Wash: A Novel

WASH

WASH

A Novel

Margaret Wrinkle

Atlantic Monthly Press

New York

Copyright © 2013 by Margaret Wrinkle

Photographs copyright © 2013 by Margaret Wrinkle

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 or [email protected].

first edition

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or localities is entirely coincidental.

Epigraph from The Famished Road by Ben Okri, copyright © 1991 by Ben Okri, A Nan A. Talese book. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must aply directly to Random House, Inc. for permission.

Printed in the United States of America

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9378-0

Atlantic Monthly Press

an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

841 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

13 14 15 16 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For all those in Deads’ Town

and for us, the Living.

In that land of beginnings spirits mingled with the unborn. We could assume numerous forms. Many of us were birds. We knew no boundaries. There was much feasting, playing, and sorrowing. We feasted much because of the beautiful terrors of eternity. We played much because we were free. And we sorrowed much because there were always those amongst us who had just returned from the world of the Living. They had returned inconsolable for all the love they had left behind, all the suffering they hadn’t redeemed, all that they hadn’t understood, and for all that they had barely begun to learn before they were drawn back to the land of origins.

There was not one amongst us who looked forward to being born. We disliked the rigours of existence, the unfulfilled longings, the enshrined injustices of the world, the labyrinths of love, the ignorance of parents, the fact of dying, and the amazing indifference of the Living in the midst of the simple beauties of the universe. We feared the heartlessness of human beings, all of whom are born blind, few of whom ever learn to see.

from The Famished Road by Ben Okri

Prologue

Pallas

It was one of his early trips to Miller’s when I first laid eyes on Wash. Pretty soon, I learned to be gone when they brought him. Made sure to be out gathering or else seeing about folks. But that first Friday afternoon when Richardson sent Wash over here to do his business, I was home and I saw it all.

Watched him ride in on that wagon while I started my fire. Stood there stewing some goldenseal and saw Wash dip one shoulder to duck inside that small side door of Miller’s barn, with Richardson’s man Quinn following right behind him step for step.

Richardson’s horses, one rust and one a faded gray, stayed tied to that shaded post all day. His wagon stood close by the barn while they loaded it down till it sagged. One hogshead of tobacco, high as my waist. Bolts of the same cloth they’d be wearing next year. Three casks of apple brandy. All in barter.

I knew everything from the beginning. Can’t say I didn’t. But it’s like Phoebe told me, everything’s fine so long as you find a way to manage it. It’s when you can’t see what you’re dealing with that you head into trouble.

Somehow it fell to me to carry Wash his supper. Everybody else stayed crossways with him but I was curious. Took him some field peas and greens with two slices of smoked ham. Miller made sure about the meat. When I got to the stall they kept him in, Quinn sat by the door on a crate. He tipped his square chin up at me as he reached out for one of the two bowls I carried. He pulled the latch back on the bottom door till it swung open and nodded for me to go in.

I bent to step under the top door he’d left bolted shut. With the late light, I couldn’t see Wash too good but I felt him there. Heavy, like something fell off a shelf, and sitting real still. Then he came clear. Sitting on the floor in the deep straw, leaning his back against the far wall, resting his elbows on drawn up knees. He wasn’t doing nothing but watching his fingers twirling a piece of straw.

Even from where I stood, I could see the scar snaking through the edge of his hairline. Deep enough to hold water. Right at his temple. Everybody told a different story on what happened but it should have killed him sure enough. Made me wonder who it was had managed to keep him here on this earth and what he could see out of the one good eye he had left.

At first, he seemed to me like all the rest of these men, worn out from a long day, except he wasn’t sitting around with the rest of everybody. Tired feels less worn out when you got a few folks to sit with. Have a sip. Try and shake the day off.

It didn’t hit me till I stood there holding his supper in my hand, watching him twirl his piece of straw. Wash was further from having folks than just about anybody I ever came across. Nobody to sit with at the end of this long day or any other day either.

I always thought I was the only one who stayed steady looking back at the world from the far end of a long rope. But watching him sit there on the floor of that stall, finally looking up at me with that one good eye and his other eye roaming the dusty wall over my shoulder, I caught myself wanting to trace that R brand fading into his cheek with my finger. I could tell he’d looked down a long rope himself and likely still did most days.

He must have took hold of my thoughts, because without ever moving, he bristled like a cat. Slammed his eyes shut right in my face, even as he stayed steady watching me. Made me feel like I’d stepped inside his yard without asking. What set me back even more was the way he looked at me after he got all bowed up. Sat way back inside himself and ran his eyes over me, just as cold as you want to be. Like he was adding up some parts.

