Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [75]
“Why, Mist’ Forrest,” Catharine said, unsmiling. “You welcome to come in.”
He thumbed the latch up and went into the yard, pulling the gate shut behind him with a little snap. As he approached Catharine stood up, still holding the baby in her bosom, turned and went into the house, leaving the door open behind her. Forrest glanced back once as he climbed the pair of steps. Matthew and Jerry sat where they were, facing opposite ways in the wagon, immobile as a pair of bronze bookends. The whitewash on the doorjamb was still tacky when he touched it with his thumb. He went inside and shut the door behind him.
The first room smelled piney from the new boards. Catharine sat on a ladder-backed chair, cradling the baby to the breast. She aimed her chin at a stuffed settee. Forrest took off his hat and sat down awkwardly. Horsehair pricked his back through the ticking. He had bought an item or two of secondhand furniture and had others made at his place on Big Creek. This was the fanciest seat in the house and the least comfortable. Forrest craned his neck this way and that. The back door was open and he could see a few green shoots of something or other coming up from the dirt beyond its open frame.
“Where’s Tom and Jimmy,” he said.
“Gone over to the river with some other li’l niggers lives round here.” She looked up at him, her brown eyes catching a gleam from the front window. Forrest pulled his head back as if he’d been slapped.
“They peepen at them boats what carries po niggers downriver,” she said.
Forrest turned his head toward a motion that caught his eye through the back door. A little speckled hen scratched the dirt in the yard.
“Like you ship me downriver to satisfy yo wife,” Catharine said.
Forrest’s hat fell on the floor as he jumped from his seat. He resisted the urge he had to stomp on it, for a grown man looked foolish stomping on his hat. “Goddammit, Catharine!” he said. “I shipped you a whole ten blocks downriver, into a new-built house with glass in the windows and brass knobs on the doors. Goddammit all to the burning tarpits of Hell.”
“Why Mist’ Forrest,” she said. “You carry on cussen thataway, Ole Devil gone tote you off to that Hell you keeps namen and stick you with a pitchfork.”
Forrest stared at her desperately. “Hit’s a hard-hearted woman ever which way I look.”
Catharine lowered her eyes. He felt that some of the fight had gone out of her. She seemed almost calm, though he knew she wasn’t. Her lashes were long and thick, the color of jet. He took a step forward to peer at the infant.
“He looks right stout,” he said, though really he was just an old baby with his eyes shut and his mouth busy pulling on the tit; there wasn’t a whole lot to see about him. “Favors his brother.”
“They favors they daddy.” She raised her head, turning her long graceful neck so he saw her in profile. Her hair was pulled up in her kerchief like a crown. She was looking out the front window now. “That’n out there on the wagon do too,” she said.
Air whooshed out of Forrest’s chest as he dropped back on the horsehair cushion. “His name is Matthew.”
“Ain’t no matter to me what his name is. That boy is witched if you ax me. Don’t speak, don’t move, don’t hardly breathe. What I want with a half-grown boy round here?”
“Chop wood. Draw water.” Forrest took a long breath. “He ain’t got nowhar else to go.”
“He a nigger, ain’t he? He a slave, ain’t he? He bound to go where you sends him,” Catharine said. “Ain’t he?”
“Listen to me.” Forrest leaned forward, elbows sliding over his knees. He searched the new planks of the floor for splinters. He felt a surge come over him of the kind he felt in any situation where there was nothing to do but throw down all he had. “His mother is dead. I never did own her. I couldn’t buy her. I was liven on my own then, traden in mules. I wasn’t with her but the one time. She got sold for a fancy girl down to New Orleans. They wasn’t no use in me thinken about it. Then she up and died lately and somebody sent word. I don’t know why they bothered. I don’t know how they