Wash (39 page)

As I stop to speak to the hounds so they won’t bark, I start to wonder whether I’ve worn a trail. I know I should stop. But I can’t.

Wash

I do mess with Richardson and some nights, I enjoy it. He comes to me and when he does, he’s got that gleam in his eye. He looks down to try and hide it but it stays, that gleam he gets from fingering this edge. Everybody knows he ain’t supposed to be coming down here and talking at me like this. Everybody and the devil too. So I will grant him that.

And he’s finally starting to creep up on some truth. Getting his words on out. Words a man like him wouldn’t be caught dead holding in his hand. Trouble with Richardson is, he wants me to listen to him and not hear him. Both at the same time. He wants me to lift him right up off that hook, but at the same time, he wants me to catch him redhanded.

It don’t make things any easier for me, walking around carrying his stories along with mine, but I’m listening mostly to hear the sound of some truth being spoken, even as I’m hunting to find what part can I use to hit him with. This man who thinks he can speak so freely.

What I say is if we’re gonna speak freely then lets us speak.

Most times, he knows if he can get me hard and in there, then that’s it. Don’t matter much what she has to say about it, she’s still soft and wrapped round me. If I’m lucky, that soft being soft on me will clear out the rest so none of it can get to me.

And Richardson makes sure about those girls. Said he wasn’t going to drag me all the way over to somebody else’s place and then have me not make it. Awkward was what he called it. One place, it’s Binah’s two granddaughters. The younger one coming into curves and the older one flush in love with a new husband.

But everybody needs that dollar and soft will do the trick. When I can manage to unlatch my mind. Just unhitch my mind and let it swing loose. I can’t be hanging on to how I don’t want this. All that’ll do is get me sold down the river or maybe even the islands. Then I’m looking at five more years tops, from what I hear, and cutting cane all the way.

If I can make it far enough down this road, push everything else away, I can stop having to work. The floor of me starts to rise and I’m in my own world spinning and it feels good. It feels good and it’s out of my hands. I’m lost to her and she’s lost to me and most times, I need it like that.

Sometimes I come up out of it with somebody jerking to stop me cause I’m hurting her. Stopping me right then, before I get the job done, throwing all we just went through right in the trash. Shoulda put grease on her in the first place. If I started worrying on things like that, we’d never get nowhere with it.

Some of em I don’t hardly touch. I know better. They’re spitting glass and I just try to get through it sooner rather than later. You got to be careful who you put your hands on in this life.

But there will be some few with some sweetness left. What little they can stand. And they look at you and they know you don’t mean it. They know you backed in a corner you can’t get out from and so they help you both through it. They come carrying all they been holding pent up for theirs long gone, and they hold you, hoping somebody’s holding theirs somewhere, somehow.

With these few, I pull em right up against me instead of pressing down. But I try to angle it so peckerwood won’t ever know. No reason they need to see my mouth on the side of her neck. We all got our nature. Don’t matter who I am to her so long as I hold her right.

But those others, the ones spitting glass, I just want it over with. Get the job done and get out. Sometimes I make it and sometimes I don’t. But I can’t afford too many misses and neither can she. She keeps coming up empty, she’ll end up sold and gone, and the last thing she wants is leaving her mamma behind and those that raised her.

People paying for this, Quinn keeps reminding me.

People paying is right is what I say to myself.

They expect to get their money’s worth or they won’t be back, he tells me. And the word will spread and then where will you be? That’s what he says to me.

Some few, even I steer clear from. They’ll cut me soon as look at me. When I see Quinn coming with one of those, I fix on him like he’s clean out of his mind. We’ll stand there awhile, me and him, but if I stand there long enough, he’ll hitch his head over to the side, just like somebody jerked it, saying get her out of here. But I can’t play that card too much or it won’t never work. Costs me a lot to put my foot down so I best be sure.

It’s when he brings one to me and I see that looking down on me look, that’s what I can’t take. Thinking she knows about me. Like I’m some kind of animal and she’s not like me. She’s too fine for this world. Makes me want to say for this time right here, I am this world, so you can’t be too good for me. That kind of look raises my hand sooner than anything. They hear this about me so most of em learn how to step out of the way. Step out of the way into the way, I guess.

It was Vesta pulling away from me that made me need to grab her. I caught hold of her just as she was heading for the door. Can’t have her bringing Quinn in on it, so I took hold of her arm. Felt her bones under her skin, all small and delicate just like a rabbit. Eyes panicked just like that too. Same shallow breathing. Backed her up against the wall, shoved her tight, just to hold her still.

I can feel her breathing under me and I can see her heart beat in her throat. I’m trying to get her slowed down, calmed down, looking at me, listening to me, seeing me. But sometimes, the more she struggles, the harder I get. The harder I get and the harder I go after her till I’m not remembering her at all. I’m a hammer and I’m coming down and that’s all there is.

We carry everything inside. Everything in the whole world is lying full and complete, inside each and every one of us. This life will bring out the deepest thing that’s in you and you just can’t say how you would do.

Best thing is to find you some time and somebody where it don’t work to force it. Like I found Pallas. Even when she gets gone, I still have the thought of her, spreading quiet on my mind.

