“Henri.” I’m not your son, he thought, and I’m not anybody’s slave.
“Onn wi?” The white captain squinted and screwed up his mouth. “You shore don’t talk like folks around this way.”
The other white men laughed; the black who held the mule was silent, studying the split logs of the roadway.
“Ain’t no kind of name for a natural man. Ornery. I cain’t hardly wrap my lips around it.”
“Henry,” Henri said.
“Well then, Henry, would ye pass me up that air cane ye got so I kin git a look?”
The captain prised open the notch in the cane with his calloused thumb. He opened his duster and plucked a foot-long Bowie knife from inside his waistband and let it into the grip of the green shaft, then, turning his horse a little away from the other, tried the flex of the thrower and grinned.
“I be go to Hell and burn!” he said. “Ye got some enterprise about ye, Henry. I’m bound to grant ye that.” He loosened his knife and tucked it away, then handed the cane back down to Henri. The horse he was riding was white and with the curly brim of his hat and his confident seat this captain reminded Henri of pictures of Saint Jacques Majeur he had seen a long time ago before he ever came into this country.
“Henry,” the captain said, taking a deeper bite of the name. “Kin ye ride a mule?”
Henri looked at the mule and the black man holding it. “I can,” he said.
“Then you best gut that doe and load her up and ride along with us a ways. We’re gitten up a company to fight for the Confederacy. Do you know what that is?”
“I know Kentucky isn’t in it and I know you’re in Kentucky.”
The captain laughed. “Ye’re a right knowledgeable feller. We’re bound for Louisville—ye best ride along.”
By then Henri had opened the doe’s white belly and scooped her entrails into the ditch. A few greenbottle flies were gathering. He cleaned his knife on a tuft of grass and stood.
“I just now came from Louisville.”
The captain looked him up and down—bare head to bare feet. “Did ye now,” he said. “Ain’t brought much away with ye, hanh?” He snorted. “Hit don’t matter none. This time ye’ll be riding with me.”
Henri crouched to lift the carcass of the doe and slung over the mule’s withers. The mule shied at the first movement, tossing his black maul-shaped head, but quieted once the load had settled. Henri vaulted up behind. The black man tossed him the lead rope and he leaned across the still warm body of the doe and into the mule’s neck to fasten the loose end to the hackamore for a makeshift bridle.
“Henry,” said the captain. “You must be hongry to run down a deer and kill it with a knife thataway.”
Henri, straight astride the mule’s back now, lifted the lead-rope reins an inch and nodded. The blue jay fledgling had about worn off—there’d not been much meat on those brittle bones.
“Ginral Jerry.” The captain turned to the old black man beside him. “Issue this man a hoecake please.”
Ginral Jerry as he was called reached into a saddlebag and tossed Henri a flat disc of cold cornbread. He raised his left hand just soon enough to catch it as it spun across his shoulder.
“Thank you,” he said. But the white captain had turned and was riding ahead, and the one he’d called Ginral Jerry paid him no mind either.
Henri broke off a piece of the cornbread between his side teeth and let it soften in his mouth a minute till he could chew it. The cake was hard as the stone he’d slept on the night before but he could taste a hint of bacon grease in it once he began to wear it down. He squeezed the mule’s sides with his knees to encourage him to match the horse’s trot. Three men rode abreast ahead of him, two in the rear. All five had as good of horses as any he had ever seen. He’d not get away from them along the riverside, though if ever they came into real mountains the mule might give him some advantage there. It was a good mule too, strong and sure-footed and a rarity being broke to carry fresh-killed meat. He didn’t think he wanted to get away but it was always good to have an idea in his mind how he might accomplish it.