I’d been in prison close to a year when a work gang captain at Little Rock told me he’d sure be sorry, Ed, if Florida claimed you before you boys go out in March to bust the sod because for a horse thief you’re a good man with a spade and an inspiring example to these other criminals. When no word came from Florida I was rented for hard labor. The leg chains were unshackled and the guards rode up and down with whips and rifles. The farmers worked the gangs like beasts of burden, gave us rotten grub and very little of it. The fields were mostly in the river bottoms, with no bridge nor ferry for many, many miles, so any man who could swim to the far side would have at least one day’s head start on the guns and bloodhounds.
Worried about my family, I was desperate to escape. One fine morning I saw my chance and ran off through the cornstalks, along with a bull nigger named Frank and a scrawny halfbreed, Curly. We had a good jump before the first guard yelled and started shooting. At the river I swam underwater, kept ducking as I angled across. Halfway over, Curly took a bullet under the shoulder but his natural-born viciousness gave him a kicking spurt that carried him to where we could run in and haul him out of range.
Curly was goose-bumped blue with cold and bleeding bad, in no shape to go further. “Should of left me drown in peace,” he snarled. His eyes darted, following our expressions like a card sharp, knowing we knew he was certain to betray us as fast as they twisted that bad shoulder up behind him. Curly’s life luck had run out, with nothing good headed his way-he knew that, too. We would have to silence him, as he would have done to us without hesitation. And so he jeered at what we must be thinking, and cursed us vilely while he still had life. He wanted to provoke us, get it over quick. “Fuckin idiots,” he complained bitterly, jerking his chin toward the shouts across the river, but he meant us, too, and all of humankind while he was at it, having the freedom of nothing left to lose. That mean skunk had grit.
Out of respect for Curly’s feelings, we went off a ways while we discussed his fate, and Frank said, “Boss, we just ain’t got no choice.” I said, “All right, go to it.” I knew how hard it was sure to be without a knife or club, and I did not have the character required to hold under the river current a man who had risked his life with us only minutes before. Frank looked surprised I would admit that but he felt the same. “In front of company, too,” I added, pointing at the knot of men across the river. What we decided was, we would duck this thorny problem-leave him where he was and keep on going. And so we said sorry and so long after trading a lot of jabber about panning for gold in Oregon, which never fooled ol’ Curly for a minute.
Our first job was to hunt up two good horses and some common clothing. That afternoon we scouted a big farm, waiting till dusk for our chance to jump the homesteader when he went out back of the barn to feed his hens. That German was real happy to saddle up both of his nags and fork over his fine German revolver and canvas kit for bullet molds and powder, since we all agreed he had no further use for ’em. When Frank frowned evilly, feeling left out, the farmer asked fearfully if “your nigra” might like a packet of smoked ham with some nice cooked grits thrown in. I had to smile at that. Scowling blackly, so to speak, my partner growled, “I ain’t nobody’s nigra,” but after all the horrible grub these tight-fisted farmers had been giving us, his stomach told him to shut up, take the damn packet. “He’s his own nigra,” I advised the German, who uttered a frantic bray not much like laughter. His nerves let go on him, I reckon.
In days to come we were to learn that while attempting our escape we had been struck by bullets in the head and drowned, according to “the wounded and recaptured convict, an accomplice of Watson and the Negro.” Maybe that’s what Curly told ’em (“Breeds can’t be counted on even to lie,” Frank said), but more likely the warden was trying to make us think no one was after us while alerting lawmen all over the West. I regretted Mandy’s grief over her husband’s demise but could not help it. There was no way to get word to my family.
Having cautioned our benefactor not to leave his farm until next day lest we return in ugly mood, we rode out at nightfall toward the west, having craftily mentioned in the German’s hearing that we were off to Oregon. We lost our hoof prints in a stream, then circled out wide and crossed a pinewood before turning back east toward the Tennessee state line.
Mostly Black Frank was silent as a knothole. When I asked him finally why he talked so much, he grinned, a little sheepish, saying he was grieving in advance for the faithless woman whom he meant to murder. He had tracked her “sweet man” to Arkansas-that was how he ended up in federal prison-and now he was headed home to Memphis to finish up the job. “Man got his honor to think about, Mist’ Jack,” he said. (For a fugitive, a new identity made sense. I had already changed my name to E. Jack Watson.)
“To err is human, to forgive divine,” I preached, thinking not to confuse this teaching with the news that I was on my way to South Carolina to kill my father.
“Well, maybe I might forgive that nigguh bitch after I got her good and dead but I ain’t promisin.” We chuckled a good while over that one.
Scavenging, traveling at night, we rode toward Memphis. But we were fugitives and one of us was white; in Memphis, we would draw too much attention. A nigra in a white man’s company was one thing but a white drifter in niggertown was quite another. Not that I didn’t trust this man. I did. All the same, my destination and my plans were my own business. If Frank got captured knowing where Watson might be headed, the law was duty bound to whip it out of him.
Frank and I had talked a lot about white men and blacks. If a black man sasses me-well, I won’t tolerate it, I told him. But as far as joking, passing the time of day, making sure he gets his feed and some fair treatment, I believe I can say I have done better by the nigras-or coloreds or darkies, or whatever Mandy calls ’em-than most of those damn-Yankee hypocrites who agitated so hard for emancipation, then abandoned ’em after ’76 and got so many killed when they turned their backs on their own Reconstruction.
That detachment of Union soldiers quartered at Edgefield in my boyhood-hell, those bluecoats had no feel for nigras, besides being so scared of the hating faces of our home people. They wanted so bad to get along that they cat-called louder than the townfolks at those gussied-up blacks in yeller boots who had the vote and called themselves Americans. The bluecoats never raised a hand to stop the Regulators, not even after a sniper shot a bluecoat, left him kicking in the dust on Court House Square. Their officer never stepped into the square, much less organized his men to hunt the killer, although he probably knew as well as everybody else that it was Will Coulter.
We parted company at the Black River. “Well, Frank, good luck,” I said abruptly at the fork, turning my horse off toward the north. I always thought Frank Reese was pretty hard and I still do, but plainly I took him by surprise and hurt his feelings if he had any. He didn’t answer and he didn’t wave, just sat his horse in the deep shadow of the river woods and watched me go. He wasn’t sulking, either. He expected no better out of life. As he once told me, matter-of-fact, “I ain’t nothin but a damn ol’ nigger. I got nothin comin.”
But this man and I had escaped together, we had swum the river. He wasn’t just any old nigger, he was my partner. I rode back, stuck my hand out, wished him all the best. First time in my whole damned life I ever offered my hand to a black man. And he didn’t take it, not till he looked me over and even then there was an awkward pause. When he finally produced a limp cool hand, he let me do the shaking and that riled me.
I rode away but in a while I turned to see if Reese was still there under the trees. He hadn’t moved. His face looked like a block of hard dark wood. I waved but he never twitched, not even to touch his hat brim. I rode back. I warned him how that kind of insolence might draw attention in Memphis, where the law would be on the lookout for a fugitive. If he wanted a fresh start in life, he could ride southeast to Columbia County, Florida, where my friend Will Cox might find him work. I was careful not to say that I might turn up there myself before the year was out.
He nodded but he didn’t thank me, didn’t even answer. I had nothing more to say, yet I didn’t go. We sat our horses by the river in the cool spring wind, watching long strings of brown cranes coming up across the country from the south. I reckon we were awaiting something that might mend our mood. Finally, I said, “Well, so long, Frank,” and turned my horse away. I never looked back. Maybe that man lifted his hat, maybe he didn’t.