Lost Man's River(284)
Lucius returned to the two men by the door, who stood again, eager to know if that man at Henry’s bed could be Andy House. They had come here from Arcadia, they said. Their name was Graham. Years ago, Henry had spoken of Lucius Watson’s kindness, and they thanked him warmly for this visit to their brother. They were concerned that nobody was on duty to give him something for his pain, but they also said that Henry had been refusing medication. As best as they could fathom his strict code, uncomplaining acceptance of his agony signified some sort of purification to the dying man. They left the bedside frequently because they themselves could not endure the sight of such hard pain.
When Lucius told Andy that Henry’s brothers were there and wished to greet him, he was overjoyed. “Grahams? Them two fellers knowed me when they seen me?” Tears came to his eyes as Lucius led him back across the room and the Grahams rose and sat him down between them.
When Lucius took the rickety chair beside the bed, Henry Short’s mouth fixed itself in that grim semblance of a smile, but the broken eyes, discolored red and yellow, had gone glassy. “You’re a tough old gator, Henry, you are going to make it,” Lucius told him.
The patient dissented with a small twitch of the chin. A moment later, he gritted out, “I had enough.…” Tears escaped onto his caved cheeks. Again Lucius pressed two fingers to that one unburned place on the ropy forearm, and Henry pressed his forearm upward against Lucius’s hand. “You come to ask about your daddy,” he whispered urgently, as if he might die before their business could be finished. He nodded when the other did not deny it.
“I lied, Mist’ Lucius. Lied to Houses, lied to Hardens, lied to you. Been lyin and lyin all of my whole life.” He was not repentant, only bitter. “White folks ever stop to think how they make us lie? How honest Christian nigras got to lie? Lie and lie, then lie some more, just to get by?”
Lucius found a towel to wipe his brow. “Don’t tire yourself, Henry. No need to talk—”
“Yes! A need! I got to finish it!” Henry rasped this with asperity. He gasped out the truth in fits and starts after making Lucius promise that what he had to say would never be repeated to the Hardens. “I’m scared my friends might disrespect me when I’m gone.”
Henry closed his eyes and kept them closed, as if reading a history burned into his eyelids. “Yessuh, they is a need. A cryin need.” He emitted a sharp cough of pain, and the churchwomen knit their brows, afraid this white stranger was draining the Deacon’s strength.
“Mis Ida House, she told me grab my rifle and go foller Old Mist’ Dan. Told me look out for him, cause he was agitatin about gettin old and had got himself all fired up to do some foolishness. And I stared at that old lady. I couldn’t believe what she was askin me to do! I started in to actin the scared nigger, only this time it was true, I was scared to death. I rolled my eyes up, prayin to Heaven, and I cried out, ‘Please, Mis Ida, ma’am, that ain’t no place for no nigger with no rifle! Not today!’
“So that old lady got upset, and she told me I owed it to her husband! Harked back to how Old Mist’ Dan done saved the life of a pickaninny child on the road south out of Georgia. Time she got done, I didn’t see no choice about it. I said, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and I fetched my rifle and trailed after ’em toward the landin, so heavy in my heart I couldn’t hardly walk.”
As if white people had leased Henry his life, thought Lucius, and now he was obliged to give it back.
Henry said, “What I aim to tell is the God’s truth.” He pointed at a shelf above the bed. Though his visitor said that Henry’s word was good enough, the patient closed his eyes and shook his head. Lucius took the Bible from the shelf and slid it beneath the mitt of bandages on the right hand.
“Mist’ Lucius, your daddy always seen me.” He opened his red eyes and searched the other’s face, wondering if the white man understood. “Seen I were a somebody—some kind of a man, with my own look to me and my own way of workin. Seen I counted. Seen I weren’t just nothin-but-a-nigger. By seein me, he give me some respect, and I was grateful, all them years I knew him.” He rested a little. “But that don’t mean he was aimin to put up with no gun-totin nigger, not in no line of men come there to judge him. When I went down to the Smallwood landin, I was deathly afeared of Mist’ Edgar Watson, and afeared of them men waitin on him, too. All I wanted was to run and hide. Cause whether I fired or I didn’t, them white men, they was honor bound to kill me.