Northern Light

by Annette O'Hare

  Margaret arose from the ground and dumped the seeds out onto Papa’s makeshift wooden table and began sorting, grudgingly acknowledging in her mind that he’d been most helpful, even though she still didn’t like him and had made that plain to him. She paused for a moment and glanced up.

  Thomas had worked the soil, his hoed rows perfectly even. His tall, broad shoulders barely fit in one of Papa’s shirts. His dark hair was tied back with a string, accentuating his jawline. He was the epitome of manliness, not embarrassed to work the soil, as if firm in the conviction of where God placed him on this earth. He looked confident…the way a good husband should.

  She turned back to the seed table, ashamed of gawking with the brazen desire of still wanting a husband, despite her Jeffrey now lying in the cold ground. Anger welled up against the object of her yearning. “Mr. Murphy…I rue the day I ever set eyes on you.” She didn’t raise her head from the pile of seeds.

  Thomas stopped working the ground to rub his injured shoulder. The action of hoeing must be causing a great amount of pain.

  “Does your shoulder hurt?” She looked at him. “I hope those soldiers’ bullets hurt you like your people have hurt our southern way of life.” She huffed out a breath. “You’re probably one of those fool Yankees who think the war is about freeing the slaves. For heaven’s sake, what’s it to you if a few southerners own slaves to help out with their farms?” Margaret completely abandoned the seeds and turned to face the man.

  “Miss Margaret, I’ve felt my fair share of pain because of this war, but you know what, I’d do it all over again if it would help to free the slaves. Now there’s a people who have suffered a great deal more than you and I will ever know. Ye might know that if ye’d ever taken the chance to talk to one of them.”

  Margaret felt her cheeks warm. “Do you really think those Negroes care one way or another? Besides, if they were given their freedom, they would probably run back to their masters lickety-split because they wouldn’t even know how to survive on their own.”

  Thomas gave her a look of disdain and shook his head. “I know you only speak from ignorance, but if ye knew the truth about the Negro people, you would be telling a far different story, to be sure, lass.”

  “If anyone around here is ignorant, it would be you, Mr. Murphy! If you had any sense at all, you would know that the North doesn’t care one bit about the Negroes. All they want is to lord their power over the South!” She clenched her fists on the seed table. “If anything, the North is using the slaves as an excuse to cover up their real agenda…tyranny.”

  “Aye, yer Papa had much of the same opinions about the war. But no matter what ye think is the cause behind it, you’ve got to admit that owning another human being is not the Christian thing to do, lass.” Thomas’s eyes softened.

  Margaret whipped her head back in astonishment that this man, a stranger, a foreigner…a Yankee, would dare question her Christian values. “Well. Why don’t you tell me, Mr. Murphy, if slavery is so bad, then why is it talked about between the pages of the Bible?”

  Thomas paused. “Have ye ever sang the song ‘Amazing Grace’?”

  “Of course I have! Before we moved to this godforsaken peninsula, my family belonged to one of the most respected Christian churches in New Orleans.”

  “Did ye know the song was written by the captain of a slave ship?”

  “No, I did not. But that just proves my point. Anyone who could write a song like ‘Amazing Grace’ had to be an upstanding Christian man.”

  “Aye, he was, but not at the beginning. He was once a cruel, vile man who treated no one with respect, especially not the slaves in his care. The song tells a bit about his harrowing experience in a fierce storm and how God saw fit to deliver him through it. The verse says, ‘Through many dangers, toils, and snares I have already come; ’tis grace that brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home.’”

  “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. It sounds to me as if this great man of faith had no problem with the slave trade.”

  “Well, lass, I don’t know why he didn’t immediately quit what he was doing, but I do know that many years after his conversion, he admitted to how sorry he was, and he supported the abolition of slavery in Great Britain.”

  “That’s all well and good, but you still haven’t answered my question. If it was OK for the people in the Bible to own slaves, why is it wrong for the South to own them today?”

  “Miss Margaret, surely ye remember the story of Moses delivering the children of Israel from the hands of the Egyptian pharaoh. God commanded him to do it because He’d heard the anguished cries of His people. They were sorely oppressed slaves under their masters and begged for deliverance. Don’t ye think the Negroes feel the same way?” Thomas’s words were spoken with peace.

