He put the harmonica in his shirtfront pocket, the derringer flask in his pants.
He started down the mountain with the aid of a walking stick, one hed cut and carved himself. It was twisted sassafras, stripped and dried. Head high, the staff allowed him to maneuver on the most drastic of inclines. Over the years, hed speared fourteen copperheads with its sharpened end.
Chicopee approached the ridge drop-off where hed first watched Clarence Dickason a month prior. This time, for fear of messing his clothes, he did not lie down on his belly. He raised and lowered his bare feet methodically, careful not to stir sound. From behind a hickory tree, he watched the bald below. There was movement inside the little clapboard house. It reminded him of one hed once known.
A white woman walked out the front door to shake a rug. She was younger than the black man whod built the outhouse. Maybe by ten or twenty years. Her hair was yellow in streaks, brown in others, pulled back and held by a lash so that her neck showed thin and curved. The sun held above. Half the homestead caught its light, half lay in shadow. It was approaching six oclock. Suppertime. Chicopee could smell beans, fatback. Cornbread.
A child ran from the opened doorway to the pretty woman shaking the rug. She paid the little boy no mind. He was waist-high on her, maybe four or five years old, and he was a handsome, sturdy boy. His hair was thick and black. His skin was darker than his mamas. To Chicopee, he looked colored and white at the same time. And so he was, and so it became evident what was going on in the little house with the little outhouse next to it. Hed heard of it before, but never seen it up close. The words flooded his head. Other folks words: race mixing. Mongrel Virginians. The WIN tribe. Such words shook him and he looked down at his feet, the toenails hed cut that afternoon with his Bowie knife. WIN tribe. It was another of the suddenly recalled confusions hed been facing with more frequency since seeing Clarence Dickason and hearing his song. They were confusions of the dream world and the waking. Memory and past.
He looked up again to see the woman and the boy returning to the house. Clarence Dickason brushed past them on his way out. He kissed the pretty woman and stepped out into the yard holding a sleeping baby in his arms.
Chicopee looked at the small blanket, the small thing it held. He smiled. Then he took his first step from behind the tree, not so careful against rustling. He stepped foot over foot down the hillside toward the family whod come here to get away from onlookers and those who would judge them and threaten their lives and stare. Always they would stare.
When Clarence Dickason saw the bearded mountain figure stairstepping the hillside with a staff in hand, he took the baby back inside to his woman. He picked up his Winchester and walked out again to meet the man. When he got back to the yard, Chicopee was twenty yards off.
How can I help you? Dickason hollered. His rifle was at his side, pointed at the dirt.
The mountain man stopped fifteen yards away. He laid down his walking stick so as not to appear threatening. He raised his left hand in a sort of hello gesture. Then he raised his right so that he appeared to be putting his hands over his head. A surrender. A target. A man up against the firing squad.
Inside, the woman and the boy watched.
No need for all that, Dickason said. He stood his ground and watched Chicopee through squinted eyes that had seen what white men were capable of. He had faith and he had experience, and the two together left him with waiting, just waiting. Finally, Chicopee lowered his hands. Still ten feet off and stepping slow, he reached one of them outward, toward Dickason. It was a handshake offering, something he remembered offering thirty years earlier to another whose skin color made such gestures mean more. This time, as he reached and inched closer, he aimed to say the words hed been rehearsing for a month. But all he could think of was his name, and even that clenched up and came out wrong when he opened his mouth. As he got within five feet, he managed, in a near whisper, to say, Chicky.
Well, Dickason answered. Well, I suppose thats your name? Chicky? He still hadnt moved from his stance. Carefully, he swung the rifle behind his back into his left hand and reached out his right in greeting. They shook, then stepped back from one another a half pace. Clarence Dickason, the older man said. He up-and-downed the beard and the matted hair, the skin like an animals somehow. The clothes so oddly hung on the mans scrappy frame. He surmised things. He said, I reckon you live out this way?
A nod to the affirmative.
Well, Mr Chicky, Ive got me some small children here, a woman just done with carryin one of em, so I thank you very kindly for stoppin, but I cant offer you supper just now. He knew a man such as this one might have more like himself waiting to come down the hill, waiting for a signal to come get whatever it was they were after. He knew that for some, just the sight of a black man and a white woman, their children somewhere in betweenfor some, this was enough to shed blood. So, Im pleased to meet you sir, and I thank you kindly for stoppin, Dickason said.
Another nod, this time an exaggerated one to signal he got the picture. He opened his mouth to bid Mr Dickason goodbye, but again, the words choked off. So, Chicopee, or Mr Chicky, as the man had called him, turned and scurried back to the ridgeline. He picked up his walking stick on the move, used his leg and feet and toe muscles to scamper back up to where hed come from.
