Cy in Chains (19 page)

After talking with the boss man, Cain came back and said the boys would be divided into two groups, one on each side of the railroad bed. They would be chained, and there was to be no talk. He unchained all the boys, mixed them up so friends wouldn't be together, and had the chains put back on. Jess, Billy, Ring, and Davy were assigned to the other team, just not side by side. Cy, West, and Mouse were on the same gang, but not next to each other, either.

There was trouble with Cy's team right away. Prescott wasn't finished with West for embarrassing him earlier that morning. He was on West from the start, calling him names, accusing him of not working hard. Finally, West dropped his shovel, stared Prescott in the face, and seemed to be waiting for everyone to look his way. Then he said, loud and clear, “I know why you didn't get none last night. You didn't
want
none. Everybody know you likes boys better'n girls any day.”

Cy was shocked to hear that spoken aloud.

Prescott stood stunned for a second, then went nuts. He grabbed West's shovel and swung it so that its edge caught West on the side of his head. The force broke his neck, and the boy dropped like a stone. He must have been dead before he hit the ground.

The boys chained on either side of West pulled away from the body. Everyone began shouting. Some boys were crying. Mouse dropped to his knees and wailed. The boys working on the other side of the embankment appeared at its top to see what had happened. Stryker was with them. Cain and the other boss man were running to where Prescott stood over West's body, the shovel still in his hands. He looked at it like he didn't recognize it, then let it drop.

From the top of the embankment, Billy began shrieking. Jess put his hand over his mouth and tried to shush him.

Cy felt dazed, trying to make sense of it. Part of him wanted to get to Mouse, comfort him. But he didn't move.

Cain knelt by West and put a finger on his neck, feeling for a heartbeat, but one look at his head, bent at a crazy angle to his shoulders, told the story. West's brown eyes, open wide, stared into blue sky.

Just the way Travis's eyes had done on that day so long ago . . .

Cy wanted to look away, but he couldn't.

“He's dead,” Cain declared, getting to his feet. “What the hell, Onnie?”

“I warned him! No
white
man could say that to me and get away with it, let alone a nigger! I warned him!”

The men in the other gang, at a word from their boss, went back to work.

“He told a lie on me! A goddamn lie!” Prescott cried.

“What was it?” Cain asked.

Prescott whispered something to him.

Cain stepped away, like Prescott smelled bad. “And you killed him for that?”

“He didn't have no right to tell a lie like that on me! I warned him.”

Cain looked at Stryker and the rest of his boys standing atop the embankment. “Dawson, get down here. Day's over.”

Stryker ordered everyone to stay put and slid down the embankment. He huddled with Cain and the other boss man, then unchained the boys in both gangs. Those who had been working near West backed farther away from his body, which still lay crumpled where it had fallen.

Cain called out, “Y'all get your tools and head to the wagons.”

Cy heard a snarl of fury and turned to see Jess charging down the embankment, straight at Prescott. Jess tackled the white man and took him down. Sobbing, shouting curses, he pinned Prescott's shoulders to the ground with his knees and started beating his face.

“Hey!” Cain shouted, and rushed at Jess. Stryker and the other boss man were right behind him. Together, the three of them managed to pull Jess off of Prescott. Still on his back, Prescott scuttled away as fast as he could. Stryker punched Jess full in the face, and he collapsed.

Cy stood with the others, struck dumb. Jess had finally done something, but Cy understood that Jess would now pay a huge price.

The white men ordered Jess to his feet. He obeyed without question, and he didn't object when he was told to put his hands behind his back for the handcuffs.

Prescott stayed where he was in the dirt. “The nigger made me!” he shouted suddenly. “He didn't have no right to say a lie about me in front of everybody!”

Stryker stalked over to him. “Shut up!” he commanded. “You're the biggest goddamn fool I ever met, you know that, Onnie? You make me ashamed to be a man. Now get your sorry ass up off the ground. We got work to do.”

Cy had always hated Stryker, just as he hated all white men, but at this moment, he could have shaken Stryker's hand.

Prescott got to his feet. His nose was running blood, and when he wiped it on his sleeve, he winced. “Nigger broke my nose!”

