The New World (24 page)

And when this silence broke?

I expected a barrage of questions but very few came. The captain told us he would like to meet this Jim, and this Natty or Matty or whatever her name was, and give them a piece of his mind—then he seemed to forget us. A few other travelers drifted up to congratulate us on our escape, and some wanted to know our story so they could marvel at our luck, but of course we did not tell them. Otherwise, everyone assumed we were not the culprits after all, and left us alone. We were just the latest episode in the long story of their journey, and now our moment was done. We were negligible again. We were Indians again, and free to sink back into the shadows.

We did sink back.

We returned to our place on deck and lay still.

We listened to the river.

We heard the splash of the oars, and the breeze as it ruffled the awning over our heads.

We prepared to sleep—and would have done so, if Joshua and Anne Marie had allowed it. But they had seen Black Cloud at close quarters and felt the heat of his rage; they had trusted us with the story of their adventure, and now they wanted the whole of ours in return. I gave in to them as I felt good manners required, but when I explained why Black Cloud had followed us, and showed them the treasure we had stolen from him, I realized my pride must be another reason.

As I drew the necklace out from my satchel, turning my back toward the captain so that he would not see, Joshua was silent for a moment.

“Dear Lord,” he murmured at last. “You have your start in life.”

“Do you think so?”

“I know so,” he said, awestruck. “Look at that. It is your future.”

I did not reply, but let my eyes run over the beauty where it lay between us on my blanket. I had not let myself admire it for several days now, and its power struck me afresh: the silver pieces glowing as I polished them quickly with my palm; the carvings breathing and shivering and hunting and flashing their dark eyes.

I could easily have thrown it away to Black Cloud a moment before. I could have returned it to where it belonged. But I had kept it. I had covered it with my hand as if it were my own. Just as I now covered it with my hand again, when I thought Joshua had stared for long enough. Covered it, then returned it to my satchel, and slipped the satchel around my neck, and said goodnight to Joshua and Anne Marie, and turned my back on them, and lay down to sleep a little distance apart.

Although the canvas that covered us kept the sun from shining directly into our faces, we woke at dawn next morning. My first instinct was to look off the stern, but there was still empty water behind us, with light twisting the surface into innocent scribbles and dashes. Natty and I watched without speaking for a while, feeling content with the silence. Joshua and Anne Marie were silent too, when they came to their senses. Either Black Cloud had scared them too much to speak, or our treasure had made them wary of us.

No matter, I thought, they need not be a part of our adventure—and turned to the only distraction at hand, which was the river. Mile after mile it yielded up wonders. On that first day alone, the first after our emergency, we passed several enormous mud-heaps on the starboard bank, built to a great height above the surrounding jungle. There was no sign of life round about, and when the mysterious and silent shapes fell away behind me, I did not know whether I had seen burial mounds, or temples, or simply a statement of existence.

I also remember a small party of Indians we surprised after swinging round yet another bend; they had plunged into the shallows in pursuit of a bear and were busily hacking at its head with axes, but this only provoked the animal to greater explosions of fury, which seemed (before the current swept the entire scene from our sight) more likely to end in the death of the hunters than a meal for their village.

A mile or so later, when we passed the village itself, I saw how welcome this meal would be. While the children ran out to wave at us, the mothers and elders hesitated beside a smoking heap of rubbish; they were almost skeletal with hunger, and responded to my cry of friendship with empty stares from empty eyes.

My fellow passengers paid little attention to such things, but continued to doze or chat and play at cards, and variously to amuse one another. For my own part, I expected to encounter more melancholy scenes for as long as there was daylight to see them, but at sunset they were hidden from me because a thick fog suddenly descended on the river. If we had been in a lane near my home at the Hispaniola we would have been compelled to stop, for fear of wandering into the marshes. Here we did not have the luxury of a delay—the river would not allow it. Here we steered as close to the bank as our captain felt was safe, while our oarsmen kept their oars continually buried in the water in order to slow down as much as possible and in this way hope to avoid any serious accidents.

Even so the current continued to drive us forward at a steady pace, our lights making so little impression on the universal grayness—except to turn it into a kind of soup—that we soon felt entirely removed from the world. Our voices were fog. Our breath was fog. Our footsteps to and fro on the deck were fog, and left dark prints to show where we had been. Our clothes and hair and skin were fog.

