by Londyn Skye
Anger had temporarily stripped Wyatt’s youthful mind of rationale as he exited the barn. He angrily glared at his mother and then marched out to the middle of the field where his father was still wrestling to get Lily away from Maya. Wyatt stomped into the dust cloud with tears in his eyes, his face red, and his teeth clenched. With explosive anger propelling his arm, he hurled the whip across Maya’s back with all his might. The shock of the sting immediately caused her to lose her grip on Lily. Maya dropped to her knees and Wyatt dropped the whip. He then kicked Maya in the back, sending her into the dirt on her stomach. With vengeful fury clawing to escape his body, Wyatt turned her over and straddled her. For the countless times that his mother had called him stupid and unwanted, he began beating Maya about the face. For all the times his mother had unnecessarily spanked him, he continued to pummel Maya. Long after Maya had ceased all movement, Wyatt burned her with the frothing rage that was intended for his mother. In the throes of temporary insanity, he mercilessly beat into unconsciousness the one woman who had always given him the warmth and love that his mother had denied him.
Once the vengeful rage was purged from his body, Wyatt’s sanity suddenly returned. He stood up over Maya and froze. He looked down at her like he had just returned from an out-of-body experience. Had it not been for his aching fists and his legs straddling the limp body beneath him, he would have sworn it was someone else responsible for the battered face he was staring at. Mortified by what he had done, he began sobbing uncontrollably. When he was finally able to get his body to respond to his brain, he looked up at his mother in the distance and glared at her with contempt. He then quickly fled the scene, trying to run from the instant regret he felt for brutalizing a woman that he loved, in the way a son should love a mother.
While Wyatt was bolting into the woods in tears, Levi was fleeing with Lily, guiding his horses into town in a drunken haze. Wyatt had returned from his out-of-body experience, but his father could not say the same. Levi was still mentally detached from reality as he fled the scene with Lily. In his alcohol-induced catatonic state, he was completely oblivious to his daughter’s desolate sobs and her pleas to be returned to her mother. Lily looked through the wagon cover at the man she had just learned was her father. Through her nine-year-old tear-filled eyes, he seemed as emotionless as a well-oiled cotton gin, mindlessly carrying out its programmed duty. Lily perceived that her very own father was intentionally ignoring her pleas to know where he was taking her. She could never have known that Levi’s mind was unable to rationally comprehend anything at all in his frazzled mind.
When Levi arrived in the town square, he may very well have been parking his wagon with bales of cotton in the back; his mind was too far gone to interpret the difference. He could have been signing the president’s name into the slave registry, instead of Lily’s, and he would never have realized his mistake. Like a walking dead man, he was going through the motions of preparing to sell his only daughter. Through every “i” dotted, through every “t” crossed, Levi’s brain was failing to absorb any of it.
After signing one of his own children’s names into the Negro auction registry, Levi went back out to the wagon. Perceiving Lily no differently than an inanimate object, he lifted her out of the back of the wagon and took her by the hand. Levi’s catatonic mind left him completely impervious to the soft hand that had once curled around his finger as a baby and melted his heart. He now held that same hand to march his little girl up the auction block steps to put her on display, like a piece of antique furniture, ready to be sold to the highest bidder.
Levi trotted back down the auction block steps, still too lost in an absent-minded haze to absorb the fact that he had just left his only daughter there helplessly alone. He mindlessly squeezed into the middle of the crowd, turned, and stared up at her. This time, flashes of his own children did not have to appear there on that auction block. Live and in living color, there one of them stood around a sea of strange raised hands, eager to take her away. He stood there in an unblinking trance, watching the tears cascading through the light tint of dirt on his daughter’s face. He looked callous and unconcerned through Lily’s nine-year-old eyes. Unbeknownst to her, though, she was a blur to her father. In his intoxicated state, the chanting crowd sounded distorted and the world was spinning. The heart-wrenching sight and sound of his daughter’s shoulder-heaving sobs had no visible, or even internal, effect on him whatsoever. Levi Collins was simply in a state of pure unadulterated shock.
Levi’s brain continued to operate like that of someone with a single digit IQ. If asked, he would not have been able to verbalize what was happening around him at that moment. His ears worked no better than a deaf man’s. He did not even hear how much the auctioneer announced his daughter had sold for when the bidding was over. His legs worked no better than someone who was paralyzed. He seemed unable to move, until a worker at the auction prompted him to come and escort Lily to her new owner. Still numb to Lily’s touch, he could not even feel her soft little hand in his, as he held it and ushered her toward Jesse’s wagon.
“Are you really my fatha’?” Lily asked Levi as he dragged her along. He heard the words, but somehow his brain failed to comprehend the simple question. Still perceiving her like an inanimate object, he lifted her into the back of Jesse’s wagon. “A-are you?” Lily sniffled, still hoping for an answer. But Levi remained totally disconnected from the world as he kneeled and placed shackles around his daughter’s tiny ankles. He stood tall after shackling her legs and came face to face with a set of eyes that were undoubtedly his. “Daddy?” Lily suddenly whispered with a quivering bottom lip and eyes full of tears, as she gazed at her father with the most sorrowful expression on her face. A word that Levi had longed to hear, she had just whispered in a solemn tone that begged to know why he would do this to her.
