The Lesser People Page 16

  I said, “Where are we going, Ben?”

  Ben shrugged, his hand tugging on mine. He said, “Let’s just get out of here first.”

  “We can’t leave them.”

  “Who?” he said.

  “Your girlfriend and her brother.”

  “No,” he said. “We’re not leaving them.”

  “We can’t go to the cops,” I said. “The Conover’s are their friends.”

  Sarah sighed and I heard a distant scream building in her throat that came out a hiss like she was a tea kettle that’s been left on the stove just long enough. I said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” she said. “Just keep up.”

  We made our way through the darkness, moving slow when I thought she’d be ready to run for the way out of the tunnel, but she had to think of her brother, and maybe she was thinking of us. We kept the wall close to our left sides. The earth was cold. The ground rose and fell. Up ahead, Sarah said, “It’s going to get a little cramped but you can’t freak out, just watch your heads.”

  My body broke out in sweat. I smelled fresh air somewhere close by. I longed for the star studded sky, the forest, the quiet stillness where blood wasn’t being spilled. I wanted my Uncle Tommy to come for us but I didn’t want to see him bury Miss Jessie because I was afraid that the men had thrown her onto the flaming porch after they shot her, and seeing her flesh ruined by it would make me sick in the heart and in the stomach, and I didn’t want to be sick anymore, and I didn’t want Sarah or Leonard to be sick, or for Ben to be standing there helpless, trying to comfort them and words failing until he had to resign himself from speaking and only stand by with his head bowed, in silent contrition and compassion.

  Sarah said, “Bend down.”

  I knelt and raised one hand over my head, waving it slowly back and forth to keep from hitting my head. My hand hit rock. I followed it around. It wasn’t more than three feet high and two feet wide. I struggled for a breath, stopped moving, and Ben jerked, almost pulled me forward face first off my feet. I caught myself and he said, “What are you doing?” Angry with me. I shook my head. I jerked my hand from his, said, “I can’t go in there.”

  Sarah said, “What’s wrong now?”

  Leonard tapped his hands to the wall like he was trying to find a doorway hidden in the darkness. I wanted to join him so that we didn’t have to travel through the tight tunnel. Ben said my name. I said, “How far is it? I can barely breathe now. What if there isn’t enough air for all of us?”

  “Shut up,” he said. “You’re going to scare Leonard.”

  “Sarah?”

  “It’s not far,” she said, but I could tell by the tone of her voice that she was lying.

  “How far?” I said.

  “Maybe a football field,” she said.

  I didn’t know how long a football field was. It didn’t seem like it could be too far, not much longer than a basketball court like the one on the playground of our old school. I trembled, did my best to steady my nerves, felt the others huddled close even though I couldn’t see them in the dark. Our breathing was labored, unsteady. It took me a second to realize they were probably just as scared as I was. Oddly, knowing that they were scared some made me less scared, actually made me feel a little better. I got down on one knee and put my head near the floor, listening and trying to see up the smaller tunnel, trying to catch a glimpse of sun or moonlight. I had no way of knowing how long we’d been underground. I guessed that they didn’t know either. I guessed it didn’t really matter. Getting out mattered.

  I thought, Just a football field of crawling on my belly. It’s not that far.

  Ben said, “Are we going or what?”

  Sarah whispered, “I’m a little scared. I’ve never been out this way.”

  “What?” Ben said.

  I said, “How do you know it goes outside then?”

  “Honestly,” she said. “I don’t. I just know that Momma said it does and she wasn’t one for lying to people.”

  “Could there be more than one tunnel?” Ben said.

  The dark air seemed to settle heavy around us. I took shallow breaths afraid we’d use up all the oxygen before we ever got out of there, so I tried to focus on my breathing because it hurt my head to think there might be more than one tunnel and we might be in the wrong one.

  Chapter Twenty

  I almost drowned once, just a couple summers before this. At first it was terrifying, like crawling through the cave had been, a sense of complete and utter helplessness that lingered for a long time after the incident. The weight of the darkness was like the water I’d fought against what felt like a lifetime ago, it was everywhere and inescapable, yet buoyant.

