Freeman (57 page)

He nodded to the white woman and backed away, began the laborious process of hauling himself up on the horse. She watched with interest.

“How did you lose your arm?” she asked. “Was it in the war?”

“Yes,” he said, regarding it as not quite a lie.

“Were you fighting for our side?” she asked. Her voice lifted toward hope.

He thought idly and for no particular reason of what it would be like to placate this white woman’s need to believe the improbable. Then he thought about Nick snapping at “Marse Gus.” He realized he was tired. When had he become so fatigued?

“No, ma’am,” he said firmly. “I fought for the Union.”

Her mouth mashed itself down to a nearly invisible line. “I see,” she said.

She would get over it, he thought.

He swung the horse around and trotted off. On the way out of town, he passed the same blacksmith, standing next to a well, drinking from a dipper of water. He was stripped to the waist, his dark skin oily with sweat. “Did you find the house?” he called.

Sam reined up. “I found the house,” he said, “but I do not believe the woman who stayed there is the one for whom I search.”

“So what are you going to do now?” asked the blacksmith.

“I do not know,” said Sam. “Would you mind if I have some of that water?”

The man spooned the dipper full from the well bucket and handed it to Sam. As Sam drank thirstily, the man said, “You know what you ought to do?”

“What is that?” asked Sam.

“Place a notice.”

“What do you mean?”

“In the newspaper. There’s a colored paper out of Little Rock,
The Freedman’s Voice
. It runs notices all the time. Husbands looking for their wives, mothers looking for their children, that sort of thing.”

“Do the notices work? Are people reunited?” He handed the dipper back.

“Don’t know,” said the man, shrugging his shoulders. “Only been doing
it since surrender, after all. But seems like it might be worth a try, unless you got a better idea.”

Sam didn’t have a better idea. He didn’t have
any
idea. All he had was the gnawing frustration of knowing he was closer to seeing Tilda than he had been in 15 years and yet not close at all. She was here, somewhere, waiting to be found. He was certain of it.

“How far is Little Rock?” he asked the blacksmith.

“About a day’s ride,” said the blacksmith. “That way.” He pointed the cup of the dipper north.

“Thank you,” said Sam. He turned the horse and spurred it down a street of clapboard houses.

Some pragmatic voice in the back of his head whispered to him, told him he could not live the balance of his life engaged in this foolish chase. And he almost pulled up on the reins and surrendered to practicality. He had done it before, he supposed. He could do it again.

Except for…

Tilda scooting close to him on the front stoop one warm evening in spring
.

Except for…

That laughter in her eyes
.

Except for…

The sound of her voice, reading the Bible to him
.

Love is long suffering; it aboundeth in kindness. Love is not envious. Love is not insolent: it is not puffed up. It doth not behave itself unbecomingly. It is not self interested. It is not easily provoked. It placeth not the evil to account. It rejoiceth not in iniquity, but shareth in the joys of truth. It beareth all things. It believeth all things. It hopeth all things. It endureth all things patiently
.

And there was one other line in that passage, one he had forgotten until just now.

Love never fails
.

Oh, God, please
.
Let that be true
.

With that prayer on his lips and anxiety gnawing his heart, he spurred his mount toward Little Rock.

Her body had refused death.

She had offered it death, told it to breathe death in like air and be released from the painful obligation of living. Her body had refused. Her legs had kicked, her arms had reached, her head had broken the surface, returning her to the world of sunlight, trees, and men. She had vomited water.

Only Honey knew. Honey, who came looking a few minutes later, driven by some preternatural sense, and found her lying in the wet grass, shivering despite the heat. Somehow, she just knew.

“Tried to kill yourself, didn’t you?” Sounding angry.

Tilda nodded, shivered some more.

“Foolish girl,” said Honey. “You gon’ kill yourself because you tired of some randy little white boy and his prick?”

Tilda could barely get the words out, her body knocking like a steam engine. “It’s not…just…that,” she managed.

Honey softened. “Sweetie, I know. But you can’t let them make you so sad you destroy yourself. You got to always have hope, child. Even if you ain’t quite sure what you hopin’ for. Just to hope, that’s the whole point.”

“That makes no sense,” said Tilda.

Honey shrugged. “Maybe it don’t,” she said. “Or maybe it make all the sense in the world and you just too sad and tired to know. Come on.”

And she had helped Tilda to her feet.

They had gone that very day to Marse Jim. Honey had stood behind
her while Tilda made the little speech they had rehearsed. Told him she deserved more than to be used for the pleasure of some randy boy, said that if he did not put a stop to it, they would no longer cook nor sew for the camp.

She had braced herself to be hit, but Marse Jim had only regarded them with an amused smile. “Very well,” he said. “You don’t have to sleep in his tent no more. You can move in with Honey if you’ve a mind.”

Surprised, she had smiled. “Yes, Marse Jim. Thank you, Marse Jim.”

