I Was a Revolutionary (8 page)

This made Roberts laugh. “Don't pay him no mind. He thinks he's white, is all.” He took a rag from his denim trousers and dabbed at his forehead, repeating his offer to CK. “Black, white, don't much matter to me, so long as you carry your weight.” CK thanked him, but remained resolute on leaving for Nicodemus after he'd raised enough money for train fare. “Whatever suits you,” Roberts said, and they continued on in the direction of his farmhouse. “That was the problem with the others, you know,” he said a few seconds later. “No workers. Most of your bunch seemed content to wait on charity.”

“Plenty willing to work,” said CK, feeling comfortable enough with Roberts to speak openly. “But some are sick, need care.”

“Whatever they are, they ain't working.”

Later CK wanted to explain what he knew Roberts could
never understand: what it felt like to make this journey together, up from where they came from. To suffer sickness and hunger, waiting on boats, penniless, packed into different churches, always being separated or sent to another town. Whether you'd ever spoke a word to them or not, the ones who'd made it this far were as much family as your true-blood kin. But those words wouldn't come to him in the moment. All he could say was: “Well, we here now.”

“Yeah”—Roberts smiled, his face mottled from the long day—“can't argue that.”

“And now they sending us to every town under a Kansas sky.”

“Except the one you want.”

“Yes, sir,” CK said. “Nicodemus.”

“Ah, Nicodemus.”

It was Roberts who set CK on the idea of hitching a ride on a supply wagon headed west. “Take a little longer, but cheaper than waiting on that rail line,” he said. “Get you closer, too.” Roberts went so far as to make inquiries, and toward the end of May, CK and Mil had raised enough to buy passage with a husband-and-wife freighter team whose name CK never troubled himself to learn.

“Can take you as far as Bull City,” the husband said. “Got a delivery there, but then we head south, on to Hays. That'll put you close, though. You can catch another freighter from there. Probably walk it even. Ain't but some miles.”

“Might could, yes sir,” CK said, taking the money from his pocket and handing it to the man. “Much obliged.”

They set out from the livery stables in the early morning, CK and Mil cramped in the back of the covered wagon with Rachel, while the husband and wife sat side by side in the cab, driving the team of horses. During the long bumpy days CK played with Rachel, dandling the wide-eyed child—so bewildered by the newness of everything—on his knee as he told
tales about what lay ahead in Nicodemus. Sometimes Rachel would coo in response, and he'd say, “I'm telling the truth, my little queen—I swear on it,” which sometimes elicited a laugh from Mil in that way CK loved to hear. Tired though they were, deliverance was near.

In the evenings the husband would lead the horses to the trough of whatever town they were passing through and CK would start the fire, while Mil and the wife fixed supper. They ate quietly, though sometimes the white couple indulged CK's joviality, grinning at a joke or story, as if despite themselves. At night CK and Mil removed their belongings to make room for the couple to sleep and would spread their dusty blanket on the ground beneath the wagon, lying down in the warm night with Rachel soughing restlessly between them.

There was a small one-foot rent in the tarpaulin covering that had been rigged to shelter the back of the wagon from which CK liked to look out at the passing land, baffled by the way the landscape of Kansas seemed to change right before his eyes. The way the open prairie went from rolling and tall-grassed in the east to flat and short-grassed the farther west they went along those desolate high plains. Strange that a
place
was actually made up of so many different kinds of places. Wasn't so different from Mississippi when he thought of it, though. He'd rarely left Bolivar County but heard tell of the hill country up north, the sandy gulf to the south, the riverboating east, and the tall piney woods between. And of course there was the burnt-black soil of his own Delta, that gorgeous floodplain between the Yazoo and Mighty Miss. He imagined the underwater humidity of syrupy summer days, the clouds of cotton dotting the horizon in all directions interrupted only by the occasional stand of pecan trees or bald cypress. When he felt the pangs of homesickness, CK would sit and stare for long stretches, humming to himself.

