Heartfire

“But it might, you can say that, can't you? It might live on, I mean if humans do it, then birds might too, right? Their heartfires may be smaller but that don't mean they'll burn out when they die, does it?”

“I reckon that's good thinking,” said Alvin. “I reckon if anybody lives on after death– and I think they do, mind you, I just ain't seen it– then why not birds? Heartfire is heartfire, I should think, lessen somebody tells me different. Is that good enough?”

Arthur Stuart nodded. “Then you can kill a bird now and then, if you got to.”

Jean-Jacques bowed in salute to Arthur. “I think, Mr. Stuart, that this was the question you really wanted to ask me from the start. Back in Philadelphia.”

Arthur Stuart looked a little embarrassed. “Maybe it was. I wasn't sure myself.”

Alvin rubbed Arthur's tight-curled hair. Arthur ducked away. “Don't treat me like a baby.”

“You don't like it, get taller,” said Alvin. “Long as you're shorter than me, I'm going to use your head to scratch an itch whenever I feel like it.” Alvin touched the brim of his hat in salute to Mike and Jean-Jacques. “I'll see you in Philadelphia, Mike. And Jean-Jacques, I hope to see you again someday, or at least to see your book.”

“I promise you your own copy,” said Jean-Jacques.

“I don't like this,” said Mike. “I should be with you.”

“I promise you, Mike, I'm not the one in danger down there.”

“It's a blame fool thing to do!” said Mike.

“What, leave you behind?”

“Healing Calvin.”

Alvin understood the love that prompted these words, but he couldn't leave the idea unanswered. “Mike, he's my brother.”

“I'm more brother to you than he ever was,” said Mike.

“You are now,” said Alvin. “But there was a time when he was my dearest friend. We did everything together. I have no memories of my childhood without him in them, or scarcely any.”

“So why doesn't he feel that way?”

“Maybe I wasn't as good a brother to him as he was to me,” said Alvin. “Mike, I'll come back safe.”

“This is as crazy as it was you going back to jail.”

“I walked out when I needed to,” said Alvin. “And now I've got to get moving. I need you to get Jean-Jacques out of New England without getting deported as a Catholic, and Verily and Purity need somebody who isn't ga-ga with love to make sure they eat and sleep.”

Arthur Stuart solemnly shook hands with Mike and Jean-Jacques. Alvin hugged them both. Then they took off at a jog, the man leading, the boy at his heels. In a few minutes the greensong had them and they fairly flew through the woods along the river.

“He's coming,” said Margaret.

“Where he be, you say?” asked Gullah Joe.

Outside, they heard the sound of galloping horses. The singing and wailing from the slave quarters had grown more intense as the sun set and darkness gathered.

“I can't tell,” said Margaret. “He's in the midst of the music. Ru

“We tell folks what you say,” said Denmark, “but this be too hard for them. The anger, it come so fast to them. I hear some talking about killing their White folks tonight in their beds. I hear them say, Kill them the White babies, too, the children. Kill them all.”

“I know,” said Margaret. “You did your best.”

“They be other ones, too,” said Gullah Joe. “No name come back a-them. Empty like him. More empty. They die. He kill them.”

Margaret looked down at Calvin's body. The young man's breath was so shallow that now and then she had to check his heartfire just to see if he was alive. Fishy and Denmark's woman were tending him now, so Margaret could rest, but what good did washing him do? Maybe they were keeping the fever down. Maybe they were just keeping him wet. They certainly weren't keeping him company, for he had lapsed into unconsciousness hours ago and all his futures had come down to just a handful that didn't lead to a miserable death here, tonight, in this place.

“Why he no fix up, him?” asked Gullah Joe. “He strong.”

“Strong but ignorant,” said Margaret. “My husband tried to teach him, but he refused to learn. He wanted the results without practicing the method.”

“Young,” said Gullah Joe.

“I learned when I was young,” said Denmark.

“You never be young,” said Gullah Joe.

Denmark grimaced at that. “You right, Gullah Joe.”

“Your wife,” said Margaret.

Denmark looked at the slave woman he had bought and ruined. “She never let me call her that.”

“She never told you her name, either,” said Margaret.

Denmark shook his head. “I never call her by no slave name. She never tell me her true name. So I got no name for her.”

“Would you like to speak that name? Don't you think that in her present state, she'd like to hear someone call her by name?”

“When she be in her right mind she don't want me to,” said Denmark.

“Slavery makes people do strange things,” said Margaret.

“I never was a slave,” said Denmark.

“You were, all the same,” said Margaret. “They fenced you around with so many laws. Who is more a slave than the man who has to pretend he's a slave to survive?”

“That didn't make me do that to her.”

“I don't know,” said Margaret. “Of course you made your own choices. You tried to find a wife in just the way your father did– you bought one. Then you found yourself in a corner. You thought murder was your only hope. But at the last moment you couldn't do it.”

“Not the last moment,” said Denmark. “The moment after.”

“Yes,” said Margaret. “Almost too late.”

“Now I live with her every day,” said Denmark. “Now who own who?”

“All that anger outside– what if they kill? Do you think they're murderers?”

“You think they not?” asked Denmark.

“There has to be something between murder and i

“I know you scared,” said Denmark. “You talk when you scared.”

“We're safe enough here,” said Margaret. “I'm just… what you did to your wife, Denmark. Do you think I haven't thought of doing that to someone? An enemy? Someone who I know will someday cause the death of the person I love most, the person I've loved my whole life, from childhood up. I know that desperate feeling. You have to stop him. And then you see the chance. He's helpless. All you have to do is let nature take its course, and he's gone.”

“But you call your husband,” said Denmark. “You wave your arms and make letters in the air. Somehow he see that.”

“So I chose to do the right thing,” she said.

“Like me,” said Denmark.

“But maybe I chose too late,” she said.

Denmark shrugged.

“Maybe. It ain't all work out yet.”

“All these people thirsting for vengeance. What will they choose? When will it be too late for them? Or just in time?”

A new sound. Marching feet. Margaret ran to the window. The King's Guard, marching in Blacktown.

“Damn fool they,” said Gullah Joe. “What we do here in Blacktown? Who we hurt? They scared of us, they no remember they gots them Black people hate them, in they house, they wait down the stair, White man sleep, up the stair they go, cook she got she knife, gardener he got he sickle, butler he break him wine bottle, he got the glass, the edge be sharp. When they blood paint the walls, when they body empty, who the Black man put on that tall hat? Who the Black woman wear the bloody dress?”