Freeman (41 page)

“You’re lying!”

“I’ve spoken to his parents myself! They say it was a steamboat!”

“Yankee lies! Goddamned Yankee lies! We know what happened to that boy!”

“It is the
truth
!” cried Russell.

In reply, a large rock came arcing in from somewhere in the ocean of arms and mouths and rage. It struck Russell on the right temple. He cried out, stumbled back, brought a hand to his temple. It came away bloody. Laughter lifted from the crowd.

Russell roared at them. “Go home! I am ordering you to disperse immediately.”

“Not til we kill that nigger army, sarge!”

It was Vern Wheaton, weaving drunkenly, a blissful smile on his face. Somehow, he had worked his way to the front of the crowd. His brother stood at his side. Bo’s expression was haunted and grim.

The cry went up. “Kill the nigger army! Kill the nigger army! Kill the nigger army!”

The soldiers edged back, rifles up. Bonnie had gone gray. Her eyes were lanterns in the shadows of the old warehouse. Russell seemed at a loss, looking to his men as if they might have the ideas he did not. Prudence lifted
her hands. “
Please
!” she cried. “Please listen to me. We did not harm that child. I know we come from different worlds, you and we. But are we really so different? Do you really believe me so callous and inhuman as to kill a child? You heard the sergeant: George Flowers was killed by a steamboat. If you are skeptical, there is a simple remedy: go ask his parents yourself.”

The crowd stilled. Emboldened, Prudence took a step. “And I promise you, there will be no army of insurrection to come out of this place. There was never any such plan. When we posted a guard here—when I very briefly and foolishly thought of buying guns for them—I was only trying to protect the children and this school, which have been the targets of threats and vandalism from its very beginning. It was not my intention to anger you. I was only seeking to help in the uplift of the colored people. I apologize if I gave offense. And I am begging you: please leave us alone.”

They were listening. She could see her words striking home, like raindrops pelting dry soil. A man gave her a tight little nod of indignation, her soft words validating his rage. A woman looked around as if waking from a dream and surprised to find herself here. They were
listening
.

And then Jesse Washington came down the street.

Prudence saw him before they did. He was coming out of the cotton fields to the east and now he stopped, puzzled, obviously surprised at the mob that had gathered in the street.

“Oh, my God,” whispered Bonnie, suddenly standing at Prudence’s elbow.

“I thought you told the men to stay away.” Prudence’s voice was an urgent hiss.

“I did,” said Bonnie. “But he was worried about us. He asked me twice if we would be all right.”

There was a terrible moment when time itself seemed suspended. Prudence urged Jesse, willed him,
prayed
him, to run, hide himself away, before…

Before.

Someone cried out, “There’s one of ’em now!” Every eye swung toward him.

And Jesse stood there. It was as if disbelief had locked his knees in place. He watched as that swell of people rushed toward him. Finally, at the last moment, he got his legs to work, wheeling around, trying to run. He managed two lumbering steps. Then they were on him, climbing that big
body like like ants on a sugar cube. Jesse Washington disappeared beneath them til all that was left of him was his voice, high and pitiful and plaintive, crying “No!
Please
! No! Oh,
Lord, please
!”

Prudence shrieked something that wasn’t even a word. Bonnie turned away, tears tumbling down her cheeks.

Russell gave the order. “Close the doors,” he cried. “Hurry!”

She awakens with the boy’s arm draped across her from behind, his thighs and his damp, spent sex pressed tight against her. His breathing is soft and regular in her ear.

For a moment, she simply lies there, listening, assessing, as the world stirs itself to life, birdsong drifting down from the trees. After a moment, she raises herself up, glances over. The boy’s face is almost sweet in repose, mouth sagging open, eyes closed, unaware of himself.

She wishes she had something sharp to plunge into his neck. Would she have the gumption to do so?

Probably not. Gumption is only a remembered thing.

She lifts his arm from her and gives it back to him He snuffles noisily and shifts in his sleep. They are on a thin mattress on the ground, inside a tent just back of the main house. She wriggles into her drawers and petticoat, then into the thin muslin dress she has worn every day for the past year and a half. She lifts the tent flap, then looks back on the boy. She wonders again how it would feel to kill him. Then she asks herself what good that would do. Better to kill Marse Jim, who lets him use her.

But these are just foolish dreams, she knows. She lowers the tent flap and steps outside. It is so early the sun is still whispering gossip to the eastern horizon, but already the air is steam. So she knows she is in for another day of awful heat.

The smell of cooking draws her to the building behind the house that serves as a kitchen. When she walks in, Honey is sitting in a chair near the
door, reading a newspaper by lamplight. Honey starts at the sound of her and has the newspaper half hidden behind her back before she realizes who it is. “Shoot, girl,” she says in a voice of mild reproach. “Don’t sneak up on a body like that. You like to scared the dickens out of me.”

“I’m sorry,” says Tilda.

