Freeman (34 page)

“Oh my God,” said Bonnie, reading.

It was a message to David, Constance’s husband in Boston, describing the attack on Jesse and asking him to procure eight rifles and ship them to her without delay. From now on, her guards would be armed.

Bonnie felt her heart kick hard. “You cannot send this,” she breathed.

“Of course I can,” said Prudence, airily.

Now Bonnie was yelling it. “You
cannot
send this!”

It seemed to catch Prudence by surprise. “Do you not understand?” demanded Bonnie. “Do you not understand
anything
?”

“I understand we can no longer allow them to bully us,” said Prudence, and her voice was icy.

“Bully us? Sister, they will
burn us down
. Do you really think these people will sit still for you arming the Negroes of this town?”

“I am only trying to protect my property,” insisted Prudence. “I have a right to do that.”

She reached for the note. Bonnie held it away, then ripped it into pieces that fluttered to the floor like snow.

“What are you doing?” demanded Prudence.

“I am saving you from yourself,” said Bonnie. “Saving us all. For once in your life, would you stop and
think
before you act? You do not understand these white people. You do not understand how this would provoke them.”

Prudence’s laughter was filled with air and light. “Do not understand white people? Have you forgotten that I
am
white?”

“It is not the same,” said Bonnie.

“You should listen to the nigger,” said the sallow man.

Prudence looked at him. Bonnie looked at him. All at once, she simply felt tired, fatigue soaking her bones like water in a sponge. “Yes,” she said, “listen to the nigger.”

Prudence gaped. Bonnie didn’t care. She walked out. After a moment, she heard Prudence following. Bonnie glanced back and chanced to catch sight of the sallow man watching after them through the window of the store. She swallowed hard. Hatred burned in his eyes.

The stone chimney lay in pieces in the yard. The split-rail fence was broken in two places. The grass brushed at their knees. Ben stopped. His mouth gaped wide. His arms hung as if the hands at the end of them were weights.

“This here yard was her pride,” he said in a soft voice. He pointed. “Over there, that was the flower bed. I still remember, she make Hannah get out there with her and they pull ever’ last weed show its head above the dirt. Old colored man name of Hanks, he be out here once a week in the summer with that scythe, mowin’ the grass on down.”

“That grass has not been mowed down for a long time,” said Sam.

“Not since forever, look like,” said Ben. He led Sam through the side yard to the back door, and rapped on it. Ben’s face was tight. He was anxious and Sam couldn’t blame him. Ben had escaped these people seven years before. Now he was appearing at their door at the end of a ruinous war. Who knew how they would respond? They might press a rifle in his belly. They might spit in his face. They might do anything.

But the short, stout woman who opened the door only squinted at him through her glasses. “Yes?” she said. She had fine, white hair drawn up in a bun.

Ben gave her that smile that threatened to split his face along its seams. “Mistress, it’s me,” he said. “It’s Ben.”

It took her a moment. “Ben?” she said. “
My
Ben?”

“Yes ma’am,” he said. “Once upon a time.”

“You rascal! You run off from us.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Ben. “I did.”

“You know how much Albert paid for you? We trusted you, Ben. We treated you almost like family. And you up and run off? Why, Ben, that’s just like stealing!”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Ben, and no smile marked his face now. “I reckon you right. I stole. I stole myself.”

She sighed elaborately. “Well, I suppose it’s too long past to hold a grudge now. All the niggers left us after a while, when the war came. You were just the first.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now you’re back?” She was hopeful.

He shook his head. “No, ma’am. Just come to find Hannah.”

Her face brightened. “That’s right! You were sweet on Hannah. I remember that.”

“Yes, ma’am. More’n sweet, actually. We jumped the broom, had us a little baby girl together. I’se real anxious to see them.”

“Well, like I say, once the Yankees come through here, most of the niggers run off. There was a big fight in these parts just before Christmas. Oh, Ben, it was terrible. She left us right after that.”

Concern clouded his eyes. “Do you know where they run off to?”

She scratched her chin. “Not for certain. But I hear a bunch of the niggers settled in town. Maybe you could look there.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

To Sam’s surprise, he did not walk away. “Place in terrible shape, Mistress.”

“I know,” she said, her voice rueful. “But what can I do? All of you all left me and Albert died in the war.”

“You out here all by yourself?”

“I’m afraid I am. Don’t know what I’m going to do, either. That war was a terrible thing, Ben. I suppose you all think different. I know all the slaves say ‘Marse Linkum’ gave them their freedom. But look at the cost, Ben. So many of our boys and men dead, niggers all run away, our whole way of life destroyed.”

Ben said, “I make you a bargain, Mistress. If you don’t mind feedin’ a couple hungry men, we give you a day’s work. See what we can do to get this yard back in order for you.”

Sam was thunderstruck. “
Ben
!”

Ben lifted a hand. His eyes never left the old woman’s face, which was lit like the dawn sky. She clasped her hands together. “Ben, you’d do that for me? Oh, thank you, Ben. Thank you. It’s good to know the old feelings are not entirely gone.”

“Tools still in the same place?” asked Ben.

She pointed. “Right out in the little shed in back.”

He nodded. “We get to work then,” he said.

She nodded. “Thank you, Ben.”

As the door closed, Sam hissed at his friend. “Are you out of your mind?”

