by Peter Troy
And then again, Mmm-hmm. Micah says.
Then Micah taps the reins on Soldier just to show who’s doing the driving right now. Jeremiah keeps on and on, dancing up to that line he knows better than to ever cross again. But Micah’s mostly turned his thoughts to other things. When he guides Soldier left instead of right on Marshall Street, Jeremiah starts laughing. Going on and on about how Micah made a wrong turn and now he’s lost, and how he ain’t gonna show him the way to go now. Uppity niggas always thinkin’ they knows it all. Jeremiah says. And folds his arms in front of him for show, but only after he checks to see that Micah’s still wearing that silly grin he’s had on most of the ride home.
They pass the Kittredges’ store, and Micah pulls Soldier in. Slows the cart to a halt, then hands the reins to Jeremiah. Ohhh nooo, dis yo’ mess! You gettin’ outta dis here by yo’sef! Jeremiah says, but takes the reins all the same. Then Micah says something about having to check on a job he did not long ago. Hops down from the cart and takes off walking up the street past the Kittredges’ stores. Whachu … whey you think you goin’? Jeremiah calls after him. But there is no response.
Micah doubles back, spotting Mary now, waiting ’til she sees him too. Then walks back past Jeremiah, who’s still complaining, and turns down the alley one store past the dress shop. It’s a few minutes of waiting, and he pretends to examine the drain spout and his work on the outside wall of the new storage room.
I thought you’d be stoppin’ by. She says, stepping outside the back of the shop, straight to the scrap bin. Opening it, pretending to sort through it, just like he’s pretending to inspect the drain spout. Staring at each other, though. The two of them. Smiling.
I just hadta … Mary … I just hadta … He says, staring right at her. Deep into her eyes, letting her melt a little, then turning his gaze to the wall … I just hadta see if this drain spout’s gonna be ready for th’winter time. You know, you cain’t be careful enough ’bout these things …
And her laughter is a symphony.
Oh, is that so? She says. Smiling. Trying best as she can to look like she ain’t sweet on him. Failing. Then I guess I’ll just be goin’ on back inside.
Now don’t you go nowhere without my kiss first. He says. And takes his hands off the wall. They both look all around, then close the space between them. And she leans up onto her toes as he pulls her to him. Another of their stolen kisses, secret, like all the moments they’ve ever had together. Her lips dissolving onto his ’til the hint of her cheek against his face is like touching one of those silk dresses she makes. And after a few seconds they break off, look all around again. Look back at each other. And it’s quiet for a while.
You all set for tonight? He asks.
Her eyes have a little moisture from the cold, glistening soft amber shades. Magic. And she stares up at him, looking more serious than usual. He kisses her again before she can even speak. No looking around first. Unable to keep away. Then after a moment, she turns her head to the side and lays her cheek on his shoulder. Whispering. I’m ready.
He kisses her hair, slides his hands up to her shoulders, opening a few inches of reluctant space between them. Needing to see her face again. Take some magic from those eyes to hold him over. ’Til later, at least.
Two bells I’m off. Three bells we meet by the stable. He says. And she nods, three four five times.
There’s more staring, another kiss, before Misses Kittredge is calling from the storeroom. Mary grabs two or three bits from off the top of the scrap bin, looks at ’em, shrugs her shoulders as if these were just what she was looking for all along. Smiles at him. And it’s his turn to laugh. Out loud. Like only she can make him do. Then she’s up the three steps and into the store with just one more glance back. He waits for a minute or two, moving his hands along the wall again, pretending. Mostly standing with a silly half-smile on his face the way it’s been through most of the day.
When he walks back to the cart, Jeremiah is climbing back up into the seat, grabbing hold of the reins. And there’s no reason to take them back. Not if it means hearing his complaints instead of the echo of her voice.
Yeah, the man what knows ’bout hawses got the reins now. Jeremiah says.
And only, Mmm-hmm. And thoughts of this time tomorrow.
