Freeman (11 page)

Where is she?

This last thought echoed in her. Chicago was a big, unknown city and doubtless contained more than its fair share of reprobates and malefactors. God grant that Bonnie would be safe among them.

It took her a long time to fall asleep.

She awoke with the light of the new day, heart fluttering with a hope that was promptly crushed. Bonnie had not come in during the night.

Prudence considered this for a moment. But what could she do? What choice did she have? She would have to press on alone. She settled her bill at the hotel and found a taxi back to the train station. The driver drove his horse at a crisp pace down busy streets Prudence did not see. She was busy telling herself that she absolutely would not worry about Bonnie. If Bonnie had chosen to abandon her like this, so be it. If Bonnie was truly determined to return to Boston, she had the funds to do so. Prudence was equally determined to carry on her father’s wishes.

But she would miss her dearest friend. Truth to tell, her only friend.

And even as she sat on the train waiting to get underway, Prudence scanned the bodies moving back and forth on the platform for any sign of her. She would be easy to spot if she were there. Bonnie was a tall woman, her eyes clear and direct, her bearing straight—except, now that Prudence thought of it, for when she had stood there last night before that horse’s ass of a hotel manager. Then Bonnie had playacted, allowing her gaze to cloud over and then diverting it altogether, standing stooped with her head down. It was as if she had become—had made herself become—someone else entirely.

Prudence was puzzling over that when she felt weight settle on the seat next to her. She turned gratefully to greet Bonnie. Instead, she found herself being admired, rather frankly, by a man twice her age at the very least. His sideburns were fashionably long and shiny with oil and he was chewing a wad of tobacco that made one cheek bulge like a tumor. He doffed his derby and gave her a smile that revealed brown teeth.

“Traveling alone, are we?”

Prudence sighed. She smoothed her skirt—it was long and straight, as she refused to wear the monstrous crinolines that took up so much space and made it almost impossible to move about. Then she adjusted her cornette and retied it carefully beneath her chin. The man grew impatient. “Didn’t you hear me, miss?” he asked, and his voice was oilier than his hair. “I said, ‘We’re traveling alone, are we?’”

Finally, Prudence looked at him. The brown smile widened in anticipation. She said, “I know not how ‘we’ are traveling, sir. I know how I am traveling, but I fail to understand why that would be any concern of yours.”

Now his smile shrank down to almost nothing, only to be reborn as a little smirk. “I see you’re a real spitfire,” he said. “But that’s all right with me. I like a girl with spirit.”

He patted her hand as he said it. She pulled away and he laughed. Prudence sighed. There were always some who were more difficult than others. Always some who refused to get the message.

He replaced the derby. “Name’s Logan, honey. Marcus Aurelius Logan from New York City. I’m a manufacturer. Going down to Dixie to make my fortune. Lot of money down there right now for a man knows where to look. How about you? What are you going down for?”

She pinned him with a look. “Again,” she said, “I fail to understand why my plans should be any concern of yours.”

And now the smile died altogether, replaced by a hard look such as you might give a cur that has bitten you after you have fed it. “I’m just trying to be sociable with you,” he said. “Pass the time of day. But it appears to me you’re in dire need of someone to teach you some manners.”

Prudence smiled sweetly. “And would that person be you?”

He returned the smile, scooted closer. “It just might be, if you play your cards right.”

“Thank you for the offer,” she said, “but I would sooner leap from a bridge and dash my brains out on the rocks below.”

His fleshy face went cold and dark. He leaned in close. His breath was a sour mix of tobacco and mash, his voice became a guttural whisper. “Look, you highfalutin’ New England bitch, I tried to be nice to you, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some skinny strumpet talk to me like…like…”

He paused in confusion, looking down to discover what it was that was pressing into his left testicle. Prudence had produced a derringer and was holding the barrel against him.

Marcus Aurelius Logan looked up, forcing a smile. “You really think you can hurt me with that toy gun, honey?”

Prudence gave him another sweet smile. “It is small,” she admitted, “but I believe it is positioned where it can do the most good.”

“You wouldn’t,” he said. “You don’t have the nerve.”

“I suppose there is but one way to find out,” she told him.

She held his gaze. He blinked, blinked again, then finally pulled back. Watching her warily, he stood up, announcing loudly, “I’m certain I can find more congenial company elsewhere.” She watched him exit the car, his
gait stiff-legged and quick. Only when the door had closed behind him did she replace the weapon in her bag.

Prudence was startled by the sound of hands clapping. She looked across the aisle and saw a small young woman with dark eyes applauding her. Prudence nodded acknowledgment. The other woman glanced at the man next to her. His head was back, his mouth had fallen open, and he had shoved his hat down over his eyes. She stood, hiked up the hem of her crinoline, and stepped past him and across the aisle. The woman landed heavily next to Prudence, her hems rustling. “I was about to wake up Stephen—that’s my husband, over there—and send him to your aid. But then I saw you had the situation well in hand. Bravo.” She clapped again.

Prudence felt herself blushing. “That was nothing,” she said. “He just needed persuading.”

“Nothing? Don’t underestimate yourself, my dear. It is not every member of our sex who would have the courage to travel alone—or the presence of mind to know how to handle threats to her virtue. I salute you.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Dolly,” she said.

Prudence spoke her own name as she took the proffered hand. “I hope you’ll forgive me for imposing myself on you,” said Dolly, “but Stephen is hardly the most amusing company. And you are, as I said, traveling alone.”

