A Different Sun: A Novel of Africa (6 page)

Henry opened the basket to find fried fish, still warm.

“You fix this for me?” he said.

“Well, I fixed it. Always carry dinner.”

“Won’t you need it?”

“Not like you do.”

“I thank you,” Henry said, shaking the man’s hand. The hand was large and Henry expected it to be rough, but the palm was tender as a baby’s bottom in heaven.

“You’ll be fine now. Try not to ride yourself to death, or your horse,” the man said.

Henry watched him walk off until there was nothing left to see. He ate half of the fish and lay back down.

He spent a week at the abandoned house. Rabbits were plentiful. He recalled Bible verses his mother had taught him.
For God so loved the world He gave His only begotten son.
The man who had brought the fish never showed again, and Henry began to believe he had been visited by an angel of the Lord. The more he thought on it, the greater his joy. God in heaven loved him and longed for his soul.

Henry’s ideas of Jesus came clean and fast. The Savior had found a field of labor among the least of these. He taught in the countryside and healed the sick wherever he found them. He stood against the high priests who sought only to expand their own power. Henry’s complaint against God had been His demand. Give all you have, even your mother. Now Henry wished to give up everything, especially his guilt, and keep only God.

When he passed into Georgia he traded in his horse, using money from his stable work to purchase a better one. But he kept the rifle, a Yager. A muzzle-loaded, smooth-bore long gun, it carried a ball and two buckshot and it was heavy. If he used it again, it would be to shoot himself if he were fixing to die anyway in some lonely place where God would forgive him for not letting the bears or mountain lions eat him before he was dead.

His eyes still closed, Henry felt along the river rock out of habit. But of course he didn’t have his firearm on the Eno River. He was having a good rest on the sunny shale. When he checked his midsection, he could tell his organs were behaving better. With that reassurance, he let himself enjoy the sun a little longer.

Henry had feared what he might find at his father’s farm, but the man had set himself straight, hiring a young free Negro to work and take part of the yield. “You’ll stay with me,” his pa said, patting him on the back. “I knew you’d be home. If you don’t favor your mother. All the good looks was on her side.”

Henry was a little sorry his father didn’t need his help more. “If I won’t discommode you,” he said, “I’ll stay.”

“You’re joshing me,” his father said. “What a way of speech you always had.”

Henry cleared his throat. “I’m through fighting. If I can find a way, I’m going to preach. I guess I got some religion from Mama too.”

“Like I said, you’re from your mother. If it hadn’t been for that tuberculosis.” The old man seemed graveled and Henry thought he might choke up, but his keen blue eyes shone content. “I’m proud of you, then,” he said.

Henry was offered a nearby church, but by the fourth Sunday he could feel the women pulling at him. He meant to live without a woman, without a wife, hoping such penance would relieve the guilt. “I’m going to do some circuit preaching,” he told his father. “There’s many a person moving into Georgia that hasn’t got the gospel.”

“I wouldn’t stop God, no sir,” his pa said.

Henry preached so for five years, into north Florida. The clutching in his stomach was gone, but another feeling took its place, something below his breastbone. It made him think of a throng of birds caught in a domed ceiling trying to break through to light. He took it as a sign of spiritual limitation and began studying all the theology he could find, the history of religion, and the early American preachers. Jonathan Edwards was ruthless; Winthrop too benign. He found his best direction in John Wesley, with a little bit of Calvin thrown in. Though firmly based in scripture, Wesley never divorced faith from reason and he believed in personal experience, salvation by grace. But Calvin kept you on your toes. God couldn’t be taken for granted.

Henry aligned himself with the Baptists because it was his mother’s church. When the debate over ministers owning slaves came up, he argued against it on the principle that ministers must live simple lives common to the lowly in their flock. At an associational meeting in Decatur, he heard there was going to be a split in the denomination. The new Southern Baptists wanted to send missionaries to Africa. The dark continent fairly glittered in the light of south Georgia, where more than once, revival meetings broke up into calls for whiskey. Henry was the first to volunteer, putting his cavalry money into the mission. He left the smooth-bore Yager with his pa and purchased a fifty-caliber percussion cap rifle. Trimmer than the Yager, with brass pipes and furniture, steel lock and hammer, and a rifled barrel, the percussion offered greater accuracy than the Yager. There was, in the country to which he would travel, the same sort of fighting over territory he had seen in Texas. He meant to be protected. Wild game was abundant and the firearm could bring down an antelope or stop a lion. At least he hoped it could.

