Walk Through Darkness (11 page)

O
NE
In the weeks after they lost the runaway’s scent Morrison and the hound continued their search by other means. They traveled the busier roads and stayed in the larger towns. Morrison tried to think out some logical route for a fugitive across the land’s features. He spoke to men on horseback, hitched rides in the back of wagons and walked along beside fellow pedestrians, asking everyone about the man he was hunting. He stopped in boardinghouses and stables, spoke to farmers and even posed his questions to children. It was hard for him—all this conversing—for he was not a man for many words.

Something in the process reminded him of his early days in America: having to learn the landscape, asking strangers for help, sleeping in barns at the fringes of civilization, the hunger of a search for something elusive. It was years ago now, but he had not forgotten. Those first months were as hard on him and his brother as anything that came before. Their first work was butchering the carcasses of dead horses at a glue factory. It was coarse work. Neither of them had the stomach for it. Neither was adept at treating the parts of a once-living animal like so much fodder for the vat. The younger brother would wake up lashing out at
his bedsheets, troubled by dreams of vengeful horses rising up from soup in which they boiled. They quit this work within a fortnight and cleaned chimneys instead, Lewis squeezing himself into small spaces as if he were an urchin of the Glasgow slums. This work singed the clothes and clogged the lungs. Twice the younger brother got himself so wedged in the confined spaces that the older joked that he was stuck fast, at least until the owner saw fit to kindle a fire beneath him. They quit that work before long and found employment as hewers of wood, and then as haulers of manure and, finally, as diggers of graves. It was lonely work, forlorn in its purpose. But it was steady.

As winter set in it was more than that. With the first frosts came new harvests of the dead, the young and the old mostly. The two brothers bundled themselves as best they could against the cold, sewing stray swatches of wool inside their garments, lining their jackets with the cheapest material they could purchase, Negro cloth. Lewis went so far as to wear a triangle of wool on his head, atop which sat a crinkled straw hat which was held in place by a ribbon that ran under his chin. It was a most awkward headdress, and the older brother looked at it with skeptical eyes. But when other laborers poked fun at Lewis, Morrison fashioned for himself a similar hat. Bearing it proudly, he challenged any to offer their jests. They did not. Warmth cometh before pride, he confessed, but pride is a right close second.

By December the ground was a frozen corpse. It was a thick skin that fought against their shovels. Day long they labored at a work that the younger brother called another form of butchery. It was hard on the hands, wearing into them till they were blistered, callous mallets, wooden fingers so stiff one had to flex them with quiet concentration. The younger brother developed a pain in his torso that sometimes sent jolts like sheet lightning fanning across his back. This was no work that suited him. But it was a life, Morrison said. A life leading to grander things. And that was the way it was between them. Every doubt the younger brother voiced the older shot down. Every fear he unveiled. Every longing for things past he disdained.

But behind his assured words Morrison’s mind reeled unhinged. This
land was bursting its seams in a way that had no parallel. It was a land of many tongues, many faces, many nations being boiled down into one. And this did not seem possible. How does a nation contain within itself the English beside the French, Germans beside Swedes, Catholic and Calvin and Quaker all intermingled? How could they exist at the edge of a continent already peopled with men of such a different hue and temperament? And what sense could one ever make of the strange bondage held over the race called Negro? Morrison kept these thoughts mostly to himself, but Lewis couldn’t help but speak of his amazement. He admitted that from the first moment he’d laid eyes upon these black people he longed to touch their skin. He wanted to verify beneath his own fingers the nature of the stuff, to confirm that its form and function was the same as his own. He would speak to his brother late at night, asking aloud why God had created humans in such different hues, wondering if there wasn’t some puzzle in it, a riddle that mankind was yet to solve. Morrison never answered such questions. He kept his fingers deep within his pockets and told his brother to think of other things. They had enough troubles of their own. Leave the accursed be.

This was why Morrison complained to their employer when a Negro man was partnered with them at their work. He asked him did he think that he and his brother were nothing but slaves? Were they to work the same ground as a black man as if they were equals? This employer was not swayed to sympathy, making it clear that he and his brother could both be replaced if the terms didn’t suit them. So Morrison returned to digging. He didn’t speak a word to the black man, only gesturing roughly to communicate. But Lewis seemed happy to talk to the slave. Overhearing his conversation, Morrison learned that the black man had been hired to this labor and that his wages went into the hands of his master. Lewis found something in this to remind him of his homeland. He asked his brother if that didn’t sound like a Lowland custom, growing rich off the labor of honest men? But Morrison would not be brought into partnership with the Negro. That evening he berated his brother. Did he really think they were so like these niggers? Did he believe they shared anything in common with that flat-faced, mumbling
creature? Must he talk with them as if they were equals, for if he acted so then other men would believe so and they’d never fare better than slaves. To most of this the younger brother was silent, and in his silence were the first inklings of dissent.

