The Keeping Room

by Anna Myers

  In order to give my family a needed rest, I have decided to wait until just before dawn to carry out my plan. Perhaps I will sleep just a wink or two myself. I slide down to the floor, and with my legs spread across the doorway, I finally float off into slumber.

  I wake just as a bright spot appears over the roof of our ballroom, which is now filled with British soldiers asleep on cots.

  I remember how the smell of their burning tobacco alarmed my mother. “It will be only by God’s mercy,” she said to me one night, “if some worn soldier does not fall asleep with his pipe and set fire to us all.”

  I smile and think that it may be by God’s mercy that I have had this idea, and I know I will need his mercy to carry it out. First I spread my blanket near the door. Neither Sarah nor baby Rebecca stir when I move them to the blanket beside the door. George is harder for me to lift, and he moans as I strain to rise with him. I freeze, certain that my mother will wake, but perhaps because of her day spent scrubbing the cabin she does not.

  There is no way to move Mary without waking Mother, so when George is settled beside the two smaller ones, I am ready. After assuring myself that Mother remains asleep, I take the candle and the blanket upon which George slept to the back corner of the cabin.

  I hold my breath for the moment it takes the twisted blanket to light. First there is a thin thread of smoke. Then in an instant a bright flame reaches toward the sacking tacked to the cabin wall. I struggle with the impulse to smother the flickering red spot as it touches the sacking, but a fitful cry comes from George as he turns against the hard floor. I remember that I am doing this thing for my little brother and sisters.

  I watch as the flame climbs quickly up the sacking. A cracking sound begins to fill the cabin, and at the exact moment, when it is too late to dash the fire with the water bucket, I scream to my mother.

  When we are outside, we stand shaking for a moment, and I can see the shock of this awakening in the little one’s eyes. We stare at the flames.

  I am still shaking, but it is not from the cold. I have small hope that the British will see the fire as an accident. Of course I will not let them blame my mother.

  What will they do to me? I shrug my shoulders. There will be no place for my family here now. Surely, my mother and the others will be sent to Burndale. They will not be exposed to smallpox there, and there will not be so many British soldiers.

  My mother turns to me. There is no doubt that she knows what I have done. “Joey, how did you start the fire?” she asks.

  “The candle and a blanket.” I am quick to add, “But there was no danger. I moved them first.” With my hand I indicate the smaller children. I wait for my mother’s response, and I notice the sun has changed from a ball of orange to bright yellow.

  Mother shifts Rebecca to her other arm, puts the free one around my shoulders, and leans her head down to rest against mine. “I am afraid,” she whispers. “They won’t just let us get by with this.”

  Almost before the words are out of her mouth an officer comes to us. “You did this on purpose, madam,” he says, and I half expect him to draw his sword and run my mother through.

  “No!” I step out toward the soldier. With a little cry of protest, Mother reaches toward me, but I pay her no mind. “My mother had nothing to do with the fire, sir,” I say. “It is I who put the candle to the blanket while she slept.”

  And so I am now in chains in the keeping room. I was dragged into the house by an officer, and was taken to Lord Rawdon himself. He is a young man, yet his eyes are hard, and he holds his head in the most arrogant way.

  He watched me as I walked toward him between my two guards. There was a cruel twist to his smile, and I thought that he would surely kill me. “Bit of a scrapper, aren’t you, boy?” It seemed there was a trace of admiration in his voice, and I began to have hope of being spared.

  “Yes,” I said, and my gaze met his straight on.

  “No more! We can’t have it. I’ve no time for childish warfare. There are armies for us to fight. A few days in chains may quiet you.” He nodded his head with satisfaction and waved dismissal. Then as we turned to leave he added, “After that you can serve our men. Make a little slave of you, we will.”

  It does not matter. Just as I hoped, my family is being sent to Burndale. I am not allowed to say goodbye to my mother, but my spunky little sister sneaks down the keeping room stairs to see me. A guard is on duty at the large front doors, but he seems unaware that I am to see no family.

