Freedom Stone

by Jeffrey Kluger

  “You really reckon this is right?” he asked.

  “Righter’n it’s ever been,” Benjy answered.

  “Fall’s settin’ in hard,” Cal said. “Frost weather’s comin’.”

  “It ain’t here yet.”

  “Rain’s comin’ too, though,” Cupit said. “That cold, cuttin’ kind of rain.”

  “That’s just the kind the hounds don’t like,” Benjy answered. “They can’t track for nothin’ when they’s wet and chilled.”

  Cupit nodded, guessing that had to be true, but not knowing for sure—which was often the way it was when Benjy was telling you something.

  Benjy then turned his attention to Cal. He held the boy’s eyes fast, and he let a second or two pass. “Besides,” he said at last, “there’s Mr. Willis.”

  Cal had half expected Benjy to say that, but the mention of the name made him feel sick all the same. It was the day after Coal Mine kicked Cal in the head that the boys’ idle talk about running away had turned serious. Scary as the blow from the horse had been, the look on Lillie’s mama’s face had been worse. Mr. Willis had said he meant to kill Cal one day, but Mr. Willis said a lot of things when his temper was up, and often as not he forgot all about them. This time, though, Lillie’s mama’s face said something else. It said she heard something different in the overseer’s voice—something deadly—and Cal, truth be told, heard it too. Now, in the darkness of the barn, Benjy looked into his eyes and seemed to know what the younger boy was thinking.

  “You only thirteen, Cal,” he said. “You got a life ahead. Mr. Willis gonna end that life sure as we’re talkin’ here. And if he don’t end it, he’s gonna make you so miser’ble you’ll wish he did. You know that. I know that.”

  Cal said nothing, but he nodded.

  “He’s right, Little Cal,” Cupit added. “I seen Mr. Willis look like that only one time before, when he caught the fox what was killing the chickens after the Master made him pay for the lost birds. Proper way to kill a fox is with a pistol. Mr. Willis used a shovel—and he looked like he liked it.”

  Cal found his voice and spoke up hoarsely. “What about you?” he said to Cupit. “You ain’t the one he wants to kill, so why you wanna run?”

  Cupit shrugged. “My papa’s dead, my mama’s sickly. Don’t got no other family. Soon enough I’ll be old enough for soldierin’, and if this war keeps goin’ bad for the whites, they’ll surely get all their slaves to fight it for ’em. I’m scared o’ runnin’ away, but I’m scared more o’ war. Both can get me free, but both can get me killed; I reckon I stand a better chance runnin’.”

  “Then we’s settled on it,” Benjy said. “We go next week. There’s gonna be a Saturday slave dance at Bingham Woods. Greenfog slaves is invited.” He smiled at the other two boys. “Three of ’em ain’t coming back.”

  Cal swallowed hard. In a fortnight he’d be free. It didn’t seem possible—but when Benjy was saying it, it somehow did.

  Chapter Twelve

  IT HAD BEEN A long time since there had been a slave party at Greenfog, but Lillie and the others remembered it well. Slave parties came as often as once a month on plantations with generous masters and as rarely as never on plantations with miserly ones. Whenever they did come, they were grand affairs. The mamas and the older girls would be released from work early so that they could prepare the cornbread and spoon bread and greens and beans that would be served up in portions so generous even the hungriest slaves couldn’t finish them. The Master would provide a hog or a bunch of chickens for a big roasting that would begin hours before the dancing and feasting. Some masters would even donate a jug or two of whiskey, which would be passed around during the evening to any slave who was of age—and many who weren’t—while the overseer kept a close eye on them all to make sure no one got too loosened by the liquor to remember that at the end of the night they were all still slaves. Usually the slaves from another plantation would be invited to attend and both masters would share the expense.