  Margaret was drawn into his way of thinking, to what he said. But she couldn’t give in quite yet. “But, that’s different! Those were God’s chosen people, and they didn’t deserve to be slaves to the pharaoh.”

  “So yer saying the African people deserve to be slaves?”

  “Why don’t you just mind your own business and go back inside the house before some foot soldier sees you and drags your Yankee tail end to the fort!”

  Thomas put his hand over hers.

  Margaret wanted to yank it away, but his touch was much too wonderful to resist.

  “Miss Margaret, yer papa told me all the horrible things you’ve been through. I know all about how ye had to up and leave yer home in New Orleans. And I know about ye losing yer fiancé. I…I just want to tell you how very sorry I am for the pain my presence must be causin’ ye. I would do anything to ease yer burden.”

  His lovely, lyrical voice, the way he spoke those words, was like a soothing balm to her heart and yet they also burned like salt in a fresh wound. Part of her wanted to fall into his warm embrace and sob for all she’d lost. But he was a Yankee, the cause of her loss. She jerked her hand away. “Mr. Murphy, you’ve never felt pain like I have.” Her voice sounded bitter, even to her.

  “Aye, but I’ve felt plenty of pain in my life and…”

  Tears welled up. Giving him the pleasure of seeing her cry wasn’t something she would allow. “I don’t want to hear anything more you have to say!” She hiked up her skirt and leapt over the fence, running down the long trail toward the bay.

  “Miss Margaret, wait. I’m sorry. Please don’t run away!”

  The sounds of the bay and a long walk would help soothe her bitter soul. She only hoped there weren’t any more injured Union soldiers to run into on her way. And he wouldn’t dare take the chance of following after her.

  9

  Margaret’s heart pounded. The farther she ran from Thomas Murphy, the better she felt. The wind stung her cheeks, which already burned with the anger inside her.

  Whitecaps bounced on the bay in tune with the swaying breeze, unaware of her bruised ego. Her bare feet sank into soft sand at the edge of the dunes. The roof of the Stoltze place came into view. She slowed her pace. Her cheeks were wet from the tears she’d shed. Pulling the apron to her face, she wiped them away. Stupid Yankee! What could he possibly know about my pain…or about the slaves…or why the South went to war in the first place? He doesn’t know anything. “O Lord, how can I hate someone so much and at the same time want him to hold me in his arms and protect me? Father God, why have You done this to me? Haven’t I been through enough?”

  She covered her face with her betraying hands that had loved his touch. Her embittered weeping was interrupted by a sweet sound floating over the dunes. She got back on her feet and wiped away the tears. Someone was singing.

  “Roll, Jerdan, roll. Roll, Jerdan, roll.

  I want’ta go to heav’n when I die, to hear ol’ Jerdan roll!

  O brethren,

  Roll, Jerdan, roll. Roll, Jerdan, roll.

  I want’ta go to heav’n when I die, to hear ol’ Jerdan roll!

  Sing it ova now…!”

  Be
autiful, dark-skinned Necie, the Stoltzes’ slave girl, sat on a short wooden stool, hunched over a washtub. She scrubbed her master’s clothes with the smooth side of a seashell.

  Thomas had said she’d never taken the time to talk to a Negro.

  Rubbish! I’ve waved and said hello to Necie at least a dozen times. Margaret smoothed down her skirt and apron and walked toward the young woman. Unlike the other times she’d seen Necie, she decided not to just wave hello and go on. This time, she’d take notice.

  The girl was around her own age. The cotton blouse and skirt Necie wore hadn’t known their original color for some time.

  Margaret stepped on a stick and broke it underfoot, making her presence known.

  Necie’s song came to a halt. Her gaze darted around before landing on Margaret. “Miss Margaret? What you doin’ wanderin’ round out here on the beach? You done scared me half to death! You know it ain’t safe for a purdy girl like you to be out here alone.”

  Margaret’s cheeks warmed. “Hello, Necie.”

  “You all right, Miss Margaret? Looks like you been crying.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. Tell me, how’s Mrs. Stoltze doing these days?” Margaret covered her embarrassment with questions.