  We have had little to say to each other of late, and for a moment there is an awkward silence between us. “It was brave, what you did,” Mary says.

  I smile, glad to be at last her hero. “There’s not much time. I hate to leave you behind.” She reaches for my hand. “Please don’t be mad at me, Joey.”

  I shrug. “I am not mad now.” I am sorry I yelled at her. “You’ll have Uncle Samuel to make you laugh.” Mother’s younger brother is a great favorite of Mary’s and of mine. I am proud of the fact that he was the first white person to be born in Camden and even more of the fact that despite his Quaker upbringing he went off to Charleston to fight the British.

  Mary tries to smile. My eyes fall on the books that stand on a small shelf near the table where Euven and I do lessons. Suddenly an idea comes to me, and before I can change my mind I say, “Take some books, Mary, as many as you can carry. You can study them, and when we are together again we will talk about what you have learned.”

  “Your books?” She seems to doubt her ears.

  “Yes. It’s high time you had some real learning. I’d help you carry them if I could.” I hold up my chained hands.

  “You know Father does not believe a woman should concern herself with much knowledge from books.” Her brow is drawn tight, and she watches my face closely.

  “Father may not always be right.” The words come out without my having planned them, and they seem to bounce from brick wall to brick wall. Mary and I stare at each other. Each of us knows that an important moment in my life is occurring.

  “Won’t you need these?” She is already across the room and gathering books from the shelf.

  “If ever Euven is allowed to come again, he will bring more. Hurry, Mary.”

  When her arms are full, she goes as quickly as she can toward the stairs. Then turning back, she comes to place a quick kiss upon my cheek. At the moment I can no longer see her form in the doorway, a loneliness deeper than any I have ever felt comes over me.

  Lord Rawdon is true to his word. I spend three days in heavy chains that cut into my feet and hands. Cato smears a thick yellow salve on my wounds, and he brings me a mat like his to spread upon the floor at night.

  On the first night I lie awake for many hours. I think Cato is sleeping, but he speaks into the darkness that surrounds us. “Misery eases some, boy. I sure understands misery. Every day since they brings me away from Africa. You knows something, boy? I done lost every soul I loves. My mammy, sold. My wife, sold. Three little childs, sold. All gone, jus’ gone. Oh, I knows misery.”

  He does not seem to expect a reply, and I can think of nothing to say. Down toward the creek an owl hoots into the night. I hear no sounds from the soldiers inside the house or from those in either army who sleep outside.

  For a time I try to pretend that no war wages. I tell myself that my father and mother and the children are all asleep upstairs. I say that Cato and I have decided to sleep here in the keeping room as a sort of lark, and that he has fallen asleep telling me the stories of his early, happy life in Africa.

  Then I give up efforts to create a make-believe world. A war is not easily pretended away.

  Chapter Nine

  Dear Father,

  I live now in the keeping room, sleeping on a mat near Cato. I wonder about your life in prison. Even if we win this war, even if you come home and we take down the fence around our house, we will never be the same. The boot scars will be always in our floors. The changes will be always in our hear
ts.

  On the third day, after the chains are removed, I am put to work. It is the prisoners for whom I do most of my jobs, carrying food, tending to the sick, cleaning the filthy pen where they are caged. My body aches for rest, but my spirit is strangely at peace. Rawdon thinks to punish me. Yet for the first time since this terrible war began, I feel calm.

  I am often outside now, and it is good to see the sky. Summer is gone. October breezes sweep rusty red needles from the pine trees. By winter their color will change again to a grayish brown, and thick carpets of them will cover the front garden where the burial ditches are. Still I will know the graves are there.

  One evening when it is almost dusk, Captain Keegan calls me to follow him. I have just carried fresh water to thirsty men, and I am leaning for a second against the stockade fence to rest my weary body.

  “This way with you,” shouts Keegan, and I trot to follow him through the keeping room door. There he points to a shelf where military supplies rest. “Take the rag,” he says, “and the boot black. My boots want shining.”