Richardson

I won’t let Quinn give mine the stripes. I don’t want them torn up. Even a fool knows whipping is best avoided. Makes them harder to sell. But if it needs to be done, I do it myself. Even my negroes will run over a man they think too squeamish to do the job.

I take care of mine myself. I have to. But it’s different than with the horses. With horses, the whip is not for hitting them. Lay into them and they’ll just tear around, walleyed and goosey. No horse, no matter how fine, shows his quality when he’s tearing around like a rabbit.

You crack the whip but just behind them. It’s the whir of the whip through the air and the sound of the crack at the end that keeps them moving forward but you can’t ever hit them. Not if you’re after what I’m after. That easiness like water flowing grace in a horse that will carry you to town and back all the way on a loose rein.

But with negroes, it’s different. Crack the whip and don’t strike a lick, all you’ll do is make them mad. The only thing that truly turns their mind away from trouble is that whip cutting into some skin.

The feeling is totally different. With the horses, it’s all in the wrist. But giving the stripes is more in the shoulder. You must put your weight behind it or it won’t cut. And if it doesn’t cut, then there’s not much point. You’re right back where you started, with them thinking they can push you around.

Best way not to have to is be sure they don’t want you to. You must lay into it. Sometimes, I can feel it the next day in the muscles running down my right side. I’ll raise my arm to take hold of my stirrup and yesterday will come rushing right back at me when that tight soreness catches me along my ribcage.

With the way I keep mine, it usually only takes one stripe, but sometimes it needs more. If I have to go past one, if I get to three, then I’ll find myself hard, pretty much without fail. Sometimes I won’t even realize it until I feel the cloth of my britches pulling tight against me. That’s the only time I ever feel like taking one of mine for myself. They know it too and they scatter, which is fine with me because there are some lines I try not to cross.

Wash

There are times when I know he gets like that. Any fool can see it come over him when his arm rises and falls. You can see his britches and read his mind.

You make somebody do something and he’ll find a way to like it, no matter what it is. Almost like God put that in our natures to test us. Makes choosing matter more.

It’d be too easy if it was only the good things felt good. How else would God know you meant what you said?

Richardson

It’s finding the balance between the threat and the execution that keeps things stable. Threats don’t work unless one is carried out every now and then. The only threat that has never worked on my place is altering. They know I won’t do it.

Sometimes I will with the horses, if one of my studs has become too much trouble and is not worth repeating. But I don’t get much satisfaction from it. Seems almost like breaking something just so you can keep the pieces. What good will the pieces do you?

If you have room for separate paddocks and good strong stalls, there’s no reason to alter. It’s like stealing from yourself. If you don’t want him, then get rid of him whole.

Better to sell trouble off than to try to alter it. That’s the beauty of selling. That threat works better than any other with mine. It’s so simple and it lets you get through without having to whip too many.

Make your place tolerable enough and most will want to stay. Thompson taught me that and he has stayed right all the way to now. Mine are no fools. God knows where they might end up. Goes from good to bad to worse, even right around here, and I make sure mine know it.

That is one of the reasons I’m so free with them. They can grow their own vegetables even if they do use it for barter to get God knows what. I’m relatively liberal with my passes and I hold two big feast days for them a year instead of the usual one. In honor of old man Thompson and everything he taught me.

Mine know to count their blessings. There are those few who can’t reason this out, or who know it clear as day but simply cannot keep themselves in hand. I don’t want those here anyway.

Unless they are fine. There’s an exception to every rule and you’re usually all right if you keep your exceptions to a minimum. This is why I put up with Wash.

Wash is worth keeping and Pallas is the same way for Miller. Even though she’s barren and spooks plenty of whites due to how quiet she stays, Miller keeps her because she makes him good money with her doctoring. But he agrees with me it might be risky using her on your own family. With Pallas, you can look right into those pale gray eyes and never quite know what you see.

But she makes Miller a pocketful of money bringing in these little ones. Crops go up and down but these keep coming year round. And we don’t have to worry about her going clean out of her head like Grange’s old granny, helping some of those women to take the life from their babies just as soon as they get here.

Pallas knows how to stop babies from coming but so long as she doesn’t interfere with Wash’s get, we let her go ahead because those others are usually mixed and we know that they will grow up to cause nothing but trouble, running around all these places looking like nobody so much as their fathers.

Wash

As different as we can be, we’re no different in some regards. His daddy taught him, just like the next man. You take what your daddy teaches you and you only got two choices. You either go with it or you go against it.

His daddy taught him he knew best and to stay in charge so he did. His daddy gave him the right and he took it. He went on and gathered up the reins. Never looked back. Looking back is a waste of time was what his daddy said.

Course that daddy of his never did tell him how heavy that weight he took up was and how quick it can wear you out.

Part Six

Thanksgiving, 1823

T
his Thanksgiving, Richardson’s table centers around a platter holding one of Emmaline’s hams, smoked to perfection then sliced thin and laid out in overlapping arcs of lustrous pink edged with strips of pale white fat and black salty pepper.