Wash (46 page)

Richardson moves so quietly Wash has not yet noticed him. He stands next to the top of the ladder, not thirty feet away, watching Wash turn the broad creaking pages to touch the names. He feels relief running through him. He even has time to wonder whether Wash can in fact read and he just never knew it.

Feeling somebody staring at the back of his head, Wash turns with a start and scrambles to his feet. He tips so violently in the big open window Richardson thinks for a moment he will fall out but Wash catches his balance and straightens up, holding the book by one corner so it falls open as it dangles from his hand.

Richardson sees where blood from trapped skins has darkened in splotches on its pages and tells himself, yes, he knew it. Of course, the book would be here. With Wash. Before he has finished thinking this thought, Wash steps closer to his candle, bending just enough to touch the corner of one splayed open page to the tip of his flame.

Richardson stands there stunned. Verses from the hymn still ring in his brain as he watches the flames jump from the corner of the first page to the next and the next until the book hanging open from Wash’s hand blossoms fully into orange.

Richardson remembers having seen a pile of old horse blankets just to the side of the last ladder he climbed. They are right here by him. All he has to do is reach over, pick one up, then hold it outspread so he can tackle Wash and the fire he has started. Stop him, smother it.

But the dark mouth of the big loft window yawns behind Wash and the book and the flames. Tackling him means they would both fall and Wash knows it so he just stands there, watching Richardson watching him. No longer needing to say this is my story. My book. Mine.

He lets the burning book fall toward the flattened straw. Richardson stands unable to move, mesmerized by seeing the impossible happen. By the time he manages to take even one step, it’s too late. The flames are already climbing the nearest walls, speeding along the broad tracks of dustladen spiderwebs straight on up to the roof.

All Richardson does after seeing Wash set his barn on fire is turn to climb carefully back down the ladders and stairs then walk down the aisle, unlatching stall doors to let his horses out. Wash follows him and they stand together, watching the horses scatter across the barnyard and through the quarters as the roar of the fire builds overhead.

Several horses refuse to leave their stalls. The hay in the loft is blazing above them and they are disoriented. Gamma will not come, even after Wash wraps his arms around her foal’s chest and haunches and carries him outside. With no one to hold him, the terrified foal runs back inside the stall where his mother screams and spins in circles, tossing her head.

Wash gets a rope around Gamma’s neck and pulls on her while Richardson beats her across the rump with a whip he grabs off the wall. Wash pulls so hard that her head and neck stretch completely flat and Richardson’s blows rain down until he has raised welts across the gray of her crouched rump but she won’t go.

Wash gestures Richardson to come to him then spins him around to grab his shirt collar at the back of his neck, yanking the shirt from his shoulders so he can wrap it around Gamma’s head to blind her. She lunges forward so hard her shoulder cracks the post by the door of her stall but she is moving and, between the two of them, they beat her on out of the barn with her baby skittering behind them.

The big barn burns all night but it takes less than five minutes for the whole place to erupt like an anthill kicked into swarming. People burst from every door, pulling on clothes and sobering up fast because fire can lead to debt which can lead to auction just that fast.

The barn burns almost backward, starting at the top and working its way down, so there’s time to save all the horses, most of the tack and even the wagon. Nobody knows Richardson had been in there with Wash before it started. They just figure he was quick on the draw like always. Right in the thick of things, telling everybody what to do, the only one besides Wash still wearing pants from last night.

But the sight of his bare torso is shocking. Glowing a pale bluish white underneath the dark smudges of ash. Bony ribs and collarbones mapped by dark veins. Nobody can remember seeing him under his clothes before but they will certainly never forget it. Gamma trots back and forth in the near paddock, tossing her head trying to rid herself of Richardson’s torn white shirt still tied around her brow like a crown, calling and calling as if she has no idea her foal runs right behind her, wheeling with each turn.

After that first rush to save what they can, everybody stands bunched together, hypnotized by the red hot mouth of the barn. Richardson steps out of the light and kneels by a bucket to wash the embers from his hair. The heat holds the rest of them back in a loose semicircle and their nightclothes glow orange until Ben picks up bossing where Richardson left off, putting half on bucket brigade and the other half to digging.

All they can do is wet the grass and dig a trench between the barn and the quarters so the fire won’t spread but this work takes until almost dawn. The birds have already started before the last of the stragglers trail back to the quarters carrying a whole new story.

Richardson stands there alone watching the day come. The smoke rises into the low pink light like breath in the cold. The stone walls of the foundation trace a pale footprint through the ash underneath the charred overhang of the big elm. He finds himself almost dizzy, it is so disorienting to be able to see straight through where the barn had stood to his fields falling away beyond.

That beautiful barn, built by his first two negroes. Virgil and Albert had hewed those broad beams from the first enormous water oaks Richardson had worked alongside them to fell. He had designed it but they had built it. There was not one nail in the whole thing. Pegs held together all four stories of the big dark evercool barn which had become his refuge.

God knows what kind of mojo those two had woven into this one place where he had finally managed to tell his story to Wash. Was that why? Were Virgil and Albert pulling his stories up out of him from where they lay buried under the ground? But now all those stories and the truth he had finally started to forge from them, all of it is gone without this container to hold it. Just ashes and smoke rising. The ground underneath everything that happened in that barn lies steaming as if breathing. Newly freed. Watching him. Asking him, where will you put everything now?

Richardson did not want to build on that same spot but Cassius insisted and he let himself be overruled. Time to let his second son take the reins, for better or worse.

