Black Angels

by Linda Beatrice Brown

Iona looked through the window. A White man stopping at their house could mean only two things: either someone she owed money to, or something she didn’t want to think about—Caswell had been discovered.

  He was close enough now that they could tell he was clearly coming to their house. She knew who he was. There was no mistaking his resemblance to Caswell. Her heart sank like a stone.

  “Quick,” she said to the children. “Y’all go into the kitchen. Now!”

  The children scrambled, aware there was danger, not sure why. Daylily had seen the man and knew it was a serious threat.

  Caswell whispered in her ear, “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered back. “A White man.”

  Although perfectly in order and clean to a fault, Iona’s house was only a nigger house to him. A nigger house with a nigger criminal raising his son. He had put both the Klan and the army on to searching for the boy who just seemed to have vanished into the war. They had looked in North Carolina and Virginia in all of the major cities, and finally after six years they had found him in Harper’s Ferry. Now Troy was here, and he was determined to have what was his.

  Troy Washington ordered Iona to open the door, and she did so with a look of one whose life has suddenly turned into a calamity.

  “You know why I’m here,” he barked at her. “Where is he? I know you have him. Your so-called neighbor down the road has heard you calling him in for supper. ‘Caswell,’ you hollered, and they told my people in order to save their skins.”

  Iona did not bother to deny the truth. The child who came for reading lessons that day and then came back often to play must have said something to his folks. She couldn’t expect to keep a child away from his kin forever. Besides, she had the others to think about. The night riders were fearful and violent. They were confederates who were mad about losing the war. They hated colored people. She knew what they could do. If she resisted, there would be hell to pay. Her only hope to save the other children and herself was to cooperate.

  “Caswell, come here, honey,” she said, her eyes red with the effort not to cry. Caswell, now a tall, lanky thirteen-year-old, appeared from a side room. Their similarity was very clear. There were the same gray eyes of Troy Washington looking at her from Caswell’s face. There was no mistaking it. In spite of Caswell’s well-tanned face and long hair, in spite of his rough farm clothes and calloused hands.

  Caswell had taken one look at his father and known him instantly. Now he only looked at the floor in a numb disbelief. How had this happened? In one second his life had been torn apart, never to be put back together.

  Daylily was standing in the shadows, her mouth open in horror. She shook with fear, wringing her hands and twisting her white apron so hard she almost ripped it. And she was afraid to look, afraid Washington would hit Iona or take her away. Nineteen-year-old Gracey was holding a screaming six-year-old Vina by the hand.

  Well, let them wail, thought Troy Washington. “You wench,” he said roughly, grabbing Iona’s arm. “By rights I ought to turn you out, or better yet give you to the White man’s law. Do you know who I am, nigger? Do you know what they do to niggers who steal children?”

  Troy grabbed Caswell’s face by the chin and turned it to the right, looking for the scar on his son’s ear. There was no way he could miss it.

  Daylily let go of her apron and covered her mouth in horror. Caswell opened his mouth to protest, and Troy slapped Iona once on each cheek. Gracey let out a cry, but Iona was silent. The other children stood helplessly in a corner. Finally, Caswell couldn’t stand it.

  “If you are my father,” said Caswell, “you’ll listen. She took care of me real good! She gave me a home. I wasn’t scared no more, and I had somebody to be with. You don’t know what we went through in the war. You don’t know!”

  “Shut up!” Troy yelled. “Shut up!”

  Caswell plunged on, stammering. “But it wasn’t her fault. I was the one who wanted to stay! I was. We couldn’t find you!”

  Troy spat on the clean floor. “Makes me sick to think about it!” He walked toward Caswell and grabbed him by the nape of the neck. Troy yanked Caswell toward the door, and then he fixed his eyes on his son. “If you so much as mention their names to me again, I’ll come back here and burn them alive. Do you hear me? And you sluts,” he said, looking at Iona, Gracey and Daylily, “you tell anybody about this, anybody, you mention this boy’s name to anyone alive, you’re dead.”

