Freedom Stone (19 page)

But that wasn't all that was on Lillie's mind. Now that she'd kept her part of the bargain she and Henry had struck, it was time for him to keep his part and mail Lillie's letter to the farmer named Appleton in Warren County, Mississippi. It would not be an easy letter to compose. She'd have to write it as if she were Henry, using the words of a soldier and freedman, not the words of a slave and a girl. She would have to work on it in secret, since any kind of writing could get her whipped, and even Mama, while proud that her children could read and write, took close notice anytime they put ink to paper, lest they be up to the very kinds of mischief Lillie was up to now. Most important, Lillie would have to write the letter fast. The sooner she got it to Bluffton for Henry to mail, the sooner it would get to Mississippi, and the sooner an answer would come back clearing her papa's name and freeing the family. Every day she waited was one day closer to the time the slave appraiser would come and take Plato away forever.

Lillie did not have to wait long to find the private time to write. Plato had stuffed himself full at the kitchen dinner on Saturday night and fell into a deep slumber from which he seemed unlikely to stir till well past dawn. Mama too had eaten well and had danced long at the slave party, and slept the kind of deep sleep she hadn't enjoyed since before Papa died—the kind that had her snoring low and steady. Papa used to say that when Mama snored like that she'd sleep “for a weekend plus a Monday” if he let her. Lillie lay awake listening to the steady breathing that came from them both, then crept out of her bed, lit a dim lantern at the eating table and pulled out her paper, ink pot and sharpened goose quill.

Sitting down at the table, she stared at the paper, which stared back at her blankly. She'd never written anything for anyone else's eyes before, and the fact that this letter would not just be read, but read closely—by an educated man who'd likely be able to spot a fraud—set her hand shaking so much she wasn't certain she'd be able to form any letters at all. What's more, unlike the Missus of Greenfog, she didn't have sheet after sheet of creamy white paper she could simply throw away if she didn't like the way her writing was turning out. She'd have to do her work well on the very first try, since that would be the only try she'd have.

After a long, long while spent thinking hard and chewing the nib of the quill, she at last set ink to paper:

When Lillie was done, she sat back reading and rereading the letter. She'd been proud of other things she'd done in her life, but nothing had ever puffed her up like this. She wasn't completely certain of all the words she'd chosen. Papa had used the word
honorable
in a story once, and while he never told her precisely what it meant, she was sure it was suited to the way she'd used it. She wasn't sure of all her spellings either, but she read the words carefully and sounded them out the way Papa had taught her and she was certain that even if the way she had spelled them wasn't the right way, it was so good that it ought to be. She folded the letter carefully, wrapped it in another piece of paper and carefully printed out “Appleton farm” and “Warren Countee, Missisippy.” She spelled
Mississippi
with a jumble of
s
's and
p
's and a
y
at the end, and that one she reckoned was surely wrong—but reckoned too that even white folks found it hard it get right.

Henry had promised her he would seal the letter with a drop of wax and pay for the one-penny stamp from his earnings at the furniture store and mail it the moment she gave it to him. There was still the matter of the letter making its way through the fires of the war and the thieves swarming the roads leading south, but that, Lillie reckoned, was out of her control. She rubbed her tired eyes, tucked the letter under her mattress and climbed wearily back in bed. She tumbled immediately into a deep and satisfied sleep.

It was not a sleep that lasted long.

“Out of the cabins! Out of the cabins! Everybody out of the cabins!” came a booming man's voice from the other side of the door.

The cry rang out loudly up and down the cabin line, but so heavily was Lillie sleeping that at first it simply got rolled up into a dream—one in which an angry man or many angry men were screaming and pounding on drums or walls. The voice got louder and so did the pounding, and Lillie now began to stir.

“Out of the cabins! Out of the cabins!” the voice repeated, and all at once Mama was atop Lillie, shaking her hard.

“Lillie! Lillie! Get up! Get up 'fore you're whipped!” she shouted.

Lillie's eyes flew open. Early morning sun was coming through the window, and in it she could see Mama in her nightclothes leaning over her and Plato standing nearby wearing Papa's old shirt. Lillie could hear more men's voices outside and could now clearly make out that they belonged to Bull and Louis and Mr. Willis. She could hear the same pounding that had disturbed her sleep, only now it was farther away, rattling one slave cabin after another. It was a harder, sharper banging than a man's hand could make, and Lillie knew from experience that it was produced by a wooden whip handle being knocked against walls and doors.

“Mama, Mama!” Plato cried.

“Mama, what is it?” Lillie asked.

“Children, outside!” was all Mama said. She pulled Lillie's covers down, tugged her out of bed and pushed both children to the door and out into the morning.

Everywhere, from all the cabins, the slaves were staggering barefoot into the early light and chill. Most of them, like Lillie's family, were wearing their nightclothes. Bull and Louis were pacing in front of them all, snapping their whip tips impatiently in the soil, stirring up tiny tornadoes of dust. Mr. Willis was standing two steps behind them, his arms folded and his own whip still coiled—for now.

“Line up, line up, line up!” Bull roared.

“Line up!” Louis repeated in his higher, reedier voice.

Lillie scanned fearfully up and down the quickly forming line. She saw Minervy emerge with her parents and two older brothers. The brothers looked afraid, but Minervy looked flat terrified, holding her mother's arm even more tightly than Plato was holding Mama's. She saw the plow-man Evers and the hauler Nate emerge from their cabins with their families. Despite the men's size and muscles, they lined up as obediently as everyone else. Looking the other way, Lillie saw Nelly and George standing nervously in line, but she could not see Cal. She craned her neck out and then did spot him, standing between the two adults and leaning heavily on George's arm. Cal appeared to be favoring his right foot . . . actually he appeared not to be using it at all; he was standing entirely on his left and keeping his right knee bent. He hopped to keep his balance.

