Stand the Storm (16 page)

In response Mary removed the cover from her lantern and hoisted it. The comforting beacon shone out from the shore. It oriented Daniel in the dark blackness and he rowed toward it.

Daniel pulled his oars from the water, climbed over the side of the craft, and waded with it into shore. Mary greeted the travelers at the water’s edge while keeping her lamplight low.

The nervous boy jumped from the boat and helped to get the young ones ashore. All the while, his attention was focused on the far shore from where they’d crossed. Daniel Joshua stood looking back across the water also, mentally putting himself through the paces of the next trip across. His arms and shoulders were weary from rowing. But he intended to cross again before resting them finally. Any rest would make his complaining arms believe they were finished for the night.

As Daniel Joshua waded out with the craft, the boy looked as if he would go back with him. Daniel stopped him. “I’ma fetch your mama and the young’uns. Better not weigh down the boat.” He climbed back aboard and rowed away from shore.

Daniel got the remaining children and the woman into the small craft with some difficulty. The woman didn’t want to leave the two dead children without burial. Her superstitions plagued her suddenly and she begged him to lay the bodies low. Daniel pleaded there was no time and nothing to accomplish the task. He had not brought a shovel and to dig them down and row the wayfarers across was asking too much.

The second crossing was unremarkable except that it was punctuated by a great many exclamations of “Lord!” “Oh, Lord!” and “Lord, have mercy!” The woman looked back to the shore she was leaving and moaned a great deal.

Daniel once again got out of the boat to guide it into the narrow pocket where Mary signaled and where she and the other children waited. Mary gently restrained the boy from wading out to his mother, and Daniel cautioned the woman not to jump into the water and soak her skirts in her eagerness to reach the boy. “Ma’am, you do well to keep dry and keep these other children dry.”

She acquiesced and held back until reunited on land. After she had covered the boy with kisses she started to moan about the bodies of the two dead babes being left upon the spit of rocks. She agitated about auguries and kept up her talk even after they had reached where Gabriel, Ellen, and Annie waited with broth and blankets.

Both the woman and her son looked like hoot owls in the church basement with their heavily ringed eyes and vigilant stares. The wayfarers were to be secreted in the church’s cellar until they could rest and be taken farther on toward north. Ellen and Annie fed victuals and ministered to the needs of the coughing children. Ellen took each babe in turn, wiped their faces, and rubbed them with oleo.

Callie of Greenbough Plantation is how the woman was called. She came into the basement at Holy Trinity Church and rocked and moaned about the two babes left behind. The children who had been rescued lay about the floor swathed in blankets and nearly as still as corpses. Only Callie and her watchful son remained awake after the first few moments of stew and warm shelter. Greenbough Callie, shocked to be alive after what she had come through, shivered, as did the boy, though they were covered with many blankets.

Gabriel’s decision to row out in the darkness with resolve to recover the bodies of the dead babies surprised Annie, Ellen, and Mary. He sat with his head lowered nearly to his knees and fiddled with the contents of his pockets as he listened to Callie. His attention was hard on the woman’s tale and her moaning. Suddenly he rose and prepared clothing to go out into the still constant rain.

“Brother Daniel, take me to the boat and I will row across for these babes,” he said. He said as well that it would be best not to leave evidence that runaways had perched there. The bones the carrion birds leave would tell a tale.

“Will you raise the lantern for me, Mary?”

“I will take you to the boat. Brother Daniel can warm his feet,” Mary replied boldly. She was surprised at Gabriel. She’d not known this man to plunge into action. But she had not known him long.

“Take care not to be seen and taken in, good Gabriel,” Daniel called after them.

“If they take me, you will know where to come to get me, good friend Daniel,” Gabriel replied.

Gabriel rowed out across the river to the place where the group had waited. The rain had abated and the sky was moving toward light. The bodies were easily found. The two small corpses looked like stone statues reclining. They were cold and the flesh was stiffly unyielding. Gabriel covered the small cold bodies with the quilt Sewing Annie had given him for the purpose. It was funerary—being dark-colored and containing a patch of the cloth of a dress belonging to old Knitting Annie. This patch was one that turned up in several of the quilts in the family’s accumulation. It had the power of repetition and was the most they could do for these dead children. He rowed back with the tiny bodies wrapped in one package.