I been looked at like that plenty and didn’t need any more of it, so I edged over to set his bowl down beside him. Then I stepped away, careful not to turn my back on him. It wasn’t till he reached to take the bowl and was well into eating when he stopped and looked at me again.

I don’t know why I was still standing there. I turned right around and left. Ducked under that top door and bolted the bottom one behind me. Both that day and the next till Wash was good and gone.

That’s how things went between us at first, but it’s a whole different story now.

Richardson

When Quinn came to me with this idea for Wash, I turned away from it. I remember thinking, surely not. But he kept after me, saying supply was drying up and we could make a killing.

We sure as hell needed to make something. My place had fallen apart after I rode off to soldier in 1812, determined to whip England once and for all. Forever trying to make my contribution in what turned out to be a damn useless war.

It took me three years to get home and three more to drag my place back into some kind of working order. But I had set too many deals in motion at once and when the bottom fell from the market, there I sat. Dogpaddling. Trying to paper us out of the hole.

I remember even the day. It was hot as hell and dry. We had been without rain for nearly sixty days and my palms stuck to the pages of my letterbooks, leaving sweaty smears alongside my columns of numbers. Quinn came into my office with his jaw set.

No matter how short and bandy legged, Quinn was often right. That’s why I’d taken him on as a partner despite his lack of capital. His father was my father’s overseer but Quinn came West aiming higher. Soon as he closed the door behind him, he started in on me, relentless as a terrier. Talking incessantly about the waves of settlers moving through west Tennessee into the new territories of Arkansas and Louisiana. What they could mean for our markets.

They’re all headed for the South West, trying to get in the cotton game. All that new land going to cotton, you’d have to be blind not to see what will happen to our prices. They’ll drop till there’s no way for us to make any money. As for negroes, they’ll go sky high. You know they will.

As I ran my eyes over my columns which so steadfastly refused to add up, I had to admit he had a point. What I couldn’t get over was how easy it laid itself out before me. Stared straight at me, tugging on my sleeve. Even as I resisted Quinn’s logic, I was counting the numbers in my head. How could I not, with the debts I carried?

It’s right there for the taking, Quinn told me again and again until I turned my mind to face it.

Send Wash over to my old friend Miller’s on a Friday, put him with three or four per day. Even if only some take, that will mean ten new negroes, worth two hundred apiece once weaned. And with his midwife Pallas on hand to catch every single one, Miller can get the whole two hundred for each before he has to spend anything at all.

Two thousand to him has got to mean at least two hundred for us. Even in barter, it’s worth it. You know it is.

Two hundred to me for sending Wash over to Miller’s on a Friday. Over to Miller’s and then over to the next place and the next.

I do question what I would have done if I hadn’t already been wondering how to handle Wash. With the way he kept cutting the buck and tomcatting around, I knew I had to do something or my whole house was liable to come down on me. You can’t let just one get away with it. That’s like having a crack in your cup. Before you know it, all your water runs out.

I saw it so clearly. My wagon taking him there and back, the money in my hand. And Wash thrashing and cussing but somehow fitting the shoe right to his foot, almost in spite of himself. Making it fit.

We all did it. It’s just that some of us did it more and better. Smoother somehow. Quinn called it the Red Sea. Said the way parts for me. Says I was born to it. Not only the silver spoon but the cup and the bowl too.

I don’t know about that. All I knew was I needed money and I had to do something about Wash. I remember thinking this work might even appeal to him.

Wash

Richardson had me at the top of his page. I knew it clear as day before I ever saw his damn book.

That man wrote everything down. Somebody brought a mare to put with his stud, he’d fetch his paper down to the barn. Unroll it all crackling, then tack it up on the wall where they could go over it together. Start with the name of that Eclipse racehorse written at the top, then branching down and down till his finger found his stud, with all those lines left empty for time to come. Not that I can read, but I can sure watch a man pointing to a word and saying it.

I knew where he was headed before the thought ever crossed his mind. It was me leading that gray stud into the sun. Walking him out for his neighbor Carpenter to see. Horse was past twenty but still acting bold so I looped the chain over his nose. Rested my palm on his withers to keep him calm.

I felt their eyes on me too but that was nothing new. Some folks stare at you like to eat you up. Hunting some knowing behind your eyes just as hard as they don’t want to find it.

