Walk Through Darkness (26 page)

F
OUR
Each time the dowel smashed into the base of William’s feet it was as if long needles had been driven into them, up through the flesh and bone of him, through his thighs and groin and into his torso. The pain was incredible, blinding, complete, driven home to the center of him, where it beat slowly, dissipating breath by breath until the next blow. And then the whole thing over again. And again. This torture like no other in that it didn’t dim with the passage of time, each blow was like the first and again, despite himself, he wanted to die and be free of it. He tried not to cry out. He didn’t cry, not voluntarily. Pain shot through him and wrenched open his mouth and spewed out. He had been beaten before but this was impossible. Each man got only so many blows. He heard them arguing over turns, each one keen to give it a shot. He had long ago closed his eyes, but he opened them again when a hand grasped his hair and pulled his head back. The dark man, his face close, moisture dotting his nose, black hairs on his chin, each strand not curly but bent, twisted. He asked him something but William could not make sense of it. Part of him knew he should
listen but the greater part was beyond that, was thinking, what could he do to get them to kill him? What words would enrage them so much they’d release him? But he could think of nothing and the man’s face spoke on, mouth moving, words unheard.

Then his face pulled away and William saw past him to the door. A man stepped in and stood for a moment framed within it. He was a gaunt man, graying in his beard and in the coarse hair that stood out from the side of his head, beneath a beat up, mangled excuse for a hat. His face was severe, eyes quick in their business, which was to take in the room as if doing inventory, counting each man in turn, measuring the size of the cell and coming to rest, after this quick survey, upon William himself. He held a rifle in one hand, pointed at the ground.

“What’s going on here?” he asked, and with his words William could hear again. His voice was deep. He moved words about his mouth like they were stones, but at the same time there was something melodic in his pronunciation.

The dark man leaned in close to William. He didn’t answer the old man’s question but expressed great mirth at his arrival. He said the old fellah had just had himself a ride. He asked the man to confirm this. The old man did not, but the dark one didn’t notice.

“What are you doing?” the old one asked. He stepped in from the door and slid a little to one side, measuring the room, his voice calm, tinged slightly with something else, an aggression that didn’t go unnoticed.

William closed his eyes, thinking it strange that with all the pain in his body a few moments of breathing eased him so.

The fat one said that they were just dealing with their prisoner, if it’s any of his business. They had it under control and he could shut up and watch or else move on. What had he been doing with the girl, anyway? the teenager asked. The old man ignored him. When he spoke again he was on the other side of the room. He asked where Humboldt was and the dark man said he
didn’t give a damn. He spoke on, his words suddenly laced with profanities that William didn’t catch. He felt the man moving again, heard him ask for the dowel and say something that the others found funny.

“Hold on a minute,” the old one said. “You just want to wait on that.”

The smooth grain of the wood brushed the heels of his feet, a soft touch, just a kiss. William knew that when that kiss ended the wood would pull back and then it would start again. This time he wouldn’t yell. He would hold it in no matter what. He had to be stronger than he had been.

“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

But the dark man believed he did and said he would demonstrate just what he was doing. The baton lifted on the upswing. William opened his eyes. They came to focus on the old man and, as if spurred by the touch of his eyes, he acted. The old man raised his rifle with the power of a single arm and brought it to sight with the help of the other, steady and motionless, the barrel so long it seemed almost to reach out and touch him. William thought that the man was acting out some plan the slavers had concocted while he was unconscious and was preparing to shoot him. But the aim was slightly off, and when he pulled the trigger the slug didn’t enter William. Neither did he see clearly all that happened but he saw pieces of it and this is how it fit together.

The blast was deafening. The first shot ripped through the soft spot in the tall man’s neck, severing the artery there, blood bursting from the wound in a sudden rain. But the lead was not spent. The angle was such that it slammed with undiminished force into the dark man’s skull, entering through his ear and exiting through the entire far side of his face. William snapped his head around but on seeing the dark man poised behind him he could make no sense of it because what had been his face was now nothing that he could recognize.

The old man spun. He jabbed the muzzle of the rifle into the fat man’s face with enough force to crush the bridge of his nose and gouge deeply into one of his eyes. The man spun again, moved forward and swung the butt end of the rifle around and caught the boy in his stupefied face and snapped his jaw. This pain spurred the boy to motion and that motion was flight. He kept spinning with the force of the blow, his legs slick on the stones, pawing for purchase but finding none. The old man tripped him. The boy landed on his chin and the force of it made the break complete. The lower portion of his face was a shapeless mess when he rolled over. He was trying to scream but he could not and instead he grasped at his face with his hands and tried to set things right and realized he could not and tried to scream again.

The old man looked around the room at each of the men, calm in the way of some men during scenes of amazing violence, as if in the act he had found a truth and though it wasn’t a pleasant truth it was one deserving of thought. Only the dark one was completely dead. The tall man leaned against the wall trying to stay the squirts of blood pulsing through his fingers where they were clamped to his neck. The fat one lay squirming on the ground. He tried to pull his revolver but couldn’t get a grip on it and began to curse it in a voice that cracked higher and lower with each alternating word. The old man dispatched each of the three in turn with the butt end of the rifle. Then he turned toward the prisoner.

William felt a moment of fear. But only a moment. Then the emotion changed to hope. Perhaps this man would kill him quickly. But the old man did not. He tossed the rifle down and touched him gently and wiped away the blood on his face and felt over his body as if checking for wounds. The man was so close that William could smell him and hear his breathing and feel the tremble in his hands. When the man was satisfied he pulled back a little, just far enough to meet William face to face.