  With the hard times across the South, such an expense was becoming something that masters could afford only rarely. The Master of Greenfog—whose fortunes seemed to be falling even faster than the other masters’—hadn’t allowed his slaves a party since just a week before Lillie’s papa left, and she thought about that night all the time. The morning of the party, the other slaves decided to give Papa a farewell gift and agreed that he would be the one to roast the hog—a job all the men liked to do and many of them would even argue about or wrestle over. Papa let Lillie and Plato help him with the roasting, giving them each a big wooden ladle and showing them how to spoon the sticky barbecue sauce onto the pig as it turned on the spit. When the job was done, he called them over so that they could be the first to taste the spicy-smoky-sugary flavor of the still-sizzling flesh. Lillie guessed she was about as happy that night as she’d ever been, and later, in their cabin, she told her papa so.

  “I wish every day was a slave party day,” she said.

  “No you don’t,” Papa answered, with a frown that surprised her.

  “But they’s the most fun we ever have,” Lillie said.

  “That’s why I don’t like ’em. A slave thinkin’ ’bout a party is a slave forgettin’ she’s a slave,” Papa said. “The masters don’t give us nothin’ they don’t reckon they have to, child. Parties is one way they keep you where you is and stop you from wantin’ to be somewhere else.”

  Lillie never did look at a slave party the same way after that—but she never quit feeling the thrill of them either. She learned about the Bingham Woods party the day after she returned from Bluffton, and even with thoughts of her visit there crowding her mind, her heart jumped at the news. At the last party, Cal had seemed close to asking her to dance, and Lillie reasoned that now that he had grown up a bit, he might find the spine to do it. Later that day, she ran across Cal near the slave cabins, talking to the boys Benjy and Cupit.

  “Heard ’bout the dance?” she asked. She called it a dance rather than a party, reckoning that might put ideas in his head.

  “Heard about it, yeah,” he mumbled.

  “You ain’t gonna go?” she asked.

  “Don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.” Then, oddly, he looked toward Benjy. “Yeah, I guess we is,” he answered finally.

  “We’s goin’,” Benjy said quickly, and gave her a big smile. “We’s all goin’. I expect we’ll see you there too.”

  “I expect,” Lillie said. She looked at Cal—who wouldn’t meet her gaze—then she walked away shaking her head. Just like boys, she thought. Nice as you please till they get around one another and start thinking they’ve got to act tough.

  After that, the business of the slave dance went mostly out of Lillie’s head, allowing the more serious business of her bargain with Henry to flood back. Henry himself might not have believed that any letter Lillie mailed to Mississippi could make it through Southern roads that were being torn up by the war, but she was still determined to try. The job of actually writing the letter, at least, would not be all that difficult a business.

  Slaves were not allowed to possess paper or pens, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have them anyway. There was plenty of paper to be found on a plantation—from the coarse brown wrapping paper that was used to protect breakables when they were stored in trunks to the fine white rice paper that the house slaves would use when they wrapped the Missus’s silks to the creamy, smooth writing paper the Missus herself would use and simply discard if she was composing a letter and the ink splattered from her pen. All the paper could be collected from the rubbish and saved by slaves who would use it to draw pictures or practice their letters. Pens were easy enough to make, simply by plucking goose quills or sharpening sticks and dipping them into ink made of blackberry or wildberry juice. Slaves who could draw—and the few who could write—kept plenty of used paper and berry ink on hand but hidden, and the white families themselves sometimes relied on the same inventiveness as the war prevented the delivery of good paper
and India ink. More and more, the Confederate mail was filled with brown-paper letters penned in runny blue juice.

  Lillie had long kept her own pen and supply of paper hidden away, and even made herself a dried mud ink-pot with a tight-fitting lid, about the size of a lady’s rouge pot. The overseer would flog her fierce if he found such forbidden things, but no one had discovered her secret yet, and now she reckoned she could make good use of it.

