Hunting Midnight (47 page)

XLV

A
n hour or so before sundown, as I sat panting at my desk in the infernal heat, writing another letter to my daughters and Mama, there was a knock at the door. Slipping on my trousers hastily, I eased it open and discovered Mr. Perrera.

“Mr. Stewart, Mrs. Robichaux permitted me to come directly to your room. I apologize for surprising you.”

“No, no, come in, sir. I’m pleased to see you.” I moved a chair away from my desk and placed it opposite the bed. “Please, sit, Mr. Perrera. I would offer you something to drink, but I have nothing at all. In this heat, I am unable to drink whiskey or even wine for fear of fainting and waking in an even hotter place ruled by the devil.”

We were both aware that I was trying to win him to my side with humor, but he did not seem to begrudge me this strategy and smiled as he sat down. I grabbed my shirt and said, “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

“I came to apologize, sir. I was rude to you today.”

I dropped down on my bed opposite him. “No, not at all. An unkempt and sweaty stranger walking into your office and speaking a foreign language … I must have been a sight.”

“No, it was not that. It was – how can I say? – I keep to myself. So when you arrived, I was startled, that was all. And if I may be frank, I find that I do not always have so much in common with the other Portuguese here, so I tend to limit my interactions.”

“Indeed, sir, I am sure you are wise to do so.”

“So, Mr. Stewart,” he smiled again, “you mentioned a
problem
for which you needed help. Would you mind telling me what it is?”

I cannot say why I told almost the entire truth about
Midnight
, but I unburdened myself of it with alarming ease. I had not been aware of my own need to confess my kinship with him. The small death in my gut eased a little as Mr. Perrera listened attentively, and I began to see that the only relief I would find in America was in the arms of the truth of what I felt for my old friend. “Indeed, I have loved him over these seventeen years of separation no less than if he were my brother – or even a second father,” I concluded.

“Love comes to us unbidden,” Mr. Perrera replied. “Do you believe in destiny, Mr. Stewart?”

When I said I was not sure, he gazed out the window. “I find I only trust what has not been tainted by our history.”

I found Mr. Perrera a rather cryptic and unhappy man, one of those souls always looking for answers to large questions.

When tears came to his eyes, he wiped them away roughly and said, “I am sorry for this terrible display.”

“On the contrary, I think you are the first white person I have met in Charleston who has a heart.”

“Will you give me the pleasure of accompanying me to my home for supper tonight?” he asked. “I should like you to meet Luisa, my wife.”

“Now?”

“Yes, we live five miles from town. But it will take less than an hour to get there in my gig. It’s out front, waiting for us.” He seemed worried now. “You could stay the night with us,” he added. “And I think, Mr. Stewart, if you will accept some advice, we ought to leave with some haste. One never knows in Charleston who might be watching.”

Mr. Perrera had a fine chestnut mare that carried us swiftly across the country roads north to his home, a whitewashed house with a large piazza out front, just a hundred yards from a gentle tributary of the Cooper River. A broad oak tree and two smaller palmettos offered shade.

Luisa was seated on the stairs when we arrived. By then, dusk
was descending quickly, but even in the failing light I could plainly see that she was a black woman.

Isaac’s two children were Hester, who was called Hettie, and Reed, who went by the name of Noodle. They ran to meet their father, begging him with squealing voices to lift them up. With the boy clinging to his back and the girl giggling in his arms, he kissed Luisa. She had deep-set, secretive brown eyes, high cheekbones that seemed to catch the last rays of sunlight, and a slender neck. She appeared irritated by my presence.

A hot supper was waiting for us, and to my apologies about creating a confusion, Luisa scoffed, saying that she was pleased to have a guest. She said that to be polite, however, and the stilted nature of our conversation over the meal convinced me to leave after supper. I would walk to the nearest town and ask for a room.

After the children were put to bed, I said, “Perhaps it would be better if I left. You are both very tired, and the nearest town must have an inn of some sort.”

“No, no, John,” Isaac said. “Trust me. Tell your story.”

Unsure of myself, I began by speaking matter-of-factly. Yet when I mentioned how Midnight had trumped my mother’s rudeness at our first supper together by saying that “Africa is memory,” my voice could not help but express my admiration for him. Luisa gave a noticeable start, as though she had been hit on the back.

