Free I Am Abraham by Jerome Charyn Page B

wild and stripped down like a harlot.”
    My knees were knocking. I would have clung to Ann, kissed her eyes, her ears, and cheeks almost as hollow as mine, if only she had let me cling.
    “Miss Ann, I’ll treasure that moment in the woods all my life.”
    She tittered like someone half crazy as she peered from beneath her winter shawl.
    “You could be Satan come to taunt a troubled girl,” she said.
    “Satan wouldn’t have such big hands and feet. He’d mask himself as a much prettier man.”
    “Abraham, why didn’t you write from Vandalia, or send me a crushed flower in the mail?”
    I didn’t know what to say. I was like a circus dummy in the snow. The trees had gone as bald as convicts, but I was bold enough to grip her hand in the dark.
    “We could run away,” I said.
    I could have been a leper with a leprous hand. That’s how quick she broke free. “And become your whore, I suppose—your pretty lady. And live without the benefit of the Book?”
    With Ann around I didn’t feel a failure washed ashore like river trash. “But I could marry you.”
    “It would still be a sin,” she said. “I’m pledged to another man. I’d have to writ him a letter and ask for my release . . .”
    “I’ll write Mack,” I said.
    Now her silver eyes wandered in different directions. “Don’t you dare—I’d have to move into the wilderness, or else marry that sinner Sam Hill. He offered to buy me from Pa. I’ll become his harlot with a bridal veil. I’d rather run nek-kid in front of a thousand men.”
    “I wouldn’t let ye.”
    And she laughed. “Abraham, we’re just too poor to marry.”
    We were too poor. I didn’t even own my saddle. That was the crusher. But she fell into my arms, as if she were my bride. We kissed until our mouths were flecked with blood, and she rubbed into me—I prayed my jelly wouldn’t spill. We ran inside the gutted bones of the tavern until the storm broke. I was reckless with my bride, carrying her onto a pony I borrowed from Justice Green’s barn. Ann slept in my saddle, my little horse with rags around his hooves to keep us steady in the snow. But the snowdrifts were too deep. And I had to pilot my pony from the ground, clucking at him and pulling at the reins. I near lost my way in a narrow patch of woods.
    Ann must have woken from a dream. The woods were dark, even with that eerie white blanket. There wasn’t much of a moon, and the wind was howling.
    “Abraham,” she asked, “where are you, honey?”
    “With you and the horse.”
    “I have a solution,” she said. “We’ll get rich and pay off what my Pa owes Sam Hill and Mack. We’ll go someplace fine—after we’ve been to the preacher and you promise not to stray from the Book.”
    “Promise,” I said. But I’d already strayed. I was deef to God, like King Saul. I couldn’t hear His voice—only Ann’s. I’d read the Book, how Saul tried to kill that ruddy boy, David, God’s anointed one. I wasn’t anointed. I was closer to Saul, that unholy king who was higher than any of the Hebrews from his shoulders up. We were both cut loose from other men.
    We’d arrived at the gate of the farmhouse. I carried her down from the saddle, would have carried her to the farmhouse door, but she knocked away my tall hat and tugged at my scalp.
    “I’d best go in alone.”
    A fork appeared in her forehead, like some thunderbolt under the skin. Her eyes were wandering again. The warmth was gone. She could have been a witch, passing over into the other world, not my Ann, but a shouter who had shoved me away.
The Lord killeth and maketh alive; he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up . . .
    She was like a gunslinger with the Book, could spit from the Bible with both barrels. She ran into the snow—I thought it would bury her alive, but she waded deeper until she got to the door.
    I stood there with my pony, a sinner in the dark. Our tracks were gone. We could have been stuck in a wall of white cake. The silence