Freeman (54 page)

Not that his life contained much of value. He had no money, no home, no child, no woman, not even a friend, unless you counted poor Ben, trying to sort out the wreckage of his own life up in Tennessee. No, all he had in his life were the joys and regrets of another day. If he continued through Mississippi searching for a woman who wasn’t there, that was not likely to change. Until the end of his days, he would be what he was today: a man with nothing, chasing a life once lived fifteen years ago.

No one ever catches time
.

And now, here was this woman who was not a phantom of his dreams, who was not a ghost of his past, who was
here
. And he wanted her. Did he not deserve that? Had he not earned it by the years he had spent, the miles he had walked, the blood he had shed?

She had been as shocked as he by the impossible thing that happened between them. But she wanted him too,
needed
him too. He could
feel
that in the impulsive arms she had thrown around his neck, in the way she had squeezed him close.

If he wanted her and she wanted him, why should they deny themselves that? If she was a free woman and he was truly a free man, who had the right to tell them no?

“I know what Prudence need,” the old woman had said. “I can guess what Tilda need. But I don’t know what
you
need.”

The answer was simple, wasn’t it? He needed to be at peace. He needed to be free. He needed to move forward.

And for that, he needed Prudence.

It was the sound of the moaning man that drew him back out of himself. He had ridden out from town and now found himself in a field of tall grass within sight of the brown river. Ahead of him crouched a man, folded over as if to hold his very self together. He looked up at Sam’s approach, and Sam saw that the man was barely more than a boy, his skin brown, his face streaked with tears, the expression in his eyes desolate. Sam wanted to turn away and leave the boy to grieve in private.

But the eyes had seen him, so there was nothing he could do but walk the horse forward. “I’m sorry,” said the boy, as Sam reined up near him. “I didn’t think anyone would come this way.”

“It is I who should apologize,” said Sam. “I did not mean to intrude.” A pause. “If you do not mind my asking…”

“My mother’s dead,” said the boy. The saying of it brought fresh tears.

“I am sorry to hear that,” said Sam. “How did it happen?”

“I don’t know, mister,” said the boy. “They won’t tell me.”

“They?” Sam lowered himself from the horse, patting its neck as it bent to graze in the summer grass.

The boy nodded. “Marse and ol’ Miss. They run me away from they front door just now. Said they don’t want nothin’ to do with none of their old slaves never no more. Like I done something wrong to
them
. Like I was bad or somethin’. They the ones sold
me
away.”

“I see,” said Sam. He knelt beside the boy.

“I told them I come lookin’ for my mama. I’m the onliest thing she got in the world and she the same for me. I told her when they sold me off seven years ago, I would find her again. I weren’t but 10, she cryin’ her eyes
out and that made me bust out, too. And I
promised
her I would come back and we be together again.”

“And you came back today and they told you she was dead.”

A nod. “Wouldn’t tell me how it happened, wouldn’t even tell me where she buried. Just closed the door in my face. Wouldn’t open it, no matter how I cried out to them.”

A dark rage howled to life within him then and for a moment, Sam saw himself going to them, to these lordly dealers in human flesh, and beating them until they begged to give this boy the simple human courtesy of a report on his mother’s death. Sam swallowed the urge down. There was a stickiness in his throat.

“I am sorry,” he said.

The desolate eyes turned to him. “Why white folks got to treat us so bad?” he said.

“I do not know,” said Sam. He would have put a consoling hand on the boy’s shoulder, but the boy was sitting to his left. Instead, Sam watched the horse chew grass for a moment. Then he said, “So what are you going to do?”

The boy looked down. “Walked all the way here from Alabam’ lookin’ for her. Suppose I’ll just walk back. Leastways, I still know people there. Maybe get hired on for harvest.”

Sam looked away. Was this what they were to be now? Once a slave people, now a wandering people, rootless and itinerant, searching for one another and for connections that used to be? It was as if to be forever incomplete was the Negro’s awful destiny.

The boy’s smile hung awkwardly from his forsaken eyes. “I used to take care of her, you know? My mama? She weren’t well and I would look after her. Make root tea when she was feelin’ poorly, put cotton from my sack into hers to keep the overseer from gettin’ on her. That was the main thing that troubled me when they sold me off: I wondered who would take care of her. So I was lookin’ forward to comin’ back here. I thought, well, that’s one thing I don’t have to worry about no more. I could take care of her myself, just like I always done. And then I get here and they tell me this.”

Sam’s gaze was on the river. “You can’t catch time,” he said. “No one ever does.”

The boy’s eyebrow arched. “Beg pardon?”

“Nothing,” Sam said.

He sat a long time with the motherless boy, both of them watching quietly as the river passed them by.

Once again, they sat on the gallery overlooking the river. Once again, Colindy brought them lemonade. “Thank you, Sass,” said Charles Wheaton without looking at her. “That will be all.” And Colindy nodded and went away.

The negotiation went quickly. Wheaton made her a generous offer: $4,000 for the building, $75 an acre for 180 acres of farmland—more than either was worth. Prudence accepted it, conditioned on one stipulation. She told him what it was and he knotted his lips in obvious distaste. But Prudence told him she would not sell the building unless he agreed, so he did.

The only remaining sticking point was time. Wheaton desired to take possession of his new property within the week; he wanted to see her gone quickly. But Prudence could not agree. There was still much work to do and she needed time to do it.

