Free Walk Through Darkness by David Anthony Durham Page B

anyway?”
    William lowered his head and studied the ground. Just the act of the man’s asking reminded him of Oli, of his own loose tongue and the events that followed. He tried to answer the question vaguely, saying he was running and done got caught. But Lemuel pushed him for details. William answered one question at a time, and in so doing soon found himself well into his own story, one that seemed long and sordid already, blurred between dream and reality and plagued by mistakes.
    When he concluded, Lemuel sat for a moment nodding his head. “Well, you done made a mess of it,” he said.
    That wasn’t the response William had expected. He tried to think of some way to refute the statement. He picked a twig and bent it into a strained curve. Finally, he just said, “You can go to hell.”
    Lemuel took this statement seriously and answered in a different tone than before, softer, more open. “Don’t think I’m littling you. That ain’t my intention. You living a world a pain and I know that pain. All us round here know it. I ain’t littling you. I’m just saying you slipped up. Had freedom in your path and first chance you got you gave it away for a meal and a little whiskey. It hurts, don’t it? That’s some expensive whiskey—the kind that costs a man his freedom.”
    William snapped the twig and tossed the two ends away. “Don’t tell me what I lost. You don’t know the first thing bout it. You wouldn’t talk that way if you’d ever gotten a child in a woman.” He made to rise, but the older man stayed him with an outstretched hand.
    “Now, that there—I’ll tell you what it puts me in the mind of,” Lemuel said, “the time Abram asked God why he didn’t have no children and what was to become a him being childless. Come on now, sit yourself. Ain’t gonna harm you just to listen. Now, Lord took Abram outside and told him to look up at the sky and count the stars. Said,
‘Look now toward Heaven’,
and if he could count all them stars then he would know how many children would come from him and how fruitful his seed would be on into eternity. I’d tell you the same, I would. I say look up and when you see them stars know that you too go on. They your children, and your children’s children and on like that. You may never put your hands on them and pull them to you in this life, but you can look up and know they out there waiting for you and some day you’ll be together with them. That’s what I do. Cause, nigga, I got more children out in the world than I can number on my fingers. And not one them would know my face to call me papa.”
    William stared at the man. “Don’t know whether you’re coming or going,” he finally said.
    Lemuel grinned. “That’s right. That’s the way I like it. Keep em all guessing.”
    William didn’t rise again, but he did turn away from Lemuel and sat with his back to him. From this angle his eyes fell on a pregnant girl. She was tiny, with a child’s round face, still incomplete in her body’s development. As with Dante, William tried not to look at her, but his eyes kept wandering back to her. She sat within the shadow of a tiny alcove, a space offered to her in kindness. But she was never comfortable. Her belly seemed to be the center of her, all thoughts and pain and emotion contained in that great swelling. She rolled her body from one side to the other, sat up and then lay down, all the while squinting out at the world.
    Later that evening he lay listening to the rhythm of the girl’s moaning. It began slowly and almost faintly enough to ignore.
    But as the dusk faded into night and the moon rose her cries did as well. The compound was as still as ever it had been. Even the two Sea Islanders were silent and motionless. This evening, it seemed, was too sacred for the invocation of spells. Into this calm the woman’s calls rose up and reached out like open hands. They grabbed the listeners by the throats and held them until the moments of agony