Beautiful Dreamer (6 page)

‘Let's get going.'

He picked up the shells, one by one, warm now to the touch, and dry, and dropped them into his pockets, four in each. He broke open the shotgun and squinted up at the sky through the barrels, light spiralling down and two circles of perfect blue at their end. Water wouldn't have done any harm, not so long as he got to clean it out sometime soon, a little oil, a piece of cloth.

He got to his feet and looked around. There was a path of sorts, which was not what he had wanted to see. That meant that people came this way and it meant that anyone following wouldn't be slowed. But it would be foolish not to take it. The thing was to reach the railroad and hope there was a freight passing sometime soon. There were those that came this way on boats, but he had never done such himself so he knew nothing about this stretch of the river beyond the fact that it took him where he wanted to go. If he had travelled by land, he would have taken another direction, circling around. They had come a fair way, though how far he did not know. And the path had not been there whenever he had glanced across, trying to keep himself floating, trying not to run his head up against rocks, so anyone following would have had some trouble unless they took to the water themselves and that didn't seem likely.

He struck out along the path, the gun over his shoulder and the boy walking behind. Who would have thought he would have found himself doing this and with no one but a black boy for company? Well, you did what you did and took what came when it came. There was no other way to live he had ever found.

*   *   *

I see him coming. He's coming fast. The cart is swaying side to side and I can see where he using the whip, which is something he never do. Something's happened, right enough. I'd finished peeling the potatoes and weeding out back and was just sitting there before having another crack. Then he comes. He pulls back on the reins and is off before she's stopped.

‘Get you things together. We going.'

I don't know what he means. I can see something has happened but I don't know what and none of it makes any sense.

He stopped and looked down at me, trying to decide, perhaps, whether to explain it all. And he does. He squats down there in the dust and takes hold of my arm.

‘I done something stupid. I went in the front door of the store.'

That didn't seem too bad to me. I know we get to go in the back but using the front door don't seem to me such a crime.

‘More than that, I got to having a tussle with them all. Might have been shot dead right there, hadn't of been for a white man.'

‘A white man.'

‘First time I ever know anyone stand up for one of ours. Jake Benchley, over past Richmond's place. Anyhow, I got out of there but I put my money on they coming after me. We got to get.'

He looked at me a moment more and then was off inside. ‘Get some clothes and put them in a bag. Then get some food and the bottles out yonder.'

‘Yessir,' I said, not knowing even then what this was all about. I guess we took about an hour loading things up on the cart. I got some water for the mule, which looked pretty dead from being ridden so hard. It only took us an hour but it were an hour too long. We weren't even up on the cart when we spotted them. Rain had been coming. You could see from the sky. But it hadn't come yet so the dust still rose up when anyone rode along and there was dust rising up now. My daddy squinted his eyes to see who it was. Then he knew.

‘You got to get out of here.'

‘I'm staying.'

With that, he hit me with the back of his hand. He never done that before but he did it now and it hurt.

‘You going.'

‘Where?'

‘You get to your aunt over Hastings. You know how to get there.'

‘Yessir,' I said, none too sure that I did.

‘Well, then, get going.' Then, in spite of what he had said, he reached out a hand and pulled me to him. He lifted me up in the air, big though I was, and gave me a kiss, right on my lips.

‘I love you, son,' he said, and hugged me to him so it drove out all the air. ‘Now get going and don't stop for nothing, you hear. Things work out, I'll come get you.'

Things didn't work out, not at all. I ran off into the bushes. I could see them now. The dust was still round them but there was half a dozen or more, on horses. They were riding hard and I could see they rifles. I turned to run but couldn't. Instead, I lay down there in the deep shade among some bushes. Nobody would see me there but I could see everything. I could see more than I wanted. A whole lot more. Even though I couldn't believe it, I saw it all.

