Freeman (27 page)

He looked back at Sam. “You remember what I said about them feet,” he said. “Mose say it’s a miracle you got this far.” He nodded to them. “Good luck to y’all,” he said. And the door closed behind him.

For a moment, Sam and Ben just looked at one another. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. Sam brought his right hand to where his left arm had been. The stump was tender to the touch. What would he do without his arm? He remembered all the hollow-eyed men he’d seen in hospitals and tents, limping about, missing hands, arms, legs, and feet. He’d always felt a vague sorrow for them, never wanted to look at them too closely for fear they might be harbingers of his own fate. He had been elated to get all the way through with every limb intact. What a cruel joke to lose his arm after the fighting was done.

Or maybe that was wrong. Maybe that was the lesson here: that the fighting wasn’t done, after all. Maybe it never would be.

“Wish we could have helped him,” Ben said.

“I do too,” said Sam, gazing up from reverie. “But you were right.”

Ben’s gaze narrowed. “When was I right?”

“In that house in Forsyth when the paterollers killed Brother and I wanted to go down there and you did not. I said it was not right for us to just run away. And you looked at me and said, ‘What does right have to do with any of this? When was the last time you saw ‘right?’”

“I was just talkin’,” said Ben. “I was just mad.”

“No,” said Sam. “I thought about that for days. And you know, I cannot
remember the last time I saw right. Truth is, I do not think I have ever seen right in my life.”

Ben sniffed. “Well, what you expect? You’s a nigger, ain’t you?”

Sam considered the question. Finally, he said, “No, I’m not. As I told you before: I am a Negro. I am a colored man.”

A smile. “A
free
man,” said Ben. After a moment, the smile softened, like a balloon with the air leaking out of it. Finally it went away, and a speculative look came into Ben’s eyes. “You think they ever gon’ let us be free men, Sam? I mean, really free?”

“I do not know,” said Sam. “It seems unlikely, does it not?”

Ben shook his head. “Sho’ do. White folks been on top so long, they don’t know no other way. You can see it in the way they look at us everywhere we go, them hard, mean looks like, ‘What you doin’ walkin’ ’round down here like you think you somebody?’ You can see it in the way they shot Brother down like he were a mad dog.”

“You can see it in what happened to Josiah,” added Sam. “A man should not have to fight a war just to get his daughter back. It is as if they think the man has no right to his own flesh and blood.”

Ben’s laughter was bitter as unripe fruit. “You might maybe want to change your name, then. Maybe you should be ’Most-Freeman. Someday-Freeman.” He laughed again, but the eyes that beheld Sam were shining and bruised and had no laughter in them.

Sam didn’t even try to laugh. He pursed his lips. He regarded his missing arm, the stump of it hanging there, useless. “No,” he said, “I think I will stay with Freeman. At the very least, it will give them notice of my intention.”

Ben appeared to ponder this for a moment. Then he nodded slowly in agreement. “You know what I’m intendin’?” he said. “Find Hannah. Find my little girl. Maybe hire on to some farm where the marse ain’t too mean. Save some money, send her to school, learn her to read and talk pretty like you can. Maybe then
she
can work in a library in Philadelphia or some such,” he added, teasingly. “Won’t have to slave and stoop like her pappy.”

He smiled, enjoying the thought. After a moment, the smile turned tentative and he gazed at Sam. “What you intendin’, Mr. Free Man?”

For a time, Sam was silent. Then he looked up. “I’m just intending to find Tilda,” he said. “I have not thought beyond that.”

They stayed in the cabin three more days while Sam rested and regained
his strength and allowed his foot time to repair itself. On the fourth day, they set out.

The morning was cool and damp and fog hugged the trees. It lent a ghostly aspect to the woods. There was no sun to navigate by and Sam feared they might get lost. But Ben swore he remembered the way Josiah had brought them and Sam was content to let him lead. The forest was dense with sycamore, ash, and pine trees. The dogwoods were still in bloom. Birds fluttered in the canopy of leaves overhead, and their morning songs trailed after the two men below.

Sam followed Ben down the dirt path that wended through the trees. They had not gone far before his foot began to ache and it was as if he had never rested. After about a mile, he saw that he was leaving droplets of blood in the dirt. Sam didn’t say anything—what was there to say? He walked. But he had begun to wonder how much longer he could go on.

Eventually, they came to the edge of a clearing and Ben paused. It all seemed very familiar and Sam wondered why. Then he knew. It was here that he had been shot. Ben studied the trees on the opposite side of the field, which were difficult to see in the fog. Sam realized he was looking for the glint of steel.

When Ben was satisfied, he turned back to Sam. “House up there a ways,” he said, pointing to their right. “We got to go straight across.” Now he pointed directly ahead of them. “Don’t want to see you get shot again in case them boys is out. I expect we ought to run. You up to that?”

Sam nodded. “Lead the way.”

“Let’s go, then.”

And they ran.

Ben sprinted out ahead. Sam kept up as best he could, but his feet were bad and his missing arm threw off his stride, so his gait was lumbering and slow. His breath tore out of him in ragged exhalations, and he could feel his heart stomping heavily in its cage. And all at once he was back in the war, charging some damnable fort again and again, seeing men go down to the left of him and the right of him, running through explosions and seeing hunks of bone and flesh cartwheeling prettily through the air before landing with a sickening thud in the grass and wondering when it would be his turn and what that would be like.

But it had never been his turn, had it? He had slid through war as a fish through water. But peace was another matter.

Five strides ahead of him, Ben plunged into the shelter of the trees on the far side of the meadow. Sam clenched his teeth, lowered his head, and dug in. Until the last second, he expected the crack of rifle fire. Then he was in the trees, and he would have whispered a sigh of relief, except that suddenly Ben was right in front of him, too close, not moving, and Sam was coming up on him too fast. He stumbled and skidded, trying to avoid a collision.

