The Mercy Seat (57 page)

It was then I saw Jessie come out the back of the store and walk swiftly up the footpath they kept soft between the back door of the store and their front porch. She had Myrtis on her hip but it didn't seem like she even knew it, because she walked right up close to where Fayette's horse was jerking and prancing, and she was talking to him but I couldn't hear what she said. Lottie stood big on the porch. When Fayette hollered at her, she'd turn and start to go in the house, and then Jessie would say something and she'd come back away from the door to stand on the porch ledge. Then Fayette would holler again and she'd go back again, and she went back and forth like that two or three times, but she never did go on in the house and bring him the gun.

I shouted at Thomas where he stood gawking at us dressed up for Sunday meeting—I could see his hair slicked back behind his ears beneath his good white felt hat—I shouted, “Get the gun, bring it here!” because Jonaphrene couldn't go down the path any faster, and I wanted to laugh again, because I could still hear Fayette shouting at Lottie to fetch his carbine rifle, and so there we were: my uncle calling for a gun in his yard from his daughter, and me doing the same from my brother as we neared the yard of the log house, and I thought, even then, that it was just a question of whether I could get Papa's muzzle loader out of the house fast enough.

“Hurry!” I hollered at Thomas, and he just stood there. Jonaphrene, over my shoulder, leaning down on me, said, “What is it? Martha, what is it? What's he done?”

“He ain't done it yet,” I said, and now we were in the yard, and I could see the tipped-over bucket so plain behind their well. “He's fixing to.”

“What?” she said.

“What,” Thomas said.

“Kill Papa. Thomas, hurry up and bring me the gun.”

On the rise—it was not so far, a hundred rods maybe—clear as day, I saw Fayette slash the reins at Jessie trying to grab for the bridle, and he cursed her once, one soft word, and then he spurred that poor horse back down the wagon track to the roadbed, and I couldn't see him then, for the log house and the store both were in the way. But I knew he was started for Cedar already, and I was still swimming, I just could not move any faster. I felt Jonaphrene's weight ease off me and, turning, I saw her standing up straight, the old look rising on her, sweeping her face beyond sorrow, whatever it was.

“Thomas!” I said. “Move!” because he just stood there, his mouth open, gaping at me, and oh, the hatred swelled on me, I cannot tell you, to look at my brother staring, comprehending nothing, and my sister with that look on her, and Fayette on his way to Cedar to kill Papa—I believed that, I still believe it. I knew what was inside him. Thomas turned to go in the house then, but I saw already it was no use. Time was fleeing too fast, Fayette was gone already, and I tried to be quick, tried to think, and I could think nothing because we had no horse or mule, only the weathering shell of wagon. I didn't know how I would catch him fast enough—and then I knew I must run, swift, run, directly over the land, and head him off at the narrow place where the two mountains ebb toward one another on either side of the road. I had to outrun the blue roan, and so I couldn't carry the longrifle. Already I was backing away from them down the slope toward the creekbank, and I said, “Sister, go down to Mewborn's and tell him it's an emergency, see if you can borrow his rig and come on in the buggy. If he won't let you, see about Skeens or somebody, but hurry!”—because I was thinking that if I didn't catch him at the Narrows, we could catch him with a rig if we had to chase him. “Hurry up now!” I said, backing, already beginning to run. “And bring the rifle! Don't let Mewborn see it!”

She seemed to be waking then, coming awake from a long sleep. I was backing, fast, and she looked at me, put her hand to the bruise blooming blue and red across her cheekbone, already swelling, and then she touched her loose hair let down for washing, ran her fingers through it, said, “I can't go to Cedar looking like this.”

“Hurry!” I said.

