Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History (55 page)

Odetta reached behind herself and closed the door shut. She untangled herself from them and removed her cowboy hat. Odetta’s coiled hair fell down to her waist like spaghetti-thin ropes made of soft black skin. The stingers stayed retracted inside the tips of her locks.

Lil Bit had forgotten her mother’s girlish sloe-eyed dark beauty. Odetta’s hair slid across Lil Bit’s lips then trailed up wiping a tear away from her eyelashes, the tactile sensation making Lil Bit’s skin shiver with the thrill of seeing her mama again.

“We thought you were dead.” It was the first time Lil Bit had ever heard a tremble in her father’s voice. “How did you find us?”

Odetta swept into the room with urgent steps. She wore denim pants with leather chaps and a heavy duster covered her entire body. She was tall and could be mistaken for a man if she kept her head down and body covered. Only her eyes and high cheekbones gave her away.

She reached inside her duster and pulled out new beige wanted posters with Gabriel’s clean-shaven face on it. The reward money was a hefty $1000. It revealed that his last known sightings were Houston and Abilene.

“We leave now,” she said.

“I have to get money back to Texas,” said Gabriel.

“You can’t go back there.”

“That money don’t show up on time, more trouble comes for us.”

“If these posters in Abilene, they damn well in this town too,” she said.

Gabriel frowned. “Where can we go?”

“Nicodemus,” she said.

“Nicodemus?”

“It’s an all-Negro town one hundred and twenty-five miles from here. We can make it in ten days if we push it. It’s safe.”

“All Negro?”

“We don’t have time for all this talking, I can explain on the way. But there’s something else.” She glanced at Lil Bit.

“What?” asked Gabriel.

“There’s trouble out on the prairie. People been finding bodies ripped apart.”

“We lost two men yesterday,” said Gabriel.

Odetta rubbed Gabriel’s shoulders with her hands. Lil Bit saw her father’s body soften.

“My brothers will go ahead of us and clear the way. We have to be gone before sun-up.”

Lil Bit watched Gabriel’s eyes close. He looked hesitant.

“Gabriel, now,” Odetta said, grabbing Lil Bit by the arm and pulling her towards the door.

It was a tense walk to the livery stable. Lil Bit took shallow gulps of air through her mouth, afraid her own breathing would be loud enough to alert trouble their way. At the stable, Odetta lit a few coal oil lamps that were set in wall brackets while Lil Bit quietly saddled up Bear and Daphne with Gabriel’s help. Odetta’s horse was hidden behind the building. When they were ready, they woke up Vicente from inside the wagon. Vicente reached under the wagon, where Juanez dozed between the wheels in a dingy blanket, and shook him awake.

Lil Bit felt heat seeping into her scalp.

“Papa…”

“Let’s go!” hissed Odetta.

“Don’t move, nigger!”

Three white men walked out from the horse stalls, their rifles drawn. Lil Bit recognized two of them from the cattle auction.

“Where’s the money?” said the taller man with a bulbous nose. His voice sounded strange to her, like his mouth was stuffed with food making it hard to enunciate.

“We don’t have any,” said Gabriel.

The tall man laughed. “Don’t lie to me, nigger.”

Odetta placed herself in front of Lil Bit.

“Bitch, keep still,” said the shorter man. His pockmarked face twitched. He sounded just like the tall man. The third muscular man kept his two guns trained on Juanez and Vicente.

Odetta slipped off her hat.

“I said keep still!” the tall man yelled.

The short man shot a round into the ground. The horses whinnied and reared their legs. Lil Bit felt her knees buckling, but she made herself stay standing. She saw Odetta’s hair unravel and discreetly slink down her back.

“You got money. We watched you. Just toss it on the ground,” said the tall man. The short man walked closer to Odetta, aiming his gun at her head.

“Slowly,” said the tall man.

Gabriel grabbed the satchel from Bear’s saddle and tossed it on the ground. The short man picked it up.

“Good and heavy,” he said.

“Nice doing business, folks,” said the muscular man. He opened his mouth wide, and a surge of blood splashed into Juanez’s eyes. Juanez shrieked, reached for his face, and the muscular man knocked him to the ground. He ripped open Juanez’s shirt and buried his mouth into his stomach and ate.