  Necie shook her head. “Oh, Miss Margaret, she ain’t doin’ so good. She got the rheumatism in her hands so bad they’s no more than crab claws anymore.” Necie mimicked how the elderly woman’s hands moved. “She don’t walk too good neither. Her backbone so twisted up…” She shook her head again and dragged the seashell over the shirt she was washing. “Come winter time, she probably ain’t goin’ to be able to get outta bed at all.”

  Margaret thought to tell Mama to check on the elderly couple soon. She sat on the sturdy driftwood log next to the girl. “Necie…Mr. and Mrs. Stoltze bought you from the slave trader after Mrs. Stoltze’s sickness made her unable to keep up with her chores, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes’m, that’s right. She’s a mighty sick woman and Massa Stoltze ain’t much better off than her. They so old.” Necie laughed. “Sometime Massa Stoltze can’t even remember where he’s at.”

  Oh dear, that doesn’t sound good at all. “Tell me, Necie, how do Mr. and Mrs. Stoltze treat you?”

  “Now what make you want to ask a question like that for, Miss Margaret?”

  “I was just wondering if they…well, you know…have they ever beat you?” Margaret fiddled with the hem of her apron.

  Necie flung her head back and laughed. “Oh, no! They treats me real good, Miss Margaret. Besides, they so old they can’t even beat eggs, much less me!”

  “Well, tell me then, what is it that’s so bad about being a slave?”

  The young girl moistened her lips and her cheerful laughter faded. “Well, I s’pose the worst thing I can ever remember is when I was sold away from my family back in Louisiana.” Necie rubbed the seashell back and forth over the shirt in her washtub. Her mind appeared to have gone far away.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Margaret too had been made to leave her home. She at least had her family to comfort her though.

  Necie had no one. But if that was normal for a slave, then that was the way it had to be.

  “My Moses and me was plannin’ to jump the broomstick fo I got drug off.”

  “Jump the broomstick? What do you mean?”

  “Miss Margaret, you know slaves can’t get married like white folk can. It ain’t legal. So when slaves fall in love and wanna get hitched, we just jump over the broomstick together to show everybody we’s married.”

  This young woman had lived in Louisiana…just as Margaret had. And she was to be married…just as Margaret had planned. Her dreams had been dashed on the rocks of life as surely as Margaret’s own.

  “Ye might know that if ye’d ever taken the chance to talk to one of them.”

  Thomas’s words stung deep in her heart. What he said about the slaves was true. It hurt all the more to admit that she knew very little about slavery. There was a more important reason than just states’ rights that the war was being fought. And even with all the modern resources available for a person to learn, she’d never taken the initiative to find out. She crossed her arms over her churning stomach as the young woman continued.

  “We wanted to get married cause I’s gonna have Moses’s baby.”

  Shocked, Margaret’s instinct was to gasp and slap her hand over her mouth, but she made a concerted effort to control her actions.

  “Life was hard for the menfolk working at the sugarcane plantation. I’s thankful I don’t have to work in that boilin’ house where they melt down the sugar. My Moses work in there keepin’ the fires going all day, every day. It so hot your skin feel like it gonna drop off your bones. But I got to work in the big house taking care of the missy’s little ones.” A smile crept across her face. “They little, white-haired babies be so sweet…not like the massa.” The edges of Necie’s mouth turned down. Her brown eyes closed to slits.

  “What happened? Did the master beat you?” Margaret watched as tears began to roll down Necie’s face. She shouldn’t have made her dredge up such painful memories.

  “No! He sold me away so I can’t be with my Moses. I fight hard so I don’t has to leave my mammy and my Moses. I kick and I scratch that man so he thinks I’s so bad he don’t want to take me with him.” Her bottom lip trembled and her voice squeaked. “But then he kicked me so hard and I fell down and can’t get back up. He just scoop me up and throwed me into the wagon and drive away with my mammy layin’ with her face on the ground bawlin’ and squallin’. Down the road a ways, I started to hurt so bad in my belly. I look down and sees blood all over my skirt and all over the floor of that wagon. My baby died and I passed him right there in the back of that wagon on my way to Texas.”

