Cy in Chains Read online

  Cy had always hated Stryker, just as he hated all white men, but at this moment, he could have shaken Stryker’s hand.

  Prescott got to his feet. His nose was running blood, and when he wiped it on his sleeve, he winced. “Nigger broke my nose!”

  “Didn’t I tell you to shut up?” Stryker said. “Get over here and help me.” He went to West and began pulling the long chain through the ring in the middle of his leg irons. In a moment, the boy’s body was free.

  “Onnie, right now!” Stryker cried. “Help me pick him up.”

  “Not me!” Prescott shouted back. “Not after—”

  “Damn it!” Stryker growled. “I said to help me!”

  “I won’t. You can’t make me. I’m never gonna touch a nigger again. I’m done with all this.” Prescott turned his back and limped toward the line of chained men, some of whom hadn’t even bothered to glance up from their toil.

  Stryker made a move toward him.

  “Let him go,” Cain said. Then he looked at the boys, some huddled away from West’s body, others still lining the top of the embankment. “Didn’t I tell y’all to move?”

  They loaded the equipment onto the wagons and waited. By now, many of the boys were crying. Billy, empty-eyed, had retreated back into his own safe place. Mouse found Cy, and this time Cy didn’t brush him away.

  Finally, Stryker approached the wagons, bearing West’s body in his arms. Behind him trudged Jess, head bowed, Cain holding a pistol on him. Stryker placed the body in one of the wagon beds. Chained again, Cy and the others started their march back to camp.

  Stryker drove the wagon holding West’s body, his eyes straight ahead. Cain had the reins of the other wagon, his horse tied to one side, Jess tied to the back.

  As they shuffled along, no one spoke a word. No one stumbled or broke stride. All the smaller boys kept pace.

  Cy tried to make sense of all that had changed so quickly. It didn’t feel real that West could be dead. One moment alive, shoveling dirt a few feet away from him, and then—a thing lying in the wagon bed up ahead, covered in a piece of oilskin. Just that morning, Cy had hoped Jess might help him plan their escape before it was too late. Now this horror. West dead. And Jess—done for too. Cy was back where he’d started: alone.

  Eighteen

  IT WAS ONLY MIDDAY WHEN THEY CAME INTO the camp. Rosalee appeared from the cookhouse.

  “Mr. Cain, why y’all back so soon?” she asked. “What’sa matter?”

  “There was an accident. One of the boys got hurt bad. He’s dead.”

  “Which boy?”

  “West.”

  Rosalee screamed and started to crumple. When Cain grabbed her, she shook him off and cried, “West? Oh, no! Sweet Jesus, not my child. Not him! Not my boy!”

  Cain shook her. “Get hold of yourself! He ain’t your boy.”

  Rosalee rushed to the wagon and pulled the oilskin away. She screamed again. And again—and again. She scrambled into the wagon bed and knelt beside the body, lifted it, and cradled it in her arms.

  Cain was right behind her. “Get down from there! Get hold of yourself. You’ve seen boys die before. This one wasn’t no different.”

  “No different? He was my son! My own flesh and blood.”

  A hush fell over the camp, as if everyone had stopped breathing.

  West, Rosalee’s son? How is it possible? Cy wondered. How could a mother and son live so close to each other and keep it a secret? But one thing made sense now. Rosalee had kept giving West extra food not because he was her favorite, as everyone had thought, but because he was her son.

  Rosalee clutched West’s body to her bosom. “Why you think I ever come to this hellhole in the first place?” she shouted at Cain. “To be near my child! They made up some lie ’bout him, lookin’ for an excuse to punish him for sassin’ some ol’ white lady what cheated him out of a dime. My little boy, not ten years old, got seven years hard labor. You hear me?” she shouted at the chained black boys all around her. “He just like you! All o’ you—forced here on some lyin’ charges ’cause men like him”—she gestured at Cain—“can’t figure no honest way to make a livin’!”

  “Shut your mouth, girl, before you regret it! You’re beside yourself,” Cain exclaimed, hoisting himself into the wagon bed. “Hush, now! Come down, and I’ll get you your medicine.”