  More worrisome than the matter of the letter was the matter of honoring the other part of the bargain she’d struck with Henry—sneaking onto the Orchard Hill plantation to tell his family he was fine and free. In the excitement of having found him in Bluffton, she was ready to promise him anything at all, but even before she got home that day, she’d begun to wonder how she could manage such a thing. The trip from Greenfog to Orchard Hill was not a long one—provided you were going by carriage over open roads. But it took a good deal longer if you were making the same trip by foot, and longer still if you had to avoid the roads and pick your way through the woods, as any slave who was traveling somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be traveling would have to do. The only way Lillie could make the journey safely would be if she were sent there on an errand. But no such errand existed, and even if it did, there was no reason to think she’d be the one chosen for it. Years had gone by between the only two trips she’d ever made to Bluffton—and that was a place a wagon from Greenfog visited all the time. Lillie could be an old woman before she’d ever see Orchard Hill.

  It was only late that night when she was lying awake in bed that an answer came to her, and that answer was the slave party. The slaves were always taken to parties by three wagons—the children in one, the adults in the other two. Leaving Greenfog, they’d travel straight for a time until they reached a fork in the road. As Bett had mentioned on their trip to Bluffton when they passed the same fork, the left-hand road led to Bingham Woods, the right-hand one led to Orchard Hill. All she would have to do would be to climb aboard the children’s wagons, slip out at the turnoff, and run the rest of the way to Orchard Hill on her own. If she stayed low and kept to the shadows, she just might get where she was going with nobody seeing her.

  There were problems with the plan, of course—though the matter of jumping off the wagon was actually not one of them. The children’s wagon would probably be the third in the line that night, as it usually was, which would make it easier for Lillie to slip off without any adults seeing her. The other children would be a different matter, but if Lillie could find some way to persuade them to stay quiet, no one else needed to know what she’d done.

  The more serious problem was one of time. When the party began and the slaves from the two plantations mingled, it would be a while before Mama would notice Lillie missing, since the adults and the children went their own ways and did their own dancing, almost as if they were at two different parties. But Mama had a sharp eye and at some point in the evening would surely come looking for her. Somehow, Lillie would have to get to Orchard Hill, find Henry’s family, tell them what she’d come to tell them and get back to Bingham Woods before anyone realized she’d been gone. If she arrived too late, she might miss the wagon home altogether. If that happened, she’d have a lot more than just Mama to worry about.

  But there might, Lillie figured, be an answer to all that. It was true that she could run only so fast; and it was just as true that there were only a certain number of hours in any evening. But not every hour, she’d lately learned, had to un-spool at the same speed as every other.

  It was time, Lillie reckoned, to pay another call on Bett.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE COMMOTION COMING from Bett’s cabin could be heard halfway across the tobacco field. Lillie was the only one in the field at the time, this being a Saturday afternoon—exactly one week before the dance at Bingham Woods—and the field thus being empty of anyone else. Saturdays were workdays at Greenfog but, as on most plantations, the quitting horn sounded early, just after what was usually the lunch break. The slaves had the rest of the day and all Sunday free, and the plantation was usually a quiet place during that easy stretch. Now the peace was being broken by what sounded like men arguing—two of them, Lillie guessed, though there could have been more. They sounded angry enough to be close to blows.

  Lillie had not yet had a chance to speak to Bett about her plans for the night of the slave party, and she had been hoping today would be the day. As soon as Mama let her leave the cabin that morning, she lit out as fast as she could. When she heard the arguing coming from Bett’s, she began to run even faster. All the slaves liked and minded Bett and would take care that no harm ever came to her if they could help it. While some believed she was a charm worker and others thought that was just Ibo foolishness, none were willing to test the point by crossing her. All the same, angry, shouting men could easily lose their heads, and if they broke into a fight, there was no telling who could get bumped in the brawling.

  As Bett’s cabin came into view, Lillie could see that there was a small crowd gathered, surrounding what was indeed a pair of men, squaring off against one another. The first man was Evers, a plow worker; the second was Nate, a hauler who baled and lifted cotton and tobacco. Both men were strong, with muscled arms that seemed ready to pop the stitches of their shirts and necks almost as wide as a horse’s. Evers was the younger by what might be ten years. He had a temper on him, but he rarely showed it. Nate, on the other hand, could be flat mean. He knew his strength and was not afraid to use it to get what he wanted. When Evers or any other slave had been wronged, it was as fair a bet as any that Nate had done the wronging.