That was a month ago. She has moved into the cookhouse with Honey. And her life has settled back into a routine. She cooks, she gathers wood, she washes clothes. The men seldom venture out any more on what they once grandly called “operations” against the federal troops. Most days are spent flopping around the camp, drinking, arguing, and cursing Yankees and all their progeny.

It is not a good life, but it is a tolerable one. At this point, that is all she asks for, all she desires. A life she can tolerate. A life she can bear.

So she is not prepared for what happens this morning when Honey comes into the cookhouse and shakes her shoulder. Tilda, curled under thin sheets on the floor, grunts in her sleep, forces one eye open. It is still dark outside. Then the light from an oil lamp fills the tiny space. “What are you doing?” she asks.

Honey’s eyes are bright. “You got to see this,” she says.

Tilda’s other eye comes open. She squints against the light. “See what?” she says.

Honey brandishes the newspaper like money. “This,” she says.

Honey has a system. Once a week before dawn, a colored man leaves the paper for her in the hollow of a tree down by the river.

Tilda closes her eyes. “See it later,” she grumbles.

Honey swats her with the paper. “See it
now
,” she insists. “It’s about you.”

Tilda’s eyes open. She sits up and accepts the paper from Honey’s hands. Honey points to a notice at the bottom of the page, holds the lamp close. Disbelieving, Tilda reads.

Tilda stares at the words for a very long time. It is as if symbols on paper have ceased to have meaning. She cannot process. She doesn’t understand.

Honey is impatient. “That’s you, ain’t it? Louisa Prentiss, wasn’t that the woman owned you? And he mentions Marse Jim. That’s got to be you. He’s lookin’ for
you
.”

Still Tilda stares. It makes no sense. She has not seen him in 15 years. She has not allowed herself to
think
of him in 15 years.

“Sam?” she says. She makes his name a question. It feels as if she is trying out a word in some exotic new language. And then: “Why?”

There is a tenderness in Honey’s smile. “For you,” she says.

“For me?” It is the most absurd thing she has ever heard. She tries to laugh, but it comes out tears. She has trouble swallowing the idea down. She has never thought of herself as a woman someone would come searching for.

“What you gon’ do?” asks Honey.

“What
should
I do?” asks Tilda.

“Go to him.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Marse Jim would kill me if I tried to get away from him. I saw him do it to two others.”

Honey looks at her. “You just tried to kill yourself,” she says softly, “few weeks ago.”

It is the first time they have spoken of it since that day. “That’s different,” Tilda says.

Honey sighs. “All I know is, they’s a man out there lookin’ for you. You asked me once if anybody was lookin’ for me, and I told you I couldn’t feature it. But if somebody was…” A pause, her thoughts creeping into silence. When she speaks again, her voice is whispered steel. “If somebody was, I’d go to them. You better believe that.”

There is a moment. She can feel herself standing there so long ago in midnight darkness, one foot poised over Agnes Lindley’s threshold, unable to bring it down. She can feel herself hating herself.

Then she comes to her feet. Grinning, Honey hands her her dress and shoes. “There you go,” says Honey.

“This is foolish,” says Tilda, climbing into the worn dress.

“It’s
all
foolish,” says Honey. “These men sittin’ around all day pretendin’ they still fightin’ a war been over for months…talk to us like we’s dogs or hogs. It’s all foolish. Why should this be any different?” Then she frowns over the notice in the paper. “‘Love never fails,’’’ she says. “Why he put that in, you suppose?”

“It’s something from the Bible I read him one time,” says Tilda. “It was long ago. We weren’t much more than children.”

She is dressed now and stands there regretting. “This is foolishness,” she says again, emphatically. “Marse Jim will find me and he will kill me.”

Honey purses her lips. “Maybe he will,” she allows. “But seem to me bein’ scared all the time ain’t much different from bein’ dead.”

“How you talk!” hisses Tilda. “You’re here the same as I am, still slaving for these people, even though you’re supposed to be free.”

“Yes I am,” says Honey. “But you know what the difference is?
I
ain’t got nowhere else to go.”

They stare at each other. Honey doesn’t blink. Finally, Tilda shakes her head. “Foolishness,” she says. But she is moving toward the door. She pauses long enough to give Honey a brisk hug. Their eyes meet. Then she is gone. Honey hears the leaves in the woods behind the cookhouse rustling at her passage. The sound is soft, as if Tilda were no more than the merest breeze.

“Godspeed,” she says.

It is too early for cooking, but Honey is too keyed up to sleep. She reads the paper by lamplight until a rim of pink appears in the eastern sky. Then she starts a fire and gets breakfast on.

An hour later, the men queue up at the door, plates in hand. There are fewer of them today. Fewer of them every day, she notes, ladling a meager portion of scrambled eggs into a plate. They are disgruntled, dispirited, shuffling their feet. She wonders, as she does on many mornings now, how much longer they can continue to hide out here, pretending their cause is not lost, pretending they are soldiers, still. Jim McFarland is one of the last in the line, hitching his suspenders over his ample gut.

He accepts his meal with a grunt. “Where’s that other one?” he asks.