The hair on Odetta’s shoulders rose up. The tall man’s eyes squinted as if he were seeing Odetta for the first time. He backed up a few steps. Gabriel grabbed a gun hidden in the small of his back.

Blam!

The thief stumbled, clutching at the wet hole in the middle of his chest. He fell to his knees, opened his mouth and a torrent of red liquid gushed from his lips in a thick stream that splattered onto Gabriel’s right leg. Gabriel screamed as the acidic blood burned through his denim and seeped into his flesh.

Odetta leaped onto the tall man and released her hair into his neck and face. The tall man spit blood onto her cheek, but she wiped it away with no sign of pain. Lil Bit saw Odetta’s hair spasm, and then the tall man stopped moving.

The two other thieves grabbed the money and ran out of the stable. Odetta snatched the tall man’s rifle and ran after them.

Lil Bit knelt by her father. Vicente grabbed a kerosene lamp and held it over them.

She ripped apart what was left of the pant leg. The skin was oozing with bloody pustules and darkening as spidery black veins ran up his thigh towards his groin. He was slipping away.

“Papa,” Lil Bit whimpered. She was crying so hard that snot and tears were falling on him and mixing into his wound. She slapped his face to keep his eyes open.

“It won’t stop, Papa.”

“S’OK,” he said.

“No it ain’t.”

His eyes were gazing at her hair. Her locks were waving around her face freely. A weak smile animated his lips.

“So pretty. Just like your Mama’s.”

He reached out and stroked a few strands that looped around his fingers. Lil Bit looked at her father’s face, then at his ravaged and festering leg.

“Sorry, Papa.”

She struck his leg with the barbed tips of her hair. The needle points went through his flesh from the top of his thigh down to his toes. She pushed her venom into his body. She could hear Vicente praying in Spanish. Gabriel shuddered then gritted his teeth as her toxins surged into his leg. She reached for his hand and held it tight. Closing her eyes, she focused on sending her venom down his leg. It was her first time spreading the neurotoxins without anger. She squeezed Gabriel’s hand tighter.

Unhooking herself, she touched his leg. Gabriel’s flesh was rock hard. She traced her finger along the skin that was still alive above his thigh, and the dark hardened mass below. She took the lamp away from Vicente and brought it closer to Gabriel’s skin. She had to make sure the infection stayed frozen in place. No more pustules formed. The black webbed lines didn’t spread. They had faded away.

He was alive.

Lil Bit touched her father’s sweaty forehead. He was conscious, watching her the entire time. Staring at her hair. She pulled her tendrils back down inside her head. The bumps on her scalp were hot to the touch. But they felt good. So good.

Vicente helped Odetta lift Gabriel into the back of the chuck wagon. Odetta took the herd money and placed it underneath Gabriel.

“When we get to Nicodemus, I’ll have my brothers go back with you to return this money for my husband. Tell your rancher that he’s dead,” said Odetta.

“Sí,” Vicente said. Lil Bit could tell that he was afraid of Odetta. He spoke Spanish when he meant to speak English, and he stuttered a bit when Odetta spoke directly to him.

“I’ll pay you for going with us,” said Odetta.

Vicente couldn’t keep eye contact with her. Her living hair was too much for him. He saw what she had done to the monstrous thieves. They didn’t look human anymore. They’d stuffed the thieves in blankets and carried them out of town in the back of the wagon.

Odetta rode Bear and Lil Bit rode Daphne alongside her. Vicente followed Odetta’s lead with her own horse tied and following the back of the wagon. Lil Bit’s uncles were staggered a few miles ahead of them.

Lil Bit couldn’t keep her eyes off her mother’s profile. One of Odetta’s locks lifted towards her.

“What you thinkin’, babygirl?” said Odetta.

“I never wanted to forget what you looked like.”

“All you gotta do is look in a mirror, chile. I be right there.”

Lil Bit glanced back at Vicente and the wagon. He held his hand up and waved to her.

“He scared of you, Mama.”

“I know.”

“Can he live in Nicodemus with us?”

“If he want to.”

“What’s it like there, Mama?”

“Everything owned by Negroes. Hundreds of colored people living on they own land for the first time. And they free. That’s what it’s like.”