  The two men stood face-to-face barely inches apart, shouting and pointing. Nate appeared to have something in his right hand, though Lillie couldn’t quite make out what it was. Bett, standing in her doorway with her arms folded, watched along with the others. If she feared any danger from the two snorting men, she didn’t show it. Lillie hurried up to the group and could at last make out what was being said.

  “—made it myself!” Evers was shouting. “You don’t think I recognize somethin’ I worked with my own hands?”

  “No proof you made it, ’cept your word,” Nate shouted back.

  “My word and Lucy’s!”

  “Lucy’s your wife. Any woman’ll lie for her man!”

  “My wife ain’t no liar!”

  “And I ain’t no thief!”

  Lillie looked closer at what Nate had in his hand and could now see that it was a necklace—and a fine one too. It was made of strands of cotton cord dyed red and green and braided up prettily. Hanging from it was a shiny, coin-sized disk the color of rich honey. Lillie had seen these kinds of amulets before, though this appeared to be one of the finest. It was made from a peach pit, sanded down and rubbed smooth, then stained with oil and varnish. Lucy was known to own such a necklace, and Evers was known to be a handy man, one who would know how to make such a lovely thing. If Nate had a necklace like it in his hand, he might well have stolen it—but maybe not. When one slave man made a gift for his wife, others were likely to copy it, lest their wives grow cross that they weren’t being treated as kindly. It was possible that Nate had made a peach jewel too—though with his clumsy hands and surly ways, he didn’t seem the sort.

  Evers and Nate kept circling and shouting, now moving so close that they sprayed spittle into each other’s face with every angry word. Nate puffed up his chest and bumped Evers’s; Evers puffed his chest and bumped back. They were sure to exchange swings any second, and other men in the circle began moving forward to pull them apart. Before they could, Bett spoke out in a surprisingly strong voice.

  “Don’t matter who’s tellin’ the truth if one o’ you’s dead inside o’ the hour,” she said. The men didn’t respond, so she spoke even louder. “I said it don’t matter who’s tellin’ the truth if one o’ you’s dead inside the hour.”

  That time the men heard, stopped and turned.

  “What’re you sayin’, old woman
?” Nate asked.

  “I got a way to settle the question, but it’ll kill one o’ you sure—the one what’s lyin’. The one speakin’ true will be fine.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ that’ll do such a thing,” Nate said.

  “But there is,” Bett answered. “And I got it. It’s an Ibo powder, from Africa. Mix it up in a mug with water drawn from a stream. A truth-tellin’ man can drink as much as he wants and no harm’ll come to him; a liar dies. I’ll go fetch some.”

  Bett turned to enter her cabin, and all the slaves but Nate and Evers—who stood uncertainly where they were—crowded toward her to follow. She turned back and held up her hand and the crowd stepped back. Bett vanished inside and returned a moment later with a brown mug and a small bag about the size of a tobacco pouch. As the other slaves watched, she walked slowly to her stream, eased herself down to her knees and dipped the mug into the water. She held it up, looked at it disapprovingly and spilled the water onto the ground. She did the same thing twice more, as if the water wasn’t quite right. Then she got a mugful that seemed to please her. She climbed back to her feet and returned to the group.

  “Didn’t never think I’d get it cool enough nor clear enough,” she said. “Wrong kind o’ water, and the powder won’t work.”

  As the crowd stayed silent, Bett gestured toward Nate and Evers to step forward. They obeyed, Nate still holding the necklace in his hand, though now he held it absently by his side. Bett looked over the crowd, spotted Lillie and summoned her too.

  “Hold the water, child,” Bett said.

  Lillie came forward, took the mug and Bett opened the bag. She tipped it over and shook it gently. A stream of white powder flowed into the water and instantly produced a hissing sound. The crowd jumped back, and Lillie felt a fine spray of mist on her face and her hand. She backed away too, holding the cup out in front of her.

  “Stay still, child,” Bett said. “It can’t hurt you. Just take care not to drop it.”