  “I don’t want no more o’ your dope!” she shouted at him. “I don’t want no more of that poison! I already done sold my soul for it, done everything you wanted, so’s I could have it.”

  So it wasn’t liquor, Cy thought. Sorrow for Rosalee welled up in his chest, and this time he didn’t try to stop it.

  “She’s insane,” Cain told Stryker. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

  “I do know what I’s sayin’,” Rosalee cried. “I found out where my boy been sent, and I come ’round, lookin’ for work so’s I could be near him. You was only too glad to hire me. I’d of done anything, anything to stay. And look what it got me! My baby dead from the hoopin’ cough ’cause you too stingy to send for the doctor. And now West! Who kill him?”

  “It was an accident,” Cain told her. “Nobody meant for it to happen.”

  She turned to Stryker. “You? You kill my baby?”

  “Never touched him.”

  “Prescott? Where he?”

  “Prescott the one done it,” Mouse called out. He moved toward the wagon, pulling Cy and the others with him. “West say somethin’ Prescott didn’t like, and he took a shovel and smash West upside the head. I saw everything.”

  “Shut him up!” Cain shouted to Stryker.

  “Where Prescott?” Rosalee cried out. “Where the man who murdered my baby?”

  “Gone,” Cain assured her. “Up and gone. You won’t see him again.”

  “Sheriff got him, then?”

  Cain was silent.

  “No, ma’am, sheriff ain’t got him,” Jess said. All eyes turned on him. “Prescott keep sayin’ West have it comin’. When Mr. Cain tell him to help pick up West body, he wouldn’t. Just walk off. Mr. Cain didn’t do nothin’ to stop him.”

  “He do murder in front o’ all these boys, and you let him go free?” Rosalee cried.

  Cain climbed down from the wagon. “I’ll explain later. This ain’t the time.”

  “How you gon’ explain lettin’ the man what murdered my child go free?” She began to weep again, holding West’s head in her lap and rocking back and forth.

  Cain found Cy in the crowd. “You’re in charge of your gang. Get ’em to their bunkhouse and keep ’em there. Jack, you know what to do with yours.”

  The moment Cy had heard the crack of the shovel against West’s head, he’d fallen into a kind of daze, a distorted dream where things felt both familiar and strange. Now his mind cleared, and he found himself thinking about something that made him sick with disappointment. If he’d been able to convince Jess to make a plan, they might be making a break for freedom this very minute. Prescott was gone, Cain distracted—who could make the boys go to their bunkhouses? Who could keep them from having their way? Forty—no, thirty-nine—boys could take two men whose guard was down, who would never expect a revolt today of all days.

  But there was no plan. Jess had tried the way of prayer, of patient waiting for God to reach down from heaven and set things right. But his God hadn’t shown up, and his rage took over. Cy realized that Jess would have killed Prescott if he’d had the chance. And now he would pay.

  No, there was no plan, but Pete Williams had been right. Fear was the master, not white men with whips, horses, packs of bloodhounds, guns. Get past the fear, and Cy and the others could be free. Or die trying to be.

  Shortly before dark, Stryker came into the bunkhouse and said it was suppertime. In the kitchen, Sudie dished up the food, her eyes and nose dripping. Jess was missing, and Cy guessed he was locked in the icehouse until Cain decided what to do with him.

  After the meal was cleaned up, the boys were ordered to bed. The mi
nute Cy lay down and pulled his blanket over himself, he was asleep.

  The next morning at lineup, a strange white man stood near Cain and Stryker by the cookhouse door. There was no sign of Rosalee. Cain was hollow-eyed and haggard.

  “What happened yesterday ought never to have been,” he began. “That boy should of known better than to sass Mr. Prescott. He was already in trouble yesterday morning, and ought not to have said anything else, no matter how bad he was provoked. So West is partly to blame for what happened to him.”

  Cy wanted to shout that Prescott was nothing but a killer and Cain had let him go scot-free. No one said a word, but all around him, Cy could feel the others’ fury. He glanced at Ring, who had his eyes fixed straight ahead, looking at nothing.

