by Robert Hicks
Hooper sat up straight in his cart, as if he were in command of all he surveyed, and when they drove the mule down this street or that, he tipped his hat to the people and the Negroes tipped their hats back.
Tole admired the operation Hooper had going. It made him laugh at the misplaced confidence of white people. But he had his own ways of keeping track of such men, especially those who snuck around meeting in smokehouses and sheds and plotting their little revolutions.
Chapter 23
Letter
July 24
Dear Mr Bliss,
I been listenin around to see what Dixon is up to and I think I found out sumthing good. Sound like he and his men been scarin foke, maybe to sell sum land he wants. I herd about 1 family they was workin on, think they name Wilson. They live near Brentwood. I gess Dixon wants their land real bad.
I hope this helps you and I will keep listenin for mor.
GT
Chapter 24
Mariah
July 23, 1867
The day after she met Lizzie, Mariah went to Franklin to deliver a beautiful baby girl—seven pounds, six ounces—soon born, named Annabelle Rose, and latched on to the mother’s breast. Dusk was falling by the time Mariah washed herself and decided to stop by the Thirsty Bird Saloon for a visit with April and May.
Inside, the saloon was lively with chatter and laugher. In the corner, a young Negro boy, no older than thirteen, sat and banged rhythmically on a bass drum; beside him a heavy black woman with a long braid down her back played the clarinet. Eben Payne and his mother, Eloise. Mariah had birthed Eben. She and Eloise nodded to one another, but Eloise did not stop playing.
April was behind the bar, pouring drinks, chatting to customers. At a corner table, Mariah saw familiar faces: Hooper, May, and, surprisingly, George Tole.
“Mariah, come on over!” May hollered over the noise and chatter.
Tole stood up, stumbled backward toward the wall, and offered Mariah his chair.
“I don’t mind standing, Mr. Tole.”
“Please sit,” he said, and Mariah did. Tole pulled another stool over and sat beside her.
When Tole stood up, Mariah noticed the shoes he was wearing. “Your boots,” she said.
Tole looked down.
“Those the shoes my boy made.”
“It was my idea,” Hooper said.
Mariah smiled. “They look a little handsome on you.”
“What brings you out this way?” May asked.
“I need reasons for visiting friends now?”
“’Course not. Except I know you and I know you ain’t jus’ come all this way to see little old me.”
“Old is right,” Mariah said.
“Don’t you go runnin’ that lip now,” May said.
Hooper leaned over to Tole. “I seen these two go at it a time or two. You don’t want nothing to do with it. They scare even the toughest men.”
“I believe it,” Tole said, before asking Mariah if she would like a drink.
“I’m fine, Mr. Tole.”
Tole nodded and gestured for April behind the bar to bring him another. Hooper and May shared a look.
“So Mariah. What brings you out here?” Hooper asked this time.
“Baby come. Ashby house over off Walnut,” she said. Tole glanced over at her, mesmerized. “Pretty little thing,” she said. “Her little palm barely fit around my finger.”
Tole finished his drink too quickly.
“You all right there?” Hooper asked him. “Maybe you need to go sleep it off?”
Tole nodded without speaking.
“You need some help getting home?” Hooper asked.
“I manage.”
Tole looked at Mariah. “It’s a pleasure hearing your stories about bringing babies into the world. See you back at the McGavocks’.”
“You will, Mr. Tole.” Mariah looked at him, worried.
Tole stumbled out of the bar, grabbing hold of barstools scattered about and finally reaching the door, before slipping out and stumbling his way out of sight. Mariah caught herself staring too long after he had gone and broke her gaze to look back at Hooper and May.
“What’s goin’ on between you two?” May asked.
“What do you mean?” Mariah snapped.
“You spending a lot of time with him.”
“He helps out around Carnton.”
“And?”
“And what? And not a damned thing.”
“Oh come on, Mariah. You hear the way the man talks about you.”
“We ain’t children, May.”
“Trust me, I know it.”
“We just friends.”
“You fancy that man!” May said, teasing her. “Mariah got her a man.”
“You stop that. Actin’ like a damn fool.”
May’s face turned serious. “It’s okay if you do.”
“It ain’t like that, okay? I just buried my son. I ain’t about to go start up some romance with a stranger. George Tole and I get on just fine. But it ain’t more than that, and I’ll cut that nonsense out your mouth if I hear it again.”
Where had this rage come from, flooding over her out of nowhere and leaving just as quickly? She asked May if she could have a sip of her water, and May nodded.
“Only having fun,” Hooper said.
“Y’all watching me. That’s what this is about.”
“Yes,” May said. “We worried about you. You just lost your boy, and nobody gone say nothing if you enjoy a man’s company.”
“Would that be so terrible?”
“Not at all. We just not sure about him, is all.”
“You not sure about Tole? Somethin’ I should know?”
“You already know,” Hooper said. “He likes that drink too much.”
“Says the man sellin’ it to him. I gonna remember that one, Hooper.”
“He a drunk,” May said. “And who knows what he saw during the war, Mariah. Men like him ain’t all put together right.”