“You don’t have to help,” said Ben, leading the way to the tool shed. “I just felt sorry for her, is all. Poor old woman, out here by herself.”

“She is a poor old
white
woman who calls you a nigger and thinks you ought to be ashamed for ‘stealing’ your own self.”

“I know,” said Ben, “but she weren’t the worst of ’em. I seen plenty far worse.”

“What about your wife? What about your daughter? Have you forgotten about them?”

Ben paused, his hand on the tool house door, and gave Sam a look. “You know better than to ask me that,” he said. “Ain’t never forgot about them. Not for a minute. Like I say, she just a poor old lady out here by herself. I just feel bad for her, is all. I sleep better if I put in a little work.”

Sam shook his head. “This makes no sense. You were always the one haranguing me to move on. Now you want to stop and spend a day putting this old woman’s house in order?”

“Told you,” said Ben, “you ain’t got to help. I understand if you don’t. I really will.”

“That is foolishness,” said Sam. “Let her do her own work.” But even as he spoke, he laboriously undid the buttons on his shirt and hung it on the door.

They worked the rest of that day. The woman had a sack of crushed lime and sand left from before the war. Ben mixed it with water and spent the morning and early afternoon carrying stones up and down the ladder, rebuilding the chimney. Sam handled the scythe, trimming the wild grass down to finger length. Raking it was difficult with one hand, but he managed it, using long, even strokes to pull the grass into a pile. Late in the day as the grass burned, the two men repaired the split-rail fence.

When it was done, Sam stepped away, dragging his forearm across his brow. It came away muddy with sweat and dirt. “You and your soft conscience,” he told Ben. But there was no rebuke in it. He was too tired for rebuke.

Ben grinned. “Yeah,” he said, “but admit it: you feel better than if you just left her out here to fend for herself.”

Sam didn’t answer and Ben nodded, taking it for assent. It wasn’t. Sam had done this work for
Ben
, because he knew it would make his friend feel better. But Sam could happily have left the old woman out here to rot and spared not a second thought. Why should he give her his labor or even his concern? What had white people ever given him? What had they ever done except take?

Mary Cuthbert had treated him decently, yes. The memory rode in to him on wings of conscience. She had read to him, written letters for him, employed him. But was that enough to make up for all that white people had
taken
? Did it make up for Luke lying dead in that bog? Did it make up for Josiah hanging in that tree? Did it make up for Sam, reduced to stealing a dead man’s shoes and finding even that difficult because he had only one arm to work with, white people having taken that, too? Did it make up for losing Tilda?

No, it didn’t.

Damn them
.

No, it did not at all.

They slept that night on the porch. The woman gave them breakfast in the morning, biscuits and eggs. As they were preparing to leave, she asked Ben if he might consider staying on. “You could help me get the place in order,” she said. “I couldn’t pay you much, but…”

She left the words hanging there. Ben didn’t reach for them. He smiled and there was pity in it. “I got to find my family,” he said.

He nodded a farewell and they set out for town. The walk took them downhill through a pine forest where trees had been broken and felled in great swaths. Then, for a while, they followed a river curling in great, wide loops along the valley floor. Ben, ordinarily a voluble man, kept a dogged silence this morning. Sam imagined he himself would not feel much like speaking if he were about to see Tilda again. Too much to think about it. Too many things to fear. And what words existed for that? After all these miles and all these mountains, what was there to say?

It took them three hours. The town that rose before them was a grid of clapboard buildings and dirt streets that hunkered in the shadow of two heavily forested hills. Sam and Ben entered on the main street. The signs of fighting were everywhere. They passed the smashed remnant of a general store, then a barber shop. They circled a huge crater in the middle of the street. Workmen were hammering together the skeleton of a building rising on a vacant lot between the scorched remains of a feed store and a hotel. At the end of the block stood a blacksmith shop, where hammer meeting anvil formed a song of industry that felt somehow hopeful in the bright, hard light of the morning. The blacksmith was a strapping young Negro man. Ben approached him eagerly.

“Do you know a colored woman named Hannah?” he said. “Got a daughter named Leila, be about seven.” The man shook his head.

It took Ben three tries more before he found a woman who knew Hannah. Her eyes narrowed dubiously when Ben asked her—Sam figured he and Ben must look a sight—but she gave them directions: go to the end of West Street, turn right at the hog pens, left on Laramie and then a quick right in a little alley without a name. It was the house at the very end, just before the railroad tracks. Ben rushed out a word of thanks and took off at almost a sprint. Sam had to hurry to keep up.

“Oh, Lord,” said Ben, speaking to Sam, speaking to the morning. “Oh Lord oh Lord oh Lord oh Lord. You believe this? I done found her. I done found her at last! Oh, thank you Jesus!”

At the mouth of the nameless alley, Ben paused so abruptly Sam almost plowed into him. As promised, there were three houses, tall clapboard structures with common walls. Two little dark-skinned girls with plaited hair sat on the steps of the last one playing hull gull. The first girl held out her fists. “Hull gull!” she sang out and her voice was sweet and thin.

“Hand full,” came the second girl’s voice and it, too, was falsetto music.

“How many?” asked the first girl, a challenge rising in her voice.

“Three.” The second girl spoke with a smugness.

The first girl’s features fell like a rock. “How you know that?” she demanded, as she opened her hand. Three seeds were nestled inside her chubby palm. As the first girl claimed her prize, Ben edged forward.