The boy was thirteen and had seen enough people slumped over a plow, or stilled after childbirth, and enough drowned children to know the difference between the quick and the dead. What he saw lying on the cot under a shiny green dress he believed was alive. The boy never raised his eyes from the girl’s face (except when Golden Gray said, “I found that dress in there and covered her with it”). He glanced toward the second room and back at the man he believed was white. The boy lifted the sleeve of the dress and patted the slash on the girl’s forehead. Her face was fire hot. The blood was dry as skin.
“Water,” he said and left the cabin.
Golden Gray started to follow him but stood in the doorway unable to go forward or back. The boy returned with a bucket of well water and an empty burlap sack. He dipped a cup into the water, dribbled some into her mouth. She neither swallowed nor stirred.
“How long she been out?”
“Less than an hour,” said Golden Gray.
The boy knelt down to clean her face, slowly lifting whole patches of blood from her cheek, her nose, one eye, then the other. Golden Gray watched and he thought he was ready for those deer eyes to open.
A thing like that could harm you. Thirteen years after Golden Gray stiffened himself to look at that girl, the harm she could do was still alive. Pregnant girls were the most susceptible, but so were the grandfathers. Any fascination could mark a newborn: melons, rabbits, wisteria, rope, and, more than a shed snakeskin, a wild woman is the worst of all. So the warnings the girls got were part of a whole group of things to look out for lest the baby come here craving or favoring the mother’s distraction. Who would have thought old men needed to be cautioned too; told and warned against seeing, smelling or even hearing her?
She lived close, they said, not way off in the woods or even down in the riverbed, but somewhere in that cane field—at its edge some said or maybe moving around in it. Close. Cutting cane could get frenzied sometimes when young men got the feeling she was just yonder, hiding, and probably looking at them. One swing of the cutting blade could lop off her head if she got sassy or too close, and it would be her own fault. That would be when they cut bad—when the cane stalks flew up to slam the face, or the bill would slip and cut a coworker nearby. Just thinking about her, whether she was close or not, could mess up a whole morning’s work.
The grandfathers, way past slashing but still able enough to bind stalks or feed the sugar vats, used to be thought safe. That is until the man the grandfathers called Hunters Hunter got tapped on the shoulder by fingertips that couldn’t be anybody’s but hers. When the man snapped up, he saw the cane stalks shuddering but he didn’t hear a single crack. Because he was more used to wood life than tame, he knew when the eyes watching him were up in a tree, behind a knoll or, like this, at ground level. You can see how he was confused: the fingertips at his shoulder, the eyes at his feet. First thing came to mind was the woman he named himself some thirteen years ago because, while tending her, that was the word he thought of: Wild. He was sure he was tending a sweet but abused young girl at first, but when she bit him, he said, Oh, she’s wild. Thinking, some things are like that. There’s no gain fathoming more.
He remembered her laugh, though, and how peaceful she was the first few days following the bite, so the touch of her fingertips didn’t frighten him, but it did make him sad. Too sad to report the sighting to his coworkers, old men like himself no longer able to cut all day. Unwarned, they weren’t prepared for the way their blood felt when they caught a glimpse of her, or for how trembly their legs got hearing that babygirl laugh. The pregnant girls marked their babies or didn’t, but the grandfathers—unwarned—went soft in the head, walked out of the syrup house, left their beds in the shank of the night, wet themselves, forgot the names of their grown children and where they’d put their razor strops.
When the man they called Hunters Hunter knew her—tended her—she was touchy. If he had handled it right, maybe she would have stayed in the house, nursed her baby, learned how to dress and talk to folks. Every now and then when he thought about her he was convinced she was dead. When for months there was no sign or sound of her, he sighed and relived that time when his house was full of motherlessness—and the chief unmothering was Wild’s. Local people used the story of her to caution children and pregnant girls and it saddened him to learn that instead of resting she was hungry still. Though for what, exactly, he couldn’t say, unless it was for hair the color of a young man’s name. To see the two of them together was a regular jolt: the young man’s head of yellow hair long as a dog’s tail next to her skein of black wool.
He didn’t report it, but the news got out anyway: Wild was not a story of a used-to-be-long-ago-crazy girl whose neck cane cutters liked to imagine under the blade, or a quick and early stop for hardheaded children. She was still out there—and real. Someone saw the man they called Hunters Hunter jump, grab his shoulder and, when he turned around to gaze at the cane field, murmur loud enough for somebody to hear, “Wild. Dog me, if it ain’t Wild.” The pregnant girls just sighed at the news and went on sweeping and sprinkling the dirt yards, and the young men sharpened their blades till the edges whistled. But the old men started dreaming. They remembered when she came, what she looked like, why she stayed and that queer boy she set so much store by.
Not too many people saw the boy. The first wasn’t Hunters Hunter, who was off looking for enough fox to sell. The first was Patty’s boy, Honor. He was looking in on Mr. Henry’s place while he was gone, and on one of the days he stopped by—to do a little weeding maybe and see if the pigs and chickens were still alive—it rained all morning. Sheets of it made afternoon rainbows everywhere. Later he told his mother that the whole cabin was rainbowed and when the man came out the door, and Honor looked at his wet yellow hair and creamy skin, he thought a ghost had taken over the place. Then he realized he was looking at a whiteman and never believed otherwise, even though he saw Mr. Henry’s face when the whiteman told him he was his son.
