by Alan Cheuse
“Pardon, pardon,” he said, “I am not usually this less-than-fastidious.”
“I ask you, Cousin, what do you have in mind?”
“In mind? In mind? The long history of our people, darkened by slavery in Egypt, long in bondage there until our savior Moses led us out of the land of captivity.”
“A long procession through the ages,” Joseph Salvador added, “up to where we sit now, with Jews like myself in the state legislature.”
“That is not what my cousin was saying.”
Jonathan feigned innocence.
“And what might I have been saying except what I said?”
“You were speaking about our freedom, and thinking about certain aspects of your own private life here.”
“Or perhaps I was thinking about your private life here? Might there be a certain dark woman who figures in that?”
“What, dear Cousin, might you know about that?”
“Know? So there is something to know?”
“It is time to go,” I said, pushing back from the table so brusquely that I nearly overturned it.
“Oh, yes, Cuz, because we have one more meeting.”
“Another?” Now I was not merely angry with my cousin but mystified. I would have been even more mystified, not less, if I had been aware that I was approaching a cross-roads in my life, knowing only that I had a deep sensation that great change was in the works.
Jonathan gave Joseph Salvador a conspiratorial glance.
“Jonathan,” I said in protest, “has your wife tried to put me in that company of her cousin Anna again?”
“Anna?” Salvador shook his head. “No, no, don’t fear the fires of social obligation. This is something quite outside the bounds of etiquette.”
“What then?” I said.
The pair of them ignored my question.
Our meeting had gone from morning, through mid-afternoon, and now the sun, as we stepped out onto the brick walk before the house, was swinging westward toward the end of the day.
“Will there be some food and drink at this mystery rendezvous?” I inquired.
“Plenty for the belly and the spirit,” my cousin said.
Salvador gave a shake of this thick red mane and bid me climb aboard the carriage.
***
The ride to the fine house at the edge of the Battery took no time at all. Liveried servants ushered us inside. My cousin and his brother-in-law made conversation about this and that with a slave woman as dark as night and shoulders as broad as a man’s. She served us tea in the parlor. Yours truly still fumed, but not so much that he could not admire the fine portraits on the wall and the deep, cushiony carpets, some with abstract weaves, others depicting certain scenes from our history, such as the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the burning of Washington.
Music from a spinet drifted down from the floor above.
“And where are the other conspirators?” I asked of my cousin.
“They will be here momentarily,” he said.
Sure enough, within moments we heard voices in the hall, and a quintet of beautifully dressed slave girls walked lightly into the room.
“Is this the meeting?” I said, standing up.
My cousin shook his head at what he took to be my impossible attitude. I certainly did feel impossible and stupidly surprised.
“Can you ever rest your busy mind, Cousin?”
“Sorry,” I said with a shake of my head, “this is not what I had in my mind at all. I am not passing any judgments on you, Cousin. This is just not…” I stood up. “If you will excuse me, I am going to take a stroll.”
His manner quite cold my cousin said, “Meet us here in two hours, or walk back to The Oaks.”
“Very well,” I said and left the room.
A servant let me out of the house just as a trio of stringed instruments sounded in the hall. I walked down the steps and fairly well loped across the park to the ocean-side.
What a marvelous way to clear my head! The sea was calm, or seemed so at least in the fading light. Out beyond the squat shape of Fort Sumter on the horizon the sky appeared to be striped with multi-layered clouds, some pink, some peach, some darker, like fog. But even as I watched the cloud-shapes shifted and the colors turned to lavender and then to red, the darker turning light, the lighter turning dark as Nature made her paintings on the sky. If I could have stood here forever, fixing my attention on the works made in air, I would have chosen to do that, fixed in time, certainly, but in the knowledge that however difficult might be the choice I had to make I would not now or ever have to make it.
Chapter Seventy-four
________________________
A Death
An hour later I stood once again in front of that house on the edge of the Battery. Within moments of my arrival, both my cousin and Joseph Salvador emerged from the front door and even before I could speak the clatter of horse and carriage sounded behind me.
Joseph Salvador, avoiding my eyes, waved a farewell to my cousin, who joined me at the carriage. We rode back to The Oaks, which took not an inconsiderable amount of time, in darkness and silence. Only as we neared the end of our journey did he say anything at all, and this began as small talk about tariffs and nullification and secession.
“Father will be interested to know what transpired,” he said.
“Shall we tell him everything?” I said.
“Don’t be such a moralistic oaf,” my cousin said. “Do you believe that he is a paragon of virtue himself? Good God, Nathaniel, when you finally see the truth of things I expect it will come as such a blast of light that you might nearly go blind.”
“And will I ever see the truth?”
“Cousin, I really do not know.”
“I know enough about you, sir, that I find it, I must say, truly uncomfortable to ride with you like this.”
“Is that so?” Jonathan turned to me and over the sound of the moving carriage and lay a hand on my arm. “Just how much do you know? Enough to worry about any partnerships we might make? Or enough to challenge me to a duel?”
