Freedom Stone (3 page)

“I'll come home again, Quashee,” he said.

But Lillie's papa never did come home. Just three months after he left, he died, one of the many, many casualties at Vicksburg. The family grieved terribly, but took some comfort from the thought that the freedom Papa had wanted for them would now be theirs. Just two days later, however, they learned that even that wasn't to be. A telegraph message was delivered to the Big House telling the Master that upon Papa's death, he had been found in possession of a small purse of coins—gold coins, and Yankee ones at that—that he was assumed to have stolen. Since he couldn't pay for his crime, the family would have to, and the promise of freedom that had been made to them would be denied. Later, the Army delivered the bag of coins to the Master—a common practice when a slave had stolen something and the rightful owner could not be found. The Master was pleased with this arrangement and, like all Southerners who came across Northern money, vowed not to spend any of it till he had gone through all his Confederate money first and had no other choice. If the South won, he could melt the coins down for their gold; if the North won, Southern currency would be useless and he'd need to hold tight to any Yankee wealth he had. Either way, the arrangement suited him fine, and he liked to boast that he had turned a far tidier profit than he could have from simply selling Papa at auction.

Lillie knew—
knew
—her father could not have done any thieving, but only weeks later, a slave who'd served alongside him and lost a leg in the fighting was freed and sent home to South Carolina. He brought word to the plantation that, yes, the coins had been found in Papa's pocket, and, yes, they were Yankee gold. Lillie cursed the coins and cursed the war and cursed the South and cursed slavery itself, but she had no thought at all of cursing her papa. He was an honest man who'd lived an honest life and, she was certain, had died an honest death.

None of that, of course, could possibly help her or her family on slave appraiser day, and as the sun rose higher, the appraiser's visit drew closer by the minute. Lillie finished her tea and sat in silence as Mama quietly prepared the family's breakfast—mush, a bit more honey and some stunted but sweet melon she'd been able to raise in her garden. Finally, the morning horn sounded—a hoarse blast from an old bugle. All the slaves would be expected to be awake before the last echo of it had died away.

The noise from the horn made Plato jump, then he murmured and climbed out of bed. As he had every night for the past four months, he had worn one of Papa's old shirts to bed. It hung down closer to his ankles than his knees and even now, seeing it on him made Lillie's eyes well up. He walked sleepily over to the table and sat down without a word, then picked up his spoon and began eating his mush. Mama and Lillie exchanged a smile. It always took Lillie a while in the morning to wake up and find her appetite. Mama was the same way, but Plato would go straight from bed to breakfast, sometimes without even fully opening his eyes.

“Boy,” Mama said, “one day you're gonna put your spoon in a bowl o' mud if you don't look at what you're eatin' first.”

“S'mush, Mama,” Plato said with his mouth full. “S'good.”

Lillie tried to eat too, but she had no stomach for food—and would not have much time to linger over it anyway. Once the horn sounded, it meant the appraiser was already on the grounds and was visiting with the Master and the Missus in the Big House, where he'd be given a small breakfast before setting about the day's business. Mama hurried the children through their meal—Lillie managing a few spoons of mush and a few bites of melon—and then began to take out the clothes they'd all be wearing.

When the appraiser was here, the slaves did not wear what they wore every day, but instead were instructed to dress in the best clothes they had—or at least the cleanest ones—and to wash and comb with particular care. The girls would be expected to decorate their hair with bits of ribbon if their mamas had any. The boys would be expected to close their top shirt button—if their shirts had a top button. This, like the extra food and the extra sleep, was believed to make the slaves more appealing.

