Yonder, p.8
Yonder, page 8
Tanner studied Nila a long moment. “It’s your property,” he said. “You should have final say.”
“That settles it,” Greene said. “Zander, fetch the whip.”
“I’ll shuck her for you,” Kirk said, scratching himself. “Skin her too.”
“Shucking and tying will suffice,” Greene said. He grabbed the drink from the tray and gulped it down. “As for the whipping, I’ll do it myself.”
He released his grip on Nila’s hair. With the other hand he replaced the glass on the tray. I turned my body toward the gates of Placid Hall, away from the whipping post. They usually made us watch whenever a Stolen got punished, but Greene hadn’t yet ordered us to do anything. I was determined not to see Nila beaten unless he made me. I stared into the distance, as far as I could see, where Greene’s borders met the sky and the heat waves fluttered above the ground like gossamer ribbons.
Somewhere in Nature there are castles, I thought. Somewhere there is magic and gold.
Cato
I heard Greene say he’d do the whipping. I watched him grab the drink and swallow it. While he drank, I imagined my hands moving of their own accord. I saw them reaching for Greene’s throat and the Thieves raising their guns to shoot us down. I felt my thumbs go in, the satisfying crunch and snap, before the weapons roared. To still my hands, to save us all, I spoke up.
“It’s not her,” I said. “It’s me. Cupid tol’ me he was gon’ run. Tol’ me not to tell.”
I could feel Tanner and Kirk gazing hotly at my back, the astonished silence of the other Stolen. Greene tarried a moment before turning to glare at me.
“Again,” he ordered. “Tell me again what you just said. Tell me again what possessed you to withhold a confidence from your master.”
“I reckon I don’t know,” I told him. “I was so afeared of Cupid.”
Greene grinned. It was ugly to see. “Oh, you don’t know fear.” He nodded at Kirk over my shoulder. I turned in time to see the rifle stock rushing toward my face.
* * *
After they pickled Isaac for running to his beloved, he refused to eat or drink. His hair fell out, then his teeth. He held on to a peach pit that in his madness he began to call Oney. All of us wondered where he got it because peaches were reserved exclusively for the residents of the big house. In frustration, our Thief placed him in irons in front of his cabin for all the Stolen to bear witness to his long, excruciating death. But someone took mercy on him and smothered him in the night.
A chain around my neck connected me to the post, inches from where I had told Greene that I was the one who had protected Cupid’s secret. My wrists and ankles were similarly bound, though my pain alone was sufficient to keep me confined. I didn’t know how long I had been there, but the occasional hoot of an owl and hounds baying in the distance told me that night had fallen hours before. When I heard Isaac mumbling in my ear as I lay next to the whipping post, I was too exhausted to be afraid. I deduced—perhaps wished—that Isaac had come from somewhere yonder to put me out of my misery, just as a kind soul had done for him.
“Best be still,” he advised. “Moving won’t help you any. Trust me, I know.”
Too sore even to open my eyes or turn toward the sound of his voice, I had no choice but to heed his suggestion. My efforts to speak were equally fruitless. With my tongue swollen and my mouth filled with blood, all I could manage was a grunt. Every inch of my flesh felt aflame, as if Greene had turned me on a spit above an open fire. What had he done to me?
Isaac responded as if he could hear my thoughts.
“Pickled you, of course,” he explained. “Slashed you from top to bottom, and then seized you by the feet and dunked you headlong in a barrel of brine. Reckon you can hardly remember. That’s best.”
I had never been much for crying. To my view it served little purpose, likely to inspire renewed cruelty in men like Cupid. And Thieves like Greene, accustomed to wrenching suckling babes from their mothers’ breasts, regarded our tears as resulting from some primitive animal instinct and not from genuine emotion. In their eyes, all our wounds were temporary inconveniences from which we would soon recover. However, as waves of agony overtook me, I was moved to part my lips and wail as helplessly as an orphan in a storm. But my voice betrayed me, as it often did. Instead of hurling protests to the night sky, I was left to convulse with silent sobbing. Many times I thought myself in the throes of death, only to arrive at a brief respite before beginning to die again.
