Freeman (5 page)

But she did not want to go back to the South, not even to honor him. She hated the South. Even more, she feared it. Its current state of devastation and defeat did not change that. In some ways, she thought, it made it worse. What is meaner and more hateful than the haughty brought low?

“There must be another way,” she told Prudence. “Find an agent down there you can trust. Why not volunteer for one of the schools organized by the Freedmen’s Bureau? In that way, at least, you would act under the imprimatur of the federal government. You would have protection.”

“That is not what my father asked,” said Prudence.

“Well, he didn’t ask me, Miss Prudence.”

“I know,” said Prudence. “
I
am asking. Will you deny me?”

Bonnie sighed. She sat on the bed beside Prudence. “I deny you nothing. You know that. But do you not think it foolish to rush down there so soon after the fighting has ended? Things may still be unsettled.”

Bonnie shook her head. “We shall travel by steamship down the Mississippi River. The Mississippi has been in Union hands for two years now.
Any danger from marauding rebel armies is nonexistent, particularly with the surrender at Appomattox.”

“We ought to be concerned about more than just the armies,” said Bonnie. “What of the people?”

“What of them?”

“The people—the
white
people,” she amended, “will be bitter because of their defeat. It might be wise to allow that news to sink in, give them more time to get used to the way things are now before we go gallivanting about down there.”

“We do not gallivant, Miss Bonnie. We travel on a sacred mission. Do you really think we should delay simply because a few rebels may be walking around with bruised feelings and their lips poked out?”

“It is more than that, Miss Prudence.”

Prudence went on as if she had not spoken. “And how long do you think we should defer to the rebels’ tender feelings? Two weeks? Two months? A year?”

“You are sporting with me.”

Prudence put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Not at all,” she said. “I just want you to see how impractical your suggestion is. We can wait. We can wait a month. We can wait a year. And while we wait, colored people will be suffering. Do you not care about that?”

Bonnie’s dark eyes flashed. “Do I not care? Of course I care. How can you ask me that?”

“Why are you so reluctant, then? Is it just fear?”

“Perhaps,” admitted Bonnie. “Perhaps it is. But if we are examining motivations now, let us consider yours. Is your haste to travel to Dixie just a sign of loyalty to your father? Or does not grief for Captain Kent also cloud your judgment?”

Prudence sighed. Something came into her eyes, then, something Bonnie could not read. “I loved my husband,” said Prudence. “I grieve him still. You know that.”

She did. For all the years Prudence had been courted by Jamie Kent, Bonnie had been her friend’s confidant. It was Bonnie to whom Prudence had first confessed her feelings, Bonnie who had nursed Prudence through the inevitable spats, Bonnie who had been closer even than Prudence’s two older sisters. “Of course I know,” she said. Her voice was soft.

“One of the things I loved about him was his passion for the abolitionist cause. Other men went to war saying they fought only for Union. Jamie knew what he was fighting for from the beginning. He was fighting to free the slaves. You know what that means to us Caffertys.”

Bonnie smiled, remembering a night as girls no more than five years old when they had snuck down a narrow passageway lined with garden implements and jars of preserved foods in the basement of the big house. At the end of the passageway, Prudence had given her a meaningful look, then took hold of a brick in the wall, pulling it to the right. To Bonnie’s amazement, the very wall itself lumbered heavily open.

All she saw of them was eyes, three pairs of them, wide and frightened in the flickering light of the candle Prudence held. A woman, a man, and a boy, sitting—there was no room for them to stand—in a tiny compartment Bonnie had never known was there.

“It’s all right,” Prudence told them. “We are friends.”

Bonnie gaped. “Who are they?” she asked.

The boy had piped up then. “We’s run away from ol’ Marse,” he said.

“Father helps runaways,” Prudence had said. And she had given her a look Bonnie had always remembered, a gaze clear as water and righteous as judgment itself.

Prudence gave her that same look now. “I know you think me reckless,” she said, “but I promise you, I am aware of the dangers. A woman with a Yankee accent traveling with a Negro into the South to set up a school for free Negroes? I know there will be…objections. But the spirit of the two best men I have ever known compels me. Besides, as you well know, I can dish out trouble as well as receive it.”

And at that, Bonnie could only smile. Prudence’s father had often joked that his youngest child was the least-appropriately named person in all of Boston. She had been a tomboy when she was a girl, a scrapper, a marble shooter, a feared hitter in base ball. People who didn’t know her were always surprised to learn these things; her features were delicate, and it was impossible to see in her the reckless, dirt-smudged girl she once had been. It made people underestimate her. She had learned to use that to her advantage.

“I know,” said Bonnie, “you are not a frail little thing to be knocked over at the first stiff breeze. But those people,”—a pause, a look—“well, we will need to be careful. That is all I am saying. Not every place is like Boston.”

“You said, ‘we.’”

“Of course I did,” said Bonnie.

Prudence smiled her relief. “Of course you did,” she said.

And so it was the next morning that they stepped down together from the house where Prudence had lived her entire life, ready to leave the only city she had ever known. The tears had been cried, the farewells had been said. Now Bonnie watched as Prudence’s sister Faith held both her hands and spoke earnestly while the third sister, Constance, directed Rogers, the houseman, in loading their three trunks on the wagon.

Constance, Prudence, and Faith
, thought Bonnie with a private smile as she gazed upon the three auburn-haired women. Mister John had never been subtle about preaching the virtues of life. How she had twisted and fidgeted through all his long lectures about thrift and honesty, chastity and patience. How she missed him now. She had known no other family than the Caffertys. And she loved them as much as she could love anyone.

