Freedom Stone (23 page)

“Wagons is wagons, child,” she said. “If they move, the soldiers want 'em.”

“Then there ain't no hope,” Lillie said mournfully.

“There's always hope, girl.”

Lillie brightened slightly. “There's that other thing,” she said.

“What other thing?” Bett asked.

“That other thing you said the oven stones could do. The one you said is too dangerous.”

“I didn't say it turned less dangerous, did I?”

“But if the mail don't go, we got to try somethin'!” Lillie said. “There won't be no other way.”

Bett nodded sadly, then reached out and laid her hands over Lillie's. “Little girl, I been a slave a lot longer than most folks' whole lives, and I reckon I know a thing or two about when there ain't no other way to do somethin'. You ain't there yet.” She laughed a tiny laugh. “You's close, I give you that. But you got a scrap of a chance left. You got to trust me about that, you hear?”

Lillie nodded, but deep inside, she was thinking no.

It was that promise from Bett—the possibility that not all hope was gone—that Lillie was turning 'round and'round in her head while she was working at the nursery cabin and Mr. Willis was weighing and measuring Plato. It was still on her mind that night when the family was back in the cabin. Plato had yet to make any mention of his visit to the barn and in fact had given little thought to it himself. As soon as he got back to the beet field, he and the other boys got caught up wrestling by the creek bank, getting their clothes and hair so covered with mud that at the end of the workday their mamas had to scrub them down. So much excitement knocked other matters completely out of his head. It wasn't until Mama noticed he was just picking at his supper and asked him why that his thoughts returned.

“It was the cornbread,” Plato answered.

“What cornbread?” Mama asked. “You didn't eat no cornbread.”

“Yes, I did; I ate two pieces. He made me.”

“Who made you?”

“Mr. Willis.”

“What are you talkin' about, boy?” Mama asked.

“Mr. Willis took me from the beet field and put me on the scale. I'm forty-eight pounds,” Plato said proudly. “But he said no ship wants to buy no deckhand as puny as me, so he gave me the cornbread.”

“What do you mean, buy?” Lillie asked in alarm. “Who said anything 'bout buyin'?”

“Sshh!” Mama hushed her, and then turned back to Plato. “Who said anything 'bout buyin'? Who said anything'bout deckhands?”

“The Master wants to sell me to a ship, 'cept I'm not for sale 'cause you don't want me to go. That's what Bull said, so I reckon I ain't goin'. Still, they said I got to eat the cornbread every day so's I get big.”

At that, Mama bolted up from her chair so fast and hard she knocked Plato's milk cup onto the floor. Plato and Lillie jumped, and Mama turned and tore out the door. The children looked at each other and then lit out after her.

“Mr. Willis!” Mama cried, running off into the descending dark. “Mr. Willis!” She looked behind her, saw Plato and Lillie following, and screamed at them. “Go back! Go back now!”

Paying no mind to where she was running, Mama caught her toe in a rut and stumbled to the ground. Plato and Lillie screamed and sped up to reach her, but Mama simply rolled with the fall and was up on her feet again, continuing to race toward the overseer's cabin. “Mr. Willis! Mr. Willis!” she cried.

Slaves in the stables poked their heads out of the door and others coming home late from the fields stopped and stared. But none followed the wild-looking mama and the two children trailing her, lest whatever trouble she was courting came to them too.

“Mr. Willis!” Mama screamed once more as she drew near the cabin. The overseer now emerged, wearing nothing but his trousers and his suspenders. His whip was in his hand, and he swayed on his feet. He'd been drinking—a lot, judging by the heavy-lidded look of his eyes and the drunk-man's snarl playing around his mouth. He spun his whip furiously over his head till it cut the air with a whistle that would have sent a hound howling, then cracked it on the ground.

“Stay where you is, Franny!” he roared. “You and them babies o' yours!” He snapped the whip again, and Mama came to a stop, stumbling to her knees. Plato and Lillie raced up next to her, dropped down and took hold of her. “What's your business here—all o' you!—disturbin' my supper this way?” the overseer demanded.

“Mr. Willis, Mr. Willis,” Mama said. “What do you want with my boy? Why you troublin' him when he's workin' hard for the Master like he always done?”