Isaac waited patiently until my twitching eased and I finally opened my eyes. He remained behind me, out of sight. I imagine he was squatting on his haunches like a man watching over a pile of sticks, coaxing smoke from ash and embers.
“You need to rest,” he said. “Sleep will help. Staying awake just makes you consider how much better dying would be. But you would be wrong. Don’t make the mistake I made.”
I felt Isaac slide his hand under my head, his rough palm scraping my battered skull. Once more I was moved to scream, but I was still out of air, out of sound. I found just enough strength to turn away when he held a gourd to my lips. He tried again—and again I refused.
“Come now, Cato,” he chided. “You need this water.” He sighed and lowered my head back to the ground.
For a moment I no longer sensed his presence. Then he returned with a damp rag and gently swiped my brow.
“You are being rude, friend,” he said. “Downright uncivil. Remember the rules.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, although it hurt to do so. I wanted to tell him that he knew nothing of the rules of civility.
He chuckled. “Don’t be so certain. Listen to this: ‘Drink not, nor talk with your mouth full, neither gaze about while you are drinking.’ ”
I wanted to cover my ears, but the chains prevented me. Isaac continued, ignoring my efforts.
“ ‘Drink not too leisurely, nor yet too hastily,’ ” he whispered, as if reciting from a book. “ ‘Before and after drinking, wipe your lips; breathe not them or ever with too great a noise, for it is uncivil.’ ”
I gasped and grunted as robustly as I could in a feeble attempt to overwhelm his voice. He spoke louder, his volume rising in accord with an immense spasm of pain. My consciousness was ebbing.
“Be not resigned to a life of suffering,” Isaac suggested. “Keep your eyes on the days ahead.”
There was no such rule, I wanted to tell him.
“And this one to observe above all others. Do not quit.”
Those were the last words I heard before oblivion descended.
Margaret
Greene sent Nila back to Two Forks after Cato’s confession. Although she had been spared a whipping, her face and body showed signs of punishment. In the cabin she would share with Sarah and me, we stayed awake with her into the night, thinking our attention would comfort her.
We sat in near darkness, our only light a few thin moonbeams seeping through the cracks in our walls. We were tempted to set fire to a pine knot and stick it in a cleft, but Holtzclaw, the driver man, sometimes saw a flickering flame as an invitation.
I worried for William and Cato. Nila seemed to think something had happened between them. They had exchanged a look, she said, when Greene sent them on their luckless search for Cupid. She told us about Cato stepping forward to take the blame. A paddy roller had smashed his gun against Cato’s head before they dragged him off to torture him.
We encouraged her to get finished with her crying before the next day began. Holtzclaw, hired to oversee Greene’s operation with an unrelenting meanness, was likely to be impatient with her, despite her bruises. She shook and sobbed, but her eyes remained dry. Our offers to hold her were soundly refused. Sarah and I quickly understood that she preferred to hug herself. I retreated to my pallet while Sarah looked after her daughter, sleeping in a crude cradle in the corner farthest from the door. Perched on a stool at our table, Nila rested her head on the table’s surface, her arms folded underneath her. Because I hadn’t known much about her before Cupid had claimed her, I couldn’t help wondering what kind of woman she’d been. Watching her, I guessed that her former self had been scoured away, lost forever. I wondered how long she could hold up in the fields.
“Holtzclaw will likely set you to picking first thing,” I told her. “You’ll want to pace yourself.”
Nila didn’t move. “I’ve been in the fields before,” she said.
“We’re just saying that maybe you’re not used to all the work he’s been putting on us,” Sarah said.
She sat up directly. “You think what I’ve been doing isn’t work? How about you trade places with me, then? See if you last a day. See if you last an hour.”