Still, she thought, and not for the first time, it would be nice if she had someone of her own who might be heartbroken by this leave-taking, someone who would miss her and mourn her absence. But there was not. Oh, there had been suitors from time to time, but nothing that ever threatened permanence. It made her wonder sometimes if there was something wrong with her. Other than the Caffertys, she was alone in the world.

“Bonnie? Have you heard a word I said?”

She started. Constance had been speaking to her. “Forgive me,” she said. “I was preoccupied.”

Constance sighed heavily at the prospect of having to repeat herself. She was the oldest sister—her husband, David, now ran the family business—and she took seriously (too seriously, Prudence often said) the responsibilities of her station. “I simply asked you,” she said now, “to please govern Prudence. You know our sister can be”—a delicate pause—“headstrong. We shall depend on you to curb her reckless tendencies. And take care of yourself as well,” she added.

Then it was Faith’s turn. “In a way, I envy the two of you this adventure,” she said.

“It is not an adventure,” protested Prudence. “It is not a lark.”

Faith lifted her hand. “I know that, sister,” she said. “What I meant is, I admire your courage. Be careful down there. Return to us safely.”

“This is not easy for us,” said Constance.

Bonnie surprised herself. “This has not been easy for any of us,” she said. “It has been difficult on all of us. The war, I mean. But something tells me the peace is going to be just as bad.”

They looked at her. She met their eyes. Around them, the square went about its quiet business. A woman entered the park pushing a baby in a carriage. Two women wearing hoop skirts promenaded on the opposite side of the street. A wagon rattled past on Mount Vernon Street, going uphill.

“Well,” said Constance finally, “let us hope you are wrong.”

But they knew she wasn’t. She could tell.

In the awkward silence that followed, Rogers opened the door of the coach and gave them his hand as they climbed inside. Bonnie and Prudence settled into the plush, upholstered seat. Rogers returned to the seat above, then flicked the leather reins lightly over the horses. The wagon rattled forward, and Bonnie watched as everything she had ever known disappeared behind her.

The woman lies atop a thin mattress on a dirt floor, huddled beneath a single sheet. She shivers in the cold and watches starlight through a gap where the wall doesn’t quite meet the ceiling.

She has no idea what time it is. Shading toward morning, she thinks. The darkness is still but for the soft snoring behind her, Wilson and Lucretia, somehow managing to sleep. But the woman is too tired to sleep. Fatigue has soaked her bones. It is not simply the fatigue of work, though there is that, what with the endless hours spent clearing debris the Yankees left behind. But more than that, there is the fatigue of life.

Her own existence has become onerous to her and it is difficult to conceive that she was ever not cold, not old, not scared.

It is a moonless night. The stars are brittle white against the unrelieved expanse of darkness. There was a time, she vaguely remembers, when she stood beneath such a sky and talked to Jesus, just as naturally as talking to Wilson or Lucretia, and asked Him to save her. She had faith. Oh, Lord, such faith.

But He did not save her. And it has been years since last she stood beneath stars, looking up.

She takes an inventory of her pains. Her left buttock is still sore from when Marse Jim kicked her there because she did not fetch his shoes promptly enough. Her left cheek still aches from when Marse Jim hit her there with a closed fist. (She never learned what her offense was that time.) Her muscles are leaden from lifting and carrying. On top of it all, she has a
bad tooth; it pounds like a hammer if her tongue so much as brushes against it. It’s in the back, top right, and it’s so rotten that it fills her mouth with a dead taste. As a result, she takes no joy in food, although food is so mean and meager these days she supposes no one does.

The one good thing about it: Marse Jim no longer finds her attractive. Even loaded up on that popskull he likes to drink, he no longer has the urge to crawl on top of her, breathing his fetid breath in her face, bristles of beard scratching her cheek as he pushes that hateful thing of his in and out of her until she considers her very beauty a curse. She is grateful to have lost it.

Lucretia, younger than she and still tolerably attractive, is not so lucky. When old Marse gets in a randy mood, she is the one called to satisfy him nowadays. But then, now that the woman thinks of it, even that hasn’t happened too much lately. Apparently, Marse Jim himself cares little about rutting these days. With all the popskull, the woman wonders if he still can rut. Or perhaps he has simply lost interest, living with so much grief.

After all, his wife and his three daughters have been carried off by disease just since the war began. And his only son, Little Jim, was killed by the same renegade Yankee raiders who ransacked the plantation last month, who fired the barn and the house. You can still smell the smoke.

It shouldn’t have happened. This area has been in Yankee hands for two years. Been peaceful most of that time. But then the Yankees got wind of some of Marse Jim’s big talk, how he was going to raise a company of rebs and kick the federals out of this part of Mississippi, and sent a company of men to investigate. Marse Jim should have backed down from them, but he wouldn’t. He cursed at the federals, then Little Jim threw a rock, shots were fired, and things got out of hand.

And when it was over, Marse Jim’s home was gone. His home and his only son.

It was that final loss that seemed to unhinge him. He was never a good man, never a good master, but was he ever so hateful and mean as after he lifted his boy’s bloody corpse from the dirt and cradled it, screaming curses as Yankees touched torch fire to his home?

Sometimes, it makes her feel sorry for him in spite of herself. She knows how it is to lose a son.

When the inky blackness above shades to a deep blue and the stars lose their hard edge and begin to seem unreal, she rises, wrapping the thin sheet about herself, and steps outside into the morning chill. A sudden blast of
snoring shatters the stillness and she pauses and spares a glance across the path for the cabin that used to belong to Wilson. With the big house gone, Marse Jim sleeps there now, lies dead to the world, curled around the Sharps carbine that has become his only companion.