  I think of the boy, Andy Jackson, who refused to do this very same task. I long to refuse and think that I too could endure a cut on the cheek or on the hand. However, I feel certain that if Captain Keegan takes a sword to me, it will be my heart or liver that bears the slash.

  I want to live. At the moment I want most to live because I can see the woodbox. Biddy is gone, allowed to go with my mother because the military cook did not want her in the kitchen. Still I fill the woodbox, and still I dream of using the pistol. Head down, I fetch the needed materials, then bend to shine the Captain’s boots.

  A small green worm crawls across the floor. Just before I put my rag to the left boot, the Captain lifts that foot and squashes the worm against the brick floor. In this man’s eyes, I am worth little more than the worm.

  When nighttime at last brings rest, I lie again on the mat beside Cato’s. My body aches and my eyes are heavy. Cato is restless. He turns and turns. Then he rises. I can see him in the moonlight that comes through the windows. He sits against a brick wall, and he wipes with a cloth at a small white stone. He begins to hum. Occasionally there is a word or two. His voice is soft, and I cannot make out the words. I think they are strange, a language I do not know.

  I am tired, but too interested to sleep. Sitting up, I listen and wonder if Cato would stop singing if I move closer. I stay on my mat, but I speak. “Is it an African song?”

  Cato nods. “’Fore they tore me way. ’Fore my misery days. Mostly the words is gone from my ol’ mind. It be a song ’bout a river. That much I knows.”

  “How old were you, Cato?”

  “Five, just five years old, holding my mammy’s hand. My pa, he fight. They splits his head open.”

  I am horrified, but I do not want him to stop talking. “Is the stone from Africa?”

  Cato laughs. “This be a rock I just finds down by the mill last year. Ain’t got nothing from that life, not one thing but bits of that ol’ song. I ’member the river some and big birds flying, not my mammy’s face, just my pa’s head. Fifty years I lives a slave life.”

  He starts to hum again, but this time there are no words. I am filled with sadness. It comes to me to tell Cato what my mother has said about his freedom. I will promise that when this war is over, he will be no longer a slave. I start to open my mouth, but I do not. Suddenly, I fear his anger.

  I imagine that I am a boy younger than George, that my father is killed, that I am ripped away from my part of Carolina, so that the Wateree River becomes only a dim memory. I imagine that then I am forced away from my mother and that later I lose my wife and children as Cato did. For fifty years I own little more than a stone that is truly my own. I imagine that when I am old and tired, some little boy waves a hope of freedom at me. I think that I would shout, “Too late!” I decide to say nothing.

  “You gets yo’self some sleeping now,” Cato tells me.

  I lie back down. “I will never hold slaves,” I say to the man across the room.

  “That be good,” he answers. “That sure be a good way, young master.”

  “No. I want never to be called master.” There in the dark I see suddenly my father’s face. I who am my father’s son find myself with ideas that oppose his. I have encouraged my sister to study. I have promised never to hold slaves. Am I betraying my father? The thought unnerves me, but I am far too weary to deal with it. I fall asleep before Cato comes back to his mat.

  Chapter Ten

  Dear Father,

  It is my birthday, but no one here knows or cares. I think of the merriment of last year, and of the feast we had, sweet potatoes, catfish stew, turkey, rice, peach leather, and lots of syllabub. It seems long ago. I am so much older now, but not because I am thirteen.

  I wish Euven would come again to see me. The prisoners, whom I tend with almost no help from the British, are kind to me. There are those among them who at one time would have made good choices for shared conversations and laughter. But I’ve no desire to make a friend of a man who tomorrow may be hanged while I am forced to watch.

  New American prisoners are frequently brought here from nearby battles, and the hangings continue to be held regularly. Captain Harkins, I know, tries somewhat to spare me. The captain is often in his quarters upstairs at such a time, and when possible he arranges for me to help him copy reports or sweep the floor.

