The Sport of Kings (85 page)

With a sudden whooshing sound, the Forge house goes up in a blaze, and Samuel stops his crying where he lies on the grass, turning his wide, frightened eyes upward. But he's not looking at the house, only at Allmon, because Allmon's arms are burning where he's been fumed by gasoline. In an instant, he's on the ground gasping and rolling, lashing his arms against the cool, dewy grass, flailing like a crazy man or someone trying to make a baby laugh. Samuel stares at him in alarm, and when Allmon finally rises, gasping and moaning with his own fire extinguished, burned flesh hangs in white tatters from his forearms.

The house drowns out the wounded sounds coming from his mouth. He reaches down and hauls up Samuel, who screams again, wriggling and striking at him. He stares at his own child with burning eyes—burning from the fire or from his mother's disease, he doesn't know which.

Now the sweat on his face is mixed with tears. Henry's howl still echoes in his ears, and Allmon's head swoons with sudden flashing lights. Don't hurt him, don't hurt him—hurt who?

Allmon stumbles sideways a few steps. What's happening? Is this revenge? There was a plan, but he's suddenly horribly confused and lost. He had a story to tell, but who will listen—really listen? Kill Henry Forge and they'll say you're just another black animal killing a white man. They always tell the same old white story.

But, Reverend, they made me a body!

He begins to sob from the center of his chest. He can't feel the pain in his scorched arms any longer; it's as though there's ice packed against his skin. He looks down at Samuel, his life on the outside. Son. It's a foreign word on his tongue with a meaning he's straining to understand.

With a start he realizes that the flashing lights aren't in his mind but on the road near the drive, and police will storm the property at any moment. He doesn't have to glance over his shoulder to see them; he knows.

Momma, I can't, I can't. I won't—

Allmon's hand trembles, and the .45 wavers. The fire is building to an inferno behind him, striving for the stars, and already he can hear voices at the foot of the drive. He looks up confusedly at the night sky with its fishes, lions, serpents, and hunters. He knows they aren't really there, they're just make-believe, a story. But the story matters. A story lives forever, longer than anyone's child.

Allmon's tears stop.

The lady's ending is up to him.

Justice is an ancient animal still taking shape in the sky. Draw it with her pen.

With a great, shuddering breath, he finally understands why he is there. They will either hang you from a tree or let you die on a couch or stick you in a prison to rot, but they will get you just the same. The world doesn't love us. The Reverend says, When they render you a body, they won't listen to words no more, so you got to let the body speak! Let it tell the terrible tale! Let them that have eyes see, and them that have ears hear!

The distance between Allmon and Henry is not so far; he covers it in a dozen strides to stare down at the bound man. At any moment, the police will surround him. He bends down and places Samuel carefully to the side like a treasure in the dewy grass. With the desperation of a drowning man, Henry strains toward the child but can't reach him.

Allmon straightens up and says, “You can't keep what ain't yours, Forge. I won't let you.” But Henry won't look at him, only at Samuel.

The Reverend says, Pray with your every action and be not afraid.

“Look at me, Forge!” Allmon demands.

He raises the gun. Be not afraid be not afraid be not afraid be not afraid be not afraid be not afraid benotafraidbenotafraidbenotafraidbenotafraidbenotafraidbenotafraidbenotafraidbenotafraidbenotafraidbenotafraidbe—

“Look at me, Forge!” Allmon cries so his voice echoes through the night, and Henry finally looks up, his eyes wide.

Four bullets blast a staccato rainbow around Henry's head—one for Marie, and one for the Reverend, one for Scipio, one for all the men and women who pace on the bottom of the river, their flesh eaten by fish, and the last is for

me, Allmon

the deserving and the broken, the guilty and the gift. I am a sinner. I broke love and sold my child to the highest bidder, but I will ransom his life and his son's life with my own. Reverend, lay me down gently. Please ask Momma to forgive me. I forgive her. Dress my body in Sunday clothes and anoint my mouth. Let my life speak, then they will finally know me. I am not afraid any longer.

Allmon turned the gun on himself. He left nothing to chance.

