The black man, on his right side, began speaking a foreign language and pointed to Counsel’s coat pocket and his saddlebags. Counsel could make out a few English words but everything together made no sense to him. Counsel shook the sorrel from the gun and rested it over the pommel. The black man kept on talking, and his talking, just above a whisper, was very loud in the forest, even with all the people and the animals. All the people and the horses seemed to have quieted just to listen to what he had to say. The man reached over and shook the hem of Counsel’s coat and seemed disappointed that he didn’t hear what he expected. Counsel used his gun to brush the man’s hand away. A woman Counsel thought was Mexican rode up on a blond horse and stopped next to the black man and nodded to Counsel. He thought Mexican because she looked like a painting in one of his books back in his library in North Carolina.
“What that nigger saying?” Counsel said. “What’s he talking?” He spoke to the woman but also directed his questions to a white man he noticed just behind the black man and to another white man who appeared on his left side. “What this nigger want from me?” he asked the white man on the left. “What’s he talking?”
“He’s talking American talk,” the Mexican woman said, her face unsmiling as if to convey the seriousness of what the black man was saying.
He knew she was lying and he wanted her now to just go away.
“He is asking if you have any tobacco,” the white man on the left said. “I take it you are not American or you would understand him.” The man raised his hat by the crown and then let it drop back down on his head. “He’s hard of hearing or he would start to discuss your calling him out of his name. His discussions can be painful, or so I’m told.”
“Tell him I ain’t got nothing for him.” The black man shrugged, apparently because he understood what Counsel had said. He began riding past Counsel and then stopped and picked the last piece of wood sorrel from Counsel’s gun. Would they all hang him from one of the trees if he up and shot the nigger right there? “Need a clean shooter,” the black man said in the same clear way he had spoken all the other words. He went on by.
The white man on the left sounded to Counsel like someone who had some sense, despite the foolishness that had come out of his mouth. “I just wanna be on my way.” Had he said that only an hour ago? A few days ago? Or was it the remnant of a conversation from a dream?
“We hold nobody back,” the Mexican woman said and followed the black man.
“Not on purpose anyway,” the white man behind her said.
Counsel started forward and people and their horses made way. He had underestimated the amount of people by half and as he moved on, he thought their numbers, with their horses and wagons, would never end. He turned around at one point and looked in the back of one wagon and saw two pregnant women, one white, one black, sitting up and staring at him. The black woman waved at him, but the white woman had a pout on her face; she had on a light green bonnet and one of the strings was in her mouth. He had seen a dark old man driving the wagon, not really a Negro, not really from any race that was recorded in any of the books in his destroyed library. As he looked between the pregnant women he saw a tiny blond-haired boy standing with his arms around the dark man’s neck, hanging on for support. The boy turned and looked at him. Counsel wondered if the authorities knew about all these people. There was something wrong here and the government of Texas should be doing something about it.
When he turned from the wagon with the pregnant women, a boy smiling with perfect teeth was facing him. He knew the origins of this one from another of the destroyed books-someone from the Orient. It might be China, if the book had been telling him the truth. The boy was no more than fifteen, and his long and thick pigtail lay over his left shoulder with the ease of a coveted pet. The boy was in his way and Counsel stopped. The boy, his hand out, shifted slightly to the right side and Counsel continued, and as he passed, the boy’s hand, never threatening, never harsh, paused at the ear of Counsel’s horse and moved down the horse’s neck, along Counsel’s saddle and thigh and on out past the horse’s rump, finally taking a gentle hold of the tail before letting horse and man go on. The boy had never stopped smiling, and the smile, more than the touch, was chilling to Counsel.
The people of one color or another and their horses flowed on past him, the ground thundering and the dappled sun coming down on them all. In the end, it did not seem that he and his horse were moving but were simply being carried forward by some counterforce the horses and wagons and people were creating as they went past him. He was in a river of them and he had no say in it. He closed his eyes.
“Better open your eyes or you’ll fall off Texas.” Counsel opened his eyes and saw a red-haired white woman looking at him. Beyond her he could see what he thought was the end of it all.
“I remember when you did that and fell off into Mississippi from Alabama.” A blond-haired man appeared beside her. The hair seemed similar to that of the boy holding the nigger in the wagon, and Counsel, trying to make some sense of everything, thought the man might be father to that boy. The man and the woman were on black horses, though the woman’s horse seemed to be turning blue as seconds went by.
“I did not,” the woman said and gave a kick to the man’s leg. “That was Jenny and her one eye.” They were now in Counsel’s way and he stopped again.
“You going farther into Texas?” the man asked Counsel.
“I have that plan.” He felt that everything behind him, horses and people and wagons, had now stopped as if what he and the white woman and man were saying was more important than wherever they were going.
“Hmm,” the woman said, “I’ve seen the rest of Texas and now I’ve seen you, and I don’t think the two of you would marry well.” Where was the law in Texas with all these people going about?
“You could join us,” the white man said. Yes, Counsel decided, the little boy was his son. “We’ve seen Texas and we could tell what all you are missing. The rivers, the land, the dust. Before we’re done telling you, you’ll think you’ve been to every part of Texas.”
“We’re as good as picture books,” the woman said.
“The only thing we ask is that you not hurt children,” the man said.
“That’s a hard one,” the woman said, kicking the man again.
“I learned it. He can learn it.”
“I want to see for myself,” Counsel said and started up his horse again.
“You learned it after you learned not to lie anymore,” the woman said and reached over and rubbed the back of her hand along the blond man’s beard. He closed his eyes and smiled, and had he been a cat, he would have curled up and purred.
“No,” the man said, opening his eyes, “that was Jenny that had the lying problem. Lying problem along with falling into Mississippi.”
Counsel turned his horse to the right. “Texas,” he said.
“Suit yourself,” the man said.
“Suit everybody,” the woman said, and as soon as she did the thunder of movement began and the white man and white woman parted and Counsel went between them. “Just don’t lie and hurt the children. Jenny learned the hard way.”
Counsel could see full sunlight for the first time since he had entered the forest, but after a few yards, he felt thunder coming from ahead and dozens of horses appeared. No people, just horses who seemed to be following all the people with the obedience of the dogs at the beginning of the forest. He went into the mix and closed his eyes. There was a sweet musty smell to all the horseflesh, and on another day, somewhere else, he could have enjoyed the wonder of them. A man behind him began to whistle. Maybe, Counsel thought, Texas was being emptied out of filth and it was now a better place for a man like him.