Free Walk Through Darkness by David Anthony Durham

longer, his eyes fixed to the point at which the woman had disappeared. He almost wished he had reason to talk to her, but she had already led him back to the trail and so she had served the use he had required. The hound craned her neck around and bared her teeth. The man watched the space where the woman had vanished and still did not release the dog. It was not the first moment since he had entered the Bay region that he had hesitated in his mission. But he could not turn away from this and he knew it. He flexed his fingers. The hound lurched from his grasp, loud and hungry and anxious, again on the runaway’s scent. Morrison rose and followed. He was on the trail again.

S EVEN The pen’s mortar walls and hard-packed floor caught the day’s fury like an oven. William sat baking, his body—like those of all the captives—covered in a film of sweat and salt and dirt. Through the hottest hours of the day they did little more than swat at flies, watch the progress of the clouds and scratch at insect bites. Though their jailers were rarely seen, they were somehow a constant threat. The only noticeable lookout was the guard posted on the balcony of the main building overlooking the pen. He was sometimes visible, looking down at them with disinterest, but most often he propped his feet so that they alone were in view from below. They fed the captives corn-flour gruel, a tasteless, textureless substance. To drink theyall shared a bucket of whiskey-tainted water that was refilled several times throughout the day. The alcohol was added for its antiseptic qualities. For William, the faint taste of it brought up a roiling nausea that was hard to contain. They also had to share a single toilet—a large basin set in the center of the compound. Men and women alike were made to squat above it, in plain sight of all, open to the sky above.
    Despite the languid stupor of the day, it was impossible not to make eye contact with someone, not to nod a greeting or maybe even to voice a question. By this means William came to know those around him. The man who had called him over was a Louisiana slave named Lemuel. He had been sold four times in his life: twice in the confines of the Delta, once up into Delaware as a result more of gambling debts than of a business transaction, and then to the slave traders who now owned his life and future works. He guessed that the figure would rise to five very soon. He only hoped that he didn’t end up anywhere near his birthplace, for it was a place no slave would want to see twice. His life in that swampy delta had been one of constant hardship, labor unending, heat and insects and cruelty, a life of cane and cotton that marked the seasons in catalogues of the dead.
    “I wouldn’t wish it on any man,” Lemuel said. He sat beside William, with his legs crossed before him. His eyes were the same reddish brown as his skin, and they tended to move slowly, settling on one object and studying the full shape and function of it before moving on. He had a crescent of a scar above his eyebrow. It was an old wound, swollen like a brand scar. He sometimes touched it when he spoke. “Not even my worst enemy. You ever seen a thing bit to death by skeeters?”
    “No.”
    “I have. I’m telling you, stay clear of them swamplands.”
    “You don’t mean a person, do you?” William asked, the image of a man covered in pinpricks already fixed in his mind.
    “Didn’t say a person. Just said a thing. But if it could happento a thing it could happen to a man too. We ain’t all that different. Now don’t take me the wrong way. There’s a beauty down in that country too. I remember sometimes lying up at night, listening to the God-almighty racket of frogs, one louder than the other, smelling all the smells what come to you when it’s dark. Yeah, there’s a beauty in some of that. Just in listening. In tasting the world and breathing it in. That’s true, but I’d just as soon not set foot back there again,