*   *   *

In the dark, there was nothing but the fire. Henry thought he was dead. By all rights, he should have been. But there was a dead man before him, sprawled on the ground, his arms extended wide, palms open to the sky. Figures swarmed around them as night air rushed in from the west, feeding the inferno and all that was left of Henry's home. The structure was disintegrating before his eyes, the joists giving way, the stories collapsing in great billowing bursts.

Samuel's mouth was stretched wide with crying where he lay in the grass, but Henry could barely hear him, half-deafened by the pistol reports. An officer spied the child in the tall grass and raised him to her chest, stumbling back from the smoke and crying out, “Whose child is this? Whose child is this?” but Henry made no reply.

Then the earth began to shake as if Nature were banging her fists on plains and mountains. From his perch in the officer's arms, Samuel abruptly stopped his crying and craned his neck around in curiosity and surprise. The fire brightened with a volley of fresh air. When Hellsmouth bloomed suddenly out of the dark, she was gleaming with sweat and bright red with reflected fire. Samuel screamed in delight as the filly galloped toward them and then sank onto her haunches and reared, her legs cycling as if to turn the very wheel of the sky. She was almost perfect. She was ready for more.

 

EPILOGUE

Because he was on the long, moonlit stretch between Millersburg and Maysville, the driver had plenty of time to stop his rig, floating down one gear after another in the thick fog, then gently braking to a forty-ton stop like a conductor pulling his train into a midnight station. John stopped, because even though the figure was wrapped in fog like a man in a dream, he could tell he was a young guy alone in this unforgiving land. It was foolish to stop, especially on a night like this, on a route like this; you never really knew who was friend or foe, but … yeah, it was definitely a young guy. What could you do? You had to help a brother out. He'd been two weeks away from Miranda and was ready to get home; he knew she was lonely and always worried about him when he ran his Southern routes. She'd be making him steak and kidney pie right now on the far side of this fog-strewn night, so he was smiling when the passenger door swung wide and a haunting face appeared, dark, severe, and streaked with black.

John tried to hide his alarm, and his amiable mouth made it easy. It was already saying, “You need some help getting somewhere, my man?”

There was no answer as the young man stepped up into the cab without visible effort at all, as though he were a weightless thing, the mere shadow of a man.

The driver cleared his throat. “I'm Mr. Parker, but you can call me John. And you are?”

There was a long pause, then the man slowly turned his head and stared straight through John with chilly, golden eyes like jeremiads. He didn't say his name; his face was expressionless. Fear instantly cinched John's throat. “Hey, no problem,” he blurted with a wave of his hand. “No problem if you don't care to share your name. I got nothing against a private man. We'll just hit the road and be on our way. No problem at all.”

No sooner had he said it than a shiver wended along his neck and John felt the sudden cold—my God, the cab felt like a freezer. He was about six gears into real foreboding when he suddenly smelled the subtle scent of smoke on top of the chill. Barely detectable at first, like a faint memory, then the strong, sure smell of campfire.

“You been camping, my man?” he said. Again, no reply was forthcoming, just swallowing silence. The man beside him stared straight ahead out the dash without blinking an eye, without even the whisper of visible breath.

A true frisson of nerves now, the old, instinctive part of the body that detects the presence of danger. But he didn't need to panic yet. Best to just settle back, keep your eyes open, and not say a word. Yes, indeed, just stay calm, don't provoke, don't question, not one single word—

“Young man,” John said gently, interrupting his better sense, “I know it really isn't my business, but—”

The man raised a single hand and, without a word, pointed toward the long, dark road.

“You want to go north?” Parker expelled a breath. “Hey, that's cool. North is where I was headed. I've taken a bunch of folks up this way, yes indeed. Just follow the North Star and you can't go wrong, know what I'm saying?” His hands were shaking slightly as he gripped the wheel, but at the same time he suddenly felt reassured deep in his bones; he was going to be all right. Just like animals, most folks were only dangerous when they were afraid. So he was coaxing the gas and they were flying through the thick Kentucky night, rolling north out of the Bluegrass and into the counties that separated central Kentucky from the Ohio line, the counties where John always started to relax and feel safer, where the river was close at hand.

