Those Across the River

CODA

THE ONE WHO had been poisoned and shot went back to the burned-down plantation and became a man again. The woman had run off towards the river and he had let her go; they were just choosing where to die now. He pumped water from the well and washed his body and his mouth and nose, his eyes, but nothing helped. He couldn’t stop sneezing, and every sneeze made his legs go numb, made him grind his teeth as the bullet moved agonizingly in his spine. Only the fact that it was silver and too hard to mushroom had prolonged his life; the hole in him was deep, but not wide. It was hard to know if the bullet or the wickedness Marse’s great-grandchild had splashed on him would end his life, but it was ending.

The rain was cool, but not freezing.

He would like to die under a roof, but the only building left with a roof was the third slave shack, and he wasn’t going to die there.

No.

Instead he dragged a crude chair from the ruins of the overseer’s house and set it on the charred foundation where the library had been in the Big House. All that was left were the chimneys and the bricks of the columns, standing over the ruin like ribs. He got the foul, wet horse blanket and wrapped it around himself, and sat there wishing for a cigar.

He resolved not to get up again.

Not for water.

Not for food.

Not to change the position of his miserable back.

It rained harder.

He rested his chin against his chest.

He hoped the buzzards wouldn’t knock him down when they fed.

He wanted the next white man on this land to see his bones upright in this chair, and to wonder why he had no crown.

AT LEAST, THAT’S how I imagine it.

My name is Frank Nichols, and I’m an old lush now.

Everything I told you about happened a long time ago and isn’t important anymore, not to you. The war I fought in before I knew any better was dwarfed by another war, which was fought in some of the same places, against some of the same people. The town I lost my one true love in has ceased to exist. I looked for Whitbrow in a Rand-McNally Atlas in 1948 and found that Megiddo Woods now extend past the river, almost to Morgan. Chalk Ridge is gone, too.

I never opened the boxes my aunt Dottie had in the cellar—I’ ll never know if they were full of her dead husband’s clothes, old dolls and perfume bottles, Confederate dollars, gold bullion or, what I suspected and perhaps feared, letters from my mother.

I never wrote about the slave revolt, or about Savoyard.

I got one old friend killed and made another think I’m a murderer.

Things got less fantastical in Chicago, but I wouldn’t say they improved.

Apparently I tried to sleep with my little brother’s fiancée, but the fact that I don’t remember doesn’t make that any better. Then I went on a tour of Northern cities, losing jobs and going to the drunk tank until I had to come back here. My brother forgave me, I think, but he married that girl so there’s no question of me staying there. I got pictures of the kids. But they’re not kids now.

Somehow I turned into an old man. I got arthritis in my hips so now I go with a cane. Not a fancy walking stick; just a cheap, sad bastard cane with a rubber tip. I don’t need it every day, but more and more of them, especially in the winter.

And, on top of everything else, I’m ugly now.

Not much hair on my head, but plenty in my ears.

Thick, boozy face and veiny nose.

Sloshy gut.

But she doesn’t see that.

Eudora, I mean.

You see, she’s in Chicago.

I was sitting in Wicker Park, off the wagon again, drinking my government check, eating free peanuts and smoking, trying to ignore a fat younger guy telling Polack jokes. I was thinking about telling him I was a Polack and asking him to step outside; he would have creamed me, but he might have just shut up. There’s no glory in fighting old lushes in Wicker Park, unless you’re one, too. Then maybe you can be king of the old lushes.

Anyway, he was getting to the part where Kowalski holds his hand in front of his face and dares his coworker to hit it with a shovel when I looked across the street and saw her.

My Dora.

My wife.

Still in her twenties, by the look of it. Wearing a thin headscarf and sunglasses like the girls wear now. Holding hands with that boy. That damned mulatto boy. It was daytime. She took her sunglasses off and I saw her eyes.

I rushed out of there, but they were gone.

That was two weeks ago.

I thought I imagined it, but I’ve seen her twice more since then.

Once, on the el, in the next car, with her hand pressed to the glass.

Once, when I was walking past the cemetery, across traffic from her. Always when I can’t get to her.

But she’s always looking right at me.

And she doesn’t see an old man.

I can tell that.

She sees what I was.

What she can make me.

She’s coming for me.

I saw the moon today and it was waxing, better than three-quarters along, hanging there in the daytime like its own ghost. Jet contrails stretched a lazy A that just missed enclosing it.

It will be full by the weekend.

And Eudora will come.

I have this idea that she will ask me a question, and the question has to do with how many legs I wish to go on.

I had better figure out what I’m going to say.