“You see?” Isaac said to his wife in triumph.

Gazing at me sternly, she said, “Go on, Mr. Stewart, tell me more.”

She listened to talk of my early life rather as though I had something to prove to her. I resented this but said nothing. Afterward, she explained: “There are many white men in South Carolina who feel affection for their Negro servants. Particularly their black mammies. But you are only the third white man I have ever met who speaks with love and respect – and kinship too.”

“I knew you would see it that way,” Isaac said with a smile, standing up to give her a kiss on the top of her head.

“The other two?” I asked.

“Isaac and a minister from Charlotte I once met. His passion for a Negro maid was such that it changed all his ideas about slavery. He was obliged to give up his ministry to marry her.”

I’d kept for last the story of how Midnight had saved me from Hyena. Recounting it to them was to change everything.

I was speaking of how the Bushman had funneled pipe smoke in my ears when Luisa exclaimed, “But I know that man! I’ve seen him do just that. He was well-known throughout the Low Country. His name was not Midnight when I knew him, but Samuel.”

I jumped up. “You know Samuel? Is he alive?”

Luisa gazed up at me hopefully. “If it is the same man, he used to live at River Bend – a plantation near here. He was renowned as a conjurer and healer.”

“River Bend lies up the Cooper River,” Isaac said. “About ten miles away, I’d guess.”

“He was a wonder,” said Luisa, her eyes shining. “Every black person around here knew of him. I even visited him once with a friend who had been taken ill. I do not know if he is still alive. Last I heard of him, he’d disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Completely vanished. I would guess it was about three years ago. They say he may have escaped. But his daughter still lives at River Bend, I believe. I cannot recall her name. She – or someone else there – will be able to tell you if there’s been any word of him.” She paused for a moment to think. “He was just as you described, though older, of course. And he walked with a limp, occasionally using a cane.”

“And he spoke – he was not a mute?”

“No, no, he was quite well-spoken, as I recall.”

My heart was pounding so loud that I could not hear what my hosts were saying. My head seemed enclosed in glass. When I came to, I was sitting in a chair before a low fire crackling in the hearth. I’d nearly fainted, Isaac told me. He forced a glass into my hand. “Drink this, John.”

I did as he said. It was brandy, and it burned. He and Luisa stood whispering behind me. Getting to my feet, I asked, “How do I get to River Bend?”

Isaac turned to Luisa. “If I were to walk to Charleston tomorrow, would you take John in the gig?”

“I could not oblige you to walk to Charleston,” I interrupted.

“I don’t mind. Honestly, I do it sometimes. It’s good for my legs. I’d accompany you myself, but I must go to my store every day.”

Luisa took my hand, gripped it hard, and gave me a hearty smile. “It will be my honor, Mr. Stewart, to take you to see where Midnight lived.”

That night, sleep would not meet me halfway. I was
remembering
too many things of long ago. Indeed, on that night,
unlike
any
other
night,
as we used to say at Passover, I could not fathom how I had reached the present. It seemed as though I had fallen all the way here in a single instant.

I went to the parlor and found Luisa seated at the dining table, drinking a cup of tea.

“You could not sleep either?” I asked.

She started, reaching a hand to her heart. I apologized for frightening her.

She laughed. “Your stories,” she said, shaking her head as though perplexed. “I’ve been thinking about them and their similarities with my life.”

She poured me a cup of tea. I said, “You mentioned that Samuel was well-known in the Low Country. How is it that no one knew of him in Charleston? I asked in scores of shops and churches. I even asked a Negro apothecary.”

“The Negroes you asked were undoubtedly protecting him. You are a white man, and you were asking after a black man who has disappeared, who might be in hiding. There are runaways hidden for years in attics, in root cellars…. We’ve had two here ourselves. So anyone loyal to Samuel would have lied to you. The others may genuinely not have heard of him.”

“Then his daughter may lie to me as well – particularly if Midnight spoke badly of my family.”

“But after all you have said, I’d expect him to be eternally grateful to see you. You intend to try to purchase him, I presume.”

