Freedom Stone

by Jeffrey Kluger

  From around the side of the building, Henry at last emerged. He looked to be about her papa’s age, though not as tall and far more beaten down than Papa had been the last time Lillie saw him. He labored across the uneven ground, his one foot and his heavy crutch leaving twin trails in the dirt behind him. His empty right trouser leg was folded back and held fast with a heavy pin, and Lillie could see that the leg was missing from just about where the knee ought to be. It occurred to her that until that moment she had never thought about what a one-legged man would do with his two-legged trousers.

  “You need somethin’?” Henry asked, barely glancing up before looking back down at the loose, pebbly soil, where his purchase seemed uncertain.

  “Let me help you,” Lillie said, hurrying toward him.

  “Don’t need no help,” Henry said without looking at her. He spoke neither kindly nor unkindly. “You here for the nightstand? It ain’t done yet, and Mr. Kile ain’t here to take payment anyway.”

  “I ain’t here for no nightstand,” Lillie said. “I’m here to talk to you.”

  Henry finally stopped and looked up. The sun was in his eyes and he had to squint at Lillie. He raised his free hand to his forehead so that a shadow fell across his face. He looked at Lillie unrecognizingly at first—and then his expression softened.

  “I expect you can help me after all, girl,” Henry said. “How about you fetch two small sittin’ boxes from inside that workshop and set them up over here in the shade?”

  Before the man could change his mind, Lillie ran into the furniture barn, grabbed two crates that looked to be about the right size, and carried them to where he had indicated, under the canopy of a leafy magnolia tree. She approached him and tried to take hold of his arm and to her surprise, this time he allowed it. She walked him to one of the boxes and eased him down.

  “Now why don’t you fetch us a drink of water too?” he said, pointing to a rain barrel with a dipper hooked to its edge. Lillie ran over to it gratefully, scooped out some water and started to drink, then stopped herself and offered it to Henry first. He smiled and waved it off. “I don’t really need it, but you do,” he said. “You got road dust over most your face.”

  Lillie drained the dipper thirstily, then scooped another and drank that off too. “Thank you,” she said, a little out of breath from the gulping she’d done. She hooked the dipper back on the edge of the barrel, wiped her face with her arm, and then sat down on the crate near Henry.

  “I know why you come, girl,” Henry said.

  “You do?” Lillie asked.

  “It’s ’bout your papa.”

  Lillie nodded.

  “About the way he died,” Henry added.

  Lillie looked at him wonderingly. “How did you know?”

  “I’d wanna know too if I was his child. And with that face o’ yours, there ain’t no other man’s girl you could be.”

  Lillie reached up and touched her face. As always, she had to fight back tears at just the mention of Papa.

  “He said you looked like him, ’cept I didn’t reckon how much.”

  Lillie’s voice felt choked. “He talked about me?”

  “All the time. Talked about all of you. Your mama, your baby brother—boy with a funny name. Ploto.”

  “Plato,” Lillie said. She laughed slightly and blinked her wet eyes.

  “He said you was called Lillie, but he said he give you another name too—one he said was more suited to you.”

  “Quashee?” Lillie asked, her throat choking.

  Henry nodded. “Child born on a Sunday,” he said. Lillie merely nodded, not trusting herself to speak. “So what do you reckon I can do for you, Quashee, girl?”

  “You can help us get free before the slave traders come to take my brother,” Lillie answered plainly. “We was s’posed to be freed no matter whether Papa come back from the war or not. But now they say we can’t cause o’ some lie about a bag o’ coins he had when he died. The Master has ’em now and he aims to keep ’em—and keep us too.”

  “It weren’t no lie,” Henry said softly.

  “Papa didn’t steal no coins!” Lillie snapped.

  “I didn’t say he stole coins. But he had coins. Went off to a farmhouse about two or three miles from the battlefield to fetch bandages one day; come back with a purse full o’ Yankee money. He showed it to me plain and admitted he got it from the farmer; wouldn’t never tell me how.”

  “So he didn’t say he took it?” Lillie said.

