Soul Catcher (54 page)

^{"Nothing," he replied, taking another drink from the canteen.}

^{"Ever'body's got something buried. Something they won't tell nobody. Tha's why you drink that poison, ain't it?"}

^{"I told you why. I drink it on account of the pain in my leg," he replied.}

^{"Huh! It's about that Indian girl, ain't it?"}

^{"You don't know what you're talking about," he snapped at her.}

^{"You loved her, didn't you, Cain?"}

^{"No," he said, then paused. "It was a long time ago."}

^{"You loved her and then you blamed yourself for her dying. Tha's why you drink that stuff."}

^{"I told you, I don't know."}

^{"Sure you do," she challenged.}

^{"That'll be enough," he said.}

^{She shook her head, smiled at him.}

^{"What?" he asked.}

^{"Whenever you don't want to talk 'bout something, you say that's enough. Like you can just stop yourself from thinkin' on it."}

^{"How about you?" he asked. "What do
you
have buried?"}

^{"I'm a slave, remember. I can't own nothin'. Not even secrets."}

^{"You must have something."}

^{She looked at him evenly. "You wouldn't want to know, Cain."}

^{And he knew she was right. As he took another sip from the canteen, an image slipped into his mind, something that disturbed him like a foul smell: it was of Eberly's hands on her. He saw his pale, clean, old man's hands, riddled with blue veins, roving over her smooth skin, touching her, exploring her, impressing his ownership of her body upon her, the way a cowhide or a chain or a brand did. It was the first time he'd actually allowed himself to picture such a scene. He couldn't say why he pictured it now, but he did. And this made him think again of what she'd suffered at the hands of the blackbirders. A sick feeling welled up in him, one composed of rage and of anger, and of something else, too. He realized it was jealousy, the sort a man gets when the thing he most desires is possessed by another.}

^{He scraped his remaining food into the fire and stood, walked over to the horses. The mare nudged his arm, looking for something to eat. From his saddlebags he got out some oats and fed her by hand.}

^{In a little while, Rosetta followed him over. She stood there, gazing distractedly into the stream.}

^{"I ain't never told nobody this," she began. "Ain't so sure I want to be tellin' you, neither."}

^{He glanced over at her and waited. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear what she had to say. She didn't look at him as she spoke, just kept staring down into the water.}

^{"My momma and me live in the slave cabins, down near the tannery. That when the missus still living, before he move us up into the big house. My momma was a fine-looking woman. Prettier'n me. Eyes the color of molasses. And strong. She could work as hard in the fields as any man. She learned herself to read the Bible and she taught me, too. About the Israelites held captive by that old pharaoh. How they waited to be led out of bondage. Before Mr. Eberly started to take an interest in her, there was a slave name of Solomon used to come around. He was kind, used to bring her things. She liked him a lot. I did, too. But then Mr. Eberly took to visiting her after it was dark. When he did, Momma make me sleep on a pallet on the floor. She told me, 'Stay there, Rosie. And hush, chile, no matter what you hear.' Mr. Eberly and the missus didn't have no children of they own. Later, the missus caught a fever and died. That when he move Momma and me into the big house, so he could have her all to himself. Had us a room right behind the kitchen. He come to her there at night. There wasn't no pallet for me to sleep on, so I lay in bed, right beside them. I turned my back to them, kept real quiet. Tried to sleep. But I couldn't help hearing him making noises, grunting on top of her. Smell him, too. A liquored-up smell. Sometimes she would hold my hand while he had at her. Later, she'd hug me, tell me, 'It all right, Rosie. G'won to sleep.'}

^{"After some years, I grew up. Started to become a woman myself. When I commenced to bleeding, started to grow breasts, that when he took notice of me. I be doing chores around the house, cleaning and such, and he give me this look, the kind men do to something they have a hankerin' for. Momma saw the way he look at me, too. She tell me be careful, Rosie, not to let myself be alone with him. So I tried being careful, kept out of his way, never looked him in the eye. Momma even rubbed cat pee all over me so I smell bad and he wouldn't want to come near me." With this, she stopped and gave out a brittle little noise, part laughter, part sigh. "But that didn't stop him. No, sir. This one time I was in the kitchen scrubbing the floor on my hands and knees. I was about twelve. Mr. Eberly come in the house after he was out riding. He smell of the drink. I remember the way he'd get with Momma when he was all liquored up. Low-down mean. Not hitting mean, that wasn't his way. He left that to others. But mean the way some men can be just looking at you or talking, make you feel like you're dirty. He come up behind me and bent over and started touching me. My back and shoulders, stroking my hair. Saying how pretty I was. How I was turnin' into a right fine-looking woman. My momma come in the house then with a pile of clothes she'd been washing, and she see Mr. Eberly touching me. She say to him, 'Please don't do that, massa.' She say that I just a girl still. She begged him. 'Please, massa, leave her be.' Said he could do anything he wanted to her but to leave me alone. His eyes got the way they can get, cold and hard as iron."}

^{Here Rosetta's voice changed. Cain was surprised at how much it became the haughty, aristocratic southern voice of Eberly. She obviously knew that voice intimately, knew its every nuance and pitch. "'Every damn thing on this plantation,' he said, 'is mine. Every last board and nail, every shred of clothing you wear. Every morsel of food you put into your mouths, all of it's mine. And that includes every one of my niggers and everything that's theirs. And I'll do any damn thing I please with any one of them I please. Do you understand?' 'Don't do that, massa,' she said, but that only got him more riled up. He walked over to me and grabbed the front of my dress. 'This here dress is mine,' he cried, ripping the front down so I was half naked. I tried to cover myself but he grabbed my breasts hard, so they hurt. 'These are mine, too.'}

