Cy in Chains by David L. Dudley

Author:David L. Dudley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

They tied Cy to the first wagon. Prescott kept up a fast pace, so he had to run to keep from falling and being dragged.

When they got to camp, Prescott led him to the icehouse and shoved him in. He looked down to where Cy lay, sprawled on the dirt floor.

“I feel sorry for you, boy. You gonna get the livin’ Jesus beat out of you later on! I ain’t never seen Cain as riled as he is right now. You dumb niggers just never learn.”

He slammed the door. The key turned in the lock.

Cy sat in the darkness, trying to keep his hands from tearing themselves to pieces against the rough metal of the strangling iron ring. He couldn’t stop the sobs that rose in his throat.

At dusk, Cain unlocked the door and peered into the darkness. “You really thought you could get away with a damn-fool thing like that?”

Cy didn’t speak.

“Stryker went for the sheriff, and they rode down to Lily’s—uh, the place Arnold said your daddy would meet you. He was right there, too, just like y’all planned it. Stryker said he was one surprised nigger when he showed up with the law, instead of you.”

You goddamn liar, Cy thought.

“So tonight, your daddy is in the county jail. I reckon he’ll end up on a chain gang too—followin’ in his boy’s footsteps, as they say.”

It was all a lie. Cy believed his father was safe. He had to believe it: that was all he had left. Aunt Miriam would hide him, help him get safely away.

“But we got other things to tend to. Prescott!”

Cy was dragged to the whipping post. Another bonfire had been lit nearby. All the boys were there.

Prescott yanked Cy’s jacket from his back, popping some buttons. Cy’s hands were tied to the top of the pole.

Cain started in on one of his speeches. He made a big point about the boys’ lack of gratitude and how Cy’s foolish plan showed that trying to escape their just punishment could never work. Then he started in on how niggers were untrustworthy, that they couldn’t even count on one another. Sam Arnold was proof of that. Cain said that to his mind, the worst nigger is one who turns against his own kind. Arnold was just like Judas in the Bible, a Jew who betrayed Jesus, a fellow Jew, for thirty pieces of silver. Even animals didn’t go against their own the way Arnold had gone against Cy—for two stinking dollars. But then what did you expect, seeing that niggers couldn’t be civilized . . .

Cy tried not to listen. His mind searched for something else to focus on, a place of escape from what was about to happen.

Then came the bite of Cain’s whip. It struck again and again, cutting, burning. He clenched his jaw, then bit his lip until blood came. He would not scream.

At last, Cain was done. “Cut him down and put him back in the icehouse,” he ordered. “And take that goddamn ring off his neck.

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