In 1850, he had gone to Africa. But in his three-year tour he had greatly desired a wife. There was the practical side; he needed a nurse for those times he was ill. Furthermore, he was sometimes attracted to an African woman and felt he might—in a rash moment—give in. Spiritually he needed a companion. Perhaps his penance was over.

The evening he found Emma in the vestibule of her church, he looked with new admiration on the Lord’s capacity for humor. She was a tall girl of ordinary looks but with a swayback that suggested motion even when she stood still. It was clear she was waiting for him and just as clear that she was going somewhere regardless of who took her. Cleave, he thought, and meant it both ways, but it was not a sin because he intended to marry her.

The sun slipped behind the bare trees around the Eno. Henry sat up and as he did, a blue heron lifted and flew across the river. Its wingspan was astonishing and he felt a thrill of communion with the magnificent animal. The bird resettled itself. From across the way, it turned its head to look at him. After a bit it went back to its activity, collapsing its long body, pulling in its neck so that the head was just over the current. Occasionally it cocked its head sideways, listening rather than looking for fish. And then like a snake the long yellow beak struck water. How various were the wonders of God, that an animal of such size could be so agile. Just so was it with Henry—a body of contradictions, a man of great sin chosen to carry the love of Jesus. He pulled on the borrowed coat and headed back to the hotel.

The next day, Henry was on his way to Richmond. He spent a week in the company of his fellows at the mission board. They expressed pleasure with his progress: the fledgling church in Ijaye, the house building, Henry’s articles on the African country. Still it burned him how men of God were keeping on with their slaves and luxurious houses. Yet what was he to do? He needed their support. People died by the thousands every day who had never heard the gospel. These men couldn’t
feel
it as he did. He left them more determined than ever.

He spent Christmas with a minister in Petersburg and from there picked his way south into the New Year, 1853, stopping where he might to preach and raise money. He wrote to Emma.
I am comfortably set in Ijaye.
A year, he thought, long enough for her to become acclimated.
A British missionary has his own mission in the town, a Rev. Moore, a mighty fine neighbor.
Meanwhile, he would explore a more northern location. It was his dream—reaching the interior, converting the Mohamedan. A sudden worry crept up and tapped against his brain. What if his sweetheart was less flexible than he thought? He believed he had taken her measure. But wouldn’t most women want a home, and hadn’t he implied as much? She might want to sew curtains, that sort of thing. He penned his next sentence as delicately as he could.
I must consider how the Mohamedan mind can be brought to Jesus. It is my greatest desire to travel to their district, farther north.

Yet another delicate subject needed explaining.
Spirits are a necessary part of mission life in the tropics
, he wrote,
as medicine, to calm the system and fight the malaria. It’s better than quinine.
Through their correspondence, Henry grew fond of Emma’s mind, and when finally he saw her again, he was fond of the whole of her. Nothing in her physical appearance had changed, but he believed she cherished him. And because no other woman had shown such care for his ideas, he felt the proudness of a young man, not a near-forty-year-old.

In the Davis parlor he asked for Emma’s hand. Her parents seemed a bit shrunken, as if slipping into oblivion, and Henry felt his advantage. Later, he joined Mr. Davis in the family library. The man was dusting a frame above his desk. Henry thought he was meant to take an interest. “Miss Davis’s college diploma,” he said after reading the print.

“Yes,” Mr. Davis said. “I should have seen her ambition.”

Henry made no response. Mr. Davis folded his handkerchief and offered him a seat.

“You’re a talented man,” Mr. Davis said. “You’ve soldiered and traveled in places most Georgia men have not. Emma tells me you’re self-taught but know more than any professor.” The man studied his fingernails. “Your father is a farmer, if I’m not mistaken.”

