The Loom (12 page)

Carriage rides, elegant wine-walled rooms, the warm savor of beef set before her, her body graced in smooth folds of satin.

Better filled her mind.

She looked down, tugged a string loose from her dress, anything to keep from looking into his eyes.

John didn’t know, hadn’t felt the feeling of running free. The wind whisking around him, the power that pumped his legs through anything, everything against him. Even as scared as she had been, nothing got her heart racing like its call to rise, to fly.

“You don’t understand.”

“I don’t?” He grabbed the white string in her hand and tied it slowly around her ring finger. “I do.”

He stretched out on his back beside her and looked up at the shabby tin roof. “I ran twice before.”

“What?”

“The first time I was about fourteen, working in Master Seward’s cornfield. I started hearing so many men talking about escaping. It became the thing they did every day, all winter. They talked, and I listened. Then finally in late spring, three decided it was time. They left one night, and I never saw them again. I heard one was hung not too far from Seward’s land. They said he wouldn’t come back without a fight so they killed him, but I like to think the other two made it.” He took a breath, his eyes far away.

“Every day I waited to see if they would return. When summer came and went I knew I couldn’t wait no longer. One cool night, I said good-bye to my mama and went after the North Star. Got all the way up near the Pennsylvania border before I got caught.”

John bit his bottom lip and closed his eyes. “The men in the field always said it was better to die than get caught, and I begged the Lord to kill me first before He left me in the hands of a White man.”

“Who found you?” Lydia whispered. She wanted to know, didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to imagine, picture him captured. Too late. She saw him wrestling, straining to break free from the hands of…”Your master?”

“No. Some slave catcher. Told me he’d blow my head off if I didn’t tell him who I belonged to. I wasn’t going to tell him a thing. Go on, kill me, I was going to say, but one of Master’s overseers was up North looking for some of their runaways and he knew me. Knew right off I was Seward’s. Umm…” He shook his head. “I got thirty-nine lashes, folk said. Master started off then got tired and turned the whip over to the one who found me. Thirty was the last I recall. Woke up raw and bloody, skin hanging off my back.” He sat up and breathed into his palms and for several minutes remained silent, his back curved under the weight of the words. “The pain… My mother cared for me, nursed me back, prayed for me, for my body and my mind. I never did understand why the Lord let me live. Not until now. Not until I met you.”

Lydia moved behind him, cradled over him, and laid her hands on his back. Slowly, she slid her fingertips under the fabric of his shirt, grazed raised scars, and wept. “John.” She wrapped herself around him, her arms pressing his, her hands against his pounding heart, and whispered, “This is no life for a man. For nobody.”

She twisted around in front of him and linked her fingers with his. “What about the second time? You said you ran twice.”

“I think that’s enough telling for one night.”

It was enough for a lifetime. They sat in silence for a moment.

“I just wanted you to know I understand.”

“So you know why I have to have it then. Why even this isn’t enough.”

“Those are your words.”

“John.”

“Even so, I love you.”

She looked up into his eyes. Without thought, she found her hand on his face, her fingers grazing his cheek, his jaw. Black satin. Was there anything, anyone, more beautiful?

He tugged the worn blanket across her shoulders.

“Where did you get this thing?”

“What?” He shrugged, laughed. “What’s wrong with it?”

“This ol’ beat-up rag? You need a new one.”

“This suits me just fine.”

“You’re planning on being a free man with this old blanket? I’m going to make you one. Make us one for when we’re married.”

“Oh yeah?”

She tilted her head. They’d better be getting married.

“No, that sounds good.” He laughed, pulling her to him. “That sounds good, Lydia.”

The thought of her hands at the loom weaving, creating for him, touched her heart.

“It’s going to be special, John. A freedom blanket. This time it’s going to be different. Isn’t it? This time we’re going to make it.” Sliding back against the wall, John closed his eyes. Lydia watched a shiny stream trickle down his cheek and bit her lip. She kissed his brow, brushed his lashes with a mouth lost for words. He looked up at her. “Free,” she whispered. He smiled, but even in the dim candlelight she could see it, sense it. Sadness in his eyes and a pang shooting through her heart.

Miss Ruth?” Lydia whispered in the ear of the old lady in the dark. “You up?” She tapped her fingers against her arm until the woman stirred and turned over on the rumpled blanket.

“Lydia?”

“Yes. It’s me.”

“What time is it, baby?” Ruth shifted upright and rubbed her eyes. “It’s late.”

“How do you know that?”

“How do I know? You mean, that it’s late?” Ruth laughed. “I can feel it in my bones, girl. Not a minute goes by without it ticking on the inside.”

Lydia didn’t understand. She never felt life moving through her. For her, it stood still. She glanced at Odessa and Abram sleeping, curled into each other in the corner of The Room. Her life was as still as those who slept, as stagnant as those waiting to die. “What you doing here, Lydia? You got work to do this late?”