                  
'Twas a long weary night,

                  
we were almost in fear,

                  
that the future was more than Nicodemus knew.

                  
'Twas a long weary night,

                  
but the morning is near,

                  
and the words of our prophet are true.

On the day before they arrived in Bull City, their wagon came upon a long train of Indians, maybe a hundred or so, making their way across the plains. There were a handful of white men in blue tunics on horses directing the scattered group, as if herding cattle.

“Something's wrong with Rachel,” Mil said to CK, whose back was turned as he looked out the small window at the strange scene.

“Look at this, would you,” he said as he chewed on wild garlic leaves to quench his thirst. He'd seen some Choctaws in and around Bolivar County, but these folks were different, and there was something of the spectacle about them now. They were barely clothed—next to naked, by God—with expressionless faces like beaten leather. A wretched lot, if ever CK had seen one. They walked slowly, in no hurry, it seemed, to arrive at their destination.

“You hear what I say, CK?”

Still he didn't turn, just reached a hand back to shake Mil's leg. The noisome smell of garlic filled the hot wagon and she wafted a piqued hand as she joined him to see what he was fussing about.

She looked on, punctuating her silence with a little
tthit
click in her mouth.

“Look at them, would you,” he said. “Ain't they terrible-looking as anything you ever saw? Where you spose them redmen going?”

“Wherever they being put,” Mil said, returning to her spot wedged up against a few large sacks of cornmeal. CK tried to imagine where that might be. Where would you go when forced from your home, not knowing your destination? Would you wander forever? “Baby's hot,” Mil said, hand to Rachel's head. “I been trying to tell you.” CK said nothing, still watching as their wagon left the dismal procession behind, thankful his family knew where their journey would end.

He moved close to his wife, raising two fingers to his daughter's head. “Fever? You sure?” he said skeptically. He took Rachel in his arms.

“You think a mama don't know?”

He rocked the child gently, inspecting her. He didn't realize he was smiling until it had eased from his face. He could feel the warmth inside his daughter. Couldn't be, he thought. Not after what they'd been through. No. He passed Rachel back to Mil. “She feel fine to me,” he said.

One of the first ordinances they'd come to decide as a community was to outlaw liquor in Nicodemus. Talmen had never been one for more than the occasional drink, but he craved the tang of that Kentucky corn liquor and was glad he'd snuck a bottle in his clothes truck. He didn't care who knew, either. Damned if anyone was going to say he weren't allowed a drink after losing Isaiah. The night of the funeral, so besot, he walked through town with the bottle in hand. He made his way to the unfinished schoolhouse and went inside. There was no door and the floorboards were warping, a combination of rain-soak and the inferior lumber they'd had to use. There were still some tools lying around, as if any day they might be able to go back to work when the neighboring towns eased up their embargo. He set a hand on the sawhorse, running a finger along the smooth wood. He took a big slug of whiskey, and stared up
at the sky through the unfinished roof. Those stars. Slowly he moved to the doorway and leaned against the frame, looking out into the distance. The stone house. Baldwin. It was the only home you could see from there if you didn't know that all around it, barely noticeable below ground, were cramped dugouts full of families. He imagined taking his hammer to every corner of that stone house. He indulged the vision for some time, taking occasional pulls from the bottle as he watched himself chipping away at it until the home was no more than a pile of chalky limestone. His sadness had become anger, and soon that anger tired him. He lowered himself to the floor and fell asleep right there in the door frame, the same spot where Rawl would find him the next morning after Eugenia sent him out to search for his father. She wasn't one bit happy when they returned home, Talmen propped up by Rawl, sweating his drink. She took the bottle and poured out the last of the whiskey right then, giving him the meanest eye she could muster.

In the days that followed, Talmen didn't do much of anything. When Rawl rose early to head out to the fields to prepare for the coming harvest, Talmen slept late and spent the long afternoon hours beneath a cottonwood not far from the banks of the Solomon, where they'd buried Isaiah. It hectored him, Death. It was cruel and it was unrelenting.

