by Alyssa Cole
“Why didn’t he?” Daniel asked, chest tight just from hearing this awful recounting. He knew why they showed so little emotion; this story was a shout that would start a landslide of emotion if they let it. They spoke low and slow to avoid being crushed by their own pain.
“Mama. Mama went to him and talked real low and sweet, and he lowered the gun and took up the bottle and walked off with her.” Jim shook his head. “She tried to convince us to run while we was refugeein’. Said Augustus could take us anywhere if we cleaned him up and slicked his hair. But we can’t leave her with him. I don’t know what he’d do to her or the others if we did. So here we is.”
Daniel sucked in a breath. His master had been indifferent to the lives of his slaves—he’d given all his power to his miserable overseer, preferring not to dirty his hands with such interactions. He’d begun selling them off rather than put time and effort into refugeeing, saying that he’d rather have money in the bank than have to worry about slaves running off or being taken by Northmen. That was how Daniel had ended up on a Richmond auction block. He’d thought his experience uniquely grotesque, but Jim and Augustus’s lives further affirmed his shame at his own inability to move on.
Still, Jim’s cynicism cut him deeply. He wanted to tell the man to live, to think of his future and that of his family, but Daniel had been unable to do either of those things himself. How could he demand it of another?
Augustus sighed, and as he talked there was color and light in his voice again. “If we get free—”
“When you do,” Daniel offered. His throat felt tight with emotion, and he cleared it.
Augustus nodded. “When. I want us to get some land, where we can farm and raise animals and provide for our families. Someplace nice, with a school for the children and a church where we can praise freely. I don’t think it hurts none to plan for that. It’s not asking for a lot.”
“No. No, it’s not,” Daniel said.
Jim scoffed. “You think they gonna just let us have that? It ain’t a lot, but it’s something. They want to take everything we have, brother. I wonder if we could ever take from them like they done took from us.”
Finally, Daniel asked the question that had nagged at him since the Russians had revealed plans of Davis’s trip to him and Janeta.
“I’ve wondered the same. What we could take from them. For example, Jefferson Davis, who so many of them revere. What if he was stopped before his government could do further harm?”
“Stopped? You talkin’ ’bout killin’?” Augustus asked. “I don’t think we should kill folk. Not our place to play God.”
“But we’re at war,” Jim muttered. “Why is stopping one man playing God, but killing a whole passel of ’em just fine and dandy?”
“I don’t like no kind of killing, Jim, but there ain’t no honor in assassination. That’s what you mean, right?” Augustus glanced at Daniel nervously.
Daniel sighed. “I mean no disrespect, but what honor is there in letting a man who works to keep you in bondage live?”
“Mmm-hmm,” Jim said. “No one ever thinks about doing anything to honor folk like us. I can’t say I’d be sad if someone helped usher Davis into the afterlife, and all of those Rebs we had to hear about every night. I wouldn’t be sad if they was wiped from the earth. If ever there was a time for smitin’ and such, it’s now.”
Augustus shook his head, stubborn. “Well, I think the Lord will decide that, just like He’ll decide when and how Davis is to go. Like I said, anyone who takes it on theirself is playing God.”
“Or maybe they’re an instrument of God,” Jim said, clearly frustrated. “We get to be that, too, sometimes, instead of just cursed, don’t we?”
“I’ve always wondered when our people will have our own Exodus,” Daniel said.
“Exodus?” Jim asked.
“In the Bible, when Moses led the pharaoh’s slaves to freedom,” Daniel explained, but he caught the look of confusion that passed between the brothers.
“Ain’t never heard of that bit,” Jim said. “It’s in the Bible you say?”
“Oh, I thought you meant little Moses,” Augustus said with a chuckle. “He is named after a Bible fella, that’s right.”
“That’s what they call that Tubman lady, too,” Jim said slowly, realization dawning on him. “The one who leads folk to freedom, and talk about the North Star. Patty from Winston’s farm told me about her.”
A terrifying realization struck Daniel; for many slaves, the closest they were allowed to literature was the Bible stories they were told—most couldn’t read for themselves, and they received the stories from others. But not every part of the Bible suited the ideas of enslavement. It would be so easy to foster a belief of the Word in a group of isolated slaves, while hiding what the Word said about freedom from them.
“I’ll tell you about Moses, leading his people to the Promised Land.”
Jim and Augustus listened eagerly, and Jim’s dourness fell away as Daniel described the parting of the Red Sea.
“Wait, that don’t seem fair,” he exclaimed after Daniel had spoken of how Moses never reached the Promised Land himself.
“No, but I think it fine to work for your people’s freedom even if you never see it yourself.” He touched the hilt of his knife.
Janeta appeared at Daniel’s side then. “I think we may have to rest soon. The children have had too much water to drink. We know what that can lead to.”
She winked at Daniel, reminding him of her confession from the other night. She stared at him, as if trying to will him to open to her again, but he gave her a curt nod. “All right.”
She lingered, as if expecting him to say more, and when he didn’t she awkwardly turned way and headed toward the back of the wagon.
