Up From Freedom

by Wayne Grady

  Millican’s corn was so high it blocked their view of the Big House. Annie stood up in the wagon to try to see Lucas, tottered, then slumped back down. When they passed the mouth of the lane, she turned in her seat and stared at the tree above the slave house, as if she expected to see Lucas hanging from it. Moody was curious, too, and slowed the horses so they could see he wasn’t there. He wasn’t.

  “He’s likely gone to Boonville with Millican’s cotton,” Moody said. “We’ll see him there. I’ll convince him to come home and I’ll return Millican’s money.”

  She sat in the wagon staring down the road as though she could see the whole forty miles to Boonville, hear the drivers slapping their horses and owners shouting out numbers, the creak of block and tackle as bales were hoisted onto weigh scales. She shook her head.

  “I worry he won’t,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “You don’t know,” she said, closing her eyes. “You don’t know what worry is. He Millican’s slave now. I hoped I never see my boy a slave with a hard massa, and now I see it. You don’t know.”

  She’d gone to Millican’s a few times to see Lucas, and told Moody about her visits. At first Lucas was well treated, she said. He and Benah were married by a tall, hungry-looking man named Bongo. But Benah was still sleeping in the Big House, on a pallet of corn husks on the floor of the pantry, while Lucas lived in the slave quarters. Millican wanted to make him a driver, give him a bullwhip and put him in charge of the field hands, but Lucas wouldn’t take that job. Millican told him that as a driver he’d get a house of his own, and he and Benah could live in it together, but Lucas still didn’t take the whip. Moody and Annie both saw trouble ahead. Why did Lucas think he could tell Millican what he would and wouldn’t do? Annie said Moody should never have touched that bone. Moody had offered to give her the pouch to secretly pass on to Lucas, but she hadn’t taken it. If Lucas had the money he would run off with Benah, and they’d both be caught and killed, or as good as. At least at Millican’s she knew where they were. Moody was tired of having his best offers turned down.

  They arrived in Boonville on the morning of the seventh. They’d slept under the wagon at night, Annie seeming to relent, to need the comfort of his nearness, though she’d cried throughout. He’d needed her comfort, too, although he was not sure she’d given it. She asked him what he would do if they found Lucas, could they take him back with them? Moody said he thought so, if Lucas would come, and if Benah could come with him.

  “Millican lied about having to apply to Congress to sell a slave,” he told her. “Nobody does that.”

  But what if Lucas wasn’t there? she asked. What would they do? It would be like Millican to keep Lucas out of Boonville, to show him who was running his life now, not him and not Moody. Millican would sink his teeth into anything soft. At Fort Brown, during lulls in the fighting, the men would sit around in Sarah Boggins’s tavern drinking Mexican beer and talking about why they were killing Mexicans. They each had their ideas about it. Some just liked fighting. Some were glad to be anywhere but home. A few, the older men who had fought in the War of Independence, said this was different, the cause in this war was unclear. They weren’t defending their own land, they were pushing the Mexicans out of theirs. Moody realized now that Millican hated him, and would do everything he could to break him. That was why he wouldn’t sell Benah. In his sitio days, Moody had been a friend of Stephen Austin’s, they’d studied law together in New Orleans, played poker and drunk rum, and Millican couldn’t stand the fact that, despite being one of the Old Three Hundred, Millican had never so much as spoken to Austin, never been slapped on the back and asked how his daddy was, never invited into Austin’s tent for a game of cards. Whatever Moody had, Millican would want to destroy. And Millican thought Moody had Lucas, even though Lucas now belonged to Millican.

  Eventually Annie slept, her head pressed against his chest, while Moody lay awake listening to the night, the horses cropping grass beside the wagon, the water slipping quietly through the charco, to Annie’s troubled breathing.

  Millican’s six wagons were in line when they got to the cotton exchange, but Lucas wasn’t on any of them.

  “You said he’d be here,” Annie said.

