A Perilous Proposal

by Michael Phillips

  “I . . . think we will not need a coffin, Jake,” she said after a moment. “Is the hole plenty deep?”

  “Sumthin’ like three er fo feet, ma’am.”

  “That should be fine—thank you. Just put . . . my, uh, my husband to rest as he is.”

  “Yes’m. Shud I cover him, ma’am?”

  “Yes, Jake, that will be fine.”

  “Duz you want ter say a few words, ma’am, or shud I jes’ go ahead?”

  “Go ahead, Jake. I don’t think I can stand to see his face again . . . like . . . like he is. I will be along in a few minutes.”

  Jake left the house and returned to the small family plot. As he was filling the grave and covering it over with the last of the dirt, he heard steps behind him.

  He set the shovel aside as Mrs. Dawson came and stood beside him. They stood in silence for several minutes. Slowly Samantha came from somewhere and stood silently beside her mother.

  “God bless you, John Dawson,” said his wife at length. “You were a man who never learned to give your anger to the God who made you. In the end it cost you your own life—”

  At the words, Jake’s head jerked toward her. But he remained silent.

  “—but you were a good husband,” she went on without noticing. “I never went hungry. You were gentle and kind to me, and though you would rage and fuss about so many things, you never raised your voice or your hand at me. I loved you when I first met you, and I loved you when I woke up this morning. For all your faults . . . I never stopped loving you.”

  She choked on her words and began sobbing again. Slowly she knelt to the ground and gently placed her face near the fresh-turned earth, then whispered again, “Oh, John . . . I love you.”

  Several minutes more she remained kneeling at the side of the grave, then slowly rose.

  Crying herself now, Samantha went to her knees, gently reached out her hand, and placed her palm on the fresh dirt. “Good-bye, Daddy . . . I love you too.”

  For the rest of the afternoon, Jake tried to keep his distance. He did not want to intrude. A couple hours later, Mrs. Dawson approached him where he sat beside the barn.

  “Would you like something to eat, Jake?” she said.

  “Dat I would, ma’am. Dat’s right kind ob you. I ain’t had much ob nuthin’ fo two days.”

  “Come inside, then,” she said. “I’ve been trying to clean up a little. I’ve got some meat and cheese and milk and bread and fruit on the table.”

  Jake followed her to the house.

  “What should we do about the two men?” she asked as they walked.

  “Dere any lawmen in dese parts?” Jake asked, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to put himself anywhere near a white man’s jail.

  “Our sheriff was killed in the war. Him and so many others. . . . No one’s taken his place.”

  “Well, I can’t kill dem, ma’am. But you ain’t safe so long as de’re here. Dat is . . . less you’d like ter kill ’em, ma’am. I wudn’t have no objections.”

  “I couldn’t possibly do that,” said Mrs. Dawson with a shudder.

  “Neither could I, ma’am.”

  They walked into the kitchen. Mrs. Dawson told Jake to sit down. She put a plate in front of him. Jake’s teenage appetite was ferocious, and he set about the provisions in front of him without delay.

  “Can’t you take them someplace, Jake?” asked Mrs. Dawson.

  “Where, ma’am?” he asked, his mouth half full of a chunk of bread.

  “I don’t know, somewhere out in the woods . . . somewhere far away.”

  “I don’t want dem chasing me down an’ killin’ me, ma’am.”

  “No, of course not—that’s not what I meant. Couldn’t we put them in a cart or wagon and haul them miles away and leave them?”

  “What’s ter keep ’em from comin’ back an’ doin’ more mischief?”

  “Yes, you’re right . . . then what are we going to do with them?”

  In the end, the plan they hatched was not without risk but was the best they could think of short of simply murdering them.