Henry thought of his papa’s few acres, dull beside this man’s plantation. He resented Mr. Davis for drawing comparisons that went against him and felt a tremble in his left hand. How had this thing turned so quickly? Mr. Davis must have observed his consternation because he took a deep breath and now he looked not at all like the shrunken man in the parlor. His vest expanded and Henry heard the rich leather breathe.

“I was wondering,” Mr. Davis went on. “How many bales of cotton you think a man could make off an acre of Greensboro land?”

“I have no idea,” Henry said. “I’ve not been studying cotton.”

Mr. Davis pulled on his mustache. “That’s too bad,” he said. “I had planned to give you fifty acres as a wedding gift.” He got up and stood at the window. “Thought to plant it for you while you’re traveling. And put the money up toward future need.”

“I have at present no way to pay for beginning the administration of such lands,” Henry said, feeling his indignation stiffen him up.

“I’m talking about a gift,” Mr. Davis said.

“It would be a great distraction to you,” Henry said.

Mr. Davis sat back down. Henry could have sworn it was for the effect of the vest. He knew this sort of man, had met him many a time.

“I have plenty of Negroes,” Mr. Davis said, and then he added, with the drama of a practiced line: “Don’t tell me you’re for setting niggers free just because you preach to them.”

The man was baiting him. “I’m not telling you anything about your livelihood.”

“I’d like to know how you’re going to care for my daughter.”

“I can teach and I can preach and I’ll be productive for as long as the good Lord wills.”

“Small harvest comes that way,” Mr. Davis said. “But I won’t press lands on one who’ll do nothing but fallow them for jackrabbits and mountain lions.”

“No sir, I reckon you won’t.” For a moment Henry wondered if Emma had been in on the design. Perhaps he had been reckless, not giving the man time to explain. He reprimanded himself for acting on impulse. Well, it was too late now.

“Good day,” he said, setting his hat on his head and walking out of the room.

“Well?” Emma said when he met her on the porch.

“Your father offered land and labor to work it in our absence—to see to your security—but I wouldn’t take it. He had already agreed to the marriage because it was your wish.” Emma’s face seemed to drain of color and he thought,
Well, there she goes, like a little goat; I’ll have to restart this business of courtship
. But she latched on to his lapels.

“You were right, of course,” she said. “We will wait on the Lord.”

“The way is open, then,” he said. “As I see it, you choose a date.”

“I’m happier,” she said, her eyes thoroughly charming.

“Happier than what?”

“Than I ever was before.”

Something in him turned clean over. He loved her. She would be enough to wrestle with and she would keep him alive.

· 5 ·

A Seal Is Set

E
MMA HELD
H
ENRY’S
gift in her lap.

“Open it,“ he said. “I made it from a mahogany packing box. It’s larger than most and a little heavy, but you’ll be glad for the accommodation later. Anyway, you’ll have a boy to tote it.”

The rectangular writing box stretched across her lap and beyond on either side. Eighteen inches wide, she surmised, maybe ten inches front to back, seven inches deep. The wood was dark brown, the shiny lacquer bringing out the natural grain in ribbons of gold, one section of grain rounding like currents in a stream.

“A man in Richmond gave me the inset handles.”

The top sat flush to the sides. Emma slid her hands up and down over the perfect handles.

“The latch came from my host in Petersburg,” Henry said. “This way you don’t have to keep up with a key. Just push the little swing arm to the right to open it.”

Emma brushed the latch with her thumb and ran her fingers over the brass corners.

Henry had worked a slender groove half an inch from the lid’s perimeter. Emma sent her index finger along its circuit. “How did you do this?” she said.

“A V gouge,” Henry said. “A man in Petersburg lent me his tools. I spent more time sharpening than carving. Mahogany is dense.”

“No. I mean how did you do all of it?”

“I guess I’ve fiddled with making things most of my life,” Henry said. “I had some time on my hands over Christmas. Open it.”

The hinges moved like silk and held the lid propped. Etched into the lid’s interior so she might read it upon opening,
In my heart a seal is set.
A verse from Percy Shelley she had written to him in their weeks of correspondence.

