Lost Man's River (112 page)

The night before, over the telephone, Whidden Harden had learned that Henry Short was in the hospital at Okeechobee. Torching fields before the cane harvest, he had been caught in a back burn when the wind shifted. Lee Harden had visited him in the hospital, where he was told that the patient's burns were fatal.

Whidden delivered this news early in the morning when he and Sally came to say good-bye, and hearing it, Andy House went red, very upset. “Henry is too old for work like that—that's dangerous work! And Big Sugar
don't care nothing at all about their workers! He is very experienced and he ain't a drinker, but he's too old for hard and heavy work around big burns!”

Those empty plantations were miles and miles to the horizon and Henry had been way out there, beyond help. Running hard for an irrigation ditch, he had fallen and was overtaken by the flames. Burned over most of his body, he was not recuperating. He was lucid at times, yet seemed too weak to breathe and was not expected to survive the week, Lee Harden said.

In a tumult of feelings, Lucius took leave of the Hardens and headed north at once. He did not feel he had a choice about it. Andy House, who felt the same, talked unhappily about Henry most of the way to the hospital at Okeechobee.

“Henry told Lee Harden he wanted to leave me his gold-digging equipment, all his treasure maps, cause he wouldn't have no use for 'em no more. Said he knew about some buried gold that was well off from the house on private property, where a man could go and dig at night, not get the dogs on him. He had made him a good map, wanted me to have it! Never heard that I went blind, I guess. Not that I would use it anyways. I don't care for the idea of sneakin onto private property!

“That side of Henry always did surprise me, because he was the most honest man I ever met, and the most religious, too. Come the Holy Day, he would never do no labor, that was his rest day and he read his Bible. But when it come to gold, he didn't see straight, it was gettin so he would break his own commandments and go dig on Sunday. I doubt he ever give much thought to what he'd do with all his gold if he ever found any, but after so many long years alone, I reckon he dreamed that striking gold might make up some way for the life that passed him by.”

At the hospital, they had to hunt for the old Negro ward, a long room with creaking fans and narrow shafts of dusty sun and decrepit cabinets which seemed to stand at odds with the streaked walls, in a sepia light and weary atmosphere which reminded Lucius of soldiers' wards in old prints or daguerreotypes of the Civil War. Torn screens in high narrow windows let pass myriad small things which crawled and flew, and distant crow caws, and the airlessness of the hot woods.

The discreet figures wandering the ward were mostly black people. Seated humbly on small hard chairs by the door were two white men in dark Sunday
serge with weathered, steadfast faces. Recognizing Andy House, they smiled and stood, but the blind man brushed right past their hands before Lucius could mend the situation.

Henry Short lay flat and still as if extinguished by the humid heat. Pinned to the coarse sheets like a specimen, the old man twitched and shifted in his purgatory. His blue cotton nightshirt was open down the front, and his chest was patched with cracked and crusted scabs, like a side of charred beef leaking thin red fluid. From his bed on its small roller wheels rose a peculiar odor of disinfectant, broiled flesh, and sharp urine. Yet the reddened eyes that peered out from the bandages seemed calm, observing Lucius as he guided Andy House around the cot. They stood beside him, one man on each side.

Through broken lips, the burned man murmured, “Well now. Mist' Lucius! And Mist' Andy.” Henry Short had first encountered Lucius as a boy of eight, down in the rivers. Even so, it astonished Lucius that this dying man had recognized a visitor he had not seen in two decades and could not have supposed he would ever see again.

Finding an unburned place on the inert forearm, Lucius pressed the cool skin with two fingertips. “How are you, Henry?” He spoke in a soft low voice in keeping with the hush over the ward. “How do, Henry,” Andy said, wide-eyed and smiling. Unable to see Henry's dire condition, anxious lest he molest his awful burns, he extended his arm over the bed like a crude feeler as the black man, in great pain, slowly lifted a white mitt toward the blind hand. Lucius reached to draw their hands together just as both men lost faith and gave up.