  We had to get down on our stomachs at one point, inching forward, the rocks scraping our elbows and knees, dirt sprinkling in our eyes from above and my skin crawled, thinking about all the spiders that lived in the narrow and cramped tunnel, and how those spiders were probably starving because more than likely hardly anything worth eating ever came down there.

  The air seemed thin, and my lungs burned as much as my tired limbs throbbed, my neck kinking from trying to see through the black nothingness, eyelids closing by instinct every time Leonard pawed himself forward and kicked dirt back in my face.

  It was slow going and painful and it only grew worse as the tunnel narrowed further, stone and soil brushing both sides of my ribs and I had to squeeze my arms forward and in front of me. I wormed on for a few minutes, crying, and bumped into Leonard’s feet, felt his whole body trembling ahead of me. Sarah’s voice was soft as she said, “We can rest a bit. You guy’s okay?”

  “No,” I said, crying harder. I wanted to be home but there was no home left, not for me and Ben, not for Sarah and Leonard. Maybe not even for Uncle Tommy. The weight of that truth rested heavy on my back and the darkness spun and for a moment I couldn’t tell which way was up or down. I grasped for the walls, the floor, nearly hyperventilating, my bladder full. I struggled to inhale a few, slow breaths, but the air was dirty, musty, unfit for breathing.

  Leonard reached back behind him and touched my head. He mumbled something, the tone of his voice soothing. I whispered, “Okay. I’m okay.” Even though I wasn’t, even though I figured we’d never find the exit, that it was all an evil trick by some cruel god, that the tunnel itself might be a labyrinth that circled in on itself repeatedly, crossing sections we’d already traveled.

  I wiped my face with my shoulder, said, “Ben, shouldn’t we have found the way out by now?”

  Ben kept quiet. His girlfriend said, “It can’t be much further.” He still didn’t speak and I couldn’t see him or anybody else in the darkness. I feared he’d gotten off on some other branch of the tunnel, and separated from us, feared he was desperately searching for the way back, alone and frightened. I said, “Ben?”

  “It’s going to be okay,” my brother said. I thought his voice was too thick and he probably hated that he was scared and crying, too. I whispered, “Okay,” thinking we could get out somehow, someday, and we’d find our way back to town and with any luck we’d discover that Uncle Tommy had gotten our parents free of prison. It was all we really had to cling to, hope for, or believe in. It didn’t seem like much.

  After we rested a while we wormed on through the darkness.

  Slowly the air felt cleaner in my lungs, my eyes hurt less from straining to penetrate the darkness, and my limbs, exhausted, reached some point where they felt they were apart from my body and moved of their own accord, in another time, another place, robotic and refusing to surrender.

  More time passed in that automatic and surreal darkness. I daydreamed of lying in the cool green grass of home, daydreamed of losing myself in a comic book on my bed, and daydreamed of cuddling tight between my mother and father on the couch late at night with fireflies blinking outside the window and the moon pressing softly against the ebony canvas of sky.

  Leonard kicked dirt in my face and I laughed against the onslaught
.

  Ahead, Sarah gasped, giggled madly. Ben mimicked her, and beyond them I caught the faintest glimmer of a pale gray light like a distant cabin’s porch light through a forest of gauze.

  I swallowed hard, my throat clicking. I said, “It’s the exit?”

  “It’s the exit,” Ben said, giggling harder.

  “How far?” I said.

  “Not far,” Sarah said. “Not far at all. We’ll be out of here within a half hour more crawling. How are you guys holding up?”

  “I’m fine,” Ben said. It was wonderful to hear him so chipper, so alive.

  I said, “I’m okay. Going to be sore for a week and it’ll take another week to scrub all the dirt from my skin.”

  “But you’ll live,” Sarah said. “We’ll all live.”

  Leonard chortled, a jubilant sound that echoed about, and he thrashed his legs as if to speed ahead, kicking dirt back in my face again. At first it made me angry, but I laughed it off, caught one of his sneakers, and said, “I know how you feel, Leo. I know just how you feel.”

