Cy in Chains Read online

  Cy hated them for that. He hated himself just as much. You’re still yellow, he thought. A kid like Billy got more guts than you.

  Cy took a step back out of his line. He waited for Cain or Stryker to tell him to get back in place, but neither one did. Cy looked at the others. They were all still boys. That was their problem. They thought like boys, acted like boys. Were scared like boys.

  And boys weren’t ever going to get free, no matter how old they got.

  I’s so sick o’ bein’ a boy, Cy thought. Of lettin’ Cain and his men treat me like dirt under they feet.

  A resolve formed in the back of his mind. Small at first, it grew quickly, and it grew so large that it filled his thoughts. This new determination frightened him, but excited him too.

  From now on, Cy Williams promised himself, he would do everything in his power to escape the hell of Cain’s camp. If others wanted to risk it with him, they were welcome.

  Starting now, he was no longer a boy.

  He was a man.

  Nineteen

  IN MARCH, THE TIPS OF TREE BRANCHES BEGAN to show deep red and yellowish green as new leaves sprouted. The first fiddlehead ferns poked through dry leaves on the forest floor. Flocks of robins, passing through to their northern nesting grounds, searched for bugs and worms after early morning rain showers.

  Billy stuck to Cy like tar. He wanted to sleep next to him, work at his side when they went to shovel dirt at the railroad bed, sit next to him at meals. At first, Cy didn’t want Billy hanging around him like a puppy. He wasn’t interested in being a replacement for Jess. But it came to him that Billy’s devotion might be useful when the moment came to escape. What he would need Billy to do—that he couldn’t say. Hell, he didn’t even have a plan yet, so how could he know what part Billy, or any of the other boys, would play in it? Still, it didn’t cost anything to let the kid hang around. Even a puppy has sharp teeth, and it knows how to use them in a pinch.

  Mouse had survived the whooping cough, but what little strength he’d had before was gone. For a while Cain sent him with the road gangs, only to have him collapse after an hour during which he hadn’t accomplished anything. Threats made no difference. Mouse simply couldn’t do hard labor, and Cain finally accepted that. Instead of sending Mouse away, Cain assigned him to help Rosalee and Sudie in the cookhouse.

  Rosalee was in a bad way. Cy knew now that she was drugged. He guessed that Cain kept her doped up so she wouldn’t carry on about losing both her sons. Or maybe she did whatever he wanted in exchange for the next dose of her “medicine.” Maybe that was why she stayed around.

  Cy bided his time, waiting for a plan to come to him.

  Day followed day as the springtime advanced. Dogwood and redbud frosted the woods white and pink. Climbing wisteria covered the tall pines in purple. And life dragged on, dull, hard, unchanging.

  Then a boy in Cy’s gang died—simply died. Darius. Quiet boy, no trouble, did his work without complaining. One morning he refused to get up, even when Stryker and Davis came in and promised a whipping. “I’s done” is all he would say. He wouldn’t leave his bed, eat, or drink. Just lay on his straw tick looking up at the roof of the bunkhouse. Three days later, he was gone.

  A boy didn’t have to come down with a sickness like whooping cough in order to end up dead. Or provoke a white man to kill him. Cy saw that he—any one of them—could die just by deciding that he’d had enough. The longer the boys were Cain’s prisoners, the greater the chance that more of them would give up the way Darius had done.

  In the cookhouse one morning, Cy glanced at Rosalee. All the boys had gone through the line, so she had a moment to herself. Standing over the empty pots of food, Rosalee had fixed her eyes on the table where Cain and his men were enjoying their fried eggs, potatoes, and coffee. Cy saw on her face an expression of such deep, bitter hatred that it startled him. And planted an idea in his brain.

  So Rosalee hated Cain. Of course she did, after what he’d done to her children. The thought grew. Maybe Cy could make her hatred part of his plan.

  The next afternoon at the railroad bed, as Cain was sauntering down the line of chained boys, laughing with the boss man of the other gang, Cy noticed two things: Cain’s pistol and the keys that hung from a metal ring attached to his belt. Cy had been aware of the gun and the key ring every day for as long as he’d been at the camp, but it was as if he were seeing them today for the first time.