And what could he say? Loathe to stand too firmly and jeopardize the deal, he relented on this point, too. She would have one month to vacate the building. With that decided, he extended his hand and they shook on it.

“Well,” he said, not bothering to hide his pleasure, “I suppose that concludes our business in as satisfactory a manner as possible, under the circumstances.”

“I suppose it does,” she said.

“You will be returning to Boston, then?”

A querulous edge had entered his voice and Prudence immediately knew it for what it was. She smiled, very faintly. “Yes, Mr. Wheaton. I have
no intention of taking your money and using it to set up a new school in the next county over.”

He reddened. “This whole thing has unsettled the town terribly,” he said. “It is a pity we could not have come to an accommodation sooner. A great deal of grief might have been avoided. A great many lives might have been saved.”

She thought she might gag on the sanctimony of it, and a half-dozen sharp retorts leapt to her tongue. But she knew what Bonnie would have told her: keep her mouth shut for once and bide her time. How often, when they were girls, had she led Bonnie into some rambunctious misadventure against Bonnie’s cautious advice? Finally, Prudence was listening.

She made herself smile again. “Yes,” she said. “But at least we have reached agreement now, before any further hardship can come.”

“Yes,” he said, “quite.”

Prudence expected him to conclude their business then, but instead, he simply gazed out over the river for a time without speaking. There was silence but for the sawing of insects in the trees. Then he said, “We are different people, you Northerners and we Southern folk. It would have been better had you simply allowed us to go our own way. It is beyond my comprehension how any of you can expect that we will ever be one country again.”

“But we must try,” she said. “What other option do we have?”

He looked at her. He looked back at the river. “We in the South must be left alone to manage our own affairs,” he said. “That is the only way the thing can possibly work. But if you all insist on imposing upon us your values and your ways of doing things, well…”

She waited for him to finish the thought. When he didn’t, she said, “Well, that is business for another day. Our business for this day is concluded, is it not?”

“Yes,” he said, “it is, indeed. Good day, Mrs. Kent. Sass will show you out.”

He wheeled his chair back through the open door without another word or even a nod of farewell. She was surprised to find herself feeling sorry for him. There was a melancholy about the man, thought Prudence, as if he understood that for all his machinations, for all the violent resistance his town had raised, they were only delaying the inevitable.

“We will resist,” he had told her, the first time they sat on this porch, “if it takes a hundred years.”

And maybe, she thought, he had been right. It might take time to truly understand the shifting of the ground, the turning of the tide, might even take a century, as he had predicted. But the change was begun. Of that much, there could be no doubt. The change was begun, and it was irrevocable. And he knew it.

Of course, Charles Wheaton was thinking in the long term, was gazing out upon a far horizon. Prudence’s concerns were more immediate.

Not a hundred years from now.

Not fifty years from now.

Not twenty years from now.

Now
.

What hope was there for the 412 Negroes in and around Buford, Mississippi
right now
, if left to the mercies of white people who had burned down half a town rather than allow a school to be set up for their benefit?

After a moment, Colindy appeared on the porch. “Marse Bo bring the wagon around directly, Miss,” she said. Her dark, moon-shaped face was as impassive as ever, her feelings and opinions, her
self
, not daring to so much as peek through the windows of her eyes.

Coming to her feet, Prudence heard herself say, “Colindy, may I speak with you for a moment?”

Now surprise entered the expressionless eyes. “What you want to talk to me about?” she asked.

In a few broad strokes, Prudence sketched out the plan she and Sam had hatched at Miss Ginny’s table. When she was done, Colindy’s eyes had widened still more. It was a moment before impassiveness remembered to reassert itself.

“So,” said Prudence, “would you like to join us?”

“Can’t do that, Miss.”

“Why ever not?”

“Just can’t is all. They ain’t gon’ never allow that.”

“What can they do to stop us?”

“Ain’t no tellin’.”

“Colindy, please think about it. It could change so much for you.”

“Done thought about it plenty,” said Colindy. “It’s foolishness, is all it is. Just foolishness.”

Prudence was about to say more, but the heavy tread of boots coming through the house stopped her. Bo Wheaton appeared on the porch. “Sass?
What’s this about? I thought you were goin’ to get Miss Prudence here. I been waitin’ out there fifteen minutes.”

Colindy addressed herself to the floor. “I’se sorry, Marse Bo. Mrs. Kent an’ me was talkin’.”

He shoved his hat back on his head. “Oh?”

Prudence had time to wonder if her entire plot was about to come tumbling down before her very eyes. How perversely fitting it would be if once again she were the victim of her own impulsiveness.

Colindy said, “Yes, Marse. She keep askin’ me what you and Marse Charles mean to use that old warehouse for. I done told her I don’t know. I don’t mix in white folks’ business.”

Without meaning to, Prudence breathed out a long sigh. It was an expression of relief, but she saw immediately that Wheaton took it for exasperation. “You done real good, Sass,” he said. “You’re smart not to put your nose in where it don’t belong.”

His gaze fell upon Prudence, and she tried her best to look contrite. “As for you, Mrs. Kent, if you were curious, why didn’t you just ask my father or me? I don’t know how it’s done where you come from, but down here, if you want to know somethin’, you ask somebody. You don’t go sneakin’ around behind folks’ backs.”