Soul Catcher (44 page)

^{"I'm done talking," he said.}

^{He got up and walked over to Hermes and got the shackles. A thought, however, occurred to him: what if he left them off, just let whatever was going to happen, happen. If she took off, she took off. And if she did, he could strike out for California now. Wouldn't even go back to Richmond. Just pack his things, take what little money he had, and go. He had his horse. He figured he could get by somehow or other. He always did. Win a few games of poker, hire himself out if he had to. Just leave. Of course, Eberly wasn't the sort of man who would take such a betrayal lying down. But the hell with him. Then again, he warned himself that that would be just plain foolish. She was worth five hundred dollars cash to him.}

^{Five hundred!
Plenty enough to see him out to California and then some.}

^{When he returned, she watched him as he shackled her to a birch tree close by the fire. She didn't say anything. He spread two blankets over her.}

^{"You warm enough?" he asked. "It's going to get cold tonight."}

^{"I'm fine," she said, staring up at him.}

^{Then he got his own bedroll and unfurled it on the other side of the fire. He crawled under the blanket, pulled his hat low over his face, and closed his eyes. But tired as he was, sleep, he sensed, would still take its sweet time. He thought about what she'd said, how sometimes living was harder than dying. The getting up and going on each day. Perhaps there was some truth to that. Somewhere in the night an owl hooted.}

^{"Cain," Rosetta said after a while. "You sleepin'?"}

^"No."

^{"Me neither. What you gone do with all that money you get for bringin' me back?"}

^{"I don't know. Maybe I'll head out west."}

^{"What of catching slaves?"}

^{"I think I am well shut of this profession," he said with a weary laugh.}

^{"I don't think it's one that you were cut out for."}

^"No?"

^{"Uh-uh. You don't seem to have you a knack for it. If I could go anywhere I wanted, I think I'd like to try Paris, France."}

^{"Why is that?"}

^{"I saw me a picture of it once. All these women wearing high hats and long fancy dresses. And one of 'em was a Negro, dressed up just like white folks."}

^{Chapter 15.}

^{H
e woke in the morning to a strange silence. He didn't hear her breathing nor did he smell what had become her familiar musky scent. With his eyes closed he thought,
What if she had escaped, like Henry?
What would he do?}

^{But before he had a chance to decide, she spoke up. "Want I should make us some coffee?"}

^{He opened his eyes and sat up, his head feeling soft and runny, like an undercooked egg. The morning had broken some time before. The sun was already painting the treetops a pale color, like tallow.}

^{He looked over at her. "How long have you been awake?" he asked.}

^{"Hour. Maybe more."}

^{"Why didn't you wake me?"}

^{"I ain't in no hurry to get back to my cage," she said with a snort. "'Sides, you look like you could use the rest."}

^{He unlocked the shackles, and she set about building a fire while he headed off into the woods to relieve himself. His thoughts from the previous night, he realized, were nothing more than those of an overtaxed mind. He had a job to do.}

^{Rosetta poured him a cup of the strong, bitter-tasting coffee.}

^{"You hungry, Cain?"}

^{He nodded, and she set about making bacon and warm ashcakes.}

^{When it was done, she handed him a plate of the fixin's. It was good, and he ate with some spirit this morning. She sat there with the shawl draped over her head and shoulders, drinking from a cup.}

^{"Thought you were a house nigger," he said. "Where'd you learn to chop wood and make a fire like that?"}

^{"When my momma be up to the massa's house, it was left to me to cook and get the fires going in the fireplaces."}

^{"How are you feeling this morning?" he asked.}

^{"Better. Who's TJ?"}

^{"My brother. Why?"}

^{"You said his name in your sleep. He the one married that woman you were s'posed to?"}

^{"That's right."}

^{"You hold that against him?"}

^{"Why should I?"}

^{"Some men be mad they own brother got what was intended for them."}

^{"He saved me from that life. I should be ever grateful to him."}

^{He glanced over at her. She looked up from eating and seemed about to say something, but then she looked away.}

^{After breakfast, they packed up and headed out. Cain figured they had maybe three days' ride to Fredericksburg, and another day after that to Richmond. Four days. Four days and he'd be done with this.}

^{* * *}

^{A
s they turned southeast toward the sea, they rode through country that became flat as a skillet. They passed fields where Negroes were working, plowing behind mules, setting tobacco, hoeing, chopping wood. They rode through small towns with people whose accents were familiar, people who barely gave a second look to a man bringing a Negro back to servitude. In the evening, they camped just outside a place called Bryon Creek. They put up in a stand of birches on the banks of a narrow tidal river that smelled of salt and mud and dead fish. Cain had shot a small doe with the Sharp's and Rosetta had cleaned and dressed it; now it was roasting on a hickory spit over the fire. The odor of seared meat smelled good, and Cain looked forward}

