Freeman (40 page)

She went into the store and took up a scrap of paper and a stubby pencil from the counter. Her hands shook as she wrote out a message. They were still shaking as she handed it to the sallow white man. “Please send this,” she said.

He read the message, then looked up with a smile that made Bonnie’s stomach lurch. “I don’t think I’ll be sendin’ this,” he said. “Don’t think I’ll be sendin’ anything of the sort.”

“But you must!” said Bonnie.

“What is it?” asked a voice behind her. She turned and was surprised to see Wheaton standing there. “What does she want sent?”

Socrates’s grin turned conspiratorial. “It’s to the provost,” he said, “askin’ him to send troops. Seems she’s worried somethin’ bad is fixin’ to happen.”

Wheaton didn’t return Socrates’s grin. Instead, some shadow Bonnie could not read flickered in his eyes. Then he said, “I think you ought to send it.”

Socrates’s smirk puddled into a frown of confusion. “Really?”

Now Wheaton smiled. Or at least, he appeared to. To Bonnie, the smile seemed an act, a mask he pulled on for Socrates’s benefit. “Yes,” he said in an easy voice. “Might as well be on the safe side.”

Prudence glanced up at the knocking on the side door. Her heart was hammering. “Who is there?” she asked, fearing the response.

“It’s me,” said Bonnie.

“Oh, thank God,” said Prudence, flying to the door to unlatch it. “You took so long, I was so worried about you.”

“I had to go around to all the plantations where the men are scattered.”

“Preacher Lee could not help you?”

She shook her head. “Preacher Lee was unable to be of service. He had to work and said he could not leave. I also sent a telegram to the provost. I asked him to send soldiers.”

“I see,” said Prudence. “So you believe we are at that point?”

“I do,” said Bonnie. “There is a small group of them out there already. That horrible man Socrates was not going to send the telegram, either, but the oddest thing—”

She stopped, as if suddenly aware of the children, staring up at them. She tried to reassure them with a smile. “Do you think we should send them home?” she whispered.

“When the soldiers come,” said Prudence.

“If they do,” said Bonnie. She widened her smile and moved out among the children. “Who is ready to read for me?” she asked. Prudence thought her voice a poor imitation of gaiety.

The afternoon passed gently. Prudence lost herself in the familiar rhythms of question and answer, of furrowed brows and comprehension
dawning like the sun. Occasionally, she would find herself watching Bonnie on the far side of the room laughing with a student, or bending down to explain something, and their eyes would catch. Prudence saw her own uncertainly reflected back at her. It was a novel feeling, uncertainty.

The hours bled into one another. Mathematics, recess, reading. Arms waving like a field of cornstalks when children knew the answers and wanted to be called upon. Two boys arguing because one made fun of other’s poor reading. Geography. Spelling. Then it was almost dismissal time.

Prudence was leaning over a boy, helping him decipher the word
mother
, sound by painful sound, when a fist rapped against the side door heavily enough to make the windows shudder in their frames in the loft overhead. Her head came up and she saw her own confusion mirrored in Bonnie’s eyes. Had some contingent from the town come to attack them in broad daylight? What about the children? Moving toward the door, Prudence smoothed down her skirt, fingers passing inadvertently over the lump the derringer made in her pocket. For once, it was not reassuring.

When she opened the door, Prudence found herself facing a Union soldier with sad, deep-set eyes under unruly brows. She felt herself breathe for what seemed the first time in an hour. “Have I the honor of addressing Mrs. Kent?” he asked, his voice issuing from beneath a thicket of russet-colored beard.

“I am Prudence Cafferty Kent,” she said.

“Ma’am, I am Sergeant Gideon Russell. I was sent here by the provost marshal’s office. I believe you sent a telegraphic message?”

“Bonnie did,” she said. Prudence’s knees felt weak with relief. She blessed her sister’s foresight.

Russell might have smiled. It was difficult to tell with the beard. “Well, ma’am, whoever sent the message, we were detached by the provost, Colonel Leonard Sharpe—I believe you met him several weeks ago. Folks down here seem to believe you’re planning some sort of servile insurrection amongst the Negroes.”

“We have Negro guards to protect our school from the vandals that have attacked it in the past,” said Prudence. “And the people in the town have it in their heads that the guards killed a little boy.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Russell, “I already know the Negroes did no such thing. The provost asked that we come and take a look.”

She caught it that time. “We?”

In response, he gestured behind him. She had to step through the doorway to see. Eight Union soldiers stood together in the middle of the thoroughfare, their horses tied to a hitching post at the abandoned livery across the street. But that was not what rounded her eyes and stilled her breathing.

It was that the entire white population of the town seemed to be standing there, too, a mass of folded arms and righteous stares, facing her building as if it were responsible for all the misery and barrenness of their lives and the day had come finally to hold it accountable for its crimes. She had never seen faces like these, never seen anything like the loathing that stretched their mouths and fired their eyes.

Prudence surveyed them. She saw shopkeepers, clerks, housewives, little children, drunks, A.J. Socrates, the woman Millie and her friends, Vernon Wheaton, and beside him, his brother Bo, wearing a deep expression she could not quite read. She thought it might be sorrow. She thought it might even be pity.

“My God,” she said.

Prudence felt an unfamiliar something spreading out from the center of her and it was a moment before she could identify it. Helplessness. She could not remember ever feeling it before.

“We were planning no insurrection,” she told the sergeant.