It was him seeing me with that horse. I know it sure as I’m standing here. It was Richardson watching me work his stud for Carpenter come to breed his mare that hooked the two ideas in his mind. After that, it was just a matter of time.

See, I know how they do. White folks like to stay in those books. They carry and they keep and they dig in their books, like nothing matters that don’t get written in some book somewhere. Like that’s the only way they can know for sure what happened.

They’ll write down who they are and what they did. And their daddies and theirs too. Put it all in a book, then close it up and put it on the shelf. Just to know it’s there so they can sleep at night. Like if they don’t get written down somewhere and they shut their eyes for a minute, they might disappear.

But there ain’t no writing this down. No book to put this in. Some of us shut our eyes at night and wake up in the morning, not written down nowhere. And still don’t disappear.

Nobody who was not here will know what went on. Life looks different from the inside than the outside, but they think all they got to go on is what gets written down.

This story will come out. That’s what I tell myself. Won’t be till after we’re dead and gone, but we won’t really be gone cause it don’t work like that. All these books and all these white folks, thinking the world is forever passing away. All trying to make their mark, trying to be a big man.

But ain’t none of us going nowhere. We stay right here. All of us, all the time. Black and white and everything in between. All together, all the time.

Time treats me different even now. I can’t stand outside my story to save my life. I keep trying to tell it without falling right in, but soon as I start to look back, I’m neck deep before I know it. Current catches me and I’m gone. Each one of those Friday afternoons when he sent me off in that damn wagon sits right here, breathing close on the back of my neck.

Part One

Sunday, August 17, 1823

Two days’ ride northeast of Nashville

It’s well past suppertime and still the heat shimmers heavy without a breeze, even high on this bluff where Richardson’s broad stone house sits facing east over the river bending below. After this long dry summer, his wagon creaks cresting his last hill as late light spikes through the clouds. Quinn brings Wash back from another weekend away.

Richardson strides out to meet them, moving easily through the empty quiet of this Sunday evening. One foot in front of the next. Battered handmade boots caked with dirt. Fawn britches worn to bagginess over bony knees. At seventy, his leanness has become extreme but he still appears fit and graceful as long as he moves in the service of a clear intention. Sharp brown eyes under hooded lids and a pronounced widow’s peak. He had been handsome once but disappointment and disillusion, along with two harsh stints as a prisoner of war, have long since knocked the gloss off.

Sweat has darkened the collars of all three men and horseflies torment the sticky haunches of the team. They stomp the ground where Quinn has pulled them up to wait. Wash refuses to meet Richardson’s eye as he slowly unfolds to his full height, standing in the wagon bed, swaying slightly to keep his balance amidst the jerking of the horses, looking older at twenty six than most men at forty.

Richardson has owned Wash since before he swam snug in Mena’s belly but the young man has never once met his gaze. Even in full sun, Wash keeps his face hard to read. Holds his head a little tilted so eyes snag on the deep scar denting his temple instead. After stepping down from the wagon, Wash crosses the parched grass toward the biggest barn. Richardson, hawkish from years of vigilance, turns to watch him go then drags his attention back to Quinn who sits high on the wagon seat, holding the reins bunched in one hand and digging in his chest pocket with the other.

A lock of steel gray hair hangs over Quinn’s low forehead as he hands Richardson the thin banknote folded around a small square of thick paper listing the names. Both documents are battered and grimy from the long ride in that sweaty pocket. Richardson takes the papers and heads for the house, leaning slightly forward as if this will help him cover the necessary ground more quickly. He can already feel the liquor loosening the perennial tightness in his chest as he scans down the list written in Quinn’s rough letters.

Minerva, Phyllis, CeCe, Molly, Dice, Charity, Vesta.

A big operation to have so many at childbearing age. At least he hopes they are. He has long since left the details to Quinn and it worries him some. But not enough to go himself to make sure. Not anymore. He reminds himself to have Quinn get the ages of these women who, along with Wash, have been hauling them slowly out of debt for more than five years now.

It’s not only the money, although that lies forever at the heart of the matter. Richardson’s interest runs deeper. He wants to know what happens and how. Which woman holds onto her child and which does not, and not just because he will need to write a refund. He wants to know, how does a child of Wash and Molly’s turn out? Or one of Wash and CeCe’s?

Richardson wonders whether any of them will carry Mena’s face. He can still see her standing on that block down in Charleston all those years ago, so clear and somehow unbroken, with Wash already on his way. That very first time he saw her, Mena had rested her eyes on him until he felt as pulled as a fish on a hook. Her unbidden image blooms so vividly up through the years that Richardson has to shake his head to knock it loose.