“Sorry you had to see me like that,” he said. “I’d ask you to forget it if I thought you could, but I know you never will. Your first memory of me is always gonna be the sight of me killing four men. That’s a damnable bad showing but there was nothing for it.”

William heard him but he didn’t comprehend even the smallest part of it. He lay there dumb as the man rummaged through one of the dead men’s pockets, came up with the keys and unshackled him and helped him stand. But when his feet touched the ground splinters of pure white agony screamed up his legs. He heard the man speak to him but he couldn’t sort out the words. They had stopped making sense almost from the moment the man began speaking and now each new word just piled onto the ones preceding it and added to the confusion.

The old man seemed to understand this. He grasped William by the shoulders and looked at him squarely and didn’t speak at all, just looked and in that look tried to say something. No, not to say something, but to stop saying anything and create a silence between them, to find a calm and to anchor them to it and to share the moment.

“Come,” he said. He bent and grasped William about the legs and lifted him to his back. William felt himself hoisted up, felt himself come to rest across the man’s shoulders, and felt the man push himself erect. The room spun with the man’s motions, and in the spinning William again lost consciousness.

He awoke in agony. His legs were aflame, crawling with fiery ants, pierced by shards of colored glass. Just the flexing of his muscles as he pulled himself upright sent splinters of pain shooting through his entire body, sucking the wind out of him and leaving him panting. He realized that he was in a different room than before. In the corner of his vision he saw a shape rise and move toward him, but even as he turned to look he fell back to a prone position. The effort of the motion was too great and at that moment nothing was as real as pain.

The body moving toward him spoke. “William.”

It was Dover’s voice. It was her face looking down on him. “We’re safe now,” she said. “Understand? We got out of that place.”

Staring up at her he realized he did understand. They had left that dungeon. He had been carried out on that man’s shoulder, he that had somehow wreaked a world of violence on those others. He had killed them one and all in the flutter of an eyelid. Everything had changed and then he had spoken, lifted him and carried him out into the streets. This pain was not new. He had lived with it as the man carried him. He remembered wondering where they were going and not caring, and then realizing that Dover was with them and suddenly caring again. He had tried to lift his face up to her but his head never moved as commanded. He saw bits of her in passing, her walking along beside him, hip rocking, one hand as it moved through his field of vision.

Now they were in a room which for some reason he recognized, a single cubicle with an opening behind Dover, a dark space into which he couldn’t see. There was a lamp on the table at the far end, its glow warm on the yellowed walls. And then his eyes were back on Dover’s. He reached up to touch her, moving slowly for exertion of any part of his body stirred pain in distant regions. He needed to feel her. The motion was only half completed before she understood it and leaned down close to him. Her cheek touched his and she whispered that it was all right. They were safe now. Her voice spread warmth over him, in the hollow of his neck, against his ear. The scent of her skin was more acrid than he remembered. But it was her nonetheless, and he tried to hear her words and take them in and hold them. He wanted to believe her, and for a moment he did, that closeness to her was enough. But as soon as she pulled back and air rushed to fill the space between he remembered there was more to it than that.

“Where’s he?” he asked.

Dover hesitated, eyes studying him as if to gauge his capability to receive the answer. “He’s up talking with Miss Anne,” she said.

So simply said but conjuring a world of questions. He realized why the room was familiar. It was his cell below Anne’s house. He remembered being carried down the steps and set down on the cot. He had caught a glimpse of Anne’s round face, saddened and serious, but he had already filed that image away as a part of a dream. How was that possible? Though he had some fractured recollection of his journey here, it only made sense in glimpses, as segments but never as a complete whole. Dover explained that they’d had to get someplace safe and nearby. She remembered what he had told her about Anne and, together with the old man, they’d found her. Anne had taken them in with only the briefest of explanations.

“A wonderful woman,” Dover said. “Few like her in the world.”

William listened to all of this, still staring, his face unchanging, still full of questions. “Who is that man?” he asked.

Dover glanced over her shoulder as if the man in question might be listening. Without answering, she rose and moved away to the washbasin. Her motions were slow and pained also, her belly supported in the crook of one arm. She picked up the basin and returned, sat with the chipped porcelain in her lap, a piece once valuable but now ancient with neglect. She said he was just a man who’d helped them. He would have to explain anything else himself.

“He the man Redford talked bout, the captain?”

Dover spit out a scornful breath. “Not hardly. That man had sold us out, each and every one of them, even Redford hisself.”

He heard the derision in her voice. He rolled the words around inside of him, thinking, trying to put them before the aches of his body. It was some time before he spoke again, but when he did it was as if there had been no pause. He steeled himself and asked, “Redford? What happened to him?”

Dover shook her head and stirred the cloth in the bowl with her finger, swirling it with such attention that she seemed to have forgotten William. But she had not. “He’s dead,” she said. She raised her finger up out of the water, watching the cloth revolve slowly in the current.

William asked her how and she told what she knew, which wasn’t much. Her story was fragmented and incomplete in all details save two: Redford was dead and the other fugitives were now in Humboldt’s hands. The whole thing was a failure. At that moment, only the two of them still held on to some semblance of freedom. She pulled a dripping cloth from the basin and wrung it out. She wiped William’s face with it, starting with his forehead and moving down.