  As he dragged Caswell out of the house, the boy stopped protesting. Somehow, he knew it would go harder for Mama Iona if he made his father any angrier. He went quietly, a lamb to the slaughter. He would hold in the grief and the outrage, but he would have his life. One day, he would be in charge of his own life. He would stop hiding, and he would come back and make things better for his family, Daylily, Mama Iona, and all the rest of them. He would have his own life; he had paid dearly for it.

  CHAPTER 41

  TO BE A WHITE MAN

  His stepmother didn’t make his life unbearable, not all by herself. It was bad enough to have lost his “family,” but even more terrible was hearing his father’s voice and the constant ridicule and hatred for people he had loved and who had loved him. On the other hand, his stepmother seemed to think he was something strange and alien, because he had been raised by a “darky woman.” She hated his habit of treating Lina like a friend, and kept telling his father he needed to “take that boy in hand” and teach him who he was.

  “There is no reason to talk to darkies, unless you are giving orders,” she told him time and time again. She told Troy the boy was withdrawn and stubborn, and that he still talked like a nigger, making mistakes in his grammar. But his father, who could be hard enough on Caswell himself, would not tolerate any criticism of him from Matilda. The lessons of what it meant to be the White man who ruled by God’s decree would be entirely under Troy’s control.

  Matilda and Troy often had guests. Entertaining was one of the few things they both enjoyed. After-dinner smokes meant arguments among the men only, about Reconstruction and politics, but mostly about hatred. Caswell had to hear comments like, “It’s 1870; they been free for five years. Five years too long, I say.” His father’s friends puffed on their cigars, and as the smoke permeated the carpets and their clothes, they continued to express their hatred.

  “We shoulda burnt that nigger too like we did the other one,” one man said. “Down in Mississippi they don’t just burn em, you know, and they make the family watch.”

  Choking on the smoke, Caswell coughed roughly.

  “What’s ailing you, boy?” said his father, slapping him on the back. “Smoke’s good. Make a man of you.” All the men laughed.

  Troy said, “They are getting out of hand, I tell you, thinking they should dress and even live like White folks.”

  Caswell nodded, pretending that he agreed, because he was afraid to defy his father, even while he was seeing Daylily’s and Luke’s faces in his mind.

  On the other hand, Caswell wanted more than anything in the world to please his father and be one of those cigar-smoking Southern gentlemen. He wished he could make his father smile.

  For a while when he was fourteen, he even wanted to become a member of the Ku Klux Klan and wear a disguise. But then, just as he thought he could do that and be a good son to his father, and fit in and be accepted, he would remember his sister Daylily and his brother Luke, and Betty Strong Foot, and Mama Iona, the only mothers he had known after his mother died.

  When he was fifteen, and the war had been over for eight years, he tried to talk to his father about Luke and Daylily. Caswell had just come back from a ride. He put his horse, Strong Foot, in the stable, and went through the house to the library. He found Troy on the veranda. His father had his back to the library door, looking over his cropland.

  “Daddy,” Caswell said, “I need to speak with you.”

  Troy said, as if he had not heard his son, “I’ve got to get more profit out of these crop
s. We didn’t make enough this year.”

  Caswell continued. “Daddy, I want to tell you about my time away with Luke and the rest.” Caswell wanted to tell him about their long walk from North Carolina to Harper’s Ferry, and about how they had become like brothers and sisters. “You don’t understand,” he said quietly. “If you knew them, if you would just listen to me, you’d know they’re people, just like you and me.”

  Troy turned around so fast he almost lost his balance.

  Caswell would never forget the look in his father’s eyes. It was like looking into gray ice. Immediately, he knew he had made a terrible mistake by saying they were just like Luke and the others. Troy gripped his cane, and Caswell looked away from his father’s face. His eyes focused on his father’s large knuckles, almost white, he held the cane so tightly.

