All True Not a Lie in It (43 page)

Pompey seems to be taking lessons from my horse, he is sitting his pony silent as a stone. Before long I am tired of him sitting there. I say:

—Do you know, I miss your singing just at this moment. Go on, call up some game for us. Charm us a buffalo.

The two Shawnee warriors confer and point at a stand of trees to the east. They get their rifles up and check their powder-horns. One jerks his head at me. I say:

—All right, you start.

The men go forward silent and easy, they trust me to my keeper, who is eyeing the gun. I am about to let him load the shot when Pompey reaches for my upper arm. His grip is cool but insistent. His voice is very low:

—Take the gun. Take it back.

His eyes are still, deliberately so. A trick he has learned from the Shawnee, Black Fish especially. He blinks up at the sky where the light is reaching the perfect pitch of dullness, it is evening shading into dark. Shadows mix with things. His head tilts slowly towards the darkening bushes. He unwraps his blue headscarf, his hair fades against the twilight, like his face. He says:

—Let your guard go. Tell him to go after the others. Here is another opportunity. Life seems to serve them up to you.

I keep my voice low like his. I say:

—What has you so serious? You speak heavy this evening.

—I believe I do.

Our eyes light into each other like teeth.

Kaskee has the gun, ramming the barrel and paying us no heed. We both look to him and then turn our eyes back to one another’s.
Pompey speaks again, soft and deliberate, as if he is teaching me more unknown words:

—Take the gun. I believe I saw a turkey in the direction of those bushes.

He does not turn his head from me, he does not twitch. Sweet Apples browses the emerging grass intently as if not listening out of courtesy. My horse hobbled behind us seems as deaf as ever to anything but herself. I say:

—In that direction?

I point to the west where the sun is gone, leaving a bright smudge on the sky. Pompey gives the slightest nod. I say:

—Why would I wish to go there?

He says:

—You know the way to Old Chillicothe and all their winter towns now. If I were a white man who knew so much, I would do something with my knowledge. I also know the way. There is much I know.

His mouth sets. This is his offering to me, I can see. It has cost him to give it. What does he want?

In the thicket of saplings, a gun blasts and sends out rings of echo. My keeper looks to the sound. No one emerges yet. My eyes find Pompey’s again, his are clear and open. He looks to the horse and the pony and I now know him to mean:
Get on the horse and we will be gone together
.

At this time, my capture in the snow with the other horse comes back to me. Fate having me try it once more, seeing what I will do this time. It strikes me that I do know where all the Shawnee towns are. And this time my horse is not loaded down. And I have a companion who knows much. I turn all this over in my mind. But Pompey’s movements are not clear. His hands twist, pulling the pony’s head up by the mane. The pony’s eyes roll behind the hair. I say:

—Why do you wish to do this now?

He stares at the pony until it shuffles. He hisses:

—I am nothing here. A servant. They might as well take my balls, I might as well be a eunuch.

—A favourite, surely. Quite a prince. Part of the Shawnee family. Black Fish—

—You are the prince. To Black Fish, I am still a slave, doing his bidding, interpreting and singing for him when he pleases. I am no Shawnee. No warrior. They call me a bearskin.

—You are safe, you are fed. What else do you want?

At once he goes stiff and proud. He says:

—I want—what you have.

He gives a sour laugh and his eyes on me are like Hill’s when we were boys, curious and determined. He comes closer and takes my arm and says:

—I have money. I buried it with my brother in Virginia. He stole it and gave it to me before the master curry-combed him with salt and pepper and hay for losing a cow, and he died. No one will ever have found it, the grave is not marked but I know where it is. It is at the end of a field. I paced it out.

My joints ache. Run now, run this time. Pompey is behaving like something in a cage bursting to get out, but to do what? His eyes are still, as if he is looking into the bottom of that grave. He says:

—It is not much, but I know where it is.

—You would dig up your dead brother?

—The Shawnee do it. I have seen it done. It is nothing.

The smell of powder residue floats back. I push my own brother Israel’s face away. The Shawnee hunters call to me: Sheltowee. Sheltowee.

So far their voices are without urgency, they are talking to each other about the deer they have brought down. My young guard is sitting splayed on the ground, troubled by the shot he is trying to fit
into the barrel. Ten steps and we would be invisible to him, we would be in the dark of the trees. I am twisting as if on a rope. I twist and twist and I do not know what is beneath me.

Pompey speaks again:

—You could say you were my master for the time. Until I could get myself elsewhere. It is your turn to help me, as you promised. You are free.

He shuts his mouth. But I do not loosen my grip on that rope. I have not finished. Not yet. If I run they will come after me, they and Hamilton will come for the fort and all of us, and they will not be kind.

And worse. The Shawnee will call me traitor. I cannot bear that somehow, the thought knots in my gut.

Looking Pompey dead in the eye, I speak up in a hearty manner:

—Well. Sounds as though we do not need a turkey now.

To the other hunters I call:

—Here I am.

Pompey instantly averts his face and rides away in the direction of the camp. Pompey, I am sorry, you thought I could give you some luck and another life. You could not go yourself and hope to be free. Where could you go? Free blacks have no true life, someone would have made a slave of you again. But I did not see this at the time. You bewildered me. I did not see what you were about. I did not wish to go looking for the dead and their money, I saw only myself twisting. I did not see you.

I
RIDE ALONE
as we continue on to the other towns. I watch for signs on trees or the ground, but there is nothing fresh or readable. The horses and ponies and walkers churn up the damp earth. Frost ridges the outlines of the prints as the sun climbs, they look silvered in the light. I watch the lines glitter and fade as a little warmth spreads out in the air. Soon enough they are mud.