In such a peculiar state, where we felt at once safe (because we were hidden from enemies that might be following us) and vulnerable (because we could not see the way ahead), Natty and I decided we would pass our second night on the
Angel
in much the same way as we had passed our first—by settling down near the stern of the vessel with Joshua and Anne Marie for company. Because our talk the previous night had ended a little awkwardly, I hoped we would eat our supper and fall asleep without much ado. But Joshua, who seemed emboldened by a day spent wandering among our fellow passengers, decided we would not close our eyes immediately and instead listen to a story. He had heard it, he said, in his home on the Missouri, and when I repeat it now I shall use as many of his words as I can remember.

“There was…” Joshua began, then paused to make himself more comfortable, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Anne Marie, while Natty and I remained on our blankets close by. “There was,” he eventually began again, “an old river-man known to my father since they were both youngsters, fifty or more years ago. Name of Allbright. Charles William Allbright. He was a good worker, often away for weeks or months at a stretch, on keelboats much like the
Angel
. As an oarsman to begin with, then mate, then captain. He was always first to wake and last to sleep, if he slept at all. But always cursing the natural lot of man, as well, and dreaming of easier ways. How he found a wife remains a mystery, even to those who knew him best. How he kept this wife was another puzzle, seeing she was very pretty and they lived so much apart, with him afloat on the river and her abiding at home.

“Still, there was never much trouble between them, no hard words or jealousies. And the early part of their life rolled by happily enough. Rolled like the river you might say, carrying all before it. Until a spring ten years ago, when I was still a boy but old enough to understand most things.

“Old Captain Allbright was setting off south for the umpteenth time, taking the same route we're traveling now, sliding down to New Orleans. Enjoying the flow of the current, and the cooler air at this time of the year, because he knew that coming back would be hard and slow, and maybe not in time for Christmas and the holidays with his pretty wife.

“A dozen miles out from home, only a dozen miles, one of his crew spies this barrel floating in the water. An ordinary barrel, all beat up but sturdy enough, with iron hoops and a bung tight in the hole. And always sitting bolt upright, bobbing when the current bobbed. Looking like it was paying attention, my father said. I remember that especially.

“The crew all thought so, at any rate, and they told their captain as much. They didn't enjoy being watched, they said, not even by a barrel, which had no business seeming so alive, as if it had eyes and a brain, and no business keeping up with them either, and staying level all the time. But Captain Allbright, he didn't mind it. It was a barrel, see, that was all. Just a dumb barrel. So how could it be watching them? That was their minds playing tricks. And how could it be following? That was only the wind and current.

“The men knew their captain cared for them but they weren't having this. They said the captain was wrong, it did have a mind of its own, this barrel, and to prove it they made a few tries to sink it—and every time it just floated up again, whenever they gave it a wallop. Ducked and dived and floated up again.

“They didn't like that one bit. And they disliked it even more when things started happening, unlucky things, with that barrel still bobbing alongside them watching it all.

“First they had a brush with a big old tree trunk. Hit them fair and square and stove in the prow on the port side and killed a man. Killed him when the water burst in. Drowned him when he was sleeping, quick as you like.

“Then another man dead, this time in a storm, a raging storm that followed them just like the barrel was following, and sat overhead like it meant to frighten them all to death, if it couldn't throw down one of its sparks and see them off that way. Which it did. Threw down one of its sparks and hit one of the oarsmen. Set him on fire like a stick.

“Then a third man dead, when this storm cleared away. Accident with a rope this time, tying up to some jetty somewhere. Could have done it asleep with a crew like that—but no, not paying attention, not concentrating. A slip, and the next thing you know there's a man overboard, drowned in the water with a rope around his heels, and that barrel still bobbing along beside them, just bobbing along.

“So that was three of them dead in three weeks, which was too much bad luck by anyone's counting, much too much. And the men went to the captain again and said there must be an explanation. But what could it be?

“Why, they knew the explanation already. The barrel. That was it. The barrel that stayed with them like it was Jonah himself. Or the Devil. So after that they pure and simple had to sink it, despite what the captain said. Sink it or better still catch it. So they could get rid of it, like. Burn it or break it up or anything. Just as long as they didn't have to watch it any more, or think it was watching them.

“And this time they did catch it. They caught it with a lasso, some cowboy did that, one of the passengers. He caught it, and he hauled it in like a catfish, except it was turning over and over in the water like it wanted to get away, which catfish never do. But it couldn't get away, see, it was caught tight, so pretty soon they pulled it on deck and opened it up, and…”

“And…” said Natty, because Joshua had paused as his father must have paused when he first told his son the story.