A brand new barn soon covers the pale footprint the old one left but Richardson doesn’t like it much. Too new, too square, too plumb. Made with new wood so orange it looks cut and bleeding against the bright green grass. He’ll be dead and under the ground before that wood starts to silver but there’s nothing to be done about it.

Even as he wonders whether Wash will set up camp in this new loft or take up somewhere else, he understands he’ll never know for sure because his trips to the barn are over.

Wash

I don’t remember knowing what I wanted exactly. All I knew was, I didn’t want him having me in his hand like that. Written down in that damn book where he could get at me. Not him and not nobody else either. Pallas had us all laid out clear in her mind’s eye and everybody knew to go to her. That way, she can decide who to tell and when.

I didn’t set out to burn that book. When my hand held it to the candle, it was something inside me, running deeper than my mind. I remember feeling all peaceful and settled inside, even with flames roaring and horses thundering round calling.

All I did was go to that pile of tack and grab some lead ropes. Caught the horses one by one and led em to the lower pasture. Each time I walked away from that barn, I felt better. Once I got all the horses down there with the gate good and latched, I laid on the ground watching the clouds glow.

Wasn’t too long after the fire when I got word of Rufus. Took him ten years to catch hold of himself but when he did, he got those Thompson boys good. What I heard was, he masterminded a rebellion. Made skeleton keys for every single shackle he forged. Got nineteen people good and gone, then he trailed behind to give em enough cover to make it through the swamp.

He headed West instead of North, knowing he’d made those boys mad enough to lose sight of the big picture, and sure enough, they followed him instead of the rest. Just like he planned. He drew those boys right to killing him, just like I’d tried to do, except he didn’t draw back. He ran right for it and that’s what made sure the others got all the way away.

I was real glad to hear that story. It was Diamond who told me. Under our maple tree by the side of the road. When I saw him looking at me hard after he was done talking, that’s when I realized I was fingering my brand. Rubbing that spot where the leg of my R kicks up and feeling Rufus real close.

It was pretty soon after that day when my time came for me. I guess living full on like I did wore me out. I’d learned not to let my anger light me up so bad, and Pallas stayed steady helping me smooth my edges. But still, my day came much sooner than I thought it might.

I was sitting under the willow like I always do, except on this day, I have Pallas with me. Leaning against the back side of Richardson’s brand new barn. Soaking up some sun on a late winter day. Storing up. Waiting on whatever the hell might be next.

It came right on me out of the clear blue sky. Didn’t have no time to fight it. Felt myself lift up out of myself, like I’d felt plenty of times before, but I could tell this time was something different. I could tell this time I wasn’t coming back, so I turned my eyes to Pallas.

Pallas

We were sitting there together. Not saying much. I was waiting on my water to boil for some tending I was doing over there. His hand was resting warm and heavy on my thigh.

Then I felt him get real still. I turned to him and saw him looking at me. His grip tightened on my leg but his face stayed just as peaceful, drinking me like water. He had his head resting back against that barn but turned so he could see me.

I reached to lay my first two fingers in against his neck just under his jaw and I heard it all. The slow pounding speeding up and then stopping. Then more pounding and stopping. I knew from the starting and stopping that I was losing him and there wasn’t nothing I could do, so I gave him what he wanted which was my eyes to look into.

They filled up and spilled over but I looked right at him and I nodded real slow, saying yes, he could go on and go if he needed to. I sat there with him, seeing him on his way and feeling myself tear in two with wanting to pull him back towards me and trying to let him go on ahead.

I held his eyes in mine until I knew he had stepped out of them and I watched this world close up behind him. Then I turned to look down this long road I’d have to travel without him, knowing I’d go on ahead.

After sitting there so still and quiet for I don’t know how long, I lifted his hand from where it was resting on my leg and set it down on his. Then I stood and walked away. Wanted to hold on to my last picture of him looking into my face.

I went around the corner of the barn. Soon as I saw Ellen’s two boys play fighting, I told em to fetch me those two sawhorses, put em in that empty stall at the far end of the barn and then lay that old door across. Don’t ask me why, just do it, and they did. They helped me lay him out on that door, then I sent em on a faraway errand so I could climb up there and lay right close against him for that last little minute while he was still warm.

Seemed like a long time later when I headed up to the house to let Richardson know but he was out seeing about something. I was just as glad to let Emmaline tell him. I didn’t want to have to lead him by the hand through this too. Some things that old man needs to learn to do for himself.

Then I went on back to sit with Wash so nobody could mess with him once word started getting around. I already knew where he wanted me to put him. He always told me he didn’t want any part of that cemetery Richardson kept for his people. Said don’t shoehorn him in between all these folks who stayed steady turning their backs on him while he was alive.

What he told me was he wanted to end up right where he started. Next to his mamma on that southwest facing slope where the river bends. Right there where he was kneeling at her grave when I rode up on him that day when I was hunting me some goldenseal. That was where he wanted to be.

Said I would know just how to carry his last wish to Richardson. If anybody could persuade the old man, it was me. And if the place fell on the far side of his line, and Wash figured it might well, then just tell him to act like it didn’t.

You take him there, Wash told me. He’ll go. He’s been wanting to know where I buried my mamma all this time. You take him and show him. He’ll find a way. If you help him. So that’s exactly what I did.

It was almost dark by the time Richardson stepped inside the stall where I had Wash laid out. He didn’t see me sitting against the front wall. He didn’t even step close. Just stood there drinking and watching all those stories he’d told Wash pouring away from him as fast as he could swallow.

I couldn’t bear him looking at Wash like that for too long so I stood up. When he turned to face me, he was all closed up inside himself. Took his words a long time to reach me.