Dickason marveled at his movements, his speed. Then his woman came up behind him. Clarence, she said, dont run him off on account of the way he looks. She yelled out, Hey. Mr Chicky. He turned, crouched in mid-climb, nearly on all fours against the slope. His beard reached the uneven ground below. Seeing him like this, Rose Kozma reconsidered. But she was a born-again Christian, the daughter of Catholic Hungarian immigrants who had, in recent years, embraced the Pentecostal. She looked at the mountain man and waved him back to the house to join them for supper.
They ate. The baby, a girl named Zizi, Hungarian for dedicated to God, cried from the blessing to the clearing of plates. This was good and bad. It agitated the nerves, but it helped cover the fact that Chicopee, for the duration, did not speak a single word.
Clarence stood in the makeshift kitchen, sinking plates into a washtub of water heated on the cook stove. He made sure not to keep his back turned on their guest. Rose stood from the table. She was tired and the baby was hungry. Doctor calls it colic, all this here fussin, she said over the childs screams. Im going to nurse her in the bedroom, Clare, she hollered. Clarence nodded and scrubbed. Chicopee was left seated and alone with Albert, the boy. As hed done all through supper, Albert stared at the mountain mans mouth.
You got gold teeth? he asked.
A nod yes.
How many?
With one hand Chicopee held up five fingers, the other, three. He watched the boy count them up.
Eight, he said.
Another nod. Smart boy for four years. Behind him, on the wall, hung pictures Rose had painted. Ocean surfs crashing down on sand and seagulls flying high. Big, exaggerated flowers, so heavy they bent almost double. Yellow and red oil paints mixed into orange. These were thick, caked paintings. Chunky, some might call them. To a man who called wilderness home, they were beautiful.
Rose is the artist of the family, Clarence said. Hed walked back to the table, drying his hands on his trousers. He sat down and rolled a cigarette. Then another. I was born with music in my bones, but Rose? She got that paint.
How bout you open wide, show me all eight at once? Albert said.
Clarence put the cigarette in his lips. Hush Al, he said. Al sat on his knees and rocked, looked at his daddy and then back at their guest. Clarence handed Chicopee the second cigarette, struck a match and lit both. For the two men, the one whod not had tobacco in twenty years most especially, that smoke went down like hot heaven. Chicopee coughed. I lined track most my life, Clarence said. Coal strike laid me off the N&W five years back. I been tryin to make a go with the music ever since. Got a band, but they aint no real money in it. Albert jumped off the bench and ran out the front door. His father paid no mind. There was still light out, the kind that fades imperceptibly, orange and calm like sleep. Come up here on account of all that, and the other thing. He looked to the back bedroom, where Zizi had finished nursing and begun crying again. Where you from?
Chicopee pulled hard on the cigarette. He breathed it out and looked down at the table, cut from oak. The Hohner sat heavy in his shirt pocket. I brung this with me, he said, and pulled the harmonica out.
Clarence almost smiled. Alright, he said. Alright now. He stood and struck another match, lit the two kerosene lamps mounted on wall brackets. Then he leaned his head toward the front door and whistled high and loud, a signal for Albert, whose footfalls soon sounded, followed by his panting. He remained out front, riding a rocking chair across the grass like a horse.
The harmonica caught the flickering light of the lamps. Chicopee put it to his lips as Clarence sat back down, humming. Rose came out from the back with Zizi, who was all-out wailing again. Rose looked as if she might cry then, and the men, set to make noise resembling song, sat upright and looked at the mother and daughter. All were helpless to end the roaring. Chicopee listened and watched. His insides ached to help that little thing quiet. He stood and held out his arms. Rose looked at Clarence, who nodded no halfheartedly. Then Rose gave their guest her youngest child.
Zizi nuzzled against all that hanging hair. Her screams became grunts. Her grunts became sighs.
She slept.
Well Ill be, Rose said.
Chicopee looked down at the creases in the babys wrists, the way her fine hair grew outward from her temple into the eyebrow. He smiled full-on then, exposed his teeth in a way he never would have before.
Well Ill be, Rose said again. Chicky Gold. Chicky Gold the baby man.
Later that evening, when they did get to music making, the guest from the mountains held the baby with one hand, the harmonica with the other. As was usual, hed worked out a tune after hearing it only once. He blew high and low, shook short reeds and long. Clarence recognized the tune as one hed sung so long ago. One he still sang. It was a song for laying steel and a song for building shelter. He sang along with his strange new acquaintance that night, though he did so softly, as Rose, asleep in the back, did not approve of secular music. He sang, Well, lovers is you right? Oh, yes we right. Newborn baby born last night, walkin talkin fore daylight, carry to the mountain boys, carry to the mountain. Then he smiled at the man draped in hair, who smiled back a mouthful of mineral that men kill for and pan faraway creeks to get.