Though there was a part of him that hungered for this abandon at that moment, he knew things had changed. He wouldn’t ask for death anymore. He no longer wanted to die. He couldn’t imagine quite what the future might hold, but for the first time in twenty-some years he wanted to see the morrow, and the day after that, and on. He wanted to sit with that young man and see what they could learn of each other: Morrison with his translucent pale skin and William with his stained, umber tones. The two of them talking, searching each other, finding meaning in what the other could add to their lives, and to the lives of those no longer with them. It was a strange notion, yes, one his father would never have imagined, but his father was dead and long decayed in another country entirely. That old man had lived and died as a poor peasant in an ancient place. He had never known the world beyond Scottish shores. What could he ever have known of his son’s life? This country was a strange one. It pushed men in directions formerly inconceivable. It made a mockery of traditions held sacred. But—Morrison was just coming to believe—this nation also allowed the creation of new meanings, of new symbols, of new definitions of race and creed and blood. There was something rare in this. Humanity had yet to fully understand it. Strange that it took him twenty years to realize this. Strange that he only now felt his mind clearing.
Humboldt’s voice snapped his attention back. It broke into the murmurs of the others, rose above them and pressed them down to a hush. He must have arrived from the other side of the warehouse. As usual, he entered full of purpose, loud and bold. Morrison scrambled up to a crouch, eyes up toward the eaves, on the thin sheen of darkness that was the window. He could hear the men rouse themselves more completely. He imagined them shaking the sleep from their heads and digging at their eyes and slurping their coffee. The hound rose, disconcerted by the man’s strange posture, but Morrison hushed her with a clicking tongue. He placed the rifle flat before him and climbed onto the crate.
Inside, the men had gathered loosely around Humboldt. He was a clear target at the center of them: the massive expanse of his chest, his teeth and eyes catching sparks from the fire, arms gesturing with an energy no other man displayed. He spoke loudly, though his words seemed ill timed to the movements of his lips, disjointed like those of a puppet in unskilled hands. He was bareheaded and some quality of the light exaggerated the effect. His balding scalp glimmered unnaturally, red and yellow and orange as he moved, a devil’s halo.
Morrison set his feet at shoulder width, bent and lifted the weapon. It seemed heavier than before. For a moment he thought something was hung up on it but this was not the case. He was simply tired, fatigued and stiff and ready for this all to be over. He felt vaguely the irritation that some men would think him a coward for his plan. But this was simple practicality. It was strategy, a voice of reason newly risen in him. They didn’t all need to die, even if they deserved it. He didn’t have to risk everything, nor did he have to comport himself to other men’s notions of manhood. What use was manly decorum to rabble such as those gathered in the warehouse? Would he duel with Humboldt? Could he gain satisfaction through the ceremonies of antiquity? He could not, for those men didn’t abide by such outdated notions. And, anyway, Humboldt had long ago given up the right to a proud death. He had whipped a man better than he, with older, nobler blood. Despite his poverty, Morrison thought, his own father would never have let such an offense go unpunished. And neither would he.
The hound let out a faint whine.
Morrison ignored her. He lifted the rifle and placed the muzzle near to the glass. He drew the hammer back and felt it click into the first notch. The hound voiced her complaint again, but Morrison shushed her, his attention focused on the weight of the weapon. The muscles in his shoulders ached already. One of his biceps twitched; a pain radiated from the back of his other hand as if a pin had pierced the flesh of his knuckle. He had to see through these things, he thought. Past them. His damn body would not betray him now, not now that he cared. He brushed his nose with the backside of his hand. It was this motion that allowed him a glimpse of what the hound was trying to communicate to him. Morrison froze.
The hound rose.
A man appeared in the mouth of the alley, some forty yards away. He stepped out of the shadows and into the pale gray light. For a second Morrison thought the man had spotted him and in that second he imagined the entirety of his goal to be lost. He couldn’t see if the man was armed, but he knew what he would do whether he was or not. His rifle was no longer a weight in his hands. It was as light as dry driftwood. His body was burned clean of fatigue and if it was the last thing he would ever do he would not fail at this. His finger caressed the trigger, pulled back just enough to feel it catch, that familiar pressure point just this side of chaos. He held it there, knowing all he had to do was turn his eyes back toward Humboldt and complete things. But he didn’t yet take his eyes from the man in the alley, and because of this hesitation the moment passed.
The man walked on muddled feet, clearing his throat, one hand grabbing his crotch in a wad and scratching. Morrison recognized him, not a man he had spoken to, but one who had joined Humboldt just before the assault on the ship. They’d gone into the hull of the ship together. This one had been nervous in his work, silent and somewhat tremulous. He had been following orders then, but now seemed purposeless. He walked in a tight circle, pausing to stretch and then standing mute, taking in the ground before him like an idiot. The man finally found his desire. He lent one arm against the warehouse wall. His other hand fumbled with his trouser buttons, at it some time before he loosed himself and began urinating. The liquid splashed upon the stones, loud in that chambered corridor.
