Nowhere Is a Place (22 page)

“Oh.”

“Well,” Obery said, starting toward the horses that were tied to the fence, “tell him we called and we’ll be back in a day or so.”

They stood silent while they watched the two men ride off.

* * *

“The two boys he had gone off to fight and died. I saw Lessing cry the tears myself,” Laney said as she shook her balled fists in the air.

“Got killed,” Brother sighed.

“No matter how you say it, gone is gone.”

“Where this ‘son’ come from then?”

“And a brother too?”

“Maybe they lying?”

“Nah, the boy got his eyes.”

“Sure do.”

“What us gonna do?”

“Cut and run.”

“Yeah, cut, but running ain’t necessary. We free, we can walk right out of town,” Willie said.

“Yeah, and got money to do it with.”

“This land is ours. We worked it. Brother, you got a mother and brother buried here. I got three of my girls and a son dug in deep here, and a heck of a lotta others. I ain’t leaving. You better find a way to make it right, ’cause I ain’t going,” Laney said.

___________________

Two days at most, that’s all they had, and Brother had used up most of those hours standing over Lessing. Standing and just staring and thinking, he was sure of what it was they would have to do.

Yes, they could cut and—no matter what the hell Willie said, walking would not be an option—they would have to run as far away as possible. But town had been a journey to a place so foreign that they had found themselves feeling out of place amongst their own people. So what would the rest of the world be like? They would stick out like sore thumbs. Hard looks would be welcomed then, because the alternative would be questions, Brother was sure—questions that he wouldn’t have answers to.

So what to do?

* * *

Suce came to him early in the morning; by then his legs wouldn’t hold his weight much longer, even though his mind was still alert and racing over everything and anything he had seen and heard in his lifetime. So when Suce came creeping in, he got angry immediately because he didn’t have the solution he was sure she was coming there to hear.

“What?!” Brother’s tone shocked her. He’d never spoken harshly to her, not even when she was small and was fond of biting him, not even then, but now he addressed her as if she alone had put him in this predicament.

“We in deep,” she said like this was news. Brother said nothing. “Laney right in one way, Willie right in another.”

Brother fingered the drapes.

“I say we come this far, but I don’t think we gone all the way.”

Brother turned and looked at her.

“I figure we got a right to this land like Laney say.”

Of course they did, but God didn’t have niggers on his mind, so what she was saying were just words.

“I knows where the will is at.”

___________________

Suce didn’t have a child growing inside of her belly, but she did have want and desire blooming there. Not just in her belly, but stretching through her veins and spreading throughout her being.

No part of her was willing to give it up—that feeling, that freedom—and so all the want and desire clamped down and sprouted and she felt hate rush through her for the first time in her life. It curled her hands into fists and sprung something wild within her when she looked up and saw those white men waiting on the porch. It was all she could do to keep herself from leaping down from the wagon, rushing them, and scratching them blind and biting out their throats.

And so there she stood, having pondered just as long as Brother had, but unlike Brother she had pondered and fell on a possibility where there seemed no possibility had existed.

“And?” Brother said and waited.

“We can change it and make the land ours.”

* * *

Brother didn’t know anything about wills and such things; his mother had taught him that slavery was wrong, that owning the land was wrong, that taking more than was needed was wrong, and since slaves owned nothing, not even the flesh on their bones or the bones of themselves, wills weren’t anything that had ever been needed or considered or brought up in conversation until now.

Suce turned away from him and moved to the small writing desk. Opening the middle drawer, she rummaged awhile and then pulled out a piece of rolled parchment tied with a red bow.

She turned back to face him and held it up like a scepter. That move alone made her look regal, and Brother lowered his eyes in honor.

“What’s that?”

“Massa—” she started and then corrected herself. “
Lessing’s
last will and testament.”

Brother waited as she gently removed the ribbon and unfurled the document.

“It says here,” she began,

“I bequeath to my wife Isabel, ten tracts of land and plantation wheron we now live. One cow called Bell.