  “Some things don’t need sayin’.”

  “That woulda.”

  “You think a Southern farmer gonna give a slave man a bag o’ gold?”

  “My papa weren’t no thief!” Lillie repeated.

  “All right, then,” Henry said, spreading his hands. “Ain’t no way o’ knowing anyhow, seein’ as your papa’s dead.”

  “But there is a way.”

  “How?”

  “You could ask the farmer.”

  “The farmer’s in Mississippi,” Henry said. “We’s in South Carolina. I don’t got a wagon, and I ain’t gonna hop there on my one good leg.”

  “You could send him a telegraph!” Lillie said. “I seen the office.”

  “Ain’t none but white folks allowed to talk by telegraph,” Henry said. “Even free blacks ain’t allowed. Besides, it costs dear, and I don’t got enough money.”

  “You could write him a letter, then.”

  Henry gave off with a rueful laugh. “I was a slave till this summer, girl,” he said. “I can’t read nor write.”

  “I can!” Lillie exclaimed, then glanced around and lowered her voice. “I can,” she whispered. “Do you know the farmer’s name?”

  “Everyone knew it. A man name of Appleton, in Warren County just outside o’ Vicksburg. We was stationed near his land for three months; took regular runs over there for water and firewood and all manner o’things.”

  “Name and county’s enough address to get a letter to him.”

  “The mails ain’t runnin’ regular anywhere in the South,” Henry said. “The worse the fightin’ goes, the more the roads get cut off. And the routes that is good are full o’ thieves what steal the mailbags lookin’ for money.”

  “I still gotta try.”

  “Even tryin’s trouble. You get caught writin’ a letter— never mind sendin’ it to a white man—you’ll get whipped and sold.”

  “Maybe,” Lillie said. “But you’re a free man. You can do what you want. S’pose I write the letter but we put your name to it? You can send it from here and say you’re thinkin’ about a friend what died in the war and you won’t sleep easy till you know if he done wrong.”

  “I do a fraud like that, and I could be called for helpin’ you escape. How you reckon I’d do back on a plantation or tossed in prison with just the one leg?”

  Lillie felt herself go hot. “But you got your freedom!” she cried. “We’s still slaves and we ain’t s’posed to be, and you got your freedom! This here’s our only chance to get what’s ours before my brother gets sold off!”

  Henry regarded Lillie thoughtfully, and then sat back and rubbed his eyes. He looked tired—tired from his wound and tired from the war and tired, Lillie reckoned, from the things he’d seen there. She reflected that if her papa were alive, this was the way he’d look too. At length, Henry raised his eyes back to her and smiled wanly.

  “Your papa was right,” he said, “you is small, but you is a bull. All right, child, I’ll help you.” Lillie started to leap up and hug him, but Henry held up his hand. “Hear me, though. There’s somethin’ you got to do for me in return.” Lillie sat back down. “I got a family on the Orchard Hill plantation—wife and a boy about ten years old. I ain’t seen neither of ’em since before the war, and they think I died in the fightin’. You got to tell ’em otherwise.”

  “They wasn’t freed with you?”

  “They wasn’t even livin’ with me. We was once all together on a farm not far from here, but they got sold of
f’bout a year before I went to war. That freedom rule don’t hold for split-up families.”

  “Why’d you go fight, then?”

  “I reckoned I could come home and earn some money and buy ’em free. Before I went to fight, I asked their master and he said yes. But when I got back from the war and went to tell ’em I weren’t killed, the Master met me with a shotgun. Said I couldn’t never see ’em till I had the money to buy ’em both. He told ’em I was dead and won’t tell ’em otherwise in case they try to escape and join me.”

  “You think he’d let me talk to ’em for you?” Lillie asked.

  “Course not. But if you was there on an errand, you could get to ’em easy enough.”

  “Dangerous business, sneakin’ around like that,” Lillie said.

  “So’s sending a letter I didn’t even write,” Henry answered.

