Stand the Storm (12 page)

Aaron’s circuit brought him to his true aim in walking about his uncle’s rooms. It was Bella Strong. Aaron came primarily to look at his uncle’s mistress, the most compelling sexual being he had encountered. Jonathan Ridley was recently enamored of the dark-haired soprano and wooed her with prodigious expense and attention. The elder was happily exhibiting her to his nephew. She was beautiful, very ghostly white skinned with small touches of red-orange accent upon her lips, a thin line ringing her eyelids, and a small mole at a place high on her shoulder just beneath the base of her neck. Aaron imagined the tips of her nipples to be thusly tinted, and mused on her. Her eyes were a changeable color and went from light to dark as light reflected from her chestnut hair and was influenced by lamps about the room.

When Aaron tore his eyes off Bella Strong and spoke, his plan was simple. He declared that he had no love of the Negroes, but was thinking of the practical aspects of a manumission deal. There was cash to be had and the Negroes were nearly free in the District of Columbia as far as he could see.

“Uncle, the niggers come and go freely—as freely as birds, I tell you!” Aaron exclaimed. He continued on his point. He explained further that the infusion of cash from the sale would make a creditable investment in the scheme of the Bristols. Thus the cash would advance Aaron toward his goal of the Bristol girl.

“Uncle, the thing to fear is this: as Gabriel has risen in his own value, you must take pains he does not slip out from under his price. If he takes himself off . . .”

“If you watch that he does not, young sir!” the older man chided.

“Sir, they are not easily watched. He has a specialized skill that takes him about the town. And the women cluck about hither and yon.”

“And these hens do bother you some, sir?” Jonathan Ridley said laughingly, showing off for his lady friend at the blushing boy’s expense.

“He himself will pay you for his freedom. Let the slaves pay a top dollar for their freedom, for you’d not get top dollar for them on the market. They’re not field hands. That Gabriel is weak and worthless at a market sale.”

“Be quiet, boy!” Jonathan Ridley snapped. “I know Gabriel’s worth. You go too far to convince.”

“Field hands are most of what is wanted further south, Uncle—wanted by the traders. And the traders are taking a profit. Cut out the middleman!” Aaron spoke insistently, attempting to turn himself to the best advantage in Bella Strong’s eyes. He had practiced to persuade his uncle, for he was eager to contribute a “scheme” of some value.

“Further, sir, with the abolitionist sentiment gaining strength, there is no guarantee that the District of Columbia will remain safe or profitable for slave-owning. Yankees continue to harangue about the appropriateness of slave-owning in the nation’s capital. As if that matters! It’s getting ever easier for the Negroes to steal away. There’s a ring of white people mixing with roaming Blacks to aid runaways in this town.” Aaron finished his point with passion and a snap of his fingers. “I tell you again, sir, this tailor will slip from under his price if you do not take care.”

“Has Gabriel collected enough cash for his purchase? Where does this money come from, boy?” Ridley questioned, trying to bring Aaron down to earth.

Jonathan Ridley was indeed interested lately in securing an infusion of cash. As he was beginning to feel a sense of rising achievement, he was outgrowing the confines of his rural home. Ridley now preferred living as a town gentleman. He’d watched the popinjay cavort about the room with his ideas trying to beguile Bella. Yes, now may be the time Jonathan Ridley would liquidate assets to build his pleasures in town.

“They are calculators—all of them—they spend much time in figuring and toting up. Aye, they are limited by their race, but these are clever and cunning beasts,” Aaron told his uncle knowingly.

“Aye,” the uncle said. “Aye, and you are helpless to thwart them.” This was a constant theme running between the two.

Know all men by these presents that in consideration of the love and affection I have for my people and the payment of the sums as listed

Gabriel, the tailor = $1,000.00

Annie, the knitter and laundress = $800.00

Ellen, seamstress and knitter = $700.00

The above-mentioned were slaves belonging to Jonathan Ridley of Scottsboro, Maryland, a gentleman and landowner, and are henceforth free. The three above mentioned further agree to continue to work and operate the tailoring concern of Ridley & Ridley with 75 percent of all profits after operational expenses from commissions of said concern to be payable to Jonathan Ridley as repayment of the investment in this business. Failure to operate the business, Ridley & Ridley, shall nullify this agreement and result in the swift imprisonment of said parties.

