Freedom Stone

by Jeffrey Kluger

  “I didn’t think you was comin’,” the girl whispered.

  “I didn’t neither,” the boy said. “I couldn’t get left alone long enough to get away.”

  He looked at the girl for a moment and then, with a suddenness that caused Lillie to jump, took hold of her fast and hard. Lillie thought that the girl would scream, but the girl didn’t scream. Instead she grabbed the boy in return, and they fell into a long kiss. The boy’s arms wrapped easily around the girl’s back, and her arms held him tight. Lillie’s eyes went wide and she emerged a bit from behind the tree, forgetting herself entirely. She watched the boy and the girl, whose kiss went on longer than she had known a kiss could—forgetting for a moment that every second it did go on took her a second further away from finding Henry’s family, and brought her a second closer to getting caught, flogged and sold. The boy and girl broke once for a breath, exchanged a whispered word Lillie couldn’t hear, followed by a giggle, and then kissed some more.

  There was no telling how long they would have gone on like that if a door hadn’t suddenly banged open two cabins away. The sound of the thing made all three of them jump, and the wedge of low light it threw across the grass seemed as startling as daylight. Lillie turned toward the sound and the light and then turned back to the boy and the girl. The boy was already gone, vanishing as completely as if he’d never been there at all. The girl lingered against the cabin wall, smoothing her hair and her clothes and catching her breath. Then she disappeared back around the side of the cabin. There was a second little wedge of light as she creaked the door open and slipped back inside.

  Lillie herself still could not move, and she felt a wave of panic, suddenly imagining herself having to hide behind this tree all night until tomorrow morning when the sun finally rose and she was exposed. She shook off the thought and turned back to the other cabin, where the door still stood wide. A little boy who appeared to be about three years old appeared, hopping anxiously on one foot and then the other and looking back over his shoulder. Lillie recognized that hop from just a few years ago, when Plato was learning to get through the night without wetting his bed and would sometimes wait too long before realizing how badly he needed to use the privy. Behind the boy, a papa now appeared.

  “Go, boy, go,” he said. “B’fore you do your business here.”

  “It’s dark, Papa,” the boy said, looking fearfully out at the tiny privy house, which stood perhaps thirty yards away, but might as well have been in another county to a child of three.

  “It’s night; it’s s’posed to be dark,” the papa said. “And you’re near four; you’re s’posed to be able to do this on your own.” He reached down and swatted the boy gently on the bottom. “Go,” he said again.

  The boy hesitated a second more, then put his head down and sprinted across the grass. Lillie heard the privy door swing open and shut as the boy vanished inside. A few moments later, it swung open again, and the boy sprinted back across the grass.

  “I did it! I did it! I did it!” he said. He ran to his papa, who stood in the doorway and scooped him up in his arms. He kissed the child, went back inside and closed the door.

  Lillie stood staring in the darkness, her mind suddenly filled with memories of how she and Papa and Mama would take turns standing guard in just the same way while Plato would pluck up his courage to dash through the night, and Papa would wait to pick him up and swing him about happily when he finished in the privy and came running back. She forced the thought out of her head and squinted back into the dark, her eyes still holding a ghost image of the wedge of gold light and the faint, illuminated shapes of the trees and other cabins standing nearby. She was surprised at how well the picture still lingered. And as she thought of that, she clapped her hand over her mouth and her eyes once again went wide. On the door of the very next cabin there was a large scrap of black cloth. It was knotted up in such a way that it appeared it was once a bow, but the wind and rain had caused it to go limp and undone. Nonetheless, there was no doubt what its meaning had once been: It was a mourning ribbon, just like the one that had been on Lillie’s family’s cabin. Someone who’d lived here was dead—had died a few months ago from the look of the bow, or just about the time her papa had died. That was also the time that Henry’s family would have been given the news that he wasn’t coming home—but not been given the news that it was because he’d been wounded and freed, not killed.

