Cy in Chains (11 page)

He had wandered up near the cookhouse when Rosalee appeared at the door with Pook. “Go on, sugar,” she told the child, gently removing his hand from her long skirt. “Let Mama see how fast you can run.”

Pook stood still a moment, then looked up at Rosalee. She nodded and smiled at him. “Run, little man. Stretch them long legs.”

Cy stopped and watched. The catch in his throat surprised him, but not as much as Pook did when the child ran right to him. Without stopping to think about it, Cy grabbed Pook under both arms, picked him up, and began to swing him around. The child squealed happily.

Cy put Pook down, but the boy wasn't satisfied. “Again!” he shouted.

So he did it again, and again. Pook kept laughing and asking for more.

“You havin' fun, sugar?” Rosalee called.

“Yeah!” he cried.

“I got to stop,” Cy said. He was panting and dizzy, but happier than he could remember being in a long time.

“Let Cy be,” Rosalee said. “He wore out from playin' with you. Tell him thank you.”

Pook hugged Cy's knees. “T'ank you, Cy.” He started back to his mother, then spotted something in the weeds. He squatted to look. Cy followed, and Mouse came over, too.

“Bood,” Pook said.

“Dead bird,” Mouse said, holding it up.

“Bood,” Pook said again. Rosalee came and stood by him.

Mouse held the bird in his palm. It was small, with some yellow on its breast and throat, and white stripes on its wings. The back was darker, kind of dull green. “We got to bury him,” Mouse declared.

“Bood,” Pook repeated, staring at the pitiful thing.

“Just throw it over the fence,” Cy suggested.

“We got to
bury
him,” Mouse repeated. He laid the dead bird on the ground and began scrabbling in the dirt with both hands.

“Why? It only a bird.”

Mouse didn't answer, just tore at the earth, digging his nails into the slimy red clay.

“Put him in,” Mouse told Pook when the hole was dug.

“He don't understand.”

“Course he do. Put him in.”

Pook picked up the dead bird by one scrawny foot and carefully placed it in the hole.

Without warning, tears came to Cy's eyes.
Stop it!
he ordered himself.
You gonna cry over a dead bird?

“Hey, you!” a voice shouted.

It took Cy a second to realize he was being called. It was Stryker, at the gate. “Get over here, boy! You got a visitor.”

On the other side of the barbed wire, near where Billy waited, staring at the road, stood Pete Williams.

 

Stryker unlocked the gate and gestured for the man to step through. He carried a shabby carpetbag in one hand. His hair had started to go gray, and there was something wrong with his left leg.

Cy didn't move.

“What's wrong with you?” Stryker shouted across the yard. “Ain't you gonna come see your daddy?”

He started forward slowly. Many eyes were staring at him, and he didn't like it.

“Son?” Pete Williams limped toward him and looked into his eyes. “Ain't you glad to see me?”

Cy didn't answer.

“Oh, let me hug you! I didn't believe this day would ever arrive.”

Cy let his father put his arms around him, hold him, but he himself made no move. This was the moment he'd thought about nearly every day for three and a half years, and he supposed he should feel glad, but all he felt was anger.

Stryker cleared his throat. “I got to see what's inside that carpetbag,” he said.

Williams went back to the gate, where he'd left the bag. Cy and Stryker followed.

“I brought my boy a couple things he might be able to use.”

“Like a file?” Stryker asked. He smiled as if he'd said something funny.

“Oh, no, suh. I sho' wouldn't never do nuthin' like that.”

“So what
is
in there?”

He brought out a parcel wrapped in brown paper. “This is for
you
, suh. And for yo' helpers.”

“
I
don't run this place,” Stryker corrected him. “What is it?”

“Best quality tobacco. Some for smokin', some for chaw. I didn't know what y'all might like.”

“You ain't put no poison in it?” It was impossible to tell if Stryker was serious or just making another bad joke.

“Oh, no, suh! Just wanted to bring you somethin' to show appreciation for how you takin' care o' my boy.”

Cy felt disgusted by his father's lie. If Stryker believed it, he was as stupid as he was mean. But he had to pretend to believe the words, just as Pete Williams had to pretend he meant them.