^{"I didn't want to cry but I couldn't help it. Mostly on account of seeing my momma. She had this sorrowful look on her face, that she was shamed she couldn't protect her daughter. But then she tell Mr. Eberly if he didn't stop touching me, she'd kill him. I thought,
Oh, God, no.
Massa swore then, pulled his gun out, and went over and put it against her head. 'Who are you going to kill?' I was crying, begging him not to do that. I said, 'Momma, just go. I be all right.' But she looked him in the eyes and said it again, 'You touch her, I'll kill you.' He tried to laugh it off, but you could see it troubled him, her saying that. 'You think you can kill me?' he said. 'You know you couldn't do that.' Then he changed suddenly, put the gun down and stroked her cheek gently with the back of his hand. She stare at him cold like. 'You touch her, I'll come into your bedroom and cut your throat while you sleeping,' she said. And he knew she was speakin' true. His eyes turned fierce again, and he stormed out and got some of his men. Strofe and a few others. He had Momma taken out and tied to the whipping post. Had Strofe cowhide her with a hundred lashes. She was half dead when they finished.}

^{"He wouldn't let me go tend to her. 'Stead he brought me back inside and took me right there in the kitchen. Push me down hard on the floor and yank up my dress. He was drunk and rough. That first time, I thought I'd 'bout die. When he finish, he got up and pulled up his trousers. He said, 'I didn't want some field nigger spoiling you. Now you're a woman, Rosetta. My woman. And don't you forget it.' Next day, he had Momma brought to the auction block in Richmond and sold her downriver. From then on, I stayed up in the big house with him. He told me he loved me, that he loved me more than anything. Huh! What he felt for me wasn't love. He made me feel lower than dirt. Love don't make you feel like that. Funny thing is, it turned out he was right about one thing. He got me to feeling that I was just a piece of property.
His
property. Worth no more than the heel of his boot. I was fourteen when my chile was born. His, though I never felt that it was. I named him Israel, like in the Bible: 'I arose a mother in Israel.'}

^{"Then one time Mr. Eberly was playin' cards with some a his huntin' friends. He call me and tole me to fetch him another bottle of licker. Israel was sick at the time, had a fever, and I didn't want to leave him alone, so I had him on my hip. I brung him into the room where those men was sittin' and Mr. Eberly he was fit to be tied. He took me aside and said I was never to show my baby around like that again. I said, 'But he's your own blood.' He got so mad I thought he would hit me. 'Stead he said if I did that again he'd sell Israel downriver, just like he done my momma. He held that over my head. Anytime I done something he didn't like he would say he gonna sell Israel downriver. If I made his eggs too hard. If I didn't polish the silverware just so. Anything. So I made up my mind I was gonna run away with my baby, so he couldn't ever take him away from me. And one night I finally did it, I up and run. I didn't get out of the county before they catch me. As punishment, Mr. Eberly sold my baby off. Tha's when I knife him. My only regret is I didn't kill him."}

^{She fell silent then. Cain saw that her jaw was set in anger but that tears were sliding silently down her cheeks. He saw that the telling of it had hurt her, deeply, profoundly, as if its excision from somewhere deep inside her had wounded her as much as the bullet's removal from his side had him. There was something else now that he felt, something that he had managed to bury all the years he'd worked as a slave catcher, telling himself he was just enforcing the law, just doing the bidding of other men who had made the decisions about right and wrong. A thing he knew to be akin to guilt. That which flowed from having white skin and being a man in a world fashioned to meet the needs and desires of white men.}

^{"I'm sorry," he said. She remained still. He reached out and lay a hand on her shoulder. "Rosetta."}

^{Finally, she glanced over at him, the first time since she'd begun to speak.}

^{"I'm sorry," he repeated.}

^{"You and me both, Cain. You and me both."}

^{* * *}

^{T
he sun was just sliding behind the western mountains when they reached Hagerstown. Cain was dog tired, his side aching. Not a sharp pain, just a dull reminder that he'd pushed himself too hard. What he had a hankering for more than anything was a soft bed to lie in and a bottle of whiskey. They rode along a run-down part of town, past a number of unpainted and weary-looking buildings--a general store, a livery, a leather goods shop, an undertaker's, several other businesses. The people they passed stared at them, mostly eyeing Rosetta, a Negro on a fine horse. He stopped finally in front of a squalid-looking doggery. It was housed in a lean-to attached to a feed and grain business. Out front a crudely painted sign said only whiskey 2 bits.}

^{"I'll go in and inquire if anyone has seen him," he said to Rosetta. "You stay here with the horse. I'm going to put the shackles on, so nobody wonders what you're doing here."}

^{Then he went inside. The place smelled yeasty, from the feed business next door. It was empty, save for some old loafer who sat at the end of the bar, which was made of a single rough-hewn pine plank set atop a pair of sawbucks. The barkeep, a tall, raw-boned fellow, stood behind the bar, eating pickled pig's feet from a large jar, sprinkling them liberally with salt. He had about him the look of one who'd recently faced a major disappointment he had not yet acclimated to. His eyes were tinged with yellow and unfocused, his mouth held in a fixed attitude of sullenness. When he saw Cain come in, he seemed, more than anything, annoyed that his repast was about to be disturbed.}

^{"Whiskey," Cain had to call over to him.}