“I thought you got all your dancin' outta you last night!” Bull shouted at him.

“Hurt myself, sir,” Cal answered.

“You'd best get well fast, then,” Bull responded. “You slaves stand on your own feet, or I'll knock you off'n 'em.”

George released Cal's arm, and Cal stood hopping as best he could. Lillie stared at him and tried to catch his eye, hoping for some signal that he was all right, but Cal was fighting so hard to remain upright he didn't notice her at all. When the slaves were all lined up, Willis stepped forward.

“Appears to me that some o' you don't want to live here no more,” he began in an almost casual tone, pacing from left to right and back again. “I can't reckon why. You're fed well, ain't you?” Some of the slaves desultorily nodded, but most just looked at the ground. “You got good houses, don't you?” Again a few nods. “And them what don't like all that, well, the slave trader's comin' back soon enough, and you just might get lucky and get sold off.”

At those words, Mama took a tighter hold of Plato. Lillie did the same.

“But that don't seem to make no difference to some o' you,” Mr. Willis continued. Suddenly, the reasonable tone of his voice switched to something angry, ugly, cutting. “Some o' you decides to run off instead!”

Lillie felt a hot surge of terror run through her. He knew about last night! He knew about Orchard Hill! He knew about where she'd been and what she'd done! Miss Sarabeth had told her daddy!

“Some o' you take it into your heads to go where you want to,” Willis went on, “to go
when
you want to. Like you was free! Like you was
white
!” He spat out the word
white
as if to say that there was nothing lower, more laughable than a slave thinking such a thing. His voice now rose to a furious pitch, and the pale, hairless top of his head flamed a bright red. “You are slaves!” he screamed. “You are property! No better than the Master's plow! No better than the Master's horse! You ain't even as good as the horse! The horse obeys the man what feeds it, and it don't run off!”

Now Mr. Willis uncoiled his whip and snapped it on the ground with an explosive noise that sounded like nothing short of a pistol shot. No whip crack from Bull had ever been so loud. Lillie braced for the next swing of the lash, which she was sure would be across her hide.

“The boy Benjy and the boy Cupit has run off,” Willis announced. “I sent Louis and Bull around to do a bed check before light. ‘Don't trust slaves what've been to a party,' I told 'em. ‘They gets big heads about 'em.' And it turns out I was right! I already been to the Big House and told the Master, and he give me free hand to do what I gotta do to find out where them boys has gone!” Willis barked.

He stopped in front of Cupit's sickly mama. She always looked frail, and now she looked terrified too—a weak, worked-out scrap of a woman. She sobbed softly into her hands.

“The mama says she don't know, and I reckon she's speakin' true,” Willis barked. “Just like a boy like Cupit to go off without tellin' his own mama.” He wheeled toward the rest of the slaves and cracked his whip. “Any o' you others know where them boys is at?”

The slaves said nothing, none of them meeting the overseer's eyes. Lillie wanted to look at Cal, fearing that he knew something and just as afraid that he'd lose control of his tongue and say something he oughtn't. But she dared not even glance his way, lest she call attention to both of them.

Lillie had never seen Mr. Willis so angry—angrier than even a runaway slave ought to make him, and she reckoned she knew why. If Benjy and Cupit ran off from the slave party, the overseer and slave drivers should have known, because they should have done a count before the wagons returned to Greenfog. If they didn't, that had to mean they were drinking at the party and forgot. The Master would surely have figured that out when Mr. Willis told him the boys were missing and would now be as furious with his overseer as the overseer was with the slaves.

“It'll go hard on any of you what helped them boys go,” Willis said, “but it'll go harder on those what helped and don't confess. Now, who wants to be first?”

The overseer began pacing the line, and Bull and Louis fell in behind him. They approached the hot-tempered Nate. The anger Nate had shown in his fight with Evers over the stolen peach jewel was nothing next to what he could show if he was taunted with a whip. He'd lost control of himself in such situations before and been savagely lashed for it. Lillie could feel the slaves along the line bracing for the same violence again.

“You know what happened to them boys?” Willis asked.

Nate kept his eyes down and muttered, “No, sir.”

“I can't see your face, boy!” Willis shouted.

Nate did not move his head, but cast his eyes up to meet Willis's. “No, sir, I don't know nothin', sir.”

“I still can't see you proper, boy!” Willis jabbed his whip handle under Nate's chin and lifted his head. Nate's jaw tightened and Lillie could see his fist clench by his side. “Lemme see them eyes,” Willis said. “Are they lyin' eyes or truth-tellin' eyes?”

“Truth-tellin' eyes, sir,” Nate said through his teeth.

Willis stared at the man for a long moment—a moment in which the slaves could see that Nate was coming close to losing hold of himself and that Willis was daring him to do just that. No one breathed for several seconds, and then the overseer lowered the whip handle slightly, releasing Nate's chin. Nate snapped his head away.

“I reckon even a man like you can be trusted sometimes,” Willis said. He wheeled to Evers. “What about you? You know anything?”

“No, sir,” Evers said. “I surely don't.”

Willis glared at Evers, then turned to walk the other way. As he did, Cal, who'd continued to fight for his balance, lost it again and fell against George. His bad foot struck the ground, and he cried out in pain. Willis flicked his eyes toward him.

“What's that noise down there?”

“N-nothing,” Cal stammered, hanging on to George.

“It's nothing, sir,” George said. “Boy just hurt his foot.”

Willis narrowed his eyes. “And what about that 'zactly?” he asked, approaching. “How's a boy as strong as this one hurt a foot as bad as he done?”