They are the only two women in the camp. Honey is plump, with skin the color of butter and a smile you could warm yourself by. Tilda judges she must be close to 70, though she is so spry she could easily pass for twenty years younger. She was a slave—still is, Tilda supposes—to Colonel Moody. He doesn’t know she can read.

“Biscuits smell good,” says Tilda. Several rows of them are browning on a tray in the hearth. A pot of gravy is warming.

“Wood pile gettin’ low,” says Honey, nodding to the log stack at the side of the fire.

“I’ll chop you some later,” says Tilda.

“Gon’ be hot as all get out later,” says Honey.

“It wouldn’t do for me to have an axe in my hands right now,” says Tilda.

Honey gives her a look. “That boy after you again?” she asks. Tilda nods. Honey says, “I hate ’em when they that age. Seem like they ain’t never got but one thing on they mind. Want to stick they prick in any thing don’t get away fast enough.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” says Tilda.

“Make me glad I’m an old thing,” says Honey. “They don’t bother with me no more.”

“Be glad when I’m an old thing, then.” Tilda sits herself on a stool near the door.

“You spoke to your marse about it?”

Tilda’s laugh is hard. “What good will that do? Who do you think told the boy he could have me in the first place?”

“Maybe he change his mind, he find out you don’t like it?”

“How you talk? Marse Jim doesn’t care what I like or don’t like. Besides, he’s too busy off playing soldier. I have not seen him so pleased in a long time.”

“I don’t know why they be happy,” says Honey. “Ain’t like they doin’ nothin’. Nothin’ that’s gon’ change nothin’, I mean. Way I hear it, they caught a Union boy out ridin’ by himself last week and beat him tolerable bad, stole some rifles off the back of a Yankee wagon. I mean, I’m sure the
Yankees don’t like it none, but I can’t imagine it’s more than just a little bothersome to them.”

“They won the war,” says Tilda. “It is not as if stealing a few rifles is going to change that.”

“That’s what I mean,” says Honey.

“But if it keeps them happy, what do we care? It simply means fewer problems for us.”

Honey laughs. “Chile, ain’t that the truth?”

Tilda has been fanning herself. Now she stops. “How long do you think it will last?”

“What?”

“All this. These men out here playing soldier, acting as if they can overturn the defeat. They have to accept it sooner or later, don’t they?”

This makes Honey laugh again. “Chile, don’t get me started talkin’ on what white men will accept or how they think. ’Fore I understood that, I expect I could understand how many stars God hung up in heaven.”

“So you think we could be out here for a long time? For months?”

Honey shrugs. “Maybe for years. We already been out here two, three months ’fore you arrived. I expect we be out here til the Yankees get tired of bein’ annoyed and come clean this camp out—or the mens just start driftin’ away ’cause they realize this ain’t nothin’ but foolishment. Might already be happenin’. Grissom left yesterday. Said he was tired of living out in the woods with a bunch of mens. Wanted to get back to his farm and see about his wife and young ones.”

Tilda sighs. “So all we can do is wait and see if the Yankees get tired or these sorry rebs do?”

Another shrug. “Either that, or strike out on your own, I expect. Might have a fair chance to get away, someone young like you.”

Her eyes hold Tilda’s a beat too long. Tilda marvels that anyone might still think her young. She changes the subject. “What are you reading?”

“This?” Honey holds it up. “Colored paper out of Little Rock.
The Freedman’s Voice
. They got all these notices in the back. Mothers lookin’ for their children, husbands lookin’ for their wives, brothers and sisters tryin’ to find each other.” Her voice trails off.

Tilda takes the paper and studies it.

Tilda looks up. “You think somebody might be looking for you?” she asks.

Honey purses her lips thoughtfully. “I can’t feature it,” she says. “Ain’t got no kin left, near as I can figure. Never had no luck with babies. Had four, but they all died ’fore they could get growed. Had three sisters and a brother, but they all older than me. I expect they gone on to glory by now, or near about. What about you?”

Tilda ignores the question. “Why do you read these ads, then?”

A frown. “Don’t rightly know. I reckon I just likes the idea of people lookin’ for they chil’ren and they loved ones. Tryin’ to get back to one another. Wish ’em all luck, tell you the truth. Hope they find the ones they lookin’ for.” She gives Tilda a wise look. “Noticed you ain’t answered
my
question, Missy. You think anybody lookin’ for you?”

Tilda thinks for a moment, then she shakes her head. “Had a son,” she says. “Luke, his name was. He died many years ago. There was a man, Luke’s father. I don’t know where he got off to.”

She folds the paper and is handing it back to Honey when the headline on the front page catches her eye:

Tilda reads. Honey watches her. She says, “Some place called Buford, I think that was.”

Tilda nods. “I know where that is. Marse Jim’s place was in the next county. The woman that used to own me before him had a place right outside of town. We came through there on the way here.” She reads some more. “Oh, my Lord,” she says. “It says here they were fighting over some school for colored and a rumor that Negroes with guns were guarding the place against vandalism. It says more than a dozen people were killed, some of them children. The military governor has sent soldiers to keep the peace.”