Unlike many slave girls, Lillie did own a proper dress, one that had belonged to Mama until the night before a recent plantation dance, when she had brought it out and asked Lillie if she'd like it for her own. Lillie at first thought she was being teased. Her shape had been changing this season, that was sure, rounding out in a way that made her clothes a snugger fit than they once were. Still, if she favored anyone's looks, it was less those of her mother—who remained shapely and lovely even deep in her thirties—than those of her father, a tall, rangy man who'd seemed to have been made up mostly of straight lines and sharp angles. Lillie had always felt cheated by that, reckoning that a girl ought to resemble her mama and a boy ought to resemble his papa. But now that her own papa was gone, she told herself it was good there was someone whose appearance would always call him to mind. Mama's dress did fit Lillie, but not without some cutting and stitching to make it more suited to her.

What Plato would be wearing today was not clear. The boy did not yet have a fancy suit of clothes, but in recent months Mama had been quietly making him one at night, as a treat for his sixth birthday. When Papa died, she stopped for a while and the birthday passed without a gift. But she'd picked the work up again lately—the better to busy herself on those nights when she couldn't sleep.

Now, as Lillie slid into her dress, Mama went over to her drawer and took out what she'd made: a pair of brown pants, a scratchy white shirt and a little green jacket that looked like it belonged more to a squire than a slave boy. “Seems like you're growed enough for a good suit o' clothes,” she said, turning around and showing them to Plato. “I reckon these'll serve.”

Plato beamed—a bigger smile than Lillie or Mama had seen from him at any time since Papa died—and began dancing excitedly from foot to foot. “Mama, Mama, Mama!” he said. “Can I put it on? Can I put it on? Can I put it on?”

“Yes, you can,” Mama said with a laugh, holding the clothes higher to prevent him from grabbing them straight from her hand. Then she settled him down and helped him into the little outfit, showing him how to fasten all the buttons. When she was done, Plato stood, looking himself up and down.

“I look just like the Little Master!” he exclaimed, having often seen the Master's eight-year-old son walking about the plantation in his many fine suits of clothes.

“No!” Mama snapped, with a suddenness that startled both Lillie and Plato. “The Little Master looks like the Little Master. You look like Plato. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, Mama,” Plato answered meekly.

“Good,” Mama said. She smoothed the jacket on his shoulders and tugged the sleeves until they hung properly. “Fine a child as this,” she muttered to herself, “the Little Master would be lucky to look like you.”

At last Mama took her own best dress down from a hook and began putting it on. Just as she was finishing, there was a loud rapping at the cabin door; before she could answer, the door flung open and the overseer stepped in.

The overseer at Greenfog was a man called Mr. Willis, and he was more or less like all the other overseers on all the other plantations. He was perhaps forty years old—young enough that he was still capable of moving fast and handling a whip, but old enough to have been doing plantation work for many years and to know how to keep such a big place running. He was a small, wiry man, with a large bald patch on the top of his head that would turn a deep, fiery red at the first flash of springtime. Lillie sometimes fancied that she could read his temper at any moment by looking at just how dark a shade of red his head had become.

“Franny,” Mr. Willis now said brusquely, “finish yourselves up and get outside. Lineup's already started.”

Mama accepted that the white folks would never address her as Phibbi, but she always hesitated a bit before responding to the name Franny, as if she could never quite accustom herself to the form of address. “Yes, sir,” she said after a moment. “We'll be along presently.”

“See that you are,” Willis answered. He looked Plato, Lillie and Mama up and down. “I expect the traders will be interested in the lot of you,” he said with a sharp little laugh. Then he turned his eyes particularly to Mama, allowing them to linger there in a way Lillie didn't like. “I'll be 'specially sorry to see you go, Franny.” He barked his little laugh again and left the cabin as abruptly as he'd entered it.

Mama watched the man go without a word, then looked at the children and nodded toward the door. Plato didn't move, and Lillie too felt rooted where she was. Mama put her arms around their shoulders and smiled.

“Ain't no different than when Papa was here,” she said. “Hold him in mind, and you'll be fine.” She nudged both children gently, and they all stepped outside.