As he enters his house, he calls down the hall, Emmaline, I am unavailable. Her yessir gets lost in the thunk of his boots on the stairs. Nine long strides carry him across the echoing ballroom to the small room off the far end where men gather after dinner to smoke and drink and talk politics. His office is downstairs by the back door but this tucked away place where his books line the walls has become his refuge.

He shuts the door behind him, steps straight to the low liquor cabinet to pour himself a slug of bourbon and then stands by the window, holding his drink cupped in his palm, watching the gray wood of his big barn start to silver in the coming twilight. As he listens to the thump and rustle of his large family settling in, he knows the high window under the eaves on the far side of the hayloft is falling dark as a fist, and he knows Wash is likely sitting there in it, watching the night draw near, just like he is.

After each of these times away, Wash heads for the barn, hoping Richardson’s stableman Ben has already gone back to the quarters for the night. He slips into the first stall and sinks down against the wall in the one corner that can’t be seen from the door, feeling nothing but thankful when this one horse turns to stand over him, dropping its head to breathe him in. A few bits of chaff from a mouthful of hay fall on Wash’s bent head as a soft nicker warms the back of his neck.

The horse returns to its hay but Wash stays tucked into that corner until well past dark. Then he stands and brushes that horse over and over, each stroke smoothing away another jagged edge of his past few days. He slips from one stall to the next, one horse to another, moving through the darkened barn as easily as a blind man.

Sometimes he runs his hands over the horses without a brush, smoothing the wide flat muscles of their necks and shoulders, down the hard straight bones of their legs, across the fluttering softness of their noses. Their slow breathing soothes him and this use of his hands retrieves them from their earlier harshness. The easy grace with which the horses receive his tenderness allows the hammered down place inside of him to open back up before too long.

Over time, these horses have become a refuge because they know nothing of the rest of his life. Usually their obliviousness eases Wash’s nerves but sometimes it enrages him. That one mare, Queenie’s first and last filly, was turning out needy just like her mother. Forever coming after him with that soft whinny, so insistent with her nudge nudge. Wanting some attention, some kindness Wash might not have to give right then.

Until that one bad day when he wheeled around and slapped the soft side of her nose with the flat palm of his hand, just where the pale gray shades into dark dapples. The sharp hollow thwack against the velvet give of her skin, her startled squeal sounding so loud in the quiet barn, and Wash regretting it before his blow even landed.

All that had grown between himself and this mare was gone. As steady and calm as he can manage to be with her now, his slip will haunt him. Any quick move he makes near her will be met with a flinch and that flash of panic in her eye, forever echoing his mistake back to him. Nothing for him to do but put up with it. Hope it will ease more quickly this time, even when it never does. The mare’s refusal to forget angers Wash more than anything else because it is a luxury he does not have.

While he has not yet learned to check his swing, over the years he has learned to direct it elsewhere. Into stacked feed bags or folded blankets or sometimes the wall. He startles the bright bay colt named Bolivar with his sudden outbursts but he has not hit him and that’s all Wash cares about. He needs to be around some creature that is not and has never been afraid of him. The solace of this is worth learning to rein himself in.

It’s good and dark by the time Wash closes the last stall door and makes his way carefully up the stairs then the ladders to the highest loft where he has hidden old blankets in the hay. He does not sleep in the quarters with everyone else. He stays in the barn whether Ben likes it or not.

With this work he’s been put to, enemies come easy. Wash stays three stories up with loose hay slippery near the edges and the horses to warn him. Nobody coming up here after him, no matter how mad they get. Most stay too scared of falling and breaking something with no way to set it right.

Running his eyes across the inside of this high peaked roof calms him. Each plank cut smooth then laid in flush against the next one. Each peg where it needs to be, driven with just the right number of blows. Nothing wasted, nothing crowded.

Inside those cabins, it’s like a hole or a nest. Smoke coating everything and sticky with nowhere to go. He has lain in plenty of cabins and he’s finished with that. Feeling the endless stream of others who have been there before him and died or lived, as clear as if he can reach out and touch them.

Wash determined early on to make his home in this loft despite Ben’s constant muttering about his horses, his harnesses, his liniment and his barn. That crotchety old stableman can’t come up here after him and they both knew it from the start. Richardson stays out of it because he has learned to choose his battles and Wash lets people tell the story that suits them.