Whereof I do affix my signature,
Jonathan Ridley
September 18, 1854

The breeze that sneaked in the window stirred the curtains and dried the bit of perspiration on Gabriel’s upper lip. It lifted the manumission paper from Jonathan Ridley’s hands. He allowed it to float to the floor as if it were the most worthless piece of parchment he’d ever put pen to. Gabriel knew it gave Ridley a satisfaction to do this, for it shone on his face. Gabriel swooped to the floor to retrieve the paper and the movement was mostly a genuflection in honor of the long struggle they’d come through—all three. He, Sis Ellen, and Nanny were free!

Jonathan Ridley brought Gabriel back to it with his reminder that the child, Delia, was still considered a Ridley slave and her freedom would have to be purchased. Gabriel assured Ridley that Sis Ellen intended to purchase the child’s freedom through her own industry at the earliest opportunity.

As Gabriel faced him with the paper dangling from his hand, Ridley walked toward his former slave. He approached close and Gabriel drew up straighter to meet him. Ridley commanded him—drilled into him with his eyes. These eyes of Ridley’s engaged Gabriel’s eyes and the pair of dark blue jewels had a hold. The former master reached suddenly and grabbed the young man’s scrotum and held the entire basket hard in his hand. The shock of it stiffened Gabriel’s whole body, but he prayed to keep his cock soft. He made himself amused like a toddling child and the moment of urgency passed.

“You’re a man, Gabriel, and hung well,” Ridley said after a moment that he held Gabriel. He released his grip but continued to keep his hand upon the frozen-still young man. “I should have kept you on the homestead to give me more pickaninnies. Instead you’ve come to the town and been spoiled. Had I planned better I could have had another sewing pickaninny—one like Sewing Annie or your Ellen.” Smiling at his former slave, Ridley relinquished his hold and turned away.

Gabriel left the sitting room of Ridley’s apartment at the Whilton Hotel by bowing and backing away from Jonathan Ridley. He took leave in a formal, final way. Though his circumstance had changed radically, the terms of the manumission agreement also bound him to service to Ridley. He knew it plainly—soberly. But, still, it was not bondage! The three were free to plan—to look forward and to say how things could be. He and his mother and his sister had attained their freedom! It was a stumbling block pushed out of their way!

Gabriel placed the paper in his breast pocket. He walked out of the hotel and proceeded down High Street over cobblestones whose chill he felt upon the bottoms of his feet. Gabriel’s shoes were thinly soled and they allowed his feet to feel all that was beneath them. Today he relished the contact. An aroma of horse manure hung in the air. But the air was also crisp and offered some relief from the city’s myriad other stinking smells. Gabriel wanted to take off running and call out loudly. He yearned to celebrate his joy. He wanted to call out his mother’s name and Ellen’s name and his own—wanted to shout them out as loudly as possible. He wanted to toll the bells in the church tower. Think of that!

Eager to reach his home at the back of the shop, Gabriel moved as swiftly through the streets as was prudent.

Master—no, no longer. Now it was Mr. Ridley. He was just a man who had once owned Gabriel and his talents and labors and Gabriel’s mother and Sis Ellen and now they were all free of him—or nearly.

Gabriel did still feel the grip of Ridley’s hand on his meat and potatoes and knew the bond with this man was not severed. But he had wrested something—paid for and gotten something more than they’d had.

Gabriel brought a mood of alarm into the workroom when he entered. He did not speak at first, only nodded to his mother and then to Ellen. He sat and placed the parchment—the freedom papers—on the table. Annie put down a cup of coffee in front of him but did not interrupt his thoughts. She looked at his temple and noted that it throbbed. She waited to hear him speak—wanted to hear her son speak out as a free man.

Gabriel stared straight ahead as the others looked at his face and then at each other. Finally he parted his lips and made a sound that was like a groan of pain. Annie started. But before anyone made another sound, Gabriel began to hum and he built upon his humming until he was singing—though softly. He sang not to lift the rafters, only to commemorate.

Sewing Annie resolved to be Annie Coats in that moment and she joined her son in singing. Her voice was small and tinny but she sang out unabashedly.

