Nightjohn Read online

  I learn a whole family of letters. All the fingers on one hand, two on the other. A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. He makes me to write them in the dirt and shows me how to take more than one of them and make a word, how the word is to be looking and how the word is to be sounding.

  “Make it slow, make the sound each time. First the letter, then the sound, then make it to meet the sound from the next letter. Write B, say it, then A and say it, then G. Bag.”

  And I make the word. First word.

  Bag.

  I make the word. I couldn’t believe it. I came to make the word. Don’t matter what the word is, what it means. Just to make the word. The first word.

  That’s what caused the trouble. Me and that first word.

  I was so excited to be making a word I went everywhere and made the word. I took a stick and rubbed a point on it against a stone and round in back of the quarters I made the word in the dirt.

  Wrote BAG. Then said it. “Bag.”

  I rubbed it out with my heel and wrote it in a new place. BAG. Wrote it all over. BAG. BAG. BAG. Each time I rubbed it out and moved to a new place and I was just looking at it, last time I wrote it, wondering if I could use other letters to make other words, thinking how to make another word when I hear the bull voice of Waller.

  “What are you doing?”

  A big hand grabbed the back of my shirtdress and dragged me up off my feet so I be hanging there.

  “Tell me what you’re doing.” He was ugly. Pale white maggot ugly and I could smell his ugliness on him—white ugly. Stink of bad sweat and whiskey and smoke and fat food. I didn’t say nothing.

  He shook me like a dog shaking a rat. I felt my eyes go to wobbling and I just about messed. I still didn’t say a word.

  “What are you scribbling in the dirt?”

  I thought, I’ll lie. “Nothing. Something I saw on a old feed sack. I didn’t know it was wrong to make it in the dirt.”

  “It looks like writing to me.” Holds me up. Closer. Stink of his breath in my face. White stink. Pig stink.

  “Don’t know nothing about writing.”

  He hit me then. Be holding me with both hands, one on each shoulder so I’m facing him, and he quick drops one hand and hits me with his fist alongside the head as I fall.

  I saw lights. Exploding colors.

  “Don’t lie to me. You tell me the truth of it and I’ll let you off. Where did you learn to write?”

  “Don’t know nothing about writing,” I said again. I had dropped all the way down and I was sitting in the dirt looking up at him but it put me in a bad place. Near his feet. Big boots. Black boots but wrong kind of black. Bad black, not good black like John. Mammy. Me. My mind rolled around like a sick dog.

  He kicked me in the stomach.

  “God damn you—don’t you lie to me. I’ll tie you to the spring house and get the truth out of you.”

  “Don’t know nothing about writing.…”

  He kicked again but he missed. First time I had grabbed my stomach, rolled away, and on the second kick I crawled-ran to get away. Ran to the only place I knew. Ran to the quarters. Ran to mammy.

  She be in the corner changing the grease and rag on Alice’s back and I ran to her dress and hid my head in the folds.

  “What …?” She held my arm. “What are you doing?”

  “Hiding from him.”

  “Who?”

  “Waller.”

  But Waller, he owned it all. Wasn’t no safe place. He owned all the land, owned the quarters. Owned mammy. He came into the quarters then and saw me and took me by the arm. He held me, but he looked at mammy.

  “Who is teaching her to read?”

  “Sir?” Mammy gave him the big-eyed look. Look like she don’t know nothing since she be born.

  Waller he stood, looking at her. Breathing. Breath cut in, cut out like a saw cutting wood. I thought of the word, making the word. Bag. How making the word can cause all this and I hated myself.

  “All right,” Waller said. “If that’s the way you want it.”

  And he grabbed. Not me. I made the word but he didn’t grab me. He grabbed mammy by the wrist and dragged her out of the quarters and across the dirt to the spring house and shackled her in the chain and bracelets on the wall.

  Then he left her there, hanging, and went to the house. I had followed them across to the spring house and when he was gone I went up to mammy.

