by Erin Bartels
“Can I help you?” George asked.
“I sincerely doubt it,” the man replied. He turned to Mary. “I would like a word with you, Mrs. Balsam.”
“Mrs. Balsam doesn’t feel well right now, and you can see she is in need of a place to sit,” George said. “I’m afraid you will have to come back another time, gentlemen.”
“You’d do good to hold your tongue, boy,” one of the other men said.
The leader raised his hand to suppress his companion. “Now, now. I think we can allow the lady a seat.” He dismounted and handed the reins to George. “Here, make yourself useful, son.”
The man offered Mary his arm. She sent a nervous glance George’s way, then took the proffered help and walked toward the house. The man’s two companions stayed astride their horses and surveyed the grounds. George stood by, powerless.
The man walked Mary through the kitchen, past Bridget and Loretta, and into the parlor. She sat on the settee and took a long breath. The man before her was tall and humorless, sandy brown hair peeking out from beneath his hat. She couldn’t decide whether or not she recognized him.
“Mrs. Balsam, I am Bartholomew Sharpe, and I am here representing a number of people whose names don’t matter at the moment.”
“Mr. Sharpe, will you please sit down?”
“I shan’t be here long. I’m here only to deliver a message.”
“Then perhaps a letter would have been a more appropriate use of your very valuable time, sir.”
He scowled. “Young woman, I don’t think you grasp how serious this message is. I have a warning for you. If you don’t send these Negroes on their way and get them out of our town and off of this farm, you’re going to be in for a load of trouble.”
“Is that so?” she said, holding his gaze. “And what sort of trouble might that be?”
“The kind you cannot afford to have, I assure you.”
“Well, sir, it just so happens that I have a warning for you as well.” She got to her feet and stood her ground. “If I ever see you on this land again, I will not hesitate to report your trespassing and your threats of violence to the constable. This is my house and my farm, and I will house whomever I wish. I answer to God, and you would do good to remember that you will someday be called upon to answer to him as well. Now leave this house at once and take your friends with you.”
Mr. Sharpe appeared to struggle for the proper retort. When none was forthcoming, he stormed to the front door but turned around before opening it, wagging a long finger at her. “This matter is far from settled, Mrs. Balsam.” Then he walked out.
Mary heard a yell and then horses’ hooves striking the rocks on the long drive. She collapsed into a chair as Bridget and Loretta rushed into the room.
“Mrs. Balsam, are you all right?” Bridget fretted. Loretta fanned her with a tea towel. Seconds later George burst through the door, followed by John Dixon.
“I’m fine. I’m fine.” Mary waved them away. “Though I do think I shall lie down for a bit.”
George pushed past the women, lifted Mary in his arms before she could protest, and carried her up the stairs to her bedchamber, where he laid her gently on the bed.
“We in for a heap of trouble now,” he said, reverting in his anxiety to his Southern way of speaking.
“No, we’re in for a heap of trouble now,” she corrected in a feeble attempt to lighten the mood.
“Trouble either way, ma’am.”
“George,” she admonished.
He sighed but smiled a little. “Mrs. Balsam.”
She shook her head and glanced at the open door. “Mary,” she whispered.
He looked long at her, a sadness clouding his face. “No, Mrs. Balsam. You know you can never be Mary to me.”
twenty-eight
Lapeer County, October
Instead of driving home after my movie with Tyrese, I sat in the back corner of a McDonald’s parking lot with my phone, reading everything I could find on the shooting in Detroit. The more I read, the more I disagreed with that theater lobby commentator and his unsolicited opinions. Even if the kid had been hanging around unsavory characters, that didn’t make him a criminal. The incident seemed to fall into a disturbingly familiar pattern of tension and violence between the police and the inner-city black community—and this time in the very same neighborhoods that were set ablaze in 1967. How did this keep happening?
Depressed and disgusted, I dropped the phone on the passenger seat and pulled out of the parking lot. When I finally turned off the engine on the gravel driveway and dragged myself up to bed, sleep was slow in coming and poor in quality. When I looked at the clock and saw 3:42 a.m., I let out a desperate laugh and thought of all the times I had wondered how people like Judge Sharpe could sleep at night. The cop who had shot that kid—was he asleep?
Late the next morning, I stumbled down to the kitchen with a pounding headache and stared at my bowl of cereal until the flakes had expanded into a single goopy mass.
Nora took one look at me, poured me a cup of black coffee, and said in a very businesslike manner, “Elizabeth, I need you to do something for me.”
I tried to summon a smile. “Sure. What’s up?”
“I have a project I need to work on and it needs a lot of fabric. I’m finally going to be able to get some use out of all of the things people have brought me over the years. Well, not all of it. I can only use cottons. Nothing synthetic, nothing stretchy, no polyester or lycra or rayon. Just cotton. There’s a ton of it all over this house. I’m afraid I haven’t kept it very organized. So what I need you to do is look in all the closets and dressers and see what you can find that’s cotton.”
“How will I know it’s cotton?”
She looked at me as though I was being willfully ignorant.
“What color?”
