My Monticello(50)

We gotta go, I said.

Devin turned back to us and took it all in. The ruined car, the gun in his hand. Carol’s crimson face, and Knox standing halfway between, pale with disbelief. My fingers were still on Devin’s skin, but I drew them back. Without more words, we moved all together, skirting the broken gate to reach the paved drive above it. Together, we ran up and away.


X.

The road was steep and winding. Its paved arm twisted one way then the other, lined in woods. We jogged and stumbled upward, halting when we lost our breath. Even in our harried state, Knox reached for my arm, begged me to say I was okay. All I could do was nod.

In a blurred voice, as if he were drunk, Knox recounted what had happened below. There’d been a pickup, he told us, abandoned in the middle of the road, just beyond the head of the driveway we were now ascending. Not a broken-down ambush like Lakshmi’d described—this time no one was visible, inside or out. Knox hoped the truck had simply run out of gas. But then, as they got closer, Knox had seen a man’s head rise from the truck bed. Aiming a rifle. Shouting for Knox to stop.

But he didn’t stop: Knox told us he knew he couldn’t.

Instead he’d slowed, then sped up, and at the last second, veered left and barreled up the same driveway we were still stumbling along. But the man with the rifle had followed him. In fact, there had been two men. Maybe the men knew there was a gate. Knox had not. When he saw the gate, Knox had laid on the gas, hoping to burst through.

It’s hard for a body to keep running upward. Carol’s sandals clacked against the pavement, and Knox’s breathing sounded harsh around his words. I lurched forward, my throat coated with fear, which tasted like smoke. My mouth filled with warm saliva and mucus until I had to bend over to try to spit it out, coughing, gagging. I wanted to throw up—to get that feeling out of me—but all I could do was retch.

Naisha, come on, Devin said.

I still couldn’t look at him, now that I knew he knew—but in truth, I felt some kind of relief, that someone else knew everything.

We started again, walking fast.

Were those the same men— Knox started.

The blue, I said. On First Street, those men wore blue armbands too.

Our fear drove us forward, even as our lungs burned with effort, even as Carol turned to look back down the road. Knox tugged me by the wrist, his Adam’s apple jumping as he swallowed. Devin still held that pistol close at his leg, as if ready to use it or else like he’d forgotten he held it. Of course, those men were blocking the road; it had been reckless to let myself believe otherwise. I’d wanted to believe they’d put away their weapons, scrubbed the smell of fuel from their hands, and used those cleaner hands to touch wives or lift their own children. That they’d soon use their reach for something useful, for restoration even. Because who on earth benefited from this rift?

Carol slowed, swaying in a patch of light, and we all used that moment to gulp in air. She had not said a word since we’d tugged her from the Town Car. I scanned her body for blood, for any sign of fracture. She looked uninjured, but her eyes were too dark, as if the brown centers had eaten the whites.

You shot that man, Carol said to Devin. Now they are going to come and find us and shoot us.

Devin looked down at his gun and tucked it hastily into his waistband, pulled his T-shirt over it, before looking back at Carol.

What did you expect me to do? he said.

We began to walk again, passing a metal guardrail, a gully. Moving through luminescent globes of gnats swarming. The air filled with the ripe, singed scent of late spring.

Where does this road lead? Knox said.

I realized where we were as I said it: We’re on the drive to the orchard, I answered.

We kept on, moving as fast as we were able, sweat rolling down on our backs. I was so thirsty, but we’d left our bag with water and a few supplies in the Town Car. I could hear dogs baying in the distance.

We’ve gotta be almost to the top by now, I said.

Finally, the woods began to open up, giving way to meadowland. The sun spotlit our heads, searing our scalps and setting a fiery edge to the unshorn grass. The hills rolled upward, lined in trellises with vines intertwined. Ahead and to our right, we soon saw a long gravel lot. Beyond that, apple trees lined up, a mottle of tattered blossoms and weatherworn leaves.

Wait—this road ends here, Devin said. Where’re we s’pose to go from here?

The lot was empty except for a handful of vehicles, spread apart. At the far end, we could see a set of barnlike structures, brick red, with picnic tables cascading down the slope behind them. When I’d worked at Monticello, tourists would drive to Jefferson’s plantation after picking fruit at the orchard. Come fall they would have cradled pumpkins, bought jugs of cider, taken their kids on tractor rides.

We’ve gotta get out of the open, I said.

Crisscrossing the lot, we peered into car windows, pulling up locked latches, wondering if we might be able to coax one of those vehicles into motion. But where could we even get to from there? Everything on that hill—in the lot and below the fruit trees—was still except for us. As we moved across the gravel, we could see that the closest building had been badly damaged, the roof breached. Storm debris had collected in a break, like a massive bird’s nest. Behind us, the road gaped—empty still, but for how long? I felt sure the men would rush into view at any moment. How hard would it be to get past our Town Car or the gate? Maybe we’d hear their pickup—more likely, they’d arrive with more men, more vehicles, more guns.