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“You have tiny filings in the handles of your pistol.”
“This is an 1860 Army Colt, converted for modern cartridges. Changing the grips won’t bring back the men I killed. Plus, every one of them had it coming, and the world is better off without them.”
“Do they visit you in your sleep?”
“You know the answer to that one.”
Andre gazed at the willow leaves floating between the boulders, dipping in the chuck, disappearing in the sunlight.
Hackberry set the coal oil can on the floor of the cave and worked his way deeper inside, where the walls narrowed and the crevice in the roof allowed a glimmer of sky when the trees were not in leaf. He felt along a shelf until he touched a rock he had wedged in a hole and then covered with a huge rat’s nest. He pulled the box, still wrapped in a rain slicker, from inside the wall. He knelt on one knee and unwrapped and opened the rosewood top and touched the smooth onyx of the cup with his fingertips.
Lord, they got my boy. They want your cup, too, but they’ll have to kill me first and pry it out of my hands. I have to move us. I hope I am doing the right thing. I would like to drill a hole between the eyes of every one of those sons of bitches, but anger only clouds my reason and empowers my enemies. Be my light, my sword, and my shield.
Sorry for swearing.
For just a moment, he was certain he had taken leave of his senses. A voice outside himself, one he had never heard and loud enough to echo inside the cave, said, I think I’ll survive it.
He stood up, the rosewood box still open in his hands. “Say again, please?”
There was no response. He was sweating even in the dampness of the cave, his ears popping in the silence. He heard a noise behind him.
“Did you want me, Mr. Holland?” Andre said.
“No.”
“I heard you talking.”
“I’m getting old. I talk to myself sometimes.”
The Haitian looked up at the ceiling of the cave and at the pale glow from the crevice that operated like a flume. “Who was the other person?”
“What?”
“I heard someone speak to you.”
“That must have been an echo. I told you not to pay me no mind.”
“Do you want me to wait outside?”
“Yes. I’ll be along shortly,” Hackberry said, his hands cold and strangely dry on the box, his throat clotted with phlegm. “Come back here.”
“What is it you want?” Andre said, frozen against the circle of blue beyond the cave’s entrance.
“What did the voice say?”
“I’m not sure,” Andre replied.
“That’s what I thought. It was probably a rock tumbling down the hillside.”
“Something about surviving.”
Hackberry shook his head in denial. “That was me,” he said. “People my age are always studying on mortality. It makes you a little crazy. You talk to yourself and don’t remember what you said.”
“Yes, sir,” Andre said. He turned to go.
“We’re not on the plantation. You don’t have to call me ‘sir.’ I cain’t stand servility. We taught it to y’all, and now it’s the bane of your race and the disgrace of ours.”
“Let me know if you need anything, Mr. Holland.”
