Freeman (37 page)

“Are you contradictin’ me?”

A strange expression. “No, sir.”

“Very well, then,” said Bo, and he moved to follow Horace inside the store. Vern stopped him with a hand in the center of his chest.

He waited until the Negro was out of earshot. “I take it things didn’t go well with Miss La-di-da?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you are obviously in a fouler mood than when you went down there, the way you picked on poor Horace for no reason. So I take it you couldn’t entice her to come for a ride with you while you explain the facts of life.”

Bo pursed his lips, annoyance blowing out of him in a great snort of air. “Vernon, I tell you, she is just the most aggravatin’ woman.”

His brother was watching him closely. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Well, I told you, didn’t I? Told you and Pa both. There is only one way to get Miss La-di-da’s attention. ’Course, you don’t want to believe me, ’cause you’re halfway smitten with the bitch.”

Bo’s head came up sharply and he poked an index finger in Vern’s chest. “I have told you about that,” he said. “Don’t make me box your ears right here on Main Street, little brother.”

It was the slow creak of wagon wheels that stopped them. Coming around the corner toward them was a mule-drawn cart. George Flowers was leading the animal. His wife and his youngest son were walking alongside, their faces downcast, their eyes fixed on some distant point of inner space. Shrouded in the back of the wagon was a body. A small body.

“My God, George,” said Bo, approaching. “Who’s this?”

“It’s Georgie,” said the man.

Bo peeled back a piece of the shroud and wished he hadn’t. One whole side of the boy’s face was crushed, an eye was missing, the skin was ragged and purple. Vern, standing next to his brother, gave a low whistle.

“I was too hard on him,” said George, his eyes still fixed on things Bo could not see.

“What do you mean?” asked Bo.

“Whupped him for messin’ with that Negro down at the school.”

“That’s right,” said Vern, remembering. “George was the one shot big Jesse.”

“Yeah, and I whupped him good for it, too.”

“Did Jesse do this?” demanded Vern. “Did the niggers do this?”

“What?” The man seemed surprised. “No. Georgie done this hisself. Stole my raft. Out there on the river like a dang fool in the dark in the main channel with no lights. Got run over by a steamboat.”

“We’re goin’ to get Preacher now,” said the woman, and she seemed hollowed out by grief. “Goin’ to get my baby buried.”

“Well, we’re purely sorry for you,” said Bo. “You all let us know if there’s anything we can do. All you need do is ask.”

George Flowers gave a barely perceptible nod, tugged on the mule, and the sad procession continued grimly down Main Street. “That’s terrible,” said Bo. “We’ll have to get Sass to bake ’em a cake or somethin’.”

Vern didn’t answer right away, just watched the sad family recede, tugging idly at the stray hairs of his whiskers. After a moment he said, “You know, when word gets around, everybody’s going to naturally assume it was the niggers did that to poor Georgie.”

“Yes, but you heard what his father said. Wasn’t them. Boy got hit by a steamboat.”

Vern’s eyebrows lifted and he affected innocence. “Was that what I heard? I ain’t rightly sure.”

The brothers regarded one another for a long moment. Bo was about to speak when a thump of boots and a jangle of keys cut him off. A.J. Socrates had come up from behind him. “You boys need somethin’? Horace is in there, ain’t he?”

“Horace is in there all right,” said Vern, with a glance toward his brother. “We were just discussin’ somethin’ we saw.”

“What’s that?”

“You remember Georgie Flowers? Shot that nigger?”

“I ought to know that worthless little rascal. Lollygags out here on the street in front of my store ’most every afternoon.”

“Well, he’s dead. His family just went by, takin’ him to the preacher to be buried. We saw the body. He’s beat up somethin’ awful. Look like somebody took a hammer to him. Half his face is gone.”

“Who done it? Was it the niggers?”

“Can’t rightly say,” said Vern. “Logical to think so, I suppose. Tell you the truth, we were so shocked at the sight, we didn’t even get around to findin’ out all the details.”

“Vern…” There was a warning in Bo’s tone.

Vern glanced back at him and his eyes held a warning of their own. They shone with a dark malevolence Bo had never seen. For just that shadow of a second, he regarded his little brother and did not recognize him. Bo flinched from what he saw and did not speak again.

That same night, there was a meeting at the school. Twelve of them sat together by the light of a single oil lamp in the loft above the schoolhouse floor: the eight guards who took turns watching over the school by night, Paul Cousins, Preacher Lee, Prudence, and Bonnie.

Prudence had just finished telling them all about the visit from Bo Wheaton and the petition he had shown her. Closing the school, she had told them, was not an option. Nor was running away.

“But I am not unreasonable,” she said. “Nor am I blind to the danger. And it occurs to me that perhaps there is something we can do to ease the tensions short of just giving up.”

“What you have in mind, Mrs. Kent?” asked Preacher Lee.

She looked at Bonnie. They had discussed this. “Perhaps,” she said, “we ought to discontinue the guard.”

This brought groans of disbelief from most of the men. Prudence waved them down. “One at a time,” she said, “please.” She faced Preacher Lee. “It was your idea in the first place,” she said. “What do
you
think?”

Preacher Lee scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Well,” he said, “we done already made our point, that’s for sure.”

“Is that all this was about?” A man named Rufus had jumped to his feet. “Makin’ a point? I thought we was guardin’ this here place so our babies and even some’a us could get a education and come up a little in the world, now slave times is over. I ain’t knowed it was only about makin’ a point, Preacher.”

Lee’s tone was mild. “All I’m sayin’, brother Rufus, is we got to be careful how we go ’bout this thing, whatever we do. White folks done got het up now, all this talk goin’ ’round ’bout some nigger army, so-called.”

