Freeman (17 page)

“Ginny,” said the woman. “That my name, just like my mammy. Make sure she get that down on that paper there.”

“I will,” said Prudence.

A tart nod. “Then I see you when you done here.”

She moved away with her painful gait and Prudence watched her go. The drivers were still stacking crates. The crowd pressed eagerly toward Bonnie, and she had to ask them several times to be patient. Prudence was smiling, still glowing with the simple rightness of it all. Then all at once, she realized something, and for reasons she could not articulate even to herself, it iced her chest with foreboding.

The white men were gone.

They were walking through a grove of cottonwood and hackberry trees on the banks of a muddy river, when Sam’s right foot lifted out of his shoe like a snake shedding skin. When he knelt to examine the shoe, he found it split open at the seams, coarse white threads visible in the gap. Its mate was in much the same shape.

Ben sat next to him. “Guess you gon’ be barefoot for a while.” He produced two pieces of dried meat he had brought with him from Washington and passed one over. “Last we got,” he warned.

“Do you not think we should save it, then?” said Sam.

“No, I do not,” said Ben, as he tore away a chunk of the salty beef. “Hungry now. ’Sides, something turn up.” He showed Sam the glaring smile, made his voice a darky rasp. “De Lawd gwine make a way,” he said.

Sam said, “Let us hope you are right.” He threw his busted shoe. It arced high above the trees, landing with a satisfying splash in the water beyond. Its mate followed just seconds behind. He removed his socks, rolled them together, and stuffed them into one of the pockets of his coat.

Ben pointed. “They’s a town yonder,” he said. “Just across the river. You see it? We might maybe could find somewhere to get you a new pair.”

“I doubt it,” said Sam. But he stood up anyway, pocketing the beef.

“You don’t believe in de Lawd?” asked Ben, eyes shining mischief.

“I am not hungry,” said Sam. Which was a lie. He simply couldn’t bring himself to eat the last food he had in some airy faith that something would
magically present itself when they got hungry again. “Let us go see what they have down there.”

Half a mile down the river, they encountered an old white man, hair gray and long and sprawling from his scalp in dirty tangles, who agreed to row them across in his skiff. They paid him ten cents each for the ride.

After a few moments, as the old man grunted and sweated and pulled the far shore closer, they began to make out the town. Even from a distance, they could see that it was dead.

Fragments of wall unconnected to other walls rose from the earth with the grim singularity of tombstones, the names of businesses still visible on the brick. Livery. Harness maker. Dry goods. It went on like that for blocks. They watched in silence, the only sound that of water smacking the skiff.

Moments later, the old man left them standing upon the far shore. The earth was packed mud, cool beneath Sam’s bare feet. In silence, they climbed the embankment from the river, in silence they walked into the center of town, passing through the shadow of tombstones that had once been places, businesses, offices. Now doorways fed into space, windows that had once looked out upon sky and trees and people going to and fro lay smashed in the mud, walls towered nowhere for no purpose. It was a cloudless day. The sun shone down, pitiless. The scrape of Ben’s shoes on the dirt seemed unnaturally loud.

And then there came a squeal of laughter.

Sam looked up in time to see two Negro boys darting across the street, a little one chasing a bigger one toward the shadow of half a building. The bigger one disappeared, but at the sight of the two strangers coming toward him, the smaller boy stopped. He stared intently, as if he had never seen men before. Then the bigger boy reappeared. His eyes bucked at the sight of them and he grabbed the little one by the hand and yanked him away.

A moment later, Sam and Ben drew abreast of the remnants where the two boys had disappeared. They found themselves facing the two boys along with a man and a woman, standing in the middle of a de facto courtyard, staring. The boys were in front, the bigger holding the smaller with a protective palm splayed across his breastbone. The man was taller than Sam, muscular, head smooth as a brown egg, just like Ben’s. He had a rifle held casually across his shoulder, the muzzle pointing into the sky, a warning held in abeyance.

Sam said, “Good morning.” He touched his hat.

Ben said, “How y’all?”

The one with the rifle called out, “Passin’ through?”

“Yes,” said Sam.

“Ain’t much here.”

“Yes, I can see that,” said Sam.

“You don’t mind my askin’,” said Ben, “what y’all doin’ here?”

The woman spoke up. “We used to belong to Marse Morrison. He the biggest planter around these parts. We left his place when we heared them firin’ off for surrender.”

“Y’all are livin’ here?”

“We waitin’,” said the woman.

“What are you waiting for?” said Sam.

“Federals, I s’pose. Wait for the federals, find out what we s’pose to do now.”

“Anything in this town?” asked Ben. “Somethin’ to eat, maybe? Or someplace my friend can find a pair of shoes?”

“Don’t know nothin’ ’bout no shoes,” said the woman, “but we got venison. Brother here shot him a deer yesterday. You welcome to some stew.”

The one she called Brother gave her a disapproving look, his lips drawn up until they were just a knot of flesh almost touching his nose. Sam heard her say, “Shush that. We got plenty.”

Sam was about to beg off, but Ben moved forward, smiling at them. It was a real smile, not the strained parody of a smile he saved for white people. “Well, thank you,” he said. “Stew be just fine.”

Brother lowered the rifle from his shoulder as they passed. “Sorry ’bout that,” he said. “Can’t be too careful, nowadays.”

They entered an open space where a rough lean-to had been built from the detritus of destruction, planks of broken wood angled against the brick wall. It was, thought Sam, enough to keep the rain off, no more. The woman pointed and they sat at the entrance. Sam glanced inside and was surprised to see four or five books next to the bedrolls lying open on the dirt.

