Freeman (48 page)

She spoke into the pause. “They called it a nigger army,” she said. “They used that odious word, did they not?”

“Yes,” he said, “they did. But how did…?”

Prudence did not hear. “Damn them,” she hissed, stabbing to her feet. She felt fire in her cheeks and tears in her eyes. “Damn them all to hell.”

“Mrs. Kent? Mrs. Kent, what is wrong?”

She mashed at the tears. “I am sorry, Mr. Freeman. I am so very sorry.”

“I do not understand.”

“I am afraid I am to blame for the attack upon you.”

“I still do not understand.”

Prudence sighed. “I told you I had opened a school here, did I not? The people hereabouts—the white people, at least—sought to frighten us off. And when the attacks became too much to bear, I allowed some of the freedmen to establish a guard here and very foolishly sought to arm them, though I never did. It was from this that rumors grew that we were raising, as you call it, a Negro militia, and planning an insurrection. Once begun, the rumor took on a life of its own. It spread throughout the countryside, far from town.”

“This was your school,” he said, “this building.”

“Yes,” she said. “They destroyed it. They destroyed half the town. Many people were killed, many injured just as yourself. All because of me.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I know it,” she said.

“You are wrong,” he said. “These people require no excuse for violence. Their own wretched anger and bitterness are all the reason they need. Had it not been your so-called Negro militia that inspired them to attack this place, it would have been something else, trust me. Look at me if you do not believe that. Look at my arm.”

“I had assumed you lost it in the war.”

Sam shook his head. “I lost it just some weeks ago.”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone shot me in Tennessee. A white man mistook me for another Negro man he was hunting.”

“You rode here from Tennessee?”

He shook his head again. “No, I
walked
here, from Philadelphia. My former mistress gave me the horse to help me escape the men who tried to kill me.”

Prudence’s mouth came open. “You walked from
Philadelphia
? Why, that must be a thousand miles. That is the most astonishing thing I have ever heard.”

“I told you,” he said. “I was looking for my wife. I needed to find her.”

“Needed? Past tense?”

Sam didn’t answer the question and she was embarrassed to have asked it. After a moment, Prudence sat back down on the cot.

“Such devotion is inspiring,” she said. “What is your wife’s name?”

“Tilda,” he said. “Her name was Tilda. Is Tilda, I suppose, assuming she still lives.”

“You have suffered a great deal searching for her. We could see in the marks on your body.”

Sam’s head came up and he regarded her with eyes that seemed to see all the way through her. “Yes,” he said, “I have. But then, many of us are suffering just now, each in his or her own way. I suspect you know this as well as anyone. Suffering is hardly unique these days, is it?”

She felt the sting in her eyes and willed it back. He had spoken more truly than he could ever know. “No,” she said, after a moment, “there is nothing unique about suffering.”

She allowed him two more days to regain his strength. On the morning of the third, she came to him and told him he must get up, must exercise if he ever hoped to recover. He protested that he was not yet ready. She insisted he was. He pointed out that he knew his own pain better than she. She listened for an impatient moment, then to his surprise grabbed his forearm and pulled. Biting back a shriek of pain, Sam came to his feet.

Alone in the stifling warehouse, they practiced walking. She told him to lean on her, but Sam shook his head and said he would use a walking stick. She was a white woman and this was Mississippi. He knew better than to even stand too close to her, much less to put his arm around her.

Sam thought that was the end of it. But she made an impatient sound and to his horror, circled her left arm around his waist. Sam was alarmed at her sudden closeness, her cheek pressing against his chest. “Mrs. Kent!” he cried. His heart punched heavily and his arm didn’t know where to go.

She looked up at him. Her eyes were green and annoyed. “What is it, Mr. Freeman?”

“I cannot do this,” he said. “I am a colored man and you are—”

“You are a colored man and I am the white woman who is trying to help you walk again. Or do you propose to spend the remainder of your days lying on the floor in an old warehouse? Shall we train the horse over there to bring you water and empty your chamber pot upon your beck and call?”

Sam pushed an angry gust of breath through his nostrils. “There is no need for you to mock me,” he said. She was an exasperating woman.

“Do you think I care that you are angry?” she said. “If so, please be assured that I do not. Your fears are unfounded. We are behind locked doors. No one can see you inside here with your terrible brown hand touching my precious white skin. Now, you will lean on me, Mr. Freeman, and you will
walk
.”

He stared down at her, searching her face for something that wasn’t steel. He didn’t find it. Sighing, muttering in anger, he draped his confused arm upon her shoulder and took a step. A bolt of lightning shot immediately from the small of his back. He squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on breathing as the flash of fire was seconded by smaller eruptions from the healing contusions that covered his entire body. His knee rebelled at the full weight of him and he could not straighten his leg. Sam had not known it was possible to hurt so badly in so many places and yet still live.

In the darkness of eyes closed, he heard her voice at his ear. “That’s the way, Mr. Freeman,” she said. “Keep going. Do not give them the satisfaction of leaving you a cripple.”

He opened his eyes. “The satisfaction they sought was to make me dead,” he said.

“Then you have already frustrated them once,” she said. “Consider how gratifying it will be to do so again.”

