Free Trail of Bones by Mark London Williams Page A

big as the others, either. Maybe a
teenager?
    Maybe it wasn’t much older than me. In
buffalo years.
    “The lad hasn’t had a shot this whole
expedition,” Lewis said. “Let him.” And without even asking, he
handed the air gun to me.
    It wasn’t a toy. It was too heavy.
    “Pick one out, Master Sands, and aim
straight for the head. For maximum mercy.”
    Mercy, I thought. “But I don’t want
to kill them,” I said. “They’re practically extinct!”
    Lewis didn’t know what that meant. “I should
say they’re right here, right now, and we need the meat.”
    “I don’t want to kill them.”
    “Just one.”
    “I don’t want to cause death.” My stomach
was feeling funny again.
    “Death is always over our shoulder, young
Sands, just a half step behind life,” Lewis said.
    The youngest buffalo, with its thick woolly
hide and its big flat wide nostrils and round black eyes, stood
staring at me.
    “I can’t. I won’t.”
    “He is a strange boy, eh?” Cruzatte said.
Not very helpfully.
    “But in death, the bison will help others
live. It’s a practically optimistic system, if I do say so myself,”
Lewis added.
    Then he raised my hand. The gun was pointing
straight at the teenage buffalo, who chewed and looked at me
calmly.
    “You will be fine,” Cruzatte chimed in. “And
we, c’est bon , will be full.”
    “Master Sands.”
    I wanted to close my eyes.
    “Just pull the trigger.”
    I didn’t want to do this.
    “We all need to eat. Even you.”
    I didn’t…
    But the shot came anyway.
    I dropped the gun.
    Another shot went off.
    The men jumped.
    And the young buffalo was down, lying on the
grass, his tongue lolling to the side, all the calmness — all the
everything — slowly slowly draining from his eyes.
     
     
     
    Chapter Nine
    Thea: Mulberry Row
    May 1804
     
    Clink-clink-clink.
    I follow the hammer sounds down the dirt
road outside Jefferson’s house. His great home on top of this
forested hill: Monticello.
    And like all great homes, many people are
required to tend to its rhythms and needs, the many wants of the
building, and its inhabitants.
    Many of those people live right outside the
house itself — in a string of small clapboard buildings called
Mulberry Row. In Eli’s English, they’re called shacks — and this is
where the slaves live.
    Whole families dwell in one or two rooms,
crowded together, laboring, growing Jefferson’s crops, making
clothes, doing laundry, fabricating construction material so that
more of Monticello may be refined and built.
    Clink-clink.
    I am looking for the one they call a
blacksmith.
    One who works shaping metals.
    A man named Issac.
    Clink.
    He fashions building fasteners — nails — out
of raw metals. And he makes shoes, too. For horses.
    I am here to see one horse in
particular.
    Clink.
    A small boy standing in a doorway waves at
me. His mother, who is washing something in a large tub, pulls him
back inside. I am considered the “new slave” here. The other slaves
don’t know if they can trust me yet.
    I have learned a few things: I have learned
that Jefferson is considered a “good” master, compared to many
others, because he doesn’t beat his workers or whip them. Still
they are not free. Unwhipped or not, they cannot choose whether to be here.
    Clink!
    The boards on these shacks are loose,
compared to Jefferson’s own grand home. I wonder how cold these
people get in winter. Or at night. Fortunately, it’s been warm
lately.
    Or maybe that’s just me. The hot flashes,
actually, are why I’m on my way to see a horse.
    Clink-clink ting!
    Sooysaa. Ever since I fell and
tangled with him, the wagon-horse has been reported as acting
strangely, or “touched,” as Sally says.
    He’s touched, certainly. With a
lingo-spot.
    I need to see what the effects are.
    Clink ting.
    Show me…
    I brush at my ear, like there’s a fly
buzzing there, but of course there isn’t.
    The horse grew so unpredictable, they moved
him from the main