They were down off their horses before they even stopped, leaving them to wander off, trailing their reins. My daddy just stood there on the porch and watched them come. They stopped a way off, as if they didn't know what they had come to do. I couldn't hear what they said, but one of them was shouting and my daddy was answering back. For a minute or so, they just stood like that and then one looked to where I was hiding so that I thought they had found me out, but of a sudden they rushed toward him. He hit one so that he fell straight down, and another, who swung away holding his face. But then they were on him and started in to beat him. I could see how they were fighting to have their turn, pulling their fists back and hitting him hard as they could. It were terrible to watch but not as terrible as what they did next.

One of them went across to his horse and unhitched a rope he had over his saddle. He walked back, paying it out in his hands. Then he started to fashion a loop at the end and I knew what they were going to do. I got up, meaning to rush out and put a stop to it, but I remembered what he said and I knew that they wouldn't pay attention to me, so I lowered myself down again, feeling so weak in the knees I thought I would fall.

They dragged him across the yard to the barn and threw the rope up over the beam where the pulley lifts the grain up. Then they fixed the rope around his neck and straight away lifted him up. They all hauled on the rope and I could see how daddy's neck twisted to one side. Then one of them let go of the rope and took hold of his legs and pulled down on them as hard as he could. Then they all stepped back, still holding the rope. And I screamed, except that when I did nothing came out, nothing at all. I screamed but it was all quiet except where they were hollering. Then they tied the rope off and stepped back, as if to admire what they had done.

They went inside the house and I could hear where they were trashing it. Then they came out and turned around to watch as a drift of smoke came out. Then pretty soon I could see flames at the windows and then it was licking out of the door and around the doorposts. Then there was a kind of whoosh and the whole thing seemed to lift up in a mess of flames. I could feel the heat from where I were lying.

Their horses started getting skittish so they got back up into the saddle and headed out. But just before they got clear, one of them turned his horse, reached back behind him and brought a rifle out. Then he steadied his horse, took aim, and fired a shot. I see where it hit my daddy in the chest and sent him swaying. But I don't think he felt it at all. I think he had gone when they first pulled him up.

Then they were off and I ran out. I ran straight to him where he was swaying still. I tried to undo the rope but it were pretty tight. At last I managed it and it slipped right through my hands. He fell to the ground and I ran up to him, the heat from the fire making me put my hand up against my face. The rope was tight. I tried to get it loose but couldn't, it was so tight. There was a knife inside but the house was nothing but a mess of flames now. He was bleeding from where the bullet had hit him but I knew that he was dead. I still tried to get the rope undone and at last I eased it off him. He just lay there, settling a bit. His face had been squeezed up tight when the rope was around him, but now that had gone his face smoothed out. I tried to cry but wouldn't nothing come. Not a sound come out of me though I was heaving so I was sure I would be sick.

After a bit, the heaving stopped and I gave my daddy a kiss. I knew he was dead. I knew they had killed him for going in the wrong door of the store and I knew I had to be going. What could I do but what he told me, only I was afraid that they would know where my aunt lived as well, that they wouldn't be content with killing him. I sat for a while and watched as the roof of the house collapsed in a swirl of sparks and then, some time on, the walls fell in. The heat was burning me but that didn't mean much. What did that matter? I thought to bury him but the tools were inside, except for one that wasn't. I had been working the garden and the spade was still there. So I spent the next several hours digging a grave. The soil was loose and it wasn't so hard but I got the length wrong at first and when I tried to put him in he was all doubled up. But after a while I managed it and then sifted the earth back on top of him until it was done. I was sweating from the heat of the day and the fire, though that had burnt down to a red glow by now. The earth formed a little mound and I stuck the spade where a cross should go. Then I said ‘When I lay me down to sleep' and stood there a bit, crying. The tears came down but still there weren't no sound. It was as if my voice had got swallowed up by all that had happened.

I knew, now, where I was going. I wasn't going to no aunt, at least not yet awhile, until I knew what they were all up to. But I was going to seek out the man who had tried to stand between my father and those that wanted to kill him. Maybe he could save me and explain what it was all about. He was white and maybe he could stop them doing what they might have a mind to do next. I didn't know no white man but perhaps he had the power to do that. So I ran off through the woods and kept running until I snagged my foot and fell so that all the wind went out of me. Then I just sat there and couldn't go on. Everything that happened seemed piled on top of me and I couldn't move. I had seen what they had done and it seemed as if the world was done with, too. I started in to cry but no sound came out. I just cried and hugged myself because there weren't nobody else was going to no more. And I was scared as I had ever been. And I had got turned around and wasn't sure for a while where I was but I guess that was just because things had happened.

