Wash (2 page)

I don’t know about that. All I knew was I needed money and I had to do something about Wash. I remember thinking this work might even appeal to him.

Wash

Richardson had me at the top of his page. I knew it clear as day before I ever saw his damn book.

That man wrote everything down. Somebody brought a mare to put with his stud, he’d fetch his paper down to the barn. Unroll it all crackling, then tack it up on the wall where they could go over it together. Start with the name of that Eclipse racehorse written at the top, then branching down and down till his finger found his stud, with all those lines left empty for time to come. Not that I can read, but I can sure watch a man pointing to a word and saying it.

I knew where he was headed before the thought ever crossed his mind. It was me leading that gray stud into the sun. Walking him out for his neighbor Carpenter to see. Horse was past twenty but still acting bold so I looped the chain over his nose. Rested my palm on his withers to keep him calm.

I felt their eyes on me too but that was nothing new. Some folks stare at you like to eat you up. Hunting some knowing behind your eyes just as hard as they don’t want to find it.

It was him seeing me with that horse. I know it sure as I’m standing here. It was Richardson watching me work his stud for Carpenter come to breed his mare that hooked the two ideas in his mind. After that, it was just a matter of time.

See, I know how they do. White folks like to stay in those books. They carry and they keep and they dig in their books, like nothing matters that don’t get written in some book somewhere. Like that’s the only way they can know for sure what happened.

They’ll write down who they are and what they did. And their daddies and theirs too. Put it all in a book, then close it up and put it on the shelf. Just to know it’s there so they can sleep at night. Like if they don’t get written down somewhere and they shut their eyes for a minute, they might disappear.

But there ain’t no writing this down. No book to put this in. Some of us shut our eyes at night and wake up in the morning, not written down nowhere. And still don’t disappear.

Nobody who was not here will know what went on. Life looks different from the inside than the outside, but they think all they got to go on is what gets written down.

This story will come out. That’s what I tell myself. Won’t be till after we’re dead and gone, but we won’t really be gone cause it don’t work like that. All these books and all these white folks, thinking the world is forever passing away. All trying to make their mark, trying to be a big man.

But ain’t none of us going nowhere. We stay right here. All of us, all the time. Black and white and everything in between. All together, all the time.

Time treats me different even now. I can’t stand outside my story to save my life. I keep trying to tell it without falling right in, but soon as I start to look back, I’m neck deep before I know it. Current catches me and I’m gone. Each one of those Friday afternoons when he sent me off in that damn wagon sits right here, breathing close on the back of my neck.

Part One

Sunday, August 17, 1823

Two days’ ride northeast of Nashville

I
t’s well past suppertime and still the heat shimmers heavy without a breeze, even high on this bluff where Richardson’s broad stone house sits facing east over the river bending below. After this long dry summer, his wagon creaks cresting his last hill as late light spikes through the clouds. Quinn brings Wash back from another weekend away.

Richardson strides out to meet them, moving easily through the empty quiet of this Sunday evening. One foot in front of the next. Battered handmade boots caked with dirt. Fawn britches worn to bagginess over bony knees. At seventy, his leanness has become extreme but he still appears fit and graceful as long as he moves in the service of a clear intention. Sharp brown eyes under hooded lids and a pronounced widow’s peak. He had been handsome once but disappointment and disillusion, along with two harsh stints as a prisoner of war, have long since knocked the gloss off.

Sweat has darkened the collars of all three men and horseflies torment the sticky haunches of the team. They stomp the ground where Quinn has pulled them up to wait. Wash refuses to meet Richardson’s eye as he slowly unfolds to his full height, standing in the wagon bed, swaying slightly to keep his balance amidst the jerking of the horses, looking older at twenty six than most men at forty.

Richardson has owned Wash since before he swam snug in Mena’s belly but the young man has never once met his gaze. Even in full sun, Wash keeps his face hard to read. Holds his head a little tilted so eyes snag on the deep scar denting his temple instead. After stepping down from the wagon, Wash crosses the parched grass toward the biggest barn. Richardson, hawkish from years of vigilance, turns to watch him go then drags his attention back to Quinn who sits high on the wagon seat, holding the reins bunched in one hand and digging in his chest pocket with the other.

A lock of steel gray hair hangs over Quinn’s low forehead as he hands Richardson the thin banknote folded around a small square of thick paper listing the names. Both documents are battered and grimy from the long ride in that sweaty pocket. Richardson takes the papers and heads for the house, leaning slightly forward as if this will help him cover the necessary ground more quickly. He can already feel the liquor loosening the perennial tightness in his chest as he scans down the list written in Quinn’s rough letters.

Minerva, Phyllis, CeCe, Molly, Dice, Charity, Vesta.

A big operation to have so many at childbearing age. At least he hopes they are. He has long since left the details to Quinn and it worries him some. But not enough to go himself to make sure. Not anymore. He reminds himself to have Quinn get the ages of these women who, along with Wash, have been hauling them slowly out of debt for more than five years now.

It’s not only the money, although that lies forever at the heart of the matter. Richardson’s interest runs deeper. He wants to know what happens and how. Which woman holds onto her child and which does not, and not just because he will need to write a refund. He wants to know, how does a child of Wash and Molly’s turn out? Or one of Wash and CeCe’s?