  Lillie stepped out from the protection of the tree, crossed the soft, wet grass and approached the cabin. The light coming from the window was almost too faint to see, but just enough to guide her. She climbed the tiny plank porch of the house, knocked once and then again, her hand rustling the black cloth as she did. The door opened. A woman about Lillie’s mama’s age stood there. A boy who looked to be about ten years old stood peering out from behind her. The woman looked at Lillie’s unfamiliar face, and her own face showed fear.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  Lillie didn’t answer that question. “I seen Henry,” she said instead.

  “What?” the woman asked, barely able to get out the word.

  “I seen him,” Lillie said. “He’s alive.”

  The woman fainted where she stood.

  “Mama!” her boy exclaimed.

  Chapter Seventeen

  THE AIR INSIDE the parlor of the Bingham Woods Big House was warm and suffocating—much warmer and more suffocating than Sarabeth had thought it would be. The windows were closed against the mosquitoes outside, and her autumn party clothes, while suited to the month, were not suited to the actual weather, which was still summery. Sarabeth’s mother liked to tell her that ladies don’t sweat, and while Sarabeth had often tried to abide by that rule, she’d never had much luck at it. She certainly wasn’t having any this evening.

  As difficult as it was to tolerate the heat, it was harder still to take the boredom. Sarabeth had known she wouldn’t be invited into the library with the masters tonight, but she’d thought at least she’d be visiting with the plantation Missus, eating cakes and sipping teas and touring the Big House rooms—the kind of social call that never looked like a great deal of fun when her mother did it, but at least felt grown-up. The Missus herself, however, didn’t consider Sarabeth quite grown-up enough and wanted no part of having to spend her evening entertaining a thirteen-year-old child.

  What made things even worse was that Sarabeth was not the only child visiting the grand home tonight. The Master of Bingham Woods had decided that as long as he’d be hosting the Master of Greenfog this evening, he might as well invite the families from some of the other surrounding plantations too. This would give the men a chance to smoke and drink, the women a chance to tour the rooms and the children—including Sarabeth—a chance to play together, an opportunity they did not get often enough.

  All the children—Sarabeth included—were thus instructed to spend the evening in the parlor in the care of a plantation nanny. They were not permitted to wander the house lest they break things, nor wander the grounds, lest they interfere with the slave party and distract the whip men trying to keep order. The door to the parlor was kept closed, and what made that confinement especially cruel for Sarabeth was that most of the children imprisoned inside with her were boys and the few who were girls appeared to be no older than five. The boys were wild little creatures—wrestling, racing, fighting, tumbling, ignoring the toy carriages, wooden horses and piles of building logs the nanny gave them to play with, except when one of them would take it into his head to throw them at another. Sarabeth could always abide Cody, but Cody was her little brother and he adored her. She had often wondered if she could bear a small boy whose savage nature wasn’t softened in such a way. Now she knew: she couldn’t.

  The nanny, who was a slave about Sarabeth’s mother’s age, was working hard keeping the boys well fed on cakes and other treats and appeared to be trying to get them so stuffed they’d grow sleepy and doze off. Sarabeth declined the food, hoping to make it as clear as poss
ible that while she was held in the room with the dreadful children, she was certainly not to be counted as one of them.

  At length, Sarabeth decided she could take no more of the heat and the tedium and the noise of the boys. She rose from the settee and walked to the window. The nanny—who was busy picking up a small, round table and a heavy crystal snifter the boys had just knocked over—did not notice her. Sarabeth flung open the window and poked her head outside. The light nighttime breeze was far fresher than the thick, cottony air filling the room, and she longed to be outside where she could feel it better. She cocked her head and could just make out the voices of the slaves and that music they made by slapping themselves and stamping their feet. It sounded strange and dangerous—and oddly exciting. It was certainly better than the din of the parlor. She listened for a moment longer and frowned. The slaves were enjoying themselves, the fathers were enjoying themselves, even the horrible boys in the parlor were enjoying themselves. Sarabeth was the only one who wasn’t enjoying herself tonight. She turned and strode to the parlor door, and with that, the nanny at last noticed her.

