by Erin Bartels
“Run the other way.”
I couldn’t tell if she was serious.
“It’s not too dressy,” she assured me with a smile. “You’re wearing tights and boots with it, not nylons and stilettos. You look very well-put-together.”
“You’re the expert,” I said as I put on my wool coat.
She laughed. “I may have been long ago.”
“I don’t know what you mean. You’re the most stylish person I know. Of course, I was raised by missionaries, who aren’t known for their fashion sense. But still. I hope when I’m your age I look half as good.”
“That’s nice of you to say.”
“It’s true. Every word.”
“Oh, go on,” she said, clearly pleased. “Have a nice night.”
Driving toward town, I couldn’t help but think of my first date with Vic Sharpe. I’d bought this outfit for Dana. It kept Vic’s attention throughout dinner at a swanky new restaurant I later found out he’d invested in. I made up a vague backstory for Dana and kept the conversation focused on him. I gave up so little personal information that at the end of the night he immediately asked me out on a second date while apologizing for monopolizing the conversation. I could hardly believe how easy it had been.
This time would be different. I had nothing to hide and no agenda. It would be nice to be completely in the moment instead of being preoccupied with playing a part and gathering information.
Looking over the people milling around the theater lobby, though, I regretted my apparel decision. Movie night in Lapeer was even more casual than in Detroit. I spotted Tyrese. He was in jeans, though not a hoodie. When I caught him do a little double take I changed my mind about my attire.
The movie was good enough, as far as movies go. But I knew before it was over that I would not remember it six months later. After the credits rolled, we walked out to the lobby.
“Give me a second,” I said. “Just have to use the ladies’ room.”
After washing my hands, I fixed a few stray hairs, straightened and smoothed my skirt, and pulled out my phone to turn it back on. No calls or texts. No notifications from any of my social media accounts. I’d been so out of touch that everyone forgot I existed. I guess in some way, I didn’t. If I wasn’t online, I wasn’t really anywhere anymore. For just a moment this hurt—until I realized that I hadn’t really missed anyone from my past life, my life before I became a rural eccentric who did nothing but garden and snoop around someone else’s house.
I was about to return the phone to my purse when my thumb grazed the Detroit Free Press app. Before I could shut it, the headlines caught my eye. They were all about the same thing, just from different angles. And that always meant it was something bad.
White Cop Kills Unarmed Black Teen
Police Chief Claims No Wrongdoing in Slaying of Black Teen
Death Threats to White Cop—“We know where you live . . .”
Protesters Dispersed with Tear Gas
Property Destruction at Site of Police Shooting
I popped back over to my Facebook feed and scrolled through the last twenty-four hours of news. Every other post was about the incident. I felt a small twinge of regret. I should be the one covering this story.
Out in the lobby, Tyrese was staring at his phone. In that moment I realized he was the only black guy in the theater.
“You hear about this thing in Detroit?” he said, more serious than I’d seen him before.
“Just saw it.”
I felt like I should say something else, but I didn’t know what. Were I back home, I’d know exactly what tone to take as a reporter relaying the news of a tragedy to my majority black city. But here . . . what was the right thing to say?
“They’re blaming the cop, of course,” said a guy standing a couple feet away.
“I didn’t read any of the articles,” I said. “Just saw the headlines, so I don’t know what happened.” I took Tyrese’s arm and started to turn toward the door.
“Here’s what happened,” the guy continued. “Another police officer was doing his job, just trying to stay alive in the line of duty. And now he’s going to lose his job because apparently you can’t shoot criminals anymore.”
Tyrese stopped my forward motion and looked at the guy with the unsolicited opinions. “How do you know that kid was a criminal?”
The guy straightened up, trying to match Tyrese’s height. “If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have been in the line of fire.”
“You don’t know,” Tyrese said forcefully. “You weren’t there.”
The guy took a step in our direction. “Neither were you.”
“Let’s go,” I said in Tyrese’s ear.
Tyrese shoved his phone into his pocket and muttered something indecipherable under his breath. He turned and headed for the doors. I followed, glancing back once to see the guy with the opinions watching us leave.
“I kind of wish we’d driven together,” I said to lighten the mood once we were out in the dark parking lot. “Then we could chat on the way home.” But really it was because I didn’t want Tyrese on the road alone.
He cracked his neck and seemed to shake off the ugly almost-incident. “How did your aunt end up way out in the middle of nowhere anyway?”
“I don’t know. She’s lived there a long time. But she’s from the Detroit area.” We sat down on a nearby bench and I tugged at my skirt. “Most of my family is from Detroit.”
“You too, eh?”
“Yeah.”
“Must be hard to get used to living out in the country.”
“I don’t know,” I said, looking up at the star-studded sky. “I like living here more than I thought I would. It’s quiet and green. It feels good to take a mess and sort it out and make it beautiful again. I feel like maybe I’m keeping something important from vanishing. I guess that’s a little silly, though. No one would care if that garden disappeared.”
He looked thoughtful. “Someone might. Someone obviously worked hard at it in the past. What if they can still see it from where they are?”
