Jake shot to his feet. “This ain’t justice!”

  “Boy, I’m warning you-”

  The court became one long outcry. The Sheriff and his goons came to remove me from the box. I hadn’t heard the second half of it, but they carted me from the room and out towards the courtyard. A stream of people followed, Jake ahead of them.

  He grabbed my left arm. The noises swirled in my head, babble mostly, which I struggled to make sense of. The Sheriff had my other arm. Back and forth they tugged, my head flapping like a doll’s. I had no strength to resist them.

  The Sheriff pulled out his night stick and released me briefly to go for Jake.

  Meanwhile I was strapped to the post. I leaned my head against it and pretended it was the stalk of a great tree, whose taproot went down to the center of the earth, plunging into a pool of crystal clear water.

  Clear water. Coldness. Silence. Darkness.

  The crowd seethed. The sun burned. They had finally subdued Jake. Shortie came and prevented the men from murdering him. Another man, the Sheriff’s lackey, had procured for the strap to beat me with. I sensed John Miller there, watching.

  The lashes hurt. I fainted after the second one and woke up for the sixth. Maybe I cried out; I don’t remember. My flesh seared, cracked, fizzled. The post anchored me to life. I clung to it like my Mama’s skirts, wishing my fever-delirium would worsen and sweep me away from the pain into a dark nothingness. Even death, if it wanted.

  They planned to leave me there, but someone’s nimble fingers were working at my bonds. Black fingers.

  “It’s me,” said Mrs. Gloria. “You alright?”

  She looked at my face. Hers swam in and out of my vision.

  “Not alright,” she muttered. “And Jesus, you stink.”

  The straps worked free. I collapsed against her.

  “You!” she barked, pointing to someone I couldn’t see. “Come help me.”

  More teak-colored hands came to help her. I was bundled and carried. The strong arms against my back burned against the welts, but inexorably they bore me out of the courtyard, up the street, and into the padded wood of a mule cart.

  The man and his mule took off. The rocking, bumping motion did not disturb me. I found the darkness I craved.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Please leave, Mister,” Mrs. Gloria said firmly.

  “I’ll go where I like.”

  “Not in my house, on my land, you won’t. Go on and get.”

  I blinked. I was lying on a mattress on someone’s floor. The smell of the room had roused me faster than Gloria’s voice. It smelled like bodies. Sure enough, about six people were packed into the corners of the pine walls. Some were seated at Gloria’s table playing cards. Others, the women, sat at the fire and sewed. They rocked in the chairs, a dirty pool of lantern light flickering along their dark faces in the same swaying motion. An owl announced itself outside. Night, then. I had slept all day.

  “We ought to find that Miller bastard,” Shug was saying, “And tear his ass a new one.”

  “I know where he stays at,” another man said. “We could do it.”

  But they were too deep into their card game. It was not a night for violence. Gloria returned to my side. She had something to drink off the stove steaming in her hands.

  She brought it to my lips. It smelled foul. I turned my head away.

  “Fine then.” She left it near the mattress. “Drink when you ready. It’s just tea.”

  “Wait,” I rasped. “Who was that?”

  “Who? At the door? Nobody.”

  But I knew. Gloria rustled over to the others, making sure everyone had a fresh drink. Trying to pick up on their murmured conversations became too much; I went back to sleep.

  The next day a knock came at the door again. Mrs. Gloria’s other visitors never knocked. They just walked in and took a seat by the fire, rubbing their heels and gossiping. But this man knocked. I heard Mrs. Gloria arguing, her voice raising and pitching like a bird’s. The visitor, a man, was dishing it right back. Finally in a huff Mrs. Gloria opened the door and let him in.

  Delirium scattered my thoughts. I recognized the man’s face but could not remember his name. Or I knew his name, could perceive his voice, but did not remember who he was to me.

  He knelt and took my hand. The smooth touch of his lips on my knuckles was bordered by a day’s beard scruff. His hand laid across my forehead. It was warm and dry.

  The next day Mrs. Gloria let him in again. She told him I still had the sickness. To be careful it didn’t spread. Then she put the cup of steaming drink into his hands and told him to feed it to me.

  But I pretended to be asleep. After that I did not wake up for another full day.

  When I woke up:

  “I can take care of her.”

  “I don’t like you stayin’ here alone.”

  “I’ll watch her.”

  “Uh-uh,” said Gloria. “Do I look like a fool?”

  But she left anyway, and Jake and I were alone. I rubbed my aching head on my wrist. Jake shifted in his place by the fire. It was uncanny, seeing his tall and stooping figure try to arrange itself comfortably in Gloria’s rocking chair. He did not belong in a place like this.