  Margaret couldn’t hold back her tears. She’d held her dead baby brother, Jeremiah’s twin, when Mama wasn’t able to. And, oh, how hard it had been when it came time to give him back to the Lord. The memory was painful and it wasn’t even her child. She couldn’t imagine the pain and loneliness Necie must have felt. “Oh, Necie, how can you stand it? My fiancé is dead, but the man you love is still alive and you’re not allowed to be with him.”

  Necie wiped her tears on the towel she had draped over her shoulder. “My heart hurt for a long, long time. But I can’t stay sad about it. Mrs. Stoltze told me about Jesus and how when I get to heaven, my baby boy’s gonna be there waiting for me. She say Jesus was God’s little boy, and He love me so much He gave His Son to die for me, and if I believe in Him, I’s gonna go to heaven when I die. I got faith He gonna do what He say He gonna do.” Necie’s words of God’s grace seemed to soothe her and give her back her smile.

  It was incomprehensible to Margaret how this young woman managed to go on living after what she’d been through. Guilt and shame washed over her and made her feel sick. What kind of Christian was she that a slave had more faith in God than she did?

  Necie wrung water from the shirt she’d so thoroughly scrubbed and placed it on a rock beside the washtub. As she fished for another piece of clothing, she began humming the tune of the song she’d been singing earlier.

  “Necie, what is that song you were singing? I’ve never heard it before.” Margaret wiped the tears from her face.

  “Oh, it’s a slave song they sings back on the plantation. My mammy sing it all the time. Mrs. Stoltze say it talk about the River Jordan in her Bible where them Israelites crossed over to get to the Promised Land. She say it also the river where Jesus got baptized. I know she right, ’cause Mrs. Stoltze sure know her Bible.” She didn’t look at Margaret as she shook her head. “But back on the plantation they say it a song about a river up north where a slave can cross over and be free.”

  “Why would they sing a song about the Jordan River if it was really about escaping their masters?”

  “Now, Miss Margaret, if they sing about running away where the massa can hear, they all gonna get a whoopin’.”

  Margaret ga
sped. “Oh, I suppose you’re right about that.”

  “But for me, I wanna believe that song is really about that Jordan River they talk about in the Bible. I know I never gonna run away. There nowhere to run to on this ol’ peninsula. What’s I gonna do, swim away?” She gave a contagious smile. “I just stay with Massa and Miss Stoltze and pray someday my Jesus gonna deliver me to the Promised Land.”

  Margaret was amazed at how Necie could have any faith at all in the midst of such a hopeless situation, but somehow…with Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior…she was able to overcome.

  How had she not understood before? The Bible said God had made man in His own image. Not just the white men—all men. Slowly, the idea sank in. A Negro was capable of having feelings like anyone else. To think she’d believed what a few people had said…that Negroes were soulless like the animals.

  Oh, Lord, how could I have been so ignorant? Of course Necie has a soul…a loving and caring soul. And a good heart that loves unconditionally…not like me, putting provisions on everyone. Oh, Father, please, please forgive me! The Lord’s cleansing forgiveness came as suddenly as the words had poured from her heart. She rose from the driftwood log and put her arms around Necie in a long embrace. She didn’t deserve the soft patting she felt on her back, but it comforted her to know she’d made a new friend.

  “Goodbye, Miss Margaret. Tell yo sista, Miss Elizabeth, I says hello.”

  Margaret was taken by surprise. “Elizabeth has been here?”

  “She come by here earlier today. She come by all the time when she goin’ up to the Langley place. Sometime I be outside tending to our vegetables and she come by and say hello.”

  So that’s where she’s been going. “Goodbye, Necie. I’ll have Mama come by and check on Mr. and Mrs. Stoltze soon.” Margaret waved as she walked away from Necie’s washing place. She wanted to feel the cool water around her feet and the soft, squishy sand beneath them. There was much she needed to think about on her way back home.

  So many things had happened in such a short span of time. Everything she’d known as truth about the slaves and the reasons for the war had changed. Thomas had been right. He understood so much more than she. Maybe the Yankees aren’t such horrible people after all. Maybe Thomas isn’t the monster I’ve made him out to be. Maybe it’s OK that I have…feelings for him.