The Untold by Courtney Collins Read Free Book Online

from his horse while it was still moving, and stepped onto the veranda. His eyes were not deceiving him.
    Jessie!
he called, and then,
Fitz!
    He walked through the door that was already open.
    Jessie!
he yelled, and kept on yelling. But nobody answered.
    He walked through the house. His boots crashed against all kinds of things. When he thought he heard some movement, he stopped dead. But then he realized it was the sound of his own moving chaos.

    T HAT NIGHT HE CAMPED in the stable. When he checked the horses he saw that Houdini’s stall was empty. He lay down to sleep but despite his exhaustion he hardly slept at all. There were so many possibilities racing through his head, thoughts turning over thoughts.
Was she dead? Was she gone?
    He was not on the clear side of the sky at all.
    He fell into a tense spell of sleep just before sunrise and when he woke he thought he heard Fitz’s voice shouting orders to him from the veranda. He sprang from his bed of hay, brushed himself down and ran up to the house like he would have any other morning. But where every other morning something cringed inside him at the sight of Fitz, now he cringed at the sight of the house and the sight of him gone.
    In the light of the morning Jack Brown could see that most of Fitz’s horses and cattle were missing and those that remained were subdued and heavy in the legs, tottering aimlessly as if they had all eaten some nullifying weed.
    The house, too, looked like a sick thing with its cowering head. Around its smashed windows and open door was charred wood and the residue of flames spiraled out to its edges.
    Inside was the same mess and tangle Jack Brown had traced the night before. But by daylight he could see there were footprints and the footprints were not his own. They were Fitz’s. He was sure of it. They led in towards the cellar and they led back outside.
    Jack Brown pulled furniture and other charred things from the opening of the cellar and lowered himself down. He pressed his hands and feet against the sandstone walls and when his feet reached something solid he planted himself on it. He lit a match. The floor was a soup of mud and shards of glass and piles of salt. Against a wall was a shelf lined with cracked jars and sacks piled up, some of them still whole, but most of them split right open.
    His eyes adjusted, Jack Brown surveyed the cellar, turning in the small space. He balanced on bricks until he realized that the bricks were balancing on some other thing. He kicked away the rubble and he saw what he did not want to see. It was Fitz—or what remained of him. Jack Brown could make out his grimy torso, his arm and the buckle of his belt glinting in the dark.
    He pressed both hands against the wall. He thought:
It should not have come to this. Did he kill Jessie first and then kill himself? Is her body here as well?
    And then:
I am done for. A black man standing over the remains of his white boss. If I thought justice would not serve me then, I know it will not serve me now.
    Jack Brown pulled a sack from the shelf and tore it open. He poured out its contents; he could not tell if it was sugar or salt buthe was not about to taste it. He thought,
Salt would preserve him best—but why would I want to preserve him at all?
    And just like the old man had done with the dog, Jack Brown opened the sack right up and filled it with his find. But unlike the old man, Jack Brown did not regard Fitz’s body as any kind of prize. Fitz was dead. There was no life left in him and there was nothing that Jack Brown could do to reverse it. He dragged the sack up and out of the cellar.
    He was still not certain that Jessie was not in the cellar too, so he lowered himself back down and lit matches and moved things around until no part of the cellar was unturned. Only then was he certain. She was not there.
    But where was she?
    He followed the tracks of Fitz’s boots, first to the veranda and then out through the mud to