  “Are you awake, Minnie?” he said, his voice husky.

  I said nothing. I went very still. Jake rubbed his jaw and looked into the fire.

  He said, “She said you needed to get your back dressed again. I could do it for you.”

  Silence.

  “What do you say, Minnie?”

  I grunted.

  He got up and came over to me. No use pretending now. I only looked at him. Slowly, his face pink, he peeled the gown off my shoulder. I half expected him to put a kiss there like he’d done before.

  He peeled the dressing away. Gloria had made a pot of salve for me, and he reached for it.

  “Wait,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You got to air it out.”

  He settled back on his heels, his head tilted, examining the marks. His fingertips hovered over them, tracing their criss-cross in the air.

  “It don’t look so bad,” he said. “I’ve got worse.”

  “I ought to give you worse,” I muttered.

  He smiled. “I might let you.”

  Finally, carefully, he touched the marks with the salve. It stank of camphor and it stung like bees.

  “Do I wrap it up?” he said.

  “No. Leave it.”

  Jake got up and brought me some water. Then, when I settled back down, to my surprise he settled down too. He stretched himself out next to me, his nose near mine. I could count his freckles like I used to do.

  “Why are you here?” I murmured.

  “Because you almost died,” he said. “Now go to sleep.”

  I shifted closer. His face had been so clear. Now it swam back and forth in my vision, fuzzing at the edges. I could feel his breath on my face.

  “Kiss me,” I demanded.

  “No,” he said. “You’re drunk on sickness.”

  “I’m not poison,” I said. “Kiss me.”

  He put a chaste kiss on my cheek. He stayed there, over me, for a split moment. Then he settled back.

  “There. No more.”

  “More.”

  “No. Not until we talk.”

  “Let’s talk now.”

  “Sleep,” he ordered, putting a finger to each of my eyes and closing them. “Sleep. When you get up we’ll talk.”

  When I woke up he was gone. For the next few days a rotation of black folks moved through Gloria’s house. Jake did not return. Each time they came with a little something, which Gloria made a fuss over but always accepted. Some tea. Fresh milk. A special paste. I began to realize these things were for me. But why? What did the other black folks in Meadows owe me? About as much as Gloria owed me, I supposed.

  “Your Mama is a friend of mine,” said Gloria, when I asked her. “Most folks here have an Ada story. She does us good turns now and then.”

  I had not known that.

  “Why didn’t she bring me around y’all?”

  “Don’t know,” said Gloria. “Ask her.”

  Gloria had lots to talk about with everybody. I sometimes caught her conversations. She knew about everyone’s babies, aunties, animals. She knew all the politics of the farms, from the Negro side and the white side. It would be nice to be a woman like Gloria and Mama, I thought.

  As I got better the barrier between Gloria’s visitors and I changed. I was no longer just Gloria’s patient. I was Minnie Sampson. They were polite to me, but we didn’t know each other. So their visits became less frequent, the house emptier, and Gloria’s conversations shorter.

  I was soon well enough to walk. I would have stripes on my back, but Gloria assured those would fade in time. She had new clothes for me that fit badly but were clean. My jail rags had been burned.

  Sitting up with her one night, sipping tea, she told me how I had almost died.

  “It wasn’t the fever I thought it was,” she said. “Not somethin’ you caught in the jail.”

  “Was it pneumonia?”

  “Huh? No. It was somethin’ else. You caught it on your own.”

  She sipped her tea deeply, closed her eyes, and leaned back. “You don’t remember anythin’?”

  “Not much.”

  Her eyes opened partially. She leaned into a pause.

  “You lost the baby,” she said finally.

  To which I could only say, “Oh.”

  The night wore down. I rocked in the chair, my cheek on my hand, thinking.

  “Mrs. Gloria?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Did you tell Jake about-”

  “The baby?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No.”

  “You weren’t far along,” she said kindly.

  I could not feel anything. Not even, at least, the loss of it. I had not known. I would not have known unless she had told me.

  We went to bed. I rose earlier than she did, full of nervous energy. My legs were working again. It did not hurt my head to stand. And I did not want to see the four walls of Gloria’s big room anymore. I felt oddly at peace as I walked outside.

  A hard cold gripped me. But wrapped in Gloria’s blanket I didn’t feel it. I left her house and headed down the path before me.

  As I passed another cabin, a woman emerged. I asked her where I could get to town. She pointed me.

  The black folks of Meadows had made the uncommon decision to clump their houses together to maximize the space of their farmland. So I left Gloria’s and was on the road in five minutes.