“Any color. Lots of colors. Any pattern. Anything you see that you like. It doesn’t matter. As I said, this is a big project, so I’ll need lots of it. And the sooner the better. I’d like to get started on it Monday.”
“I can do that.” A new distraction was just what I needed now. “You know, I brought a lot of fabric up to the attic from my room when I first moved in. Should I look through that too?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Hey, remember when I asked you about the beds up there? You never did tell me the story.”
“Let’s talk about it over dinner tonight.”
Put off again. Eleanor Rich was indeed a stubborn woman as Barb had said. Or did she simply not remember that she’d said the exact same thing to me when I first asked about the mysterious cots?
Nora looked lost in thought. “Why were you up there?”
“I had to get all that fabric out of my room before I could put any of my clothes away; the armoire and the dresser were full of it. I didn’t want to mention it at first, because you’d said the room was all ready for me and it wasn’t.”
“I said that?”
“Yes, you said William had gotten it ready.”
“William? I told you William had gotten it ready?” She looked a little pale. “I can’t imagine why I would say that. William’s been gone for fifty years.”
twenty-nine
Lapeer County, October 1963
The day for the move dawned clear and cool, which Nora took as an auspicious sign. She and William loaded up a borrowed trailer behind his old yellow Chevy Biscayne. They shared hugs and kisses with Mrs. Rich and Bianca. J.J. was conspicuously absent.
An almost tangible feeling of promise hung in the air as the miles receded beneath the tires. Nora couldn’t read William’s expression, whether he was happy or upset about this new chapter in their lives. But the night at the drive-in had made up his mind. Nora fixed her eyes on the horizon, such as it was in the sprawling city, and felt like she was leaving a place she dearly loved that did not love her back. It took over an hour of stop-and-go driving down Woodward Avenue to get out of the Detroit metro area, but soon after they turned onto M-24,
farms and windbreaks replaced parking lots and lampposts and they were flying toward their future.
“I think that’s the first time I ever saw a tractor in real life,” William noted as they passed a farm. Nora was about to laugh at him. Then she wondered if perhaps it was the first time for her as well.
It was lunchtime when Nora pulled her head out of the pile of maps and directions in her lap and said, “I think this is the turn right here.”
“Here?” William asked, pressing down on the brake.
“Yes. Look at the picture.” She held up an old photograph that showed three neat lines of baby pine trees behind a low, broken-down stone wall. In the background rose a white farmhouse.
William stopped the car on the side of the road and took the photo from her. “I don’t know.”
“Look there, at that wall. See the gaps? Aren’t they in the same place as on the picture? The trees are just bigger. You can’t see the house, but I’m sure it’s just behind the trees.”
“But there’s no driveway.”
Nora rolled down the window and hung out of it. “There.” She pointed. “Those trees aren’t so close together. I bet that’s the driveway.”
William looked dubious. “No, I do believe that is a bunch of tall grass and rocks that the trailer’s going to get stuck in.”
“Let’s just walk up through there and see what’s on the other side of those trees.”
Picture in hand, they walked past the line of rocks and through the pines. When they emerged on the other side, Nora smiled. The paint was chipped and peeling and vines had grown halfway up the sides, but it was indeed the house from the photo.
“Let’s get the car,” William said. On the way back to the road, he scanned the ground and tossed aside rocks and branches to clear a path. Then he inched the car and the trailer through the pines.
On the front porch, Nora and William turned the key together, and the door to their new life opened wide. They crept through dark rooms, pulling dusty sheets from furniture and testing lights and faucets. William ventured into the cellar with a flashlight to turn on the water main. Nora peered into kitchen cupboards full of cobwebs. They reconvened by the back door and went outside, where a weathered barn and a quaint old chicken coop stood in a field of wildflowers, and the ghost of a garden lurked inside a picket fence.
“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” William said in a flat tone.
Nora thought of her once-flush bank account—no, she corrected herself, her father’s bank account—and felt like crying. She had so blithely swept aside William’s warnings about how her life would change, hadn’t counted the cost. But she propped herself up with the thought of the love she had for the man at her side.
“I’m going to see if there’s a ladder in that barn,” William said.
“It’s probably locked. Mom gave me an envelope of keys. Let me get it.” She trotted to the car and retrieved the envelope from the glove compartment. She also grabbed the picnic basket Mrs. Rich had packed for them that morning. As she walked back to where William stood staring at the house with his hands on his hips, she decided once again that it was all worth it. This was the place they were meant to be.
“Want some lunch first?” she asked.
He shook his head. “We gotta air this old place out if we’re going to live in it.”
She handed over the keys and he headed off to the barn. Nora went inside, pulled the large white sheet from the dining room table, and coughed at the dust. She shook it until it seemed as good as it would get, then she brought it outside and laid it on the ground in the backyard. Four stones kept the corners from flapping in the breeze.
William came back with a tall wooden ladder. Together they made their way around the outside of the house, unlatching shutters and securing them to the wooden siding.
“We’ll have to paint this place before winter,” William said.
