My aunt was right, he was obsessed by the negroes, he wanted them to admire him, to adore him, and my mother was right as well; they had killed him.
I could see myself, so passionate, so terrified, weeping like a fool and calling out to him in the cold wind on the dock. And then I turned to find those boys—did I really see them?—who appeared from nowhere to tell me what no one in my world ever would, the plain unvarnished truth. “Your pappy started that fire hisself. He shot hisself.”
It was the truth. They had no reason to make up such a story. They were just children, repeating what they had heard. Mother knew it, and it destroyed what was left of her life.
I reached out and laid the portrait facedown on the table. “Hypocrite,” I said. My head was bursting. It felt as if an iron collar, such as I have seen used to discipline field women, were fastened about my skull. I remembered watching my husband through the spyglass as he stalked across the lawn with one of these devices dangling from his hand. He was in a fury because he’d caught a new girl in bed with the overseer. He passed Sarah, who was feeding chickens in the yard, and spoke to her. I couldn’t hear what he said, but judging by the scowl she gave him, it was something insulting. What was it?
“You’re next.” I heard his voice clearly as I sat there in the darkened room clutching my head. He’s dead, I told myself. He’s not coming back. But it was as if he were there, leaning over me, turning the screw of the hot iron collar tighter and tighter until my skull must crack from the pressure.
IT TURNED COLD that night. I was so tired I slept well in spite of it. In the morning, while I huddled over my coffee, Rose and Delphine went about closing the windows and piling coal into the grates. My headache was gone. I felt better than I had in weeks. Let me just live quietly, without illusions, I thought.
When the fire was lit, I took my cup into the parlor and sat at the desk. I could hear the women struggling with the window in Mother’s bedroom. It has stuck for as long as I can remember. My thoughts wandered and my eyes traveled over the familiar furnishings until they settled upon a sight I will never become accustomed to: Walter was leaning in the doorway, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles. “What are you doing here?” I said, as if he had it in him to give me an answer. He dropped his hands, ran across the floor, and threw himself down on the fireplace tiles, letting out a groan of pleasure at the warmth. Before I could call Rose, he turned upon his side and fell asleep.
He’s like a cat, I thought, always seeking comfort or making trouble, immune to all commands. Someone had washed him recently and cut his hair in short ringlets. In the firelight it glowed like hot copper wire. His lips were moist and red. I seldom looked at him, but I was in such an idle frame of mind that I noticed his face had grown longer in the last months. Though he had his father’s light eyes, he had begun to favor his mother.
Where was she? Philadelphia? New York? Great cold cities full of foreigners. How much longer would it take for Mr. Leggett to find her? And at what cost?
Rose came in, looking from Walter to me and back again. “I thought he was in the kitchen,” she said. “He snuck out while we was closing up. He always want to be where you are.”
This was true, I thought. He was fascinated by me. “Leave him,” I said. “Tell Delphine to fix me a big breakfast. All I ate yesterday was a morsel of bread and a plum.”
WINTER SETTLED UPON us. The cold seeped around the windows, rose up through the floorboards, even the carpets were cold beneath my thin slippers. I spent the mornings in the parlor, wrapped in shawls, the afternoons at my aunt’s, where the fireplace was large enough to accommodate small logs, and the nights shivering beneath a pile of blankets. Walter turned the morning nap by the fire into a ritual. To the amazement of Rose and Delphine, I allowed it. He was there, sound asleep, when my aunt arrived with the news that Sarah had been apprehended at last.
“A gentleman named Foster came to us last night,” she said, breathlessly pulling off her gloves. “He said he had promised Mr. Leggett to relay certain information to us, as he would arrive before the mails. Good heavens, is that Walter?”
“I let him sleep there once,” I said, “and now he wants to do it every day. Rose says he always wants to be where I am.”
My aunt contemplated the boy, who lay curled on his side, his head resting on his arm. “What harm can it do?” she said. “He has certainly grown.”
“He looks like his mother,” I said. “Where is she?”
“She is in jail in Savannah.”
“But I thought she was in New York?”