When he glanced at Jim and Augustus, they were sharing a loaded look. Let them think what they wanted. They would be parting ways soon enough, and they had problems of their own to deal with. If he felt the slightest pang of regret that he hadn’t been able to smile and continue the playacting of a loving couple with Janeta, well, it wasn’t the worst thing he had dealt with.
CHAPTER 16
Janeta hated the gulf of anxiety that opened up in her when she knew someone was cross with her. It was the fear of that gulf that drove her to twist and change herself into whatever pleased people most.
She’d felt she owed her family because, even though she had always been told otherwise, her reflection proved that she was indeed like the people working the fields, and serving, and cleaning, and everything else that required labor. She’d felt that she owed something to everyone who treated her like she wasn’t, who saved her from a life of hardship.
So she gave them what she could of herself, and that had amounted to . . . everything.
She shrugged off any self-pity. She was free. All that had been asked of her was to make sure she was capable of charming everyone so thoroughly that they wouldn’t begrudge her it. It was no hardship compared with the hardship of a life in the cane fields. After all, she could see what people wanted—all she had to do was fit into the mold they’d laid out for her.
Papi had wanted a doting daughter who clung on to his every word and made him feel like a great man. Her sisters had wanted a good, obedient girl who pretended her skin wasn’t as dark as the slaves’. Henry had wanted a woman seductive but coy, exotic but familiar, fiery but submissive. And Daniel? He’d just wanted her to leave him be. He’d said that from the start. So it shouldn’t have hurt when he’d retreated back into his cold, unsmiling behavior.
But it did. It cut her much more deeply than should have been possible.
That was just further evidence that Janeta Sanchez knew nothing. She’d thought herself brave and determined when she’d set out, but these days she felt like nothing more than what she truly was: a shell, filling itself with whatever was needed to please the people around it. Daniel had likely sensed that; after all, it was only when she’d tried to be herself with him, or what she th
ought to be herself, that he’d pulled away.
She’d tried talking to him in a friendly way after that morning at the river, and when that hadn’t worked she’d tried to talk Loyal League business, and after that she’d tried desperate flirtation. He’d avoided her every time, and she’d eventually given up, keeping close to Shelley and Mavis and avoiding the women’s pitying glances.
The truth of the matter was at hand: she had failed. She couldn’t get information for Henry, and she no longer wanted to. She couldn’t make Daniel want her help. She should just leave, but how? She’d have to find a telegraph and hope the message got to Henry, and then what? How would she get back to Palatka? How would Henry respond to her failure? How would Papi?
She hugged her arms around herself as the wagon jolted over the hole-pocked road.
“We’ll be there soon,” Shelley said, misinterpreting Janeta’s agitation, and reminding her that there were people with bigger issues than being a spoiled, foolish princesa.
Shelley, Jim, Augustus, and the others would all be put to work. They would be in an unfamiliar town with people who might treat them even worse than what they had grown used to.
“I’m sorry,” Janeta said. “That we’re almost there.”
“No need to be sorry. It is what it is.” Shelley stroked the head of the child that lay curled in her lap. “We gon’ be free soon enough. I know it. And folks like you are helping us to do that.”
Janeta startled and Mavis laughed.
“Oh, of course we knowed you wasn’t just two Negroes wandering the woods for no good reason in times like this. We talked to other folk like y’all before.”
Shelley lowered her head shyly. “Wish I was brave enough to do that.”
Shelley had misread her again. Janeta shook her head. “You’re so much braver than me. Both of you. Truly. And . . . and . . .” She closed her eyes and swallowed, then opened them and met Shelley’s gaze. “And I am going to do my best to help put an end to this war. For the North. For you.”
Tears welled in her eyes and she dashed them away. Those words were—that vow was—a refutation of everything she’d promised to do when she’d left Palatka. They were an abandonment of her father. But she could help him in another way—she could help Daniel get useful information from this Englishman, and maybe from Jefferson Davis himself, and she could ask the Union to show her father clemency in return. Henry had told her there was only one way to free her father, but she was realizing that Henry also told people what they wanted to hear—and he’d wanted more in return than acceptance. He’d wanted to aid and abet very bad men.
It struck Janeta then, what she had circled and circled around even after admitting to herself that Henry had never loved her: he wasn’t just helping bad men; he was one.
“Well, if you say I’m brave, I’m not one to turn away a compliment,” Shelley said with a trembling laugh.
“You are. And even if you weren’t, you would still deserve to be free. If there’s something I can do to help that, then I will.”
Janeta was so used to saying what people wanted to hear that she wasn’t sure if her words were true or simply meant to make herself or Shelley feel better. All she knew was that, for the first time in a long time, her words didn’t feel like a lie. For the first time maybe ever, she felt swayed by more than love for herself or her family or a man. Her chest filled with something—an overwhelming desire to be better, to do more.
She thought of her mother, broken by the lies she had told herself and her daughter and anyone who would listen. Janeta would no longer break herself trying to shape herself into other people’s desires.
Janeta Sanchez was a fool, insensata, but even a fool could do the right thing.
* * *
Homes began cropping up along the road, many abandoned or damaged, and fields that had been cleared of their harvest or hadn’t been tilled for some time and lay fallow. It was only after passing several empty barns that Janeta realized there were no animals to be seen besides the mule that pulled their wagon. And though there were houses, there weren’t many people, though she could feel the gaze of strangers from darkened windows.