When Henry Lestory, the man so expert in the woods he’d become a hunter’s hunter (and when spoken of and to, that is what they called him), got back and saw the buggy and the beautiful horse tied near his stall, he was instantly alarmed. No man he knew drove a carriage like that; no horse in the county had its mane cut and combed that way. Then he saw the mule Patty’s boy rode and calmed down a bit. He stood in his own door and had a hard time making out what he was looking at. Patty’s boy, Honor, was kneeling beside the cot on which a pregnant girl lay, and a golden-haired man towered above them both. There had never been a whiteman inside his house. Hunters Hunter swallowed. All the pains he had taken shot to hell.
When the blond man turned to look at him, the gray eyes widened, then closed, then, sliding slowly up from Hunter’s boots to his knees, to chest to head, the man’s gaze was like a tongue. By the time the gray eyes were level with his, Hunter had to struggle to keep from feeling trapped—in his own house. Even the groan from the cot did not break the lock of the stranger’s stare. Everything about him was young and soft—except the color of his eyes.
Honor looked from one to the other. “Glad you back, Mr. Henry.”
“Who be these?”
“They both in here before me.”
“Who be these?”
“Can’t say, sir. The woman she bad but coming around now.”
The golden-haired man had no pistol Hunter could see, and his thin boots had never walked country roads. His clothes would make a preacher sigh and Hunter knew from the ladylike hands the stranger had never made a fist hard enough to smash a melon. He walked to the table and placed his pouch on it. With one swing he tossed a brace of woodcock in the corner. But he kept his rifle in the crook of his arm. And his hat on his head. The gray eyes followed his every move.
“The woman had a bad fall from what I can tell. This here gent, he carried her in here. I cleaned the blood up best I could.”
Hunter noticed the green dress covering the woman, the black
-blood spots on the sleeve.
“I got the fowl in and most of the pigs. Cept Bubba. He young but getting big, Mr. Henry. Big and mean…”
The cane-liquor bottle, uncapped, was on the table, a tin cup next to it. Hunter checked its contents and eased the stopper in, wondering what land this queer man came from who knew so little about the rules of hospitality. Woodsmen, white or black, all country people were free to enter a lean-to, a hunter’s shooting cabin. Take what they needed, leave what they could. They were waystations and anybody, everybody, might have need of shelter. But nobody, nobody, drank a man’s liquor in his house unless they knew each other mighty well.
“Do we know one another?” Hunter thought the “sir” he left out was as loud as a bang. But the man didn’t hear it because he had a bang of his own.
“No. Daddy. We don’t.”
He couldn’t say it wasn’t possible. That he needed a midwife or a locket portrait to convince him. But the shock was heavy just the same.
“I never knew you were in the world” was what he said eventually, but what the blond man had to say, planned to say in response, had to wait because the woman screamed then and hoisted herself on her elbows to look between her raised knees.
The city man looked faint, but Honor and Hunter had not only watched the common and counted-on birthings farm people see, but had tugged and twisted newborns from all sorts of canals. This baby was not easy. It clung to the walls of that foamy cave, and the mother was of practically no help. When the baby finally emerged, the problem was clear immediately: the woman would not hold the baby or look at it. Hunter sent the boy home.
“Tell your maw to get one of the women to come out here. Come out here and take it. Otherwise it won’t live out the morrow.”
“Yes sir!”
“And bring cane liquor if any’s around.”
“Yes sir!”
Hunter bent down then to look at the mother, who hadn’t said anything since that scream. Sweat covered her face and, breathing hard, she licked beads of it off her upper lip. He leaned closer. Under the dirt, lacing her coal-black skin, were traces of bad things; like tobacco juice, brine and a craftsman’s sense of play. When he turned his head to adjust the blanket over her, she raised up and sank her teeth in his cheek. He yanked away and touching his bruised face lightly, chuckled. “Wild, eh?” He turned to look at the pale boy-man who had called him “Daddy.”
“Where you pick up a wild woman?”
“In the woods. Where wild women grow.”
“Say who she was?”
The man shook his head. “I startled her. She hit her head on a rock slab. I couldn’t just leave her there.”
“Reckon not. Who sent you to me?”
“True Belle.”
“Ahhhh.” Hunter smiled. “Where is she? I never did hear where she went off to.”
“Or with?”
“Went off with the Colonel’s daughter. Colonel Wordsworth Gray. Everybody knowed that. Quick they went, too.”
“Guess why.”
“Don’t have to guess now. I never knew you was in the world.”
“Did you think about her? Wonder where she was?”
“True Belle?”
“No! Vera. Vera Louise.”
“Aw, man. What I look like wondering where a whitegirl went?”
“My mother!”