^{to a thick venison steak. Rosetta had scoured the woods and come up with a pile of greens that she boiled with salt.}

^{After he'd eaten until he couldn't eat any more, Cain got his saddlebags and brought them over to where his bedroll lay. He withdrew his Milton and put on his glasses.}

^{"What's that you always readin'?" Rosetta asked.}

^{"A poem."}

^{"What about?"}

^{"God and Satan," Cain replied. "I'm at the part where Satan tempts Eve."}

^{"Gets her to eat that apple, I reckon," Rosetta said.}

^"Yes."

^{"Wasn't for that apple, we wouldn't a had all these troubles. Pains and heartache and tribulations--all 'cause a that ole apple. Could you read me some?"}

^{"If you'd like."}

^{Cain opened the book and began to read where he'd left off:}

^.

^{"But he thus overjoy'd, O Fruit Divine,}

^{Sweet of thy self, but much more sweet thus cropt,}

^{Forbidd'n here, it seems, as onely fit}

^{For Gods, yet able to make Gods of Men:}

^{And
why
not Gods of Men . .}

^.

^{When he'd finished reading, Rosetta said, "A man write that?"}

^{"Yes," Cain replied.}

^{"White man?"}

^"Yes."

^"Figures."

^"Why?"

^{"Only a white man would want to be a god."}

^{Cain chuckled at that.}

^{"One thing I never could figure out about that story," Rosetta opined. "How come it always the womenfolk leading men down the wrong path? Why not the other way round?"}

^{"I don't know," Cain said.}

^{"The way I sees it, it's the menfolk more often than not that's to blame. There was this one slave down on Mr. Eberly's plantation. Jonas. A man with growed children working in the fields already. Old. Older than you, Cain," she said with a straight face. "This Jonas had him a wife, a good woman name of Letty. But he had him a roving eye. He took a fancy to this one young girl, Charity. She weren't but fourteen and kinda slow. Born that way. Didn't matter to Jonas, though. He got her with child. When Letty found out about it, she took to yelling and screaming at poor Charity, hitting on her and calling her a black nigger whore for sleeping with her man. As if it her fault what her husband done to her. Letty went to Mr. Eberly and made up some story about the girl stealing from the smokehouse. Got her fifty stripes."}

^{"How old do you think I am?" Cain asked.}

^{"How old?" Rosetta glanced over at him, looked him up and down, as if seeing him for the first time. "Cain't never tell with white folks. Fifty?"}

^{"Fifty!" Cain scoffed. "Hell, I'm not forty yet."}

^{"It's all that liquoring you do. Saps the life out of a body. You ain't a bad-looking man, Cain. For a white feller," she said, smiling. Then she glanced down at the book he was holding. "Why you readin' that anyway? You don't even believe in hell."}

^{"I don't believe in it as someplace with fire and brimstone, if that's what you mean. But, like Mr. Milton, I believe we can make our own hell. Satan says the mind can make one place into the other."}

^{"Sometimes I think I already been there. Not just in my mind neither. Could you read me some more? I like the sound of it on your tongue, Cain."}

^{They were sitting near the fire, Cain reading to Rosetta about Satan's trickery, when several men on horseback came riding into camp. The horses, Cain saw, had been ridden hard, were well lathered, their nostrils flaring. The first thing Cain recognized was the black gelding with the four white stockings, its lameness now even more apparent. It shifted its weight to the left side and now gingerly pointed its right front hoof. When Cain glanced up, he saw the man with the long, streaked beard and, beside him, the red-faced one with the powder burn under his eye. The blackbirders they'd run into back in Connecticut. Only now, they were without their booty of Negroes. Cain wondered what had brought them here. He supposed it could have been just a coincidence. They were all headed south. Then again, he'd always been reluctant to put his trust in happenstance. He knew why they were here--Rosetta.}

^{"Evening," said the ruddy-faced leader, tipping his hat.}

^{Cain nodded but didn't say anything.}

^{"We saw your fire," said the one with the skunk beard. "That venison sure do smell good."}

^{"You're welcome to some before you move on," Cain said, making his intentions clear.}

^{"Thankee kindly," the man replied, getting down from his gelding. Two of his companions dismounted as well, and the three of them fell upon the carcass of the deer, hacking off thick slabs of meat with their knives and tearing into them. The leader remained on his bay, holding the reins with his left hand. He stared down at Rosetta.}