  We moved on. The rest of the world seemed apart from us, non-existent, even though it was what we were striving to get back to an inch at a time, moving spastically, faster and faster, soil and sand flying from where we clawed and kicked, the muscles in my back and shoulders on fire and my heart trip-hammering so loud it roared in my ears.

  And there was a light at the end of the tunnel growing wider and taller, not even thirty feet away, a pale gray opening outlined against the darkened trees and the canopy of shadows which they cast.

  I was barely able to distinguish the trunks of old ash trees around the scurrying bodies of those in front of me. The air itself seemed to lighten like the dawn that was coming on fast and strong, carrying with it the wind that blew soot and the scent of blood.

  My heart thumped manically and I wanted to push past Ben, Sarah and Leonard but resisted the impulse. A cool breeze coming in from the mouth of an opening ahead only made the desire stronger.

  The sky was light gray as we hustled out from a hole in a tree. I sucked in a lungful of fresh forest air. It took us all a minute to get out bearings. We’d come a long ways and though I could smell the ruins of Miss Jessie’s house I couldn’t see it.

  The four of us stared at each other, breathing hard, all of us ready to cry.

  Leonard moaned softly, the metal contraption strapped to his mouth glinting in the day’s early light. Sarah draped an arm over his shoulder and pulled him close.

  My brother said, “We need to find our way back to the house and make sure.”

  Sarah shrugged, sobbed, lowered her head and her brother moaned again, his eyes cast on the gray and pink sky.

  I said, “It can’t be too far.”

  I pointed, thinking I knew what direction we needed to travel. Nobody paid attention to me. They just huddled closer. I was anxious to find if Uncle Tommy had come back. It didn’t seem likely. It seemed Sarah had a point and the sheriff and the others at the rally would have burned him down when he went to try and save his brother.

  I remembered how my granddad had come by and what he said about all of us suffering and the way he looked, like we deserved to suffer, and I thought that it’d probably make him happy to see our pain. I didn’t know what kind of man that made him other than a cruel one. I didn’t know how Daddy had turned out so different than his father when just about everybody I had ever met had so many qualities of their parents, whether they could admit it to themselves or not, it was downright scary, like they were learning to become them and take their place.

  Ben shifted his stance. He said, “Ain’t no point in standing out here. We need to find out what’s going on.”

  Sarah rubbed Leonard’s back. She said, “What the hell does it matter? Ain’t nothing left for none of us now. What are we supposed to do?”

  “Well,” Ben said, “I guess we’ll have to take it one thing at a time.”

  I saw a puff of smoke drift above the trees. The wind carried it along until the darkness it carried dispersed. I said, “Smoke is blowing from that way.” I pointed again and this time they turned their heads. Sarah wiped her eyes. She nodded. She said, “Okay.”

  Ben smiled what looked a painful smile.

  The leaves around us sighed.

  Twigs and dry, dead matter crunched under our feet as we moved along, Ben in the lead, then Sarah, then Leonard, then me. I watched our back trail, not sure why other than it felt like someone was close by and watching us.

  Shadows gathered among the boughs and exposed roots. The deep black soil grew softer as we neared the back of the property, the field off to our right. Ahead, as we parted the trees and stood stock still on the overgrown back lawn with the gutted old slave quarters in front of us, Sarah let out another sob and this time her brother wrapped his arms around her and buried his head in her shoulder.

  I don’t know if he knew what he was hugging her for, the reason behind her tears, or if he just wanted to comfort her, drawing on some universal impetus that lay at the core of human suffering, no matter if one could speak or not.

  She let him hug her and Ben stood by, close, his hands hung loosely by his sides, reminding me of Daddy and Uncle Tommy. He shook his head, whispered, “What a thing they done here.”

  And it seemed he was looking not only at the ruined remains of the servants housing, but beyond it to the house we could not yet see, and the woman that we all knew was laying up there in the rubble. I didn’t know if the shotgun blast they’d fired had killed her but I hoped no matter how she went it was quickly and with as little pain as possible.