MICAH JUST GOES INSIDE HIS cabin once the first bit of samplin’ the potato mash starts that night. Laughs when the toasts begin. Starts packing, layin’ out on his bed the long knife, the hand ax, the hammer, the chisel, the pliers, the file. All swiped that very day. One by one he wraps them inside the sleeves and legs of the extra shirts and trousers he’ll be taking along. Then two blankets wrapped around all of it. Some cornbread and pork jerky and a half-dozen turnips and twice as many sweet taters all stuffed in as well. Saved ’em up for the last few weeks. He ties it with some string around the top and lifts it up to test the weight, laughs at how light the load feels. Figures he could carry this whole cabin the way he feels tonight. Then puts it back down and sits on the bed. And waits.
It’s a while before the church bell rings ten. The celebration outside gettin’ ’bout as loud as it’s been the whole night. By eleven, someone’s said something ’bout saving what’s left of the potato mash. So by twelve there’s just a few voices from the stragglers sittin’ ’round what’s left of the bonfire. But the next two hours are long as anything he can remember in his life. He thinks for a while that he should’ve told Mary to meet him at two bells, quiet as it is now. But he leans outside the cabin at one and there are still lights coming from the Main House. So the plan’s right as it is, he reassures himself.
At two bells he’s up without hesitation. Peeks outside first, then walks all around the cabin to see if anyone’s half passed out by the fire. Nothing. He gets his satchel, and it’s straight back a hundred feet or so to the edge of the trees. Walking behind Longley’s timber mill, behind his warehouses filled with lumber, and off into the real woods on the edge of town. He could make it to the Kittredges’ house in fifteen minutes, walking straight as the crow flies. But this is much safer. So it’s through the woods for as long as he can go, then a couple of open fields and a few empty city blocks to their place. Just a sliver of a moon to help him feel his way, much less than what he’d had ten days before when he’d done it for the first time. But it’s a horse path he’s following, and he’s out of the woods before long. Then through a long stretch of open field and the start of city blocks on the northern part of town.
The Kittredges have one of those old city houses, the kind set back off the main street and with a nice piece of property to it. Across their stretch of field in front, just a few buildings to the west, is the mercantile and the dress shop. But he’s not going there tonight. Tonight it’s the stable in back of the house, and he slips behind the row of stores adjacent and is just about a hundred yards away when the church bell rings three times. Walking across the open field, he looks at the house and smiles. No lights on anywhere inside. And as he gets closer, he sees her. The faint glimmer from a street light illuminating part of her silhouette leaning against the corner of the stable. Plump like she ain’t never been. And must be wearing three four dresses like he told her to do. That’s my girl, he thinks, right on time.
He’s seventy then sixty then fifty feet from her and smiling. Then the sound of horseshoes on the cobblestone street echoes across the open field. There are three sets at least, and they’re not a simple patrol, or people making their way home late at night. They’re moving quickly and getting closer, and he freezes for a moment. Tries to locate them precisely. But there’s no need to wait very long since they turn up the Kittredges’ block and ride straight for the house. Micah drops to the ground and sees Mary turn around the corner, flat against the wall so her silhouette can’t be seen. That’s my girl, he thinks again. He wants to call out to her but is still too far away. Wait until they pass, he thinks.
But then the clap of the horseshoed hooves against the cobblestones slows to stop. And the riders turn off the r
oad and toward the front door of the Kittredge house. They stop there, and two of the riders dismount. One of them taking the reins of the other. And the first man walks up to the Kittredges’ front door and knocks loudly on it five six seven times. Micah’s shock doesn’t last long before he starts to crawl along the ground, pulling himself forward by his elbows. The man bangs on the door a few more times, and Micah hears a gasp from Mary, maybe forty feet away and around the corner of the stables.
I think they sleepin’, Massa. The man holding the reins calls out.
Of course they are, shitwit, it’s three in the mornin’, the man doing the banging answers.
And Micah’s eyes grow wide at the sound of their familiar voices. It’s Jeremiah and Longley.
