He told you this?” Gabriel asked cautiously.

  “Naw, not me exactly. He told it to the boy that asked him. He told him to come on back tomorrow afternoon and they could talk about it. What do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “About getting jobs with Mr. Hogg. Texas, Gabe! Man’s got a full ranch, cattle, horses like we seen. You saw the way he ran that show.”

  “I saw.” Gabriel contemplated the sky above him, unable to share his friend’s abounding enthusiasm. “Why would he hire us? Neither of us has ever worked a day on a ranch.”

  “He didn’t tell that other boy no. He was scrawnier than either of us, little sick-looking white boy, but Mr. Hogg told him to come back anyway.”

  “He probably don’t hire coloreds.”

  “Does too! Had a colored man standing right there with him like his right-hand man.”

  Gabriel thought this over for some time. “Thought you didn’t care for cowboys.”

  “Shit,” James said. “I never said that. They might act a fool sometimes, but I never did say a word against the work. Gabe, two days ago I met a cowboy wasn’t fifteen years old. Not fifteen, but had him a horse, a Stetson hat, spurs clanking when he walked, and a six-shooter. Had him a six-shooter like he’s ready for a gunfight. Don’t that sound sweet?”

  Gabriel didn’t answer immediately. A hawk rose from a distant field, hung in the air for a moment, then dipped down toward the earth. He stared at the place where it had disappeared, as if it would appear again and award the vigilant. It did not. “Yeah. That sounds all right. I’ll see if I can’t go in there with you. See what Hogg has to say.”

  This brought a whoop from James, who talked on without pause, sure that tomorrow was going to be a day that changed their lives for the better. He attributed to Mr. Hogg such characteristics of wealth and benevolence that one would have thought he’d passed a good few years with the man. He asked Gabriel if he could feel it in the air, this force finally come to move their lives toward a greater providence than they’d yet imagined.

  Gabriel didn’t say whether he could or not. “We’ll see” was his laconic answer.

  NOBODY PROTESTED WHEN GABRIEL ASKED TO GO TO TOWN. The previous week’s work had tired them all, and the chores left to be done that morning somehow didn’t seem so urgent. The men walked the grounds, shaking their heads and laughing at the way God overdoes his bounty sometimes. If Ben had any interest in going with Gabriel and James, he didn’t show it. He spent the morning tending Raleigh in the barn, something he had taken to recently. He stroked the horse’s nose and spoke to him softly, telling him things for his ears only. The horse responded by stepping closer to him, as if he would push his shoulder up against him and rest his weary bones there. Only Eliza worked on that morning, taking advantage of the empty house to wash the walls and clean out the corners of the place. She wished the boys a good day and asked only that Gabriel make it back for supper.

  Gabriel said that he would. He walked to the door and paused, looking back at his mother. She lifted her eyes and met his, a curious, loving look. “Hmmn?” she asked. The boy shrugged that it was nothing, and as an afterthought asked her if she needed anything from town. She said she didn’t. With that answer, Gabriel walked away, turning his back on her with no intent of malice but with a nagging feeling that such was somehow the result anyway.

  The boys had walked only a half-mile or so before they were picked up by Mr. Mitchell, the family’s nearest neighbor. He was a kindly Mennonite man who spoke with well-measured words and long pauses. He asked Gabriel about the progress of their farm and seemed well pleased to hear that things progressed in accordance with the Lord’s wishes. It was a long ride for Gabriel, but he spoke with the man in the polite tones he always reserved for white folks.

  Outside the general store, Mr. Mitchell bade the boys enjoy the day, telling Gabriel to meet him no later than four for the return trip. Gabriel thanked him and turned to survey the streets. There was a busy weekend atmosphere; the streets were filled with cowtown traffic, as new herds were being driven in daily for transport via rail to points east. Wagons full of merchandise and loaded high with baggage rolled by. People strolled: some cowboys and many farmers; some women dressed garishly, whether respectable women or prostitutes, Gabriel wasn’t sure. Cowboys patrolled the streets on horseback or on foot, swaggering and proud and a bit louder than necessary. A few people hawked homemade goods, and a row of quiet but poor-looking Indians sold the wares of their people.