120 acres purchased from Vicey to be divided equally between my sons, Jacob and Joseph.

I bestow the white mare called Snow to my wife and the mare called Ink to my son Jacob.

The Negroes: Laney, Tenk, Hop, Jim, and Suce and her increase are to be given to my wife.

Lynx, Lee, and Soap are to be given to my son Joseph.

Jeruey, Ida, Axel, and Smyrna and her increase are to be given to my son Jacob.

I appoint my son Joseph to be my executor.”

Brother listened again as Suce read the words on the page to the group. Some sentences came as smooth as water, others contained words that came out jagged, but all made him think of being divided as easily as eggs and that made him angry.

“I don’t know,” Willie said, exhaling and sending the candlelight dancing.

“I do,” Laney muttered and drummed her fingers on the table.

Brother said nothing. Suce was on her fifth piece of parchment, trying hard to imitate the swirling letters that split them up as easily as dough.

* * *

By morning, Suce’s fingers were swollen and Willie’s head was on the table. Laney had long since gone off to her room. Spin was curled in a ball on the floor in the sitting room, but Brother remained awake, his eyes red and puffed but his mind alert.

The final imitation looked as good as the original:

I bequeath to my wife Isabel, the home wherein we now live.

I bestow the Negroes: Lynx, Tenk, Ida, Exel, and Smyrna and her increase to be divided equally between my sons Joseph and Jacob.

Upon my death, the Negroes known as Brother, Laney, Hop, Spin, Willie, and Suce and her increase are to be released from the bondage of slavery and gifted forty acres of land for their good service.

I appoint my son Joseph to be my executor.

It didn’t sound real, but the past two years had seemed like a dream, so Brother guessed it fit. The seal would be a problem—already it mocked them, thornlike and as red as the bloodiest of roses. Brother was sure if he touched it, it would prick him.

“The seal is somewhere in the house; it has to be,” Suce said.

But after hours of searching and Laney calling them for the fourth time to come and sit down for lunch, still they’d found nothing.

Ham on the table, like a last supper. Corn bread and sweet potato, mashed and dripping with butter. Kale seasoned with salt pork, and peach pie set out and still bubbling hot when they arrived.

Last supper, for sure, and the sun already setting, hurrying up tomorrow and their deaths, for sure.

“That look real ’ficial like,” Willie had said between bites of food.

“Well, it ain’t. It ain’t got no seal,” Brother threw back at him, and scratched his head in frustration.

Willie stared at the document and blinked. “That there?” he said, using his greasy finger to point at the red smudge of wax on the original will.

Ignorant nigger, Brother thought, and cut a hefty slice of pie.

Suce nodded.

“Oh.”

They all stared down at the paper, the signature, and the wax seal that made it all official.

“How’d they do that?” Willie asked as he leaned in to get a better look at it. Brother slowly slid the document away from him.

“What?”

“You got food hanging out of all sides of your mouth, you wanna ruin it?”

Willie used the back of his hand to wipe away the debris.

“It’s candle wax, is all,” Suce said.

“Well, we got plenty of that,” Laney said, but Suce’s and Brother’s faces still looked troubled. “What’s wrong?” Laney ventured.

“The letters in the wax,” Suce said.

Laney peered at it. “Well, you could write those in too, can’t you?”

Suce shook her head no.

“Why not?” Willie muttered.

“See here”—Suce used her delicate pinky finger to point at the seal—“there’s little tiny hats all around the letters.”

“Crowns,” Brother corrected her.

“Crowns,” Suce said exasperatedly.

“Shit,” Laney said.

* * *

The seal had to be somewhere in that house. They dug through every dresser drawer, looked in places a seal wouldn’t have had any business being. Laney asked Lessing point-blank, “Where the seal at, Lessing?” But all she got was a toothless grin that let on that he might not be as mad as they thought he was.