That they keep him off and separate. Make him stay in the barn with the animals. As if they are punishing him when they are giving him exactly what he wants.

He tries to make it work out like that whenever he can. Makes him feel big. Big enough to take all this in and still have a part of himself where he can find room enough to stand. Makes him feel like his insides are as wide and open as the swaybacked meadows running as far along the river as he can see under a full moon.

Makes him feel bigger every time he sees that most of them don’t have even a dogpatch worth of room on the inside. All that money and all that carrying on and they don’t have much more than a little patch to look around and see out from. This is one of the pictures that tugs the corner of Wash’s mouth into Mena’s slight downward grin.

Once nightfall has swallowed the big barn with Wash inside it, Richardson turns away from the window toward the business at hand. He hides this particular book in a surprising place. A place so unlikely that he does not need a key for it.

This liquor cabinet was a gift from his godfather Thompson. Hip high and lovely, with a honeyed walnut lid rising to reveal a clutch of glass bottles, each nestled snug in its own padded compartment. The whole of it lined in midnight blue velvet scattered with stars. Old man Thompson had bought this cabinet in England with sugar money his family made down in the islands before they’d been driven out by mass uprisings. He’d bequeathed the liquor cabinet to Richardson in his will. Told him he would need it and he was right.

Everybody knows Richardson uses Wash as his traveling negro but nobody knows all the details, nor should they, is what he thinks. The squared box holding the bottles lifts enough for him to draw his secret book by its spine from this hidden compartment between the liquor above and the shelves of glasses below. Each broad page holds a span of time, covered with Richardson’s careful looping track. When, where, who and how much. Page after page, lying smooth and gilt edged inside their brick red leather binding. His eldest daughter Livia had given him this blank book several Christmases ago, back when she kept urging him to keep a daybook, but Richardson has found another use for it.

He sets his glass down on Miller’s unfolded banknote and lays the book open. Dips his pen into thick black ink which will fade over the years to an amber matching his liquor and writes Sunday, August 17, 1823. The date makes a roof over the column of names.

Minerva, Phyllis, CeCe, Molly, Dice, Charity, Vesta.

Richardson leaves room for the information to come. In nine or ten months, he will return to this page, having sent for Miller’s midwife Pallas to bring him word. He will call her to this small room, shut the door behind her and wait for the details. Pallas will stand by the window, resting her gray eyes on the horizon as she trades him name for name.

Each woman, each child. Who lived, who died and when.

Richardson will mark it all down. He likes to keep track. Whenever he rides out, whether on business or just visiting, he makes it a point to pass through the quarters. Says he wants to see how they turn out. And most every time, he shakes his head, thinking, damn if they don’t all carry Wash, with those wide brows like wings over crisp dark eyes and lashes so thick and curled back that they look tangled.

Clear as day to Richardson, but it often seems he’s the only white man who catches the resemblance. He has never understood those who cannot tell negroes apart, especially their own. He wants to tell them, every single body possesses some distinguishing characteristic. You simply hunt for it until you find it. After that, it’s obvious.

As for the negroes, they are not sure what to make of Richardson. He catches some of the tricky bits but misses plenty of the easy ones. They know all about Quinn but they hear Richardson pulls his strings like a puppet, even if the two men are supposed to be partners.

How much, is what they want to know. And which is which? How much is Richardson, how much is Quinn and how much is Wash? That is the real question lying under everything like a high water table.

∞

It is a golden day in early September and still hot as the drought drags into its third month. A trio of Richardson’s neighbors have stopped by to take care of some business. Atkinson, Butler and Grange, ordering lots to be sent upriver from Richardson’s store in New Orleans. A set of dining room chairs, a saddle, three crates of Madeira and two dictionaries. They are also here to get in Wash’s book. Settle on some dates. The men walk together from the house to the barn to take a look even though they’ve used Wash before.

Richardson leads the way, half a head taller and older by thirty years than the other three but somehow the most vital of the group. The younger men turn to him continually for confirmation despite the fact that he rarely gives it. Richardson lets their chatter eddy around him as he scans his place, hunting for anything amiss.

The layout never fails to please him. The broad stone house built square on the highest point, well back from the rocky bluff over the river, with limestone-rich fields falling away from its flanks. Rows of cabins march off to the left while his garden sprawls toward the pond on the right with the biggest barn bridging the gap behind.

