Chaneysville Incident (38 page)

“Eighteen forty-nine,” I said.

He looked at me.

“The book was called
Reminiscences and Sketches.
It was published in Harrisburg, in 1890. The author was Judge William Maclay Hall.” He was staring at me now. I didn’t look at him, but I could feel his eyes. “And the name of the man who found the body was Iiames, or that name with a variation in spelling, because Richard Iiames was one of the original settlers. And there were thirteen of them, not a dozen, and they were led by a man named Joseph Powell, who was the grandson of Thomas Powell, who was the first white man to set foot in Southampton.” I looked at him. “Or in the rest of the County,” I said. “Bear that in mind; he discovered the whole damned place.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Oh,” I said. “And you know who gave you that book. Or lent it to you, rather. It was Moses Washington.”

He sighed.

“No,” I said. “I can’t imagine what the truth is, but I’ll know if you lie. So stop it.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Or maybe you’ve forgotten.”

“No,” he said. “I haven’t forgotten. I’ll never forget any of it. Not that day. Not that ride. We went slow out of town, 30 as not to attract any attention, and we went down through Cumberland Valley and up over the mountain, so if anybody did see us going they’d never connect us with Southampton. We had to go through Rainsburg, and I ducked down low in the seat; nobody saw me. We went up over the next mountain and we came down into Chaneysville. I didn’t even bother to duck down; nobody in Chaneysville sees anything, and if they do, they don’t talk about it. It was a stupid place for Moses to get himself killed. Anyway—”

“What?” I said. “What did you say?”

“I said it was a stupid place for your father to get himself killed. But I suppose you’re right—any place is a stupid place to get your head blown off in. Anyway, we went on through Chaneysville, we went up a hill and came down close to the creek. I recall it was cool in there, cool and green and quiet. It made me angry…. No. It offended me, being quiet and peaceful as Eden, when the day before somebody had gone up on a hillside and blown a man’s brains out. But then, I suppose that’s what Eden was all about, wasn’t it? Murder in the middle of peace and beauty.”

He looked at me, and I raised my cup to hide my confusion. Because I knew he wasn’t lying. He was telling the truth, as he saw it. I thought for a minute, going over everything, wondering if maybe I could be wrong. Again. But I was as sure as I had ever been about anything. So I kept the feeling out of my voice, and I said, “Yes. That, and the knowledge of Good and Evil.”

He nodded, sipped at his cup. “Well,” he said. “I was angry. But then I stopped being angry. Because we passed this cement bridge, County Bridge number twenty-four. Eight hundred and ninety-nine feet above sea level. I didn’t have to get out and look, because that bridge was part of a deal I had made with somebody about something—I can’t recall who or what, and I couldn’t recall then. But I saw that bridge and all the anger went out of me. Because I realized I was a part of whatever had happened down there, one way or another. I don’t imagine you understand that. Or believe it.”

I didn’t say anything.

“A mile farther on we parked the car. We had to go on back in the woods on some old—I don’t know if it had been a road at one time. Maybe. It ran along the stream. Then we went up over a hill. And we came on the place. It was somebody’s burial ground, maybe that farmer’s. I don’t know. But there were a lot of gravestones, and a wall, and just beyond the southeast corner of the wall, there was Moses. They hadn’t touched him. I figured that he had thought to take cover behind the wall and someone had taken him from behind. I know, it’s hard to believe anybody could take Moses Washington in the woods, but he hadn’t been in the woods that way for a long time, and he wasn’t a young man anymore, either. And whoever had done it wasn’t a fool; he had tried to make it look like suicide. Smart, as far as it went. The coroner believed it. But nobody who really knew Moses Washington would have believed it, not for a minute. So we put it down as an accident, and your mother collected on the insurance, and—”

“And that’s why you came to his funeral. Because he was your friend but he had the bad sense to get himself killed in an election year, and so you covered it up and let some slack-jawed hillbilly murderer run free. So much for justice.”

He glared at me. “Maybe Moses getting killed, that was justice. Poetic justice, if nothing else. He killed his share.”

“And you were worried about somebody else lynching somebody.”