The hound stepped forward and paused, one paw in the air, nose uplifted, eyes tight on the man, back hairs curling. Her ears pulled back over the crown of her head, flat and taut. She glanced up at Morrison but the man gave no guidance. She knew the man was aware of her, and so she held back, waiting for a sign, a call to action. She set her eyes back on the newcomer, annoyed at the man’s presumption, angered that he should choose this alley to mark and to mark so exhaustively. A growl started low in her throat and rose into her jaw.
Whether the man heard the hound or whether some other sense finally stirred within him Morrison was not sure. The man looked up. His gaze settled on Morrison, on the shape that must have been barely visible in the shadows. He stared and then cocked his head to the side and then pulled his hand from the wall and wiped at his eyes. Only after that did he give way to frenzy. He cursed under his breath. He pinched the flow of his urine and tried to shove himself back inside his trousers and began to shout. His words made no sense in his excitement, but they were enough that they needed to be dealt with.
Get! Morrison said. The hound jumped at the command. Morrison turned away and attended to his goal. He yanked the hammer back to full cock, aimed and fired straight through the glass. The whole wide pane went white and then to dust and then fell away. For a second Morrison could see nothing but a sparkling brilliance. He feared his eyesight had betrayed him. But then the scene came into view, and with it Humboldt. The man was staring at him, one hand pressed against his chest, surprise etched on his face. The other men ducked and bolted, stumbling into each other, coffees thrown down, chairs kicked out of the way. Humboldt alone stood still, one hand covering the hole that had just been torn into him, the entry point of a lead ball that had shattered his ribs and torn through his heart and lodged snug against the vertebrae of his spine. His face still held the same twist of surprise as he stumbled over something on the floor and began to fall. His mouth opened and he seemed at pains to say one last thing. Before he could gravity yanked him down by the shoulders and he was gone. Morrison stared a moment longer but the man had fallen out of sight and there was nothing more he could do. It was done. He ducked out of the window and leapt to the ground and stumbled into a run toward the mouth of the alley. There he received yet another shock.
The hound and the man had been engaged a
t close quarters, but they were still now, the two of them a jumble on the stones. And then there was movement, but it came not from the hound but from the man. He rose from the paving stones, stunned, arms dangling like two ropes, one of them ending in the silver silver of a knife. His penis hung from the opening in his trousers, limp and fatigued as if it too had some part in this work. He stared down at the hound. For a few seconds she writhed on the ground in an attempt to stand, but she quickly gave up this effort and lay still. The man was so fascinated by what he saw below him that he didn’t notice Morrison’s approach until it was too late.
The tracker smashed his nose with the stock of his rifle, sending slivers of bone up into his skull. Before the man even hit the ground, Morrison was on his knees. He scooped up the hound. Her body was limp against him, and he knew that the wetness on her was her own blood. He turned with her pressed to his chest and strode back down the alley into the shadows, chased by the shouts of the men and clatter of their feet on the stones and pistol shots sent after him. But he didn’t stop to answer them. He had no more fight to give. He just ran, burden in his arms.
TEN William lay still as Dover took her turn silently reading the note. He stared up at the ceiling, his eyes once more engaged by the water-stained circles on the wooden beams. No matter how long he stared they seemed always in the process of expansion, each ring echoing outward, a moment captured in stillness, hiding motion even as his eyes imagined it. He lost himself in the contemplation of it, watching the ceiling, thinking of a pond, the undulations of a smooth surface disturbed by a rock, a stone that was in his own hand. He saw himself winding his arm back and tossing the stone, followed its arc through the air and down into the center of the ripples that had somehow formed in anticipation of its fall. It was a memory of sorts, though whether from reality or dream he was unsure.
Dover’s reading was no better than his was. Doubtless she did not comprehend the letter in complete detail, but when she lowered the note to her lap and met William’s gaze her face indicated that she had grasped the greater portion of it. There was no surprise on her features, no sign of anxiousness, no questions. Her façade was composed, held firm by a resolve William wasn’t sure how to read.
“Now you’re the one looking strange at me,” he said, not speaking his mind but needing to say something.
Dover shook her head. It was a simple movement, but one that shamed his inconsequential gripes to silence. With it she hushed all the nonsense he might wish to speak. “Let’s not waste words,” she said. She didn’t hold up the note, but nodded her head in a way that made it the subject of her speech. “This is your momma talking to you. She put herself down on this paper and now she’s talking to you from the grave. She’s doing from that side what she never could in this one. She’s just brought your father to you.”
William had seemed almost lulled by her words, but at the mention of his father he awoke. “I don’t know anything bout that man. I don’t care what that note says. My mother told a lot of lies in her life. Could be that’s just another one.” He tried for some sort of firmness, but he couldn’t muster it. His words faded toward the end of the last sentence, his lips doubting them even as he spoke them.
Dover heard this and answered gently. “You never did your mother justice. Ever since I’ve known you you had things to say against her. You tried to forget bout her, wanted me in to fill her place in your heart. Don’t deny it. Think bout it. Live with that for a while and see if I’m not right. But don’t fight this, William. Don’t pretend it ain’t real. You don’t have to take this all on at once. Let’s us just do what we have to tonight and let tomorrow come in its own time. Let next week come and the week after that. You got all the time you need to get to know him.”