He had decided on stone for the house in 1792. Most of the early forts they built had been burned during Indian raids. After his brother David was ambushed and scalped by the Chickasaw, Richardson brought masons from Baltimore and had them build vertical slits into the thick stone walls on each side of the upper floors so he could lock his house up tight yet still lower a rifle barrel down through those deep narrow grooves.

He made room for two enormous underground cisterns close to the house while saving the biggest elms for shade. But he broke with custom by fitting all the necessaries inside the house itself. His initial reasoning had been for protection but he didn’t like lots of little outbuildings crowded close around the house. Said it always looked to him like a hen with chicks.

So he built the kitchen inside and the smokehouse too. With a loft for Emmaline wedged between the kitchen ceiling and the floor of his drinking smoking room upstairs. Waist high is not room enough for her to sit up in, but he said she could do her sitting in the kitchen since she seems to do most of her sleeping in there anyway.

He heads now for his biggest barn. Only one of its tall double doors stands open so the four white men step into darkness, jostling one another in momentary blindness. As they walk through the dim aisle to gather in the doorway on the far side, curious horses swing their heads to look over stall doors. Wasps rise and fall, trailing a buzzing drone, and pigeons coo relentlessly no matter how many times Richardson has Wash destroy their nests.

Wash stands high in the bed of a hay wagon, breaking apart the enormous bale that Richardson ordered from Cincinnati to tide them through the drought. Wash feels the men behind him but he does not turn from his work, choosing to focus instead on the solid heft of the pitchfork in his grip. The smooth way the sharp tongs slide into the densely packed hay. His fingers wrap tighter around the worn wooden handle as he listens to the men talk about him, thinking to himself, these men like to stand around talking. Easiest thing for him to do is to stay busy. Keep his back to them.

He straightens up and takes the pitchfork in both hands, tines turned toward him so he can use it more like a shovel or a hoe, raising it high then stabbing it deep into the bale to break off chunks before tossing them onto the small square platform he will winch up to his loft to unload. He sets down the pitchfork and picks up the harpoon-shaped hay hook. Stabs it deep into the rest of the bale then draws it out to check for mold.

Just as Wash knew he would, Atkinson asks Richardson, Don’t you worry about him getting after somebody with that hay hook?

After a long pause, Wash hears Richardson say in his dry quiet voice, Then what, Atkinson? Where will he go then, except straight to the gallows, with parts missing after a long and bloody day?

Wash knows without looking that Atkinson’s mouth has puckered shut. Feeling the men still watching him, he stops himself from shaking his head as he thinks about Richardson. Salty old dog. Wash sets his knees and his back, takes a breath and heaves a bigger chunk from the floor of the wagon onto the adjoining platform in one fluid motion.

The men continue talking, with Richardson telling Atkinson, You must keep an eye out. And carry that knife even when you’re sure you won’t need it.

Richardson’s knife is thick and flat but short, riding at the back of his right hip, nestled in a sheath strung on a thin calfskin belt that too often slides down inside the waistband of his britches, soaking with sweat then drying out again until it stiffens and threatens to crack. His wife Mary used to take this belt from its hook in their wardrobe, rubbing it between her hands with oil to supple it while she watched him dress. Now that they’ve virtually gone their own ways, Richardson has Ben oil the belt for him, along with his boots.

Richardson continues, Just make sure they know you have it and that you’ll use it. It’s a waste of time if you don’t make it clear that you plan on taking one with you when you go.

As soon as the words leave his mouth, Nero comes into his mind, just as vivid as Mena did the other day. Richardson rubs the back of his neck and Butler starts nodding because he knows what Richardson is seeing. He likes the Nero story and has told it often but Atkinson and Grange look confused so Butler takes over, talking through the sudden quiet and jerking his shoulder toward Richardson as he tells it.

You never did see that negro he bought in New Orleans? He just about carved himself a new road to China, right through the middle of that boy.

Atkinson does remember that negro. Tall, looming and fine. Except for that look in his eye.

Butler’s voice rises. That Nero’d kill you just as soon as look at you.

Atkinson and Grange shake their heads as the story comes back to them.

How the hell you think that Nero ended up in New Orleans all the way from Virginia in the first place? That’s about as far downriver as you can get sold. And likely as he was, nobody would even bid on him except for our Richardson here. Forever indulging his weakness for the fine ones, no matter what we try to tell him. Thought he’d found himself a bargain.

Grange looks over at Richardson standing quietly in the open mouth of the barn door. His hands are clasped behind him as he toes a small stone over to the doorjamb so it won’t be there for any of his horses to step on. He holds his