He didn’t say anything.

“And your precious integrity too, worried about opening a folio, breaching a sacred trust…”

“All right,” he said. “That’s why I came. Out of guilt, like you said.”

“Guilt, hell,” I said. “You just wanted to be sure they got him in the ground so you wouldn’t have to smell the stink. But I’ve got news for you—they never bury anybody that deep.”

He didn’t say anything.

I raised the fragile little teacup to my lips and drained it. I set it down. “I think I’ll be going now,” I said. “Don’t bother to see me out.” I got up and went to the door. I stopped and stood there, just at the edge of the hallway, looking back at him. He wasn’t looking at me, he was hunched close to the fire, and I knew he would be shivering, just as I was. I almost told him then, almost told him the truth. But he had made his own lies. And I had told him about the folio; I had been kind enough for one night.

“What’s going to become of us?” she had said. We were lying in the bedroom, windows closed, heat turned high, lights out.

“There are a couple of incidents that can be used to argue to the contrary,” I said, “but it’s safe to assume we’re going to die. What happens after that is a matter of theology, not history—”

“I’m not talking about history,” she said. “I’m talking about us.”

“Are you implying our romance is less than historical? You don’t think we’re as important as Antony and Cleopatra, or at least the King of England and Wallace Simpson?”

“John,” she said. “I want to talk about this.”

“I don’t.”

“Oh, I can see that.”

“So don’t push it.”

“I’m not.”

“
Somebody
is.”

“Mother Nature,” she said.

I didn’t say anything for a minute; I was busy thinking. Counting. “You’re not pregnant,” I said.

“Of course not,” she said.

“Then what are you talking about?”

She didn’t say anything for a while, and I lay there listening to her breathing. “I was born in 1948,” she said finally. “I am thirty-one years old and I have been with a man—with you—for five years. We have been living together for three. We get along. We have a lot of problems, but we get along. And I would happily go on forever, but there’s a part of me that wonders if that’s all there’s going to be. Because when a woman is with a man like I am with you… No. I take that back. I suppose it isn’t true for some women. But it’s true for me: I think I would like to have your child.”

I didn’t say anything.

“What’s frustrating,” she said, “is that you won’t even talk about it. And time is running out.”

“There is plenty of time,” I said.

“No,” she said. “No, there isn’t plenty of time. There’s barely enough.”

“There are tests….”

“Jesus, John” she said. “I’m a doctor. I know about tests. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll wait. I’ll wait until I’m thirty-five, or thirty-six. Or forty. All you have to do is say that it will happen then. But you have to say it now.”

“Why?” I said. “Why now?”

“Because I have to decide if what I want is your child, if what I want is
a
child. And if what’s important to me is the child, then I have to have time to get away from you and find somebody else, and build a relationship….”

“I don’t know how you can say that,” I said.

“I don’t know how I can’t. What do you want, for me to start forgetting to put the jelly on my diaphragm or something? Then I can come in one day and I will be pregnant. Well, I won’t. Because I don’t intend to raise a child of ours by myself.”

“Right,” I said. “And you couldn’t, could you? Because there wouldn’t be any help from the old folks at home if their daughter turned up with a half-breed baby and a bastard to boot….”

“John,” she said quietly. “Do you hear what you just said?”

“What?”

“You as much as admitted that if I were pregnant, you’d leave me.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Oh, I don’t blame you, in a way,” she said. “I’d leave me too, if I were you and I thought I was trying to do something that devious. But the thing is, it might not be devious. It might be an accident.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You don’t trust me at all.”

“You don’t understand,” I said.

“You think I don’t,” she said. “You don’t give me enough credit. You think I’ve just decided I love John, and John loves me, so hey, let’s have a baby. You think I’m one of those stupid white bitches who sticks her fingers in between some black man’s fingers and says, What pretty babies we could make. Well, I’m not. I’ve thought a whole lot about just what kind of garbage a child of mine would have to face if his father was a black man. And I don’t like the idea at all. If it turns out I want to have a child and it can’t be with you, I wouldn’t dream of having it be a black man. And I think if you were almost any other black man, I wouldn’t dream of having your child; if I decided I wanted one, I’d just…leave. But I want it to be your child, because I love you, and I think that maybe your child would have a better chance than any man’s child, black or white….”