Stryker took the tobacco. “What else you got?”

“Some sweet cakes—here's some for you, too—and some apples.”

“And?”

“Stockin's, and some drawers and a undershirt.”

“Nothin' else? No contraband?”

“I swear it, suh. Just these couple little things for Cy.”

“All right, then. Y'all go on and visit.” He walked away.

Pete Williams picked up the carpetbag. “Cy? Can we go somewhere quiet and talk?”

Cy was about to answer when he noticed Billy. He was still fixed in the same place, but now his eyes weren't on the road. They were riveted on Cy's father.

“Who that?” the man asked.

“Nobody. New kid. Name of Billy. Thinks his daddy gonna take him home today.”

“That likely to happen?”

“Probably not. Folks never show up to take anyone away.”

“I's here,” Williams said.

“Took you long enough,” Cy said.

“Let's go find someplace to talk,” his father suggested again.

Cy led the way to a front corner of the camp, as far from everyone else as they could get.

They stopped, and Pete Williams put his hands on his son's shoulders. “Let me look at you. You mighty thin! They don't feed you much.”

Cy stepped back and glared at his father. “Why you never come to see me?”

“Son—”

“Where you been all this time? You don't care nothin' 'bout me! Just go away and let me be.”

Williams put his hand on Cy's shoulder again, but Cy brushed it off. “Don't touch me!”

“I can explain, if you give me a chance. Let's sit down. My leg hurts if I got to stand too long.”

Cy didn't reply.

“Please, son! I tried to come right from the day them damn Sconyers boys snatched you away, but it done took me all this time to find you.”

Cy still didn't move. Inside him, a battle had begun.

“Suit yourself,” his father told him, “but I got to sit.” Slowly, favoring his hurt leg, he eased himself onto the damp grass.

Cy wanted to turn his back and walk away—or part of him did. The other part wanted to fall to the ground, crawl into his father's lap, and cry his heart out. Instead, he simply sat down.

Pete Williams opened the carpetbag and brought out another parcel wrapped in brown paper. Inside were molasses cakes. “They's for you,” he said, offering them. “Please, son. Have one.”

The cakes looked just like the ones his mother used to make. They'd been his favorites. For a second, a crazy hope rose in him. Had she returned?

“Where you get these?”

“Bought 'em from a store up in a place called Tifton.”

“Where that?”

“Little place 'bout ten miles north o' here. Ain't much to it—sawmill and a few businesses.” He offered the molasses cakes again.

“You never come for me,” Cy whispered. He could smell the spices and molasses in the cakes, and his mouth was watering. Something told him that if he took one bite, he wouldn't be able to stop until every one of them was stuffed into his belly. “What happen to your leg?”

“Please look at me, son. I
wanted
to get here! I been tryin' to get here for more'n three years now! You got to believe me.”

Cy wanted to. “I thought—you didn't care. I thought—you forgot about me.”

Pete Williams choked back a sob. “Forget you? Oh, son!” He dropped his molasses cake on the ground and tried to take Cy into his arms.

“You didn't forget me?”

“You all I got left in this world. I couldn't no more forget you than I could my own name.”

Cy let his father put an arm around his shoulder. Then he let himself cry. When he was done, he wiped his eyes and runny nose. He grabbed one of the molasses cakes and took a bite. It tasted so good it startled him. All these years, he'd had no sugar, no syrup, no sweetening. He took another bite and had to keep himself from swallowing it whole. He didn't stop until he'd eaten four.

Pete Williams watched his son, a sad smile on his face. “You ain't had nothin' like them in a long time, right?”

Cy shook his head. “No, sir. No coffee, neither. No chicken, no ham, no biscuits, no food fit for a dog!” He had to wipe tears away again.

“I's so sorry,” his father told him. “Sorry from the bottom o' my soul. But I found you at last. That the important thing now.”

“Daddy, please get me outta here.”

“I know. I got a plan. But first, I want to explain a couple things. Why it took all these years for me to find you.”

“All right.”

Williams looked at the sky, like he was trying to remember, or maybe because he didn't want to remember. “That day—the day Travis got drowned—Strong's men come for me in the field. They got hold of me and tied me, took me to a curing barn and locked me in.”