  “He’s going to whip you,” I said. I was crying.

  She sighed. Soft sound. And she looked up at the sun and the trees by the white house. “Birds sure do sing nice, don’t they? They make the prettiest sound.”

  “It’s all my doings.” I pulled at the chains but they don’t give. “I be making the word and forgot where I was and he saw me and now he’s going to whip you.”

  Her eyes came on me then. I was crying but she wasn’t. Her eyes came on me and they were sharp and her mouth was tight. “He would have whipped me anyway someday. Some other reason would have come along. He loves to use the whip.”

  “John.” I thought of him. “John will stop him.”

  She shook her head. “He can’t. No matter what he says, it won’t stop Waller from whipping me. Now you go along and bring me some water when they ain’t watching. He won’t whip me until close on dark when everybody’s back from the field to watch. The sun is hot and I’ll be getting a big thirst, don’t I get some water.”

  I snucked mammy water through the afternoon and she hung there. Way the chains and bracelets were, she couldn’t reach down to sit so she had to stand. But standing through the day that way without moving is hard. After it passed some long time her legs didn’t do so good and she sagged, and come late in the day she was ’most hanging on the chains. Her arms were up and she was having to hurt. I stood and watched for a spell and cried some but she stopped me.

  “You take care of the young ones. Go now. They’ll be dirty and stinking, if you don’t change the rags on them. You run along. I be fine.”

  Took forever, waiting on the day. Mammy hanging that way. I thought once of running to the fields to tell John. Wouldn’t do no good. Driver working the fields, he see me coming he just put me to work. They say if you can walk to the fields you can work. So I be working and not here and John couldn’t do nothing anyway. They just keep him there no matter what I say.

  So nothing.

  Waller he keep his white maggot ownself in the white house all the day. Don’t come out but once to see me standing by mammy. The sun works across the sky, cooking her. I brought her water again and a piece of cornbread I’d been saving since morning food but she shook her head.

  “I’ll just throw it up when he comes to whipping me. You go now—get the rags ready for my back and the salt.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes. You can. Go do it.”

  Finally it came on to be dark and the hands come in from the field. Part of the afternoon I had the young ones to make a trough of cold food so they had enough to eat. They had to walk past the spring house and they saw mammy but there wasn’t nothing they could do.

  I went up to John and told him what had happened.

  “Damn.” He shook his head. “I should have warned you about making words.”

  “I knew. I was just excited. To be making my first word. I got to writing it in the dirt and he caught me. Waller caught me. He’s going to whip her. Mammy. Going to whip her into rags.”

  John didn’t say anything. He looked to where mammy hung on the spring house. His eyes were flat. “Bastard.”

  I was going to say more, say can you stop it, can you say something, but I heard the door on the white house open and Waller came out. He made gas and spit like he’d just ate a big meal and walked across the yard. Stopped.

  “All of you get out here and watch.” He bellered like an old bull, then turned. Didn’t go to the spring house. Didn’t have a whip.

  Instead he went to the barn and went inside.

  Come out in a breath or two
and he was carrying a horse harness.

  He went to the buggy by the carriage shed and hooked the harness like he had a horse in it, except it was empty.

  Then he went back to the spring house. Looked at mammy.

  “You going to tell me who’s teaching them to read?”

  Mammy been hanging but she stood now and gave him the big eye again. “I don’t know nothing about reading or writing.”

  “God damn you.”

  He hit her with his fist. Then he unhooked her from the chains and ripped her clothes from off her body and dragged her naked to the harness.

  “Put it on—I feel like a ride in the buggy.”

  Mammy put the collar around her neck with the lines going back to the buggy. Stood there. Looking up at the sky. I couldn’t keep my eyes down. But the men did, they didn’t look at her. Looked at the ground.

  Waller climbed into the buggy and sat in the seat. He reached under the footboard and come up with a whip.

  “Pull, damn you.”