Though Henry did his best to smile, his awful travail turned his eyes murky and twisted his parched mouth.
“Fiery furnace!”
Still working at that death's-head smile he gasped out that phrase from the old spiritual. Teeth chattering, he closed his eyes and rested a little until he got his breath.

An old black woman two beds away called to the white men that Deacon Short was a true man of God, and if he had ever sinned, none could recall it. “Praise the Lord!” the old woman cried, and there came a shy chorus of assent rose from the hushed room. Like mourners in a slow procession, the ward visitors did not gather around Henry but continued walking, and now they began a crooning in warm harmonies. And the burned man muttered, “Hear them angels? Hope they come for me!” Though he struggled with it, he could not work his smile.

Lucius returned to the two men by the door, who stood again, eager to know if that man at Henry's bed could be Andy House. They had come here from Arcadia, they said. Their name was Graham. Years ago, Henry had spoken of Lucius Watson's kindness, and they thanked him warmly for this visit
to their brother. They were concerned that nobody was on duty to give him something for his pain, but they also said that Henry had been refusing medication. As best as they could fathom his strict code, uncomplaining acceptance of his agony signified some sort of purification to the dying man. They left the bedside frequently because they themselves could not endure the sight of such hard pain.

When Lucius told Andy that Henry's brothers were there and wished to greet him, he was overjoyed. “Grahams? Them two fellers knowed me when they seen me?” Tears came to his eyes as Lucius led him back across the room and the Grahams rose and sat him down between them.

When Lucius took the rickety chair beside the bed, Henry Short's mouth fixed itself in that grim semblance of a smile, but the broken eyes, discolored red and yellow, had gone glassy. “You're a tough old gator, Henry, you are going to make it,” Lucius told him.

The patient dissented with a small twitch of the chin. A moment later, he gritted out, “I had enough.…” Tears escaped onto his caved cheeks. Again Lucius pressed two fingers to that one unburned place on the ropy forearm, and Henry pressed his forearm upward against Lucius's hand. “You come to ask about your daddy,” he whispered urgently, as if he might die before their business could be finished. He nodded when the other did not deny it.

“I lied, Mist' Lucius. Lied to Houses, lied to Hardens, lied to you. Been lyin and lyin all of my whole life.” He was not repentant, only bitter. “White folks ever stop to think how they make us
lie?
How honest Christian nigras got to
lie?
Lie and lie, then lie some more,
just to get by?
”

Lucius found a towel to wipe his brow. “Don't tire yourself, Henry. No need to talk—”

“Yes! A
need
! I got to
finish
it!” Henry rasped this with asperity. He gasped out the truth in fits and starts after making Lucius promise that what he had to say would never be repeated to the Hardens. “I'm scared my friends might disrespect me when I'm gone.”

Henry closed his eyes and kept them closed, as if reading a history burned into his eyelids. “Yessuh, they is a need. A cryin need.” He emitted a sharp cough of pain, and the churchwomen knit their brows, afraid this white stranger was draining the Deacon's strength.

“Mis Ida House, she told me grab my rifle and go foller Old Mist' Dan. Told me look out for him, cause he was agitatin about gettin old and had got himself all fired up to do some foolishness. And I stared at that old lady. I couldn't believe what she was askin me to do! I started in to actin the scared
nigger, only this time it was true, I was scared to death. I rolled my eyes up, prayin to Heaven, and I cried out, ‘Please, Mis Ida, ma'am, that ain't no place for no nigger with no rifle! Not today!'

“So that old lady got upset, and she told me I owed it to her husband! Harked back to how Old Mist' Dan done saved the life of a pickaninny child on the road south out of Georgia. Time she got done, I didn't see no choice about it. I said, ‘Yes, ma'am,' and I fetched my rifle and trailed after 'em toward the landin, so heavy in my heart I couldn't hardly walk.”

As if white people had leased Henry his life, thought Lucius, and now he was obliged to give it back.