“I do,” Mariah said, coming to Tole’s defense. “I know what he’s seen and I know where he’s been. I know why he drinks, and if I’m the only person who understands, then so be it. He might be all those things you say about him, but that ain’t all he is.”
“We wasn’t trying to—”
“Oh hush,” Mariah said, interrupting. “I know what you was trying to do.”
“He the saddest and angriest man I know,” May said. She was not afraid of Mariah, not like the rest.
“Well, I’m sad and angry, too, May. Maybe that’s what I like about him.”
May placed her hand on top of Mariah’s. “You do what you do and I’ll shut my mouth.”
* * *
Mariah left the Thirsty Bird an hour or so later, after full dark. The air was sweet and cool against her face. She turned the corner onto Main Street and caught sight of Elijah Dixon ahead. She thought about avoiding him, but he seemed unavoidable, like an avalanche.
When they drew abreast, Dixon stopped her. “Mrs. Reddick,” he said. “I had hoped the next time I saw you would be as joyous an occasion as the last.”
The last time Dixon had spoken to Mariah, she had handed him his new baby boy. Now she said nothing, just looked him up and down in his fine seersucker suit.
“I suppose it’s the tragedies in life that bring people together more often than not,” Dixon said.
“Or chops them apart,” Mariah said.
Dixon looked shocked to hear her speak so directly. “I suppose that’s true.”
“Please excuse me, sir—”
“Heard about your boy,” Dixon went on.
“Yes sir.” He would never know how close he was to being strangled to death right there.
“So very sorry. A real tragedy.”
Mariah said nothing.
“I knew your son, Theopolis. Did you know that?”
“Oh yes, he spoke very highly of you, Mr. Dixon.” She had never spoken to Theopolis about Dixon. Her loathing f
or him was like acid inside her.
“I am certain we will find the evildoer who did this,” he said.
She could feel her fingernails biting into her palms. “Yes sir,” she said.
“We must also be careful not to rush to conclusions lest an innocent be strung up.”
“Wouldn’t want no innocents to be strung up,” Mariah repeated, thinking of innocent little Augusten and his other four children, innocently playing in their beautiful house with their innocent servants and their clean carpets and innocent regular meals. She trembled with rage and was glad it was too dark for him to see it.
“Can’t have the town getting it all wrong,” he said. “Can’t put the crime on a man who ain’t done it, I’m sure you understand. It’s a damn terrible thing, no mistake about that, but these things take time to sort out and make right. Got to make it right and got to start not making it wrong. Patience, child, patience. Go to church and pray.”
“Oh yes, Mr. Dixon, thank you, sir.”
He frowned, not being a dumb man. Was she mocking him? A former slave, albeit a midwife, mocking the magistrate? Surely not.
Men across the street called to him. He flapped his hand at them like he wanted them to shut up and expected them to shut up when he said so.
The men went into the tobacconist. Dixon paused as if he had just forgotten something that needed to be said. He cocked his head at his feet, inserted his left hand into his waistcoat, cocked his head the other way. Mariah wanted so desperately to get home that she nearly ran. But she stayed, her freedom a relative concept.
“Your son was…” Dixon began, but let it trail away. He opened his mouth and shut it tightly again. His mustache danced, flecks of tobacco in it. “The smallest things have a way of turning into the biggest things of all. Have you noticed that?”
He turned and crossed the street before she could answer.
She refused to stare after him, so she stared at the ground in front of her, a few dandelion leaves poking out from a crevice in the dirt. The biggest things of all.
She would not let Elijah Dixon breathe this air that had filled her son’s lungs, that had touched his arms and cooled his sweat as he bent, exhausted, in front of a cobbler’s bench. She might be a Negro and she might be a woman, she might be a former slave, she might have belonged to someone like a spoon or a vegetable peeler or a shoelace, but sometimes—as he said—the smallest things have a way of turning into the biggest things of all.
Yes. She had noticed.
Chapter 25
Letter
July 25
Refrain from eavesdropping on Dixon and his men any longer. You’ll get caught and you’re unlikely to turn up much of any import. The only way to get what we need is to access documents I imagine he keeps in his office rather than at home, or perhaps in some other location entirely. That’s where the real information is, not out in the open where you can see or hear it.
I have learned from my contacts in Nashville that he has bought a substantial amount of new land around the state in recent months in addition to what he already owned. This includes the Wilson property in Brentwood, thank you for that information. But I have not yet been able to deduce what he means to do with it. Therefore you will have to go into his office and see what he is hiding there. Make no move yet. I will write soon with further directions about what to look for once you enter his office. You will be rewarded for this work.
Dixon is a dangerous man, do not forget.
Chapter 26
Mariah & Tole
July 28, 1867
The stars made the mud puddles shine, but he walked straight through them, coming back from working with Hooper, who had dropped him on the road past Carnton. They’d gone to some outlying farms collecting junk and making whiskey deliveries, and now Hooper had headed off to the woods while Tole returned to the light and flash of Franklin. All was dark and he was bone-weary.