Kittredge … Kittredge. I need to talk to you … Kittredge! And Longley bangs on the door more insistently. Kittredge! … Kittredge! … bangs eight nine ten times. Starts calling out to anyone inside.
Hello! Hello!
Then—what’s the little girl’s name? Longley asks Jeremiah.
Mary, Suh.
Not the one he’s runnin’ off with … the little nigga girl that keeps house! Longley shouts at him.
Oh … ahhhh … Bessy, I think, Suh, though I ain’t altogetha—
Bessy … Bessy! Kittredge!
Desperate now. Like Micah’s never seen him before. And banging on the door some more, ’til a dog across the street starts barking. Someone lights a gas lamp on the second floor of the Kittredges’ house, and Mary gasps again, from around the side of the barn. Micah realizes he has to get to her, so he starts to crawl again. ’Til a few seconds later the windows along the first-floor slave quarters are etched with the faint glow of candlelight. And Mary steps back around the corner of the stable so Micah can see her silhouette again, turned this time toward the house. He’s maybe thirty feet away now when she takes a few slow steps, then starts to run across the field. Not toward him or toward the open fields behind the house. But back toward the house. The worst thing she could do.
Mary … wait. Mary, it’s me. He says, whispering and yelling all at once. Then louder again. Mary! In almost a regular voice now.
She stops for a second and follows the sound to where he is in the field. With him lying on the ground. A lifetime away from her in the stretch of no more than forty fifty feet. ’Til he lifts himself up enough for her to see him. With him still unable to see her face buried in the shadows of her coat hood, following her turn away from him, and toward the Main House. And he can’t tell whether she’s still ready to go or if she’s too scared now. As she stands frozen there in the field.
And his mind flashes through all the possibilities. Not thinking now, in these desperate seconds, of how this went wrong. But of how much worse it will be if she goes back inside. Then pressing his mind to skip forward to the inevitable. To how he can fix it. And he stands all the way up. Begins to walk toward her as the noise and light grow inside the house. But she brushes her arm two times away from her like she’s shooing him off from twenty shadowy feet away. And he can see the hood of her coat twisting from side to side. Shaking her head like she’s ready to abandon everything they’d talked about. In just that instant.
Wait, Mary. He urges her. We can still get to the river before the—
And more bangs on the front door of the house snap her head on a pivot away from him.
Just two brushes of her arm now, urging him to go away, to go back. And then she’s off again, running toward the house on the tips of her toes.
Mary … wait. We can still … Mary …
She’s so slow that he could catch her before the edge of the light that reaches out from the windows. But something holds him from it. Like the first bits of understanding how to fix a plan gone wrong. Longley’s after him, he knows. But if Mary can get back in time, she might still be safe. And she’s at the house now. As his head twists back and forth. Watching her step into the low window of her room. Then back to the front of the house, where Kittredge is standing with an oil lamp. Demanding to know what the meaning of all this is.
And Micah stands frozen there in the field, his shoulders dropping from the weight of all this helplessness. Looking back at Mary’s window, for a minute, maybe two. ’Til there’s a light in her room, and he fears the worst. That she’ll be punished, sold off maybe. And he thinks of running straight down the street to draw their attention away from her, but realizes it’s too late. Stands there in the field, instead. Helpless. With more windows lighting up in the house across the street and the other alongside it. And the echoes of Kittredge and Longley shouting back and forth from inside the parlor. ’Til he understands that everything is lost now. Gone in a heartbeat. The way stolen moments always are.
MARY
DECEMBER 24, 1862
Memories are funny things, how they all pile up on each other and come out at the strangest times. Gertie used to call ’em your very own scrapbook, but that was when she was talking about the happy memories, the ones you want to remember. It’s easy enough to keep those nice ones in a neat scrapbook in your head, all decorated with ribbons and such. But it’s the sad ones, the shadow ones, the ones that hang all around and sometimes over you like dreams on a winter evenin’—those are the ones that can make a real mess of things.