I clenched my fists, having never been spoken to like this before in my life by one of my own kin. But I forbore, saying nothing. We rode in silence under the great starry vault of the sky. It was a moonless night, and though the stars glittered everywhere above us, in some places seeming to be as thick as dust, the moisture in the air kept us from a perfect sight of the heavens. Things blurred, things faded. But that was the way we saw such matter in this world. And I thought to myself, what if there were a way for us, me and Liza, to grow wings and fly up into that space, and hurry away to some star where we might be alone and together and happier and easier than we are? And then I said to myself, I will book us passage on that ship to New York, the two of us, and we will sail away, if not fly.
At last, the great dark tunnel of trees lay just ahead. We rode along, beneath the shadowy wood, darkened by the darkness.
Then we saw at a great distance at the end of the low road the house all aglow, candles in every window.
“What is it?” I asked my cousin. “Another meeting? It looks as though they might even be having a party!”
When we made our way inside the house, we found the front parlor filled with weeping slaves and wailing Jews. Rebecca sat in a chair near the door, moving her head from side to side, crying out, “He’s gone! He’s gone!” while my aunt lay unmoving on the couch, Precious Sally was kneeling next to her, dabbing at her face with wet cloths.
“Oh, my aunt,” I said, rushing to her side.
She coughed, let out a whimper, cleared her throat.
“It happened so suddenly. He went up to take a nap, and awoke a short while later with a small fever. He said he was tired, and went back to sleep. I looked in on him while he was sleeping, and he was soaking such a sweat I didn’t know what to do. After a while I asked Sally to make a poultice.”
Tears flowed from her eyes and it took her a few moments to regain her composure.
“She went out back and did not return for a long time. When she did, she wore a terribly long face. ‘There’s another man, Jason, sick out back in the cabins,’ she said. ‘The Master is sick upstairs,’ I told her. ‘You must pay attention to him.’ ‘The man in the cabins, he seen the Visitor,’ she said. ‘Please, Sally,’ I told her, ‘don’t you start a panic. Please go up to lay the poultice on the master.’
“She went up, and after a while she came part way down the stairs, the saddest look on her face. ‘You better come up, missus,’ she said to me. I could not move. I asked Rebecca to go in my stead.”
Rebecca spoke up from her chair.
“I went back upstairs and found him lying there, a feeble smile on his face. His head appeared huge to me, his skin pale and taut across the bone beneath.
“‘Has the rice come in?’ he said.
“‘Yes, my beloved uncle,’ I said, ‘the rice has come in.’
“‘I am glad,’ he said, closing his eyes. Next he whispered something so quietly I could not hear. I leaned my ear close to his lips.
“‘Free them,’ he said. His last words before he lay still, so quiet and peaceful. I tried to wake him.”
Her voice rose into the higher registers. “I could not! I tried, but I could not!”
From outside the house the voices of field hands drifted up—
Working all day
And part of the night,
And up before the morning light,
When will Jehovah hear my cry
And set a poor soul free?
They stood huddled in a corner of the veranda, shaking their heads, singing under their breath, and Isaac stood with them, singing, talking. I look around for Liza, but did not see her. My heart beat back and forth from calm to hectic, calm to hectic. All the while the slaves kept singing.
When will Jehovah hear my cry
And set a poor soul free?
Jonathan had gone up the stairs, and now he came down.
“Well, now, folks,” he announced, and he appeared to be looking directly at me, “I have seen my father, and he has passed away.” More weeping and wailing from all gathered here. Jonathan waited until the noise subsided somewhat and then said, “I suppose this means that The Oaks is now mine.”
I felt as though I had taken a blow to the face.
“I must see him,” I said and turning from my cousin—his hard jaw gleaming red in the light of the fire, I mounted the stairs, footsteps following after me. I turned with a start to see young Abraham at my heels.
“Abe,” I said, “you must not go in now. The sick room is not a good place for you to visit.”
He shook his head, and tears rolling down his cheeks he clambered past me up the stairs.
“Do not touch the…do not touch him,” I called after him as with fallen shoulders he stepped into the room where his grandfather lay.
Leaving them both to the dark, I wandered along the hall and entered my own room. It was dark inside, and a few traces of Liza’s perfumes and odors lingered in the air. I closed that door and drifted back down the hall. From the sick room came the sound of a young boy sobbing hoarsely, as for the first time in his life. From the parlor the sounds of mourning grew louder and louder.
“Cousin,” Jonathan called up the stairwell. “Come down, it is time, and I have some things to say.” It was odd how strong his voice sounded, given the loss he had just suffered. “Come down!”
The candles fluttered as a breeze stirred in the otherwise quiet hall. At the bottom of the stairs moved the shapes and shadows of the mourners and the slaves. I shook my head, my limbs, though, froze me in place, and my heart settled almost to a stand-still, either in calm or in fear.
A floorboard creaked behind me.
“Abe?” I turned around, staring into the dark.