  The whip snaked out from the buggy seat like it was alive and flicked and blood come on mammy’s shoulder. Big cut. She started pulling but it wasn’t good enough. She strained and heaved and the wagon it moved and Waller kept saying:

  “Faster, damn it, faster.”

  And the whip come again and again, blood running down her back, the buggy moving across the yard and I hear in back of me:

  “She don’t know nothing. It was me that taught the girl the letters.”

  I turned and John was standing there. He had stepped forward and he pointed to mammy.

  “Let her be. She don’t know nothing about it. It was all me.”

  Waller looked at him the way a cat looks at a mouse caught in a corner. He smiled. Ugly smile.

  “Well—I might have guessed.” He stepped down from the buggy and moved to John. “Why don’t you just go over there and put yourself in those irons on the spring house wall?”

  I thought John wasn’t going to do it. He held for one, two blinks of my eyes. Waller had the whip in his left hand, coiled but ready. His right hand was on the butt of the big pistol in his belt.

  Two blinks, then John moved. He walked to the spring house and put the bracelets on. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and when he turned his back the sun caught the scars from the old whippings. Rippled and ridged.

  There’s nowhere for the whip to hit, I thought. Can’t hit nothing new. No new meat. Stupid. The way my thinking worked.

  But Waller, he wasn’t set for whipping.

  He made one of the field hands to fetch the stump used for chopping the heads off chickens. Sent another hand to the blacksmith lean-to for a wide chisel and a hammer.

  Then he turned to us. All standing, watching. I had moved to mammy but she shook her head. Stood.

  “It is wrong to learn to read.” Waller’s voice loud, bouncing off the buildings. “It is against the law for you to read. To know any letters. To know any counting is wrong. Punishment, according to the law, is removal of an extremity.”

  We don’t know all the words. Never heard “extremity” before. But we don’t need to know.

  Waller had two field hands to hold one of John’s feet on the block. He put the chisel to the middle toe and swung the hammer.

  Thunk.

  The toe came off clean, jumped away from the chisel and fell in the dirt. Blood squirting out, all over the block. John he jerked the foot so hard it knocked one of the field hands over. But quiet, not even a grunt out of him. He didn’t look down either. Just kept staring off into the fields next to the spring house.

  “Other foot.” Waller spit and wiped the chisel off on the stump.

  The two field hands grabbed John’s left leg. The one next to the wall of the spring house—his name is Robe—he take it slow. Doesn’t move fast so you could see it was bothering him and Waller snaps like a breaking stick.

  “It can be your toe, too. It doesn’t cost more to cut another one off.”

  So Robe he puts John’s foot up there and Waller puts the chisel on it.

  Thunk.

  This time was not so clean. The foot jerks back and the toe is caught by some skin the chisel missed.

  “Hold it up, damn it.”

  They hold the foot to the block. John he still not making any sounds, but his face is stiff. Like it’s carved out of rock. And there’s sweat pouring off his forehead, his neck, down his chest. He’s soaked.

  Waller cuts the last bit of skin.

  “There. That’ll teach you to mess with things you shouldn’t. Get a rag and some grease on that.”

  He walked back to the white house without looking back and as soon as he was away from us we went to helping.

  The two hands carried John between them to the quarters and I went to mammy.

  “Fetch the salt,” she told me. “Get it in these cuts and ’fore I pass out for God’s sake cover me with something so I ain’t naked before the Lord.”

  So I did. And she swooned some with the pain and went down. And I frotched her dress and helped to put it on her and then helped her back to the quarters because her legs they didn’t work right from hanging and standing all day.

  All the time I’m thinking, be a hell, be a good hell with fire and brimstone and devils cutting skin off backs like mammy says. Be a good goddamn hell with demons eating at you, pulling your guts out—be the worst hell there is to be.

  And put Waller in it.

  SIX

  John he down for three nights.