That grin of his sent something hot and crawling through Brother’s body. He had to steel his arm at his side so as not to slap the old man. Jim’s swinging and then burning, Lou pregnant with grief . . . the memories rolled into him, and he centered his hand at his side.

The sun was coming up. It was usually a slow rise, one that Suce had loved to admire, but that morning she decided the moon belonged to niggers and the sun to white folk, ’cause on that day the sun climbed into the sky faster than she’d ever known it could and shone brighter than she’d ever seen it shine.

Nowhere.

They hadn’t missed a spot, a crook, or cranny, but still they turned up nothing. They mulled it over now, each in a plush parlor chair. Thinking, thinking.

“Hop probably got to it,” Laney mumbled as she twirled a long gold thread around and around her finger.

“What you say?” Brother half inquired. His eyes were set on his shoes and the fine carpet beneath it.

“I said that Hop probably got to it.”

Brother just snuffed, and a small grin broke through where there had only been placid resolve. Hop had light fingers, yes he did—could steal a tail feather from a blackbird and the bird wouldn’t have noticed the loss.

Brother leaned back into the chair. His shoulders were aching, the lower part of his back tight and throbbing. “You might be right on that one,” he said.

Suce nodded in agreement. “Well, anyone for coffee?” she said as if this new day was like every other day before it.

Brother just looked at her.

Willie said, “Ay-yuh, I s’pose I could go for a cup.”

Laney’s head shook no and then yes.

“You want it sweet?” Suce asked Brother.

Brother’s head cocked a bit, like he was considering changing the way he’d been living since he was fifteen.

“You usually like it sweet,” Suce said, hurrying up his sluggish memory.

“I think you’re right,” Brother said, and slowly raised himself up and out of his chair.

“Well, that’s the way you always take it—”

“Not you,” he said, pointing a finger in Suce’s direction. “
You!
” he bellowed, and the finger swung to Laney.

Laney jumped. “What?”

“I bet you Hop got that seal,” Brother said, his eyes glimmering.

“Hop dead,” Suce reminded him.

“Get the shovel, Willie,” Laney said, and started toward the front door.

“Ma’am?”

* * *

Behind the house, just paces from the stream, Willie worked at unearthing Hop’s coffin. Plain and simple and mostly eaten away by wood worms.

Hop’s body was wrapped in a quilt that was covered in maggots.

Willie covered his nose while Brother reached in and pulled out the small sack that Hop had kept his treasures in.

A silver coin, a button, a piece of blue granite in the shape of a bird, a jagged bit of looking glass, a red river rock, and, just like Laney said, the seal.

___________________

They couldn’t go back; there wasn’t anything to go back to. Slavery was done and over with, friends and family were either dead or in places none of them had ever heard of.

Nothing to go back to, but plenty ahead, and so all eyes turned to the window and the land beyond it after Suce pressed the seal into the cooling blotch of wax Laney had made red with gooseberries.

Nothing to do after that day but wait.

* * *

When the men do return, Brother is the one to walk out and meet them, the scroll of parchment clutched tight in his hands. He doesn’t know what words he’ll use, but he figures by the time he reaches the stern faces looking back at him, he’ll know.

Laney reaches for her broom and begins to sweep the kitchen floor, the steady sounds the straw makes against the wood calming and rhythmical, and Suce, who is seated nearby, begins to hum.

“Mornin’,” Brother spouts while he is still a good twelve feet away from them. His eyes are steady, careful not to linger too long on the soft-colored wood butts of the rifles they carry. Instead, he concentrates on the long metal part of the rifles, wonders if the steel is cool against the crooks of their necks.

“Hold it right there, nigga,” Obery Lessing says as he lifts the rifle into the air and slowly lowers it so that the dark, round eye of the weapon is pointing directly at Brother’s heart.

Brother stalls.

The son, Fenton, trains his eyes on the house.

“We been asking around town, and the story we got there is different from the one you gave me,” Obery says, and brings his other hand up to help with the weight of the gun.