Mungus: Book 1 (10 page)

             
“I’ll be right back,” I said, and I dashed away.

             
“Where are you going?” Bradley asked, but I was running too quickly to answer.  I was running the opposite direction of our cabins and I imagined that Bradley was confused and wondered if I was abandoning him with a vomiting, seizing, heat stroke victim.  The sun was hot above me and I wished that I was taller so that I could see above the stalks of cotton.  I ran until my breath became fast and rapid and my legs begged for a break.  And finally, after 4 or 5 minutes of running I came upon the big brick building that I had seen the night before.

             
The brick was hot in the sun and I ran to the front door and banged on the wood.  I received no answer.  There was no one there to help me, and so I took the initiative.  I ran over to the wooden barn beside the brick building and found that the spotted horse that Hank had ridden to the farm on when I walked in chains was again attached to a trailer.  Even though I had never been on such an animal, I opened its stall and climbed up onto the horse.  The horse was old and tame and even though it didn’t know me, it obeyed my commands.  I slapped the reigns like I had seen them do in country western films and the animal began to trot forward.  Once out of the stall, the spotted horse picked up speed to a sprint over the dirt road.  The wheels of the trailer squeaked as they spun behind me and soon we came to a stop in front of the crowd of servants surrounding the sick man.

             
“Put him on the trailer,” I told Bradley and then I looked around for a place to take him.  Atop the horse I could see over the stalks and I saw a great white house that I didn’t know existed the night before.  The servants all looked at me in awe, probably wondering what kind of trouble I would get in for highjacking a horse.  Once Bradley and Hank were securely on the trailer, I turned the horse around and the spotted animal began to gallop over the dirt road.

             
We sped past the brick building and the horse stalls and then made a sharp turn onto an adjacent road.  The horse didn’t slow and one of the wheels on the trailer flew into the air.  Bradley hollered in fear, but as we straightened out, the wheel fell back onto the ground safely.  We continued to sprint until we came to a stop in front of the huge, white house.  The great structure sat on a lawn of green grass; in front of the porch was a garden full of all colors of flowers.  Huge pillars stood erect across the front. The door was a decorative combination of white wood and glass.  Whenever the horse stopped running I jumped off and began to make my way up the wooden steps to the front door.

             
“Where are you going?” I shouted to Bradley.

             
He was running back the way that we came.  “Two of us don’t need to get in trouble for this,” he said and then he was gone, leaving me to face whatever consequences came by myself. 

Hank’s body moaned in the trailer bed and I took the steps in strides of two and then knocked on the wooden door.  No answer.  I began to bang on the door and a minute later a tall, beautiful Salyer woman answered the door.  Her
baldhead was curved perfectly to the back of her head and her full lips frowned with worry when she opened the door and saw me.

“Can I help you?”

“This man,” I said, pointing to Hank, “He’s had a heat stroke.”

The woman ran down the stairs and out to the trailer, hiking up her white dress as she went, and when she reached Hank
, she touched his cheek.  “You go,” she said, looking at me with fierce green eyes.  I didn’t understand.  “Run,” she said.  “If they find out you took this horse, you will be severely punished.  I’ll get help and we’ll take care of him.  Thank you.”

The woman bounded up the stairs and through the open door.  I obeyed her orders and ran until the stalks were high above my head in every direction.  I didn’t return to my group that day; I guessed that the workers would be temporarily divided among the other leaders and that my presence would not be missed.  I walked deep into the stalks where no one would find me and felt that the fatigue from the night before was finally catching up to me.  I lay down in a row where the leaves of a plant were blocking my face from the burning sun and began to think about Hank until my thoughts transformed into dreams.

When I awoke, the dirt was cooler and the sun was beginning to set.  In the wavering light, I navigated my way back to the cabins and found that I was just in time for dinner.  Saul ate with the Beardsley girl whom he liked, Sarah, and I chose to eat inside of my cabin alone.  I looked outside of the window as I chewed my sandwich and was glad to not be eating with Bradley after his betrayal.  I couldn’t believe that he had left me like that.

