Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [126]
“And you don’t know?”
“How would I know? Am I soldier or a saddle-maker? White man or a nigger? A body can’t be both, can they? Not both of those things jumbled up together?”
Henri cocked an eyebrow at him. “You might want to try just being a man, and never mind the rest of it.”
Matthew ducked his head. “It’s different for you.”
Well, that was true, Henri thought. Or maybe it was just half-true.
“I hadn’t seen such a lot of Willie lately,” he remarked.
“He’s keeping him back.” Matthew raised his pistol sharply, sighted it down the empty road, then lowered it again to his lap. “So he’ll be safe.”
Henri considered. It could be true. Forrest might indeed have grown more solicitous of his only son, since his brother Jeffrey had been killed in the pursuit of A. J. Smith.
“That’s his Momma wants him safe,” Henri said. “Forrest has got fighting blood. He wants his blood to fight.”
“If I’m his blood,” Matthew said, “he never has claimed me.”
“He has,” Henri said. “A time or two. I’ve heard him.”
“If I’m his blood,” Matthew said, “then why would he stick me in an old nigger shack at the bottom of Memphis? Where he slips around at night to fuck that nigger wench who plays like she’s my momma though she ain’t. Fucks the wench like she was a dog.”
“Wait a minute.” Henri raised a hand to dam the flow of ugly words. Benjamin was motionless on his pallet of sacks; only his eyes darted, beneath closed lids, tracking whatever he saw in his dreams … Henri considered the Memphis raid, when Forrest had fallen behind them on Beale Street. In his inward eye he saw the woman with those little boys, recalled the liquid grace of her movement. Son. Dark honey in her voice. Why don’t you hold the ginnal’s hoss? The thing that hadn’t made sense then did now. He could see the woman and Forrest inclining toward each other like a pair of silhouettes cut from black paper.
“Does he do her like she was a dog?” He waited.
“No. I don’t guess so.” Matthew looked at the ground between his dangling feet. “It’s like he can’t get enough of her.” He raised his head to the smoke-stained horizon. “Like she can’t get enough of him.”
Henri followed his eyes to the smoke. The dots in the air across the river must be buzzards.
“They act like they love each other.” Matthew spat.
“Well,” Henri said. “I suppose that’s not much use to you.”
“It’s not much use to nobody,” Matthew said. “You know he’ll never claim the sons he got with her.”
Henri looked away up the hill. There was no argument with that, he knew.
“He claimed you once,” he said. “I heard him do it.”
Matthew looked at him.
“The day Sam Green got killed.”
“Oh, that,” Matthew said. “Well, he’ll call anybody Son. He’s probably called you that before.”
Henri reached around in his memory. It might be true; he wasn’t sure.
“You ever hear him say a thing he didn’t mean?”
Matthew stared at the dirt between his feet. His right hand clenched the handle of his empty weapon. “But he never thinks,” Matthew said. “He never thinks about how it might be like for me.”
“You might be right as far as that goes,” Henri admitted. “If he got all tied up thinking thoughts like that he wouldn’t be able to do like he does.”
“Oh yes,” Matthew said. “Do and ride on and never look back.”
“Listen,” Henri said. “He won’t claim you like he does Willie. You’re not headed for a bunk in the big house when all this is done. I know that as well as you. That won’t happen in your time, not anywhere in this country. But you’re not headed back to slavery time either.”
Matthew looked up at him sharply. “How do you know what’s going to happen.”
Everything has already happened, Henri thought, but he knew it wouldn’t help to say that.
“If we’re not headed back to slavery,” Matthew said, “then what are we fighting for?”
“Oh,” Henri said. “You think I don’t ask myself that every day?” He had begun to laugh and couldn’t stem the tide of it any more than if he had been