“Boy talked, eh?” Willis said. “Too much cornbread, eh? Don't worry, Franny. I don't want nothin' with your boy. Don't reckon he's worth much at all.”

Mama started to slump in relief, but the overseer went on.

“Can't say the same for them ship captains, though. They likes to get 'em young. Train 'em up right.”

“He ain't but a child, Mr. Willis, a child,” Mama pleaded. “He ain't no sailor!”

Willis swayed dizzily, then waved her off absently. “Course he ain't. Not yet anyways. But when he's fattened up, maybe. When he's taught right, maybe.”

“No!” Mama wailed. “He can't go! He can't go!”

“Maybe the girl oughta thought o' that before she took to helpin' runaways!” Willis roared, turning Lillie's way. “The Master knows 'bout that now! He knows it good!”

Mama looked at Lillie, not understanding what the overseer had said. Lillie looked back, not able to make full sense of it either. Plato clung to both of them, too terrified now to move or weep or even breathe.

Lillie took hold of Mama hard, her eyes filling with tears. “Mama, Mama,” she whispered. “Mama, your babies is here.”

Mama wheeled back to her and cried aloud. “For how long, child? For how long?” She spun back to the overseer. “There ain't nothin' left of our family but what you see here! We ain't got no man! Let me keep my children, please!”

The overseer looked at Mama, his face now curling in full disgust. He whirled his whip around his head again and lashed it out once more. The tip of it struck the ground and this time seemed to explode against the soil just inches in front of Mama, pelleting the family with pebbles and dirt.

“The boy's gone, Franny!” Mr. Willis shouted. “Appraiser's comin' back inside o' the week. You try to hide him, I'll find him. I'll find him, and I promise you, I'll kill him dead!” The drunken man then looked down at them all, and his face this time lifted in a wicked smile. “Besides, Franny,” he said, running his eyes over her, “once you're free o' the boy, you'll have more time for other things.”

With that, Willis turned around, staggered back into his cabin and slammed the door. Mama collapsed onto the ground, and Lillie and Plato held her tight.

Chapter Twenty-four

IN THE QUIET of the cabin later that night, Lillie came to accept that Plato was well and truly lost—and that she and Mama were partly to blame.

Mama knew better than to talk to Mr. Willis the way she had tonight, even if her fears for Plato made it impossible for her not to. There were few things that set Mr. Willis's mind firmer to something he was planning to do than someone's begging him not to do it. A slave about to receive ten lashes dared not plead for mercy, lest that ten become twenty. Twenty could easily become fifty the same way. Not long before Lillie was born, so the stories went, the Master ordered Mr. Willis to sell off four slaves and gave him leave to select which four. One of the slaves he chose was a strong boy who was the younger of a mama's two sons. The mama wept and sobbed and clung to Mr. Willis's leg when she learned what was to happen. Then she said the one thing she oughtn't have said.

“You're too kind a man to take my baby away,” she cried.

It would not do, Mr. Willis believed, for any slave to think him too kind for anything—so he sold off both of the sons instead. The mama died within the year, killed by sorrow as much as by the sure knowledge that it was her own words that had doomed her child.

But Mama's hand in dooming Plato was nothing next to Lillie's. With all the noise and tears outside the overseer's cabin, Mama did not seem to have kept hold of what Mr. Willis had said about Lillie helping runaways. The overseer was drunk and he was angry, and Mama likely reckoned he was just remembering the whipping he wanted to give Lillie when she told her tale about hurting Cal's foot. But Lillie suspected there was more to it than that—and that Sarabeth was involved. More than once, her old friend had told her that there was nothing in the world she loved so finely and fiercely as her family—and no one in her family she loved so finely and fiercely as her father. If Sarabeth concluded that Lillie had had a hand in Benjy and Cupit's disappearance, as she surely would have when she caught her coming out of the woods, she would just as surely have carried that news back home.
The Master knows 'bout that now,
Mr. Willis had said.
He knows it good!
Lillie was certain she knew how he came to know.