  “I said he might,” Moody said. “Maybe he’s gone for a walk.”

  Annie looked at him as if he were a moron. As soon as he pulled into line behind the last wagon, Annie jumped down and went over to talk to a group of Millican’s teamsters who were standing inside the entrance to the warehouse, no overseer in evidence, probably at the saloon or the whorehouse. They kept their eyes away from her, looking down at their feet, or up and down the street as though for a wagon to come along and save them. Annie came back to the wagon and told Moody that Lucas had disappeared and they didn’t know where he was, or else they weren’t saying to his mam.

  “What we do now?” she asked him.

  “Wait here,” Moody said. “Move the wagon up if our turn comes.” He handed her the reins and got down from the wagon. At the warehouse, he asked Millican’s men straight out where Lucas was. The men looked at each other and then at him.

  “Lucas bain’t here,” one of them said.

  “I can see that. Is he somewhere with Benah?”

  “Benah bain’t here, neither.”

  “Benah be sold,” the first man said.

  “Sold?” Moody said, stunned. “Sold where?”

  “Massa sell she, up away.”

  Up away meant the auction block north of Boonville, on the Camino Real, a stockyard meant for cattle and horses but owners sometimes took slaves there who were trouble and couldn’t be sold locally. Too wild, too old, too crippled up. Most of the buyers were speculators passing through, looking for a bargain. Benah would have been a prize. If that was where Millican had sold her, she could be anywhere between Santa Fe and Galveston.

  “What about Lucas?” he asked the man, but he already knew the answer.

  “Him gone after she, da.”

  He went back to the wagon and told Annie what he’d learned. “As soon as we sell our cotton,” he said, “we’ll go up to the auction yard to see if Lucas is there. If he isn’t, I’ll go see Millican, get him to say who he sold Benah to, and then we’ll go find her, and when we find her we’ll find Lucas.”

  “Go now,” she said. “Buy Benah yourself.”

  “I need the cotton money.”

  Annie looked at him as she had when he’d told her to put the biscuit dough on the bird rock. There’d been some warmth in her then; this time she just stared, her hands clasped on her lap. She hardly breathed, sipped air into the tops of her lungs like she was floating on her back on the ocean, afraid to empty them for fear she’d drown. She’d warned him. She’d told him trouble would come.

  They waited two hours. Finally, their bales were lifted off the wagon and weighed, their weight debated, their value calculated, and more time consumed in counting and signing. Annie was almost comatose. There was little point in going after Lucas this late, the auction would be over. Moody’s gloom increased with every dollar that was passed to him. Annie hadn’t moved.

  Lucas wasn’t at the auction yard. Whatever commerce had taken place there that day was long over. Moody spoke to a white-haired man who was sweeping the office, but the man didn’t know if a woman had been sold that day or not. Annie sat quietly beside Moody the whole way back to the farm. Only once did she speak.

  “I knew trouble come the day Lucas born. When I saw his light-light skin I started waiting for this day. It no good, white on black, it pain at the start and worse pain at the end.”

  He supposed she was talking about Casgrain. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Maybe it ain’t your fault. Maybe he’d have run off anyway.” But she didn’t look convinced. “You been good to Lucas,” she said, “you raise him like your own.”

  “I tried.”

  “But he not your own, he mine. You didn’t have that right.”

  13. />
  Millican was sitting on his front porch, a drink in one hand and a fly swatter in the other. Moody didn’t dismount. He sat on his horse in the sun and left his hat on to let Millican know he was in a hurry. There was a table beside Millican with a scattering of dead flies on it and a Colt Paterson revolver lying on its side, like a dog sleeping with one eye open, staring at Moody. Millican must have kept it as a war trophy. Moody had heard him say that if they’d had revolvers at the Alamo a lot of good men would still be alive. Moody thought it unlikely, given the odds had been a hundred and seventy to one. Millican always thought he could beat the odds.