About thirty minutes down the road, he said gently, “Now, just so you know, I'm going north, but I wasn't going all the way into Ohio tonight.” He hoped that agitation wouldn't pierce through the steadiness of his voice. The man's head turned slowly in his direction, but John was afraid to look into those fathomless eyes again. He added hastily: “See, I live in Ripley with my wife, but I've got to drop half this load tonight and half in the morning, both on the Kentucky side. Processing plant just west of Maysville, you know, where that famous singer lived, you know who I'm talking about?” And now he was really starting to relax, extolling the virtues of voices you couldn't hear on the radio anymore and talking about the housing boom and how it couldn't last, how it was going to be a disaster, and of course it would hit working folks the hardest—folks like the two of them—but what could you do, really, what could you do, rich men ran the world, they called the shots, all you could do was try to stay one step ahead. His passenger sat rigidly beside him, motionless, and never said a word, so John tried to not think about how his cab now smelled like a barn on fire, and how he was so cold that the hair was standing straight up on his arms, and that the man's face was stony like an Egyptian sarcophagus, the kind they had in the museum in Cincinnati. Why, oh why, had he picked this one up? Because … dammit. A human being is precious cargo, and you had to help a brother out. It was how his mother had raised him. She'd seen a lot of hardship back in Virginia, hardship like you couldn't even put in words. If you didn't learn to help others, what was the point of surviving suffering?

When they finally turned onto Route 8 west of Maysville, John said, “We're getting pretty close now,” but it was like the man already knew; he was leaning forward in his seat, closer and closer to the edge, reaching out to grip the dash with granite-like hands—God, were they singed from a fire?

John gathered his courage as he was pulling onto Plover Road with its quiet subdivision, where the night was pulling down a thorough black around the houses. He hesitated, wondering if he should venture it, then said gently and very carefully, “Young man, it seems to me like you've come into some kind of trouble. Now it's not my business and I'm not asking you for details, but I'd like to help you out. I'm happy to get you to a safe place where nobody'll come looking for you, and tomorrow you can travel on—”

“The river,” the man said suddenly, his first words, and the raw voice nearly stopped John's heart. It was the sound of old, rusted machinery rolling into motion.

John whispered, “The river's right down this hill behind those houses. And my house in Ripley is right across the river. It'll be easier to see in the morning.”

“Stop.”

“Son—”

“STOP.”

John couldn't disobey that voice, enormous as time and deep as a grave. It filled every cavity of his heart with migraine, it made his limbs go rigid. He was not even close to a rolling stop when the door was flung open and the man floated out, first his dark head and boxy shoulders, then his tattered T-shirt snapping and disappearing, the blackened sole of one work boot the last thing John saw of him.

Now the man was passing over a thick, shadowy lawn, around a swing set and a shed of fresh sawn wood, straight through a row of hedges, away from the rig and away from the South, away from the markers of civilization until all the houses disappeared and the night swallowed him, the ground sloping down and away.

It was dark as far as he could see. The world smelled like coming water.

The man discovered he was not alone. A steam calliope shrieked in the dark; muskrats peeked out at him from the shadows, and in a great collision of sound, all the animals began to chatter at once—ospreys, papery herons, belted and bearded kingfishers, bank swallows in their burrows—but this time it didn't frighten him. The muskrats chirped and the turtles whispered and all the white-tailed deer conversed as, far below, like music, the river was running. The man could see it now—eternal and quick, and on the other side, the luscious, original world, the place where he had been made. High on that distant shore, far above the bottomland with its rushing river, a single light burned. He understood it was burning for him. He passed down the embankment, the brambles parting before him and the limestone earth making a way, little stones rocketing down before him to herald his arrival. The calm, watchful moon shone on the ancient course of the flowing river, which sparked and fired with its dark gems. He was racing toward it now with all the remembered strength of his body, wanting only to wash the ash from his old skin, the burn marks from his clothes, the acrid stench from his hair. There before him the northern side was dark and lovely. He heard a calling in the distance and his mind was filled with the wonder of expectation. The whole world was rising toward him. When he reached the mudflats and felt the cold river embracing his weary feet, he cried out, “Yes!” From somewhere on the other shore, she called to him by his given name, and the sound filled him with knowing. He raised his beautiful, burned arms in long-awaited greeting.