  “That don’t mean that I excuse Mr. Prescott for what he did,” Cain went on. “He let his temper get the better of him. Nobody likes other folks to tell lies on them, but Mr. Prescott lost his self-control. And now he’s payin’. He lost his job because he let his feelings get the better of him.”

  Cy didn’t care a mouthful of spit for Prescott’s feelings.

  Cain looked uneasily down the two lines of boys, almost as if he were expecting some protest. “Mr. Stryker and me buried West last night, so y’all don’t need to worry about that.” He gestured toward the strange man. “This here is Mr. Love Davis. He’s gonna take Mr. Prescott’s place.”

  The man was heavily built, shorter than Stryker and maybe younger, with a bushy black beard. Where had Cain come up with him so quickly?

  “Mr. Davis is a fair man, like me. And he got a more even . . . temperament than Mr. Prescott. So as long as y’all mind yourselves, you won’t have no trouble with him.”

  Davis nodded.

  “In light of recent events, I’ve decided to give y’all a day off,” Cain went on. “You can wash uniforms if you want to or just take it easy. If any of y’all want to get together and have a little service for West, you can. So after you eat, you got the day to yourselves. Can’t any man say I ain’t fair, and more than fair.”

  Midmorning, a few of the boys had their service for West, even though there was no body, no coffin, no preacher, no nothing. Stryker showed up and stood to one side. Cy figured Cain had told him to keep an eye on things, make sure no one “lost his self-control.” Can’t have that in camp, Cy thought bitterly.

  He found himself wishing Jess could be there. He would have the right words to make them feel better, even if those words might not be—exactly true. But Jess was still in the icehouse.

  Cy felt the other boys’ eyes on him. Wouldn’t they be shocked to learn what was really in his mind? But a glance at Stryker, casually rolling a cigarette, told him now wasn’t the time. Still, he had to say something. He was the leader again.

  “We sure gon’ miss West,” he began. “Warn’t no boy in camp could make us laugh like he could. Always had somethin’ funny to say. Always in a good mood. And could that boy eat? I seen him put stuff in his mouth didn’t even look like food—”

  Oscar and Davy laughed, remembering.

  “West was always gnawin’ on some sort o’ root or leaf or berry, or somethin’. And I know some of y’all remember the time he ate them minnows—”

  “Raw,” Oscar said. “And them little clams he found in the creek—made a mess tryin’ to break ’em open with a rock.”

  “And all kind o’ mushrooms,” Mouse added.

  “Miracle he didn’t poison hisself,” Ring said. “He was always lookin’ for somethin’ good to eat—”

  “Because he was always hungry,” Cy said quietly. The second the words were out, he felt nervous. What if Stryker had heard? But the man wasn’t even looking in their direction.

  Cy glanced at the other guys and realized that they agreed with what he had said.

  “Yeah, he was always hungry,” Ring said. “Just like the rest of us. You tell it, Cy.”

  “I still can’t figure what went wrong with West,” Oscar said. “I know somethin’ bad happen to him after he sick. He warn’t never the same after that hoopin’ cough.”

  “It warn’t the sickness that change him,” Ring replied. “It was Pook dyin’.”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” Cy said.

  “’Cause Pook his brother?” Oscar asked.

  “Yeah. Rosalee was West mama, so that made Pook his brother—”

  “Half brother,” Ring corrected.

  “Half brother,” Cy went on. “I reckon Rosalee planned on stayin’ ’round here till West seven years be up, then she could go away, take her boys with her. When Pook die, all that fell apart. West just give up.”

  “Maybe he saw some o’ that stuff when he told his own fortune,” Billy put in. “You know, in the bowl with the blood and water. Scared him, so he wouldn’t tell us ’bout it.”

  Oscar shook his head. “None o’ us ever gon’ know the answers, not till we get up there and be with West on them streets o’ gold.”

  “Yes, Jesus,” Davy agreed.

  “West gone to a better place,” Billy declared.

  Cy wanted to tell them they were wrong. There was no better place, no city called heaven with streets of gold and gates of pearl.

  “Gone right up to the golden throne where Father be sittin’, sendin’ his angels down to bring the dyin’ home to him,” Ring exclaimed.

  “Tell it!” Davy said.

  “Yes, Lord!” Billy shouted.

