Freeman (22 page)

Ben’s smile was surprisingly easy. “That all you talkin’ ’bout? Shit, that just pretendin’. You tellin’ me you ain’t never had to put white folks on?”

“If you pretend long enough, it ceases to be a pretense,” said Sam. “If you keep pretending, it becomes your identity.”

The smile twisted. “You ain’t seemed to mind my pretendin’ when that soldier boy on the bridge had that Colt in your face, ’bout to blow you to hell. Your big words ain’t helped you much then, did they? You liked my pretendin’ just fine, then, ain’t you?”

Sam could not answer, which infuriated him. He started walking again. Ben followed, chuckling softly.

After a moment, Sam said, “It is a new day. That is all I am saying.”

Ben didn’t bother to hide his contempt. “That’s where you wrong,” he said. “Ain’t no new day. War over, I give you that. Slave times gone, I give you that, too. But you still a Negro and they still white. They still got the power and they still don’t care no more ’bout you than they care ’bout a dog or a horse. That’s why I told you it be a waste of time, sit up in that country town, wait to tell that provost what happened in Forsyth. What he care? He white, Brother a Negro, so what he care? Told you that.”

“We had to at least try,” said Sam. “It is bad enough that we ran and did not try to help her.”

“How we gon’ help her? What we gon’ do? We gon’ bring that man back to life? We gon’ take care her and them chil’ren? Can’t hardly take care ourselves! We done the only thing we could. We got out of there ’fore them white mens come after us, do the same thing to us they done to Brother. Wish you get that through your head. We done lost best part of a day ’cause your conscience botherin’ you for doing the only thing made any sense.”

“Conscience is what makes us human,” said Sam. “We had a duty to Sister. You ever hear of Henri Benjamin Constant de Rebecque?”

Ben rolled his eyes and appealed to heaven. “Oh, Lord,” he said, “you ’bout to tell me somethin’ else you done read in a book?”

Sam spoke right through it. “He was a Frenchman,” he said. “And he wrote, ‘Where there are no rights, there are no duties.’ You know what that means? It means if you really are a dog or a horse, then you do not have
to worry about it. If you are nothing but an animal, you do not have to concern yourself with anything beyond your own needs: eating and sleeping and rutting around, that is it. But we are not animals, we are
men
!” declared Sam, slapping his chest hard for emphasis, “and if you are a man, if you have claimed for yourself all the rights of a man, then you must accept the duties of a man.”

Ben stopped again, glaring at him. “Why you always do that?” he demanded. “Always quotin’ books at me?”

Sam paused, met the angry eyes. “There is wisdom in books,” he said.

“We don’t
live
in no book!” To Sam’s surprise, Ben shouted it. “Why you always think I’m gon’ care ’bout what some white man who wrote a book think about what I do? You talk about duty? I got one duty in this life: to get back to my wife and my little girl, what I ain’t seen in seven years.
You
ain’t got but one duty: get back to Mississippi and find that Tilda you always talkin’ ’bout. That’s what we got to do, Sam. That’s our duty. And we can’t put up with anything take us away from that.”

They looked at each other for a long moment. Then Ben gave a small shrug as if to say reasoning with Sam was like reasoning with a cabbage, and started walking again. Sam followed him and they came out from under the cover of the trees into a clearing. He didn’t know what to say.

Sam was a man for whom words were water and air, necessary to his very being, necessary to his very sense of self, so not knowing surprised him. Then he realized: it wasn’t that he didn’t know what. It was that he didn’t know how. He had read the great books, absorbed the great ideals—not simply for the value of the ideals themselves, but for what knowing them said about him, what it told Billy Horn and Jakey the soldier and anyone else who looked at him with contempt or presumed to judge him as something less because he was black:
I am here. I am a man. Your scorn and your hatred cannot diminish me
. He would make them understand that through the very force of his excellence and will.

I am here
.

I am a man
.

And yet…

“You are right,” he heard himself tell Ben. “But do you not see—”

And then somebody shot him.

It happened just like that. He was speaking, Ben was turning to listen. Then all at once, a flat cracking sound, like a tree branch breaking, a stabbing
pain, blood all over him. He had time to see Ben’s features widen in shock. Then he was lying in wet spring grass, his own breath hot and loud in his ears, and he could hear more gun fire, bullets whizzing above like angry bees. Just like in the war.

He tried to get up, to claw his way upright, but his body would not obey. It was as if everything below his head had become a separate country. He looked down at himself. There was so much blood. Where was he hit? How bad? He wanted to fumble for the wound,
tried
to fumble for it, but his hands just lay there, useless.

Lord, if it was his gut… Don’t let it be his gut.

He felt nauseous. He felt himself slipping, sliding, going.

His eyes closed. He saw Tilda’s face. And then he saw nothing.

The little boy’s forehead furrowed like corduroy. His mouth twisted and he pushed at the page with his index finger as if he could will the unfamiliar symbols to become a recognizable word.

“The,” he said, finally. And then, “cat,” he said.

Bonnie put a hand on his shoulder. “Take your time, Bug.”

They called him that because the boy’s distended eyes gave him an expression of perpetual surprise. Bonnie had refused to use the name at first, thinking it cruel. She had insisted on calling him William, his given name. But after a few days, he had come to her in distress, asking, “Why you don’t call me Bug like everybody else?” To her surprise, his birth name made him feel more singled out than his nickname did. It was neither the first nor the only time her best intentions had produced consequences she did not intend.

The school had been open for just under two weeks and she found herself doing as much learning as teaching. She was becoming vaguely ashamed that she had fought so hard against coming here.