“Why on earth,” I said, “would you think that?”

“Because you could tell him things. You could explain things to him. He’d have a father who wasn’t afraid of anybody.”

“That’s not true,” I said.

“I said ‘anybody,’ not ‘anything,’ ” she said. “You’re not giving me enough credit again.”

“And you still don’t understand. What am I going to do, tell him the glorious story of the black people in America? Well, let me tell you, a lot of it isn’t all that glorious….”

“I
know
that,” she said. “You think I’ve been listening to your little lectures for five years without knowing that? ‘History itself is atrocious.’ I hear it in my sleep. But I also hear you saying that the problem is not the horror, it’s the lies, the ones they tell and the ones they don’t mention. And our child will know the truth….”

“Lucky him. We’ll give the little spearchucker an African name and a set of
rada
drums for Christmas. There’s only one thing you’re forgetting.”

“No,” she said, “I’m not forgetting it.” Her voice was suddenly soft, forlorn. “I think about it every time I think about saying all this to you. Because I grew up on stories about
my
ancestors. And yes, those stories made me proud and strong. But there was one story about…well, I’m not even sure he was one of my ancestors. My father always said he was, but he’d claim anybody who was named Powell who had anything to do with Virginia and who did anything halfway illustrious. He claimed a man who was a pianist once, and we almost got sued, because he was no relation at all. And this story was so old, and there are so many Powells in Virginia…. Well, anyway he claimed this man. His name was John Powell. He was a sea captain. His ship was called the
Seafoam.
When I was a little girl I thought that was just the prettiest name. But my father was more interested in the fact that John Powell came into the James River in 1620, the same year as the
Mayflower
reached New England. He’d make a big point out of that; he’d sit there by my bed and he’d say, ‘The same year as the
Mayflower
, Judith, and it could be, a month before.’ He never tried to find out for sure, because he might have found out it was a month after, or maybe even that great-great-however-many-great-grandfather was no relation at all. He didn’t care about the truth; he was too busy being proud. And I was proud too, even though I didn’t know what it meant. But you know, now I think, what if however-many-great-whatever John wasn’t just a sea captain; what if he was a slaver? What if the
Seafoam
was a slave ship? They all had pretty names, didn’t they?”

“Not all,” I said. “Some. Like
Desire.
And
Jesus
.”

“And that’s the trouble,” she said. “You know those things. And I suppose if you found out the
Seafoam
was a slaver, you’d tell our child that his mother’s ancestors kidnapped his father’s ancestors and chained them and tormented them and sold them into slavery.”

“Well,” I said. “I wouldn’t worry about it. 1620’s a little too early for an Englishman to be a slaver. There isn’t any evidence of English slaving on a large scale until 1660 or so. Oh, it’s possible—the English were in Africa then, and they’d carried some slaves before—but it’s not likely. So probably you folks weren’t slavers, you were just a bunch of salt-of-the-earth tobacco farmers. Probably you didn’t steal us and sell us. Probably you just owned us.”

She hadn’t said anything then, for a long while. But I had been able to hear her breathing harshly in the darkness. “You don’t show anybody any mercy at all, do you?” she had said finally.

The metal of the mailbox was cold and a little damp with the moist air; it stuck to my skin. I pulled the door open and stood there for a long time. Then I took the envelope out of my pocket and dropped it into the chute. I heard it fall. It made a solid strike against bare metal; they had already made the pickup for the day. I wondered if they would pick up again in the morning, or if it would be another day before the letter went out. It didn’t matter; she was going to say the same thing whenever she got it: that I showed no mercy.

I let the door swing shut, wincing as the metal shrieked against the night. I turned away and headed back towards the Hill, thinking as I went that she would be wrong, that I did show mercy, to her if to nobody else. Because all the while she was imagining things about her however-many-great-whatever John, the captain, I could have been telling her the truth about her maybe however-many-great-whatever Thomas, the explorer. Or worse, about his for-certain grandson Joe.