“Aye, but I have not told you everything. Something terrible took place between Samuel and my father.”

“John, you must tell her the stories you’ve told us – they will change her mind. She will hear her father in your voice. And you must speak to her when she is alone. If she is with others, even other slaves, she may feel constrained in her reactions to you.”

“It may take some time to get her alone – and to convince her. I shall need to invent some reason to stay for a week or two at River Bend.”

Luisa and I bandied suggestions back and forth, but none seemed right. After a time, I asked, “How did you meet Isaac?”

“Oh, I’ve known him forever, it seems. Once upon a time, there was Isaac and Luisa…. His parents purchased me when I was fifteen, as a laundress and seamstress.”

“But didn’t they have the same opinions as Isaac? I mean, weren’t they – ”

“Their change of mind about slavery came later. The odd thing is, just like you and Midnight, Isaac taught me how to read. Isn’t that astonishing?”

“Aye, it’s a strange coincidence at the very least.”

I believed my reply then. But now I can see the obvious – that the act of teaching a friend to read is intimately tied to love. As a matter of fact, I can think of nothing more natural.

“Please excuse a stupid question, but are you a freed woman?” I asked.

She gave me a hard look. “John, that is surely not a stupid question. It’s the
only
question, as far as I’m concerned. I was given to Isaac by his father as a birthday present when he turned twenty-one. That same day, he set me free.” She cupped her hands around her mouth and whispered, “Though he hates for me to say that. He says I make it sound as if he did something for me, when he was only rectifying an abomination.”

“Yet at the synagogue, I was told that Isaac was a
slave-owner
.”

She frowned. “Some of those folks – even his aunt and uncle –
they don’t want to see what we are to each other. They prefer believing that I’m still his slave than knowing I’m the mother of his children and that we are common-law man and wife.” Whispering again, she added, “Not only am I not white, but I’m not Jewish!”

Luisa fed me a bowl of her pumpkin custard and told me a curious thing about River Bend: Its previous two owners – Big and Little Master Henry – had each been found dead with a knife buried in his neck. Locals believed they had been murdered by a ghost, perhaps the grandfather of Big Master Henry’s wife, Mistress Holly. Apparently, he had vehemently opposed her choice of husband.

“The moral of the story,” Luisa said with an amused pucker to her lips, “is you best get Grandpapa’s blessing before you marry around the Low Country of South Carolina.”

Looking at her shining eyes, I imagined stars peering through dark clouds. I could see she spent a good deal of her time protecting her family. I suspected she could be fierce. I tell you this: I would not have wished her angry at me.

XLVI

I
managed only an hour or two of sleep and woke abruptly at dawn. Midnight had lived only a few miles from here. Thinking of that, I knew that hope had found me. It played inside me like a fanfare, making me vibrate with the need to get to River Bend.

Sitting on the piazza, watching an ivory-billed woodpecker hammering on the trunk of an oak tree, I had an idea for how to convince the owner of River Bend to let me stay on his
plantation
. I retrieved my sketchbook and got quickly to work.

Luisa and I left as soon as we were dressed, with Isaac and the children waving good-bye to us from the lawn. The road north was pitted and muddy. She and I spoke of her childhood on an island off the South Carolina coast. She missed the ocean, most of all at sunrise, and said that it was her dream to have a small cottage by the beach. When the children were grown, she and Isaac would travel to Europe, perhaps even to Portugal.

Hours into our journey, with the sun nearing its noontime zenith, a creaky wooden bridge permitted us passage over a marshy river. Soon we reached a gate from which dangled a wooden sign of black letters on a white background:
RIVER BEND
. I released the latch and swung it open. All around us were fields of rice, shoulder-high and swaying in the breeze. Four black men and two women were stooping in a field a hundred yards away. Up the dirt road, a half mile away, stood a large three-story house on a small hillock.

Luisa gave a deep whistle and shook her head at having to enter a plantation.

“I apologize for making you do this,” I said. “If there was another way – ”

“I’m pleased to do it for you. I’m just glad I’m not staying.”

We rode up the muddy drive. Beyond the house was an endless horizon of pine, and on its south side was a large garden with hydrangeas, azaleas, and other flowering bushes.