The woman introduced her family. The one with the gun was named Eli. She called him Brother because he was her brother. Her name was Sarah, but he called her Sister for the same reason. The boys were both hers. “They daddy got sold away a few years ago,” she said softly, pausing for a moment to watch as the boys chased one another through the open space
where the building had been. “Don’t rightly know where he is now. They uncle they daddy now, I expect.”

“Not knowing where family is,” said Sam, “is something I am sure many of us have experienced.”

“Whoo, how he talk,” said Sister with a laugh. “He talk ’most white, don’t he, Brother?”

Brother ignored her. He regarded Sam with a sharp expression. “You lookin’ for someone?”

“We both are,” said Sam as he accepted a steaming plate ladled from a stewpot. “He is trying to find his daughter and her mother and I am trying to find my, well, wife, I suppose you’d say.”

“You
s’pose
?” said Brother, not bothering to hide his scorn.

“Well, there was not any real ceremony. There was nothing to make it legal.”

There was something almost cruel in the smile that curled Brother’s lips then. “You need some white man with a Bible to tell you who your wife is?”

Sam considered this. He thought of Tilda as she had looked holding their son, a contentment stealing across her face such as he had never seen, as if she could live in that moment the rest of her life and it would be enough, would be all she needed, ever. “No,” he said, “I do not.”

“Yeah,” said Brother, “I didn’t neither.”

“Guess ain’t a one of us ain’t lost somebody,” said Ben, quietly. He blew on a spoonful of stew.

There was a moment. Then Sarah said, “Sam, you don’t mind my askin’, do you know where your wife is?”

He shook his head. “The last time I saw her was on the old place in Mississippi. That was a long time ago.”

“I knew where Fletcher was, I might try to find him,” she said. “’Course, I got the boys to think of.”

“Need to give that up,” said Brother. His voice was granite, a cudgel dashing hope to death like some small furry animal.

“I know,” said Sister, her voice small, ashamed of itself. Sam had the sense he had wandered into the middle of some argument that had been going a long time. Would be going a long time yet.

“I just miss him sometimes,” she said. “That’s all.”

Ben had been chewing thoughtfully on a mouthful of venison. Now he nodded at the books. “Y’all likes to read?”

Sister smiled bashfully. “Naw, we can’t read. Them for the boys, for them to learn on.”

“Took them from Marse,” said Brother. “From his library. Him and Missus done run off, scared of the federals, so we took the wheelbarrow, put some books and things in there ’fore we lit out.”

“Don’t know what we gon’ do with ’em,” said Sister, laughing. Her teeth were brown, with wide gaps between them. It occurred to Sam that she was probably not nearly as old as she looked, that she might even have been pretty once. “We sure can’t traipse around the countryside pushin’ no wheelbarrow.”

“Man owed me that much, though,” said Brother, and his voice had narrowed to a thin sliver of ice. “All them years I worked for him, he treated me like some kind of mule or horse or somethin’? He
owe
me that much and a whole lot more.”

Sam said, “Do you not fear that he will come after you?”

Brother cast a meaningful glance toward the rifle, leaning against the brick wall within easy arm’s reach. “I hope he do,” he said. “You can see books ain’t all I took from him.”

“Brother angry,” said Sister.

“Damn right I am,” said Brother. The curse caused Sister to suck in her breath. He cut his eyes toward her and after a moment he said, “Sorry about the language, Sister, but it the truth.”

Suddenly, Sam was eager to get going. He forked up the last of the venison. The meat had a dark, full taste, and it occurred to him that he had not eaten so fine a meal in a very long time. He held up his plate. “Is there someplace I can wash this for you?”

In response, Brother snatched it from his hands and flipped it back against the brick wall, where it broke in several large pieces. “Missus’s plates,” he explained. “We put some of them in the wheelbarrow, too.”

Ben looked from Sam to Brother, carefully speared the last of the meat from his own plate and put it in his mouth, and then tossed the plate casually against the wall, where it shattered, the pieces landing atop the remains of Sam’s plate. They all looked at him. He gave them back a blankness that made them laugh. “Hell with ’em,” he said.

Brother nodded, still laughing. “Hell with ’em all.”

“Hell with ’em,” said Sister, eyes shining with her own mischief, one hand covering her mouth as if to hide the profanity that had just slipped out.

Sam was more certain than ever that she had, indeed, been pretty once. “To hell with them,” he said, completing the circle.

As the laughter renewed itself, he wondered if this wasn’t all a kind of madness, this idea of being free, of being governed only by your own wits and wants, of saying to hell with white people. A glorious madness.

It scared him a little. “We should be going,” he said. Ben, wiping amusement from the corners of his eyes, nodded. They thanked Sister and Brother for the meal and walked on, leaving the family standing before the lean-to in the shadow of a brick wall that had once framed a building that was no longer there.

“Hell with ’em,” said Ben, softly reminiscent.

“That is easy to say,” said Sam.

After a moment, Ben said, “Yeah.”

The street was packed mud, a gift from a recent rain, cool underfoot. But Sam knew he had to find something for his feet soon, else the miles and the rocks would tear his skin and leave him hobbling. He could not hobble all the way to Mississippi.

“Maybe shouldn’t of been so quick to throw that shoe away,” said Ben, as if he could just pluck Sam’s thoughts from a stack in his mind. “Might maybe could of fixed it someway.”