War had touched these people in a different way than it had in Palatka. There had been skirmishes outside the town and on the river, but the struggle for control had been a matter of numbers and not force, with the goal occupation and not destruction. The Yanquis who approached her home generally had done so while feigning civility; they’d smoked cigars with her father and drank his rum, while eyeing his fine daughters. Even when they’d led him to the stinking prison, they’d done so with regretful looks.
The area they passed on the way to Meridian had not been given such courtesy; it had seen heavy battle. She’d heard Daniel talking to Jim: after Vicksburg, the land had been fought over in a game of tug-of-war. Soldiers from both sides had likely taken food and supplies from the people here, and likely more.
She would have felt untainted pity for these people at some point—already poor and having lost more than they could possibly ever regain. Back home she had helped organize food and clothing to be sent to those in nearby towns. But now she had to wonder how she would be greeted here were she to knock at one of their doors and try to talk as if she was their neighbor, let alone their social better.
Janeta shook her head; she didn’t have to wonder. She knew. Her assistance wouldn’t have been given a welcome with open arms, as she’d received from the refugeeing slaves. As they reached Meridian’s main street, she felt a heaviness in her chest knowing that she was leaving Jim and Augustus and Shelley and Mavis—she couldn’t even think of Moses and the other children.
“Are you gonna come visit us? After mama and everyone else come?” The little boy’s eyes were round and hopeful as they unloaded from the wagon, and Janeta did what had always come so easily. She told him what he wanted to hear.
“Of course, we will come visit you! Daniel and I will not be here long, but we will see you before we depart.”
She glanced at Shelley, who was staring at the ground working her bottom lip with her teeth.
“That would be something,” Shelley said. She looked up and her own eyes were glossy. “Would be something even better if old Abe sent some more of the boys in blue round here, but to hold the line this time.”
“Don’t know for sure nothing is better or worse until it happens,” Jim said with his usual cynicism before turning to Janeta and Daniel with worry in his eyes. “You sure you both gonna be all right?”
Her chest squeezed because she realized then that, though they were enslaved, Jim and Augustus had some power imbued by the color of their skin and how people perceived it. They’d offered more than companionship for the journey—they’d offered what little protection they could. And now they were worrying over whether Janeta and Daniel, free people, would suffer its loss.
She swallowed a sob. She couldn’t ever allow herself to forget that she had once agreed to help the men who wanted to keep Jim and Augustus and Shelley as their property, forever. It shamed her, but she would use that shame as a guiding light.
“We will be,” Daniel said. His voice was flat and he couldn’t quite make eye contact as he shook each person’s hand. He turned toward Janeta, so she saw the painful surprise on his face when Moses’s arms went around Daniel’s legs.
The boy looked up with a serious expression. “Don’t worry none, Mr. Cumberland. I’m gonna protect everyone from the monsters now.”
He held up the stick he had been toting around since the Rebel soldiers had come to the camp, displaying it with the same fierce pride Daniel had displayed when he’d shown the boy his knife upon their first encounter.
She expected Daniel to keep up the quiet, withdrawn demeanor that had eclipsed his sunny behavior—and their near kiss. Instead, Daniel smiled and picked up the boy and seated him on his shoulder. Moses’s squeals of delighted laughter echoed over the group.
Daniel’s voice was deep and rough when he spoke. “
Moses has very bravely offered to protect you all from monsters, but I request that you all protect each other. Can you do that?”
“Yes!” The other children swarmed around Daniel’s legs as he swung Moses down.
“Well, then I guess we’ll be off,” Daniel said. “Take care of each other.”
“Y’all do the same,” Augustus said. Then their friends continued down the road. Shelley peeked out from the back of the wagon and gave an abbreviated wave.
Janeta didn’t understand why it was so painful to walk away from these people. They had only spent a few days together. She’d met hundreds of people in the parlor of Villa Sanchez. She was used to saying goodbye. But this was the same glancing ache she’d felt when Lynne and Carla had gone off on their mission, leaving her with Daniel. She was leaving people who accepted her at face value, and seemingly liked her as she was. And she was being left with Daniel, who had frozen her out. If she hadn’t known true cold before, she certainly did now.
“Time to see about this Roberts fellow,” Daniel said. He walked stiffly and wouldn’t even look at her. They passed an older Negro man in front of a general store who cast a suspicious eye toward them, and then went inside the squat building.
Janeta looked around them: it was an average main street, lined with small businesses and horses and people milling about, like she’d seen both in Santiago and Palatka, but everything seemed ominous.
The townspeople going about their daily business glanced at her and Daniel and whispered behind their hands, or actively glared at them. One man spit his tobacco in an arc that landed in a dark mass on the ground right beside her foot; she had to force herself not to gasp.
A sheen of sweat broke out over her skin, raising the chill bumps, and she shivered. She remembered what her mother had told her when she reached adolescence, hunching over to avoid the stares of strange men and sneering women. “Chin high, shoulders back, remember that your father can crush any of these fools who look down their noses at us.”