  “I don’t know where that boy of yours went,” Millican said. “But I will tell you this” —he pointed the swatter at Moody— “he gets brought back here I’ll whip him so hard his own mammy won’t recognize him. I’ve a good mind to ask you for my money back, plus something for the filly.”

  “You shouldn’t have sold her,” Moody said. “You knew he’d go after her.”

  “I sold Benah to pay for Lucas.”

  That was another lie, and both men knew it. Millican took a drink to cover it.

  “I offered to buy her myself,” Moody said, “but you told me you couldn’t part with her.”

  “I knew why you wanted her.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “You’re too soft on your help,” Millican said lazily. “I told you that before.”

  “I treat them like sensible human beings.”

  “That’s just what I mean. They ain’t sensible and they ain’t human beings. Somebody treated Nat Turner like a sensible human being and look what he did. Slaughtered a dozen innocent people in their beds, is that what you want to happen out here?”

  “I doubt there’s a dozen innocent people in the whole territory,” Moody said.

  Millican laughed and touched the revolver. “Get down off a that horse and have a drink,” he said. When Moody didn’t, he said, “You want those niggers to start thinking they don’t have to go out and pick cotton if they don’t want to, if it’s too hot or they got better things to do, like rut all day in the barn. All right,” he said after a pause, “I sold her because Lucas was making her forget her station. I caught her saying things like ‘It’s hot, Lucas. I wish I didn’t have to wash these bedclothes,’ and him saying, ‘You shouldn’t have to, Benah dear. What’s wrong with leaving them till tonight when it cools down?’ ”

  “Sounds sensible to me. What’s wrong with waiting until it’s cooler?”

  “Because that’s how it starts is what’s wrong with it. What’s wrong with it is my wife told her to wash them bedclothes now, not whenever she damn well felt like it. My wife and I tell people what to do around here, not Lucas. And not you, neither.” He pointed the swatter at Moody again. “Like I said, the kinder you treat your niggers, the harder I gotta be on mine.”

  Moody turned in the saddle and looked over Millican’s cotton fields, dark now after the harvest. A few balls blew along between the rows. Cicadas whined in the heat.

  “Who’d you sell her to, Endicot?” He kept his voice casual, as though he were only conversationally interested.

  “Why, you going after her?”

  “I’m going after Lucas.”

  Millican gave him a long look. “Some slaver, I didn’t catch his name.”

  “He say where he was heading?”

  “No. South, I reckon.”

  Moody’s and Millican’s cotton was being barged down the Rio Brazos from Boonville to Galveston probably that very day. If Lucas knew Benah was headed south, he might have stowed away on one of the barges. Maybe their best chance was to go down to Galveston and wait for Lucas to show up there, with or without Benah.

  He turned his horse to leave, but Millican stopped him.

  “Virgil Moody,” he said, “you find that nigger you bring him back here. I don’t care in how many parts.”

  He’d gone to Millican because he thought he had to do something. But he didn’t have to do something, he had to undo something. And maybe that wasn’t possible. It would have been like unfinding the bone. Once a thing is done, it can’t be undone—was that what his father had meant? That nothing lost can ever be found again? But the bone had been lost for ten thousand years, and he had found it. Lucas had only been lost for a few months.

  14.

  When he got home, Annie wasn’t there.

  He called. He walked through the house, the barn, the cornfields and the pasture, the bare, red hills above the lane. He climbed down the hollow behind the house to where the bodark grew thick above the river. He sat on the porch, dread growing in him. There weren’t a lot of other places she could be. He got up and went down to the river, past the Mexican’s grave and where he’d found the bone. The water made a steady, rushing noise, a kind of gravelly hiss. He looked into it, but it was too silted up and he couldn’t see more than a few inches down. He thought about wading in but knew that wouldn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know.