Guided by Mary’s lamp, Gabriel came near the shore, waded in the shallows, and dragged the boat in.

“The dead must be buried, Mary. ’Tis just one of the things that must be done. We cannot leave the little babes to make food for carrion. We people got to cling together like it matters that we do. It’s the only way we make it,” he said. The intensity of the look in his eye commanded her.

As everyone knows it is unlucky for a childless woman to dress a body, Gabriel did not pass the bundle to Mary.

“Mary, go and tell Nanny that I’ll bury the babies in the plot that some of our women have secured. It will suit them,” he said, and walked away.

Gabriel returned home and stood in the yard, washing himself before entering. He removed his shirt to lave his arms and chest despite the cold air and the chilled water in the bucket.

Mary stood at the back door. She had waited. For the first time the sunrise would catch her here in the Coats house.

Mary looked at Gabriel’s clothes and saw evidence of his digging the graves for the two babies. She considered the wisdom of digging the ground in the wet like this night. All this he had done in the dark and suspicious time—at great risk to himself. He was a puzzling man, she thought, and enjoyed watching him wash.

On the day that followed the daring boat rescue of the woman and her chickens, Daniel Joshua’s chest filled with rasping noises and his body shook with chill. Once again Annie shuffled pallets and put Daniel Joshua to sick bed in her own sleeping place. For three days the man was laid low and fed broth to restore his energy. Aromatic clouds were circulated about his head and he was urged to breathe deeply.

Fifteen

“T
HERE COMES A
time when a man wants to take comfort, Brother,” Annie said, standing next to the outhouse. Between them existed no shame so that she spoke frankly to her son, who was taking his constitutional behind the door. Annie had followed Gabriel because she had not been able to cadge a private word with him in some days. She’d maneuvered to trap him in the toilet.

Gabriel was not a pacer, but had been visibly restless and ill at ease for some days. Because Annie had followed him to the toilet before, she knew his bowels were not locked against him, causing this discontent. He ruminated upon another concern.

“This girl is a good matchup. She’s comfort and contentment, Brother. No doubt she’s the tonic you need,” Annie said with tittering. “Listen to your nanny, boy. It’s a constant woman you’re wanting.”

“Go off, Nanny,” Gabriel said, fingering his penis. “Leave me be.”

“ ’Tis not good to worry, Brother. ’Tis not good to worry yourself either, Brother,” she said, and laughed heartily. “Lay a claim before someone else,” she finished, and quit the backyard.

Comfort
and
contentment
—they were the words he would have used. Gabriel sat upon his seat behind the crescent moon and ruminated on Mary. He mused that she did give outward signs of feeling comfort and contentment around him and his family. Dare he hope that she would accept to stay with them and put in with them formally? Dash! Would she take him? Would she have him to husband?

Gabriel knew it to be felt amongst colored people and the main folk that only a married woman was a decent woman. A married woman would not get cutting sidelong glances from the strivers and the big colored around town.

’Tis an abundance of loose gals and disease among the other man’s women in this town.
Gabriel chuckled and hitched his pants and recalled the experiences of Mr. Pearl and himself. They had been circumspect, but they had occasionally availed themselves of the courtesies of the town’s public women.

On the following evening, through a plan, Gabriel and Mary were left alone in the kitchen. Sewing Annie put down her work and went to her room soon after the evening meal. Ellen had also bid good night, scooped up her child, and been gone like a wisp. Had she gone to the outhouse? Had she gone to put Delia down to rest? The wonder crossed Mary’s mind and she came to the realization that the women had left the spinning wheel idle purposely. It was an odd occurrence for the busy room and it set her on guard.

Gabriel alone remained and Mary had a sudden, timid fear that Gabriel had sent the other women away to press a hurtful purpose.

“I won’t subjugate you, Mary. I won’t take anything away from you that the Lord gave you,” Gabriel said solemnly. “I would like for you to marry with me. It would be the most proper thing for us to do.” As if to emphasize the rightness of his proposal, Gabriel sat very straight in his chair and placed his hands flatly on the table before him. This inactivity was arresting, for rarely in a day were his hands so completely still.