Lillie turned her face into her thin, rough pillow and broke into quiet, helpless tears. The two people who loved Plato most had now also done the most to help send him away. Her tears came harder, and she covered her mouth to stifle her sobs and felt surely as if she might perish from the idea of what awaited the boy, and then—something broke clear in her mind.

She flipped over on her back and stared at the ceiling with eyes wide and her breath quick. All at once, she understood! She'd figured it out, the “something else” the stones and the oven could do! It was the only thing that made sense. It was the only thing it could be.

And with that, she also knew what she had to do. As she had on the night she wrote her letter to the farmer in Mississippi, she forced herself to lie awake until she could hear both Plato and Mama breathing steadily in their sleep. Then she climbed out of bed and crept to her dresser, silently cursing the floorboards of the cabin, which creaked with every step she took. She reached around in her bottom drawer until she felt what she was trying to find—an old dress she'd worn for much of last year and all the year before. The dress was too small for her now and was frayed around the hem and sleeves. But there was still some serviceable cloth in it, and Mama intended to save what she could for patches and scrap.

Lillie wadded up the dress, tiptoed to the cabin door and stepped outside in her nightshirt and bare feet. The ground was cold and wet, and she stayed on her toes to avoid the crawly feel of it. She crept twenty or thirty steps from the cabin—far enough, she hoped, that her work would not be overheard. Then she bent down and felt around on the ground, groping for a sharp rock. She found one she thought was right and held it up in the watery gray moonlight. It looked suited to the job, but Lillie hesitated before she could go further. Mama had worked hard to make that dress, and Lillie remembered well the night she finished it. She had sewn straight through the evening and gave it to Lillie to try on just before bed. Papa had smiled broadly when Lillie twirled before him in it, and he said he could all at once see the grown woman hiding inside his girl. He pronounced it the finest dress Mama had ever made. Mama had beamed and given him a kiss.

Lillie pushed that memory from her head and, with one quick move, slashed the dress with her rock. Carefully then, so as not to waste a bit of the fabric, she tore it into long ribbons, glancing nervously at the cabin to be sure the noise didn't wake Mama. When she was done, she gathered the ribbons up in her arms and tiptoed back inside—taking care to kick the soil off her feet first. Then she tucked the strips of the dress under her mattress and slipped quietly back into bed.

 

 

 

Day broke cold and drizzly, which Lillie noticed when she woke up and counted as a good thing. On rainy days, there were still chores for many slaves to do, but not for most fieldworkers, which meant the mamas would be staying around the cabins. If the mamas had the day free, they wouldn't be bringing their babies to the nursery cabin, which meant Lillie had the day free too.

The gray sky outside matched the grim mood inside the cabin as Lillie, Mama and Plato rose and had their breakfast. Mama's eyes looked heavy and red. Plato had not spoken much about the terrible things the overseer had said, and it was not certain he really understood them. But he remained so quiet this morning—and clung so close to Mama—he must surely have been feeling the danger he faced. All three picked disinterestedly at their breakfast and when the meal was done, Mama put the uneaten hoecakes away. She'd serve them up again, along with some greens, when lunchtime came around.

Mama did not press the children to do much cleaning, save sweeping the floors and washing out their breakfast plates and cups. Lillie did as she was told, waiting for a chance to be left alone. When, at last, Mama and Plato went outside to fetch some water, she hurried over to her bed and pulled the cloth strips from under the mattress. She hiked up her dress and tied them around her waist, pulling the dress back down and smoothing it out as much as she could. When all the work was done, a quiet Plato wanted only to climb into Mama's lap and listen to stories, and that suited Mama too. When Lillie asked if she could go outside, Mama nodded, seeming to hear her only halfway. Lillie kissed her mother and her brother and left the cabin.

Outside, Lillie slipped around the back of the cabin where no one could see her, pulled her dress up again and untied the strips. Then she hurried off to Nelly and George's cabin.

The distance to the cabin was a short one, but Lillie ran it in a sprint, heedless of the puddles she stepped in along the way. When she arrived, she knocked on the door and once again entered before she was invited. Nelly, George and Cal were sitting at their eating table having their breakfast. Cal's injured foot was propped up on a box. George turned in Lillie's direction and rolled his eyes at the sight of her.