  “Miss Sarabeth, Miss Sarabeth,” she said, hurrying over with a piece of broken toy in her hand. “Is there somethin’ I can git you?”

  “Nothing,” Sarabeth said.

  “Does you need to use the house privy?”

  “I’ll look after myself if I need to use the privy,” Sarabeth said. “I just need a walk.”

  “Your daddy said you wasn’t to leave the house.”

  “I’ll stay inside and tour the rooms.”

  “Your daddy said you wasn’t to leave this room.”

  “Well, my daddy isn’t the one talking to you now, is he?” Sarabeth snapped.

  “No’m.”

  “Do you want to ask him? Do you want to walk in there and disturb the masters?” Sarabeth gestured past the closed door in the direction of the library.

  “No’m.”

  “And you can’t very well chase after me and leave the children alone if I go.”

  “No’m,” the nanny said. A loud bang sounded behind her as the boys once again knocked over the table and snifter. The nanny flinched.

  “Very well, then,” Sarabeth said, smoothing her dress and tossing her hair. “I will take a walk then—outside the house if I choose to—and I will return shortly.” She reached for the door.

  “Miss Sarabeth!” the nanny cried, loudly enough to startle her.

  “What is it?” Sarabeth snapped back.

  “At least take your wrap, Miss.” She hurried over to the settee where Sarabeth had been sitting and snatched up the silk shoulder covering that her mother had made her bring with her against the night chill. The nanny brought it back and Sarabeth put it on. Then she opened the door, walked out and shut it smartly behind her.

  Standing in the hallway, Sarabeth could now hear the voices of the fathers coming from the library across the hall and smell the tobacco smoke seeping out from under the door. She wondered if it had been such a good idea to close the parlor door as loudly as she had. If her father came out to see what the disturbance was, the grand airs that had worked so well with the nanny would be of no use to her at all. She slipped out the front door as quietly as she could.

  On the porch of the great white Big House, Sarabeth looked around herself and inhaled the early autumn air. She could smell the heavy scent of barbecue from somewhere off to her left and could hear the music flowing toward her even more clearly. To her right, she could detect the subtler smell of freshly cut crops—a tell-tale sign that the first part of the harvest had begun. From one direction was the faint scent produced by the slaves’ labor; from the other was the richer scent produced by their joy. She stepped off the porch and turned toward the joy.

  Sarabeth approached the party cautiously, realizing she had no business being there. The slaves would react awkwardly and formally to her, as they did more and more the older she got. The whip men would react quickly, hurrying over to her and insisting that she return to the Big House straightaway, if only for her own safety. Sarabeth knew these things would happen, but nonetheless felt irresistibly drawn to the dance—the music and the smells and the laughing voices seeming to hook her and reel her toward them. She picked up her pace and felt the urge to kick off her tightly laced shoes, and she might have too if she hadn’t known she’d soil her stockings in the grass and dirt. Instead she bounded clumsily ahead, trying as best she could to hold her balance and stay upright. Finally, she drew close enough to the party that she could actually make out the faces of the slaves—distinguishing between the familiar ones of Greenfog and the unfamiliar ones of Bingham Woods.

  For all of her thirteen years, the Greenfog slaves had worked for Sarabeth’s family, served her family, obeyed her family—and Sarabeth had pitied them their lot. But tonight, she pitied herself. The lives the slaves were living may have been terrible, but she did envy them this evening. Without another thought, she tossed off her scarf and ran even faster toward the party.

  Chapter Eighteen

  LILLIE’S VISIT WITH Henry’s family was a brief one. The slave cabins were closely watched at Orchard Hill, and while families were free to mingle and talk after the children went to sleep, the overseer conducted regular patrols to make sure no drinking or other forbidden activity was going on. There was nothing more strictly forbidden than harboring a runaway from another plantation, and a slave who broke that rule would be severely flogged and likely sold. No matter how big or wonderful the news was that Lillie was bringing, she thus had to share it quickly, whisper it quietly and then leave as soon as she could.