No one spoke for several long minutes. Crickets chirped outside, their song buoyed by an occasional breeze. Finally Sarah broke the silence.
“He didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“That he was going to run.”
“You don’t have to worry about us saying anything,” I said. “You know us better than that.”
“I don’t know what I know. I’m grateful to you for tending to me, I am. But I got nothing to share besides the knowledge that I didn’t mean a thing to Cupid. I might as well have been a hole in the ground.”
“It’s not my place,” Sarah said, “but I will ask. Was Cupid never kind? He never talked softly to you?”
Nila sucked her teeth. “You’re right, it’s not your place. He got blood in his eye when he was a boy. Ruined him for kindness.”
“That was just talk,” I said. “Nobody believes—”
“Hmph. Spend your nights under a man like him, spend your days keeping out of his way. Then tell me what you believe.”
We talked, sometimes arguing and sometimes consoling, until weariness of mind and body got the best of us. Before falling asleep I asked our Ancestors to keep watch over Nila in the fields. She would have to step carefully with Holtzclaw, just as she had done with Cupid. The two men had much in common, despite one being a Thief and the other Stolen. On the worst days, Holtzclaw would stare so hard you thought your dress might catch fire. He would stare until finally you had to meet his gaze, and he would shift his head just a little, in the direction of the barn. You knew that meant to drop your sack and go with him. I had been under Greene’s protection since he paired me with William. Still, I slept with a shard near my pallet just in case.
Cato
I awoke to flies buzzing and the sun’s heat finding every crack in my body. My bones felt as if they had tangled and knotted while I curled against the post in fitful sleep. I had no strength to move; it hurt just to consider it. Isaac was right: being still was best.
“Cato. Cato. Are you still with us?”
“He is. If he wasn’t, an angel would have come and taken him away.”
I recognized the voices of William and Little Zander. I felt Zander’s hand against my neck.
“He’s still here,” he said. “Just like I told you.”
“Cato,” William said. “Greene’s giving you three days. You can live or die. We want—I want—you to live.”
I felt a gourd being pressed to my lips. I kept my mouth shut tight.
“Come on,” Zander urged. “Take some water.”
I tried to shake my head, but I’m not sure if I moved at all.
Their voices faded. I heard murmurs, whispered arguments. Then they slowly drew near, each step resounding in my head like a fist pounding a drum.
Before I could adjust to those violent vibrations, I was drenched. Torrents of water bombarded me, shocking me from my scalp to my toes. Water found the cracks in my body as surely as the sun’s rays had, flooding my nose and ears while battering my eyelids. The deluge seemed to continue for hours, but in reality it only lasted until William and Little Zander finished emptying their upturned pails.
I coughed and snorted and rolled away as far as my chains allowed me, prompting a new succession of searing cramps and stings.
“We’re not going to let you die,” William yelled. I heard him hurl a pail to the ground and stomp away.
Zander knelt down and spoke softly in my ear. “The Buba Yalis are busy enough,” he said. “Don’t give them any bother.”
I don’t know how long I lay there, inert and unmindful of the world’s mad whirling. When I could finally open my eyes without wishing for death, I found myself staring at the stars. Behind them the sky was awash in blackness, cool comfort after the sweltering sunlight that had tormented me all day. I heard movement and turned to see Pandora emerge out of the dark. She squatted and stared, her face unsmiling.
“Have you been saying your seven?”
My silence told her the answer.
“I suppose they can wait,” she said. “For now, you must get something good in you. I will tolerate no foolishness.”
To my consternation I was unable to resist. She sat and, taking my head into her lap, fed me sips of pot liquor. The liquid was as savory as it was nourishing. I tasted essence of carrots and greens and marrow.
“Silent Mary brewed this just for you,” she said.
I tried to speak but she hushed me.
“Just rest. And listen.”
“Once upon a time in a kingdom by the sea,” she began.
I closed my eyes again and felt the knots and twists in my body begin to ease. Pandora’s stories, full of fairies and fortunes and gilded carriages, were completely unfamiliar. Yet, as I drifted off to sleep, I found comfort in believing they had been composed just for me.