Early in the new year the Bay froze fast, trapping within it boats and bringing much trade and commerce to a halt. As such, it was a bad time, but as with all aberrations of nature it also invited men to moments of mirth. The brackish water made a strange ice, ridged and translucent and somewhat soft to the touch. It gave way beneath their feet when the two brothers ventured on to it. They stumbled and clutched each other, shouted nervously and listened as the stuff cracked. They had never seen the likes of it before—frozen seawater. They walked out dangerously far, looking back over their shoulders as the black line of the shore grew thin. The younger brother joked that they could run all the way back to Scotland.

The older brother said, Aye, but you’d be daft to try it. Daft and alone you’d be.

But even as he said this he wasn’t sure what actions might or might not be called sane. He looked to the distance, at the white, lumpy carpet of the Bay, to the shoreline and the sad conglomeration of houses there, structures he still believed could be blown away should this land ever produce a storm like those of the North Sea. It was a sad picture. That shore was not a shore worth the name. It was a pathetic melding of sand and water. It was hard to tell where one ended and the next began. The land never rose but for the smallest hills, never dipped but for the shallowest of depressions. It was a land meant for the till, aye, but it was a sorry sight compared to the country that bred these brothers. How different was that homeland, where the black waves cast their full bulk upon the rocks, where the two forces engaged in battle. There the sea was the muscle of nature and the shore was a craggy stone wall thrown up against it. The interaction between them was a grand confusion of sound and spray and motion, constant through the day and night. That place was built in bold features, where the land never tired of change, rising from loch to glen to mountain. That was a land. It was harsh in many
ways, but one could never mistake it for a sandy rise in the water. And once having seen it, one could never forget it.

Lewis pulled at him then, and the two slipped on the ice and laughed and tried to scrape up chunks of it to throw at each other. In action thought was reprieved, dreams deferred, life moved on. Motion pushed them on, and this, Morrison thought, was good. Neither realized that objects in motion couldn’t stay so indefinitely. They must, at some point, collide.

T
WO
William knew they were coming. He had heard them move about near at hand more than once. He could distinguish them from the rats by their voices if by nothing else. But this time they were closer than before. He tried to slide himself further back between the crates, but there was no place to go. His spine was twisted, his body at a cant, the space so small he couldn’t even sit with his shoulders straight. So he paused and waited for them, patient, watching the light of a lamp creep across the beams above him in strange fits and starts.

When the two white men appeared, William just stared at them. They said something. He knew that they were speaking because their mouths moved, but he couldn’t hear their words. For a moment he couldn’t hear anything. The world had gone quiet. He just watched the men’s puzzled faces, knowing that they were questioning him. Eventually, one of the men reached down toward him. His outstretched hand hung in the air, beckoning. William reached up and met the man’s grasp.

That’s when the spell was broken. The man’s palm was callused, warm and very real. Reality spread out of it, down through William’s forearm, up his shoulder and into his head,
which cleared in an instant. This was no dream. They hoisted him up onto his stiff legs and led him through a maze of crates, wooden beams and shadows. He stumbled in the dark and found himself leaning on the man beside him. He tried to pull away, but just fell against the other man and progressed along supported by one or other of them in turns. They reached a ladder that William ascended by wrapping his arms through and around the rungs. They walked the length of the next level, mounted another ladder, and then pushed through a series of narrow doors.

Light pierced to the back of his eyes. Fresh air slapped his face, salt-tinged and moist. The world came alive with sounds. Nothing was muted. Sails snapped in the wind. Waves sliced open before the ship’s bow. Seagulls cried their rude calls one to another. And he heard the voices of men, harsh at times and gay at others, men hard at a type of work that gave them joy. As his eyes adjusted to the light he saw the visual manifestations of those sounds. He was on the brig. But instead of a dim shape in the stillness of the harbor, the ship was at full sail through a white-capped ocean. Studding sails stretched far out on either side of the vessel, billowed by the wind, driving them onward. The coastline was some distance off to the left, and to the right the water stretched to the horizon and beyond. They were no longer in the shallow waters of the Chesapeake. This was the open Atlantic.