“Didn't I tell you to shut up?” Stryker said. “Get over here and help me.” He went to West and began pulling the long chain through the ring in the middle of his leg irons. In a moment, the boy's body was free.

“Onnie, right now!” Stryker cried. “Help me pick him up.”

“Not me!” Prescott shouted back. “Not after—”

“Damn it!” Stryker growled. “I said to help me!”

“I won't. You can't make me. I'm never gonna touch a nigger again. I'm done with all this.” Prescott turned his back and limped toward the line of chained men, some of whom hadn't even bothered to glance up from their toil.

Stryker made a move toward him.

“Let him go,” Cain said. Then he looked at the boys, some huddled away from West's body, others still lining the top of the embankment. “Didn't I tell y'all to move?”

They loaded the equipment onto the wagons and waited. By now, many of the boys were crying. Billy, empty-eyed, had retreated back into his own safe place. Mouse found Cy, and this time Cy didn't brush him away.

Finally, Stryker approached the wagons, bearing West's body in his arms. Behind him trudged Jess, head bowed, Cain holding a pistol on him. Stryker placed the body in one of the wagon beds. Chained again, Cy and the others started their march back to camp.

Stryker drove the wagon holding West's body, his eyes straight ahead. Cain had the reins of the other wagon, his horse tied to one side, Jess tied to the back.

As they shuffled along, no one spoke a word. No one stumbled or broke stride. All the smaller boys kept pace.

Cy tried to make sense of all that had changed so quickly. It didn't feel real that West could be dead. One moment alive, shoveling dirt a few feet away from him, and then—a thing lying in the wagon bed up ahead, covered in a piece of oilskin. Just that morning, Cy had hoped Jess might help him plan their escape before it was too late. Now this horror. West dead. And Jess—done for too. Cy was back where he'd started: alone.

I
T WAS ONLY MIDDAY WHEN THEY CAME INTO
the camp. Rosalee appeared from the cookhouse.

“Mr. Cain, why y'all back so soon?” she asked. “What'sa matter?”

“There was an accident. One of the boys got hurt bad. He's dead.”

“Which boy?”

“West.”

Rosalee screamed and started to crumple. When Cain grabbed her, she shook him off and cried, “West? Oh, no! Sweet Jesus, not my
child
. Not him! Not my boy!”

Cain shook her. “Get hold of yourself! He ain't your boy.”

Rosalee rushed to the wagon and pulled the oilskin away. She screamed again. And again—and again. She scrambled into the wagon bed and knelt beside the body, lifted it, and cradled it in her arms.

Cain was right behind her. “Get down from there! Get hold of yourself. You've seen boys die before. This one wasn't no different.”

“No different? He was my
son!
My own flesh and blood.”

A hush fell over the camp, as if everyone had stopped breathing.

West, Rosalee's son? How is it possible?
Cy wondered. How could a mother and son live so close to each other and keep it a secret? But one thing made sense now. Rosalee had kept giving West extra food not because he was her favorite, as everyone had thought, but because he was her
son
.

Rosalee clutched West's body to her bosom. “Why you think I ever come to this hellhole in the first place?” she shouted at Cain. “To be near my
child!
They made up some lie 'bout him, lookin' for an excuse to punish him for sassin' some ol' white lady what cheated him out of a dime. My little boy, not ten years old, got
seven
years hard labor. You hear me?” she shouted at the chained black boys all around her. “He just like you! All o' you—forced here on some lyin' charges 'cause men like him”—she gestured at Cain—“can't figure no honest way to make a livin'!”

“Shut your mouth, girl, before you regret it! You're beside yourself,” Cain exclaimed, hoisting himself into the wagon bed. “Hush, now! Come down, and I'll get you your medicine.”

“I don't want no more o' your dope!” she shouted at him. “I don't want no more of that poison! I already done sold my soul for it, done everything you wanted, so's I could have it.”

So it wasn't liquor
, Cy thought. Sorrow for Rosalee welled up in his chest, and this time he didn't try to stop it.

“She's insane,” Cain told Stryker. “She doesn't know what she's saying.”