Just as the overseer had said, the lineup was already forming. Every slave on the plantation would be present except Bett, who was too old to sell and had been for a while. All the others were now clustering in ragged groups in front of their cabins, and Mr. Willis, along with two slave drivers, strode back and forth in front of them, flicking their whips and summoning them forward into a neat row. The bigger of the two whip men was known as Bull, because that seemed to capture both his build and his wits. The other one—who was called by his proper name, which was Louis—was a tick smaller and a bit brighter. Neither man was shy about using his whip, but Bull seemed truly to love it. He was known as a marksman with almost any lash and was said to be able to whip a blueberry off a fencepost without touching the wood or leaving a stain of blue juice behind. The slaves crossed the whip men at their peril, and this morning none of them chose to. They assembled side to side as they were instructed, mothers and fathers holding their children's hands.

From behind the cabins, they could soon hear a clopping of hooves, and the Master and the slave appraiser, mounted atop their horses, trotted into view. The appraiser was dressed in old and worn traveling clothes, with a slouchy leather hat on his head and boots so scuffed that it wasn't easy to say what their original color had been. The same clothes would not have looked out of place on a slave. The Master was dressed in a fine morning suit—much finer than he would wear on any ordinary day. Such fancy clothes meant a prosperous man, one who didn't need to sell off any of his slaves unless he could get a top price for them. Of course, the appraiser would not have been there at all if the Master were really as wealthy as he was trying to appear—something everyone assembled today knew.

“Impressive crop o' workers,” the appraiser said as the men's horses slowed and they dismounted. He scanned up and down the line, casting a practiced eye over them and making a brief notation in his ledger. “You look after 'em well.”

“Fair portions of food and lots of hard work,” the Master said. “That keeps them strong.”

The two men began to pace the line while Bull, Louis and Willis stood nearby. Lillie squeezed Mama's hand, and Mama squeezed back. Then Lillie craned her neck forward, looking left and right, in the hope of getting a glimpse of Cal. Cal was a boy about her age whom she'd never much noticed in the past, but was becoming fonder of lately. Like Lillie, he was growing this year, and she reckoned he was turning out handsomer—if skinnier—than she'd thought he would. Cal had a quiet, sometimes worried way about him, which she found dear, as well as a quick temper and a taste for trouble, which she found less so. Plato had seemed to have taken a shine to Cal too of late—ever since Papa had died. Sometimes, he'd trail after the bigger boy when they were walking to work in the tobacco fields, and Cal would pick him up and swing him about till he giggled—which figured high in Lillie's estimation too. As always in the last few years, when there was a slave lineup, Cal would be standing not with his own family, but with another one that had taken him in.

Cal's mama had died giving birth to him—her first child and, as it turned out, her only one. Cal's papa never quite got past the death of his wife, reckoning that if the Master had allowed a doctor to tend her properly, she might have survived. Ever since then, he'd had a hot turn of temper, and four years ago, during a lineup just like this one, the Master had sold him South to Louisiana, far enough away that he was never likely to see his son again.

Cal moved into the cabin next to his family's, where a couple named George and Nelly lived. They had never had children of their own, and now that they were getting old—past forty, most people reckoned—were not likely to. Cal accepted the bed they gave him, ate the food they made him and minded them as well as he could. Now and again, he even looked as if he cared for them. One sleepy afternoon, Lillie spotted him napping on the porch of his cabin with his head in Nelly's lap and her hand smoothing his hair, like a real mama and her real boy.

As the slave appraiser paced the line, Lillie spotted Cal far at the left end, and she didn't like what she saw. He was looking down—not straight ahead as the slaves were supposed to so that the appraiser could examine their eyes and teeth—and he was looking cross. This was just how his papa used to behave himself, and though George and Nelly warned the boy to mind himself better, he never seemed to listen. Even at a distance, Lillie could see Cal's jaw working and his hands clenching. George and Nelly were standing on either side of him and both nudged him to soften his expression and unknot his hands. The appraiser saw all this too.

“Who's that boy?” he asked, pointing Cal's way.

The Master, who didn't hold on well to names, glanced questioningly toward the overseer.