And then the voice came out of the grove next to the road and nearly made him drop dead right there. He reached for his knife and flashed it.
“You’ll get my son’s boots dirty and wrecked, you keep doing that.”
Mariah.
“You should put that knife away, too, ain’t polite.”
She took his arm, turned him around, and walked with him. His heart calmed. He kept walking and she kept walking, and soon he knew where they were going—back toward Carnton, back to Mariah’s small two-story brick cabin behind the main house. They took their time walking there.
The shadows from the stars and the moon wavered on Mariah’s face, which seemed boundless. When she spoke again, it was as if she had already been talking to him for hours. It seemed as if he’d heard these words before, carved somewhere in some nameless place inside him that only she could reach. “It ain’t enough to know that my boy been killed, by accident or by purpose, and that it was some kind of white men who done it,” she said. “Who don’t already know that? No one got to be told that.”
“Always the white man at the heart of it,” he agreed.
“But,” Mariah said, “it’s better to know for sure than to wonder. Wondering gets to worrying, and that gets to poison, poison like anger. Eat you up. Eat me up.”
“True.”
“He was a good boy.” She paused, corrected herself. “Wasn’t a boy. A man. A good man.”
Tole saw a sky of stars and noticed how they painted her gray and flat. She looked old, suddenly, and bent. “He was.”
“Ain’t paid attention to his mama, though,” Mariah said. Tole watched her. Did she smile when she said that? Her mouth turned up at the corner.
“What you tell him?”
Mariah looked up, wide-eyed. “What I tell him?” She shook her head and looked back down again. Tole watched her shoulders slump forward. The night was silent and cold around them. “I told him not to go speak in front of men, to keep himself down and happy and safe. I told him the world wasn’t ready for him, and that it was dangerous.”
“He be alive today, if he listen to his mama.”
“Maybe he would.”
For a moment the only sound was their feet, scuffing through the dust and weeds. Carnton loomed over them, then behind them, and they circled the porch, the boxwoods smelling rich and sad. The ground sloped down, and Mariah’s cabin sprang up before them, a light glimmering in the downstairs windows.
“I was right,” Mariah agreed, opening the door and letting him in before her. One candle burned on the table, with a scent Tole couldn’t quite place but that smelled sharp, something he could feel in the back of his nose.
“But,” Mariah said, now staring holes into the floor, her eyes bright and hard and aflame. “I weren’t right. And he knew that, and he smiled at me when he left me the last time and said he hoped I would come to hear him speak. But I didn’t even have that much courage, to go hear him. I can never know what he sounded like up there, giving his speech and making his arguments and doing his preaching. I never saw him. I only saw him dead.”
“He was good, Mariah. Real good. Better than a preacher.” Theopolis had never had a chance to speak—the crowd had begun to riot around the time he took the stage. Even if he had spoken—and Tole knew that he had tried, he’d watched the boy’s lips move—Tole had been too far away, too high up, to hear a word. But even so, perhaps the young man had been changing the world with his voice. Tole didn’t know, but he wanted Mariah to think it anyway.
“I was wrong. He might have lived and I still been wrong. I might have been happy and wrong, I might have had my boy and been wrong, I might have kept to my ways with everything undisturbed and been wrong, and wrong again, and wrong some more.”
“You a mama, what you gonna say?”
“I’m a woman!” Mariah hissed it. “I’m a grown woman, a real person and not half a one, and so are you. We are real people. No matter what was past and where we was and how we used to think. Real people speak up and do what they can, and the rest in God’s hands. Real people speak o
n two feet and are heard, in heaven and below. Real people made in God’s image, breathed into by that God when we was clay, just like the rest of ’em. We got our own powers.”
Powers. Did Tole have power, any power beyond that of a rifle and a finger squeezing gentle on a trigger? Was there anything else, intrinsic and deep inside him, that would call out to the world and make it different? “Yes ma’am,” he said to her. “We got our powers. Amen.”
Mariah shook her head. “I ain’t preaching, I just saying. I was wrong and Theopolis was right, even if he died after being right. Not because he was right. He wasn’t punished for being right. Not one of them men said to theyselves, ‘Let’s kill the nigger, he so right about all them things.’ He was punished because men are small, the world of men is twisted and fallen, and ain’t of God, and they don’t think and do as God, and so what? That’s the truth and ain’t no getting around it. But it don’t mean my boy shouldn’t speak, stand up and speak as a man. The thing I hate the most is I never heard him.”
Neither of them spoke.
“And,” Mariah said, finally leaning back and stretching her neck, as if she had just let a weight fall from around it, “the thing I hate almost as much is that them white men going to come here and not give one goddamn about my boy’s dying. They won’t care for who he was no matter what. They won’t even hear about him, except as ‘the Negro boy,’ and that make me angry. We free now. We not slaves. We not property.”
He could sense she’d been circling what she’d sought him out for, circling it like a pack of wolves would head off a deer, or a fox anticipate the frantic, desperate leapings of a hare.