After a few days Eugenia came upon Talmen sitting in the shade of the tree, staring a few yards away at the wooden cross he'd fashioned bearing his son's name. She spoke, and when he didn't answer, she lowered herself to take a seat beside him.

“Tal,” she said, placing a hand on his leg. They'd hardly spoken twenty words since the funeral—not because of any anger or reproach, but because not speaking of it had been their way of carrying on in the past. But here he was, underneath the cottonwood tree. “What's wrong that you have to sit up here all day?”

“You know why, Genia.”

“Your heart is heavy,” she said, rubbing her hand over the leg of his overalls.

“I can't leave it behind.”

There was a long silence, and they both looked out at the water, a slight breeze passing over them. Last born, first to die, he thought. The awful imbalance of it all.

“Isaiah, he gone, but you still here. Your family still here. We need you.” Talmen didn't say anything. “And the wheat will be coming in soon and you know Rawl can't do it all hisself.”

“Eugenia,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, and when he added nothing else, she spoke: “Your heart can sore and you can father. Don't have to favor one to the other.”

Talmen looked at the river, silent for a long moment, and then said, “Go on and leave me be a little longer.”

“Okay, a little longer then,” Eugenia said, but she stayed where she was until Talmen finally moved to stand, giving one hard exhalation, and together they made their way back to the dugout.

The freighter team let them off at the limits of Bull City, the mister—reins still in hand—tipping his cap to CK, and pointing in the direction of the Solomon River. “Bless you, folks,” CK said, and watched as the couple made their way into town to deliver their meal and molasses.

Mil said, “We should take her to a doctor now. Here.”

“Our girl's fine. We all are—we almost there.”

They were so close. He could feel it.

“How you know there's even a doctor in Nicodemus?”

“Of course there is. I seen it in my vision.”

“You seen it.” Mil looked away, making that clicking sound again in her mouth. “I'm taking her to town now, CK.”

“No you ain't,” said CK. “You're my wife, you'll do as I say. God start us on this journey together and we gon finish it so. Ain't nothing wrong with any of us that can't be made right in Nicodemus.”

CK turned in the direction of the Solomon and began to walk. After a brief pause he heard Mil's footsteps and they continued on until they found the river, and CK stooped by the banks to ladle a hatful of cool water. Slowly he rose and brought some water to Mil and Rachel, and they said nothing to each other for a long time afterward. That night they made their way a little farther on before camping on the bank. Eventually the river would lead them to Nicodemus. The contents of the pack had dwindled on this long journey, having shed some weight at each stop along the way. CK built a fire and set on the coffee, thinned and watery. After trying in vain to catch a jackrabbit that was too elusive in its jagged quickness, they settled for nibbling on the last of their stale bread.

“How she doing?” he said, nodding at Rachel. Their first words in hours.

“What you care?” she said, and pulled Rachel's blanket up so that it covered her neck. It was a cool night and colder still near the water. They slept underneath a quilt with the heat from Rachel's body providing additional warmth. They set out early in the dawn, unable to sleep after the baby began her crying shake. They walked all that morning and stopped in the early afternoon in the shade of some trees. CK eased into the shallow part of the river, dunking his hat under and spilling a refreshing pool over his head.

“We almost there, I can feel it,” he said. “Everything's gonna be okay.”

Mil was sitting on the ground, leaning against the trunk of a tree, catching her breath. She looked tired and hungry and said nothing. CK filled the tin cups from the pack and brought
water to her. As he waded out again, he looked down into the river, seeing the occasional fish swim past his legs, and there he stood while Mil and Rachel took a short nap, splashing around, trying to catch dinner until his fingers brushed against the tail of a medium-sized trout and brought him headfirst and all the way under, soaked. He resurfaced, shooting a thin stream of water out of his mouth, and smiled at Mil, who'd woken in the commotion. “Shoot,” he said. “Nearly had him.” Mil regarded him, then looked away into the distance.