I fell asleep early that night and awoke to see the moon sitting plump outside of my window.  I closed my eyes and remained still on my cot, but my feet wouldn’t stop fidgeting.  I twisted and turned under my blankets and I heard an owl hoot outside of my window.  My eyes shot open, I crawled under the wooden back wall and then I was out, running over the dirt in between the stalks.

My face smiled as the cool breeze rushed over my running body for the second night in a row.  I ran just as I had the night before, digging my feet into the soil and pushing forward with as much might and as often as possible to propel me forward.  I ran passed the first road, the second road, and then the third until I came to the spot that I had stopped during my last run and then I kept on going.  The stalks whipped passed me as a wall of green and I kept my eyes fixed on the road ahead, silver and gray in the light of the moon.  My body begged me to stop, begged me to listen to its cries of pain and to stop, but I didn’t obey.  My mouth became dry and hot mucus formed around my back teeth.  ‘Dig, dig,’ I thought as I felt my toes plowing through the earth under me.  The night before I had felt an intense freedom at the thought of being away from watchful eyes, but on this night, the feeling became more than that.  I was free of more than just people knowing where I was.  I ran until the pain consumed me and it was all I could think about.  I couldn’t think about Glen putting the gun in Saul’s mouth, I couldn’t think of my mother’s yellow eyes and dying pleas, and I couldn’t think about Blaine Trotter’s body being ripped apart by canine jaws.  No, the screaming from my muscles was too loud for me to hear anything else.  I was free of my thoughts.  I was free of everything, and for the first time in my life, I felt entirely capable and self-sufficient.

Finally, after a long fight, my muscles won over and my body collapsed into the dirt.  I lay there, gasping for air and holding onto my chest as my legs locked and writhed in the dirt.  Every inch of my body ached and tingled and the moon darkened in my tunnel vision.  I closed my eyes and I did my best to pull air into my lungs.  I coughed and spit mucus out onto the ground and then I pulled
my body up onto my hands and knees and my stomach lurched, but nothing but strings of mucus came out.  Then, I turned over and lay panting in the dirt as if I had just come up out of water for air.  When I opened my eyes again, the moon was sturdier and so I stood up and began to walk.

I didn’t go near the dog
fences that night.  The animals’ barks made me uneasy and even though I was relatively sure that there were no Salyers patrolling the farm at night, I didn’t want to risk the noise.  I crept throughout the night until I came upon the big brick building where the Salyer workers lived.  I wondered if Hank was in there sleeping and if he had made a recovery.  I thought about Verne and about how he had collapsed that day.  I had never been told, but I was fairly certain that he was dead.  The young and old don’t last long on the farm.  I kept moving until I was close to the big house that I had dropped Hank off at on the trailer.  The house looked even bigger than I had remembered it.  I hadn’t had much time to examine it when I dropped off Hank.  The mansion stood four stories tall with great stone pillars with green vines wrapping around in the front.  The doorway was a work of art with beautifully carved white wood and glass pieced together to form the centerpiece of the mansion.  The doorway led outside to a large, multileveled wooden deck with rocking chairs, hanging swings, and potted plants.

As I crouched down in the dirt and gazed at the mansion in between plants
, my ears cocked up and my body tensed.  I had heard something.  I listened and stopped breathing.  It was a low sound coming from the back of the house.  It was quiet and I circled the house through the plants to investigate.

I moved on my toes with my head ducked low to avoid detection.  When I reached the back I saw her
—the beautiful Salyer woman who had answered the door and told me to run—sitting on a swing and sobbing quietly with her head in her hands.  She sniffled and moaned and the tears ran from her eyes.  Her bare toes swung just above the hardwood deck as the swing moved back and forth.  I lay down in the plants and watched her.  She cried for the better part of an hour and never said anything to indicate why.  I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.  The woman thought that no one was watching and as she wept I promised myself that I would never speak of what I had seen to anyone.