  He smiled and shrugged, and Lillie had to smile back. Henry was a smart man, and it was a fair deal he was offering, even if it was risky for both of them. She stood up and extended her hand for a shake the way she often saw adults do. Henry looked surprised and shook her hand with a laugh.

  “I’ll be back,” Lillie said with a serious expression that made her feel grown-up. “When I am, I’ll have word from your family and a letter for you to mail.”

  She sealed the bargain with a nod, then spun around and lit out for the center of town. She’d be home at Greenfog well before dark, and she’d have work to do once she got there.

  Chapter Eleven

  PSST! LITTLE CAL!”

  The voice jumped out from seemingly nowhere, and Cal himself jumped in response. The stables were a dark and quiet place after the sun went down, particularly on a night like tonight, when the moon was just a shaving of its full self, shedding little light even when there were no clouds in the sky to get in its way. Cal had been here many times after sundown and ought to have been accustomed to the complete stillness of the place. But all those times he was here with permission, having been sent by the overseer to shoo a raccoon that was spooking the horses or chase out a tomcat that was stalking a she cat. The business he was here on tonight was a whole different matter.

  “Psst! Little Cal!” came the voice again.

  Cal leapt once more, though less than before, and this time he frowned a little too. It was Cupit who was calling his name, but calling it in a way only he would. Cupit had been addressing him as Little Cal since long ago when they were both small, and back then that was a fair enough thing to call him. Cal was the younger of the pair by close to three years, and he was indeed a good deal smaller—short and feather light while Cupit was broad and stocky. In the last year, however, Cal had begun to grow fast, even if he still didn’t have much bulk on his bones. Cupit nonetheless continued to call him Little Cal, sometimes seeming to punch the first word harder than he used to, as if reminding Cal that no matter how big he grew, he’d still be the younger of the two.

  “Over here!” Cal now answered in a loud whisper that he hoped could be heard anywhere inside the stable but nowhere outside it. Swaddled in shadow the way he was, he couldn’t tell exactly where he was standing, but from the powerful smell of leather and riggings, he reckoned he was close to the harness room, which was where he was supposed to be.

  “Don’t move, boy,” Cupit said. “I’m comin’ your way.”

  Cal reached out his hand, felt a rough-hewn post and leaned against it. His eyes were starting to accustom themselves to the darkness and from around one row of stalls he saw the shadow of Cupit approaching. The older boy moved through the darkness with far greater speed and ease than Cal had earlier—not a surprise, since Cupit had been working as a stable boy for years and was well familiar with the lay of the place. It was Cupit who’d recommended meeting here tonight, knowing from experience that it was one of the spots the slave drivers and overseer patrolled least after dark. Cupit trotted up to Cal and spoke in a whisper.

  “Did anyone see you come?” he asked.

  “No,” Cal answered. “Slipped out of the cabin after the others was asleep.” Cal had a few ways of referring to George and Nelly. “The others” was one of them. “The growns” was another. He never described them as his parents.

  “Did you cut through the field like I told you to?” Cupit said.

  “Yes. Kept low, kept quiet. Didn’t run into nobody. But I didn’t see Benjy, neither.”

  “He was supposed to be here first!”

  “I know it,” Cal said.

  “I don’t like it,” Cupit answered.

  Neither boy could have been completely sure that Benjy would be here on time tonight, but the fact that he wasn’t was nonetheless a cause for worry. When Benjy was late, it was usually because he was in some kind of trouble. Benjy was the oldest of the three boys—seventeen or so by most people’s reckoning. He’d been bought from a plantation in Louisiana just two years ago, and that was the third time his ownership papers had changed hands since he was born on a farm somewhere in Kentucky well before the war began. When slaves were bought and sold so much, their true ages often got lost. However old Benjy was, he was old enough not to need any adult slaves to look after him, and he generally bedded down in the cabin of whatever family was willing to take him in for a few weeks or months at a time. When none were, he’d sleep under the stars, in the toolshed or sometimes even with the horses.