He leaned close. “I know,” he said in a voice meant only for her. “I believe your only intention was to uplift the little pickaninnies. But look at these people. Do you believe soft words will convince them? They are frightened, Mrs. Kent. And they will not stop being frightened until we prove to them they have nothing to be frightened about. Just do as I ask.”

Prudence gazed across at the hatred mirrored in a hundred pairs of eyes. “They are not just frightened,” she said.

But Sergeant Russell was no longer leaning close. He stood back now and in a voice meant for the whole street to hear, he said, “Mrs. Kent, I need you to open the loading bay doors so my men can do a thorough inspection.”

“But the children,” she began.

His voice was stern. “Mrs. Kent, please do as I ask.”

Prudence looked behind her to where Bonnie stood in the middle of the classroom, several of the children gathered to her.

She swallowed, pulled the massive key ring from her skirt pocket, and stepped onto the sidewalk. As she came into clearer view, an angry murmur lifted from the crowd like smoke from a fire.

“There’s the Yankee whore!” someone cried.

“Ought to string her up right now!” someone else cried.

The soldiers watched impassively. Prudence’s skin seemed to vibrate. She tried to swallow and couldn’t. Her tongue tasted like metal. She opened the latches.

Two soldiers came then, brushing her aside and pushing at the big doors. They squeaked as they fell open. And then the whole interior of the school stood revealed. Vulnerable. The children had gathered in a tight knot around Bonnie, hugging her, hugging one another, crying soundlessly.

Russell addressed one of the soldiers, his voice still intended for the crowd. “Parker,” he snapped. “Take three men and search this place top and bottom.”

“Yes, sir,” said the soldier.

As Parker called out three men and moved to follow orders, Russell grabbed his arm and spoke in a softer voice. “Gently, Parker, gently. It is not necessary to destroy the place.”

Parker glanced from his sergeant to Prudence. “Yes, sir,” he said. And the small group of soldiers brushed past her and entered the Cafferty School for Freedmen.

“What about the children?” asked Bonnie.

Russell glanced behind him. “Quite right,” he said.

And then, to the crowd: “Make way! Make way, so the children can leave.” He addressed one of the remaining soldiers. “Schultz, make a path through the crowd.”

“Bonnie, you leave with them,” said Prudence.

Indignation lifted Bonnie’s chin and for a moment, she seemed taller than she was. “I will
not
,” she said.

“Make way!” cried Russell again. The one called Schultz and the remaining three soldiers waded into the mob like swimmers breasting a wave, pushing, yelling. With palpable reluctance and angry protests, the people moved back.

Now, all eyes swung expectantly toward the children. They seemed to shrink in the sudden glare of attention, pressing back against Bonnie. “Go
on,” she told them, gently pushing a bright-eyed little boy who had fistfuls of her skirt.

“I’m scared,” he said, his voice a high-pitched whine.

“I know,” said Bonnie, “but you must be brave. All of you: you must be brave.”

“You need to hurry those children up,” said Russell.

“They are children,” snapped Prudence. “They are afraid. Wouldn’t you be?”

She didn’t wait for an answer, stepping past him and into the school. She knelt before the little boy clinging to Bonnie as to the edge of a cliff. “I know it is frightening, but you see those soldiers with their guns? They are here to protect you.”

Someone in the crowd cried out, “Hurry up and send the little niggers out!”

Prudence closed her eyes. She felt her blood rushing through her like a river. She opened her eyes. “You will be perfectly safe,” she said, wondering if she were not telling a lie she would regret every day for the rest of her years.

Not that the boy knew this. She was his teacher, and who can you trust if not your teacher? He regarded her closely, then nodded solemnly and said, “All right, then.” And without another word, he turned and ran. Other children followed him.

A tall girl turned to run, then turned back. “Miss Prudence, you didn’t give us our homework.”

Prudence smiled. “No homework tonight, Janey. Go.”

She patted her back and Janey went, bringing up the rear on the line of children sprinting single file through the slot the soldiers had opened in the heaving mass of people. Just before she reached the other side, she paused in stride, one foot still hanging in mid-air, and looked back. The girl’s gaze was unreadable. It was only a moment, then she wheeled back with a child’s heedless grace, and ran.

Prudence never saw her again.

With the children gone, the soldiers stepped back and the mob flowed together like water. There were so many of them. Screaming. Jeering.

“I should have brought more men,” said Russell.

Prudence had drawn a measure of security from knowing the nine soldiers with guns were there to protect them. This quiet admission made her
gasp. Russell looked down at her as if surprised she had heard him, as if he had not realized he had spoken out loud.

Corporal Parker came down the stairs in that moment, holding a rusty old Enfield by the barrel. “Sergeant,” he said, “this is the only thing they have. It doesn’t even work.”

Prudence recognized it. The rifle had been there the day they arrived. Russell snatched the weapon, inspected it for a moment, then stepped forward, holding it out before him like a peace offering. “Here is your ‘nigger army,’” he said. “One old rifle with a broken hammer.”

At the sight of the Enfield, a noise swelled from the crowd, an undistinguished roar of angry cries and shouted taunts. Anger flamed in Russell’s cheeks. “Go home,” he cried. “All of you people, go home. There is no servile insurrection. Go
home
!”

“What about the boy?” someone yelled. “What about Georgie Flowers?”

“Nobody at this school hurt that boy!” called Russell. “He took his father’s raft down the river without permission and had a collision with a steamboat!”