  At the head of the gap I stopped to get my breath. Then back to walking. I noticed a little off the road there was an ash tree with a gash in the side, missing branches torn off by the storm. I waded through the leaves and mushy soil to it. Snapped the branches with my foot and made myself a little staff. When I grew weak I leaned on this staff gratefully. I was weak often.

  One foot in front of the other, head down, counting my steps. I reached the connect to the main highway leading into town, then I stopped. My breath was tight. I had to sit down. I should have gone back to Gloria’s and gone to sleep. But I couldn’t. I was alive and I wanted to prove that miracle to myself.

  A speck rose along the road, in the distance. A horse, I guessed, with dark flanks. I waited. The figure grew and in no time stopped in front of me.

  “What,” the rider said, “Are you doing here?”

  “Walking,” I replied. The bright sun flashed in my eyes, shrouding him in shadow.

  He dismounted. I took the cue and got up from the ground, shaking the dust and leaves from my skirt. It felt very formal, this meeting. But there was still nothing formal about Jake McCoy. His trousers were dusty at the knees, his boots still scuffed, his black hair still wildly flowing to his shoulders. On his nose and cheeks a sunburn was fading. I remembered counting the freckles there once. I remembered how he would hold my soft hands in his calloused ones, tracing the lines of my palm like they were little rivers flowing up my arms, elbows, shoulder blades, cheek bones...

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “To see you.”

  He lifted the ridge of his hat, squinting at me. A dark shadow on his jaw and chin showed a growing beard. His eyes picked out blue along the bleak landscape behind him, little reflections, almost, of the sky.

  “Me?”

  “I’ve been by six times since Saturday. Do you remember? I fixed your back.”

  I frowned. I did not know what day it was.

  “Why?” I asked.

  He looked up and down the road. The cold had made a red flush rise up in his cheeks and nose under the sunburn. Or perhaps some deeper embarassment caused that.

  “You don’t know anything, do you?” he said.

  “I know some things,” I replied.

  “No, I mean of what’s been happenin’ in town. The fever.”

  “I heard...”

  “Lucille lost the baby,” he said brutally. “And we found out who the Pa was.”

  “Oh.”

  I thought of what Gloria had said to me the night before. About my own unknown baby, lost in a bed of blood. It would be awkward to bring that up now, and Jake looking at me with that expression.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, a beat too late.

  “No,” said Jake, shaking his head. “Don’t say that.”

  It occured to me that I had not prepared for this conversation and I did not want it to happen.

  “Well,” I said quickly, “I’ll head on back. I’m sure you have things to do.”

  “I came to see you,” said Jake. “That’s the only thing I have to do.”

  Jake had a bag slung over his saddle; he reached into it and took out a small blanket. This he draped over my head. It smelled of herbs. It smelled of him.

  “Why don’t you walk with me a while,” he said.

  “Mrs. Gloria will want to know where I’ve gone to.”

  “She’ll be fine.”

  “What if I get tired?”

  “Ride on the horse.”

  So I walked with him, back down the road. He looked strong and silent and tall. The cuffs of his coat were patched- Lucille’s work, probably- and the hat he wore was new. He still sported a shiner under his eye from that day in the courtyard where the men had held him back from me. But the bruise was small and fading, like my memory of what had happened.

  “How is your back?” he asked politely.

  “Stiff.”

  He cleared his throat. “That woman turned me away when I came yesterday. Did you know that?”

  “I’m sure she had her reasons,” I said stiffly.

  He breathed out deeply through his nose, as if containing himself. “I suppose there’s no beating around the bush no more, is there, Minnie?”

  “We don’t need to talk about it.”

  “I think we do.”

  I stopped. Mrs. Gloria’s wasn’t far. But I didn’t want to go back to hers, not yet.

  I said, “Why did you testify, Jake?”

  “Why do you think I did, Minnie?”

  He said this very softly. For the first time he seemed unable to hold my stare. He looked off into the distance. He rubbed his jaw.

  “I should leave.”

  “Maybe this is the wrong time to say this,” said Jake.

  “Maybe.”

  “But will you listen anyway?”

  Did I have a choice?

  “I don’t know how it happened,” he said, swallowing a lump in his throat. “But I fell for you. I tried to deny it. Tried to tell myself it wasn’t more than a passin’ fancy on a summer’s day. And then, bein’ with you, it grew and grew. My thoughts, my dreams, were all tied to you. I’d think of somethin’ funny and then think how you’d laugh at it. Whatever I saw I wanted to tell you. Whatever I did, I wanted you to like it.”

  “You left me,” I said. “I needed you and you left me.”

  “I thought Lucille needed me more.” He looked at his feet. “I was a damn fool.”