A hard wind searched through roadside trees, cracking cold limbs. Over the rushing of blown leaves, fragments of voice commanded me to halt. When I whirled to defend myself, the rifle’s weight swung me off balance. I fell hard on the frozen road.
A hard-veined black hand set down a water bucket and retrieved the fallen musket as I groped for it. When I clambered to my knees, Tap Watson backed away a little, brushing earth off the barrel, checking the load. “What you doin wit yo’ daddy’s shootin arn? What you runnin from? What’s dem tears fo’?” The old man squinted in the direction of the ruin. “You knowin somethin ’bout dat shootin over yonder? Las’ evenin, and again dis mornin?”
I shook my head, reaching out to take the gun. “None of your business, Tap.”
“Oh Lawd, Mist’ Edguh.” He took his hat off, bent his head, but would not return the gun. “O Lawdy Lawdy!” Tears shone on his cheekbones, which looked like dark wet wood in the cold sunrise. “Been leavin dese few greens in dat place over yonder. You folks needin any?” He tossed his nearlimp croker sack against my chest. Astonished, I made no attempt to catch it. It flopped onto the frozen dust between us.
Tap raised the musket, waving the muzzle in the direction of the ruin. “We’s goin back up yonder. Got to look.”
“You threatening me, Tap?” I picked up the sack he had dared toss at my chest.
“Nosuh. I b’lieve you is threatin me, Mist’ Edguh.” He waved the gun again. “Get on now. I gots to tell dem at de Co’t House. Gunfire late last evenin, den another shot dis mornin. Gots to tell ’em how I seen dis boy Mist’ Edguh Watson runnin off from dere just now totin his daddy’s shootin iron, which his daddy ain’t allowed to haves back in de firs’ place.”
I went ahead of him up the red road. “A black man’s word won’t mean much against mine. Just get you in bad trouble, Tap.”
“Barrel still warm, Mist’ Edguh. Sposin I telled ’em dat?”
“It won’t be warm by the time you get there. Anyway, it’s very dangerous, messing into white men’s business.” No answer came, only a slowing of the scuff of boots on the frozen clay. What would the Regulators do to any nigger who raised a weapon to a white man? I asked next. A nigger who slung greens at that white man’s chest like he would toss slops to a hog? And threatened to report him to the bluecoats? If Major Coulter got wind of this, Tap Watson would be a stone dead nigger before nightfall.
But of course Tap’s story would be told before the Regulators could shut him up. A loyal nigra, a “good home nigger,” a church deacon swearing on the Bible-who would doubt him? Who would believe Ring-Eye’s stinky son even if he told the truth, that a traitor long ago given up for dead had been caught stealing from his trapline? That Colonel Robert Briggs Watson’s nephew had only gone to get his rabbit back, taking a weapon in case the thief attacked, finding instead the traitor Tilghman, wounded mortally the night before. He had grabbed the gun barrel and the old gun went off. It was an accident.
Wounded mortally? Hold on right there, boy! How you figger it was mortal? You a doctor, boy? Wounded by who? You’d best get your story straight, young feller!
Colonel Robert would deliver a harsh judgment. Was a pilfered rabbit reason enough to kill a starving kinsman? An Edgefieldian, a Confederate officer, a battle hero? Colonel Robert would call it murder.
Oh, I warned you!-I could hear Aunt Sophia now. At Clouds Creek, those “sky-crazed Celts” (Cousin Selden’s term) were sure to seize on this excuse to cast out Ring-Eye’s lineage for good. In the imminence of such injustice came a pounding ache so violent and a vertigo so sudden that I never even realized I was falling.
A black face inset in the gray heavens, mouth working without sound. Darkness came and darkness went. Jack Watson awakened, in grim humor. Panic had given way to a resolve as clear as that still point when, with the wind’s dying, the shattered moonlight on the surface of rough water regathers its shards into one bright gleaming blade. How terrible that blade. How pure and simple.
No one lived near. I rolled up onto my feet so easily and swiftly that the black man stepped back in alarm. Leading the only witness back into Deepwood, I felt strength surge into my step, and every breath renewed me with wild power. I even teased Tap over my shoulder. Hadn’t he only wanted me along because black folks were scared to be alone with corpses? With his contempt for darkie superstitions, Tap would normally be caustic in response. Today he remained silent, and when I turned, he stopped short in the road, then relinquished the musket.
“Dis sho’ly ain’t no nigguh business, nosuh, it sho ain’t.” Mumbling, he took out a bandanna, wiping his neck in the frozen air as he might have done in the hot fields of midsummer. “You too young to be mixed up in dis, Mist’ Edguh.”
“I’m not mixed up in this. Unless you mix me.”
“Ain’t fixin to mix nobody, Mist’ Edguh.”
But it was really me who needed company. When I waved him toward the hole in the west wall he went ahead, then slowed. After a few more steps, he went no further. Having glimpsed what lay inside, he placed his hands over his eyes-“Oh Lawdamercy!”-and fell to his knees as I forced myself to look.
I had not tarried long enough to see the Owl-Man’s body through the musket smoke. It had no head.
Without a tool to chip a grave in the frozen ground, we piled half-burned timbers on the trunk and legs. Tap mumbled prayers. “You was a good man, Cop’n Selden, suh,” he finished, bowing his head. “A very good man. Black folks ain’ gwine fo’get you.”
Standing behind him, I lifted the musket and sighted down the barrel at the gray-frizzed scalp, the bare skin of the crown, the ears, the twitching skin and throbbing pulse, the humble skull. How fragile and transient the bent human seemed, with death hovering so close. One inadvertent twitch of my forefinger, already half numb with cold on the frozen metal. In leading me to kill by accident, Fate had betrayed me. In tempting me to obliterate the only witness, regaining my lost life, was Fate redeeming me?
At the base of my tongue was a quick metallic taste-not the taste of death but the taste of an unholy power to take life. I held my breath as with great care I lifted that numb finger from the worn and shiny lever of the trigger, but not before Tap Watson jerked his head around and stared into the eye behind the hammer.