All Souls' Rising by Madison Smartt Bell Page A

inside my head I saw the flash and saw the dog drop, still. I didn’t know. He had put the pistol away out of sight.
    When the coachman spoke I was so amazed to hear that voice that I almost gasped out loud. Though after all it was not so far from Haut du Cap. I moved a step or two along the hedgerow to a wider gap and saw him then, sitting on the box. His coachman’s dress: the worn green coat with the brass buttons, and ribbons at his knees. His feet were bare. Both his hands were on the reins and the whip was in the stand. Toussaint had never whipped a horse or needed to.
    From inside the coach Bayon de Libertat said something in a thin silvery voice. The horseman bowed from the saddle and replaced his hat and rode by. Toussaint gave the reins a shake and the coach began to creak and jingle along the road. There was white dust, I saw, on the shoulders of his coat.
    The slaves had fanned out into the field and I could hear them weakly singing, some not far from me. These were not the songs of the night before, during the petro dances. The slaves were weary, and unwilling. It was a misery to hear them. I crawled through the orange hedge into the road and began to run again, around the three corners of the cane piece and back toward the stable yard. The sun had come up out of the mountains and I felt naked in the bare new light. The coach was standing in the stable yard as I had hoped, and he had already unhitched the horses. Of course there was nowhere to go on this road except for Habitation Arnaud.
    Someone had carried the dead dog away, and there was a ragged stain where his blood was darkening on the dirt. People were going back and forth on different errands between the cabins and the grand’case , and I waited for them to stop, but the yard was never empty. At last I stepped out into the yard and began walking toward the barn. A chicken ran squawking from under my feet, and I was afraid then. A woman in a long checked dress looked at me curiously but she said nothing. Then I came under the high lintel of the barn door and into the shadows of the hall.
    Toussaint was standing by the water trough at the back, brushing one of the matched pair of grays. One of Arnaud’s grooms was going away from him—Toussaint would have sent him away. I waited until the groom had gone and went a little nearer.
    “ Parrain ,” I said. When I was a small boy, I called him so, and now it came again out from my mouth.
    Toussaint looked over the horse’s back and nodded. “Riau,” he said. “You’re thin.”
    “It’s dry,” I said. “Besides, you’re thin yourself.”
    “It’s how I’m made,” Toussaint said. A thick band of leather bound the brush to his palm. He stroked it over the gray’s back and shoulders, sweeping away the dust of the road.
    “ Fatras-Baton ,” I said. I used the old nickname of Thrashing-Stick because I thought he didn’t like it. It made me angry that he wasn’t surprised to see me there, to think that he had somehow known my presence earlier, on the road. It was not possible. Toussaint smiled his secret inward smile.
    “I remember when you were fat,” he said. “Wasn’t that two years ago?” He came around the near side of the horse and took my upper arm and squeezed it. “Oh, but you are still strong,” he said.
    “What did you come here for?” I said.
    “To drive the master.” Toussaint turned from me, and brushed along the horse’s flank.
    “Why would he come?” I said. “He’s a different man from the master here.”
    “They have affairs,” Toussaint said. “The times are strange. You don’t know—” He stopped speaking and turned the horse, crowding me over against the wall. A pair of Arnaud’s grooms were walking through, talking to each other.
    “You don’t know, hiding in the mountains,” Toussaint said, when they had passed.
    “Have I missed so much?” I said.
    Toussaint shrugged, and put the brush in his coat pocket.
    “It’s all right for you,” I