  James tugged his arm. “Come on. We already done wasted half the day.”

  They found Marshall Hogg leaning against a fence, half looking over the horses held inside and half talking to the small group of men around him, all cowboys or garbed as such, loose-jointed and weatherworn. Marshall had about him the same confident air he’d had on the podium. Close up, one could see that his hair was not so white as it had first appeared. He had thin, sunburned lips, a square jaw, and a nose slightly crooked in its line of descent, whether by nature’s design or because of injury was unclear. He smoked a hand-rolled cigarette, which he perched on his lips so that he could gesture with his hands, talk, and laugh at the same time. His eyes touched on the boys for a second as they approached, but he looked away, hardly noticing them.

  James pointed out a boy who stood near Marshall. “That’s the boy that asked about work,” he said. Indeed, the boy didn’t surpass James’s earlier description. He was thin around the neck and shoulders and generally sickly-looking, pale enough for the dead of winter and with a nose pink and sore, as if he suffered from that season’s illnesses.

  “And there’s the colored,” James whispered.

  Again he reached up to point, but Gabriel stopped his arm. His eyes had already found the man. He stood at the edge of the group, leaning back, both elbows against the fence, one leg bent and resting on a crate of some sort. He was not a man of great stature or girth, but there was something immediately impressive about his body’s hard lines. He seemed made entirely of sharp edges: the triangles cut by his limbs, his jutting cheekbones and chin, the narrow slits that were his eyes. The only thing truly rounded about him was the crown of his head, which was clean-shaven and smooth. He returned the boy’s attention with his own appraising gaze, but on his face no greeting or kinship could be read.

  Gabriel lowered his eyes, and the two approached the men like nervous schoolchildren. They stood waiting for some time before Marshall noticed them. “You two after something?” he asked.

  James nodded that they were.

  “Well?”

  “We . . . Mr. Hogg, we was wondering if you might be needing some hands.” It took James a great effort to get the sentence out. Once he had done so, he exhaled a pent-up breath and seemed to relax considerably.

  Marshall eyed James briefly, then studied Gabriel. “Is that right?”

  Gabriel nodded that it was. He wondered if the man recognized him from the day he’d spoken with him and Solomon. If he did, he gave no sign of it.

  “And what can you do?”

  “We do everything,” James said. “I mean, we’ll do anything you put us to.”

  The white boy looked askance at the two newcomers, his eyes loath to touch on them. He seemed to be preparing some speech in his head but came out with mucus instead, which he sent in the vague direction of Gabriel and James.

  Marshall shared a smile with the man next to him. “Here’s two young colored boys who figure
they can do everything,” he repeated for the man’s benefit. “They call me Mr. Hogg, too. Polite chiggers.” He looked back at the boys. “In my years of ranching, I never have come across a hand that could do everything. I’ve found some that can do something. A few that could do this thing or that thing. But the only ones I ever heard try to do everything ended up doing no thing. What do you make of that?”

  James hesitated. He glanced at Gabriel. “I didn’t mean it like that. What I was saying was, Gabe here knows farming, and I been working with—”

  “Don’t waste your breath, boy. What do they call you two?”

  “James and Gabriel.”

  Marshall feigned surprise at the improbability of this. “The king and the archangel! Very impressive. Well, damned if I could be luckier.” He looked at another of his companions. “They look to be two strong ones, don’t they? Probably got some fight in them.” The man to whom he was speaking smiled a toothless grin and nodded complete agreement. “Tell you what, you boys follow me, all three of you. Got a test for you, if you’re up for it.” He spun on his heel and started walking off, not looking back.

  The boys hesitated. James mouthed some words that Gabriel couldn’t make out. He shrugged in answer, and they followed the group of men who had moved off with Marshall. Only the black man remained. He didn’t move till the boys did, slowly bringing up the rear.

