Wash (12 page)

He watches his family from this faraway place like he’s seeing them through a pane of glass. He wants to tell his story but he does not know how or to whom. Maybe Thompson could have heard him but he’s been dead for years. Richardson’s not even sure what his story is, just the dim sense that it may be through the telling that he can drag his life back onto the course he set for it long ago.

One last thoughtless comment about the murder and he has had enough. When Caroline asks whether Emmaline has a pastry cutter and whether she should be allowed to keep it, he pushes back his chair with a rough creak and stalks out of the dining room with his wife’s quavering objections fluttering in his wake.

Richardson takes one of his long rambling walks to get away from his house full of people and no one to talk to. He heads for the barn and finds himself talking to Wash. Drinking and telling Wash all the things he cannot say as they sit together with the night falling between them. Mesmerized by the sound of his own voice rising up out of him, Richardson pours his rivers of words into the dim quiet stillness of that big barn for Wash to take or leave behind. It is as free as he has ever felt.

Wash

It was the day he rode home from stringing up Charlotte. That was the first night Richardson came down here well past dark.

Used to be, he’d come to the barn at the end of the day, like he had to tell me something for tomorrow, like it wouldn’t get done right less he made sure. Then he’d stay through nightfall, acting like it was an accident, like he never intended it.

And used to be, I was all right so long as he had company come to stay. Made him have to leave my barn by dinnertime. Go sit at the head of his table so they can eat.

I always thought he didn’t have it in him to come see me after full dark fell. But that day he strung up Charlotte was when he started coming later and later, talking at me into the damn middle of the night, always sitting a little too close and forever holding that flask. Telling me all his insides whether he meant to or not.

At first, it made me feel big because it gave me something on him. Like he was giving me a stick to poke him with. But as time went on, I saw it wasn’t a stick for poking him or hitting him neither. It was bigger. More like a heavy wooden beam. A beam I couldn’t hardly lift. All his telling did was pull me too close to hit him good.

His wife likely thinks he’s out tomcatting, but he’s down here trying to get his story straight. But he’s not talking to me. He’s talking to night. Talking to whatever will hear him and not talk back. And he’s not even standing next to any kind of truth yet, so I go between listening to him and watching the shape of the story he’s telling himself. I work to find parts I like so I won’t get caught so hard in hating him. Come daylight, he’s not the same man. I can’t hook the two together.

He tells me how he grabbed and he took all his life because everybody knows a man is made of what he has. Makes me have to stare hard at the step he’s sitting on, with his talk pouring round me steady as a stream. Makes me wonder about moving back to the quarters. He’s not about to come in there after me. But I know I can’t stand that, so I see can I stand this.

I sit sideways so he can’t see in my face whether he’s lit another lantern or not. Rest my eyes on the stone footings across the aisle, picture the river they came from with that greeny water pouring. Run my eyes up the walls, looking for spiderwebs and swallows’ nests. Count the hatchet marks on those beams and wonder who made each cut.

Sometimes it’s new, what he’s telling me, but once he starts coming down here later and staying longer, that’s when he starts circling back round. Makes me wonder whether I might do more than nod. Maybe he’s telling me his stories over and over till he sees me latch onto em. Put em in my mouth and chew.

He never does tell me what I want to know. Some word on those laws he keeps writing, reining us in tighter and tighter. But he loves to talk about what they set out to do. Him and his brother. All that clearing and those forts they built.

Didn’t seem to do em no good since he keeps telling who got killed and when. How those Indians were quiet as the devil and every goddamn where. How they’d sneak up behind a man, knock him to his belly, then kneel on his back to grab that forelock. Pull it tight and lay their blade across right at the hairline. And your friend looks out at you from under that blade, hoping it’s sharp enough so he won’t feel the cut till he’s already bled to death. Cherokee did just exactly that to his brother David but he ain’t come close to telling that day yet and I doubt he ever will.

I like hearing those wild Indian stories better than all the mess round here. Who voted him postmaster and who didn’t. Who blocked him from getting the county seat in that first town he made. All about this new Memphis he’s working to build out on that muddy riverbank. Who’s hell bent on stopping em and how. Who knows best and who can’t see the big picture.

I’m thinking it must wear a man out, knowing better than everybody else all the time.

When he starts in on me, I try to call up what my mamma told me about how to think about things. She already told me about Richardson naming me and boy, does he like to go on about that. How he gave my mamma the name Washington to put on me. How I was the first negro born to him and he wanted a name with some weight to it, so he wrote to old man Thompson, telling him mark it down.

It’s mighty strange to hear him talk about Thompson being like a father to him. He says they came close to starving and stayed close ever since. Hard to believe those two sat chained together for nearly a year. For a free man, he sure has spent some time behind bars and it shows. Weathered as hell and still looks hunted.

My mamma had already told me about that night when Thompson read her that part from Richardson’s letter out loud. She was building him a fire with me strapped tight to her when she heard him say mark it down. Told me she didn’t mind much. She had her own name for me and didn’t want it in any other mouth anyway. Some pieces you don’t share. She said we needed a name for em to use and this one was fine. Wash. Every time she said it, she heard waves and saw water sheeting off me. Sweeping me clean.