I looked no more at either of them but turned and ran over the road in Jim Dee's boots. Even in the March-hard roadbed the sharp bootheels broke the pan and released the ocher dust, and I could see the dust from the blue roan also, trailing on through town nearly to the boggy place. I looked no more in that direction either but ran down into the trees along the creekbank, ran through the underbrush. Sap-softened willow twigs bent with me, cold jackoak fingers cracked and snapped when I passed, snagging at the cartridge belt across my shoulder. I came to the sandstone slab without stopping, slipped off the bank beside it and waded into the water. I could only see one of the pistols—not either one of the Colts, but an old single-shot Remington, but it was good enough. I didn't stop but waded directly toward where it was wedged against a tree branch. I reached my hand in the cold rushing water, and the pistol rolled a little as if it would sweep away from me, but I grabbed for it, scooped it up, dripping, and held it against my shirt, rubbing the side of the barrel against my chest as I continued to try to run, splashing against the current, and now I was truly swimming, though my feet scrabbled along the bottom, because Jim Dee's boots were weighted with water, sucking me down with water, willing me to surrender and allow them and the force of the water to sweep me downstream. But I would not. I would not! I clambered up the bank, and never for a minute had I stopped running, nor did I slow or stop or ease for a second but ran straight across Faulks' fresh-plowed field, the cartridge belt thumping against my chest, my brother's boots squishing and dragging, rubbing, my heels burning fire, and I ran on, spinning the cylinder once or twice to rid it of water, and I didn't know if it would fire but I believed that it would. I thought I could beat him to the foot of Waddy Mountain and shoot him from the side of the road, but when I reached the clotted underbrush that marked the turn of roadbed, I saw the roan's dust sifting away south behind the curve. I stopped long enough to take my brother's boots off, flung them to the side of the road and undraped the belt from over my shoulder. I strapped it around me—it was twice too big, and so I wrapped it around twice—and buckled it. I jammed the gun into the holster and ran on, the weight of the gun beating against my thigh. I ran with the tan ruts and small rocks retreating beneath me, ran in the bright air so still I could hear crows laughing on the far side of the mountain. The dust of the roan stood above the earth long after they'd passed, and I ran through it, my lungs burning hot. The sharp pain thrust its knife in my side, but only for a short while, and then I grew light in my body so that I skimmed over the earth almost like dreamflying, and the rejoicing came back on me. I couldn't feel the stones. I ran as a deer runs, swift, on my small feet.

So I gained on him, came up behind them. I could see the roan's dark tail flicking flies in the distance, because he had slowed to a walk. Fayette held himself straight in the saddle, and I slowed, walking fast still, but not running, and I was silent. I meant to get within pistol range and kill him, that was all—only I thought suddenly it would be better to get around him and shoot him from the front, because I was thinking how they tell Belle Starr's killing over and over because she was ambushed, shot in the back, and to this day they don't know who did it, and that mystery has kept her alive because they talk about it, say it was her son, her lover, a neighbor who shot her, and worse, it has sanctified her in people's minds because they say the killer was a coward and she didn't get to face him, even she didn't know who shot her—or maybe she did. But I was unwilling that my uncle be sanctified and kept alive by people talking. I was unwilling to be called coward even if none knew my name. And so when we came to the place where the road curves back to the east around the base of the mountain, I cut south straight across the land.

I had to run again, to get around him and head him off before he got to a place where there would be others to see us. That part of the valley hadn't been logged yet, and the trees were tall—pine mostly, and red oak, a few giant hickories, their bottom branches so far above the earth a man could ride a horse beneath them and never have to hold his hat—and so it was easy to run. The earth was soft with pine needles and crumbling dead oak leaves, but there were acorns and pinecones to jab my bare soles or roll beneath them, and the trees were many and I had to weave in and out. It was dark in the pine shade, and cool, because I was sweating. I tried to angle continuously south and east, but it was hard because the trees grew in their untamed pattern and wouldn't let me keep to a straight line. Still, I felt that strange joy, even in the pine darkness, running, half thwarted, with murder in my heart.

In time, I saw the lightened space ahead between the tall trunks, and I headed directly toward it. I came out from the pine woods abruptly, like running out a barn door, onto the beaten road, and there, a half mile or so to the south, the rock and wood buildings of Cedar rose up on either side of the tan strip to nestle and hold it, and there on the road itself, maybe fifty yards past me, was my uncle's back, jostling on toward the town. He didn't turn; I guess he didn't hear me, though my breath was shuddering so loud. I drew the pistol and stood in the roadbed, held the gun in both hands and aimed at the matted brown hair on the back of his head. I lowered the muzzle and aimed at the broader target of the dirty white shirt stretched across his back. I was in good range, easy range. I pulled back the hammer with both thumbs, held it, watched my uncle's back jimmy away from me along the road.

I don't know why.

I don't know why.

I had every intention.