“I
do
know what I's sayin',” Rosalee cried. “I found out where my boy been sent, and I come 'round, lookin' for work so's I could be near him. You was only too glad to hire me. I'd of done anything,
anything
to stay. And look what it got me! My baby dead from the hoopin' cough 'cause you too stingy to send for the doctor. And now West! Who kill him?”

“It was an accident,” Cain told her. “Nobody meant for it to happen.”

She turned to Stryker. “You? You kill my baby?”

“Never touched him.”

“Prescott? Where he?”

“Prescott the one done it,” Mouse called out. He moved toward the wagon, pulling Cy and the others with him. “West say somethin' Prescott didn't like, and he took a shovel and smash West upside the head. I saw everything.”

“Shut him up!” Cain shouted to Stryker.

“Where Prescott?” Rosalee cried out. “Where the man who murdered my baby?”

“Gone,” Cain assured her. “Up and gone. You won't see him again.”

“Sheriff got him, then?”

Cain was silent.

“No, ma'am, sheriff ain't got him,” Jess said. All eyes turned on him. “Prescott keep sayin' West have it comin'. When Mr. Cain tell him to help pick up West body, he wouldn't. Just walk off. Mr. Cain didn't do nothin' to stop him.”

“He do murder in front o' all these boys, and you let him go
free?
” Rosalee cried.

Cain climbed down from the wagon. “I'll explain later. This ain't the time.”

“How you gon'
explain
lettin' the man what murdered my child go free?” She began to weep again, holding West's head in her lap and rocking back and forth.

Cain found Cy in the crowd. “You're in charge of your gang. Get 'em to their bunkhouse and keep 'em there. Jack, you know what to do with yours.”

The moment Cy had heard the crack of the shovel against West's head, he'd fallen into a kind of daze, a distorted dream where things felt both familiar and strange. Now his mind cleared, and he found himself thinking about something that made him sick with disappointment. If he'd been able to convince Jess to make a plan, they might be making a break for freedom this very minute. Prescott was gone, Cain distracted—who could make the boys go to their bunkhouses? Who could keep them from having their way? Forty—no, thirty-nine—boys could take two men whose guard was down, who would never expect a revolt today of all days.

But there was no plan. Jess had tried the way of prayer, of patient waiting for God to reach down from heaven and set things right. But his God hadn't shown up, and his rage took over. Cy realized that Jess would have killed Prescott if he'd had the chance. And now he would pay.

No, there was no plan, but Pete Williams had been right. Fear was the master, not white men with whips, horses, packs of bloodhounds, guns. Get past the fear, and Cy and the others could be free. Or die trying to be.

 

Shortly before dark, Stryker came into the bunkhouse and said it was suppertime. In the kitchen, Sudie dished up the food, her eyes and nose dripping. Jess was missing, and Cy guessed he was locked in the icehouse until Cain decided what to do with him.

After the meal was cleaned up, the boys were ordered to bed. The minute Cy lay down and pulled his blanket over himself, he was asleep.

The next morning at lineup, a strange white man stood near Cain and Stryker by the cookhouse door. There was no sign of Rosalee. Cain was hollow-eyed and haggard.

“What happened yesterday ought never to have been,” he began. “That boy should of known better than to sass Mr. Prescott. He was already in trouble yesterday morning, and ought not to have said anything else, no matter how bad he was provoked. So West is partly to blame for what happened to him.”

Cy wanted to shout that Prescott was nothing but a killer and Cain had let him go scot-free. No one said a word, but all around him, Cy could feel the others' fury. He glanced at Ring, who had his eyes fixed straight ahead, looking at nothing.

“That don't mean that I excuse Mr. Prescott for what he did,” Cain went on. “He let his temper get the better of him. Nobody likes other folks to tell lies on them, but Mr. Prescott lost his self-control. And now he's payin'. He lost his job because he let his feelings get the better of him.”

Cy didn't care a mouthful of spit for Prescott's feelings.

Cain looked uneasily down the two lines of boys, almost as if he were expecting some protest. “Mr. Stryker and me buried West last night, so y'all don't need to worry about that.” He gestured toward the strange man. “This here is Mr. Love Davis. He's gonna take Mr. Prescott's place.”