TransAtlantic by Colum McCann

Negro.
    —Get out of here, the guards said. Now.
    Creely pushed the carriage on. The roads twisted. Hedges rose high around them. Night threatened. The horses slowed. They looked ruined. A gout of spittle and foam hung from their long jaws.
    —Oh, move it, please, called Webb from the inner cab where he sat knee to knee with Douglass.
    Under a canopy of trees the carriage came to a creaking stop. A silence pulled in around them. They heard a woman’s voice under the muted hoofshuffle. It sounded as if she was invoking a blessing.
    —What is it? called Webb.
    Creely did not answer.
    —Move it, man, it’s getting dark.
    Still the carriage did not budge. Webb snapped the bottom of the door open with his foot, stepped down from the inner cab. Douglass followed. They stood in the black bath of trees. In the road they saw the cold and grainy shape of a woman: she wore a gray woolen shawl and the remnants of a green dress. She had been dragging behind her a very small bundle of twigs attached to a strap around her shoulders, pulling the contraption in her wake.
    On the twigs lay a small parcel of white. The woman gazed up at them. Her eyes shone. A high ache tightened her voice.
    —You’ll help my child, sir? she said to Webb.
    —Pardon me?
    —God bless you, sir. You’ll help my child.
    She lifted the baby from the raft of twigs.
    —Good God, said Webb.
    An arm flopped out from the bundle. The woman tucked the arm back into the rags.
    —For the love of God, the child’s hungry, she said.
    A wind had risen up. They could hear the branches of the trees slapping each other around.
    —Here, said Webb, offering the woman a coin.
    She did not take it. Bent her head instead. She seemed to recognize her own shame on the ground.
    —She’s not had a thing to eat, Douglass said.
    Webb fumbled in his small leather purse again and held out a sixpenny piece. Still, the woman did not take it. The baby was clutched to her chest. The men stood rooted to the spot. A paralysis had swept over them. Creely looked away. Douglass felt himself become the dark of the road.
    The woman thrust the baby forward. The smell of death was overpowering.
    —Take her, she said.
    —We cannot take her, ma’am.
    —Please, y’r honors. Take her.
    —But we cannot.
    —I beg you, a thousand times, God bless you.
    The woman’s own arms looked nothing more than two thin pieces of rope gathering upwards towards her neck. She flopped the child’s arm out again and massaged the dead baby’s fingers. The inside of its wrists were already darkening.
    —Take her, please, sir, she’s hungry.
    She thrust the dead baby forward.
    Webb let the silver coin drop at her feet, turned, his hands shaking. He climbed up onto the wooden board beside Creely.
    —Come on, he called down to Douglass.
    Douglass reached for the muddy coin and placed it in the woman’s hand. She did not look at it. It slipped through her fingers. Her lips moved but she did not say a thing.
    Webb hit the reins hard on the shiny dark back of the horse, then drew back just as sudden, as if he was moving the carriage and yet not moving it at the same time.
    —Come on, Frederick, he called. Get in, get in. Hurry.
    THEY GATHERED PACE . Through bogland, shoreside, long stretches of unbelievable green. The cold spread its arms. They stopped to buy more blankets. They drove, then, silently, through the dark, along the coast. They hired a man to run a lantern in front of them until they reached an inn. The small globe of light cast the trees in relief. The man fell after eight miles: there were no open inns on the road. They huddled in the carriage together. They did not mention the dead child.
    It rained. The sky did not seem at all surprised. They passed a barracks where soldiers in red uniforms were guarding a shipment of corn. They were allowed to feed and water the two horses. An old man stood on the road near Youghal throwing stones at a dark-winged rook in a tree.
    There was nothing they