The Story of Land and Sea: A Novel (25 page)

“Did
you
ever purchase the right to see your own children?”

“I have no children,” he says.

“And I wonder why God took them from you.”

Hasn’t he wondered this too? It shouldn’t twist him so, to hear someone else name it.

“Get out,” he says. He begins to leave the parlor himself, to search for some emptier room. “Get out.” He is in the hallway, leaning against the doorjamb to the dining room. He hears her footsteps behind him. The sound of any woman’s feet causes him pain now. He is already sorry for having shouted. “Please,” he says. He has no sense of what God wants him to do. Waiting so patiently to be guided, surely his own faults cannot be counted against him. It feels like he is being left behind, every day, again.

The front door opens, and she leaves. The house is quiet. The tea in its cup is still. He climbs the stairs to his bedroom. From the window, through the scrub of trees by the water, he can see the prow of his boat, its boards brown and blue. The sea beyond is endless, and empty.

The baby has a cold. Her eyes close and her tiny hands jerk up in pain when she coughs. Moll covers her forehead with a wet cloth and rocks her as she tries to mix a biscuit dough for dinner, but the baby won’t settle. Moll passes her to one of the older girls. She is using up their flour ration so that she’ll have extra for the road. They will be left with very little. There are women here who will find them and tend them; hers are not the first children to be forsaken. She doesn’t worry if Moses will love them, because it doesn’t matter.

She saw the boat. All she had seen for days was phantom boats, and then there was Asa in a battered dinghy, struggling to shore. She made her plea, though she must have already known what he would say. There are bridges of sympathy that even good men cannot cross. That was it, that was the last hope, and now her way is clear and righteous. Helen had told them, on those hot Sundays in the cabin, that all their suffering was but steps on the ladder to paradise; it was evidence of faith, of God’s favor. Moll believed this for as long as it had seemed true. But as a woman—as a mother—she knows there is suffering that transcends God himself.

The bread is on the fire and the baby is chewing at her breast. The new moon comes tomorrow night. Moll maps out paths in her head: the trail that runs from the quarters onto Asa’s land, the garden path that sneaks from his wife’s roses around the side of the house to the lawn, the channel between the mainland and the shoals, the unknown road to Wilmington. She draws these maps on her baby’s back, and they are soothing. Moses is somewhere else, visiting a friend or a woman. She feeds the girls biscuits before bed, and they lie together until some of them fall asleep.

In the morning, she is in the fields again. She doesn’t think of her son, or of the four hundred miles. She thinks of the dirt and the hoe and the seed, and in her break for dinner under the sweet gum tree, she thinks of the boat, practicing her strokes with open hands for oars. The afternoon turns warm, and the others sing while they plant—a low song, joyless. Abel works at the end of a row, his shirt off and the stripes on his back catching the sun. Her courage grows by the hour. She doesn’t understand why so many of these people will never make the attempt. Why this land is such a sinkhole for human will. And yet: she is thirty-three years old, almost thirty-four, and has she ever tried to leave? Has freedom ever been something she would die to have? Even now, it’s not freedom she’s after. It’s the boy, old enough to know the evils he’s up against, too young to defend himself. You cannot take a child from its parent. Not when it’s so young. Not when it’s grown. The parent will walk until it is found again.

She is whipped once for resting. A line of blood rises on her arm.

When she gave birth to Davy, she was alone; her husband wasn’t there, or the midwife, or Helen, who had once promised Moll a stock of childbed linen but who instead took to sea with a soldier in the middle of Moll’s pregnancy. She gave birth in the dark, in an empty cabin, a rag between her teeth. He was a purple boy, then brown and warm and loud. A body that she had created from nothing: from abuse, from rotten corn, from forced labor. He had not a stain on him. She kissed him and brought him, still corded, to her breast. His face, his wrists, his toes. Faultless. Had her own mother loved Moll as much? She was a cipher, sold when Moll was just beginning to walk. Mothers fail their children in so many ways. Not Moll. Not with this boy.