The two men grasped him by either wrist and the muzzle of a gun pressed into his abdomen. They led him forward. He took small steps, thrown off balance by the heaving of the ship, his head dizzy and vision swimming. They walked around crates and between giant coils of rope, beneath the mainmast and through the taut lines strung vertically and reaching up into a web of angles and shapes and lines. They drew up before two other men, just behind the foremast. One was a small fellow, compact of structure but tightly built. His golden hair kicked out from his
head in strange angles. When he saw William his hand went to the hilt of his dagger, a slim, curved weapon that dangled from his waist belt.

The other man turned and took William in with little visible sign of surprise. He was older and wore an intricate sailor’s hat, bent brimmed in the style of an earlier time. His face was craggy-featured, rough and multitextured. His eyebrows perched above his eyes, two thick lines drawn in coal. A similarly bushy beard spread downward over his jowls. His eyes were large even for his wide face, more bulbous than usual. William’s captors addressed this man, explaining where and in what condition they had found him.

The smaller man moved before they had finished speaking. He strode the space between them in two quick steps and punched William across the mouth. William reeled away from the blow, but was set right by the two men. “You’ll soon see you’ve made a mistake, my friend.” He signaled something to the men. One of them moved off, but the other one, with the gun, kept his grip on William.

“Captain,” the small man said, “we’d be within our rights to hang him ourselves.”

“Without a trial, Mr. Barrett?” the captain asked, his voice unhurried and nasal.

“What trial did his like give those men?” Barrett stepped forward and grasped William by the chin between his rough-gloved fingers. “What trial did you give those men before you rose and slaughtered them?”

“Please, Mr. Barrett, give me a moment.” The captain motioned the younger man aside and examined William from head to toe, taking in each feature of his body and clothing, lingering long on his tattered breeches and on the sad state of his brogans. He reached out as if to touch William along the jawline. William lifted his head before the man made contact with his skin. “You don’t have the countenance of a murderer,” he said, “but I of all
people know that looks can be deceiving. God gave us the good sense to know the difference between the lion and doe, and he wrote the laws by which we punish the criminal among us.”

One of the other men returned, bringing with him the familiar clinking of heavy iron. William set his jaw against the sound. Tired and exhausted as he was, he would not stand before this man like a slave on the auction block. He set his gaze to the distance to show them that he was far away from all this, someplace else entirely, a place they could never own. For the first time it occurred to him how much there was inside of him that no white man could ever know. There were regions within him upon which no claims of ownership had hold. He thought about Dover and that rage of hers, and he felt closer to her than he had since that day in January.

“Forgive me if I sin against you,” the captain said, “but I have my ship and crew to protect. You understand …”

The captain motioned the man forward with the chains. William stared straight before him as the man clamped the iron over his scarred wrists. He watched the distant shoreline, a white line of sand behind which dunes rolled out of sight.

“I am not wholly without sympathy for your situation,” the captain said. “I abhor the institution that has enslaved you, and I even believe that the spilling of white blood may at times be justified. But, for the moment at least I must treat you as a criminal. You may, at will, make a case for yourself and I will hear you out.” The captain paused and expressed with his folded hands that he was ready to listen. “Have you anything to say in your defense?”

William didn’t answer. He didn’t want to listen to or engage with the man at all, let them do with him what they would. Given a moment’s peace he would again try to escape. And if caught, he would again escape. And if he was not meant to find Dover then he would die in the effort. Even if he was to die here he would not show an ounce of fear, for he had seen white men killed. He had seen their flesh unmasked and looked beneath it.
If he never saw Dover again, at least he would die knowing she would be proud of him. She would find him beautiful in his anger.

“You are one of the fugitives from that coffle, one of those that rose in Virginia and massacred their keepers?” When he didn’t answer the captain sighed. “Perhaps no white man has ever asked for your thoughts before, but that’s just what I’m doing. I’m giving you the opportunity to speak for yourself. You would be wise to take it.”

Though William tried not to listen—not to engage with the man at all—the strange cadence of his words reverberated in his head. He gathered that the man knew of the massacre and knew that he was a runaway, but he couldn’t place what the man’s attitude to these things might be. If he had called for a rope just then it would’ve made more sense. If he knew the things he appeared to, then William would only live until a noose was fastened around his neck. Did he have anything to say in his defense? He had a million things to say but not one that a white man would care to hear.

“Sir,” the small man said. He crowded behind the captain.

The captain’s voice stayed calm. “You are one of those fugitives. You stowed away on my ship in such a way as might have compromised me to the authorities. Am I correct? Do you deny any of this?”

William pressed his tongue against his teeth.

“Your silence leaves me no choice,” the captain said. “Barrett.”

The small man sprung toward him, spun William around and shoved him toward the port side of the brig. The railing hit him at waist level and his upper body pitched forward. The water slipped past with incredible speed, the sleek back of the ocean and the ship carving into it. Barrett held him facing it for a few moments, his fist clamped around his collar. “The captain said talk!”