I considered this. Could the dead look down and see the living? Could Mary Balsam see me kneeling in the dirt by her grave? Did it bring her pleasure to see that someone was remembering her? Did it pain her that I didn’t know who the other grave belonged to?
Tyrese was looking at me with a half smile. How long had I been lost in my own thoughts? His eyes flicked down and then back up to my face. I almost laughed. How did any guy think a girl didn’t notice that?
“You look really nice tonight,” he said.
“Thanks. I feel a bit ridiculous.”
“Why?”
I gestured toward myself. “A bit overdressed, don’t you think?”
“Seems about right for someone who pulls weeds in a cocktail dress.”
“Har-har,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I told you I hadn’t planned on doing that when I went out there.”
He smiled and shook his head. “I’m kidding. Like I said, you look really nice. You looked good that day too.”
I stood up. “It’s late. I better get going.”
Tyrese got to his feet.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked.
He screwed up his face. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
I shrugged. “You’re not going to go back in there and argue with that guy, are you?”
“What would be the point? Anyway, I’ve got a business to think about.” He smiled ruefully. “And the customer is always white.”
twenty-six
Detroit, September 1963
“Nora, I just don’t think running is the answer.” William shut his car door and handed her a red and white paper tray filled with fries.
“It’s not running,” she said, placing a napkin across her lap. “It’s a new start. Think about it. The house is paid for. It’s furnished.”
“It’s your father’s.”
“Not exactly.”
“What, ’cause your uncle owns half? Psh. Don
’t you want a place of our own?”
“But that’s what makes it so perfect. We would be on our own—no judgment, no commentary from anyone else.” Then she added loudly for the benefit of the couple in the car next to them, “No staring.” They turned their heads back toward the expansive movie screen, where cartoon food advised them to visit the snack bar before the feature started.
“If you think they stare in Detroit at a black drive-in, just wait till a bunch of white country bumpkins get a load of us.” William dropped a fry into his mouth.
Nora sighed. “You’re not getting it.”
He swallowed. “Yeah, I am. I get it. I get that you want to escape. I know you’re not used to jeers and sneers and name-calling. But I am. I been getting that my whole life one way or another.”
“William, not two days ago a complete stranger said you should be lynched!”
“No one’s lynching a black man in Detroit. Anyway, how am I gonna change that if I run from it? How we gonna change people’s minds when there ain’t no people around to change? For that matter, what will I photograph when I’m living in a field with no people around? What are we gonna do all day out there?”
“You could get a job in Flint. We can start a family.”
“And what would we tell our kids when they’re at an all-white school in the boondocks? That their daddy could have helped get Detroit schools integrated, but instead he hid out in a field ’cause it was easier and so now they’re the only black kids in the county?”
Nora had nothing to say. She had thought William would jump at the chance for a fresh start in a new place. She hadn’t even considered his photography or the fact that he would be even more of a minority than he was now.
“Look, baby, I ain’t saying no, all right? I just need more time to think about it. That house ain’t going nowhere.”
They turned their faces away from one another and focused on the screen, where a caravan of military vehicles traveled a lonely road that bisected a farm field. Enormous red block letters spelled out The Great Escape as a spirited military air played over the speakers. Nora imagined the landscape of Lapeer County must look quite a bit like the German countryside behind those big red letters. It looked so pleasant and green and inviting. But then the trucks reached their destination and the rows of plants were replaced with rolls of barbed wire.
It wasn’t long before William leaned over and said, “I’m going to get some popcorn.”
He slipped out of the car. A moment later he slipped back in. Then Nora realized it wasn’t him at all.
“You have the wrong car,” she said to the man.
“You got that wrong, missy. You in the wrong car. And you at the wrong theater.”
Nora’s heart raced. “My husband will be back any minute,” she said with conjured courage. “Perhaps you can sort it out with him.”
“I’d rather sort it out right now.”
The man drew a knife from his pocket and opened it to reveal a short blade. On the screen a German officer told Steve McQueen that to cross the warning wire surrounding the prison camp was death. Then the blade was at her throat.
“I don’t want to see you at this drive-in again, you understand?”
Nora swallowed hard and felt the lump in her throat scrape across the blade as it went down.
“You belong up at Ted’s or Maverick’s. You don’t see any of us up there. And we don’t wanna see you down here. Got it?”
Nora nodded slightly, her eyes fixed on the screen. She didn’t want to look at this man, didn’t want to remember his face.
He pulled the knife back. “It’s nothing personal. It’s just better for everybody that way.”
She nodded again, and the man slid out of the car as quickly as he had slid in. Nora’s hand shot to her neck and her entire body shook. The car door opened again and she cowered.
“What’s the matter with you?” William said. He looked at the screen with confusion, then looked back to his wife. “What’re you crying at, baby?”
Through shuddering breaths, Nora managed to say, “Someone told me to leave.”
William scowled. “Who?”
“I don’t know.”
He craned his neck, searching for the source of her terror. Then he tucked her still trembling body beneath his arm. “Baby, don’t worry about that. Whoever it was, he’s all talk, just like the rest of ’em.”