  That evening, Jake hitched up a small wagon and loaded the two men, tied as tight as he could bind them, along with their dead friend, into the back of it. Just before dark that same night, he blindfolded them just as tight, then he set out with Mrs. Dawson at his side. They left the farm, moving south. As the night progressed, with Mrs. Dawson guiding Jake with silent directions, all the while speaking many misleading clues as to their route and various landmarks along the way, they gradually made their way in a wide arc until their actual direction was due north. Having grown up in the region, Mrs. Dawson knew every inch of the territory for miles. By the time they reached one of the ridges of the Cumberland about six miles as the crow flew from her home, she was confident they would need a magician to find their way back.

  She motioned Jake to circle a few times, then stop. The night had been long, and the day preceding it even longer. She was exhausted. But the long hours of darkness had given her the chance to dwell somewhat upon her own thoughts concerning the tragedy that had overtaken her.

  Jake dragged the dead body out onto the ground, then pulled out the two black men, shoved them onto the ground, and removed their blindfolds.

  They squinted in the moonlight. At last they began to see the dim form of Mrs. Dawson standing over them.

  “I am going to leave the two of you here with your friend,” she said. “If you can get yourselves free, then God help you. If you can’t, dying on this mountain is no more than you deserve. I will spend the rest of my life praying to be able to forgive you for what you have done. I don’t know whether I will succeed or not, but perhaps the Lord’s grace will give me strength. But be assured of this, I know how to use my husband’s guns. If I ever see either of you at my home again, I will shoot you dead. God be merciful to your souls.”

  She turned and climbed back up beside Jake on the wagon. He flicked the reins and they rattled off into the night, heading north, listening to vile shouts and profanities and threats behind them. When she judged that they were out of earshot, Mrs. Dawson directed Jake how to make his way again in a wide circle. At length they found the road south that led them back in the direction of her home.

  RESPITE

  24

  IT WAS ONLY TWO OR THREE HOURS BEFORE DAYBREAK when Jake and Mrs. Dawson again rode into the yard of the home that had been visited by death and tragedy the day before. Mercifully Bess Dawson was exhausted. Sleep overcame her almost before she collapsed on her bed.

  Jake unhitched the team, then sought his former bed of straw in the barn. He did not wake until nearly noon. He found Mrs. Dawson in the kitchen, red-eyed again but strong, as women of all eras have had to be in times of death.

  “I reckon I, uh . . . oughter be movin’ along,” said Jake. “Duz you mind ef I cud hab jes’ a little somethin’ ter eat afore I go?”

  “Of course not, Jake,” she replied with a sad smile. “I will put you up a few things.”

  She paused and a strange look came over her face.

  “Do you . . . do you have to go, Jake?” she asked after a moment.

  “Uh, I don’t know, ma’am . . . I don’t reckon, but . . . wha’chu mean?”

  “Only that . . . I would be,” she began, seemingly embarrassed, “—that is . . . my husband was mending a stretch of fence he was concerned about, and . . . I’m frightened of those men, and . . .”

  She stopped and looked away. For a Southerner to ask for the help of a Negro was about the worst form of degradation imaginable. But being married to John Dawson for more than twenty years had done much to wear away whatever pride might once have existed in the heart of Bess Dawson. She was not above asking a near stranger for help. After what had happened, she saw Jake not as a black but as a fellow human being whom she needed, and maybe whom she could help a little too. How could they consider themselves strangers after what they had been through together?

  “Actually the truth is,” sh
e struggled to go on, “I would . . . I’d be obliged if . . . if you would stay for a while, Jake. I could give you jobs to do . . . it would be a big help to me.”

  Jake nodded. “No, ma’am,” he said, “I ain’t got ter go—I ain’t in no hurry ter git anywheres. I don’t eben rightly know where I’m going anyway.”

  Mrs. Dawson sighed, in obvious relief. “Then sit down and have something to eat.”

  Jake remained at the Dawson farm a month.

  What Samantha Dawson thought of the arrangement she never said. But Jake suspected well enough from the way she looked at him that she was anything but pleased. Her father’s brutal death, however, as well as her own close brush with what would likely have ended in her own, had moderated her anger toward him. She was proud and arrogant, but not completely stupid. She knew that what her mother had said after slapping her across the face was true. Jake had saved their lives, and possibly protected her from rape and becoming the mother of a colored baby. If she would never be capable of actually thanking him, that knowledge at least allowed her to tolerate him.