Others at Placid Hall took turns keeping watch over me through the night and the following day. Silent Mary contributed her brooding presence. Milton, still lame from his wounded foot, drew pictures in the dirt while chattering without pause. Double Sam argued with his invisible brother. At the time I was uncertain of the precise nature of these visits, whether they actually took place or sprung from my fractured imagination. Only later was I able to confirm my friends’ efforts to provide relief during my ordeal. An additional encounter, like Isaac’s spectral visit, remained inexplicable. On my third and final night chained to the post, a remarkable sighting influenced my fate in ways too numerous to tally.
Rain had been falling for hours. Perhaps fall is too gentle a word. It was the kind of downpour that leaves scars, grooves, and dents in the earth. I shivered in my chains, blinking rapidly as it came down in sheets and pellets. With Silent Mary’s broth coursing through my innards, I had regained sufficient strength to hold myself in a sitting position, resting my head against the post. I had only to be alive until daybreak and Greene would remove my chains, leaving me bound to him nonetheless.
Soaked to the bone, I awaited the dawn while considering the looming paradox of my situation. What little I had to live for.
In the distance, the splintered gray boards of our cabins appeared to tremble and dissolve in the wet. The resulting cloud of grayness, murky and unsettled, gradually took on new shapes, outlines of boys and girls. Struck dumb, I watched while they marched down the corridor of the quarters toward me before veering sharply and proceeding toward the plantation borders. Clad in garments I had never seen—nothing like our sackcloth and threadbare castoffs—they passed me in shades of gray, nearly close enough to touch. I had thought of my Ancestors as ancient, with a history of torment etched on their weathered faces. But these were children, ranging in age from five harvests to fifteen, with gleaming faces and vigorous frames. I didn’t understand their youthfulness. I understood only that they had been in the world before I came to it, and that they now belonged to some other place. Occasionally a boy or girl would pause and look at me, then rejoin the procession without missing a step. They walked unsullied through the mud, as smoothly as if they were gliding on cushions of air. I called to them, but any sound I made was lost in the fury of the gale.
Already shivering, I became consumed by a different kind of chill, a peculiar sensation unlike anything I had ever known. I sensed the presence of an energy at work, quick, elusive, and beyond my comprehension. I did infer, however, that submitting to melancholy would undo the labors of those who had come before me, that I had an obligation to resist instead of giving in. I rose unsteadily to my feet, aware of my shackles but determined to somehow overcome them. My ancestors, so resolute and curiously young, had shown me a glimpse, perhaps, of the end of sorrows.
The last pilgrim in the strange parade lagged behind the others, growing taller as he approached. It was Isaac, grinning confidently.
“Mind yourself,” he said, “and follow their footsteps.”
“I’m trying,” I shouted. “I’m trying!”
Isaac and the ghostly train disappeared into the fog. I strained against my chains, bellowing into the wind and rain until I passed out.
In the morning, I opened my eyes and saw the lovely face of my Pandora, preparing to revive me with a kiss.
Pandora
I came at sunrise with more of Silent Mary’s pot liquor. Cato was sleeping, as I expected. But his body was oddly relaxed, much changed from his previous posture. He was smiling too, as if enveloped in a fanciful dream. He met my kiss with equal, steady pressure, and when he spoke his voice was clear and resonant. I knew at once that it was his old voice, the one whose absence he had often lamented. He told me that his ordeal was over, that there was nothing in this world strong enough to keep him down. He talked of Ancestors and an old friend named Isaac. Cradling his head in my hands, I pressed my face to his. Before, even as I was drawn to his gentle manner and his wonderful hands, I had harbored doubts about the weight he struggled under. I questioned how much of it I could pile onto my own shoulders. As I knelt beside him absorbing the signs of his renewal, my uncertainties melted away in the warm glow of morning. I knew then that we could carry each other.
