David Anthony Durham - Gabriels Story

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ACCLAIM FOR DAVID ANTHONY DURHAMS

Gabriels Story

WINNER OF THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION BLACK CAUCUS LITERARY AWARD

Haunting.... A classical bildungsroman told in masterful prose.... Not just a startlingly poetic African-American voice but a welcome new voice in the rich spectrum of American letters. The Christian Science Monitor

Sweeps the reader up into a fascinating, Oz-like whirlwind of language. San Francisco Chronicle

Durham captures with exquisite precision the isolation, loneliness and cruelty of life in the vastness of the West.... The reader turns the last page with regret at the journeys end. The Times Picayune

A bold, sweeping odyssey that tackles big themes.... A thrill to read. The News and Observer

Artfully plotted, masterfully written, this is a work of shimmering intensity and wisdom.... Gabriels Story will easily stand in the first ranks of American literature. Jeffrey Lent, author of In the Fall

A sensational debut... lush and atmospheric. Essence

THE BLACK MAN WATCHED THE DOOR. HE STOOD, ONE HAND holding the reins of two horses, the other hand engaged in a senseless motion, closing and opening, a rock to a board, a rock to aboard. His profile against the morning sun was like the chippededge of a flint arrowhead, carved by the force of stone on stone andleft imperfect and therefore best suited to its work.

The horses were beautiful creatures. One was a dun, the other apaint of brown and white, with a faint touch of something likeorange. The man sometimes spoke to them in a low whisper, wordsnot of our language and perhaps of none other, but sounds that thehorses knew and were comforted by. He watched the door, and ashe watched he caught a scent in the air and knew that the cacti onthe plains to the east had opened their blooms to the sun. He lookedat the horses and could tell by the flare of their nostrils that theysmelled it too.

When the door swung open with a bang, he knew somethingwas wrong. A man strode out, a white man, his hat pushed backon his head, the brim of it looking like a halo as it caught the lightand illuminated his face. Two strides and he was off the porch,another two and he had reached the dun, taken the reins, steppedinto the stirrup, and swung his large frame up into the saddle. Hehad a young face, tanned and weathered and abused but no olderthan his years. He set his gaze on the black man, and in that gazewas a shallow anger that was red hot, that burned bright and fora moment obscured the other anger, the slow heat that he carriedwith him always.

You coming?

The black man didnt ask him where. He slipped on top thepaint and sat as if hed never been off it.

A woman appeared in the door of the house. She was a creatureof considerable girth, cloaked in a dress that hung over her like acover over a piece of furniture, alluding to but rendering mysterious the shapes hidden beneath. She squinted in the sun and calledthe man by name.

It dont gotta be like this.

The man spat and set his gaze on her. Those were all the wordshe needed.

You always did have to be a hot-head, she said.

You aint even seen me warm yet. With that, he spun his horseto the east and rode.

The woman called the black man by name. You aint gotta gowith him, you know? He dont own you. This aint no slave country anymore, and we dont have no quarrel with you.

If the black man heard her, he gave no indication. He turnedand rode away from the ranch and didnt look back and didntsquint, although the sun pierced to the back of his eyes. He fell inbehind the other horseman and rode in his wake toward the sun.

Part 1

THE BOY HAD MEASURED THEIR PROGRESS ACROSS THE land through the warped glass of the trains windows. He had seen it all unfurl, from the tidewater up over the broken back of the mountains, out onto rolling hills and into the old frontier, now pacified and peopled and farmed, and further still, through cities and small towns and finally out onto this great expanse, across which they traveled like fleas on a mammoths back. He had even watched at night, while his younger brother slept against his shoulder and his mother contemplated thoughts of her own. He searched in the lands dark contours for things he dared not name aloud, and he held within himself a rage of voices that to the outside world looked and sounded like silence.

WHEN THEY STEPPED OFF THE TRAIN that afternoon, the boy couldnt help but stare over the crowd and out to the horizon. Looking to the west, he could just make out the geometric shadows that were Crownsville, that cowtown newly bloomed and thriving, connected to the East by a bloodline of iron and steel. To the north and south and back to the east the land rolled away in undulating nothingness. The grass lay heavy and tired from the beating of the previous evenings rain, and the April sky was not a thing of air and gas. Rather, it lay like a solid ceiling of slate, pressing the living down into the prairie.

The train station was made up of several sod-brick buildings. They had crooked roofs out of which sprouted an abundance of green shoots. In front of one of these structures a motley array of men lounged, with expressions of indolent curiosity on their faces. The grass had been trodden down and thinned by the traffic. It was pockmarked with puddles and prints of both feet and hooves, and cut by wagon wheels.

Gabriel, you and Ben help the men unload, the boys mother said. Make sure we get all our crates. Theres six of them. Count each one and stack them ready to load on Mr. Johnss wagon. The boys didnt move, but she didnt seem to notice. Instead her gaze rose and roamed through the sparse crowd of people. Go on and help, like I said, she said, moving away a few steps. The trim of her dress dangled down into the wet grass and mud, but she made no attempt to hold it up.

Gabriel nudged Ben on the shoulder, and the two boys walked toward the freight car, carrying what hand luggage they had with them. Gabriel had just turned fifteen, although he looked two or three years older. He had a strong body, tall and lean, with the long legs of his nomadic ancestors. His wool jacket cramped his shoulders and impeded the swing of his arms. His skin was a dark shade of brown stretched taut across his features, as if the components of his face were growing more rapidly than the shell. His nose was thin-bridged, with a distinctive flair to the nostrils that was wholly African in design.

Ben was his younger by two years. They looked much alike in the rudimentary casts of their appearance, although Ben had a small indentation on his forehead, and his eyebrows were drawn in thin, wispy lines. He also moved with a nervous energy very different from his brothers brooding gait. His gaze bounced from object to object, out toward the fields, from person to person, and back to the enormous iron works of the train that had brought them so far.