  Once during such a time he told me of an injury he suffered when he was in Massachusetts, early on in the war. “My leg was badly hurt. Unable to walk, I fell among the other wounded and the dead. The battle was over, but still no one came to help me. The sun beat down on me, and I lay drifting in and out of consciousness. I woke to see a form bending over me and holding out a canteen. He straightened my wounded leg, which twisted when I fell, and he gave me a drink of water. He was an American soldier going about to ease suffering among the British.”

  “He did a thing I would never have done,” I say, and I begin again to sweep at the floor.

  Captain Harkins is at his desk. For a second I think he has not heard me, but then he looks up from his papers. “By my word, Joseph, I wish you did not hate me so.”

  I swipe at the floor with a mighty energy, an energy born of the hate Captain Harkins would have me give up. I could not, even if I wanted, give up that hate. What then would keep me alive? My thoughts are filled with little else than the gun at the bottom of the keeping room woodbox. I will hold that gun, and I will kill a redcoat. Only when I have done so will peace come to me.

  When I walked this morning to the prison pen, there was a crunchy sound from the heavy frost beneath my feet. A group of birds are black against the bright sky. They seem late in their departure for a warmer climate. I wish the men who huddle in the rude huts before me could go with those birds.

  Food grows more and more scarce. Our little community could never feed so many. The British still eat well, but the prisoners in their makeshift huts have little more than watery soup.

  Out at Burndale it is the same. I imagine little George and Sarah with thin faces. Even small Rebecca, I fear, has lost her baby roundness. I am never allowed to leave these grounds, but Cato is not watched so closely. At night he sometimes hunts by torch light for wild pigeons in the swamp and carries his bounty to my mother before dawn.

  He comes back, muddy, cold, and exhausted after I have had my meager bowl of breakfast porridge. I worry about Cato’s health. He no longer wears the bright clothes that were the uniform of the principal house slave. “These suits me better,” he says of the rough clothing he now wears. I marvel how I never thought that Cato’s uniform made him look like a fancy doll, but I fret because his frame grows thinner and more bent beneath his coarse shirt.

  I wonder too what has become of my waistcoat and linen shirts. I am only curious. Like Cato I feel better in my work clothes, and I notice that my britches are shorter than they were when first I put them on. I am thinner, but taller. The British cannot stop my growt
h.

  My mother sends me a note. “Joey,” she writes, “we think of you always. I am allowed now to send your father letters and to receive his. He is well. I know it would bring him pleasure to have word from you. Cato can bring your letter when he comes next. I have had word too from your brothers. One day we will all be together again. My darling son, I pray for your safety and that your eyes are on the inward light.”

  After I have read the note, I sit for a long time beside the keeping room fire. I think of my brothers. They have experienced nothing of this war. How can they ever understand?

  I go to a shelf where there is paper and pen. If no redcoat calls me to work, I will write a letter to my father, a real letter, one that will be posted. I settle at the table and am undisturbed for some time. Yet my page remains blank. My eyes go to the woodbox, and I put the pen away. Perhaps I will not write to my father until I have made my big strike against the British. Then I will have something to say.

  Each night Cato and I place our mats as close as possible to the big hearth. We have but one blanket and share it, both of us glad to have also the heat of another body near. One night before we sleep, I tell him about my father’s gun. “It is there still, waiting.” I sit up so that I can see the box. “One day my chance will come, and I will kill a redcoat. At least one of the hated soldiers will die because of me.”

  Cato’s response from his mat beside me is a surprise. “Don’t yo’ do it, Mister Joey. Don’t yo’ go and do no such thing. I kills me a man, needed killing too, but them eyes they follows me. They watches me while I lives.”

  “But doubtless he was not as evil as these redcoats,” I argue.

  “Most these men, they just soldiers. They got bad jobs, that’s all. War be like that, I reckon.” Cato closes his eyes. His now familiar snoring tells me any argument I might voice would be wasted.