Micah leaves around two-thirty in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, and the way he’s smiling, and you are too, it’s like the shop doesn’t need any wood in the fireplace, like the glow from how you feel inside could keep everyone else warm, too. Then the Misses goes up to the house and comes back not long after that, and suddenly she’s all aglow too. She’s got her brother and his wife with her, and their daughter Ashleigh, the ones from down in Carolina who haven’t been here in a few years. They just arrived for a nice long visit, and the Misses takes to showing them around the shop, talking about how things’ve changed since they’d been here last. And she’s building you up all the while to them, saying how you practically made the whole place yourself.
Everything’s Mary this and Mary that, and the Misses’s brother and his wife keep saying how impressed they are, and the Misses’s brother’s wife hopes you’ll make her a dress and one for Ashleigh, too. ’Course you say you’d be glad to but then realize that it’s a lie, that you’ll be gone this time tomorrow, and that’s a bit of a shame. It was the Misses’s brother that was the reason you got saved in the first place, since it was him they were visiting in Carolina, and him who fell from his horse and made them decide to stay a little longer, which turned out to be just when you were standing up there on that auction block, when Juss first waved to you and smiled.
Before long it’s time to close up, and then it’s back over to the house, and Juss is there in your room waiting for you, so you can open presents like you always do before dinner on Christmas Eve. She always wants to do the giving first, and she hands you your present wrapped up in a big piece of cloth with a big red ribbon holding it closed.
Sorry there’s no paper on accounta the war, she says, but you won’t care ’bout that once you see what it is.
It’s long and narrow and you smile and untie the ribbon, taking your time peeling back the cloth. First you see the curved wood handle, and you know that it’s your very own parasol, it’s gotta be. Juss has a smile big as a half moon, and says keep goin’, keep goin’, and you peel it back some more and see the light green and then some yellow and white and peel it back all the way, and there are green and yellow ribbons tied to the tip of it. And it’s then you feel your breath stop cold inside you.
Rememba that? Juss asks, still smiling. And you can’t speak, with the breath still stopped inside you, so you nod your head but forget to smile.
Doncha rememba? Juss asks, and she’s a little disappointed now, seeing how you’re not saying anything and not smiling either. It’s the same parasol I was carryin’ the day we became sisters.
She’s never once described that day in any other way, never said the word bought or purchased or auction or an
ything of the sort, even when she got older and knew just what was really happening that day. And you know how she means so much for this parasol to bring back happy thoughts, and how disappointed she’ll be if you can’t shake the breath free inside you and get to smiling and telling her how much you like it. So that’s just what you do, hugging her first and holding tight, letting her squeeze you to maybe get the air moving inside you again. Then there’s some tears from her, which makes some tears in you, and she’s telling you how that day’s just about the most important one in her whole life, telling you everything she was wearing, including the two green and yellow ribbons that she’s tied to the tip of the parasol. She’s saying how her Grandmamma gave her this before she died and how that makes it a family heirloom, but her Momma said it’s okay to give it to you ’cause it’s like keeping it in the family after all. And then you start to crying some more, and Juss does too, and by the time you get around to giving her the long white gloves with lace and special stitching you’ve been working on in secret at the store for the last month, well, they’re not so special anymore.
You’re all twisted around inside then, thinking how nice it is to have a sister like Juss and how the Misses says how you’re like part of the family, and then of course you get sad thinking how you’re about to run off and break Juss’s heart like that. It doesn’t help that the parasol brings back those memories from standing on the auction block, and you can’t explain to Juss how that day was a sad one for you and always will be ’cause of how the memory’s stored up inside you. You can’t tell her that, and then it doesn’t matter anyway ’cause Cora’s opening the door without knocking, same as she always does when it’s your room she’s coming into. She’s surprised that Juss is there with you, and that maybe makes her a little nicer, but still she’s plenty mean enough when she tells you that the Misses told her she’ll be sleeping in here fer as long as th’kin is here. Cora says the Misses give her room to her brother’s slaves, and now it’s gonna be the two of you together.