by Peter Troy
No.
This subjugation was an everyday thing. Played out over and over again, even to shit excuses of a man like Dunmore. Especially to shit excuses of a man like Dunmore. But for these last eight nine ten weeks that was the one thing he didn’t have to do. And it’d just about made the hunger, and the cold so deep inside him he’d forgotten what normal was. Just about made it all worth while. Not to have to bow like that. Until now. Again.
Don’ shoot, please Suh. I’s just a … a runaway Suh. He says.
What he learned right off was that just ’cause they were wearing blue uniforms didn’t make them any less than what they were first and foremost. More than any nation, religion, anything else. They were white men. And they didn’t take kindly, runaway or not, to a colored man with a shotgun slung across his back.
No Suh, ’at’s jus’ for scarin’ off bears—maybe do some huntin’. It was enough of an explanation to get him brought to the Lieutenant instead of shot right there.
Got us a runaway, Lieutenant.
A runaway with a shotgun?
That’s what we was sayin’—go an figger that!
It didn’t take much to slip right back into it. The subjugation of himself. Something carved that deep into everything he was couldn’t go away with eight nine ten weeks in the mountains. Wasn’t likely to ever go away. So they were properly appeased before long. Confident that he was harmless. Ignorant. One helluva lucky nigger to traipse all the way up the Blue Ridge. Not get shot by Johnny Reb or Billy Yank. Not freeze to death. Or starve. Lucky. Couldn’t be smart, of course. Just, lucky.
But when the Lieutenant dismissed the men, and it was just Micah and him now, he started askin’ how he did it. So Micah told him just enough. Told him he’d been coming up the mountains all the way from Carolina. Left a couple of weeks before Christmas. Lied, in case word had made it this far about the dead men he’d left in Virginia. Just in case something as comparatively small as the war could be put aside to find a colored man who’d killed four white men. The Lieutenant brought him over to the giant map stretched over the wooden table. Asked him more questions. And Micah tried pointing out what he thought his route was, acting ignorant. ’Til the show and the story altogether were enough to earn him a hot meal and a pot of coffee. And a tent for the night.
Next morning the Lieutenant set him up with more hot food and coffee. And Micah could feel some of the frozen layers begin to thaw, from the inside out. The Lieutenant brought him back to the big tent from the night before. Only this time, waiting inside, was a Captain. The Lieutenant presented Micah, and the Captain looked him over without saying anything. Looked him up and down. Appraised him.
What’s your name, son?
Son. Captain couldn’t be more than twenty-five, like Micah. Still. Son.
Micah, Suh.
Ahh, from the Old Testament. Those Rebs often do that. They figure if they name their slaves after Biblical figures, that it makes it all right in the eyes of God.
Captain looked at the Lieutenant like he was conducting a class or something. Then it was more of the same from the night before. Lieutenant asked Micah to point out the route he traveled. Went through the whole thing on the map, playing dumb again. Not that it mattered. The Captain didn’t seem to care at all what he had to say. Started talking about his Daddy the preacher up in Connecticut. Talked about what an abomination slavery was. How it was the white man’s burden to look out for the inferior races, not enslave them. The Captain spoke with the righteous indignation of a preacher himself. Seemed to have a very clear understanding of the Natural Order of Things.
Let me ask you now, Micah. Did you boil bark and make that Negro soup along the way?
Micah looked at him. Unable to speak. After all that with the map, here he was asking about soup. Lieutenant didn’t seem too pleased by the question, either, but had to stand quiet.
Suh?
You know, stripping the white birch bark and boiling it up into one of those primitive Negro soups. The runaways on the Peninsula did it all the time.
Didn’t have no pot, Suh. Jus’ a fryin’ pan.
The Captain seemed very unhappy to hear that answer. But you would’ve. If you had a pot, you would’ve, yes?
Micah looked over at the Lieutenant, whose eyes seemed to instruct, give the man what he wants. Yessuh, Cap’n, I s’pose so.
Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm. See, that’s what many of these Negroes are accustomed to. It’s an instinctive thing in them from back in Africa. They’re like the Indians that way. Not as cunning, but the same primitive instincts. Best to free all the slaves and put ’em on ships back to Africa. Back in their natural habitat.
From the entirety of his life thus far, it was hard for Micah to imagine hating a man more than he’d hated Dunmore. But he believed, just then, that he could come to feel that way about the Captain, given a little more time. Maybe an hour or so. ’Cept that was the end of the interview. Soup, and such.
No wonder they’re losin’ this war, Micah thought.
Then the Lieutenant gave him another warm meal and some rations to take with him. Made sure he got back the shotgun and all the ammunition that was left. Gave him an extra blanket, walked with him across the pontoon bridge to the other side. Lieutenant told him that they were in Maryland now. Started explaining what waited ahead for him, just like Micah’d told him about what stretched out south of here. Told him how the mountains kept getting smaller and smaller as he kept on north. Told him he could stay off the peaks, walk on the crest along the valley. Nobody up in these parts owned slaves, and no slave-catchers’d make their way past the Union Army. Lieutenant told him he could make Pennsylvania day after next. And that would mean freedom altogether. Said it like it’d mean something to Micah. Then shrugged his shoulders when Micah said nothing. Still, he wished Micah good luck. Turned out to be one good man in a whole army of ’em, after all.
He walked all that day and the next until it was too dark to see three steps in front of him. The mountains were smaller, like the Lieutenant said. The streams were easy to cross in the places he’d told him about. And except for a few farms that looked more like frontier homesteads than something permanent, he didn’t see much sign of anyone. On the third day he knew he’d made Pennsylvania. Didn’t know where Maryland let off and Pennsylvania picked up. Just knew he was there. And free, like the Lieutenant said. Built himself a big fire that night. Big, like the one on Christmas Eve back at Longley’s old place. A free man should have such a fire, he figured. But it wasn’t nearly warm enough. Not without Mary. Or Daddy and Momma and Bellie. To see that he’d made it this far. Got himself free, indigo field or not.
’Stead it was just him and the not-warm-enough fire.
And freedom. Mostly empty, after all.
MARCELLA
BROOKLYN
MARCH 23, 1863
There were fifty or sixty people there at least, Ethan’s family of course, and some of his friends—Smitty and Violet—and some men who were later introduced as business associates of his brother Seanny—and a few people from the neighborhood including Mr. Hadley—and then, as they made their way through the crowd, she saw Catherine and Mrs. Carlisle, and five members of the Ladies Abolition Society and three of their husbands too! … and she burst forth to greet all of them, elated somehow, even though she had spent hours since her return with them … Catherine and Mrs. Carlisle of course, and the other ladies even—and yet still, somehow, she was filled with such great joy that they were here!
Marcella would later shed more than a few tears to hear how the whole thing had been arranged, how Ethan’s Mam and Aunt Em had visited Mrs. Carlisle’s just the day after she and Ethan had returned so they could start making plans … and how Sean—Seanny, as she promised to call him before the evening was through—had insisted upon arranging all the carriages for Mrs. Carlisle and Catherine and the ladies from the Abolition Society … and how Uncle Paddy, who she had learned was Aunt Emily’s second husband, had arranged for a special
ferry just to take them back and forth … and the food from the Clinton Hotel … and Feeny closing the pub altogether that night, just so he could be here to administer the spirits by way of a tribute to his son who had fallen at Fredericksburg along with all the rest of the lads … and the music, a virtual symphony of fiddles and hand drums and even a piano brought into the parlor … with voices loud and mostly on key—and oh!—it was as if she’d arrived in a foreign country altogether!
Then in the late evening hours, after the guests had almost all gone home, she was summoned by Mam and Aunt Em to accompany them to the front stoop, where Violet Smythe was already seated. Marcella sat along the ledge of the top step and listened to the clanking of chairs and dishes and glasses inside, where the men, including Sean and Smitty, seemed quite busy.