That night, she asks Moses to take the girls to Aunt Caty’s cabin; she wants to drag the mattress out and scrub the floors. When they leave, she bundles up the sheets and carries the mattress and the stool and the pots and the cradle onto the porch. The only thing left, in the corner, is her bag. She tucks it under her arm and looks once around the room. Outside, the stars are just emerging. She takes no light with her. At the cabin next to hers, an old woman sits on the porch steps, braiding a child’s hair.

Moll heads toward the creek; for anyone watching, she could be taking her clothes to wash. The darkness soon swallows her, and she begins to hurry. From Asa’s pines, she can hear the trembling yelp of a nightjar. By the time she reaches his back garden, with its ripe smell of roses, the sky is patched with thin clouds. A light burns behind curtains in a second-floor window. She follows the line of the house, snaking around its brick corners, avoiding the gravel walkways. She stops beneath the curve of the front staircase to watch the lawn. It stretches like an open mouth to the sea. She waits until she is sure it’s empty. The only person who ever walked the lawn at night was Helen; Moll used to watch her linger after supper, first as a girl enchanted by the ocean and starlight, and then as a woman waiting for a soldier. Helen must have thought her walks were secret, but she wasn’t old enough, levelheaded enough, to wander without being watched. Perhaps Asa too sat on his bedroom floor and peered at his daughter from a corner of the upstairs window. They had let it happen. When Helen ran away, was either of them surprised? Moll has her own children to watch now; she can’t bring herself to feel any guilt over Helen’s fate. The circle of people she calls family narrows every year.

Moll skirts the lawn around its border, where a woman once planted rhododendrons. Untended, they have grown leggy and wild. Creeping along their edge, she feels the small whips of their branches on her face. The clouds have thickened, and their whiteness illuminates the new spring grass. Moll watches them, and goes more slowly. What will Moses do when he finds her gone? She sometimes visits with neighbors in the evening. Will he drag the mattress back in and fall asleep, or will he wait for her until he worries? He has never waited for her. She takes her time approaching the shore.

The rope is knotted in a strange, twisting hitch around the willow trunk. She can’t see the ends, and it takes her a few minutes to fumble it free. She feels two drops of rain; they fall on the back of her neck and on her arm, just above the cut from the whip. She holds the loose rope in her hands and follows it down to the reeds, where she clutches the bow of the rowboat. The rain begins to sprinkle steadily. Moll throws her bag in and walks onto the clump of reeds, her feet half sinking, as she pushes the boat off into the clear water. Once it’s free, she clambers in, getting wet almost to her knees. The rain pelts. She fumbles around the bottom of the boat, feeling for the oars, but her hands touch nothing. She gropes beneath the thwarts, in the bow, along the outside hull. She kicks her bag to one side. How big are oars? She retraces the lines of the boat, feeling now for sticks, flotsam. Nothing. The boat has rocked out into the channel now, pushed by the wind that carries the rain. It slowly turns, pointing toward the sandbar and the open ocean beyond. Moll digs her hand into the water on one side, but the sides of the boat are high, and she can only reach far enough for weak paddles. The boat continues to drift. She pauses, waits, looks out at the dark water surrounding the boat. In her cabin, the sound of the spring rain would help her children sleep.

She is still only a few yards from shore. Oars do not vanish. She leaves her bag in the boat and jumps into the cold water. She finds the line knotted to the bow and swims to the bank, dragging the boat behind her. The water is still shallow enough for her to find some footholds in the muck. She climbs into the reeds, onto the muddy ground. She leaves the boat resting half in the sea grass, its rope loose, and runs along the edge of the lawn to the outbuildings behind the house. There is a shed where Asa used to keep extra wood for barrels and his wife’s dibbers and shears. Even after wiping the rain from her face, Moll can see nothing. She reaches out toward some tall shapes, and a scythe crashes to the floor. In the distance, a dog barks. She stops moving, thinks she hears a door shut in the big house. Alone in that house, is Asa afraid? Does he prowl the grounds at night, missing his family? She takes a step outside to see if the light in the house is moving. She sees a dark shape in the pines. Beneath the sound of the rain is a rustling. Feet. If they discovered her absence, who would be the first to come? The driver, with a gun? She runs back to the lawn, past the fringe of rhododendrons, down to the boat. She fumbles in it for her bag. She can no longer tell apart footsteps and the sound of water drumming on the boards. Will she die before she even begins?