  Something he’d seen when he was looking for her snagged in his mind, and he tried to remember what it was. Something in the barn. He ran back up the cut and on his way glanced at the house, half expecting to see her sitting on the porch shelling beans or mending one of Lucas’s shirts. In the barn, he went to the harness room and flung the door open so hard one of the leather hinges snapped.

  He looked at the empty trestle table for a good two minutes, waiting for the bone to reappear, then ran back to the river. He might have yelled “No!” He might have called her name. He knew what she must have done. She must have carried or more likely dragged the bone down to the river, tied herself to it, walked out into the water and let it go. Let the elephant drag her in. He could see her doing it. He was running to stop her, untie the rope from her waist before the river grabbed her, tell her they would find Lucas, get him back, start again. Undo everything. He remembered her almost-last words to him, that it wasn’t his fault, that Lucas would have run off anyway. He’d known it wasn’t true when she said it, but he hadn’t understood she was saying goodbye.

  Sometimes, where his shadow lay on the water, he thought he could see deeper into it. He waded in, felt around with his foot, moved out deeper to where the bottom dropped off sharply and he was nearly pulled in. That was where Annie would be, down there with the catfish and the alligator gar. He knew better than to dive in, but maybe if he had a pole. He ran back up to the barn and looked around. Didn’t he have a pole? It was like he was in a stranger’s barnyard. The top rail of the corral gate was about four inches around. He grabbed it, worked the spike at the other end of it out of the post, and ran back to the river. He edged his way out to the drop and stuck the pole in. The current was so strong he could barely hold the pole against it. He braced the pole against his left leg and moved it around like a tiller. He thought he felt something solid come up against it. He thrashed around in the water, trying to pull and at the same time keep upright and away from the drop.

  It was a post from his old dock, broken off two feet below the surface. And there was something attached to it, like a crosspiece, smooth and hard. A rope. He turned the pole until the nail hooked on the rope and began pulling it in. It didn’t come at first, and then it began coming faster than he could keep it taut. He pulled until he could grab the rope, then threw the pole away and hauled on the rope. He felt the cloth of her dress, and he pulled harder. Her face came into view, floating like a caught fish, just beneath the surface. The rope wasn’t around her waist, it was around her neck. Jesus, Annie. The more he’d pulled, the tighter he’d choked her. She’d done that on purpose, in case he came back before she drowned; when he pulled her in he’d have lynched her.

  “Jesus, Annie,” he said again, aloud this time.

  He carried her to the cut and set her down. When he loosened the rope around her neck, water streamed out of her mouth.

  After a long while, he fetched a shovel and blanket from the house, and dug a hole beside the Mexican soldier big eno
ugh for Annie and the bone, too late but he did it anyway. He said a few words as he filled in the hole, whatever came to mind. He was sorry. He’d tried his best. No, no, he hadn’t tried his best. But he would, he would from then on. He would try his best.

  15.

  He went up to the house and drank some water, standing at the bucket looking through the window down toward the cut. The house was clean, everything in the kitchen washed and put away, the beds made. Annie’s farewell. Whoever found the place would have no complaints that way. He opened a satchel and ran around the house like he was grabbing things to save from a fire. Did he need a hairbrush? No. Soap? No. A change of clothes? Put it in. The pistol. Put it in. The envelope with Millican’s money in it was lying on the table. Put it in. He still had the cotton money. Put it in. The Cuvier paper? He hesitated over that, then put it in. When he was done, he took the satchel out to the porch and set it down, then went out to the barn. He saddled Justice and fed and watered Max and Carlota. He’d stop up the road and tell Harry Goodfellow he could have the horses. The corn, too, if he wanted to bring it in. The whole damn farm. He went into the harness room one more time. The bone was still gone. He dug the two bottles of brandy out of a chest and put them in the satchel. Then he went down to the river and stood at the bank, looking across the water at the line of trees on the other side. He thought he could see crows in the tops of them, working their way south. It was nearly sunset, he’d best get on the road.

  “Lucas isn’t lost,” he said to Annie. “I’ll find him.”