“Ran,” said Bug, then began stammering his way into the next word. Two rows back, a little girl’s hand bolted into the air, her arm going back and forth like a flagpole whipped in a stiff breeze.

“Put your hand down, Adelaide,” said Bonnie, without looking.

Somewhat to her surprise, she was a good teacher. They crowded in to the old warehouse six days a week promptly at nine, ragged little boys and ashen-kneed little girls poring over the McGuffey primers she and Prudence
had brought down with them from Boston as though the mysteries of the universe might be decoded in their monosyllabic tales. What was more surprising was that each evening, after hard hours spent plowing and chopping or sweeping out stores or just waiting hand and foot on white people, their parents, even grandparents, folded themselves onto the same tiny, child-sized benches their children had used that morning, opened the same primers, struggled over the same words.

“To,” said Bug. Then his frown deepened and Adelaide’s hand went up again. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor with about a dozen other children. The school had run out of benches. Today, once she was finished teaching, Bonnie would walk to A.J. Socrates’s store and send a telegram to the Campbell & Cafferty warehouse in Boston ordering more desks, including some large enough to accommodate adult bodies. The school had doubled in size in just two weeks and there was every indication it was not finished growing. Negroes were said to be coming from farms five and six miles away on the news that here was a school where they could be taught.

“Ann,” said Bug.

And now, having crossed the finish line, having reached the period at the end of the sentence, he looked up at her, face shining with triumph. As he did, Adelaide’s hand fell as if someone had tied a heavy stone to it. Bonnie rubbed the boy’s head. “Very good, Bug.
Very
good. You are making splendid progress.”

The word rubbed new wrinkles into his brow. “What splendid mean?”

“It means good,” said Bonnie, smiling.

“Miss Bonnie?” Ivey, a tall girl, painfully thin, had her hand up, but she didn’t wait for Bonnie to acknowledge her. “Why you talk like that?” she asked.

“Like what?” asked Bonnie.

“Like you white,” said Ivey.

“No, it ain’t just that,” said Bug, and he was regarding her thoughtfully now. “We got a plenty white folks ’round here, and they don’t talk nothin’ like that.”

“My Pa say it’s ’cause she a Yankee,” said Ivey, triumphantly.

It made Bug look up at her with those amazed eyes. “Is you a Yankee, Miss Bonnie?”

Bonnie smiled, amused to find herself a curiosity. “I come from a city called Boston. That is in the North.” Hearing herself speak made her painfully
conscious of how tart and plain her voice must sound in this place where mouths lingered languidly over words, as if to hold on to them that much longer.

“That mean she a Yankee,” said Ivey.

“She ain’t no Yankee,” declared a little boy sitting next to Adelaide. “My marse told me Yankees got tails and they got a hoof like a cow.”

“Yo’ marse lyin’ to you,” said Ivey, indignant. “He lyin’, ain’t he, Miss Bonnie?”

Bonnie said, “We shall discuss that tomorrow. Put your readers away. We are finished for today.”

The groans of disappointment rising from that announcement were, invariably, the most gratifying sound she heard each day. These children would stay here into the night if she allowed it. Bonnie unlocked the big doors and swung the left side open a few feet. She stood there and, as was her custom, hugged each one of them as they left.

Prudence came down from the loft upstairs where they had their office and stood next to her as the last child waved over his shoulder before trotting out to the fields. “How are they doing?” she asked.

“Splendidly,” said Bonnie. The word made her smile softly to herself.

Prudence regarded her. “You seem to be doing rather splendidly yourself, Miss Bonnie.” They often used the old nicknames in the privacy of this place.

“I enjoy the work,” said Bonnie, “more than I thought I might. They are so hungry to learn. It is as if you cannot teach them fast enough.”

“I know what you mean,” said Prudence. “When I teach arithmetic, there is one little girl whose hand is constantly waving in the air.”

“Adelaide,” said Bonnie, and they both laughed.

“She is a whip,” said Prudence.

“She will be teaching us before long,” said Bonnie, and the laughter renewed itself. It felt good, standing in the sun together and laughing, the unseen hand of a spring breeze ruffling their hair. It felt good, knowing that Bug’s and Adelaide’s lives, Ivey’s life, all their lives, would be different from what they might have been, that destiny itself would be rewritten, because of what they did here. The knowledge filled Bonnie like cool water in a crystal vase. It made her feel complete. And it struck her as she put on her straw hat and tied it beneath her chin that this must mean she had been incomplete all those years, that there had been something missing from her life and she hadn’t even known it.

“You are going to send the telegram?” asked Prudence.

“Yes,” said Bonnie. “Mr. Cousins will walk with me.”

Prudence leaned toward her. There was something playful and sly in her eyes that reminded Bonnie of when they had been girls together. “Shall I come along as chaperone?” she asked.

“That will not be necessary,” said Bonnie.

“You will be careful?” Prudence asked, serious now.

“You may depend on it,” said Bonnie.

They had an unspoken understanding, after the incident at the store, that Prudence would no longer venture down the street to the west side of town. Whatever needed to be done down there, whatever business had to be conducted, Bonnie would do it.

She hated doing it. When she was here on the east end of the street, when she was teaching or preparing lessons or chatting at dinner with Prudence and Ginny, she could almost forget where she was, forget that Buford, Mississippi was a beaten place and that the white people here hated her for it.

She had raised no weapon against them, manned no artillery, occupied no territory. They hated her for existing, she supposed, hated her deeply yet impersonally, hated her before they knew her, before they saw her, before she uttered a single breath in their presence. But the problem was, they hated Prudence even more.