“I saw your journal the first day I called—figured you ought to have a writing box,” he said. “Do you like it?”

A brush of memory. His hands at her waist. The hand-sewn diary falling to the ground. Then a vision of her bureau drawer lifting of its own accord, lost for a moment in a swirl of winter leaves, settling now in her lap. Henry had seen into her heart.

“You’ll have a great deal to record in Africa,” he said.

“It’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me, Mr. Bowman,” Emma said, awed by this mystery.

“Now look here. I’d like you to call me Henry when it’s just the two of us,” he said, the hint of a smile in his lips.

Wouldn’t he kiss her?

“I put steel screws in the interior to strengthen the joints,” Henry said. “Here’s the writing surface covered in baize to be good and sturdy.” He was serious again. “When you unfold it, you have your desk.” She wanted to touch him. But she opened and closed the box. “I’ve already got most of what you need—ink, quills, nibs, paper. I found the diary in Washington at a stationers’ shop,” he said. The book was bound in red leather. The firm cover and thin pages gave her a feeling of great tenderness and security.

Finally Henry showed her the secret drawer by lifting the pen – and-ink holder and pressing a latch. “For your most private thoughts,” he said.

Currents flowed through her like the brown waves in the wood. She closed the box, hushed. She slid her palm across the top. “What is this?” she said. In the center was a single scallop, worked out like the perimeter groove but deeper.

“The sway of your back,” Henry said.

* * *

E
MMA COULD NOT
sleep
.
“What is it?” she said to herself after hours of restless tossing. The moon threw sheets of light into the room. As she sat up, she had a sense of her bed as a small boat at sea.

For her March wedding, Emma wore a blue silk dress with a white rush at the neck. She imagined she might look pretty coming down the family staircase and was disappointed when Henry averted his eyes as she entered the parlor. But when she reached him, he put his hand to her elbow and held it like an exquisite object coming down on a current. They stood so close her bouquet was crushed, and the scent of evergreens and camellias filled Emma’s senses. She had invited the Pilgrims School, though the children remained outside in the yard. After the ceremony, she greeted them, giving each a flower. One of the older Negro girls pushed a tag of bark into her hand.
JESUS
, it read, the letters made with a charcoal shard. It tore at Emma’s heart. What of these children right here in Georgia? Didn’t they need her? Was she running away? She felt dizzy and closed her eyes.
One two three four remember.
When she looked out again, the girl was gone.

Indoors, Emma sought Henry and found him standing before a display of boxed gifts in the hallway. He was rapping them with his knuckles as he might a watermelon.

“A silver tea set,” Aunt Lou said, her voice as large as her satin-banded dress.

“It’s not something I would think of,” Henry said.

“You’ll take it for your wife.”

“We hope to,” Emma said in a rush, fearful Henry might say something about the extravagance of silver in Africa. “But we can only carry so much.”

“Of course we’ll take it—for Mrs. Bowman,” Henry said, a sly glance at Emma.

“Good,” Aunt Lou finished. “It won’t break.”

Emma felt someone’s eyes upon her. Mittie Ann stood at the door to the butler’s pantry. She looked stately in her brown empire dress. “My father’s expecting you to come by,” she said. “He has something.” The woman started out and Emma followed.

At the cabin door, Emma waited for her eyes to adjust and took in the smell of camphor and ash. In a moment she saw Uncle Eli sitting in bed, looking toward the window that offered a view of the garden. Several of his bundles—what she had taken long ago for stars but were to him warnings against evil—still hung from the ceiling. She chose her steps so as not to bump her head against one of them.

“I feel you a-comin’,” the old man said when she moved around where he could see her.

“Good afternoon, Uncle Eli.”

He gestured with his chin toward a rocking chair. She preferred to stand because of her skirts, but she sat anyway. The old man’s white hair was huge, as if he had decided against ever cutting it again. It ranged and peaked, the liveliest part of him.

“Been some while,” he said, “since you call on this old friend.”

