My Monticello(51)

We could hide in one of these buildings, Knox said.

Devin plucked his T-shirt away from his body. If we hide in there, what we going to do when they get here? I shot at them, remember?

You did not shoot “at” them, Knox said. You shot them—one of them. Knox’s voice was sober again, but distant, like when he was working out a difficult equation.

What the fuck y’all want me to do, Devin said. Let them shoot you? Shoot us?

I could tell Knox was still calculating, looking up at space above Devin, as if the answer was floating there. When I saw those men, Knox went on, I knew I couldn’t stop. Because you were in the trunk. If the trunk had been empty, they might have let us through—

You think it’s my fault, our fault, Devin said, palming his own chest, pointing at me.

Knox’s eyes came back down, landing on Devin. That’s not what I mean, he said.

Felt like Devin’s body had been whipped into frantic motion, even though his feet were still planted. Isn’t it, though?

Knox raised his palms in defense, like he had that first night before Devin punched the Jaunt. Why do you hate me so much?

Why you need everybody to love you? Devin said.

I’m not like them, Knox said, his face betraying some new sadness, or maybe the same old one that drew me to him at the start.

Do something, then, Devin said.

Knox let his hands fall. What the fuck do you want me to do?

Watching them go back and forth, my body grew so heavy—there was so much loss there, and not just mine. I’m the one who insisted on coming, I said, my voice overflowing with that loss. We’re fucked and I need you both to help figure this out. So quit fighting and put the blame on me, okay?

Devin and Knox both went silent, choking back words, their dispute suspended. They might have gotten right back to it except that Carol interrupted. She’d walked out toward the edge of the gravel lot where the land sloped down. Now she stood visoring her eyes with her hand, peering northward toward town. What is happening down there? Carol said.

We moved alongside her to try to see what she was seeing.

Past the heads of the trees, a haze obscured our view, smoke funneling out from someplace that felt close to the road below us. A wildfire maybe, like the ones out on the West Coast, though the smoke seemed more localized. I tried to imagine the land below us as if I were looking down from high above. What was down there, besides woods, between us and the highway? Seemed like the smoke was rising from where the Blue Ridge Sanatorium was—a compound of crumbling buildings that had once, long ago, housed the city’s white patients with tuberculosis, touting sunshine and fresh air. Later, it was used in other ways, and eventually it was purchased by the university, though it had been closed to the public for many years. I’d been to Blue Ridge precisely once, back in high school, invited to come along by a couple of white girls I knew from my honors classes. We’d met up with two SUVs full of football players, in the lot near the Saunders-Monticello Trail. Together we’d walked through pitch dark to scale the fence, the boys’ backpacks heavy with beer. One of them knew the caretaker was gone that weekend—we would not get busted, he assured us. Even so, as we stood before those once-beautiful buildings—a grand residence hall boarded up all along its face, a chapel dripping with moss, the footballers already starting to build a small fire on the pavement—I hadn’t felt safe there. I hadn’t stayed.

More houses on fire, Carol said.

Knox said, A bonfire, maybe.

You think it’s them, Devin said to me. It’s gotta be them, Naisha, right?

I tugged at the gaping scoop at my collar. Prob’ly, I said.

My God—look at town, Devin said.

Through the bluish fan of smoke, we could see sets of faultless red rooftops—but then too, black footprints where some of the buildings by the lake should have been. Oily smoke fanning up from what looked like Belmont and an odd checkerboard of damage had been stamped across downtown and northward with charred remains between unmarred stretches. Near the university, the massive white tower of the hospital had been transformed to a blackened shell: my whole hometown, a patchwork of ruin.

Da’Naisha, Knox said.

When I turned to look at Knox, there were people behind him. Across the lot, a group of men stood where moments earlier there had been no sign of anyone. More bodies began to trickle out of the brick-red buildings in a thick braided line. Men, women, and children rounded that closest damaged barn, slowly revealing their numbers: maybe five times as many people as we had on our mountain. A trio of collies leapt barking into the space between.

What should we do? Carol said.

The orchard people trod toward us until their line was as far away from us as the length of three cars, maybe. It curved around our foursome like a giant horseshoe, or a fat rope tightening. Pink and tan faces tilted. Eyes squinted below sunhats and baseball caps. Hands lifted shovels, axes, hoes, with only the inner row of men carrying long rifles, which they kept pointed toward the ground. The things they carried, along with their numbers, suggested that they did not want to hurt us, but that they could.

We all raised our hands, even Devin. Devin’s handgun remained tucked in the back of his waistband, but sweat had made his white T-shirt translucent as a veil. Please, please don’t see Devin’s gun, I thought.

One man dressed in denim and flannel stepped ahead of the group, moving halfway between them and us. He looked sinewy, his face gaunt and lined with age or wear. His head alone was bare—not covered like everyone else’s. His hair, chestnut-colored and streaked in silver, funneled down the back of his neck. He almost looked like a hapless farmer except there was something flashing in his eyes. The collies, fur mottled in black and white, whined obediently at his feet.