  Mending the broken fence turned Jake’s thoughts toward his own mother and what had happened back at the Winegaard plantation. And the secret . . . the terrible secret that no one knew . . . the secret that haunted him . . . tormented him with the guilt of Cain. Was he too destined forever to be a wanderer . . . running from his past, trying to escape what he could never escape—the hidden evil within his own self?

  He threw down the hammer in his hands and clasped his palms to his ears, desperately trying to silence the accusing voice. But it could not be stopped. For it was the voice of his own conscience.

  In turmoil he walked back toward the farmhouse several hours later, relieved to have the day of inner conflict behind him.

  He found Samantha Dawson alone in the kitchen.

  “Mama’s gone into town,” she said as Jake entered and removed his cap. “She told me to give you something to eat.—Here,” she said, setting a dish down on the table in front of him.

  Jake thanked her and sat down. Another place was set at the table, but she made no move to join him. Finally Jake spooned out a portion of stew and began to eat.

  “You gwine eat anythin’, miss?” he asked.

  “I’m waiting for my mama,” she replied, her back turned.

  Jake ate a minute or two in silence.

  “Why’d you lie about me, Miz Dawson?” he said after several slow and thoughtful mouthfuls. “Before, I mean . . . when I wuz here wiff da soldiers. Why’d you say I dun what you an’ I bof know I didn’t do?”

  “Why do you think?” she said, slowly turning around. “Because you’re colored.”

  “But why’d dat make you tell a lie ’bout me?”

  “It wasn’t really a lie.”

  “Wha’chu mean by dat?”

  “It’s the kind of thing you might have done.”

  “How kin you say dat? You neber seen me afore dat.”

  “You’re colored. Your kind does evil things.”

  “I neber touched a girl wrong in my life,” said Jake.

  “Well, you probably would have if you’d had the chance. Colored people smell different and rape people and say coarse things and don’t talk right and act like animals.”

  Jake stared at her in disbelief.

  “Where’d you learn such nonsense as all dat? I doubt you eber eben knowed a colored person. You learn all dat from yo daddy?”

  “Where I learned it’s none of your business.”

  “Do you hate me now, Miz Dawson?” Jake asked.

  “I don’t know—maybe not now.”

  “But you still think dose things ’bout me?”

  “You’re colored. What else can I think?”

  “Are you afraid ob me, den?”

  “No,” she replied with a hint of a smile.

  “Ef blacks do all dat you say, den you must be terrified ob me.”

  “I keep a gun in my room,” she said. “If you try to come in, I’ll shoot you. Mama doesn’t know. Daddy always said she was too soft-hearted for her own good. So when you and she weren’t looking I took one of those dead men’s guns and I’ve got it hidden if I need it.”

  Stunned, Jake stared back at the young woman.

  “Why haven’t you killed me, den? You’s had plenty ob chances.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because you’re helping Mama. And you did chase those men away, and I suppose that counts for something.”

  “But not enuff ter make you see dat I’m a normal person jes’ like you?”

  She laughed as if he were a child.

  “But you’re not like me. We’re nothing alike. I’m white, you’re colored.”

  “So colored folks can’t neber be the same in yo eyes, no matter what dey be like on da inside, is dat it?”

  “Of course not,” she laughed. “Everybody knows that. Even slaves know they can never really be like white people.”

  “Dere aren’t no mo slaves, Miz Dawson. I’s free now too.”

  “I heard something about that. But that can’t make you be like me, not ever.”

  Not reassured by her words and the disclosure about the gun, Jake made himself a new bed in the loft of the barn for the remainder of his stay. He did not want to be quite so accessible in case she changed her mind about tolerating his presence for her mother’s sake.

  He began making plans to complete enough of the work around the place so that Mrs. Dawson could get by, and then he’d move on. Samantha’s mother would gladly have hired him as a permanent hand, for he had shown himself capable and trustworthy. But knowing her daughter kept a pistol under her pillow, or in the drawer of her nightstand or wherever it was, was all the convincing Jake needed that he could have no future here.