The sky lightened for a new morning and Lil Bit helped Vicente dig up the graves. Her mother tended to Gabriel. The digging didn’t take long. When Vicente was about to roll the last body into the ground, Lil Bit moved closer to the tall man’s face. His mouth was parted open. She picked up a small stick and stuck it inside. Wiggling it around, she dragged out a thick forked tongue. There was a bulging dark gland under the tongue. It still dripped blood. She noticed something else.

“Be careful, chica.”

“They have no teeth. No wonder they talked funny. See here? There’s a hole under the tongue, that’s where they spit. Their blood eats away the skin.”

“Bury it,” Odetta said.

Vicente trembled from the sound of Odetta’s voice. He gently nudged Lil Bit aside and shoved the thing into the grave.

“What were those men, Mama?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think they are like us?” asked Lil Bit.

“Those things eat people,” said Odetta.

“No, I mean… they have blood that injures people, and their mouths are made like lizards… and our hair can do things like their blood…” The words were not coming out the way she wanted them to.

“Let’s go, Lil Bit. There might be more of them around.”

Vicente grabbed the shovel and walked back to the wagon.

“Papa?” asked Lil Bit.

Odetta smiled.

“Weak, but he’ll be fine. You saved his life.”

They both climbed on their horses. Lil Bit eased Daphne a little closer to Bear. She thought about her book and the picture she saw of the woman with writhing scales for hair. If she and her mother existed, and those white men who ate human insides existed, maybe the book wasn’t made up. She side-eyed her mother for a few minutes as the horses settled into a comfortable trot.

“Where do we come from, Mama? The
Medu
?”

“When my grandmother was alive, she called it the bright lands. A place called… hmmm, how she say it…
Rebu
…
Rebu Tehenu.
A dry hot place. Like Texas. Desert country. She said we were something to see.”

“In Africa?”

“Yes, somewhere there.”

In the rising sunlight Lil Bit stared at her mother’s plump lips, her glossy black ropes of living hair, and her blue-black flashing eyes. Mama was nothing like that old mythology book said. Nothing like it all.

Odetta shook her tresses, and every lock spiraled out, dancing around her face and defying gravity.

“We
Medu
, babygirl
.
Be who you be.”

Lil Bit threw back her hat. She let her scalp throb and pushed out. Every dark strand from her head tasted the morning air, never to be hidden again.

Never
.

Art by Eric Orchard

1914
Montana

Adelaide Henry and her steamer trunk had come a long way but still had much farther to go. They’d left the family farmhouse in Redondo behind, burned down to its foundations. They escaped on a San Francisco–bound steamer; a second ship from San Francisco to Seattle, then the locomotive inland. Now there were just two more days on Mr. Olsen’s rattletrap wagon. Soon Adelaide, and that steamer trunk, would finally reach the small cabin. Their homestead. Their hideout. Their exile.

She checked the padlocks on the trunk every time the wagon hit a hard bump, which meant at least once an hour. When the Mudge family joined her on Olsen’s wagon she checked the padlocks every ten minutes. The Mudges. A mother and four boys. The oldest looked to be seventeen and the youngest about six. The boys all wore blindfolds. At first Adelaide thought they were playing a game, but the blindfolds never came off. It was everything Adelaide could do to keep from lifting each one and peeking at their eyes. A mother and four blind boys headed for the wilds of Montana. Adelaide’s anxieties about her own homesteading were put into perspective.

The Mudges huddled down in the wagon just like Adelaide. The winds out here were stronger than sea currents. At one point a gust got hold of Adelaide and actually lifted her to her feet. Nearly flung her out the wagon. Mrs. Mudge didn’t move to help and the four boys couldn’t see anything with the blindfolds. Mr. Olsen, up driving the wagon intently, hardly even turned back when he told her to be careful. If she’d actually fallen out she felt sure she’d be dead and then the Mudges and Mr. Olsen would have the Seward steam trunk sitting right there in the middle of the wagon. How long before curiosity got them to open it? Before they pried the padlocks apart? Adelaide couldn’t help imagining the violence that would come next. A vision of the six year old with his stomach torn open – really just a memory of what her mother had suffered in the farmhouse – made Adelaide go tight.