Daddy. That single word processed in Levi’s brain with the utmost understanding and brought reality crashing back to him. With that one word, Levi finally felt the impact of everything he had just done at full force. That one word had instantly sobered him. It suddenly restored and magnified every one of his senses. He comprehended where he was, and the world finally stopped spinning. That single word had yanked him from the depths of a dark blinding abyss and brought him into the light to finally see his little girl with great clarity. Eyes that Lily swore were glaring at her coldly were actually gazing at her with immense compassion. Levi was now fully aware that he was staring into the sparkling eyes of the beautiful child he had created out of pure love, a child that he loved beyond measure … a child he would now never see again.
By the time Levi was finally able to absorb the magnitude of his actions, his daughter was being dragged away by a brutal demon. According to the law, he could now legally do nothing to stop him either. Like a coward, Levi turned his back, and listened to his beloved daughter repeatedly hollering the one word he had been desperate to hear since the moment she could speak. As he walked away with his head lowered in shame, he recalled how he had once told Maya that he would give anything to hear Lily call him daddy. Never, in his wildest imagination, did he ever think that Lily would be the “anything” he was forced to give away.
Levi now no longer had to imagine what it was like to sell one of his own children. He had answered that question for himself. The sickness that it caused to stir in his stomach led him to go to a remote creek on the outskirts of town, where nobody lived for miles. He climbed down from his wagon, immediately dropped to his knees, and vomited violently into the rushing water, his body purging what was left of his sanity. After clearing his stomach, he sat on his knees, wailing like an animal with its leg caught in a trap. He stayed there paralyzed in pain like one as well. Weakened by sorrow, he eventually fell over onto his side. His body had finally succumbed to the exact moment when Levi Collins was never again the same man: January 14, 1845 … 1:53 p.m.
Chapter Twenty-one
Emancipation proclamation continued
… And as Comm
ander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, I further declare, and make known, that the military and naval authorities of the United States will recognize and maintain the freedom of all persons held as slaves. And as a fit and necessary war measure, I further declare that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service. And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity.
I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
President Abraham Lincoln
December 25, 1864
Just after midnight, the popping sound of gunfire tore Mary Jo Parker from a dead sleep. Her father, Joseph, was awakened as well. He glanced out his window to find that a miniature war had broken out on his plantation. He had expected as much, though. While doing business in a neighboring town, he was warned about a brazen group of men, who were sneaking onto plantations and freeing slaves in the dead of night. After seeing the battle outside his window, Joseph was certain that that very group had now made its way into Fayetteville and had descended his property. But Joseph Parker had prepared in advance to meet the group’s late-night thievery with force. He had hired a team of armed men to guard his plantation around the clock. But the money he had spent proved worthless on this night. The small group of hired men were disarmed, bound, and shackled together in a matter of minutes by the midnight crusaders currently invading the farm.
With the security team rendered useless, Joseph and Mary Jo were now completely vulnerable to the onslaught of men, who were rounding up their slaves and ushering them to safety. Trying desperately to defend his daughter and his property, Joseph loaded his pistol and bravely went outside. He quietly tiptoed to the back of his wraparound porch and hid. He peeked around the corner and shot a man who was headed toward his house. The sound of the shot blast prompted several men to charge toward Joseph. He panicked and quickly tried to run back inside his house. But he turned around only to find a gun aimed at his face. To Joseph’s shock, he was staring down the barrel of a man whom he had known since birth. “James!” he shouted.
“I’m not here to hurt you, Mr. Parker. I’m just here for Ms. Claudine,” James explained, referring to Joseph’s house slave.
“Sh-she ain’t here!” Joseph answered, nervously raising his pistol.
Before Joseph could straighten his arms to shoot, the handle of James’s rifle connected with his skull. The force of the blow immediately rendered Joseph unconscious. He dropped to the ground, blood pouring from the massive gash near his temple. When James leaned down to take Joseph’s weapon, his peripheral vision picked up movement. He turned, looked inside the back door, and saw a trembling Mary Jo. She was standing a way back in the kitchen, staring down at her father as he lay bleeding on the porch. Slowly, her head panned up to find that the person crouched over her father was a man she once loved. James stood tall and stepped toward the door. Still paralyzed with fear, Mary Jo could not get her feet to work as James closed in on her. He froze near the entrance and slowly raised his gun. Just as the barrel was lined up with Mary Jo’s face, a fireball erupted behind James in the distance. A newly freed slave had just torched the slave quarters. The burning building illuminated James to perfection as he glared at Mary Jo with pure hatred in his eyes.
“P-p-please, d-d-don’t sh-shoot,” Mary Jo begged, trembling so hard that her words were barely discernible. Her tears were flowing just as fast as the river of urine running down her leg.
