wanted the sea itself to stop and let me catch up. And yet, for the first time since I had been on my own, I felt the connection that was in the blood, our blood, and I knew it was alive and ancient. As Unai told me one night when I became impatient, “You are Meq, you are Egizahar Meq. Learn your Stone. The Stones speak; we are silent.”
We arrived outside New Orleans on a late afternoon in March, not long after Mardi Gras. It was snowing — strange weather that was just beginning. We decided to drop anchor and not disembark until morning. Captain Woodget wanted to make sure all his papers were in order, both legal and illegal.
I was supposed to stay on board and only Captain Woodget would accompany Isabelle and her entourage ashore and through customs, acting as her escort. This was as close as I’d been to St. Louis in more than twelve years and I thought about it most of the day. I felt anxious and after dinner I asked Unai and Usoa who was the “evil one” they sought. Their answers were vague, only telling me that he was “diko” and “aberrant.”
I fell asleep in an agitated and frustrated state of mind. Outside, it kept snowing, and inside, I came apart.
I dreamed I was in the stone cell again, only this time there was an opening in the wall and a hole in the floor. I walked over toward it and saw that it was really a well, a dry well, with no borders around the edge. I had to watch my step. I heard a voice or thought I heard a voice, coming from inside the well. I got down on my knees. I crawled to the edge and looked over. Down in the darkness, floating in space, was Carolina’s head. Her eyes were wide open and she was trying to scream, but there was only a faint cry coming from her lips. I reached down and couldn’t touch her; her head kept floating away. I yelled “No! No!” but it was drowned out by another sound, a sound like a train roaring through the night, and Carolina’s head spiraled out of sight, disappearing into nothingness.
I awoke in terror. I knew what I must do. I had to get to St. Louis and get there quick. Carolina was in danger and a dream as sudden and clear as lightning had told me so. I thought of Papa’s very last words, “We are the Dreams.”
I ran to Captain Woodget’s cabin. I knocked and woke him from a sound sleep. I told him of my dream and the absolute necessity for me to leave at once. He was calm, just as he was at sea. I never remember seeing him anything but calm in dirty weather. He told me to wait and slip ashore when he and Isabelle disembarked. He would create a diversion, and as a child, I could easily get lost in the chaos.
I waited. Morning came and the rare snowstorm had disappeared. Captain Woodget and Isabelle, along with Unai and Usoa, went ashore. The captain immediately created a ruckus concerning the luggage and the customs agents came running. I slipped easily through the confusion and shouting, acting as if I were lost and looking for my sister.
I was in the United States, in New Orleans, and on my way to St. Louis.
For over twelve years I had smuggled goods and valuables in and out of countries. Every time, the cargo was something someone wanted or treasured. This time, I only smuggled fear.
5. ETSAI (ENEMY)
It was more difficult than I expected picking up a ride to St. Louis. I finally hired on as a cabin boy on a barge hauling coal to Dubuque. In a little more than a decade, river trade had begun to decline due to federal regulations and competition with the railroads, I was told. Maybe Solomon was wrong when he said the money would be on the water.
Whatever the reasons, I was being delayed and in my mind the fear kept growing that I might be too late, but too late for what, I didn’t know. I only knew that up ahead, upriver, there was danger, and the closer we got, the more I felt its presence.
After stops in Natchez and Memphis, we docked in St. Louis late at night. I collected some of the wages due me and said I’d be back in an hour. I never returned. I made my way through an unfamiliar St. Louis to the south side, walking hills and streets I knew from memory, but feeling like a stranger.
I rounded the corner where I had met Ray and saw the boardinghouse. I walked toward it. The sun was just rising. I saw the sign out front and it still read “Mrs. Bennings’s House.” I walked around the back to the kitchen door. It was unlocked and I opened it.
She was in the kitchen, in the dark, but I saw her in the half-light that shone through the windows. She was standing by the stove putting water on to boil. Her blond hair was piled on top of her head. She tried to tuck a strand of it behind her ear. I watched her in silence. She was in her mid-twenties and beautiful, even in a worn old cotton robe and unlaced boots. She was at least six inches taller than I was. She watched the stove. I watched her.
“You know it won’t work like that, don’t you?” I said.
She jumped back, kicking over a chair and landing against the table. She regained her balance and looked over toward the door. “Who’s there?” she yelled.
I said, “You can’t boil water and watch it too. You know that.”
She didn’t make a sound for several moments, then she got on her knees and sort of half crawled toward me and the light from the open door. She stopped and looked at me, started to rise, then sat back down on the floor and crossed her legs, never taking her eyes from mine.
“Hello, Carolina,” I said.
“God, Z, I knew it. I knew you would come back just like this, just this way. I didn’t know when, but I knew how.”
I stared at her. I had seen the gold flecks in her eyes before, but now those eyes were in the face of a grown woman, a beautiful woman. Suddenly we both laughed, not a nervous laugh, but a real out loud laugh. It felt so good to see her.
“How’s Georgia?”
“She’s fine, she’s fine.”
She reached up and put her hand on my cheek. It was a woman’s touch. It was my mama’s touch. This was crazy. Inside, I was a man who had traveled fifty thousand miles at sea for twelve years; outside, I was a child being touched by the fingers of a beautiful woman.
“Should we talk about this?” I asked.
“This? What do you mean — this?” She put her hands in her lap and rubbed them together. She nodded at the door. “Why don’t you shut the door. it’s cold.”
I shut the door. “But what about—”
“Come on,” she said, cutting me off and taking my hand. “I’ve got something for you.”
I wouldn’t quit. “But what about—”
“This?” she said, cutting me off again. “I told you a long time ago, Z, ‘this’ doesn’t make any difference.”
She took me out of the kitchen and through what had once been the front room. Walls had been knocked out and the whole space was one big parlor with velvet couches and chairs, a full bar at one end, a card table, and an upright piano between two windows hung with thick, blue velvet. There was one gas lamp lit, next to one of the couches where a woman in a full-length red gown was sleeping, snoring heavily.
“What the—”
“Shhh,” she said, covering my mouth.
She took me up the stairs and down the hall, which now had a runner of rich blue carpeting down the center and tiny gas lamps over every door. She pulled me into her room.
“Carolina,” I said, “you want to tell me what I just walked through?”
