Smith knew how easily he could get off the chain if he wanted to; in that bright corner of his mind where he instinctively Knew Things he had seen himself sever the links just by concentrating for a few seconds. But what was the reason for leaving the chain? Where would he go? Tomorrow, inevitably, he would be back in the yard. They all would, even those who had come from "somewhere." Towns and homes and families they thought about daylong, their hopes and silent cries for release passing through Smith's receptive mind.
But he had nowhere to go. Dreams, memories, were denied him. The chain—the first and final place—was home, just as tomorrow was today, and today was yesterday. He was there simply to endure.
Oh buddy don't you fall
.
The man with the hernia had been taken away. Hobbs, scowling, leaned out past his horse to spit chewed tobacco.
And Smith raised his hammer.
As he had done countless times before, as he always would do.
Then he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, something completely unexpected, compelling in its newness. Something different.
He stood there transfixed, arm and shoulder muscles bulging.
Crazy in my head, huh!
went the refrain up and down the squad chain.
But, as they grunted
huh!
in rhythmic expectation of the hammer's fall, Smith was motionless. Men with hammers and pickaxes faltered and stared at him in stark disbelief.
A taxi had appeared on the road, and was slowing opposite the chain gang on the embankment.
Smith couldn't read and had no concept of what the word DUMAS TAXI slanting through a yellow shield on a front door of the taxi meant. But in the part of his brain that Knew Things he was aware that this day was meant to be different, with consequences to himself.
The black horse threw back its head, reacting as if a bee had wandered up its nose. Cap'n Hobbs nearly lost his seat.
Work had stopped. Everyone was looking at the taxi.
A back door opened, and a young woman in a summer dress and a wide-brimmed hat stepped out into the rust-colored road. She held the crown of the hat to her head because of a sudden breeze and gazed up at the chain gang.
"God damn you, Smith! Starin' at a white woman there? Nigger, you bring that hammer
down
!"
Smith
.
The young woman smiled, and looked in his direction. In his mind where he Knew Things, Jericho Smith heard her voice.
You're Smith? Come on then. We've got places to go
.
The breeze freshened; red dust blew. Smith laid his hammer down.
Walked away from the shackles and chains that fell from his ankles like paper cutouts.
Shocked silence, punctuated by the cocking of hammers on Cap'n Hobbs's eight-gauge sawed-off.
Smith glanced at him and the dust rose in a furious cloud and swept Hobbs away from his horse, lifted him twenty feet into the air while Smith shrugged a biting fly from a sweaty shoulder and walked on down the embankment toward the waiting girl.
He jumped the ditch while most of the men on the gang and the guards watched Hobbs cartwheel squalling through the dirt maelstrom that surrounded him. His horse wheeled and ran. A few of the prisoners were more intrigued by Smith, who had paused to speak to the girl. She gestured to the open door of the taxi.
A boy of fifteen or so with hard-to-comb blond hair and more than a touch of hobgoblin in his face, so ugly he was sort of cute, looked out of the taxi with a cranky expression, said impatiently, "C'mon, it's time to go! Leave late, get there late."
The young woman held out a hand to Jericho Smith.
"I'm Gwen," she said. "For Guinevere. And the Stinkpot's right. We'd better be going; it took me long enough to find you."
"Who am I?" Smith said uncertainly.
"Big guy, we'll talk about it on the way?"
"I have to do something first."
Smith turned, looked hard at the long line of prisoners on the railroad embankment and the brutal guards who seemed not anxious to fire on him, standing as close as he was to the pretty young woman.
The chain writhed and upended a score of prisoners before flying harmlessly to pieces, freeing them. A few of the men turned to the guards, who ran for their lives. But the rest just stared at their feet for several moments before layin' them down a final time and scrambling away in all directions from the never-to-be-finished Dumas line.
"There," Smith said. For the first time in his harsh existence he felt the unfamiliar tug of facial muscles. He was smiling. In the mind sanctuary where he had always Known Things recognition stirred as he looked again at Gwen.
"I don't know who I am," he said. "But I know who I want to be."
"And who is that?"
"You will do," Jericho Smith said.