“MISS CLAUDINE!” James yelled. He kept his weapon aimed at Mary Jo, enjoying the sight of terror on her face too much to turn away. “You have the choice to leave here for good, if you want,” James explained to Claudine when she arrived, still refusing to remove his eyes from a tearful Mary Jo as he spoke.
The shock of seeing James with a gun aimed at Mary Jo’s face made Claudine slow to respond. “I-I can just l-leave?” she asked nervously.
“Yes ma’am. You can stay here, if you want. But, by orda’ of the president, you’re now free to go. Which do you prefer?”
Claudine took one look at the self-centered woman, who had spent years rudely demanding her around, and her mind was instantly made up. “I’ll go!”
James motioned his head towards the door. “Go on out to my troops. They’ll help ya’ out to the wagons and take you to safety.”
“Yessa’,” she replied, stepping over her master’s unconscious body on the porch as she made her way to freedom.
“Anything, you wanna say?” James asked Mary Jo once Claudine was gone.
Mary Jo’s knees suddenly buckled. She dropped down into the praying position, landing in a pool of her own urine. Her body quaking with fear, she glanced up at James. “I b-b-beg your f-forgiveness. P-please, I’m so s-sorry for e-everything I d-did to you and L-Lily,” she choked out.
Even though the word was stammered, it was the first time James had ever heard Mary Jo address Lily by the correct name. But he knew her sudden show of respect was selfishly motivated by a need to preserve her useless life. Disgusted by her insincere apology, he pulled back the hammer on his gun.
Mary Jo winced and closed her eyes when it clicked it into place. “Pl-please, God n-no!”
Silence.
After a moment, Mary Jo cautiously opened her eyes to find herself alone. She breathed a heavy sigh, crawled over to her father, and collapsed on his chest in a sobbing heap.
If James was callous enough to kill a woman, he would have shot Mary Jo straight between the eyes on Lily’s behalf. Instead, he hopped on his horse and briefly glanced back at her as she wept on her father’s unconscious body. As much as he desired to murder her, he was satisfied knowing that a life without her slaves was equivalent to a torturous death for her anyway.
James snapped the reins on his horse and sped toward the exit of the Parker plantation. Before leaving for good, he stopped at the front entrance, climbed down from his horse, and hammered a large stake into the ground. Attached to it was a massive American flag. James climbed back on his horse and looked down with pride at the star-speckled, red, white, and blue symbol that signified that the Freedom Riders had succeeded in yet another mission. He then sped away on his horse, with one more very personal mission to conquer in Fayetteville.
Despite the Emancipation Proclamation, the south had refused to emancipate their slaves, per President Lincoln’s orders. Instead, the Confederacy had begun forcing even more slaves to fight on behalf of the south. Frustrated that the president’s orders were being ignored, James asked and received permission from General Blackshear to form a special task force. The sole purpose of the alliance was to extract slaves from their owners to prevent them from being forced to fight against their own freedom. Knowing James’s story of Lily and Rose, there were no shortage of troops that wished to be a part of the coalition. The most surprising person who wished to join the team was Elijah Ridley. Even more surprising than that was the fact that James did not deny his request. As much as he hated the man, James could not deny that Elijah was one of the most skilled soldiers of the entire brigade.
James, Elijah, Harrison, Austin, the twins, and many other soldiers then began their crusade together as the Freedom Riders. James named the group specifically as a retaliatory antonym to his father’s racist cult. Much like the Ghost Riders, the Freedom Riders also snatched slaves in the dead of night, but for far more honorable purposes. James’s dedicated team of men had marched south through various states, releasing thousands of slaves to groups of people that could help them begin the process of rebuilding their lives, as free American citizens. They ushered women and children to safety and gave weapons to the men who wished to fight to put an end to the institution that had held their families captive for centuries. Instead of burning crosses like his father’s group, the Freedom Riders planted American flags at the entrance of e
very plantation that they emptied of slaves. The name of their organization was beautifully branded into the wood of every stake they hammered into the ground. After nearly a year of successful missions, well over two-hundred flags had flown gallantly outside of the homes of slave owners, as a symbol that their captives had been officially freed. With every rescue mission, James hoped to hack away at his father’s so-called legacy and eventually obliterate it altogether. While on his monumental journey, James ultimately hoped to find the woman who had inspired him to fight on behalf of freedom in the first place. Despite hundreds of missions, James had yet to succeed in that goal. But only death would have prevented him from continuing his efforts.
Having arrived in his hometown, death was indeed on James’s mind … but not his own. It was a major rule among the Freedom Riders that no innocent civilians were ever harmed during their late-night raids. Joseph Parker had been the first civilian ever injured. But James had no plans for him to be the last in the town of Fayetteville. Right after leaving the Parker plantation, James made his way onto familiar grounds.
“Masa’ James?!” Corrina yelped. She had been startled awake when she heard him whisper her name. When her eyes adjusted, and she realized who he was, she jumped up to hug him.
“Shh,” James said, reciprocating her embrace.