It happened, as chance (or Providence) would have it, on a Sunday. Dusk was falling, and still Anne hadn’t come for me—; I lay rigid and unmoving on my cot. She had never waited so long before. I permitted myself, for the briefest of spells, the luxury of imagining she’d forgotten me. Soon enough, however, I heard her deliberate, heavy foot-falls on the stairs—; a moment later she was guiding me down the hall. Her husband let out his customary warble of despair as we passed his door, propped open, as usual, with an empty mash-bucket. At the head of the stairs the idea came to me, fleetingly and sweetly, of tipping her head-first over the banister—; but I kept passive as a stone. I followed her mutely down the cellar steps, past the filthy, grease-markedcurtain, into that hateful alcove. I turned and raised my hands for her to bind them.
“Not today, Oliver,” Anne said, her voice high and lilting. It was not a tone I’d heard her use before. She held the bandanna at a distance, as though it were the carcass of some small animal of the field. (Her eyes, too, were more far-away than usual, her face more impassive.) Suddenly her eyes recovered their sharpness, as though a veil had been pulled from them. Her voice fell and roughened. “Turn your self round, boy. Lay your face against the brick.” I hesitated, unsure of what she wanted—; the heel of her right hand struck me hard across the chin. When my vision cleared I found myself positioned as she’d directed, my hands held out behind me, my right cheek flush against the wall.
“Cross your wrists above your head. There. Hold them up! Higher, boy.”
It had always been important to her to see my face. I shut my eyes and did as I was told, trying to think of nothing but the river.
“Right,” Anne said morosely, binding my wrists together. “Right.” Her work-chipped finger-nails slid across my brow, lingering there a while—; in spite of myself I let out a sigh as she withdrew them. The world had already begun dwindling away to nothing, to a grain of jet-black coal. Anne was somewhere to my left, perhaps a half a pace behind me. She stripped herself with a few coarse movements, then hurriedly undid my britches and pulled them to my knees. Her right hand planted itself at the base of my spine. I sank my teeth into my lower lip and waited.
Before Anne could act, however, a foot-fall sounded on the cellar steps. After a pause it was followed by another, then a third. Anne stopped short and dug her nails lightly into the small of my back—: a warning to me to hush. As yet the curtain kept us hid.
Nothing happened for a time. Anne struggled to keep her breathing steady, and I, for my part, kept as quiet as a mole. She could do nothing, however, to keep from shivering in her nakedness. The rings of the curtain rattled tinklingly together.
“Annie Bradford? Am I right?” came a voice. (A thick voice, clumsy with its consonants—: the voice of a drinker.)
“Missus Anne Bradford,” she answered, her voice steady and severe. “Who the hell are you, sir, to come into my house?” She let go of my nape, now, and crouched to gather up her clothes.
The man proceeded down the steps.
“Hold there! Hold!” Anne shrieked, stamping her bare foot against the floor. “I’m entirely as nature made me, sir!”
“So are we all, Annie,” the man said sadly, stepping off the stairs. What I’d mistaken for clumsiness was in fact some manner of dialect—; he wasn’t a Dixie man at all, perhaps not even an American. He was no more than three steps from the mash-kettle now, and eight or nine steps from the curtain.
“I don’t much enjoy trading how-dos with a muslin sheet, Mrs. Buh, Buh, Bradford,” he said. He sounded crest-fallen, apologetic. “What say you come out, as is, and I avert mine eyes?”
“Get you gone from this house,” Anne said in a hiss. Her breath came whistling against my nape. “Get you gone, sir, before I call my husband—” (here she took in a frantic, gasping breath, but so quietly that only I could hear it)—“or my boy.”
The man guffawed. There was nothing threatening in his laugh, perhaps, but no politeness, either. “Your boy’d have no objection, I think, if I tuh, tuh, took you off his hands,” he said. He laughed again, more quietly, then raised his voice—: “Would you, boy?”
Anne spat out a curse. “Let me caution you of something, Mister—”
“Kennedy,” said the man. The mirth was gone out of his voice already. “Kennedy’s the name I were born into. I’m here on a errand for Mr. T. H. Morelle, gentleman, of Nuh, Nuh, Natchez-on-the-River.”
A brief, unwieldy silence fell, during which Anne did up the buttons of her shift. The man said nothing, did nothing. Evidently he was content to wait for her to dress. His conduct was unlike any burglar’s I’d heard tell of. But in truth I never mistook him for a burglar—; I knew exactly who he was. He was my day-dream of deliverance made flesh.
“Morelle?” Anne said finally, stepping out from the curtain. “Does that name excuse a man from ringing my house-bell?”
“It should,” said Kennedy.
“We’ve a power of customers here, Mr. Kennedy. Quite a number of well-heeledand accredited gentlemen buy their mash from Mother Anne. You’ll have to forgive us if a name escapes—”
“ ‘Us’?” Kennedy said. His voice was suddenly flat as a crypt-cover. “What do you mean by us, ma’rm?”
“Why — just what I said, sir. Us. Me, my husband, and the boy.”
“Your husband is upstairs with his guts strung around his ankles,” Kennedy replied.
Anne made a sound at this that seemed stripped of any meaning. It could have been a laugh, or a snort of indifference—; it could have been a cry of pain.
“You borrowed four hundred State of Louisiana dollars from Mr. Amos Dall, of Vidalia, Louisiana,” Kennedy said, as though reading from a receipt. He cleared his throat and spat onto the floor. Mother Anne made to answer, but her voice was oddly muffled, little better than a gurgle, as though Kennedy had his hand over her mouth.
“That sum were to of been paid back, with interest, at a monthly rate of three puh, puh, percent, in three-and-one-half years from the time of borrowing,” he went on. His stutter seemed to be worsening. He spat again, more loudly still. I decided he was chewing on a tobacco-plug.
“Not that terms matter much, marm. That money weren’t Mr. Amos Dall’s to get fancy with. That money belonged to Mr. T. H. Morelle of Natchez-on-the-River, gentleman and financier.”
Anne gave another gurgle, louder and more desperate than before. It was clear from the sound that she was not more than three paces from the curtain, and also that she was kneeling on the floor.
“Let go of my trouser-leg, Annie. No harm will cuh, cuh, come to you today.” He went quiet for a moment. “Am I right, little Annie, in saying so?”