A hand came up and touched me at the small of my back, and I turned yet again, my blood chilled with fright.
“Nate,” Liza said, “it is time. Come with me!”
Chapter Seventy-five
________________________
The Other Way
Liza clearly knew her way down the damp dark narrow back staircase, leading me by the hand as we descended into the room behind the kitchen and stepped to the rear door of the house.
Promise stood there quietly waiting along with my cousin’s usual mount.
“How—?”
Isaac stepped out of the shadows and offered me the reins.
“Up you go, massa,” he said, giving me a hand up and then hoisting Liza onto the back of Jonathan’s horse.
Now the animals jittered about in the dark.
“What are we doing?” I asked.
“Running,” Liza said. She sounded a bit out of breath as she spoke, but it could have been the snorting and clattering of the horse.
I felt as though struck by a bolt of lightning.
She led, I followed, as we took the dark trail behind the barns and on into the woods. In a moment the house, for all of its lights, was swallowed up in the gloom of the trees.
“We must turn back,” I said, feeling as though I had just come out of a dream. “I cannot leave them in the midst of their mourning just for…” I stopped speaking, unsure of what I could say.
“I can’t leave them neither,” she said. “‘In the midst of their mourning.’ But it is my mourning, too.”
“You liked the old master, did you not?”
“Yes,” she said, “I did. I liked him.”
“No matter that he owned you?”
“He did own me, and then again he did not.”
We talked, but we did not stop. Perhaps it was an illusion created by the dark but it seemed like no time had passed before we came to the fork in the road and ducked under the trees to take the trail to the brickyard.
“Wait here,” Liza said as we arrived at the clearing. She dismounted and I watched her shadowy figure enter the small brickmaking shed.
Promise moved about in a small circle, sniffing and snorting, swatting his tail. I knew the creek was nearby. I could hear creatures splashing about in the water.
“Liza?” I called out, just as she reappeared in the clearing, a sack over her shoulder and a shadowy companion at her shadowy side.
“You know this boy, I think,” she said.
I peered down at the young fellow, who was, because of his skin color, almost invisible in the dark.
“You!” I said.
It was the slave boy from Perth Amboy, who traveled with the mean-spirited man, and ran away.
“Have you been hiding all this while in the brickyard?”
The boy touched his hand to his forehead in a sort of salute and moved with Liza to the horse. In a moment she had remounted, and he swung up onto the animal behind her.
“Are you ready?” Liza said.
“Am I ready? We have to go back to the house. I must go back. And you, too. All will be forgiven. If you go back now there will be nothing to forgive.”
“Perhaps in another life.”
I still did not understand, or did not want to.
“Liza, my uncle—”
“He’s dead,” she said, “and there will be nothing but trouble.”
“No, no,” I said. “Jonathan is the heir. I will buy you from him. I will take you north.”
“If he sells me,” she said. “it won’t be to you. He will sell me at the auction block in the town.”
“I can bid for you there.”
Such a sound of disgust mingled with horror burst from her throat that even in the dark I could measure the intensity of her response.
“I will not allow you ever to bid on me!”
“I will do whatever I must do.”
“You will not have the opportunity, I tell you now. He will sell me down river or kill me first.”
The horses pawed at the ground, snuffled and snorted, anxious to move somewhere, anywhere.
“Why?” I said, “Why?” and I despised myself for the horse-l
ike whine I could hear in my speech.
In a voice I had never heard her use before, it was so drained of spirit, so ghostly, she said, “He will see the will and he will sell me.”
“The will? My uncle’s will? How do you know this? How do you know about my uncle’s will?”
“He left it in his desk. One day I found it there. I read it. Thus the dangers of teaching your inquisitive slaves to read.”
Again, the horses asked us, Can we please move now? Now?
“There was a surprise,” she said. “The way we live here, there is nothing anymore to surprise us and then along comes a surprise.”
“And what was that?”
“He had another child,” Liza said.
“By some other wife? Did he keep a family down in the Islands?”
“No, no,” she said.
“Oh, no, not him!” I could not hide my pain and dismay at learning this. “He, my dear uncle, also went down to the cabins?”
“He did, indeed,” Liza said.
“I do not know the laws of the state in this matter,” I said. “Could it be possible for him to leave property to a child born of a slave?”
“I don’t know the law,” she said. “But in the will he recognized the child as his own.”
“And who is this child?”
Please, said my horse. Now, I truly need to move now.
“Easy, Promise,” I said. “Easy.”
“The child did not know. He is a man now and suffers to know. None of us knew, not until I read the pages. When your cousin hears the news he will be very very angry. He will sell the man down river, or somehow arrange for the patrollers to take him into their custody.”
“Who is this man? Do I know him?”
“You know him.” Liza sighed, and bent to pat her own insistent horse while the Amboy slave slipped his arms around her waist and held to her.
“Who?”
I thought of all the Africans I had met here, I thought of the African men, toiling their lives away in the heat and dust and flowing and ebbing waters.