  “Now you listen to me, boy, and you listen well.” He wasn’t shouting, but there was something in his low-pitched voice that was much worse than shouting. “Niggers are not like us and they never will be. Niggers are animals. And like my horse and mule they were put on earth to be servants to the White man. Do not ever, ever let me hear you say that they are like you and me again. Or, and I promise you this on my father’s grave, I will beat you with this cane until the blood runs.”

  Troy walked into the house, and Caswell could hear the cane and the man’s footsteps going through the parlor and up the stairs. He listened until the terrible sounds faded away, but he could still hear his father’s voice in his head and see his enraged eyes. He had listened to his father, and he had listened well, and he would never forget what his father said, because that was when he realized he was still hiding, hiding who he really was from his father and his father’s world, and hiding sometimes even from himself.

  He thought about Betty saying he had the spirit of a wolf inside him. Betty had said, “The wolf is wise and leads others, especially his own family.” Caswell knew his skin was white, and he was not an Indian and he was not Black, but in his heart he was just a person. At that moment, he knew that the truth was that all people were sisters and brothers. He had to find out what to do with this feeling that was so strong in him. He wanted to know more about what was in the Bible.

  Caswell used to go to church with his mother every Sunday, and he’d heard about Jesus saying, “Love one another.” And He had never said anything about not loving people who were not White. So Caswell stood on the veranda and let the tears run down his face and over his chin. And he wept for his sister and his brother, and for Betty Strong Foot and for Mama Iona, and was not ashamed.

  CHAPTER 42

  DECISION 1874

  And then the day came. The day when he was forced to choose. He awoke to the peace of Indian summer in Charleston, South Carolina. Hot sun shone through the curtains of his bedroom. October, still hot in South Carolina.

  Lina knocked on his door with the news that breakfast was ready in the dining room. She always let him sleep as long as possible. She seemed glad to have him around the house, and he would always regret that he had not been able to say good-bye to her.

  He heard only the early morning seabirds that had come into shore looking for food. Until he splashed water from the basin in his room on his face, he heard only those peaceful sounds. And then there were horses, and men talking to his father in hushed and excited tones right under his window.

  Caswell was halfway through his breakfast before his father came to the table. Troy sat down to his coffee, and Caswell recognized the anger he had seen so often.

  “Damn niggers have to be brought to their senses,” he said. “There’s only one way to teach them who’s in charge. They don’t listen to anyone.” Troy reached for the preserves. Matilda quickly excused herself, even though she was not through eating, knowing things were going to be said that Troy didn’t allow her to hear, and that he would have sent her out of the room had she not left.

  Caswell chewed slowly. He didn’t dare ask what had happened.

  “I want you there tonight,” said his father. “You’re seventeen now. It’s time. The boys are all getting together. We’ll put those niggers in their place. After dark, nine thirty. This’ll be a good education for you.”

  Caswell asked to be excused. Suddenly he wasn’t hungry any more. There was little point in protesting or even making up an excuse for tonight. Troy had already made up his mind.

  It was a very long day for Caswell. He spent most of it pretending to read, but really worrying about what was to come.

  There were ten of them. The moon slid through the trees, making the white robes stand out in the night and the shadows more sinister than usual. Caswell felt the tension in the men and in his own body.

  Some of the men carried unlit torches. There were two groups. One for the death, one for the burning.

  “The nigger refused to pay, and then he disputed me,” one of the men said, in between chewing furiously on his tobacco. “He called me a liar. No nigger should get away with that and live!” He spit his chewing tobacco as far as he could.

  The closer they got to the man’s house, the worse Caswell felt. They were really going through with this thing. He stepped on a twig in the dark.

  “Hush up, boy!” one of them said. “Surprise is the big thing.” This man was a friend of his father’s, someone he knew.