William wanted to wrench himself from the little man’s grip
and look upon the captain again, to hear more of his questions and more of the voice in which he spoke them. He opened his mouth, but where and how to begin? What could he say that would stay the moment and grant him more time to think? Barrett pushed his elbow into the small of William’s back, making him gasp, a sound that came out like a curse.

“You hear that?” Barrett asked. “He sassing us. Listen to him.”

The captain moved in close to the two men. “I am sure you can perceive the extent to which Barrett is willing to go with this questioning. We must have answers, and if you’ll give us none I’ll give Mr. Barrett permission to submerge you. Do you understand? He’ll bind your feet with a long rope and toss you overboard and you will learn what it’s like to drown. It’s not at all pleasant. You lash out in the water trying to find some purchase. But the water is a thing with and without substance. You beat against it but it cannot be mastered. Your exhaustion is like none you have ever experienced. We pull you on like a fish on a line. You would cry out, but your head is beneath the water. You may lose consciousness, if you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky you’ll be very aware of the moment the water rushes in on you, filling your insides and choking the life out of you. And at that point Mr. Barrett would haul you back aboard and ask you the very same questions. Now …” He turned William’s face toward his. “… let us avoid all of that. Tell me, are you a murderer?”

William shook his head.

“You have no blood on your hands?”

For the first time that he was aware of, William vocalized his answer. “No.”

The captain asked the next question in simple, deliberate words spoken close to William’s ear. “Then give me the words … Speak so that I may know the truth.”

“I never murdered anybody. The others did that.”

“Typical,” Barrett spit. “Typical answer! Shall I dunk him, sir?”

“No. We don’t have time for that.” The captain drew himself
up, folded his arms behind him and considered William from that posture of authority. “This is not a court. We shan’t hear this matter out here. He pleads innocence. That’s enough for now. See that the prisoner is locked away securely. We’ll turn him over when it suits us.” Barrett looked ready to protest, but the captain stopped him with a raised hand. “That’s my mind, now see it made true.”

With another motion of his hand the captain spurred several men into action. They wrestled William out of Barrett’s grip and began to drag him away. For the first few yards he walked as guided. He closed his eyes and let them lead him. The image of the shoreline came to him and he was filled with an urge to dive into the ocean, to swim for that shore or drown in the effort. He opened his eyes and saw the passage into the ship approaching. He jerked his arms free of the men that bound him and strode forward, turned and made for the edge. He lunged for the railing, but just as he touched it his feet were kicked out from under him and the men were upon him, grappling and kicking him. They hauled him up and dragged him onward. He tried to yank himself free, twisting to see the captain and to talk to him, suddenly willing to plead his innocence. But the captain was out of his view. As they dragged him to the portal his arms banged out against it to stop him. He yelled out Dover’s name, but his cry was snatched away by the wind across the deck. Then the ship swallowed him.

William sat fuming in his cell, wrists chaffing beneath the chains, buttocks sore from pressing against solid wood. It was a tiny room, too short even for him to stand, just wider than his outstretched arms. His chains were secured to a ring in the floor, though it hardly seemed necessary. There was not a chink of light to be seen in the cell, no moving air. It was a chamber of black, dripping wood. His captors had set a bucket near the door for him to relieve himself. But he didn’t need it. There was nothing
inside of him to come out. At first he dreamed of escape. He imagined how he would manage it, scenes of blood and gore not natural to him but being learned. But his anger didn’t last. It seeped out of him and into the darkness around him. It was a relief almost, to give up hope, letting thoughts and schemes slide away, replaced by a numbness inside that mirrored that around him. How much could a man take? How much until he could give up with honor? Perhaps he was failing Dover and the child, but how much could he take before giving in?

When the door opened he snapped upright. A single candle shone through the crack. A moment later a face appeared beside it. For a second, William thought the candlelight was playing tricks on him. The face it illuminated appeared to be black, only the whites of the eyes clear and bright in reflection. The face vanished. The candle wavered. Then the door swung open and a man stepped in, candle in one hand, plate of food in the other. For some seconds the person’s face was hidden, but when it turned toward him again he realized he had not been mistaken. It was an ebony facade, that of a Negro, darker than he, with hair that—if the image in the candlelight could be believed—sprung from his scalp like black worms several inches long. For a moment William thought the face feminine. High cheeks sloped to a narrow, hairless chin. Eyes were wide set and almond shaped, tilted upwards at either end. But there was something masculine about the person’s movements, quick and assured and not the slightest bit nervous with their proximity.