  Sarah said, “I can’t do this.”

  Ben said, “We got to.” He looked at me and said, “Maybe you should stay back here with her brother while we go investigate.”

  I shook my head. Not him nor anyone else could stop me from seeing what the men had done. I wanted to see it as much as I didn’t want to see it, knowing it’d mark me for the rest of my life, and though it’d be the anger, it’d also bud those first disturbing tremors of true fear in my fellow man. I shook my head again, said, “I seen Isaiah. I seen Preacher’s servant hanging from the old tow truck south of town, even had the man sitting next to me in the back of Preacher’s car, and this is important.” I pointed at Sarah. “It’s her mom and she’s our friend.”

  Sarah let a few tears fall before she ran the back of her dirty hand across her face, just smearing more dirt, the poor girl looking so rundown, like she’d be lucky to take a single step around the building to view what remained of her home. She crossed her arms over her chest. “We’ll all go,” she said. “Then we better figure out what to do next.”

  “We can’t call the cops,” I said to remind them. “They ain’t going to care.”

  “No,” Ben said. “They were part of this somehow.”

  I said, “Do you think those men came here hoping to make Uncle Tommy come out?”

  “I don’t know,” Ben said.

  “She got one of them before they killed her,” Sarah said.

  I nodded. Ben did too. He said, “That’s good. Wish she could have got them all.”

  Sarah took his hand and held it tight between them, pressed it to her leg as they looked back at me and her brother. I offered him my hand and he smiled a little, cautiously, nervous, a bit of distrust in his eyes, but he took my hand, maybe only because I was about his age and so far I hadn’t done anything to hurt him.

  The four of us moved as one, slick like rain down a spout, our purpose and direction clear. The grass had blackened from the extinguished flames. It stained our shoes.

  We rounded the burned outbuilding and the tracks from the men last night stood out, their cast seemingly burned into the turf, though looking closer I could see the depressions of their steps were only outlined darker from ash and lighter inside from dew. My heart felt like it was dead it hurt so much just from looking at the tracks. I didn’t want to know what it’d be like to see Miss Jessie’s body, remembering how
less than eight or ten hours ago she’d shown us into her house and she’d meant to protect us, but she’d failed, and her failing must have hurt as much as dying.

  We stopped near the house’s back door. Like the slave quarters, the walls were still mostly intact but they were eaten by the fire like a swarm of locusts. The ceiling had caved in. All the windows in the back had been blown out and the shards of glass twinkled in the morning light with our tight group knotted and trying to be strong.

  Leonard scratched at the back of my hand, squeezed hard enough that I winced, then he let up. He looked at the second floor where I guessed he’d spent most of his life, hiding and being hid by Miss Jessie because she didn’t want anybody to know her baby boy was of mixed blood since she knew they’d treat him bad and call him nigger.

  I wondered what kind of life he’d had here, back before the men and the fire came.

  It didn’t seem like living, being trapped in an upstairs room with only a window to view the world from.

  Ben said, “They didn’t even send a fire truck out, just let it burn out by itself.”

  Sarah said, “I always hated this place.”

  “Why?” I said, looking up at the house, then around the property, thinking that it was nice before and probably in fifty years nobody would even remember what happened here, which made me a little sad and I didn’t know why.

  “Not this house,” she said. “This state. Everybody always putting on a show of how important they are and how much they care about each other and the community.”

  She waved a hand toward the house, said, “Then they do stuff like this.”

  Ben said, “Uncle Tommy has lived a lot of places and he said it’s pretty much the same everywhere. Good people, bad people, forests, farms, concrete.”

  Sarah nodded. “People suck,” she said. “Life sucks.”

  I thought that we hadn’t even seen the worst of it yet and I didn’t know how Sarah could prepare for it, unless what she was doing now was her way. Her brother hugged me. He mumbled in my ear and his lips tickled the hair by my temple. I tried to back away but his hands grew insistent on my shoulder. Sarah cocked her head. I wanted to ask Ben to help me but he just stood there looking stupid with his hands in his pockets, saying, “He likes Eli.”