“They het up?” Rufus’s old eyes glowed. “So what. I’se het up, too. We all het up.”

“Rufus,” pleaded Preacher Lee, “be reasonable. Like Mrs. Kent say, I was the one had the idea to organize this here guard system in the first place. But we got to be realistic about this thing, now.”

“What you want us to do?” The old man’s voice was scathing. He had dark skin, blunt, heavy features, and his gleaming scalp was ringed by a horseshoe of white fuzz. “You want us to tuck tail and run? Done had enough of that. Been tuckin’ tail to white mens my whole life.”

“He want you to act like you got some sense!” Paul yelled it so suddenly Bonnie jumped. “We got to shut down this guard. That’s what we got to do.” Rufus swatted the words down as he would a fly and turned his back on Paul. “You think I don’t know how you feel?” cried Paul. “We all feel the same way, don’t we? All feel like we want to be treated like men for once in our lives?”

He stared around at the assemblage, some sitting, some standing, all their eyes upon him, shining up from the darkness of faces. “All I’m sayin’,” said Paul, and his voice was husky, “is there ain’t no need of
dying
for it.”

Rufus turned. “Some of us don’t care ’bout that,” he said, his eyes level on Paul’s. “Some of us ain’t
scared
of it.”

Paul’s face dropped like a stone. Bonnie could only guess how deeply the insult cut. “Ain’t no need of that kind of talk, brother Rufus,” said Preacher.

“You callin’ me a coward, Rufus?” Paul came to his feet, took a step. “Is that what you think? I ain’t no coward and you know it. I’se just tryin’ to help you, is all. I’se just tryin’ to get you to
think
about what you doin’ before it’s too late.”

And suddenly they reached a silence so deep Bonnie could hear the soft clucking of chickens in the coop across the back alley. She had been sitting quietly in a chair behind Paul. Now she surprised herself by standing. “
None
of us are fearful,” she heard herself say. “None of us are cowardly. If we were, we would not be here. And shame on anyone who says otherwise.” She stared at Rufus. His eyes flickered and he found something on the floor to look at.

Satisfied, Bonnie took in the faces gazing up at her. “All we are saying,” she said, “is that we need to be smart in how we go about things. Perhaps the guard has outlived its purpose. Perhaps Preacher is right. Perhaps we
have made our point. If we have, then keeping a guard on the school is just a useless provocation.”

“Yeah, but while we busy bein’ smart, they busy shootin’ us.” This was Alex, a thin man with a dignified bearing. “Look what happened to Jesse,” he said, and the men nodded and murmured their agreement. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with bein’ smart, Miss Bonnie. But you also got to protect yourself. That’s what I like about Mrs. Kent,” he added, nodding in Prudence’s direction. “No offense, Miss Bonnie, but she a
fighter
. We needs to be fighters like that.”

Automatically, Bonnie glanced toward her sister. She would not have been surprised to mark a smirk of satisfaction on Prudence’s face just then, a tiny show of vindication for Bonnie’s benefit alone. But to her surprise, Prudence’s face remained clear as water. She sat in uncharacteristic silence.

“How we gon’ fight a whole town?” demanded Paul.

“Who said anything about fightin’?” retorted Rufus. “All they done is bring that there petition around. All they done is frown up they faces and mumble behind they hands. We s’posed to tuck tail from that? What kind of men that make us?”

“You do not understand,” said Bonnie, exasperated.

Now Jesse stood. He still wore a dressing on his left bicep. “Beg pardon, ma’am,” he said in that soft, deferential voice, “but it’s
you
who don’t understand.”

“What do I fail to understand?” asked Bonnie, turning to face him. The calmness of her own voice surprised her.

“What I mean to say is, you’s ’most white yourself, ma’am. Oh, I know you’s colored, sho’nuff, but way I hear, you come down here from somewhere up North. Folks say you grew up right alongside white folks, right there in Mrs. Kent’s house, and they always treated you like family. Is that true?”

Bonnie swallowed. “Yes, it’s true,” she said.

“From what I heard, you ain’t even wanted to come down here in the first place, but Miss Prudence asked you to. Not that I blame you for that, ma’am. Don’t know if I’d a’ wanted to come here myself, I had a choice.”

If she could have closed her eyes then, and then opened them again and been anywhere else, Bonnie would have done it. Instead, she forced herself to look up at the giant, his face slack with unspoken apology. “What is your point?” she asked him.

“Well, ma’am, it’s like I say. You can’t understand how we feel about this here. Man come through, gather us all together and say, ‘Y’all niggers free. Ain’t got to slave no more, ’Cause you free.’ And we say, free to do what? You got to do somethin’ to give it meanin’, or else, it ain’t nothin’ but a word. How you gon’ know you free if you doin’ the same things you was before, if you still jumps when they calls you or act like you scared to do what you got a right to do?”

“How you know you free if you
dead
, fool?” Paul yelled it.

Again, silence intervened. The big man lowered his head. Bonnie felt sorry for him, so gentle a man lashed like a whip by Paul’s anger. “We just don’t want any of you to get hurt,” she said. “What would happen to your families if you were hurt?”

“Be hard on ’em, I expect,” Jesse said.

“But at least they know we died as men!” hissed Rufus. “That got to mean somethin’ too, don’t it?” He looked around at the assembled men and repeated himself. “Don’t it?”

Bonnie allowed herself an inward smile. She had tried to convince them. They were dangerously close to convincing her. She had assumed they were driven only by impulse and emotion. She had assumed them to be unthinking. But these men understood the stand they were making in guarding this school and they had given it—this was plain to see—a great deal of thought. They moved from motives deeper than just passion.