“That's what they said,” Cy remembered.

“Them Sconyers boys?”

“Yeah. They got me after they locked you up. Uncle Daniel tried to stop 'em, but they hit him, knocked him out, I guess, and took me away.”

Cy's father's face showed that remembering was painful. “Strong didn't let me outta that barn till the next evening. By then, you was long gone.”

Now Cy understood. “Bastard made sure you couldn't find me.”

“Like I said. I's sorry, son. O' course Uncle Daniel told me who kidnapped you, but they didn't show up for almost two weeks. By that time . . .” He fell silent and fixed his eyes on the sky again.

“What, Daddy?”

“By that time, Strong was dead.”

“Dead? How?”

“Two days after Travis drowned, Strong had that poor child buried in the graveyard next to his mama. Uncle Daniel said after all the folks left, Strong went into the barn and barred the doors from inside. Then he shot that black devil and turned the gun on hisself. They found him lyin' dead in Teufel's stall, right next to the horse. I dug his grave, and the white folks come and bury him next to Travis. So all them Strongs is together again, at last.”

Cy wasn't sorry Strong was dead. But Travis? An old ache, one he thought he'd killed long ago, grabbed at his heart. And Teufel? Why?

“I got to piss,” Cy said. He stood up, went to the corner of the camp, and relieved himself. When he returned, he found his father eating one of the molasses cakes.

“They mighty good. Have another.”

Cy took one and chewed it slowly.

“After they bury Strong, his creditors come 'round right away, and 'fore we knew it, we was all kicked off the place. Daniel an' Dorcas had to leave. I don't even know where they is now.”

“How you find me after all this time?” Cy asked.

“I went to them Sconyers boys and begged 'em to say where they took you. Jeff acted like he was halfway ready to, but that damn Burwell put in his two cents, and they made me a deal: for one hundred dollars, they agreed to tell me where they brung you. It taken me all this time to save up that much.”

Was it possible? His father had had to work to earn the money to find out where he was? Cy looked at the man sitting opposite him and noticed things he'd missed earlier: how his father's hair had thinned, the deep lines of sadness around his eyes.

“Gettin' kicked off Strong's place didn't make it no easier, and then I hurt my leg,” Williams went on.

“How that happen?”

“When Strong's creditors show up sayin' we had to leave, I took one o' the wagons and a mule and cleared out.”

“You stole 'em?”

“Yep. Figured I had the right.”

“You did.” Cy's old familiar hatred of John Strong blazed up in him.

“I headed in the direction I thought they took you. Turns out I was goin' farther
away
from you, not closer. Anyways, I ended up near a place called Louisville, found a man what needed hands to work his place. Things went okay for a year or so, exceptin' I was mighty lonely. So many times I wanted to drink all my sorrows away, but somethin' inside stopped me. I ain't had a drop in two years, Cy.”

“That's real good, Daddy.”

“Then I was returnin' from town one Saturday afternoon, 'long a stretch o' road where they's deep gullies cut on either side, to keep the road from floodin'. Here come Rafe McReynolds, the son of Ol' Man Tucker McReynolds, the man I was workin' for, and a bunch o' his friends, ridin' hard toward me, side by side, all stretched out across the road. Prob'ly drunk as usual. I thought they'd slow down, give me room to pass, but they keep comin' on, at a full gallop, like they warn't gon' to stop. I had to get out they way fast, but the road drop off so steep there that I didn't know what to do. Then that mule Jupiter—you remember him—decide for me. He shied, and down we went, crashing down into that ditch. I got pitched off the seat, and here come the wagon down right on top of me. Broke my thighbone right in two. Jupiter broke a leg too, and they had to shoot him.”

Cy did remember Jupiter. How many times had he helped Uncle Daniel hitch him up? How many times had he curried him? Jupiter wasn't like most mules, ornery and lazy. He'd been a good fellow. And now he was dead, like Teufel.

“Them boys stopped above me, laughin', and one of 'em shout, ‘Why didn't you get out of the road, nigger?' Then they went. Reckon I passed out after that, 'cause next thing I know, some colored folks is pattin' me on the face, askin' me how I am.