Richardson wonders whether any of them will carry Mena’s face. He can still see her standing on that block down in Charleston all those years ago, so clear and somehow unbroken, with Wash already on his way. That very first time he saw her, Mena had rested her eyes on him until he felt as pulled as a fish on a hook. Her unbidden image blooms so vividly up through the years that Richardson has to shake his head to knock it loose.

As he enters his house, he calls down the hall, “Emmaline, I am unavailable.” Her yessir gets lost in the thunk of his boots on the stairs. Nine long strides carry him across the echoing ballroom to the small room off the far end where men gather after dinner to smoke and drink and talk politics. His office is downstairs by the back door but this tucked away place where his books line the walls has become his refuge.

He shuts the door behind him, steps straight to the low liquor cabinet to pour himself a slug of bourbon and then stands by the window, holding his drink cupped in his palm, watching the gray wood of his big barn start to silver in the coming twilight. As he listens to the thump and rustle of his large family settling in, he knows the high window under the eaves on the far side of the hayloft is falling dark as a fist, and he knows Wash is likely sitting there in it, watching the night draw near, just like he is.

After each of these times away, Wash heads for the barn, hoping Richardson’s stableman Ben has already gone back to the quarters for the night. He slips into the first stall and sinks down against the wall in the one corner that can’t be seen from the door, feeling nothing but thankful when this one horse turns to stand over him, dropping its head to breathe him in. A few bits of chaff from a mouthful of hay fall on Wash’s bent head as a soft nicker warms the back of his neck.

The horse returns to its hay but Wash stays tucked into that corner until well past dark. Then he stands and brushes that horse over and over, each stroke smoothing away another jagged edge of his past few days. He slips from one stall to the next, one horse to another, moving through the darkened barn as easily as a blind man.

Sometimes he runs his hands over the horses without a brush, smoothing the wide flat muscles of their necks and shoulders, down the hard straight bones of their legs, across the fluttering softness of their noses. Their slow breathing soothes him and this use of his hands retrieves them from their earlier harshness. The easy grace with which the horses receive his tenderness allows the hammered down place inside of him to open back up before too long.

Over time, these horses have become a refuge because they know nothing of the rest of his life. Usually their obliviousness eases Wash’s nerves but sometimes it enrages him. That one mare, Queenie’s first and last filly, was turning out needy just like her mother. Forever coming after him with that soft whinny, so insistent with her nudge nudge. Wanting some attention, some kindness Wash might not have to give right then.

Until that one bad day when he wheeled around and slapped the soft side of her nose with the flat palm of his hand, just where the pale gray shades into dark dapples. The sharp hollow thwack against the velvet give of her skin, her startled squeal sounding so loud in the quiet barn, and Wash regretting it before his blow even landed.

All that had grown between himself and this mare was gone. As steady and calm as he can manage to be with her now, his slip will haunt him. Any quick move he makes near her will be met with a flinch and that flash of panic in her eye, forever echoing his mistake back to him. Nothing for him to do but put up with it. Hope it will ease more quickly this time, even when it never does. The mare’s refusal to forget angers Wash more than anything else because it is a luxury he does not have.

While he has not yet learned to check his swing, over the years he has learned to direct it elsewhere. Into stacked feed bags or folded blankets or sometimes the wall. He startles the bright bay colt named Bolivar with his sudden outbursts but he has not hit him and that’s all Wash cares about. He needs to be around some creature that is not and has never been afraid of him. The solace of this is worth learning to rein himself in.

It’s good and dark by the time Wash closes the last stall door and makes his way carefully up the stairs then the ladders to the highest loft where he has hidden old blankets in the hay. He does not sleep in the quarters with everyone else. He stays in the barn whether Ben likes it or not.

With this work he’s been put to, enemies come easy. Wash stays three stories up with loose hay slippery near the edges and the horses to warn him. Nobody coming up here after him, no matter how mad they get. Most stay too scared of falling and breaking something with no way to set it right.

Running his eyes across the inside of this high peaked roof calms him. Each plank cut smooth then laid in flush against the next one. Each peg where it needs to be, driven with just the right number of blows. Nothing wasted, nothing crowded.

Inside those cabins, it’s like a hole or a nest. Smoke coating everything and sticky with nowhere to go. He has lain in plenty of cabins and he’s finished with that. Feeling the endless stream of others who have been there before him and died or lived, as clear as if he can reach out and touch them.

Wash determined early on to make his home in this loft despite Ben’s constant muttering about his horses, his harnesses, his liniment and his barn. That crotchety old stableman can’t come up here after him and they both knew it from the start. Richardson stays out of it because he has learned to choose his battles and Wash lets people tell the story that suits them.

That they keep him off and separate. Make him stay in the barn with the animals. As if they are punishing him when they are giving him exactly what he wants.

He tries to make it work out like that whenever he can. Makes him feel big. Big enough to take all this in and still have a part of himself where he can find room enough to stand. Makes him feel like his insides are as wide and open as the swaybacked meadows running as far along the river as he can see under a full moon.

Makes him feel bigger every time he sees that most of them don’t have even a dogpatch worth of room on the inside. All that money and all that carrying on and they don’t have much more than a little patch to look around and see out from. This is one of the pictures that tugs the corner of Wash’s mouth into Mena’s slight downward grin.