  Cain’s pistol. The keys. He had to have them. How to get them?

  Rosalee.

  Cy lay awake that night, and by dawn, he’d decided what to do. The plan sounded crazy, but he couldn’t come up with anything better, and he’d decided that doing something, anything, was better than doing nothing.

  He began the day pretending to have twisted his left ankle so badly that he could hardly walk. Cy put on such a good show that Cain said he could stay in camp and work in the cookhouse with Mouse and the two women. Davis would stay too, to make sure Cy and Mouse didn’t “try anything.” But Cy already knew Davis well enough to be sure the white man would spend the day sitting in the sun whittling and depositing tobacco juice in his spit cup. He wouldn’t show up in the cookhouse until it was time for dinner.

  At breakfast, Rosalee didn’t look drugged, which Cy took as a sign that things would go his way. After the others had left, she put him and Mouse to work scrubbing pots. When they were done, Rosalee told Mouse to go back to the bunkhouse and get some rest. Sudie tidied up around the stove and didn’t even look up when Cy asked Rosalee if he could talk to her outside for a minute.

  The morning was bright with spring sunshine that felt good in the cool air. Over the camp, a turkey buzzard scouted for something to eat.

  They stood beside the door to the cookhouse. “What you want?” she asked him. “I got work to do.”

  Cy had planned his opening. “I’s sorry ’bout Pook and West.”

  “That’s it? I don’t want to think about all that mess, and I don’t need no sympathy from you.”

  Keep going, Cy told himself. “Remember the day Pook let me swing him around? That was fun.”

  Her face softened. “He liked that. You about the only one ever show interest in him.”

  Now Cy realized how to reach her. “I miss West too. He always could make us laugh. He was a good friend, always shared the extra food you give him. We others wasn’t sure where that grub come from, but we was mighty thankful.”

  “Huh! Didn’t make no difference in the end.”

  “Must o’ been right hard for him to see you every day and not be able to let on you his mama,” Cy went on. “I think about that, and it make me miss my own mama. At least West had you close by.”

  “Lot o’ good it done him! Prescott kill him just the same. And Cain let my little Pook die.”

  Cy did his best to look sympathetic. In truth, his heart was racing with excitement. Here was the test: everything depended on his choosing every word carefully.

  Across the yard, he noticed a spot of gold in the middle of the trampled grass. “Hold on a minute,” he said. He walked over to the place and quickly returned with a brilliant yellow dandelion on a long stem. He handed it to the woman. “Pretty, ain’t it?”

  Rosalee held the flower in her palm.

  It was time to take the lead again. “Mr. Cain didn’t do nothin’ for us when we got the hoopin’ cough. I thought he might take better care o’ Pook.”

  She crushed the dandelion in her fist. “His own flesh and blood! Let him die like a dog.”

  “Miss Rosalee, I got to tell you somethin’.” Cy lowered his eyes and tried to look pitiful.

  “What is it?”

  “I’s real scared.”

  “We all scared. Every black man, woman, child—we scared all the time.”

  “I’s scared all us boys is gonna die just like Pook and West, or get sent to the mines like Jess, ’less we can get outta here. I thought the hoopin’ cough was gonna get a bunch more of us, but by the mercy o’
God, we still here.” Cy was grateful he’d learned to lie as if he meant what he said.

  “Oh, yeah! God sho’ done poured out his mercy on y’all!” Rosalee said it like it was a curse.

  Cy pressed onward, testing her. “You can leave.”

  “No, I can’t! I need my dope, and that devil Cain give it to me! You know about laudanum? You start off takin’ jus’ a little, it make you feel good. Help you forget you’s nothin’ but a whore. Then you need a little more, an’ more—”

  “Aw, Miss Rosalee, don’t talk like that. You ain’t a—”

  “Don’t be sorry for me! I knows what I is, and I got jus’ what I deserve.”

  “Naw, you didn’t! You come here to help West. You can get off that stuff. You don’t got to stay here.”

  The woman looked into Cy’s eyes. “I stay here to get even with Cain! There! I said it! You satisfied?”