Finally, her sobbing stopped and she stood up.  She straightened up her skirt, opened the back door, and padded inside.  I lay in the dirt for a moment, thinking about what I had seen until my eyes grew tired once again and I made my way back to my cabin and crawled through the dirt under the back wall.

8

A New Job Title

             
I sat spooning my grits out of an old tin can and into my mouth.  They were congealed that morning and I guessed by their consistency that they were leftovers from the previous days.  I longed for variety.  The texture and tastes of the grits had become as common to my taste buds as the roof of my mouth and I felt that if I had to eat one more serving that my body would start rejecting the stuff.  Still, the sun wasn’t yet above the horizon and it was going to be a hot and long day.  I decided that I needed the calories so I held my breath, tried not to think of the stuff being slopped out of the rusty wheelbarrow, chewed, and swallowed.

             
Cabin after cabin of sleep deprived servants seemed to be doing the same things.  The older ones didn’t even look at the stuff, they just took a spoonful, tilted their heads back and swallowed.  They probably didn’t even taste it.

             
The Salyers, of course, seemed to have something different for breakfast every day.  That day they were eating stacks of pancakes doused in syrup.  Hank was among them and looked well.  He laughed and opened his mouth wide to take in a huge bite.  He had made a full recovery.

             
From beyond the first cabin I heard the galloping of a horse and saw that Salyers and Beardsleys alike turned their attention toward the dirt road.  The woman who had thanked me, the one I had seen crying the night before, rode in on a muscled white horse.  She was wearing blue jeans and a pearl snap, like the Salyer workers, and despite her masculine attire and lack of hair, she retained a feminine beauty that was the envy of all of the servant women who looked upon her.  She came to a stop right next to where the Salyers were eating their pancakes and Hank stood up to greet her.  They shared a few words, and then, to my horror, Hank pointed right at me.  Then, after they said a few more things, the woman on the horse began to ride over to me.

             
My body tensed with fright and my spoon stopped in the air while bringing grits to my mouth.  My mind raced with terrible possibilities.  ‘What if Glen found out that I took the horse?’  ‘What if she’s going to take me to answer before Glen?’  ‘What if he puts that gun in my mouth?’  ‘What if my blood is the next to stain the cement and bars of the Cell?’  Or, the worst one, ‘What if she saw me last night?’

Before I could think of more things, the horse came to a stop before me.  Its ears flicked and its nose snorted.  “Come with me,” the woman said.  “I have a new job for you.”  I put my grits to the side and stood up.  She offered me a hand, pulled me onto the back of the saddle, and without any more explanation we were off and riding in between the rows of cotton.

I held on tightly to her slender torso as the horse ran in between two seas of green.  We passed the brick building and the stables and then the horse came to a stop in front of the big white mansion.  The woman did not look at me, but said, “my name is Lauren, I’m Glen’s wife, and we needed a servant at the house.  I am raising a toddler and the cleaning is becoming too much for me.  Go to the front door and knock.  Pitri will answer.  I have to go tie this horse up in the back.”

I felt as though I should say something.  “Thank you for choosing me.  My name is Walt.”

But she didn’t answer.  She just stared off into the sky.  I couldn’t even see her face.  I climbed down from the horse and as soon as my feet hit the dirt the animal took off around the house.  I dusted my pants off, walked up the stairs, and knocked on the door.

A Beardsley man with an unfamiliar face answered.  “Hello?” he asked.  He raised his eyebrows, popped his hip, and pursed his lips at me when he talked.  “Can I help you?”  The man blinked his eyes and I saw that they were painted with black makeup.  His face was rugged and tough; he was a man in his later years in life.  The top of his head was completely bald, and hanging from his face was a mess of gray hair.  His shoulders were not as bulky as the other Beardsley’s and a round belly stuck out under a dirty white
t shirt.