“The most gratifying thing,” said Sam, “would be never to see them again.” The pain was ebbing. He steeled himself, knowing the lightning would come again with the next step. And then he took that step.

“So you intend to leave Mississippi?”

“Yes,” he said, “just as soon as I am fit to travel.” Tears were leaking down his cheek. “What of you? Have you not had your fill of Dixie?”

“I have not decided,” she said. “Perhaps I will return to Boston. I truly loathe the thought.”

“Why is that?”

“I hate to let them run me off,” she said. “We do not know each other well, but if we did, you would know that is not in my character.”

“I believe I am coming to know something about your character, actually.”

The shadow of a smile passed her lips. “Come,” she said, “let us take another step.”

She braced him and he lifted his foot and brought it down, grinding his teeth as pain cut a jagged path down the length of him. For a minute, he exhaled his agony in winded gusts. Not long ago he had been a man who could and did walk a thousand miles. Now he had become a man who had to measure the steps and suck in his breath even to make it to the end of an old warehouse and back. It was a humbling thing.

“Tell me about Tilda,” said Mrs. Kent.

He gazed down into her disconcertingly direct gaze.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean that it is not every woman a man would walk a thousand miles to find. You must have loved her a very great deal.”

“I did,” he said.

“I once had a man who loved me a great deal,” she said. “My husband Jamie. He died in the war.”

“I am sorry.”

“I would like to think he would have loved me well enough to walk from Philadelphia to Buford as you did, Mr. Freeman, but I honestly do not know.”

“Please call me Sam,” he said.

“I will, Sam, if you will call me Prudence.”

“Well, Prudence, I am certain your husband would have walked those miles. When you love someone, distance is immaterial.”

She gave him a dubious look. “That is an easy thing to say, Sam. It is much more difficult to imagine yourself actually doing it. Especially after 15 years. So much can change in so many years. Many men—I daresay, most men—would not have undertaken what you did.”

“I had no choice,” he said.

“I see,” she said. “And now?”

“Miss Prentiss—that is the woman who once owned us—said she sold Tilda to a man who has since left the state, taking her with him. There is
no way of knowing where she has gone. At any rate, I am in no shape to continue searching for her. My decision has been made for me.”

“So it would seem,” said Prudence. “It is a circumstance I have regretfully come to know all too well, having decisions made for me. How will you feel, returning to Philadelphia?”

He gave it a moment, but no answer came. “I do not know,” he confessed.

She nodded thoughtfully, then said, too brightly, “Let us try another step, shall we?” From its makeshift stall in a corner of the warehouse, the big roan whickered as if in encouragement. Sam took another hesitant step. His wounds screamed and he felt blood creeping on insects’ feet from the dressing on his back.

She allowed him to rest, saying nothing. He was grateful for the silence. It gave him space to contemplate the momentous thing he had just heard himself speak. Something about it made him feel guilty, and something in him rebelled against that. Didn’t he have the right to give up? Wasn’t the final verdict on this foolish errand heard in the painful scrape of his feet on the floorboards? Wasn’t it felt in the pain grinding through his body? What more was there to say? What more could he ask himself to do or to suffer through? Was not this enough?

“All right,” said Prudence, “let us turn now and go back.” Awkwardly, he made the turn. She had provided him an old army cot, salvaged from what place he could not guess. It came toward him now at a gradual pace.

When he finally lowered himself, Prudence bracing him to provide counterbalance, Sam was breathing heavily. Pain shimmered through the arm that wasn’t there. He trembled as he lay back. Prudence stood over him with arms akimbo. “You will rest,” she announced. “We will walk again this afternoon.”

Then she said, “What is the matter?” and he knew his disbelief must have shown on his face.

Sam laughed despite himself. “I was just thinking that you remind me of the sergeant who used to drill us in the Army. I believe, however, that you are a little tougher than he was.”

Her cheeks painted themselves a rosy pink. “I am only trying to help you get back on your feet, Sam.”

“I know you are,” he told her. “And I
am
grateful for it.”

That was surprising enough that it made her smile. He was such a grim
and taciturn man. And she had the sense he had been this way long before he was injured. Perhaps not when he was with this Tilda who seemed to mean so much to him—perhaps then, he had been a different man. But yes, she thought, certainly for a very long time, he had been this man who faced life as though walking against the wind.

She was about to answer when there came a heavy fist against the side door. Questions congealed in her eyes as she went to answer.

She pulled the door open and was shocked at the sight of him. Not simply his presence at her door after all that had happened, though that was shocking enough, but also his appearance. All the time she had known him, he had carried himself as a feckless ne’er-do-well, overly impressed with his own charm. But he seemed to have aged overnight. His gaze was somber, his mouth set in a grim line. His hair, usually combed into place with a fastidious, almost womanish care, straggled from beneath his hat at odd angles. He did not bother to remove the hat or even touch his fingers to it.

“What do you want, Mr. Wheaton?”

“I have a business proposition to share with you, Mrs. Kent. I also bring news. I promise, both will be of the utmost interest to you.”

“I cannot imagine that anything you would have to say would be of any interest to me, Mr. Wheaton. Good day.”

“I am afraid I do not have the patience today for your usual obstinacy, Mrs. Kent. Shoot me with your little pea shooter if you like. I am coming in.”