“What are they doing?” she whispered to Aunt Em.
And Aunt Em laughed a little before answering, “Well of course, they’re doin’ the cleanin’ up!”
She tried to imagine her father and brothers doing anything of the sort, then laughed out loud at the idea.
“What is it dear?” Ethan’s Mam asked her.
“It’s just … well … in my father’s house the men don’t do much cleaning—or anything, really.”
“Ah sure, they don’t here either,” she laughed.
“ ’Tisn’t anything more than the chance to sneak in an extra pint before callin’ it an evenin’,” Aunt Emily added.
“Cigars and brandy,” Marcella said with a smile.
And almost as soon as she’d said these things—allowing herself to be too comfortable amongst these women she was still getting to know after just a few days of living here—she wished she could have the words back.
Catherine had pulled her aside early on and told her that the McOwens had so dearly wanted to invite her family and all her friends to celebrate their marriage, but having no addresses other than Mrs. Carlisle’s, they came to call on her first. Mrs. Carlisle had discreetly suggested that a family gathering might best wait for a future date, but that there were several dear friends of Marcella’s who would no doubt be happy to attend, and Marcella felt more beholden to Mrs. Carlisle than ever before. Still, the disparity in guests from each respective side of this new union had lent itself to a few awkward moments for her. Friends far enough along the periphery of the McOwen side of things had asked Marcella where her family lived in Spain—meaning it in the present tense—and it was only thanks to Ethan or Catherine or Mrs. Carlisle being beside her at each of these occasions, that she had managed to make it through the evening without having to tell anyone that her family had been living just across the East River for going on eleven years, and wouldn’t dream of coming to a party such as this, even if she were in their good graces.
But here on the front stoop, with the guests all gone, there would be no escaping the full disclosure of things, and it was her own fault for having opened the door to it all. Marcella was unusually reserved after the slip.
“How’s that, love?” Ethan’s Mam asked.
And Marcella looked at her, hoping for a way to avoid the inevitable.
“You were sayin’ cigars an’ brandy an’—I wasn’t quite followin’ ya—did ya want some brandy? I don’t know if we’ve got—”
“Oh no, Mrs. McOwen. It’s just that in my father’s house, the men would slip off at the end of the evening, too—only into the library for cigars and brandy after the supper, and the women would be left in the parlor.”
Then she thought of all that Ethan had said of their time in the Old Country, and how they all had worked for an aristocratic family called the Brodericks. And at that moment her heart sank to think that they might count her as one of that class—until Aunt Emily broke the brief silence.
“Well, it looks like we got the better o’ that arrangement then,” she said. “At least they do a pretty good job with th’cleanin’ up. And it’s only fer the cost of a pint.”
“Could you imagine that lot drinking brandy?” Violet asked.
And they all laughed, Marcella even.
Then almost on cue came Ethan’s Uncle Paddy booming out the first line of a song, with the rest of the men inside joining up for the second:
There was a wild colonial boy
Jack Duggan was his name,
He was born and raised in Ireland
In a town called Castlemaine
He was his father’s only son
His mother’s pride and joy,
And dearly did his parents love
This wild colonial boy.
And the women spoke in a songlike manner of their own.
“Oh Jaysus, there dey go,” Aunt Emily said. “Four bleedin’ Irishmen—”
“And a bleedin’ Scot,” Violet added.
“And not a one of ’em who can sing on key,” Mam said.
And Marcella, feeling a little more at home with these women now, offered the finishing touch.
“What are the odds of that?” she said.
Violet laughed straightaway, but Aunt Emily and Mam looked at each other with wide eyes first before smiling and joining in.
“Ahh, Mahrcella dear,” Mam said, touching her knee, “sure it’ll be nice to have ya ’round.”