The breeze rises as we ride on, the sun is warmer. The tiredness in my bones lifts. I see a woodpecker with its feet dug into the side of a tree, and I think of throwing my little bird club when I was a boy, again and again, until I could get anything I wanted with it. I would have been glad to get this bird with its scarlet crest and its black and white body. I would have taken it to show to my brother Israel. Israel, you would have been surprised. I think of you but I do not feel you near.

The bird raps sharp at the bark. My father riding ahead turns, and his eyes pierce me through. His silver earrings sway when he stops. I am startled somewhat. When he urges the horse on again, I see Pompey cutting away from him and dropping back among the warriors.

In his anger at me, Pompey has been telling Black Fish that I mean to be off. I am near certain of it. I can feel his anger from here.
But no one comes back to truss me up. I walk the white horse for a time and no one holds me. I am slow, my guard Kaskee walks some little way ahead with the other young men. The horse steps high, the mud sucks at her feet. The dew will be heavy tonight. I keep my weight light and even to stop my tracks being too visible, an old hunting trick Israel showed me. Going along slow, I watch the light coming through the bare branches and the hard buds, a web above us. The trail curves to the left.

Round the bend, Black Fish is alone. He is off his horse, standing at the centre of the path and waiting for me to catch him up. His eyes are hard. He has let his blanket drop to his waist and his hunting shirt is open. I see a thin crooked line on his chest. I think of knives. My heart begins to speed.

—My son.

He seems to be speaking without falseness or threat, he is all calm. He waves Kaskee off. The others go on at his nod and we remain where we are. A grapevine is coiled around a tree, hard and brown with a few new shoots snailing out. He seems to admire it. He touches one of the tendrils and pulls it to see it spring back. I watch his hand, the easy return of it to himself.

The party has moved a way ahead, I can hear the murmur of talk, the horses’ footfalls. We go on staring at the vine until Black Fish abruptly speaks again:

—You miss your wife? Your daughters and sons?

I think for a time. Pompey has been speaking to him, I know, and saying what?

No answer comes. My tongue clicks and feels dry and loose in my mouth. The shut box flies open in my face once more, and I see the fort and all of them there. They are like a set of knives stuck in me and pulled out again, leaving holes. But here and now they are not quite real, the way the fort has never been a real place. They have become a story. I do not know how to finish it, I cannot bear to
think of them suffering, I do not know how to save them from it and from you, Father. I do not want them to be here. I want to be here.

Such are my tangled thoughts, but I do not try to untangle them for his benefit. I say only:

—We will see them soon.

A good response, surely. Safe.

Now Black Fish is quiet. His eyes inspect every inch of the tree bark. My gut rumbles and he points his finger at my belly:

—Do we not feed you well here?

He looks quite sincere, I might say concerned. My throat is rough as I say:

—You feed me fine. And I hope my hunting satisfies you, Father.

—You know you are a fine hunter.

—I know I am.

I am struck with the sense that he does know me, and that we do not have to play the old false game. A bird rustles in the dead vine growth up the tree. Black Fish puts his hand on my neck. I feel the fingers before they reach me. He takes them away and says softly:

—They may have hanged your men by now at Detroit. This is what they do, no matter what they say. They have no use for such prisoners as those.

My eyes want to dart off from his. Keep them still. Keep your mouth still. But I cannot. Instead I blink and look for the bird. I say:

—I know.

I did not know, though, did I? I did not know that this was why we were going to Detroit. Behind my lids I see Callaway’s neck, burned further and stretched, his angry face purple, his eyes cast with blood and bulging. Hill’s neck, his voice all gone, his curious eyes dull as a pond. The others all hanging like terrible dolls. Will and Sam Brooks. Ben Kelly. The young men. All of you, I am sorry. I am sorry now.

—Sheltowee, did you wish it so?

I did wish them all dead at one time or another. My Fate seems to have twisted and pulled at her weaving to bring it about for me. Black Fish’s eyes are so tender that I have the curious feeling that he is not speaking to me, but to his dead son. And as his dead son, in a dead skin, I reply:

—It had to be so. Father.

—We took them to Detroit. You brought them to us first. This is what you think. But the way they were is not your doing.

—I know it.

My voice comes in taps like a hammer on thin metal. Black Fish is still speaking softly. He says:

—The men talk always of your daughter, your wife.

I tighten my lips. This has the feel of a sly stab with a dull old knife. I stab back:

—They
talked
of them. Before they were dead. Which they now are. You could have burned them yourself. Saved us all a trip.

My father now takes the vine in his hand. He says:

—This is good for hanging. Very strong.

—You would know that, I suppose. Being who you are.

My blood is rushing, my stomach lets out a moan. Callaway makes a queer noise deep in my skull and Hill calls up:
Dan, Dan
. Now Black Fish is close, I can see each of his lashes around his black eyes and the dark shadow beneath the skin of his jaw where his hair is coming. He has almost no smell, it is so peculiar that I find myself sniffing without thinking. He says:

—Your daughter, the one they say is a whore. I know of her.

—Everyone knows that story.

I speak sharp, thinking of Delilah saying the same thing back in Old Chillicothe. The kidnap, the rescue. Why can this not be buried, as the bodies at Detroit must be by now, buried in unmarked graves, bundled up with other bones to be lost? Why must it be paraded about like a severed head? But Black Fish lifts his hand and goes on:

—You took her back from our people. We would have kept her as we keep you.

He is rolling his neck, the looseness of the movement is not like him. His face has gone slack.

—I took her back. Of course.

I have to calm the pitching and flaring inside my body. I exhale hard and I see Black Fish blink, a ripple passing over his face like a breeze over a lake. I saw the same ripple when I first went into his house as his son, the same wave rolling over and vanishing. I keep myself still until I am able to say: