Читать книгу The Book of Duels - Michael Garriga - Страница 21

Brossie, 14,

Slave on Pelham’s Acres

Standing behind Mr. Reagan, yellow stains on his white-collar shirt, I hold horse reins and move dirt with my toe till the iron and ’bacco rise up to my nose but Marse say, Don’t look away, boy, this is justice, and just this morning as I limp past him, Marse wretch down and catch my arm and heft me up on back of his horse and we thunder off—wind dries the tears and sweat from my fresh-scab skin—we get to the Welcome Home and straightaway I point out that bully foreman, and Marse, he hop down and slap fire from bully’s thin lips, and they tie theyselves with a rope long enough to bind you to a tree as they take your mama away while you cry her name on New Year’s Day—next I know that bully chokes, noise like spurs been put to his side—and when Marse steps back and lashes that whip, something deep below my belly rises—again that whip sings through the air and his shirt dances off his back and he makes a face like some catfish come ashore, with just his eyes Mr. Reagan holds back the other foremen—the black men, all funky from the fields, don’t dare watch but they listen and hunch each time that whip snaps, as if it was a snake in a tree, striking—I’ve never seen a white man beat but just then, holding them reins jelly-jar tight, my palms start to itch to hold that thicker leather, to hear it creak against my fingers, but who I got to beat—the foremen, those slaves, this bully? Myself, I reckon this thrashing’s a thing Marse gotta do but not on me—he ain’t belt me but once and even then like a father might a son—now bully’s shirt come off his skin in sopped rags—white cloth and white skin gone to a boiling red—he lay flat to the ground, still as a rock, save the skin on his back that opens like a wild weeping flower.

I know if he could live long enough, the scars would heal like great stalks of lightning come frayed and burnt beneath his skin, but he will not survive, so the foremen start to yell the slaves back to work and they obey but tonight they will dance and sing—Mr. Reagan, silent as an undertaker, puts his hand on Marse’s sweaty shoulder, who stares at me like some raging bull, breath heaving, and me staring right back with aching palms and desires I can’t yet name.