“Amen to that!” Aunt Emily added, opening the front door and waiting for a break between verses to call inside to the men, “Mind the neighbors! Sure they’ve got ears that have to listen to ya, too!”
“And the dogs as well, poor creatures,” Violet said.
And they laughed and listened to the men sing the next verse more quietly, though far more noticeably off key, without being able to mask their musical inadequacies now by shouting. The four ladies looked at each other, cringing and shaking their heads.
“Just how important are the neighbors to you?” Marcella asked.
And they laughed in unison this time.
“Sure, you’ll fit right in here, love,” Aunt Emily said.
And on a night she wanted to spend with her husband and not the memory of her grandmother at all, she felt compelled to write just a few words all the same.
Abuela,
More than once tonight I was told about the memory of Ethan’s sister Aislinn, rest her soul. Aunt Emily told me that I would’ve loved her as a dear, dear sister, and my new father-in-law said it was a joy to have a daughter again, and Seanny confessed that he could never forgive himself for her death, but he was glad that Ethan had picked such a woman as me to make the family as complete as it has been since The Hunger. I’m sure it is all the sort of pressure I would have been terrified of just a few months ago, but there is a certain symmetry to it I think now—to have lost my own family so completely, and to find a place so completely waiting to be filled within another. And so, I am an orphan no more.
ETHAN
COOPERSTOWN, NEW YORK
JULY 6, 1863
She opens the familiar sheet music for only the second or third time since they’ve been here, and spreads it out across the display, and he considers it a small miracle that he’s somehow stumbled his way up the front steps undetected, to see her there, unfettered by news of the world outside, and looking like the Venus de Milo—if ever the Venus de Milo had long black hair and arms, such arms, with graceful fingers at the end of them to play the piano. And then, with her still not knowing he’s there, or choosing not to let on, she places her fingers on the opening chords and plays without hesitation.
She bobbles slightly at the first key change, and he has to smile, thinking of how she’d done the same thing when she played with Mrs. Templeton. But then she backs up and plays over the key change again, and a third time, and then the fourth sounds just right, and she allows herself a little smile while playing on, coasting through three minutes’ worth of fondest memories. And he stands there taking in the music, certain that she’s aware of his presence the way she exaggerates playing some of the bolder chords, and lifts her hands far off the keys in long draping lines accentuated by downward pointed fing
ers. So it’s more of the dance that it has always been between them, and he’s glad the day can at least begin this way, and the world outside can be put off for a few moments more.
Now that time sounded perfect, he says once she’s finished, and he walks through the partly opened front door.
She turns around on the piano bench and pulls the blanket up from her hips and back over her shoulders, smiling easily at him, confirming that she’d been aware of his presence all along.
I still need to work on that first key change, she says. How was the lake?
Beautiful, but tomorrow I think …
And she offers an exaggerated frown at the mention of another day of waking up to find him gone from their bed.
… well, next time I go, I’ll take pictures of the sunrise—and perhaps Mrs. McOwen will accompany me for a morning picnic?
She smiles, then asks, a late morning picnic?
Well, I s’pose the sun’ll just have to wait until Mrs. McOwen is ready to watch it rise, he says, and she smiles her best Cleopatra sort of approval at the handling of such trivial details.
He sits down beside her on the piano bench and she opens the blanket to allow him to slip inside it. His left arm slides around her waist and they share the same long, slow, breathless kiss that has become the morning custom.
Ooh … you need a shave, she says, breaking away for just a moment before returning.
And then, as if satisfied that he’s made up for his absence that morning, and the effrontery of thinking a flower and a note could serve as a replacement, she pulls her lips from his and stares at him with an interrogating gaze. He knows that the folded newspaper protruding from his pocket is a violation of their agreement, but the outside world seems ever more determined to find its way to Cooperstown, to this house even, and what has seemed an Eden-like interlude compared to the rest of their brief marriage. And she slips her hand down his shoulder and lifts the newspaper slowly, staring at him in an accusing manner.