Free Walk Through Darkness by David Anthony Durham Page A

all things considered.”
    One of the others was a runaway named Dante. He had been caught well into Pennsylvania, on soil some called free but which gave him no protection. A pack of hounds had ripped the flesh of his forearms and left the wounds raw and oozing. He sat near enough to share in the conversation, though his thoughts always began and ended in tragedy. He seemed to have given up the will to live, and made no attempt to swat away the flies that plagued him. William watched him askance, finding it difficult to look at him, but harder still not to. His eyes were drawn again and again to the man’s wounds. He shooed the flies away when he could, although he did this covertly, as he somehow sensed the man would be annoyed to be the subject of pity.
    There were two among them who kept to themselves. They made an odd couple, although no one thought it wise to comment on this. The more noticeable of the two was a giant of a man named Saxon. He was naked from the waist up. His britches were torn down the backside in a manner that exposed his privates to the world when he walked. His body was a thing to be marveled at. He must have weighed twice as much as any of the others, and he bore the weight evenly distributed about his frame. The muscles around his neck bunched and quivered when he moved. The flesh around his shoulders and biceps was scarred by stretch marks. The other man was quite inconsequential in comparison. He was a mulatto, honey-complexioned, with short legs and a slight pouch-belly despite his otherwise lean form. He and Saxon shared only each other’s company. They spoke in lowtones that seemed so foreign as to be another language. At moments they were as still as statues. Other times they rose up from the ground, smacking parts of their bodies with the palms of their hands, striking out at the air as if warring with swarms of unseen insects.
    They were a mystery to William, until Lemuel explained that they were Gullah people from the Sea Isles of the Carolinas. They lived isolated lives of incredible labor. They’d formed a culture unique unto themselves, with their own language, their own customs, their own blending of Christian and Moslem and tribal African faiths. It was said that they practiced black arts as powerful as any Haitian magic, blood rituals that called upon the undead to aid the living. Watching those two, William could well believe it. He found, despite himself, that he was curious about what they might know, what tools of evil they might have at their disposal.
    “Now, I ain’t saying there was never a good body come off them islands,” Lemuel said, “but they got they own ways and not all of them ways is Christian. Listen at night and you’ll hear them trying to work themselves up a voodoo to get themselves free. It never has worked, far as I can tell. But they sure keeping the faith. Whatever faith they got.”
    William watched the two men. They sat on the other side of the pen, touching at the shoulder, eyes closed and heads tilted up toward the sun. “Wouldn’t turn the Devil down,” he said, “not if he could get me outta here.”
    “You wanna be careful getting in bed with Satan,” Lemuel said. “Tell me this, you ever met a white person you thought belonged in Heaven? You haven’t, have you? Maybe some child, but that’s not what I’m talking bout. Talking bout a full grown adult. Man or woman, don’t make no difference. Ain’t many of them getting to Heaven, not by my tally. If them white folks ain’t in Heaven where is they?” The man pulled his eyes away from the two men and set them on William.
    “Hell, I suppose.”
    “That’s what I make of it, too. They in Hell. Now, do you want to spend forever with a bunch of evil white folks? It’s hard enough just living this life in they company. Naw, I wouldn’t get in company with the Devil. There’s got to be a better way. It’ll be shown to us one day. How’d you get yourself up in here,