  Mammy come up right away, but we grease and wrapped John’s feet in rags mammy boiled in the pot for cooking food and he stayed on his back.

  For the first night he was quiet and didn’t say nothing. Just to lay and look at the ceiling, night and day, except to use a can mammy put there for him to use.

  Second night he call me over to where he lay.

  “What?” I ask.

  “H.”

  “What?”

  “That’s the next letter. H. It sounds huhh, or hehh. It’s a funny letter because it doesn’t make any difference how it stands. Goes up, goes down, doesn’t matter. It’s the same.”

  He makes the letter in the dirt.

  H

  Mammy she was in the other end and she came walking down to us. The young ones be out playing. Everybody else in the field. I thought she would roar at him, maybe gut him.

  But she’s smiling.

  “Are you addled in the brain?” she asked.

  He nodded. On his side, laying like a broke dog. He smiled back. “I don’t get smarter. Just older.”

  “You know what he’ll do if he catches you teaching letters again? You ain’t got so many more toes.”

  “Two more nights, I’m gone.”

  “On those feet?”

  “On these feet.”

  “You’ll bleed out. I knew you were going, but wait a week.”

  “How did you know I was going?”

  “You were always going. When you came here they brought you in the collar. You are born to leave.”

  John’s smile grew wider. “We should have met some other place.”

  “And other time.” Mammy she snorted. “I make two of you, old enough to be your mother.”

  John laughed. Rolling deep sound. “Maybe so that doesn’t matter so much.…”

  Mammy she went on and he lay back. Looked to me. “Make the H. Make the sound, then the letter. When you get done, fetch me a piece of rawhide from the barn, so big.” He held up his hands. “I need to make some shoes.”

  And in two nights, like he said, he was gone. He made the shoes out of rawhide and put rags around his toes and on the night he was to leave he made me to fetch him lard and pepper.

  “For the dogs,” he said. He rubbed the lard thick on the bottom of each shoe and wiped pepper in the lard and stood to leave. “Throws their smell off to the side.”

  Everybody asleep. Even mammy. Except me.

  “I’ll be back,” he said. “Got some things to do and I�
�ll be back.”

  But I knew he was lying. Just being good, saying the good things to hear. He ain’t coming back, I thought, and watched him leave, hobbling on his stiff shoes and sore feet covered with rags.

  Man gets out of here, I thought, gets clear again, he won’t never come be here again. Never coming back.

  Not unless the dogs catched him.

  SEVEN

  Wrong again.

  Only not right away.

  He made it clean away. The next day Waller he took the dogs and two field hands and his horse and set off swearing and stinking. Two days he be gone, and he come back and make a storm around the place so we all know John he made it. He be gone.

  Mammy she cried in a happy way and I smiled some for a time and hoped him well, though he left me hanging. I had only the same letters as on both hands. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J.

  I could write them and read them and I took to making words in my head with them. Made HID. And FIB. And JAB. And HAD. And BIG.

  Other words. But I didn’t dare write them in the dirt. Waller catch me and he’d make a tobacco pouch out of my skin. So I did them in my head, and tried to see the words, see the letters. But summer went, and then we took in crops. Cotton and corn and killing pigs came. Into fall. I still tried to make the letters in my head, and the words.

  But my troubles came and though I hid it I knew they’d get to finding out and send me to the breeding shed.

  I was in a misery. Mammy she worked to cheer me but it didn’t do any good. I was feared and worried day to day that I’d be found out.

  Come a night in winter. Leaves gone, pigs all killed and hams hanging in the smokehouse. I sat in the dark, in the corner of the quarters, wishing I could go back a season to where I didn’t have the troubles, and I heard a sound next to me in the dark and it was him.

  John.

  Be right there, next to me.

  “Come on,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Follow me. We got to go so’s you can get back before first light.”

  “Go where?”

  He smiled. Took my hand. Led me to the door. “School—we got to go to school. Don’t you want to learn the rest of the letters?”