  And he had not forgotten his mother’s words.

  As Jake prepared to leave, Mrs. Dawson shook his hand warmly. “Thank you for everything, Jake,” she said.

  “I’m mighty obliged to you too, ma’am,” Jake replied. “You been a good frien’ ter dis wanderin’ colored boy.”

  “Well, I imagine you’ll do all right for yourself now, Jake. And I want you to take this.”

  She reached out and handed him a fistful of money. Jake stared at the pile of coins in his hand.

  “I can’t take dis!” he said. “Dere must be a fortune here!”

  “I want you to have it. It’s only twenty dollars.”

  “Laws almighty, Mrs. Dawson, dat is a fortune!”

  “I don’t want you to starve before you find what you’re looking for.”

  “I won’t starve. I knows how ter work.”

  “That you do, and you’ve been a big help to me. Now take the money.”

  Jake put the coins in the pocket of his trousers with awe and gratitude.

  “Best of luck to you, Jake.”

  CAROLINA

  25

  AS JAKE PATTERSON CONTINUED HIS SOJOURN IN response to his mother’s dying charge, he was much closer to his long-undefined goal than he realized. And with Mrs. Dawson’s directions, within weeks he had crossed into northern Georgia and eventually across the Savannah River into the hilly western region of South Carolina.

  To his inquiries now, he was met with, “Why dis be Carolina, son . . . you’s in Carolina.”

  Now that he was in the place he had so long sought, Find Carolina could no longer guide his steps. What was he to do now that he was here?

  With the change, he began to think more and more of his father. What would he do if he actually did find him? What would he say?

  Was his sole responsibility to deliver his mother’s final message? Would he then turn his back on the man who had given him life? Would he just walk away . . . never to see the man again?

  Is that why he had followed “Find Carolina”—only to deliver her message?

  Such questions did not exactly form themselves in Jake’s brain. But he felt a subtle change coming in ways he could not define, even in ways he was not yet aware
of. He felt increasingly uneasy, on edge, almost like someone was watching him . . . like his mother was watching him. Had it now become a quest not merely to discharge a final duty as a son, but to discover what it meant to be a son?

  Only time would answer such an important question.

  Mrs. Dawson’s twenty dollars lasted him a long time. He spent his newfound wealth sparingly, and continued to work at whatever jobs presented themselves, mostly in small towns along the way. As he grew stronger and learned more of the ways of how things stood between blacks and whites, and as he gained confidence, his range of skills also increased. He was strong and capable. No one could be around him long without realizing that he possessed an uncanny sense with horses. He never stopped to ask himself if he had inherited the gift from his father.

  His sleeping accommodations were usually a bed of straw in either barn or stable, usually clean, mostly dry, and he expected no better. Sleeping under the stars was no hardship. He had been doing so for years.

  Continually he moved on. He knew that his father had taken care of horses too, shoeing them and tending them when sick and sometimes training them for special uses. He began seeking out large ranches and livery stables, asking for work himself but also hoping to find the trail of another black man who may have come before him who was known for his skill with horses.

  He worked for several months in Anderson, moved on to Greenwood, then south to Aiken, Orangeburg, north to Sumter, then west across the Wateree River. But nowhere did he hear anything. He spent the end of 1864 around Columbia, then again began to move northward, through Camden and Kershaw, eventually crossing the border into North Carolina as spring began to blossom throughout the South.

  Through March and April, he moved through Robeson and Cumberland counties, always looking, always listening. Gradually he began to realize how futile his search was. He was looking for one black man who might have changed his name, who might be dead, whom he probably wouldn’t recognize if he saw him anyway.

  Deep, undefined emotions still drove him on. He heard that the war had ended. He was now able to travel and work more openly.

  As spring advanced, he was working in a livery stable in the town of Monroe. There he chanced to make the acquaintance of a black family traveling north who said they had heard of a freedman named Patterson.