Henry said, “What I aim to tell is the God's truth.” He pointed at a shelf above the bed. Though his visitor said that Henry's word was good enough, the patient closed his eyes and shook his head. Lucius took the Bible from the shelf and slid it beneath the mitt of bandages on the right hand.

“Mist' Lucius, your daddy always
seen
me.” He opened his red eyes and searched the other's face, wondering if the white man understood. “Seen I were a
somebody
—some kind of a man, with my own look to me and my own way of workin. Seen I counted. Seen I weren't just nothin-but-a-nigger. By
seein
me, he give me some respect, and I was grateful, all them years I knew him.” He rested a little. “But that don't mean he was aimin to put up with no gun-totin nigger, not in no line of men come there to judge him. When I went down to the Smallwood landin, I was deathly afeared of Mist' Edgar Watson, and afeared of them men waitin on him, too. All I wanted was to run and hide. Cause whether I fired or I didn't, them white men, they was honor bound to kill me.

“Mist' Edgar looked red-eyed, all wore out, like he'd laid awake most of that week. Spoke in a low and scrapy voice, said, ‘Henry, you got no business here. You get on home.' And I seen he would not tolerate me. I seen the murder shinin in his eye.”

“Would not tolerate your color?”

Henry closed his eyes. He was running out of time. “Nosir. What I told you.
Nigger-actin-to-be-a-man
. Somethin like that.” His dry mouth twitched in that gaunt shadow of a smile. When Lucius fed him water in thin sips, he nodded minute thanks, shifting and settling his pain before resuming. In a hurry to expel his truth, he talked too fast, exhausting himself. Lucius touched his arm to slow him down.

“Knowin this here black feller could shoot, your daddy didn't take no chances. He hefted up that double-barrel nice and easy, like he was fixin to hand it over to Mist' Dan. But by the little shiftin of his feet, I knowed he was gettin set to swing that gun, shoot from the hip. I was standin apart, out in
the shatters, so it weren't no trick to blow me off that line.” Henry nodded. “Show them others he meant business. Show 'em that the next one he shot might be a white man.”

In a bout of agony, Henry gasped. He raised a hand and lowered it again onto the Bible. “Lord is my witness, I believe that Mist' Edgar was dead soon as his gun come up. What Henry Short done or did not do never made no difference.”

Henry was not looking at him now but past him. “Mist' Edgar's gun come up in a snap swing, and mine did, too,” he murmured after a while. “He had me beat cause I held my fire, still prayin I would not have to shoot.” Henry spoke in sorrow, as if truly regretful that Mr. Watson had not killed him. “His gun misfired, Mist' Lucius. I seen his eyes go wide—out of his surprise, y'know—but it was too late.” He sighed. “I had pulled that trigger, not knowin there was no need of it, not knowin the good Lord had already went and saved me.”

Henry closed his eyes. “It was all over so fast! Mist' Edgar was fallin.
Somebody has shot Mist' Edgar Watson!
Took me a minute to understand who might of done it. I was starin at him lay in there while them men shot and shot, and all I could think was, Henry Short, you will die here, too.”

“Is it possible you miscalculated, Henry? Maybe figuring he
might
shoot you, you fired first—”

Henry Short grimaced, raising his hand a little, then lowering it again onto the Bible. “Nosir. Weren't no time to figure nothin.”

“Bill House—?”

Henry shook his head. “I heard his shot. Mist' Bill shot just behind. Young Mist' Dan, Old Mist' Dan—all them Houses was good shots, and very likely hit him, but Mist' Watson was already fallin by the time they fired.”

“You
know
you hit him.”

The wrapped hands jerked on the coarse coverlet.

“And you
know
you killed him.”

Hollowed out like little leather dishes, the burned man's temples pulsed. When Lucius put a rag of water to his lips, he could muster up no thanks. His eyes had closed. “Hell is waitin, Henry Short,” the burned man whispered.