“Suppose I did, eh? What’d be the next step? Go up to the Colonel? Say, look here, Colonel Gray, I been wondering where your daughter got to. We ain’t been riding in a while. Tell you what you do. Tell her I’m waiting for her and to come on out. She’ll know the place we meet at. And tell her to wear that green dress. The one make it hard to see her in the grass.” Hunter passed his hand over his jaw. “You ain’t said where they at. Where you come from.”
“Baltimore. My name is Golden Gray.”
“Can’t say it don’t suit.”
“Suit you if it was Golden Lestory?”
“Not in these parts.” Hunter slipped his hand under the baby’s blanket to see if its heart was going. “Baby boy’s weak. Got to get some nursing soon.”
“How touching.”
“Look here. What you want? I mean, now; what you want now? Want to stay here? You welcome. Want to chastise me? Throw it out your mind. I won’t take a contrary word. You come in here, drink my liquor, rummage in my stuff and think you can cross-talk me just cause you call me Daddy? If she told you I was your daddy, then she told you more than she told me. Get a hold of yourself. A son ain’t what a woman say. A son is what a man do. You want to act like you mine, then do it, else get the devil out my house!”
“I didn’t come down here to court you, get your approval.”
“I know what you came for. To see how black I was. You thought you was white, didn’t you? She probably let you think it. Hoped you’d think it. And I swear I’d think it too.”
“She protected me! If she’d announced I was a nigger, I could have been a slave!”
“They got free niggers. Always did have some free niggers. You could be one of them.”
“I don’t want to be a free nigger; I want to be a free man.”
“Don’t we all. Look. Be what you want—white or black. Choose. But if you choose black, you got to act black, meaning draw your manhood up—quicklike, and don’t bring me no whiteboy sass.”
Golden Gray was sober now and his sober thought was to blow the man’s head off. Tomorrow.
It must have been the girl who changed his mind.
Girls can do that. Steer a man away from death or drive him right to it. Pull you out of sleep and you wake up on the ground under a tree you’ll never locate again because you’re lost. Or if you do find it, it won’t be the same. Maybe it cracked from the inside, bored through by crawling life that had to have its own way too, and just crept and bunched and gnawed and burrowed until the whole thing was pitted through with the service it rendered to others. Or maybe they cut it down before it crashed in on itself. Turned it into logs for a fire in a big hearth for children to gaze into.
Victory might remember. He was more than Joe’s chosen brother, he was his best friend, and they hunted through and worked in most of Vesper County. Not even a sheriff’s map would show the walnut tree Joe fell out of, but Victory would remember it. It could be there still, in somebody’s backyard, but the cotton fields and the colored neighborhood around them were churned up and pressed down.
One week of rumors, two days of packing, and nine hundred Negroes, encouraged by guns and hemp, left Vienna, rode out of town on wagons or walked on their feet to who knew (or cared) where. With two days’ notice? How can you plan where to go, and if you do know of a place you think will welcome you, where is the money to arrive?
They stood around at the depot, camped in fields on the edge of the road in clusters until shooed away for being the blight that had been visited upon them—for reflecting like still water the disconsolateness they certainly felt, and for reminding others about the wages sin paid out to its laborers.
The cane field where Wild hid, or watched, or laughed out loud, or stayed quiet burned for months. The sugar smell lingered in the smoke—weighting it. Would she know? he wondered. Would she understand that fire was not light or flowers moving toward her, or flying golden hair? That if you tried to touch or kiss it, it would swallow your breath away?
The little graveyards, with handmade crosses and sometimes a stone marker pleading for remembrance in careful block letters, never stood a chance.
Hunter refused to leave; he was more in the woods than in his cabin anyway, and seemed to look forward to spending his last days in the places he felt most comfortable. So he didn’t haul his gear to a wagon. Or walk the road to Bear, then Crossland, then Goshen, then Palestine looking for a workplace as Joe and Victory did. Some farm that would give thirteen-year-old black boys space to sleep and food in return for clearing brush. Or a mill that had a bunkhouse. Joe and Victory walked the road along with the others for a while, then took
off. They knew they had left Crossland far behind when they passed the walnut tree where they used to sleep on nights when, hunting far from home, cool air could be found high in its branches. And when they looked back down the road, they could still see smoke lifting from what was left of the fields and the cane of Vienna. They found short work at a sawmill in Bear, then an afternoon pulling stumps at Crossland, finally steady work in Goshen. Then one spring the southern third of the county erupted in fat white cotton balls, and Joe left Victory helping the smithy at Goshen for the lucrative crop picking going on outside Palestine, some fifteen miles away. But first, first he had to know if the woman he believed was his mother was still there—or had she confused fire with hair and lost her breath to it.
All in all, he made three solitary journeys to find her. In Vienna he had lived first with the fear of her, then the joke of her, finally the obsession, followed by rejection of her. Nobody told Joe she was his mother. Not outright; but Hunters Hunter looked right in his eyes one evening and said, “She got reasons. Even if she crazy. Crazy people got reasons.”
They were cleaning up after eating some of what they’d caught. Joe believed later it was fowl, but it could have been something with fur. Victory would remember. Victory was wiping the roasting stick with leaves while Joe leveled the fire.