  Cy could have shouted. He’d been ready to suggest that very thing, and here she had said it for him.

  “What?” she asked him. “Why you lookin’ at me thataway? You gon’ turn me in to Cain now?”

  “Naw! Course not. I feels bad for you. I won’t say nothin’, I promise.”

  Cy glanced around. Sudie wasn’t in sight. He spotted Davis across the yard, sitting in a rickety chair against a pine tree. Sure enough, his whittling knife was out and he was contentedly making a pile of shavings. His jaw worked away at his plug.

  Cy lowered his voice and spoke urgently. “I need to tell you somethin’, but first you got to swear you won’t tell nobody.”

  Rosalee threw him a sharp look. “You tryin’ to trick me? If you is, you better know Cain’d believe my word over yours. I’s still his woman.”

  “It ain’t a trick, I swear! God is my witness.”

  “Since when you believe in God?”

  Cy looked up into the blue sky, dotted with drifting white clouds. “Since Jess talk to me about him,” he lied. “And Jesus, too.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I swear, I ain’t tryin’ to get you in no trouble. Truth is, you could get me in a heap o’ trouble if you let on to Cain what I’s gonna tell you.”

  Rosalee sighed. “It don’t matter. All right. I ain’t gonna tell nobody. Go ’head and say what you got to say. I swear to keep quiet, if that what you need.”

  His heart beat wildly. “Okay. I got a plan to help us boys escape, ’cause if we stay here, we all gonna end up dead or sent off to Alabama and the mines. But to do that, I got to have Cain’s keys.”

  “And—”

  “I need you to get ’em for me without Cain knowin’.”

  “And why would I want to do that?”

  “Like you said. To get even with him! To get . . . revenge.”

  “I might do somethin’ like that just for myself. Why should I help y’all?”

  “Because we all black! So you can do for us what you couldn’t do for West!”

  Rosalee let the crushed flower drop onto the hard-packed earth. She faced Cy, her hands in front of her chest, palms toward him, as if she were trying to push him away. “They’s only one way to get them keys from Cain.”

  Cy lowered his eyes. “I know,” he murmured. “Kill him.” A trickle of sweat ran down his forehead.

  “Stryker and Davis, too,” she said.

  Suddenly everything felt wrong. Here they were, talking about murdering three men. Three white men. It was like a nightmare Cy wanted to escape, make himself wake from. But this was no dream. It was real, and it felt terrible. The only way to freedom was to go through that feeling, no matter how it sickened him.

  “I know they got to die,” Cy said.

  “And who’s gonna do all that killin’?”

  Cy wanted to stop everything this second, go away and pretend it hadn’t happened. But he made himself keep going. “I ain’t got no way to get to Cain. You do. You take care o’ him, I take care of them others.”

  “How?”

  He hadn’t thought of these things, and now wished he had. He made up the plan as he went along. “You and Cain—sleep together sometimes, right?”

  “Yeah. What of it?”

  “One night, while he sleepin’, you can do it.”

  “Kill him?”

  Cy nodded.

  “How?” Rosalee asked again.

  “Knife. Pistol make too much noise.”

  Rosalee’s head drooped. “I always knew my life would end up like this! Hooked on dope, white man’s whore, and . . . a killer.”

  Cy couldn’t let her think of those things, not yet. “Kill him, take his keys, and come get me. Unlock me, and I go take care of Stryker and Davis. They be ’sleep too, and I sneak in and finish ’em with Cain’s pistol ’fore they knows what hit ’em.”

  “I never figured you for a murderer!” Rosalee looked toward the green pine woods. “You just never know what a man might do.”

  Yeah, a man. “I don’t wanna be no murderer,” Cy said, “but I can’t figure no other way.”

  “Say we do manage it. What then? How you gonna get all them boys away from here? Where y’all gonna go? How far you think you make it in them uniforms? They’d get every one of you in a day or less.”

  He had thought about that during his long, sleepless night. “Cain got regular clothes stashed away somewhere. Get the fellows into ordinary pants and shirts, divide ’em into groups, send ’em different directions, tell ’em to find some colored folks to help ’em. At least some of ’em would have a fightin’ chance to get away.” He paused, determined to make himself look both sad and serious. “Anyway, I rather be dead tryin’ to get away from here than stay and die for sure.”