William glanced at her and away. He began to speak but then bit his lower lip between his teeth and pressed down till it pained him. “She shoulda told me,” he said. “She was all the time talking about him … about my father. About the other one, I mean.” He lost the train of his words and met the woman’s eyes again. None of it was clear. His head was a muddle of thoughts and emotions, memories and the melancholy they always pulled in their wake. Putting it into words just made it worse. “She shoulda told me,” he repeated.
“She did,” Dover said. “That’s what she done. Just took her time about it. Just made it so that the message came with the messenger and not before.”
They both heard the knock upstairs on the front door, the footsteps moving to answer it, the quiet tones of conversation, and then the more solid tread of a man’s boots.
“That’ll be the coal man,” Dover said. “Guess it’s time.”
“I need time to think,” William said, his eyes up on the ceiling, following the footsteps, watching the dust knocked free beneath the footfalls.
“But you don’t have time,” Dover said. “This night could set us free. You know that, don’t you? That man, Andrew Morrison, he’s the one sent to help us. He’s the one. I don’t know what sort of things he’s done in his life, don’t know who he is or just why he’s come. But he has. I don’t need to know everything bout him. I can see what I need to in his eyes, and in his actions.”
The young woman scooted closer. She leaned over William as best she could and blocked his vision. “You’re beautiful, William, and you’re strong. Thing is you don’t always know just what and how to use that strength. I used to think I knew best. Wanted you to rage at the world. Wanted to use your anger as a weapon.” She held one hand out before her mouth, her fingers trying to draw the words out of her and present them just right. “But that’s not the only way. This ain’t about forgiving him, not tonight, at least. Remember who wrote this note. Nan wrote it, and whatever was done between them she believed that he deserved the chance to set it right. Now I’m asking you a big thing, a harder thing than rage. But I need you to have the heart to trust her. To believe that something impossible might be possible. Ain’t that what this note’s telling you? Ain’t that what Red-ford was trying to teach us?”
William had closed his eyes as she talked. He opened them now. They were red and full of moisture, unsteady and flickering. When he spoke he didn’t answer her question but addressed something else altogether. “I didn’t believe her,” he said. “All them years I thought she was lying. Thought she was just like any nigger woman and I was just a bastard who didn’t have no father.”
“Well, that ain’t the first time you been wrong,” Dover said. She smiled. “And it won’t be the last.”
The door to the cellar opened. Voices slipped down to them. The stairs creaked.
“You gotta decide now,” Dover said. She reached out with one hand and wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes, delicate with the moisture, taking it from him and lifting it to her lips. “Your momma’s come back to school you. You gonna honor her this time?”
ELEVEN Morrison’s lungs burned in his chest. His legs were each a pedestal of torture and his lower back became the center of him, pain radiating from it as if a great spider was clasped there, sucking the life from him. But he didn’t slacken his pace. He moved through the alleyways as if he knew them by heart, trusting his legs, stumbling at times, once falling hard upon his kneecaps, once knicked across the forehead by some protrusion he hadn’t seen. Initially, the other men were close behind him, but he took a circuitous route, around warehouses and through back lanes, under a gated fence and through a market just awakened. He ran past the startled merchants—an old man in a frenzy, limp canine in his arms, wild eyed with grief or anger or resignation. Before long the gunfire faded. The only sounds were those of his feet and voice, his breathing and the slow rasp of the hound.
He talked through choked breaths as he ran, whispering courage into the hound, telling her the things they would do together in the future, the great hunts, the wide open spaces, the freedom. She had strength in her yet, he said. She would pull through yet. He cajoled her to stay this side of death. He ordered her to do so. And then, in his fa
tigue and pain and grief, his voice choked with sobs. He paused in an open, wooded area at the edge of an avenue. He would not have chosen the spot, but emotion grabbed at him in gasps. It took all of him to fight them down. He lowered the hound to ground and studied her wounds with more care. She had been slashed in one long stroke from under her ear down her shoulder. The gash was thick with blood, deep enough to have cut through muscle and cartilage, the lower end flashing glimpses of ivory. It was a horrid wound, but it was not the one that threatened her. There was another mark, barely an inch wide, the only small sign of a stab wound. The knife must have punctured a lung for the hound’s breathing came both from her mouth and in a strange rasp out of her chest cavity itself.
Morrison flung off his jacket. He held the material in his hands as if he might shred it, but then tossed it down and tore off his own shirt. He ripped the garment down the back, making two halves of it. He knelt down with them, testing them against the wounds, trying to measure the hound and best bandage her. And then he realized he didn’t know how to bind such wounds. They didn’t fit together neatly. He needed help. He bent and, still shirtless, heaved her into his arms again. She groaned as she came to rest against his skin. Her eyes opened and rolled up at him. She growled and seemed not to recognize him. She kicked her hind legs, but as they found no purchase in the air she gave up. The man ran on, talking again, explaining that he was taking her to help. This was too much for him. He had gotten her in over her head and he was sorry for it. He would still see her to safety, he promised. He would carry her all the way. She could trust him still. He would run with her, but not from her. He wasn’t that type of man anymore.
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