  They were making too much noise. Cy looked toward Stryker, sure that he would come over and break up their meeting. But Stryker had wandered away.

  Billy’s eyes were shining. “West done gone up to that throne, and bow low before Father God, and he see the four livin’ creatures and the burnin’ seraphim. And there, next to Father, on his own throne, he see Jesus!”

  “Yes, Lord,” Cy heard himself cry with the others. Why? He’d just reminded himself he didn’t believe any of that stuff. He looked into the happy faces of the others and, for a moment, wished that he had what they seemed to have, something to make this hell more bearable.

  “And Father gon’ wipe away all the tears from every eye,” Billy continued, his voice rising. “So I reckon West ain’t cryin’ none now—he ain’t never gon’ cry no more. He lookin’ all around at them green pastures—”

  “That’s enough,” Stryker broke in. They hadn’t noticed his return. “Y’all have had your time, so get back to whatever it is you were doing.”

  Why did the white men always get the last word?

  The next morning before breakfast, Cain had the boys stand in two lines at attention while Stryker brought Jess from the icehouse. His hands weren’t cuffed now, but tied in front. Cain made him stand before them all. Cy had expected that Jess would be whipped again, but the post was not in sight.

  As always, Cain had a speech to make. “Like I said yesterday, while we all regret Mr. Prescott’s losing his temper the other day, we got to keep in mind that West ought not have provoked him. And neither should Jess, here, have taken it into his own hands to judge Mr. Prescott’s behavior.”

  Cain was just getting warmed up. He rocked back on his heels. “I reckon y’all understand a basic principle of incarceration.”

  Mouse whispered at Cy, “What that mean?”

  “Prison,” he whispered back.

  “In a prison environment,” Cain went on, “the prisoners do not correct the officials placed in authority over them. The authorities are mandated by the state to impose correction on those who have broken the law. In other words, Jess had no right to go after Prescott, no matter how he felt about things. We ain’t concerned here with how any of you feel! Y’all got that?”

  A chorus of yessirs.

  Cain looked satisfied. “Two times in recent memory, Jess has showed us all that he don’t like how things are run in my camp. First, he interfered with Mr. Prescott, who was capably handling a runaway state prisoner by the name of Billy. Then, a couple days ago, he showed his displeasure with Mr. Prescott by trying to—infl
ict pain on him. First offense, Jess got the whippin’ he deserved and my stern warning. Second offense, no more warnings. I can’t and won’t tolerate a boy in my camp who won’t obey the rules. Therefore”—he turned to look at Jess—“this fellow gets to learn for himself how they dig coal over in Alabama. That oughtta keep him too busy to mess in things he got no business with.”

  Love Davis came from the horse barn, driving one of the wagons. He stopped next to Cain.

  “Say goodbye to Jess, boys,” Cain directed. “You want to see him again, just do the kind o’ foolish stuff he did, and you can get yourselves a free ride over to Birmingham too.”

  Davis jumped down from the wagon and approached Jess. “Let’s go,” he ordered.

  This whole time, Jess had been calm, his face sad. He moved toward the wagon. Suddenly, Billy raced to Jess and grabbed on to his arm.

  Not again, Cy thought. Billy had already acted crazy twice before, trying to escape on visiting day and then throwing himself at the doctor’s feet when they were sick with whooping cough. Given Cain’s mood, Billy might find himself getting his wish and going with Jess to the mines.

  Screeching, kicking, biting, Billy hung on. Above the racket, Cy heard Jess calling his name. They locked eyes, and Jess called, “Look after Billy, and Mouse too.”

  It took all three white men working together to finally pull Billy off Jess. “Throw this brat in the icehouse!” Cain ordered, and Stryker took Billy away.

  Cain and Davis restored order. Jess climbed into the wagon and sat down. He gazed out sadly at the faces of the other boys.

  Why don’t you fight? Cy wanted to shout. Don’t make it easy for ’em!

  Davis climbed onto the wagon seat and told the horse to go. The wagon went through the gate and down the road. All the boys watched until it was gone. No one besides Billy had protested. All the other boys had allowed the white men to send Jess away to the mines and to death.