We were met at the piazza by an old black man with closely cropped gray hair and one eye dimmed by a cataract. He wore ancient black velvet pants and what must have once been a white shirt but was now just tatters sewn together. He walked with a noticeable limp. The man told us hesitantly that his name was Crow. Luisa spoke for the two of us and asked if we could please meet with the master of the plantation. I looked around to see if I might get a glimpse of Midnight’s daughter, but there were no other slaves in sight.

Before Crow had a chance to announce our arrival, a white man in blue satin pants and leather slippers rushed out to the piazza. He looked down at us, hands on his hips, as though we were trespassing.

I had expected Luisa to take the lead with him, but she raised her eyebrows and whispered, “Go on, John.”

“Sir, I … I do indeed beg your pardon,” I stammered, “for the unexpected nature of our visit. My name is John Stewart, and I am a stranger to this lovely land of yours, having recently come from across the sea, from far-off Britain. It is my intention to draw and paint the magnificent birds of South Carolina and to later publish these in a volume in London. As I have not yet had the pleasure of sketching the birds of this particular area of the lowlands, I … I was of the … of the …”

Owing to the impatient glare of our prospective host, my words faltered.

“You’ve caught me at an awkward moment, sir,” he said irritably. “But if you will give me a few minutes, I shall meet you in the tea room.” Turning to the old black man, he snapped, “Crow, take care of Mr. Stewart.”

I took my sketchbook from the gig, since I wanted to show him my drawings. Luisa told me she would wait for me on the piazza. “My presence will only make things more difficult,” she observed.

Earlier, we had agreed that I would say that she was a friend’s slave from Charleston and that her name was Dorothy. The less that anyone at River Bend knew about her the better, as far as she was concerned. “If they get my name, they might get me,” she had said.

When Crow entered the room with a pot of tea and a platter of butter biscuits, I thanked him and asked for the names of the women portrayed in the various portraits that crowded the walls. He told me that the young lady with the defeated look was Mistress Holly.

“May I put to you a rather intemperate question?” I asked him. Upon receiving his agreement, I said, “Was this painted before or after her husband’s untimely death?”

Thoughtful fingertips played over his lips. Crow’s one good eye had a clear awareness. “Oh, that would ha’ been long befaw he died, suh. Le’ me see,” and here he gazed up toward the ceiling and wrinkled his nose. “I reckon it was painted in 1800 – that’d be twenty yea’s befaw Big Master Henry passed on.”

It was the same year I had met Daniel and Violeta. “And which of these men was her ill-fated husband?” I asked.

Crow pointed to a sandy-haired ox carrying a musket in one hand and a Bible in the other. His eyes were dull, and he looked rather like he might enjoy nothing so much as sleeping.

Edward joined me a short time later, apologizing profusely for obliging me to wait. Then, over the next half hour, he made it his aim to convince me that he was a simple man of modest needs. Given that the silver in his sitting room alone must have required two days of labor each week for a slave to keep properly polished, this was a rather pointless ruse. Nevertheless, to give a sop to Cerberus, I pronounced him most manifestly a man of simple but elegant taste. “These are perfectly charming surroundings,” I added.

Primped by my compliments, he consented with an eager smile to take a look at my sketchbook. He took time over each drawing,
discovering some detail – a beak, a tail-feather, the glint of an eye – at which to marvel. This was not so much to praise my skill, though he did that often enough, but rather to draw attention to his own powers of observation.

I was about to ask him delicately about the possibility of my staying at River Bend, when the door to the parlor opened and in walked a skinny lass in an old white dress. She had dark, oval eyes, and her skin was bronze-colored. In her, I could see Midnight as he had been on that wondrous day of his arrival at our home in Porto. How lithe and handsome he had been! I had an overwhelming desire to run to her. My skin was tingling with the need to ask her about her father – to speak my heart to her as well.

Knowing that my father was responsible for the life of poverty and humiliation that this girl had inherited, my shame seemed to fix me in a snare; how could I even speak to her when she was sure to have spent her childhood cursing me and my family?