“And what do you think?” said Joshua. “They all stood around on deck while someone flipped off the end of the barrel, and the water poured out, and they heard something. Something crying.”

“From inside?” said Natty, because Joshua had paused again.

“From the captain,” he went on. “From Captain Allbright, my pa's friend. Him who said it was nothing, this barrel, but who turned out to be…”

“A liar.” Natty leaned forward and the lamp that hung closest to us sent its light into the fog-jewels sprinkled through her hair, making them shine.

“Worse,” said Joshua.

“Worse,” echoed Anne Marie.

“A murderer,” I said, without quite knowing how this might be so.

Joshua lifted his face.

“No need to look guilty,” he said, which puzzled me.

“I'm not guilty,” I told him. “Why should I be guilty?

“We're all guilty of something.”

I wanted to make him pause again, so I could ask him what he was talking about exactly. The necklace—or something else? But I wanted the end of his story even more.

“So what was the captain's?” I said. “What was his guilt?”

“His baby,” said Joshua. “They thought there was nothing in the barrel, but there was a baby. The captain's baby. A little boy. He knew it was his, because of the marks and moles on him. And dead as a nail and naked as the day he was born, which can't have been long before, because he was still very small, and all folded up like he was still in his mama.”

“Who killed him?” asked Natty, which I might have done myself, had I not been distracted by Anne Marie, who I noticed was now very bright-eyed and cheerful, urging her beloved to finish.

“No one had killed it,” Joshua said. “Or rather, nature killed it. Not a father or mother or any human hand.”

“But why the barrel?” I asked, finding my tongue again. “Why all the unhappiness and the bad luck?”

“I shall tell you,” said Joshua, and leaned backward against the rail.

“The baby—” he said, when he was ready. “The baby had been born alive as far as anyone knew. A beautiful baby son born to Captain Allbright and his pretty wife, that is. But he died soon after, being too good for this world. Whereupon the captain returned to his work on the river thinking to occupy his mind. But not thinking, or not thinking enough, how his wife might need him to stay at her side and comfort her.

“So that was it. They buried their boy, and soon after the captain said good-bye and he set off south on his keelboat. And what did she do, the lady Allbright? She visited the graveyard, and dug up their one and only, and put him in a barrel, and sent him after his father.

“She wanted to punish him I guess. Well, she managed that and no mistake. She punished him by sending her sorrow after him, and she punished him by keeping too much alone while he was away and by wandering in her wits. By letting sadness hunt her down, in fact, just like the captain was hunted down. In the end, when he picked up his baby all dripping and cold from the barrel, what do you think he did?”

Joshua asked the question but did not want our suggestions. “He spoke to his oarsmen,” he went on very quickly. “He told them to steer for the river-bank, and when they got there he went ashore, and said he was going home now and they must choose someone else to be their captain.”

Joshua paused once more and this time Natty took the chance to cut in. “So he found his way home after that?” she said. “And did he live happily ever after?”

“My father never spoke about it,” came the answer.

“The country's very difficult,” I said. “We saw that ourselves.”

“But you found a way through,” said Joshua. “It is possible—you proved it.”

“We had help,” I told him. “It wasn't the same for us.”

“And yet we all have some guilt chasing after us,” said Joshua, as if logic told him this followed exactly. His voice was somber now the heat of his story had faded, and all the nervousness I had seen in him yesterday was gone.

“Why do you say that?” I asked, and saw Natty frowning because she heard the change in our voices.

“Well,” said Joshua, peering into the fog which had thickened so much it even wound around the lamp hanging outside our captain's wheelhouse and made the wick hiss as it burned. “I saw those men following you. We all saw them. They did not—” Joshua hesitated, and swallowed with a little click—“they did not look as though they wanted to shake your hand. Or anything to do with friendship.”

“Not exactly,” I conceded. “But that doesn't mean I feel guilty.”

Joshua shrugged again, as though he had already achieved what he wanted and could afford to back down. I had thought him so humble when Natty and I first saw him, sitting with his girl beside the slaves. Now I felt sure he had played me, and for a reason I did not yet understand.

“Very true,” he said eventually. “Perhaps you don't. But never mind—we've passed some time together, haven't we? We've eaten our supper and we've digested it, and we've dispensed with an hour that might have been tedious otherwise, and now we can fall asleep.”

As he said the word “asleep” he dropped his head, whereupon Anne Marie instantly closed her eyes and put her head against his shoulder.

“Indeed we can,” I replied, rather formally, because I did not want to think my day had ended with a quarrel.