  As the group reformed within the confines of a barn, Gabriel found himself standing close to Marshall. The man raised his arm in a gesture to another, and for a moment the silver glint of a pistol flashed from inside his jacket. The boy craned to see it better but caught only the black handle of the thing, smooth and curving and engraved with some design he couldn’t make out. He straightened up when he realized Marshall was watching him. The man grinned and whispered to the boy, “Don’t trust a man with a fancy gun. It may be pretty, but it’ll kill you just as dead as a plain shotgun.”

  He laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder for a moment, then walked into the center of the group, creating with his circular path a ring of sorts. He moved a few of the men back with his hands, gesturing, treating the whole thing like some solemn work. When the circle was to his liking, he beckoned Gabriel and James forward and had them stand facing each other. “Now, look into the eyes of your competition.” From the position he had put them in, it was clear to each that the other was who he referred to. “You both want a job, but there’s room for only one. Question one is whether it’s one of you. Question two is which one of you it might be. Figure we got one easy way to settle it—a little boxing match. First boy that bests the other walks away with a dollar. If you impress the jury here, you may walk away with a job. So have at it.” He stepped back and motioned for the boys to join in battle.

  The boys stared at each other in surprise. Voices around them urged them on, encouraging and coercing at once. The boys still made no move, although James looked at Gabriel with desperation in his eyes. His hands had begun to tremble. He flexed them to steady them, clenching them into fists and then releasing them. He took a few tentative steps from side to side, trying to conjure some solution through movement.

  “Boys, you’re sorely disappointing me. I won’t make you fight if you haven’t got it in you. But I will take myself and the job of a lifetime on back to Texas, leave you here in the sorry state I found you in.”

  These words brought up in James a sudden rage, which he directed at Gabriel. “I’m not going back to Pinkerd’s. Let’s just do what we’ve got to,” he said.

  Gabriel didn’t even lift his arms. “James, I ain’t fighting you.” He’d just turned to leave when James moved forward and punched him on the shoulder, not hard, but enough to bring his attention back. Gabriel wheeled around. “What are you doing? You’re gonna let—”

  He cut his words as James threw another blow, this time toward his face. His head bobbed out of the way, his feet sure beneath him, sliding him almost imperceptibly away. He would have said something else, but James came at him again. Gabriel had to slip left to avoid yet another whirling fist. A change came over his face. As he looked at James, his scowl returned, his lips drew back from his teeth. When the other boy made another move toward him, Gabriel unleashed an anger quicker even than its genesis. His arm swung up on that well-oiled shoulder joint, fist tight and hard as a rock, and he spun it down toward his friend. It caught the other boy between the lip and the nose, snapping his head back. As James stumbled, Gabriel hit him several more times across the chin, then the neck, dropping one blow into his abdomen.

  James pitched over but reached out with one arm and grabbed Gabriel. He drew him in, preferring to receive his blows at close range. The two boys tussled about that way for some time, a moving mass of limbs and grunts. Eventually Gabriel got a grip on James’s legs and yanked them into the air. The other boy hit the ground with a force that sent spit from his mouth and churned up a cloud of dust. Gabriel lashed out twice with his heavy foot, catching James in the arms crossed over his chest, this position suddenly his only means of defense.

  Gabriel paused in his attack and stood above his newfound foe, his chest thrown out in the attitude of a gladiator considering the kill. He allowed James to rise. The boy’s face was bloody and distorted with emotion—anger or desperation, it was hard to say. The boys stared at each other, tired from the effort and seemingly amazed at their own behavior.

  Marshall stepped between them, laughing uproariously. “That’ll do, boys. Shit-fire! That’s what I like to see.” He looked back at his companions. “I asked them to fight and they damn well did. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve both earned work. What about you, you ready to fight one of these?” He turned to the white boy at the edge of the group.

  The boy nearly spat when he answered, “I ain’t fighting no nigger for a job.”

  “Figured you wouldn’t. We won’t be needing your services, then.”

  “You want the niggers instead?”

  “I respect a fighter, is all. I’ll always give the best man the job. Ain’t that right, Caleb?”