She carried biscuits for us on a platter, though we hadn’t yet finished the previous batch or asked for more. Edward explained to me that she was always engaged in some foolery or other, like bringing in sweets when there wasn’t any need. He winked at me as though we had established an intimate complicity, then said to the girl, “Morri, I used to think you had yourself a good head on them bony shoulders, but you are one silly girl. You think you can do anything you like, don’t you? But you can’t. You’re going to see that one day, sure enough – one day soon, I reckon. Now, get your troublesome black behind out of here ’fore I box your ears.”

“I’s real sorry,” she replied, but she did not seem perturbed by his reproach in the least.

I, however, should have liked to crash my fist into his face, which is undoubtedly why I thought of Midnight telling me:
You
are
just
a
gemsbok,
so
do
not
let
yourself
be
provoked
so
easily
….

Likely mistaking me for a friend of her owner, Morri gave me a disdainful look as she turned to leave.

I then summoned my courage and asked Edward if I might stay at River Bend for a week to draw the local birds. I held my fingers locked together on my lap as I spoke; I had noticed by
now that white Southerners, like the English, regarded hand gestures as vulgar.

“But, Mr. Stewart,” Edward said, looking puzzled, “I do not believe we could offer you the conditions you are used to in Britain. It is a modest household, as I’ve said, and my wife is away at present. I myself am only here two or three days a week. I’m quite sure you would find River Bend a most primitive place.”

“I would need only a room and a single meal a day, Mr. Roberson.”

“Yes, but the niggers, they are likely to be troublesome at this time of year. The hot moist summers create a sort of frenzy in them. They’d dance all night were it not for the whip.”

“To tell you the truth, sir, I never even notice the Africans. None of their damned fool rascality will nettle me,” I said, giving what I hoped was a convincing performance.

“Yes, I imagine you find woodpeckers and wrens more
appealing
,” he said, grinning.

“Indeed so,” I said, laughing.

Edward then scoffed at my insistence on paying for my stay, saying he’d never allow it. He called for Crow, who had waited at the parlor door, and instructed him to help me move my bags into Mistress Anne’s old room. Before heading upstairs, I went outside to rejoin Luisa. I told her that all was well and returned with her to the gig to fetch my bags. I whispered that I had seen Midnight’s daughter and that her name was Morri.

Luisa gripped my hand, then thought better of showing her feelings. Looking around to confirm we’d not be heard, she said, “Oh, I’m so glad, John. Did you speak to her?”

“I could not. I shall try later.”

“You will convince her, I’m sure of it.”

“If only I had your confidence.”

“Confidence doesn’t cost anything,” she said with a grin, “so I’ve got bales and bales.”

I thanked her and Isaac for their help.

“I’ll not kiss you here,” she whispered. We shook hands. “Now, you be careful, John. I’ll leave you with what my mama used to tell me whenever I was up to something risky. I don’t
rightly know what it means, but it used to encourage me.” She placed her hand against my chest and pressed. “You eat the night, child. Eat the night deep inside you.”

Later that day, I took my sketchbook outside, then rushed around the perimeter of the tea room toward the kitchen
building
, which was joined by a walkway to the main house. I could hear soft voices coming from inside. I knocked, and an elderly black woman wearing spectacles, in a loose white tunic, came to the door and bowed deferentially.

She soon told me she was Lily, the cook. When I asked if there was someone who might wash and iron a shirt and trousers, she hesitated for some time, rather as though deaf. Then, when I repeated my request, she said, “I get Morri right on it, sir.”

“And might I talk to Morri herself?”

“Yes, you shawly can, sir. Ya jes’ wait right here, please.”

Morri appeared after a minute or so, her eyes filled with alarm, holding one arm straight down, her other hand grasping it at the elbow. She remained two long paces from me, wary. “Morri, I have a favor to ask you,” I said.

“Yes, sir.”

“The clothes I left on my bed are very, very soiled. Would you please make the shirt … you make it as white-white as the sky.”

“White as the sky? I’m ’fraid I don’ und’stand, sir.”

“I have been told that that was the color of the sky at the time of the First People.”

She took a step back.

“We are the First People,” I added. “You and I … and everyone else. Though that is a secret only few people know.”

Before I could explain myself further, she fled, groping her way along the kitchen wall as though blinded.