  “What about me? After I kill a white man, where can I go? They get me too, and then you gon’ see me hangin’ from the end of a rope!”

  “We got to take the chance. Somebody could hide you—help you get far away from here.”

  “I ain’t got no friends. I ain’t got—nobody.”

  “When my daddy was here, he tell me about a woman—Aunt Miriam. You know her?”

  “Heard tell of her.”

  “Where she live?”

  “Why you want to know?”

  “’Cause when we escape, that’s where I’s going.”

  “You? How ’bout all them others?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You better know! You got to do more than unlock them boys’ chains. Most of ’em be as helpless as chickens outside the coop.”

  She was right, but he didn’t want to think about that. “We can get it figured out.”

  “I bet.”

  Cy studied the ground, where green grass shoots poked through the red soil, despite being trampled by many feet. “Will you do it?”

  This was the most important question he would ever ask anyone in his life. He was halfway hoping Rosalee would laugh in his face and tell him to forget all about it.

  “It ain’t much of a chance,” Rosalee said.

  “I know. But it is a chance.”

  “Maybe you right. When I think of what Cain did to my babies . . .”

  “So?”

  She nodded, and Cy’s knees felt like jelly.

  “When?”

  “Sooner the better, ’fore I lose my nerve.”

  “Tonight?”

  “You crazy? Naw, I got to have time to think. Tomorrow.”

  “All right.”

  Rosalee glanced around the camp. “We best get back to work.”

  Work didn’t seem important anymore, but Cy helped her sweep the cookhouse. Then Rosalee sent him to “take care o’ his twisted ankle.”

  He limped past Davis, who glanced up at him, then sent a stream of tobacco juice flying onto the grass. His knife never stopped scraping the pine stick he held in his thick fist. Was it possible that sometime soon, Cy would put a bullet through his brain?

  Of course it wasn’t. It ain’t gonna work, Cy thought as he headed into the bunkhouse. He would find Rosalee later and tell her to forget it.
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  She’d have changed her mind by then anyway. No one in their right mind would think seriously about trying to carry out such a hopeless plan.

  Twenty

  FROM THE SECOND CY ENTERED THE BUNK HOUSE and found Mouse asleep, time slowed way down. Cy lay down beside Mouse and wished he could sleep, too, but that was impossible. When he closed his eyes, he saw foul images of blood and spattered brains. He fought them off by remembering all that Cain and his henchmen had done. He thought of the starvation, whippings, and backbreaking work. The humiliation. The sentence of death in the coal mines. Murder. Now the white men would pay, and he, Cy, a black man, would collect.

  He lay there until Davis stuck his head in and said that dinner was ready. Cy woke Mouse, and they went to eat, but when the food was put in front of him, he couldn’t swallow even a mouthful. Rosalee served up the beans and potatoes impassively. The blacks of her eyes were as small as pinpoints.

  That afternoon, Cy did sleep, deeply and dreamlessly at first, but he woke in a panic, his heart thudding. To his disgust, he realized he’d wet himself a little.

  The other boys returned from their day of labor. Everything was the same; nothing was the same. Billy had had a rough day, and he wanted to stay close to Cy, who let him. If things worked out, he might need the kid’s help soon. Best to treat him well until then.

  Cy slept fitfully that night. He dozed, woke to find himself aroused, and jerked off, seeking relief for his body. But he could not find the restfulness that usually came over him after the act.

  He was awake at dawn, his nerves stretched as tight as barbed wire on a new fence. Rather than pretend to have a bad leg again, he decided to go to the railroad site. Being with people and using his muscles would be better than staying in camp alone all day, waiting for a word from Rosalee.

  She wouldn’t look at him during breakfast, and he had to leave the camp not knowing what, if anything, she had decided. That day, he worked like a machine, striving to exhaust himself, trying to find distraction from the uproar in his brain. Nothing helped. As they trudged home, Cy decided he would find Rosalee and call off the whole thing. He couldn’t stand any more of this tension.