Well used to drinking goat’s milk from a cup, Delia climbed into her mother’s lap and pulled at Ellen’s dry breasts and buried her face between them. Gabriel looked at her pawing at his sister’s bosom and felt some aversion spoil his joy at this picture. This child had no right to Ellen. And Jonathan Ridley had not forgotten about her. Ellen added her voice to the singing and each of several familiar tunes made rounds. Only once did Gabriel raise his voice as loud as was possible and he cared not who heard him sing.

Gabriel put aside stitching on a commission when his mother finally ascended to her bed. Ellen and the babe had gone before her. Gabriel’s restless hands took up his knitting as he mused on the number of buttons sewed on to buy his freedom. For that matter, what number of rows of knitting had passed his fingers and his mother’s to come thus far? It was quiet work—their lap work—but it was furious and productive. How many rows of knitting had his mother completed? It had been a many, oh, Lord. It had been plenty! Gabriel considered that for his mother’s sake, she ought never to take up knitted work again. She could let her arms fall asleep at her sides. But he chuckled to himself. It might be that his mother’s arms would seize up and become useless to her if she were to stop working at her knitting. Needlework was the thing she had done since she had begun working—which had been so early in her years that there could be no way to know when.

Gabriel imagined that when his mother had carried him her arms had rested upon the bulge of him as they had when she carried Ellen. This was in the long-ago time when their father had been alive. He recollected his mother propping her arms on her bulging stomach full of Ellen. He remembered seeing her. And her hands were never stopped from knitting and what she worked upon rested atop the child’s head.

Is that what makes Ellen so lively and sure at the needles?
Gabriel thought, cheerfully recalling her early gifts. Ellen’s lap work output was prodigious from her toddling. Her skills were so sure that the needlework seemed less toil than a beautiful undertaking that often couldn’t be stopped or interrupted. She would knit smoothly for so long without breaking off that she seemed not to inhabit the body that worked. Gabriel remembered that he had used to think the same about his mother—that her soul belonged to her needles.

But he did, in fact, know better. He knew that both these women had belonged to Master Ridley and now they did not. Whether or not it made them happy or content to be so, it made them different. He mused on it—Sewing Annie and her boy, Gabriel, and her girl, Ellen, belonged only to themselves. Gabriel’s vitals had a singular feeling when he considered the way they had all come. Yet there was the burr—the constrictions, the limitations. Again he felt the phantom grip of Jonathan Ridley squeezing his meat and potatoes.

At this thought, Gabriel’s hands became still for the first time. They had moved constantly all the day. Even when he’d stood frozen before Jonathan Ridley, his hands had shaken and he imagined the bones in them rattling like dry stalks. He remembered his knitting and began again. Gabriel’s weary fingers wanted to be still, but his thoughts would not allow it for long.

Mary—a tender, painful spot of worry for Gabriel. Where was she on this night? Had she reached Canada? Had she made herself free? Today Gabriel Coats was made free, but he could not fly.

Gabriel sighed and reflected that his work left him too much time to ruminate. He rose from the table to recapture errant pins and buttons and to wind threads. At last it was time to put up and go to bed.

Gabriel climbed to his room with a small candle end. At each landing, he paused long enough to catch a troubling sound if there was one. But the house was silent. There was nothing unexpected. He crushed the candle stub between his fingers and went to his rest.

Twelve

M
OURNFUL BOAT WHISTLES
blew through the dusk as Aaron Ridley left the shop to pursue his supper and his friends. Daniel Joshua approached the shop’s back door secretively. From behind a tree in the yard he looked for a signal that it was safe to knock. Since Daniel had become warm with them, the Coatses were a regular bead on his circuit of town. They had their signals between them. Daniel recognized Annie’s signal in the small square window of the kitchen workroom. A white curtain tied in a knot in the middle told him they expected and welcomed him. His mouth got set for a bracing cup of coffee and a pan of biscuits as he scraped his fingers on the back door. He did wonder, though, how his friends would take the news he was bringing.

When Daniel Joshua was inside and seated, Annie replaced the knotted curtain with a square of indigo cloth that shut out all light from the window. Not a soul else was expected that night.