“I did not start out that way,” said Prudence. “I started out with a companion. But we became separated last night. In fact, I was just looking for her when the gentleman sat down.”

“Her?” The woman seemed confused.

“A friend,” said Prudence.

“I see,” said the woman, though her expression suggested clearly she did not. The notion of two women traveling together seemed to strike her as even more outlandish than one. At length, she said, “Stephen and I are going to St. Louis. His father owns a meat-packing company there. He has promised to give Stephen a stake to start his own business. May I ask where you are going?”

“To Mississippi,” said Prudence. “I was told it was impossible to take the train down there because the war has left the tracks in disrepair, so we—that is, I—will go to St. Louis and arrange passage on a steamboat.”

As she spoke, there came the clatter of bells. She heard the conductor yell, “Booooard!” And then the train began to move slowly forward. The
finality of it settled over her like a mourning shroud. So that was that. Bonnie was going back. She was going forward. It stung.

“To Mississippi?” The woman pronounced the word as if she had never heard it before. “What on earth for?”

“I am going to open a school for the freed Negroes.”

Dolly regarded her with an expression Prudence could not read. “That is rather…bold of you, my dear. To be a woman traveling alone—or even with another woman, which is essentially the same thing—on such an enterprise, is commendable and all, but I doubt the Southerners will greet you with open arms. To tell you the truth, I’m surprised your husband is allowing you to go.”

“My husband is dead,” said Prudence. “He died at Gettysburg. But he would have approved. In fact, he would have expected it of me.”

“Oh?” said the other woman, arching an eyebrow. “So, your husband would have expected his wife to travel alone into hostile territory to do a thing that can only inflame the local population?”

“Why not?” said Prudence. “After all, that is exactly what Moses did. Except, of course, that Moses was not a woman.”

“Moses had God on his side,” Dolly reminded her.

“I believe I do as well,” said Prudence.

“With all due respect, dear, we must serve different gods.”

Prudence said, “I would not be at all surprised if that were true.”

This earned her a withering glance. There was a silence. Then Dolly said, too brightly, “Well, I suppose I should be returning to my seat.”

“It was good talking to you, dear,” said Prudence as the other woman stood and made her way cautiously across the aisle.

Alone again at last, Prudence folded her arms across her bosom and closed her eyes. She supposed she would have to get used to people like Dolly—and much worse. Dolly was only a busybody constrained by conventional ideas. The people she would encounter as she traveled south would be desperately poor, their farms burned, their cities leveled, their livelihoods gone. And they would be embittered, having discovered that all their hubris, all their daring and all their élan were insufficient proof against the superiority of Yankee steel, Yankee determination, and Yankee numbers. Bonnie was right about one thing: There would be hostility. She must anticipate that.

Then she corrected herself. There would be hostility from
some
. The newly freed slaves, she imagined, would welcome her mission with gratitude, would crowd into her school, eager for the education she could bestow. And that would be enough. With that, she could validate what Jamie and her father expected of her.

And then again, she felt weight settling on the seat next to her. Apparently, the man was a slow learner. Prudence reached for her derringer even as she opened her eyes. But it wasn’t Marcus Aurelius Logan who sat next to her. It was Bonnie.

Prudence couldn’t help smiling. “I thought you had left me,” she said.

“I should have,” said Bonnie. “If I had any sense, I would have. But I owe your father more than that.”

“I was worried about you. Where did you go?”

“I found lodging with a Negro woman, a widow who lives near the river.”

Across the aisle, Dolly cleared her throat loudly. “Excuse me,” she said, and there was confusion in her eyes, “but is that the ‘friend’ you were referring to?”

Prudence regarded Bonnie for the briefest moment. Then she gave the other woman the sweetest smile she could muster. “No,” she said, “of course not. This is just my girl.”

Free?
The word rattles in her thoughts, untethered, unattached, unconnected to any thing she has ever known or lived before.

Free?

It comes upon her at the oddest times. Using the necessary, fixing a meal, strewing cottonseed along a row.

Free?

It had seemed a thing too ridiculous and large to take seriously at first, a thing so outlandish that the only proper response was to laugh. But that was three days ago. The men who brought the troubling word with them, the tall colored man Nick and the white man who used to own him, have long since moved on. And Tilda is not laughing anymore. Suddenly, that word is all she can think about.

She finds herself trying to imagine it, define it, comprehend what it might mean.

Wilson and Lucretia struggle with it, too. Sometimes, during the day, her gaze will catch his or hers and the silent understanding will pass between them and they will know they were both thinking the same thing just then:
Freedom. What does freedom mean?

At night, with Marse Jim lying in the next cabin snoring loud enough to silence the crickets, they have talked about it, tried to decide what to do with it. Lucretia and Wilson are sweet on each other, have been since they were children, and Tilda can tell they are intoxicated with the prospect of going somewhere, finding someplace where they can be together, alone, and
never again answer to any master’s order, any master’s bell, any thing in the world but their own desires and needs. Eve and Adam back in the garden, that’s what they want to be.

Tilda is older. She knows better than they how life can work, how cruelly and capriciously it can treat your hopes, your wants and your innocence, until you come to realize that it is better not to have those things anymore, better to leave them behind you, because all they do is get you hurt. She is not sweet on anyone. She cannot even remember how that feels.