  The reason Benjy got sold so many times had to do with his temperament. He was a good-enough-natured boy when he wanted to be, which was most of the time. He worked well and he worked fast, and he always seemed happy to join other slaves in their chores when he was done with his own. It was Benjy, in fact, who’d done the most to help Cal get his wound bandaged the day he got kicked by Coal Mine. Even Cupit had hung back, too afraid of the overseer to move, until Benjy ordered him to lend a hand, lest Cal and Benjy not be there for him if he ever got hurt the same way.

  But Benjy worked best when he wasn’t being pushed. The less he was interfered with, the more he got done. Smart slave drivers learned to recognize which slaves had that trait and knew to stand aside and let them be. The problem was that smart was just what most of the slave drivers who’d had a whip-hand over Benjy had not been. Louis and Bull seemed the dimmest of all, and they never appeared quite as happy as when they were badgering Benjy about how he was working, telling him to do something one way, then the other, then deciding both were wrong and coming up with a third way. Eventually, Benjy would grow angry enough to talk out of turn or throw down his hoe and earn himself a field flogging for it—which Cal reckoned was the reason Bull and Louis bothered him in the first place. Many was the time he and Cupit tried to tell Benjy that if he really wanted to bother the slave drivers in return, the best way to do it was to hold his temper and deny them the chance to lash him. But Benjy never seemed to hear that, and it was generally believed that he’d been whipped more than any young slave who’d ever worked at Greenfog before.

  “I knew he’d be trouble tonight,” Cal said to Cupit, looking around the stable. “We shouldn’t never have allowed him to come.”

  “It was all his plan,” Cupit said. “He’s the one what gets to say who’s a part of it.”

  Before Cal could answer, there was a loud jiggling of the stable latch, followed by the sound of the door opening with a squeak and closing with a careless rattle. Cal and Cupit froze. The only people who’d be making such a racket would be the overseer—who didn’t have to care who knew he was here—or Benjy, who ought to care but wouldn’t bother if he was in a foul temper. Neither possibility pleased Cal.

  “Anyone there?” a voice whispered. It was Benjy’s.

  “Over here!” Cupit whispered.

  Benjy moved clumsily though the darkness, thumping and bumping things as he went, and finally joining the other two boys. He was out of breath as if he’d been running.

  “Woulda got here sooner,” he said, “but I nearly run into Bull. He looked drunk as a hound and sounded like one too, the way he was bayin’ at t
he sky. I had to keep ’specially low so he wouldn’t see me.”

  “You still didn’t need to slam that door!” Cupit whispered fiercely. “We get caught here, there ain’t no tellin’ the trouble.”

  Benjy waved him off. “Won’t have to worry about none o’ that soon enough. We’ll be done with this place and done with bein’ slaves too.”

  Benjy smiled and looked at Cal and Cupit, expecting them to smile back. The other boys tried, but somehow couldn’t manage. It was no secret why they were all here tonight, but until this moment, none of them had ever said it out loud in quite that way. The fact that Benjy did was both thrilling and terrifying.

  For a long time, Benjy had been whispering to Cal and Cupit about what it would be like to run away from Greenfog. There were ways it could be done, he’d say, routes through the woods where the thickets were so heavy and the swamps so muddy that no man could track them and no hound could smell them. There were people along the way who would help runaways—free blacks and other slaves who knew the route north. There were even a few whites—ladies, mostly, who lived in the South but were partial to the Union and were happy when the war came if only so all the slaves could be set loose. Naturally, talk of escape was forbidden among slaves, and whole families would be broken up and sold off one by one as punishment if a single member so much as whispered about it.

  But Benjy never seemed troubled by such things—or by most matters that caused other slaves worry. He had courage—dumb courage often enough, but courage all the same—and he knew how to talk a line. The way Benjy’s voice quickened and his eyes brightened when he spoke of escaping—the way his words painted a picture of how easy it could be—made it hard to imagine why every slave didn’t try it. Cal and Cupit knew the folly of the thing, but when Benjy was talking to them, they forgot all about it. Still, tonight, when it was more than just talk, Cal didn’t feel so sure.