And just like he can hear me thinking about her, that’s when Richardson starts in on seeing my mamma at the sale. Telling all over again about seeing her standing on that block, staring at him till he raised his hand for her. Said it felt like she saw something in him. Felt like she lifted his hand right from his side. Made him bid on her.

You’d think I’d want to hear about my mamma but her name in his mouth makes me feel cornered. He thinks he’s talking about her on my account, but all I want is for him to keep his mouth off her. That’s when I start needing to put my hand on him. Make him leave her alone. Stay the hell away from her.

She always said Richardson was just like his daddy. From what she’d heard, that man’s got something to say about everything and never did learn to say it to himself. She said every man grows up to be like his daddy, one way or other. I ask her do I and she nods yes with that smile crooking down.

Soon as I see her nodding yes in my mind’s eye, I’m gone from that damn barn. Away from Richardson talking at me. That’s what I do when life gets drawn tight. I drop down inside my story, just like she showed me. Let my mind carry me back to some ease out on that island.

What my mamma did was, she took me down to the water and she painted my life out for me to where I could see it good. There were some parts I’d ask her to tell me over and over and she did.

“Tell me about seeing my daddy. Tell me about that.”

And she’d smile and drift and I could tell she was seeing my daddy, as clear as that first time she laid eyes on him. How she was still looking down, even after she’d stepped one foot in front of the next along the gangplank, coming off that boat. Knowing something else was coming and not knowing what it was.

She told me how she held her eyes on her own two feet. Trying to keep track of herself. Looking away from the light flashing too bright off the water and away from all those eyes. Sometimes she’d add in a piece she left out before. How they stopped at the edge of Charleston Harbor. Threw buckets of salt water on em. Cut their hair and greased their faces.

I listened to every story she told me but mostly I wanted to hear about my daddy. Her seeing him for the first time. Her watching her own feet and bumping smack into him before she ever looked up. She always grinned telling this part, her top lip catching a little on that crossed over tooth she had.

I made her go slow, all the way from my daddy’s feet to his face. His one foot a little pigeon toed and the other one with that scar from running not looking where he was going. When she saw that shiny old scar wrapped round his ankle, she remembered the bright red blood dripping down on that day when they were playing tag and he stepped too close to the sharp point of an old staub.

How his family sent him away to keep him safe while he was still scrawny, puny she said, so she had to take him in real slow before she saw that long ago boy was this same somebody standing in front of her right now. How he was himself and somebody new at the same time. How she could tell from the way he was looking at her, she was herself and somebody new to him too. How all the pieces came together, all at the same time.

How they did not get to say one word before the lines started moving again and people bumped between em. How it was not until later that night when they found each other in the moonlight falling on the two open pens, side by side, with a gap at the back of the fence where he could slip through.

How it was better that way, with nobody knowing what they were to each other. How they sat up that night and the next. Leaning braced against the wall, trying to stop the swaying from being on the water so long. She said turning her head to look over at him made everything tip and spin at first, so she sat watching the ground and feeling the sound of their words falling on her skin like rain on a dry place. They talked and talked but low. Then they sat still, looking at their legs stretched out side by side.

And the next night, how he laid his big hand down careful in the warm dust between em. Then he lifted it, leaving his palm print just as clear as a track. How she laid her own palm down in the print he made, and then they sat looking at her littler hand laying inside his bigger one. How she lifted her hand out of his print and laid it on his flat low belly in the sticky heat. How she lifted her hand, leaving her pale dusty print floating there, and how it kept saying mine. Mine.

How he left his prints all over her but light. How she looked up at him with that big moon rising over his shoulder and she knew they were making me. Come what may, they were making me.

She told me every single story she had. I didn’t always know how to make sense of what she told me, with some running through my fingers and some sticking with me. But she told me her stories so many times and in so many ways, said she was laying her staples inside the pantry of my spirit. I might not see the shape of each one right away but I’d find it when the time came.

She even told me about waking up that day when they had her hanging over the side. How she looked down at all that heaving blue and came right on back, lickety split. Said she knew she had things to do and I was one of em. And no, she didn’t know what happened to my daddy after those first two nights but every time she looks in my face, she knows he’s with us both.

Soon as she was taken to a new pen, she had to turn her mind to finding the right buyer. Told me she saw right away she had to take hold of this new life or it would sure enough take hold of her. So she hunted till she found her eye drawn to one tall skinny white man who stood calm and quiet. Looked kind of hawkish but greeted by most everybody. Not a big talker, just small nods. But when he did speak, the other men leaned close to make sure they weren’t missing something.

Somebody decent was what she kept saying. Steady enough so we might be safe.

Hard to believe that tall skinny white man she told me about turned into this one, sitting here like he can’t get close enough, drinking till I can smell the sweet coming off his skin and telling me everything I don’t want to know.

Part Two

Friday, August 7, 1812

Nags Head, Outer Banks, North Carolina

O
ld man Thompson was lucky in that he got exactly the death he’d hoped for. Fell asleep with the sea breeze coming in over him one day and didn’t have to wake up the next. Wash will soon turn sixteen, the Thompson brothers have been itching to crack down for years and Richardson is nowhere to be found. In his last letter to Thompson, he said he was riding off to his final war, determined to whip England for good this time.