She heads away from the noises, west, through the trees along the path to town. This is the way she would go if she had a boat and oars. Should she have taken the scythe, cut down branches from the willow to make paddles? She is frantic. She has made a mistake. She can see one of the tall lamps that light Front Street. When errors have been made, they must be forgotten. She slows her pace, holds her bag as if it were ordinary. Beaufort once had a slave patroller, but the town has shrunk since the war, and men are expected to protect their own property. She holds her head up and concentrates on taking even steps. The only people on the street are a few old men sitting on the stoop of the public house with glasses of beer. She smiles at them; one whistles. The bile is rising in her throat. To her left, she can see the boats bobbing by the docks. The men watch her progress. At the far end of town, she turns north. The street becomes a path again. The trees close in. She comes to the Newport River, which she cannot cross. She continues north along its bank, toward New Bern, the city to which all slaves run. Once they know she’s missing, they can find her within an hour. From what Abel told her, the Newport swells into a wide bay before it becomes a creek again. There is no crossing west for eight or nine miles. If she can make it till daylight, she might have a chance.

Moll ties her skirt into a knot above her knees and begins to run.

The morning is wet and gray; the rain muffles the sound of the knock. Asa pushes back the covers and reaches for his robe. He stands at the window, waiting for the visitor to leave. A young man wearing a cap jogs down the stairs to his horse, which is stamping one hoof in a puddle. Asa crawls back into bed without removing his dressing gown.

His hunger wakes him. Downstairs, he lights a fire in the parlor and then descends to the kitchen for some bread and butter. In the dim light, he knocks against the oars leaning on the hearth. He had forgotten he had brought them inside for sanding. He would’ve done it in the shed, but it was too cold outside, and this room had a fireplace. He is glad there’s no one to see his weaknesses. He runs his hand along the rough paddles. Maybe tomorrow, when the sun is out. He carries the half loaf and the small bowl of butter upstairs and eats on a stool beside the fire so the butter melts and his hands are warm.

He feels a nagging unhappiness and searches for its cause. Tab? John? No, he remembers: Moll. He is sorry that he couldn’t please her. He has lost most of his fight, but he hasn’t lost his sense of justice. You cannot simply free a slave because you love them in a way. There is an order to the human system; you are born in a certain stratum, and you work very hard with your hands and with your wits so that your children are wealthier, happier. You cannot just ask for favors. Asa’s children would have had a better life, and this residual pride warms his chest. Moll too must earn that pride. Whether or not our children are taken away from us, we have a duty to God to be honest and uncomplaining. We cannot fight his will. This soothes Asa, and he finishes all of the bread, licking the butter off his fingers. He will not fight, and he will be rewarded. He curls on the rug by the fireplace and dozes.

In his dream, a bird is perched on his shoulder, nuzzling in his hair. He wakes, and the martin flutters to a corner of the ceiling, where it bats around before dipping down to knock against the glass. Asa must have left a window open before the rains came. He stands up slowly from the rug, one leg tingling, and limps to the dining room, leaning against the walls for support. He shuts the open window. The martin cannot seem to leave the parlor; Asa waits in the door and watches it fumble for an exit. Deep blue and sheeny, it would be a pretty bird to keep. Its panicked chirping sounds almost like a child. He could build a birdcage, teach it to eat crumbs from his hand. He finds the straw broom Mrs. Randolph left behind and flushes the martin into the hallway. It clutches at the cornice and waits, its chest heaving like a bellows. When Asa opens the front door, a letter falls from the handle onto the porch. This morning—the young man on the horse must have delivered it. He thought that might have been a dream. Was the martin? He looks up. It’s still there, panting, head cocked, waiting for the next attack. He lifts the broom and, after a few false tries, persuades the bird out the door, where it bangs once against the top of the porch before lighting out into the open air, a flash of metallic blue.

The letter is in an uncertain hand; the letters jumble over each other and lean in unusual ways. He returns to the fire to read it and to warm his hands again.

This is for my mother
, it says at the top, with several notes of exclamation. He is confused, and feels still asleep.