She knew how she had recently avoided him. She was going to Africa. He was taken from there against his will. He would die here. She felt her pity roused for him. She was even bitterly sorry. Yet this was her wedding day. She should not be asked to feel sorrow like this. “I’ve been busy preparing for my journey. You’ll remember to pray to Jesus, for his mercy, and pray for me and my husband going into your homeland.”

“I don’t forget to pray,” he said. “I pray all the time.”

She had a sudden urge to ask what he remembered. “What’s your favorite memory, Uncle Eli?”

“You mean my country?”

“Yes.”

“A big yard where I run around with my brothers and sisters, my mother there cooking. Oh, we had a good time.”

She sat and brooded. Uncle Eli’s hands rested on top of the quilt tucked snugly around his legs. She looked toward Mittie Ann, but the woman was a silhouette against the light of the door frame.

“Is there something I can do?” Emma said.

“You might could get me a glass of water,” Uncle Eli said. “Some cooling on the porch.” She left the cabin and found the clay pot and a ladle and poured water into a cup and brought it back. When she returned he had a burlap package tied with twine on his lap. She handed him the drink. “That’s good water,” he said.

“I’m glad,” she said, thinking how stuffy the room was.

“You remember now, don’t you?” he said.

“Yes,” she said, remembering much but not sure of what he meant. Then she thought of his toes, something she would never forget. Uncle Eli turned and gazed on her, his eyes, she knew, hardly seeing, yet mysteriously knowing.

“I teached you how to look,” Uncle Eli said, tapping his head. He turned back to the window, the parcel still resting in his lap. She brooded more, her eyes cast on the quilt until she made out the faded blue pattern, something like petals in a square.

“I wish I could take you,” she said finally.

He didn’t look at her this time.

“My legs tire,” he said. She thought again of the wound to his foot and the crime of it. It was too confusing, all this harrowing up. She must get back to Henry. No one knew where she was. Soon she would be perspiring through her dress.

“I made something for you,” he said. He held the parcel out and she took it, the stays of her corset pressing against her flesh as she leaned forward.

“Let me open it,” she said, an urgency now in her fingers. But she couldn’t unknot the twine, and Mittie Ann helped her.
She must wonder if I’ll be able to take care of myself
, Emma thought, feeling childish. Uncle Eli was looking out the window again.

“Some travel is one way to go and some travel is another,” he said. He did seem to ramble now. She pulled against the burlap. Finally she clasped the gift, one of his carvings. At first she wasn’t sure what to do with it. The item was long and thin, tapering to a point, one side straight as a ruler, the other slightly arched. The broad end was whittled into the likeness of a man’s head and on top of that, the figure of a bird. She held it like you might a cross, the wood gleaming yellow. “It’s lovely,” Emma said. She perceived how she might understand it. “It’s the bird; it’s you with the bird; it must be you and me.” She felt a flood of release. He was offering her an emblem of their friendship, a portrait. As she turned the carving in her hands, she saw it might work as a letter opener; surely that was his intention. “I love it,” she said. “How did you make it shine so?”

“It’s the leaf I take to rub it,” he said. “You remember. Now you carry that with you. It wants a place to lie.”

“Yes, I promise.” She was still feeling a great relief.

“That’s good. When you get there, you look for a place. I know you will. You teachable. Now Mittie Ann, she teachable too. But I knowed she couldn’t go. You could go. Remember now. Don’t forget, you won’t get lost.”

Emma’s eyes rested on the quilt again. Something floated up. Her anxious night, her bed like an unmoored boat. She had been afraid. But here the old man reassured her. She
was
capable of Africa. She just had to remember her conviction.

“I’m back to the house,” Mittie Ann said all at once, and Emma heard the door of the cabin close and the woman’s one step from the porch onto the ground.

“I’m ready now,” Uncle Eli said.

“Yes, I’m ready,” Emma said. That was what he meant:
You’re
ready. “But I’ll miss the garden terribly. I’ll make one in Africa.”

“You take that with you,” Uncle Eli said, pointing to the letter opener, his eyes now closed. “You find the right place.”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes tearing. “I have to go.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek. He found her hand, even with his eyes closed, and pressed it to his lips. Then he released her.