“Watch out!” cried Sam. In the same instant, he brushed heavily against Ben, who staggered, regained his balance, but otherwise did not respond. Momentum took Sam a couple more feet before he regained control. “Why did you stop like that?” he demanded, walking back.

Ben pointed, Sam looked. And he stopped breathing. “Oh my Lord,” he whispered.

There through tendrils of fog, he saw it—a body, a black man, hanging in a tree, the weight of him making the branch sag, his neck bent at an angle impossible for living flesh and bones to achieve. They walked toward him slowly. His eyes were distended as if about to pop free of their sockets, a grotesque parody of surprise. His tongue poked through lips that had gone gray like spoiled meat. Dried blood streaked the rags that had been his clothes. The skin on his right arm was torn as if dogs had been at him. The rips were deep enough that you could see his bones. And there were bullet holes in him. So many holes.

Ben wept. “All he wanted was his daughter,” he whispered as tears made shiny trails down his cheeks. “She his own flesh and blood. Why they couldn’t let him have her?”

“They are white,” said Sam. “That is why.” As he said it, a twinge of…
something
—lament, perhaps apology—passed through him for Mary Cuthbert, a white woman who had read to him while he lay in a darkened corner waiting to die.

“This ain’t right,” said Ben.

At that, Sam shot him a hard look, a look that demanded. Questions pooled in Ben’s eyes. Then recognition chased them away. He shook his head again. “Don’t think I ever seen right in my life,” he said, dully parroting his own words.

“Exactly,” said Sam. “Now let us go. For all we know, those boys may still be about in these woods.”

Ben regarded Josiah’s body, turning slowly at the insistence of a gentle
breeze as the rope creaked softly against the branch above. Ben nodded and they took off at a trot.

All at once, they stopped. They spoke for a moment. Then Sam returned to the spot. He looked into Josiah’s bulging eyes. “I need these,” he whispered. An explanation. Or perhaps, an apology. And then, with his remaining hand, he began to unlace the dead man’s shoes.

It happened shortly after dawn as they were walking to school. The smell was the first thing they noticed, a reek of blood and putrefaction that made their hands fly to their mouths.

Bonnie said, “What
is
that?”

Prudence could only shake her head. She couldn’t imagine. They edged forward slowly, all thoughts of lesson plans and grades driven from them by the stench of decay.

It wasn’t until they drew closer that they saw the tiny lump of her, lying there in front of the school. “Oh no,” said Prudence. She felt sick. It was the cat, Prissy, and she lay hard against the big doors, yellow eyes open and vacant. A long slit had been cut into her side and she was in a pool of her own blood, grown tacky overnight. A bustling line of ants trailed away from her. For a moment, Prudence could not take it in. For a moment, she was without thought.

Then she saw the square of paper nailed to the door just above the little carcass. She snatched it off and brought it to her face. In a careless scrawl, it said simply: “Sometimes the mice fight back.”

Bonnie took the note from her and read it, hand still pressed to mouth against the stench. Prudence stared, anger boiling up in her like steam in a kettle.

“Who could do such a thing?” gasped Bonnie.

“You know who could have done it,” said Prudence. “Any one of them. Any one of them in this entire godforsaken town.”

A tiny breeze blew and the doors moved, creaking slightly. Only then did Prudence realize they weren’t locked. She looked closer. The latch was splintered. Cold dread flooded her thoughts. “Sister,” she said, touching Bonnie’s shoulder. Bonnie saw.

“They have been inside,” she said.

“Yes,” said Prudence. “Perhaps they still are.” She stood, one hand in her pocket feeling for the little derringer. She took the right side door and pulled it open. Bonnie took the left and did the same. The cat was shoved aside in a smear of blood.

It was just after dawn and the light that entered the school was meager, but it was enough. Whoever they were, they had run riot in the school. Not a desk or a chair stood upright. The floor was a carpet of papers—pages ripped from McGuffey primers, work turned in by children, lesson plans. Whitewash splattered the floors, the furniture, the torn pages.

“Oh my God,” said Bonnie.

“God had nothing to do with this,” said Prudence. Fury coursed through her, a runaway train on straightaway tracks. She could hear her own blood humming in her temples. Prudence bit her lip hard, hoping the pain would distract her from the angry tears she felt building. She had no time for tears.

“What happened?”

They turned, and there was Bug standing behind them with his father, Big Will. The boy sometimes came in early for extra help with his reading. It was he who had spoken, the distended eyes even wider than usual. His father had no need to ask. He took in the ugly tableau with eyes that already knew.

Prudence hoped her voice was level. “Some bad people broke in and vandalized the school,” she said.

“White people,” said the boy.

It was not a question, but Prudence nodded. “Yes,” she said, “in all likelihood they were white.”

Big Will seemed embarrassed. “Miss Prudence, he ain’t meant—”

Prudence waved the apology down. “I know what he meant,” she said. “Besides, he is right, is he not?”

Bonnie was kneeling above the torn remains of one of the primers. “I feel as if I could gladly strangle whoever did this with my bare hands.” Her voice was a knife’s blade.

“You must calm down,” said Prudence. She was distantly amused to find herself cast as the voice of reason.

Bonnie’s head came up. “Calm down?” Her brown eyes, normally so thoughtful and warm, burned with a fire Prudence had never seen. In response, she made herself breathe, concentrated for a moment on nothing except the sensation of air coming in and going out. One of them had to stay calm enough to do the thinking here and it was obvious that, for once, it would not be Bonnie.