  Suddenly they stopped walking and each man put on a white robe and a hood, so Caswell could see only their eyes. He wasn’t sure which one was his father now, or his father’s friend. In the darkness an owl was disturbed from his gloomy perch and flew up into the night with a great flutter. Caswell’s stomach turned over. He had no robe and no hood. He was to observe, to learn, they had said. He was told to stay in the background at the edge of the clearing, out of sight.

  All of them surrounded the pitiful little cabin this family called home, ghastly men in deathly white in the dark. Suddenly a gun was fired. Someone lit the torches.

  “Come on out here, nigger,” one of the men in white said. “Come on out and git your punishment! We’ll teach you to think you can talk back to a White man in South Carolina.” A Black man came to the door. He had brought a lantern with him. Caswell could see by the light that the man was frozen with fear.

  “Please leave my family alone,” the man begged. “They didn’t do nothin.”

  “Do we have to come in there and git your woman too?” The men were closing in toward the house.

  The man stepped out onto the ground, and they surrounded him, dragging him deeper into the woods. Caswell heard the whimper of a child, and then somehow a torch was lit and thrown at the cabin. He heard the Black man screaming as smoke and flames leapt into the air. Caswell didn’t know exactly what they would do to the Black man, but he knew that whatever it was, it would end with the man’s death.

  They had surrounded the Black man and started pulling his clothes off. Caswell lost his sense of who was doing what; white robes were everywhere. There was one scream of agony. Suddenly, Caswell felt like he was in one half of the world and those men in the robes were in the other half. Caswell could not see what the men were doing, but when he saw a flash of metal, he knew that they were cutting and slashing the Black man’s body. He ran forward into the horrific noise. “Stop it! Stop it! Please stop it!” Caswell screamed. In the torchlight, he could see red stains on the white robes. No one heard him. No one even remembered that he was there. The men were in their own world of noise and blood and unleashed hatred.

  When he looked up, the Black man was hanging from a tree and blood was everywhere, dripping from his naked body. The white-robed men were rejoicing, slapping each other on the back, laughing, screaming, pulling out their flasks. They were way past seeing Caswell. In the orange light from the fire, Caswell lost his dinner, and then, beyond knowing the sound of his own sobbing, beyond knowing which white apparition was his father, he ran through the darkness, intent only on reaching his horse and leaving his father’s house forever.

  CHAPTER 43

 
RUNAWAY

  He rode hard for miles. When he realized he was not being followed, he stopped to rest his horse. The long days of childhood travel had taught him much about sleeping in the woods and finding his way. He was closer to North Carolina by now, but Virginia was three days away. As his horse rested, he thought. He made his plans.

  He knew he’d never be able to go back home again. He smiled a sad smile and thought, I’m a runaway for sure now. Just like the captured slave I remember from my childhood. But I’m not about to hide out in the swamp, he thought. I’m going to find Daylily and Luke, and then, I’m going somewhere I can learn about love. There must be other people like me, who understand that this hatred has to stop. Suddenly it occurred to him. Seminary, he thought, that’s where people learn about God. That’s where I should go.

  He would have to find some kind of work. To save money so he could pay for his training to become a clergyman. He had no friends in this part of the country. His horse pawed the ground, restless, defiant. That horse had been his only real friend all these lonely years. He had named him Strong Foot without telling his father why.

  Just then, Strong Foot seemed to be trying to say something to his rider, and then Caswell began to listen to the countryside, the sun just rising, the dried cornstalk on his left. Ten years, the tenth summer, and harvesttime . . . before the first frost.

  “This is it,” he said to his horse. “This is the day.” The horse turned toward the north and Virginia, and Caswell gave the bay his head. They were free.

  CHAPTER 44

  THE TENTH SUMMER, 1874

  Daylily hadn’t thought about the tenth summer for a long while, at least not consciously. But she thought about Luke and Caswell every day in one way or another. She hadn’t thought that three, then four, then five years had gone by, but she wondered every day whether Luke was dead or not. Had he made it through the war alive and whole? And what had happened to Caswell? Would he still call her his sister?