He pulled away and took both of her hands in his. Then they saw the blood on her fingers.
twenty-seven
Lapeer County, June 1864
“But why would he want to leave?” Mary stood at the open barn door silhouetted by bright morning sunlight, her loose skirts casting a shadow that reached almost to George’s dusty boots.
George stopped hammering. “He says he wants to do his part now that the army is accepting Negro soldiers.”
“Mrs. Balsam,” Thomas said, coming up behind her, “if we don’t do somethin’ for ourselves today, why would we think tomorrow will be any different?”
“I wish you’d reconsider and wait to see if you’re drafted,” she said.
“Mr. Balsam done talked me into enlistin’ ’fore his furlough ended. Said they makin’ former slaves into spies,” Thomas said with a gleam in his eye. “That’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna spy out the land for Mr. Lincoln. Tell him what I see. Help him end this war.”
“He needs all the help he can get,” George interjected.
“But what if you should get kidnapped and taken back to the plantation?” Mary asked. “What might your former master do to you then?”
“I ’spect Mr. Charles is too busy tryin’ to keep them Yankees away from his farm to worry ’bout me. Besides, I aim my death won’t come easy.” He walked past her into the barn and leaned his shovel against the wall. “I’m sorry to leave you, Mrs. Balsam. And Bridget too. I know you was countin’ on me at harvest now the crop’s got so much bigger. But the road for me leads to Massachusetts and then on to Virginia.”
Until he said it, Mary hadn’t considered the vastly expanded plots of land they now had under cultivation. What if others enlisted as well and she was left in September with no one to bring in the harvest?
“Jacob isn’t going with you, is he?”
“Nah. I don’t think so. He ain’t convinced my road his road. He been consultin’ the Lord ’bout it. I guess we’ll see what he has to say. But I’m leavin’ tomorrow mornin’, with or without Jacob.”
Thomas walked back out into the sun. Mary sighed.
“You need to sit down?” George asked.
“No, I’m fine. I just . . . I hate this unending struggle. We seem to be no closer to victory than we were in the first month of the war, and yet hundreds of thousands of men are gone, wiped from the face of the earth. For what? What have we accomplished?”
George went back to hammering.
“I don’t mean to say it has all been for nothing, of course,” she hastened to say. “Were it not for the conflict, there would have been no emancipation. But I just don’t see how it will ever end. Is every young man in this land to be offered as a sacrifice? Will we become a nation of women and children and old men?”
“I’ve thought of it,” George said between strikes of the hammer.
“Thought of what?”
“Joining up.”
Mary did need to sit down then. “You wouldn’t,” she said, one hand on her swollen stomach, the other searching for a bale of hay.
George dropped the hammer. He grasped her hand and guided her to the milking stool. “No, ma’am, I wouldn’t.”
“Don’t do that to me,” she said, a little breathless. “And don’t call me ma’am. You know I hate that. And don’t tell me it’s a habit, because you have been here long enough to form a new habit.”
Mary put one hand on her heart and then realized that George still held the other. She did not pull it away, did not dare to even look for fear he too would notice and let go. He had not held her hand since th
at terrible night nearly three years ago.
“Are you okay?” He searched her face.
“I’m fine. As long as you stay here, I’m fine.”
“I told you before I ain’t never leaving you, Mrs. Balsam.” He looked deep into her eyes. “I mean that.”
“Then why should you talk of enlisting?”
“I only said I thought about it, not that I was thinking about actually doing it. It would be an honor. What kind of man would I be if I was not willing to fight?”
“I’ve heard that before. It seems to be the final line of reasoning for every man who ever wanted to do a reckless thing.”
George said nothing.
“I’m so tired of this war,” Mary went on. “You know that the papers are full of dire news about Lincoln’s chances of getting reelected. Some are calling for him to rescind emancipation to get enough votes. What will happen to all who have escaped north should the worst transpire? What would happen to you?”
“Worrying won’t change things,” he said. “Change happens when the cost of keeping things the way they are is too high. We need to make it so that the South has no choice but to change. That’s what Thomas wants to help do.”
Mary took a calming breath and fixed her eyes upon his. At that moment she could not conjure up a memory of what her own husband’s eyes looked like. “I know you’re right. I should not give in to despair. Only do not leave me. I could not survive without you.”
Then there was nothing else to say. Nothing that could be said aloud. Nothing even that Mary might dare put in a letter. They held each other’s gaze a moment longer, then George looked down to his fingers wrapped around hers and let go.
“I better get back to these beds. Even with Thomas leaving, we still have people sleeping on the floor. You need help getting back to the house?”
Mary struggled to push the words past her throat. “I can manage.”
George pulled her to a standing position. When she wobbled on unsteady legs, he put his arm around where her waist had been six months before and walked her out of the barn.
They were halfway up the slope toward the house when three white men on horseback galloped up in a cloud of dirt. George’s tight hold on Mary did not abate as he met the eyes of the man who seemed to be leading the group.