On the way out, she forgot and her head hit one of the old bundles; dried berries rained on her shoulders. She nearly tripped in her hurry to get back into the house, going straight for her husband, who stood by the fireplace smoking. “Look,” she said, handing the object to him.

“What’s this?” Henry said, rubbing it like a gold piece to check its worth. “It looks almost African.”

“But he’s
from
Africa.”

“What do you mean?”

“The old slave, Uncle Eli, he came on a ship, directly. He’s the one who made it.”

“Well, I like it better than the silver tea set. Don’t mislay it.”

That was it. Uncle Eli told her to lay it in a good place. She slipped the gift right into the writing box Henry had made. The old man only wanted to be remembered.

First nights for a couple are powerfully inscriptive. Henry and Emma would spend theirs in a cottage loaned by a friend in Madison. As Henry was checking on the horses, Emma slipped out of her crinoline petticoat and climbed into bed still fully clothed. She didn’t even take her boots off. She hoped it wouldn’t happen. Now that the time had arrived, it seemed preposterous, unimaginable that such an arrangement could be made between her body and her husband’s. She had thought Henry’s experience might diminish her alarm, but she found it did not. Throughout the courtship, she had been filled with ideas of heaven, the thrill of Henry’s letters, delightful kisses that made her spin for days in her own sheath of energy. Not this, which would surely make her pass out.

She tried to breathe evenly when Henry approached and leaned over, whispering into her ear, “Where are my Emma’s toes?”

Clumsily, he felt about the bed for her feet, acting the part of a blind man until she started to giggle. “Here they are, you silly,” she said, and produced her boots from under the covers. With great seriousness, Henry began to unlace, hook by hook. On each foot’s release, he leaned over and kissed her still-shrouded toes. Slowly he walked his fingers up her legs, spider fashion, until he came to the pink garters at her knees.

“Emma toes,” he spoke as he untied each garter and pulled down the white stockings she herself had decorated with her new initials. His mastery was magnificent. How much he knew. Exactly how to unbutton, unhook, untie every article of clothing. He folded each article as he took it off, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, anklet to waist. She watched his serious face until she thought her body would break open. But he took his time. And as each part of her emerged into the pale candlelight, he named it “Emma toes,” touching softly with his fingertips. At last he had her very place, and she found that some miracle had occurred as they pulled together, almost like riding a horse. They were both together—the horse and the rider—all the way across the plain, to a great flowing river and then a waterfall.

It was unseasonably warm the morning they took the train out of Atlanta, and Henry joked about how Africa had come to meet them. Emma was happy in a new spring dress with only a shawl and delighted in Henry’s company. What her husband did in the day was as exquisite as what he did at night. In the dining car, he decided on rack of lamb, for example. He looked to their things. In their compartment, he dipped his pen in the inkwell and with greatest care set nib to white paper. He rolled a cigarette with the deliberation with which one would seal a love note. She liked the smell of the smoke. Even the odd way Henry held his teacup—with thumb and middle finger—seemed worldly rather than rude. Sometimes he seemed to study the newspaper overlong and forget her, and once he left and was gone for more than an hour. In his absence, she opened the writing box, the lovely lid propped. Uncle Eli’s letter opener greeted her eye, and she felt a fondness envelop her. She laid her hand against her New Testament. Then she unwrapped the only personal item she had brought from her bedroom, a clear glass prism she had selected in a Savannah store on a trip with her father. It sat on a short square base that fit within the palm of her hand and then tapered like a six-sided pyramid. She had been immediately enamored when her father held it in the store window, showing her how it cast a rainbow. She rewrapped it and brought out the red journal to make a note.
The landscape changes before my eyes. Pines taller than ours in Georgia, then hills, then a river far below us. What will the world of Africa show me?
When Henry returned, she thought he had alcohol on his breath. “For a headache,” he explained. She observed the back of her husband’s neck. Loving a man was like finding a forgotten book of the gospel: luminescence and dark mystery. Throughout it all, the sound of the train on the track brought foundation to her skimming heart.