“Oh,” Mary answered, as if the words brought forth an explosion from her. It was a dignified request. It was a sensible, practical arrangement for a woman who was free but unanchored. It was the stuff of a dream, but frightening in its implication.

“We might join at the church and take a ceremony there. We might have a fest, Mary.” Gabriel spoke to buoy her and persuade her and to cover the long silence. “Nanny and Ellen will make a party.”

Mary cried tears in answer and Gabriel was flummoxed. He was not so very vain, but he had thought she would say yes quickly. There was unease and there was more puzzling silence. Mary said her piece bluntly.

“I want you, sir, but I am afraid to disappoint you. You are wanting a good wife and I am no longer good. You are wanting a good girl to marry.”

Gabriel went silent in his turn and became deeply engaged in thought.

“Mary, we want no girl here. I need a wife. You are a fitting cog and we will have you stay. It is best for us to marry if you stay. We will settle a home. I feel there is goodness in you . . . and more. I would have that goodness and more with me.” Gabriel placed his hands to either side of Mary’s chin and cupped her face. She shied from his hands, then could not break from him. “Mary, will you be joined with me?”

Mary mused on Gabriel’s strong grip. Again and again she would discover that his hands were capable of many gifts: gentle, firm, authoritative, demanding, playful.

It was not lack of pure wanting but the fear of the measure that caused Mary to hesitate. She signaled her agreement by shaking her head, moving within his grip, and when Gabriel released her chin in joy, she said, “Yes, sir. I will.”

Mary knew instantly that Annie, too, was in favor of this bond, for Gabriel would not have spoken if she opposed this. Annie was the chief here, but she was good and used all of them well.

Gabriel rose and walked about the room, coming to stand behind Mary’s chair again. He exhaled near her ear. It was a rarity for Mary to feel the warm breath of someone upon the back of her neck—someone who did not mean to pummel her. Gabriel stared at her nape as he stood over her and spoke. His breath hitched and Mary felt the change in his warm exhalation. She was a tad startled by the man’s cultivated gentleness.

His closeness unsettled her. Mary worried about her body. Her skin was not smooth and unmarked. There was upon her the perfect impression of Phillip Ruane’s brand. Would Gabriel laugh at the sight of it or would he be sickened?

Mary sought out Ellen when the news of the nuptials was spread. She pulled her into the small store room at back of the workroom and bared her thigh and asked Ellen to gauge the ugliness.

Annie broke in on them. “I’ve seen you,” she said to Mary. “I know you beneath your clothes, girl. There’s nothing upon you that my son cannot bear. He is good and quiet, but he is not weak. I know his wants, girl. And you need a tree to stand under. Better a one like him.” Annie paused. “You don’t know much of men, though you have had your bad experience. Ellen don’t either. Follow behind me. When they nature gets up, they don’t start to quibble about what a’not perfectly pretty. It don’t worry ’em.” This declaration set the young women laughing and put a lid on the talk of ugliness.

Mary’s curiosity about Gabriel’s body was not chaste. What was beneath the scrupulously mended clothing that Gabriel wore? Had his life at Ridley Plantation been as soft and uncomplicated as it seemed? Did he hide Jonathan Ridley’s fury on his back? Or had he escaped this ignominy? And if his front and back were smooth, where lay his scars?

Out of Annie’s earshot, Mary did ask Ellen what was upon Gabriel’s back that she had ever seen.

“ ’Tis as smooth as a babe’s. Gabriel is Master’s favorite dumb dog so he has no marks for disobedience,” she said. At this, Ellen unlaced her own blouse and loosed it to fall at her waist. “I am marked, too, you see.” She showed Mary a welt that ranged from beneath her left breast down her side and stopped at her waist. “The once I pushed him off he made me pay with his belt. Master Ridley was not pleased with me. Do not tell Nanny . . . or Gabriel,” she implored.

“No,” Mary replied. “I will never.”

“I will make a nightgown for your bedding that will be so complex with tatting that Gabriel will be lost counting knots and will not notice much else until his nature is well up.” Ellen laughed at her own humor and pulled Mary into it, and the two laced each other up with much giggling. They concluded with a kiss to seal their pact.