Then it started, like I'd known it would. It came from nowhere. At first it's just way there at the back of my head like something come loose and floating down. I can tell when it going to happen. That don't mean I can stop it, though. And I'd known even when I was running, as if I could outrun it, knowing all the time that I couldn't. It floated down on me and even the feeling was one I hated, before the thing started. All my skin seemed touchy and things started in to move. And the lights coming through the tree branches were more than I could take. I held one hand with the other, knowing it wouldn't make a difference, had never made a difference so long as it had been happening. And it didn't now. The shaking started and then ran down me like a wave washing over and I could feel things going black and the shakes started in and then I was gone, gone wherever I went when it happened and everything washed away for a while. I don't know how long it took, have never known. I just come to and I'm sweating and my teeth hurt and I feel for my tongue and I open my eyes as if I just been born. Then it over and whatever washed over me has washed away and I'm left like a fish on the river bank, flopping around and wondering whatever happened to me that I'm there.

The dark came on suddenly and a flash of lightning lit everywhere up so it looked real scary. And then the thunder came, right over me as it seemed. There was no rain, though, and I thought maybe it would pass on by. But it didn't and the thunder came right on in after the lightning so that I knew it must have been most overhead. And then I began to think of twisters and how they might come right on through and flatten everything. But I guess I didn't really care about that. What did I care if I was killed? My daddy had been killed as well. But I got up and started forward and made my way all right, recognizing things, I guess, though I don't know how.

After a bit, I come into a clearing and saw the house. It were his right enough. There were no lights, so I went over by the window and crouched down. I could hear a noise coming from inside, a kind of whimpering like you hear from a wounded animal, that and a snoring sound. The windows were open but the screens were in place, except on one window that was closed. Just then the rain began, only it wasn't rain but hail that danced and jumped white across the ground. I figured there was no sense in staying outside. If I needed to see this man, I had best get indoors. Later, it didn't seem such a good idea, but I guess I wasn't thinking straight. If I had been thinking straight, I wouldn't have been there at all. Truth was, I was good and scared. I was scared over what had happened. I was scared because I couldn't speak. And I was scared because here I was outside the house of a white man, which was a quick way to get shot in the head, only my daddy had said that this was the man who had tried to stop them, even if he hadn't. I am trying to figure why I opened the window but, whatever it was, I opened it. I eased the window up, slipped inside, and slid it down again. I just sat on the floor for a bit, listening to the hail outside, listening to it beating on the roof, and listening, too, to the sounds of the man in the next room.

Then I began to think how he would wake up and shoot me dead. And I stood up, not sure what to do. I knew I should have left then, opened that window and got myself out, but there was something else in me, someone whispering in my ear and saying to go in and see this man.

So I went in. It were dark so that I couldn't see anything except the doorway. I stepped through and stood there, waiting for the lightning to flash, and, when it did, I got to see him. He were lying there, his eyes closed but puffed up and scraped as if someone had thrown him off a truck. There was a smell, just a human smell, I guess, but it were different. Then it were dark again. A minute later, it flashed and I could see something strange about his chest. I didn't like what I was seeing and it sounded as if he were on his way to being dead and I had seen enough of that. I went back into the other room and nearly tripped over a chair. I sat down on it and didn't know what to do. I never been so scared. Then the lightning flashed again and I see his gun, leaning up against the wall. And for a bit I thought that maybe I should take it in and shoot him like they shot my daddy. He were white. It were others like him done this thing. But then I remembered he weren't like that and I began to think how he was all smashed up and how maybe that was because he had helped my daddy, so I didn't do nothing. I just sat there, with a bundle of things in my hand, and waited for morning to come. I didn't know what I would do when morning came, but I figured maybe I would know by then or maybe he would wake up and tell me what to do.