“I just wanted to get started. On my dress.” The thought made her smile. “I think I’m getting married soon.”

Ruth’s back straightened. She turned her face to Lydia. Blue eyes stared past her in the dimness.

“I think I’m getting married.”

“Is that right?”

She nodded, then realized Ruth couldn’t see the gesture. She was grateful she hadn’t. It was a foolish statement. There wasn’t a married slave among them, never would be under the law that marked them as property.

“And you’re making yourself a dress?”

She didn’t answer. Weaving a dress for a make-believe bride. She sobered. No. No, she would not. Gowns were a custom reserved for White women.

“Lydia?”

“I’m going to wear something simple. Nothing special.”

Ruth nodded and gripped her hand, squeezing Lydia’s knuckles together against her palm.

The moment rested between them.

“Is he good, Lydia? Is he a good man?”

“He is. The best.”

Ruth turned aside, her shoulder resting against Lydia’s, her breathing slow and steady.

“What is it, Miss Ruth?”

“Ain’t nothing, baby. I was just thinking what it must be like.”

“What’s that?”

“Love. What it must be like to be loved. By a man.”

“You’ve never…?” Lydia blushed. Why she thought to ask something so intimate of her elder, a woman she respected, stuttered her words. “I—I haven’t neither. I’ve never—”

Ruth chuckled and gripped Lydia’s knee. “I’ve been with a man. One man plenty.” Her laughter stopped abruptly, swallowed in silence. “I ain’t talking about that. I’m talking about being loved by one. What’s that like?”

What was it like? This love?

Lydia was surprised how suddenly her mind filled with images, how quickly her lungs inhaled the feeling. Love was like the heat of summer, she thought to say, a sweltering that left her warm and wet, but she would never allow those words to leave her lips.

It was like the chilling touch of winter tingling her spine until she shivered. Certainly Ruth would understand that, as cold as the cabin had been in January. Or was love more like springwater quenching a thirst she hadn’t even known she had? Better yet, it was the red and orange leaves of fall, bold and bright against a washed-out world. It was beauty at its best.

Lydia looked at the woman sitting erect, waiting. This one whose time had passed, whose life would end within these walls without the very thing needed to sustain it. The one thing Lydia possessed. “It’s something,” she said simply.

“I hear you.” Ruth nodded. “It’s everything.”

She was late.

It was several minutes after the eleven o’clock hour when Lydia dashed up the back steps of the colonial. Easing the door closed behind her, she crept down the dim hall to her room.

She heard heavy steps behind her, but when she swung around, she saw no one. It wasn’t until her thumb gripped the doorknob, slipped from the cold metal and her elbow was grabbed, she knew she wasn’t alone. She spun around.

“Lydia.” Dr. Kelly towered over her, his dark brows raised over eyes steady on hers. The ends of his moustache curved around a grin.“Dr. Kelly.”

“You’re just coming in?”

“No.” He had seen her, hadn’t he? “I mean, yes.”

“Me too.” He smiled wider as he laid his large hand high against the door frame, leaning against the wood. Knuckles covered in hair clawed above her, his prey.

“Well, good night, sir.” Her pulse raced as she groped once again for the knob.

“May I come in?”

“I don’t think so. No.”

“Oh, just for a moment.” He swung the door open, plowed inside, bumping into her three-legged table. It wobbled against his knee. “I won’t stay long.”

Lydia stood in the doorway, unsure of what to do. Run?

“Aren’t you coming in?” He chuckled. “These are your quarters, aren’t they?”

She didn’t move.

“Oh, I see. You want me to come after you.” He strutted toward her.

Please, no.

“You were out in the slave quarters, too, weren’t you?”

“Yes.” No reason to tell she was in his storehouse without permission. “I was.”

“For?”

She hesitated.

“With whom?”

“Sir?” She could feel the ball of her foot lift against the soft leather of her shoe, her leg starting to bounce under the pressure.

“Oh, never mind that.” He stood close, his tar-scented breath drifting over her, his gaze leaving her eyes, her mouth, traveling down the length of her. “You look nice.”

She glanced down at her russet dress. Far from nice. Hot and grimy, the cotton clung to her moist skin. She gripped the front of it, pulled it away from her body until it tented around her, hiding all signs of femininity.

“I’ve noticed your glances.”

“Sir?”

“I’ve noticed, Lydia.” He reached for her. “Just a little timid, are you?”

Like lightning, he slid his arm around her waist, nestled into her shoulder, his wet mouth pressed against her neck, his hand, his solid, heavy hands, grappling, pulling, tugging at her.

She squeezed his fingers, dug her nails into the flesh of them until she felt bone and shoved him away.

He stumbled back and looked at his hands, gawked at the ruby wounds.

Lydia’s heart raced. She tried to run, but fear locked her feet in place. She was certain he would slap her, kick her, kill her, but when he finally looked into her eyes, she saw no signs of anger.