I wasn't afraid. I was in some kind of high glory that drove me beyond even the comprehension of fear. I ask myself to this day, as I question all the if-onlys, because it was my last chance and I knew it, even if it meant I had to shoot him in the back. I just didn't, that's all. I don't have an explanation. I wasn't afraid, I tell you; I wanted to kill him. In hatred I wanted to kill him, for all of it, from the gray dawn of the morning it would not turn morning, for the sake of my mama and Grandma Billie and Jim Dee and Thomas, for that look on my sister and what was in his black sodden heart about Papa, which I tell you I knew.

No. That's not it.

All right. I will tell it.

I could not squeeze the trigger, because I had been made to go inside him. The hellish stink and loathing of him lifted my soul in the barn darkness and soothed me, gave me that power to run barefoot without tiring, rejoicing, but the same instant that gave me power and gladness was the same that stayed my hand an hour later from killing him, and it wasn't anything like what we know of the word compassion, don't think it. It wasn't because I loved him or grieved him or felt sorry for him to ride drunk on a blue roan and be shot in the back—it was because my soul was made part of his, and his mine, so that I could not un-know him, because he was me, because that was made to happen to me, though I had refused it, I'd turned my back on it the dawn the cedars bled.

I don't want to remember that. I don't want to.

Walking. I was walking and it wasn't dawn yet, it was not even the lifting just before first light, and I was in the valley east of Waddy walking alone, not even Ringo was with me, though he was still alive then. I was fourteen, it was spring. It was after the camp meeting where they say I did such things but I don't remember. I was fourteen. Thula tried to warn me, she told me time and time again.
The Creator give you that job to do, you going to die you ain't done it.
In English she told me, and again in her language, and I was willful. It wasn't my brothers and sister I set my face against. It was God's face. Because He gave it to me, Thula told me, and I turned my own face away.

I walked before daylight in the place of tall grasses where the thousand rocks are hidden just under the dirt's khaki crust, and the grasses are tall and sweeping there, I don't know why; it isn't a place of blackberry brambles and sumac as other open spaces are, but just those tall grasses in the little prairie east of Waddy and the cedars dotted here and there, so much distance apart, as if God planted them for the shape of His eye's pleasure, and the cedars are shaped like cones, peaked at the top and rounded full on the bottom, not as a pine tree is formed, but in the shape of a child's top. They were burnished copper still with winter, the drouth of that winter, and it was the time of the earth's turning with springtime, the loop dropping down. I walked toward the sun which had not come yet, but light was quickening east, and I saw it happen to the cedar tree to the right and just a little in front of me. The cedar tree smoked. I saw it and stopped, and I held myself in the still air, so still the grasses did not even hint to whisper, so still I could hear the fluting thrushes starting in the deep woods far off on Toms Mountain. Smoke seeped from the silhouette of the cedar. It was like the burning bush in the desert, the smoke shimmering around it the same shape as the tree itself, as if the heart of the tree was on fire, and yet there was no flame, and it was not consumed. Off to the north, I saw another. And in time, farther east, another: the cedar trees bleeding their lifeforce in smoke shimmering to the still, predawn air. I stood motionless in the still valley, held my breath to not stir the motionless air. Way off, I could see another, and later, another, as if singly, one at a time, touched by God's finger, they must burst into flame, but it was not the flame of fire but something else, I don't know what it was: their blood. And then I heard the song.

It was not humming now, not a high keening at the edge of hearing, but a real song. I could hear the voice of it, I could hear words, and they were not words of English or Choctaw but I knew them as we know dreamwords, and the song rose and fell, it was in the air, the smoke, the light coming from the east: piercing, beautiful, like water trickling, like light shining, the sound of spirit walking in the world. The song pulled from my very breast, the hard core heart of me, to my nipples and fingers and the soles of my feet. As I listened the song became smell; it didn't die or transform but became smell also, embraced smell, and it was smoke then, it was light then, and taste, and the smell of some place on the earth I had been and forgotten, which I cannot describe to you any more than I can name you the sound, but it was a little like watercress plucked from a stream and crushed at once in the teeth and fingers, the green smell of plant but not of earth, of water but not the mud and dank that goes with it; a smell of longing, like craving, to prick at the nose like crushed cedar and become in the back of the mouth and throat a taste like green apples and honey, and the song was mine, the smell was my before and after, what was given to me, what I was supposed to do: it was my life, singing in the air and earth and sky around me. The pain came then, sudden, an eruption in my limbs like they would be torn asunder, and I heard a voice saying,
See this, you must follow. Be still.
There was Light then, and Presence, and around me in the valley the cedars bled.