Nora thought of all the run-down apartments at which they had turned up their noses. But of course this was different. It wasn’t in a bad neighborhood. It wasn’t surrounded by people who didn’t want one of them there. It was freedom.
When William descended the ladder for the last time, Nora could hear her stomach growling. “Finally,” she said. “Let’s eat.”
They rinsed their hands in cold water from a pump by the house and settled onto the makeshift picnic blanket. Nora opened the basket and began to pull out the sandwiches and potato salad when she felt William’s hand on her hip.
“Do you want ham or turkey?” she asked.
“Neither.”
She dug around the basket a little more. “Well, that’s what we have. That and potato salad and oranges and some cookies.”
“Well, I don’t want any of that.”
Nora knew that tone. “I’m hungry,” she said.
William drew up close behind her and whispered into her ear, “So am I.”
She turned toward him to say something, but he caught her cheek in his hand and silenced her with a kiss. “Come on, baby.”
She was melting inside, but she pushed him away. “Not out here.”
“Why not?”
“Are you crazy? Anyone could be watching.”
“Who’s watching? Squirrels? Birds? No one’s here but us, right? Isn’t that the whole point? No one’s around for miles, and no one even knows this place is here.”
She squirmed. “I just . . .”
He kissed her again.
She wasn’t hungry for food anymore, but she pushed him away to speak. “In the house.”
He got a playful look in his eye. “Uh-uh. It’s all musty in there. Somebody could’ve died on those old beds.” He laid her down with him, then pulled a plate out from beneath his back. She laughed as he tossed it off the sheet onto the overgrown grass.
As her self-consciousness melted away at the tender touch of her husband, Nora felt more keenly free than she could remember. There was nothing else. Just her and William. Two people in full view of the God who had made them both.
That afternoon they strolled through the now bright house, making a list of chores to do and repairs to make. They chose the bedroom off by itself at the back of the house. It had the best view, but it was the incredible carved bedstead that clinched it. They brought in armloads of clothing and boxes. Then, tired and getting hungry again, they unhitched the trailer and drove to town. They needed groceries and a newspaper and to get the phone and electricity turned on. More than a few curious heads turned, but Nora kept her eyes fixed ahead as they went about their errands. There was no need to invite comments by making eye contact. In the future, she’d do the shopping alone.
“I think you should try Flint,” Nora said as she skimmed job listings on the way back to the house. “Doesn’t look like there’s too much in Lapeer. In Flint you’d have your pick of assembly-line jobs.”
William was quiet.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“I thought I might not look for work right away and spend some serious time fixing up the house and the grounds. We don’t have rent to pay.”
“No, but there are the utilities and groceries.”
“I saw a room in the basement I could turn into a darkroom. Then I’d be able to develop my own pictures.”
“What does that cost?”
“I don’t know. We’ll see. I could probably get ahold of some used equipment.”
She was quiet a moment. “I think I’ll put an ad in the paper about sewing.”
He nodded. “That’s good.”
“And maybe I’ll make us a quilt for our bed.”
“Nice.”
Suddenly he swerved to the side of the road.
“What?” Nora asked in alarm. “Do we have a flat?”
“No,” he said, straining to look over his shoulder. “We just passed a sign for a plant nursery and I want to check it out.”
“What about the groceries?”
He did a U-turn. “We won’t be long. I just want to
look at their trees.”
“Why? There are plenty of trees around the house.”
“Yes, but not our tree.”
thirty
Lapeer County, November 1864
Mary sat on Loretta’s bed, two-month-old George upon her breast. No one knew that that was what she called her baby boy. When he was born in September, she had written to Nathaniel to give him the news and ask him what he would like to call the baby. As she waited for his reply, the child was referred to as “the baby” by the rest of the household. But in her mind and in private moments, Mary could not help but call him George.
“Still nothin’ from Mr. Balsam?” Loretta asked as she tucked Simon in for a nap.
“Not yet.” She tried to keep the concern out of her voice.
“They just movin’ fast, is all,” Loretta said. “They winnin’ now. Mr. Lincoln voted back in and there ain’t nothin’ can stop ’em now.”
Mary smiled. Surely that had to be the case. Nathaniel’s letters had become a bit more sporadic lately anyway. Though this was the longest she had waited without word in some time.
“You write him more than once, right? Just in case it got lost? You write lots of letters.”
“Yes, more than once.”
In fact, Mary had only sent two letters to Nathaniel. The rest Loretta had seen her writing were for George. She had taken to writing the body of the letter first, with no salutation, just in case someone should come in unexpectedly or the letter should be misplaced. Only at the very last would she write Dearest George at the top and With Love, Mary at the bottom. Then she sealed the letter in an envelope, wrote his name on the outside, and handed it directly to him the next time the two of them were alone.
George still started his letters with the formal Dear Mrs. Balsam. But Mary had noted with a flutter in her stomach when he had replaced Sincerely with Love. Thinking of his last letter, Mary felt a warm stirring inside. He had been careful to keep his words guarded, but she could read between the lines. Their ardor for one another grew with each passing week, and the longer it remained contained by standards of decorum, the more fierce it became.