  The black man stared back at him, no visible answer on his face. He scrutinized the boys with eyes that seemed to find them a sorry sight, then looked down at his own feet as if they were of equal interest.

  Marshall continued undeterred. “Boys, you don’t know shit about ranching, do you? Not a thing, I can see that. But if you’ll work half as hard as you fight, we’ll use you for something. If you want in, be back here tomorrow at sunup. We won’t wait for you, so be early.” He studied them for a moment, appraising. He wiped a lock of whitish hair from his forehead, then pulled out two cigarettes from his shirt pocket and offered them to the boys. “Have a smoke on it, and remember, there’s more where these came from.”

  Gabriel took the cigarette, holding it out before him as if he was unsure of its purpose. The two boys walked away with the men’s best wishes, but they shared none of their enthusiasm. They walked without saying a word to each other, and mumbled their goodbyes without ever asking each other’s plans.

  GABRIEL CLIMBED OUT OF THE MITCHELLS’ WAGON at their turning, a half-mile from the house. He waved goodbye and cut out across the prairie through the dusky light. The knee-high grass brushed against his legs with each step. There was an undertone of insect life in the air, the background hum and chirp that can be heard and forgotten and thought of as silence. He walked with a steady progress that soon brought him to one of the knolls from which he could see the house. It was only here that he stopped, squatted, and took out the cigarette that Marshall had given him. He rolled it in his fingers a moment, then placed it between his lips, where it sat unlit.

  To eyes untainted by anger, the house on which the boy looked was no poorer a beginning than any other in the heart of the continent. It sat lonely on the plain, indeed, but its character was not one of desolation only. There was in its simple geometry a stoic perseverance. The items spread across the grass had been taken inside, and candlelight flickered in the windowpane like
a heart beating, dim but warm. Plots of turned earth had grown around the house on three sides, as yet only patches of greater darkness on the plain, but signs of progress and a testament to months hard spent.

  But to this the boy’s eyes were blind. His thoughts were bitter. His gaze focused on the forlorn plow stuck deep in the boggy field, a sorry tool for such surgery and a fresh reminder that here too inequity ruled the land. Nothing was truly different here. All was toil and the flight from racial strife and dreams thrown about the impartial land like seeds. Where would they take root, if ever, and who would reap that harvest when the day came? He offered no answers to these questions. He asked them only as a pretext to name his one answer, to shape one word into many words, to make it clear, perhaps only to himself, that he would not reap this harvest and these were not his dreams, nor his future, that his answer had always been and could only be no.

  He reached up and touched his chin, felt the bruise there beneath the pressure of his fingers. By the cold vigilance of his stare, one might have thought it was the homestead itself that had so bruised him and not the fists of his friend. He let his fingertips rise higher and massage the balls of his closed eyes. He did this for some time, pausing only to listen to the passage of some birds above him.

  With that, he stood up and turned around, not daring the warmth of home and family but choosing instead this dark field in which to make his judgment. As he moved away, he wondered if it could really be this easy. Were decisions made this way, with such silence, in such solitude? He wondered, but even as he asked, he knew that there was nothing easy about this, and he felt within that silence the threat that nothing would ever be easy again, and the fear that solitude might be no more a blessing than it is a curse. He thought so, but still he walked, with hesitant steps that only gradually grew more forceful, away from the light of his home and into the evening’s willing embrace.

  Part 2

  THE CARAVAN MOVED OUT BEFORE NINE. THE BOYS RODE in the cargo wagon, atop crates and satchels of various sizes and descriptions, behind a train of four hitched oxen. Crownsville faded behind them, diminishing in stature and breadth with the passing miles till it was little more than an island mirage in a great, grassy ocean. Eventually even that phantom melted into the sea and was forgotten. James looked back often, a smile across his face that grew with the distance behind them. Gabriel also cast glances back to the north, but his eyes searched the receding horizon as if he feared pursuit. Part of him urged the oxen forward with greater speed, while another part cried out for him to jump ship, run home, and erase this digression before it became a full-blown sin.