  Lillie did not know how Henry’s wife and boy would react to what she came to tell them, but once the moment was over, she knew she’d never forget it: how they didn’t believe Henry was alive at first; how they wept with happiness when they did come to believe it; how they asked and asked when they could see him; how they wept again when they thought of the suffering he’d endured.

  “Does it hurt him—the place the leg was?” the wife kept asking.

  “No, it don’t,” Lillie answered, having no idea if that were true or not, but sparing the woman more cause for tears.

  “Does he think about us?”

  “He don’t seem to think ’bout nothin’ else.”

  Even as Lillie was bringing them such joy, she felt a familiar sadness rising inside her. What Henry’s family was feeling, after all, was a happiness she and Mama and Plato would never know. Papa was dead—well and forever dead—and no strange slave girl was going to come knocking on their door late one night to tell them otherwise. When Henry’s wife was done with her questions and told Lillie she’d best go, she felt strangely relieved. The two of them exchanged a long, teary hug, then Henry’s wife peered out the window to make sure no one was prowling and opened the door a crack.

  “Go,” she said. “Go fast—and be safe!” Lillie slipped outside, looked around and made a quick sprint through the soft grass and into the cover of the woods.

  With the magic of the oven and the stone now gone and nothing but her own legs to carry her back to Bingham Woods, Lillie suddenly felt all the fear she’d been spared during her charmed run to Orchard Hill. The road between the plantations was filled with the same bats and slave catchers and chilling darkness as before, but she could no longer outrun or sidestep or breeze past them. She was just an ordinary slave girl, out at night when she wasn’t supposed to be—a runaway child who was breaking the law and would pay dearly if she was caught.

  Picking through the thin patch of dark woods, she quickly came back upon the road and looked far down it in the direction of Bingham Woods—or as far down it as the black of the night would allow. She took a few steps and winced at the sound her feet made against the dirt and stones. When she was running here under the spell of the baking, she had made no such noise. She had felt as if she were practically flying—as if little more than her toe-tips were grazing the road. Now that she heard how loud a road it could be wh
en you truly trod on it, she reckoned she had been correct.

  All the same, Lillie had to run, and she set off as fast and as light-footedly as she could. Her legs, she noticed, ached terribly, surely from the hard work they’d done bringing her here. At the same time, they had an odd tingliness about them—a little like the crackle in the wind that could make her hair stand up before a lightning storm. She liked the feeling and idly wondered if it would last—if maybe it was something the charm had left with her forever.

  Lillie was beginning to make good speed. When she looked down, the light of the moon revealed streaks and scattered pebbles in the soil below her feet, which she reckoned were the tracks she’d left as she was coming in the other direction. It made her smile and reassured her that she was going the right way. All at once, however, she snapped her head to the right and her blood ran icy. She was sure she’d seen a flicker of light deep in the woods—the same light she’d seen from the torches of the slave catchers earlier. She stopped cold, almost losing her footing and risking making even more noise as she fell into the road, but she caught her balance and held her ground.

  She scanned about, with her breath catching. The woods in these parts were full of fireflies, Lillie told herself. She’d seen them; she and Plato had even hunted them. That was surely all she had noticed. Then, with a deep sense of relief, she saw the unmistakable cool blue light of one of the little creatures hovering right in front of her. She allowed herself a nervous laugh; she’d been a fool girl after all! No sooner had she thought that, however, than her laugh stopped cold in her throat. Further away, deep among the trees, she saw the equally unmistakable orange-yellow light of a fire. And it was a fire that moved in the bobbing way of a torch being carried by a person. Behind it was a second fire, moving the same way. It was indeed the slave catchers—and they were on the move. Lillie felt fit to swoon, but stayed collected and bounded over to the far side of the road, where she threw herself down in the dirt.