“Have a good day.”
Josh left and headed back to the street. For several seconds he stood there and tried to figure what to do next. Although not sure what he’d expected from Walt, he was unsatisfied with the visit, disappointed that he’d not done more to make up for his slackness in handling the matter from Mossy Bank. He felt dirty, as if he’d stepped awfully close to something that didn’t smell too good and the aroma had stuck. Mounting his horse, he headed toward the Baptist church. He might just stop and go in. Maybe a few minutes of quiet in their fine white building would calm his spirit some. He hoped so. Otherwise, he didn’t know what he’d do to make that happen.
Chapter Nineteen
By the time November came, Ruby had settled into marriage with Obadiah without much of a hitch. When his work allowed it, he stayed with her in the back room of her house on The Oak, and when he couldn’t, he picked her up in his buggy every Saturday right as the sun went down and drove her to his place, a four-room white house with two glass windows on the front, a small spot for a garden out back, and two red rugs that he’d bought from a dead man’s widow in the main room.
Ruby always cooked for him when she got to his house; fixed him fine meals from the goods he kept stored in the cabinets he’d built in his kitchen. The cabinets stretched from the floor almost to the ceiling and covered one whole wall. The first time she saw them her mouth fell open, and she stepped back to take a better look. Smooth arches ran across the cabinet tops, and finely cut figures of men and women in all manner of dress and doing all sorts of labor decorated the sides and fronts.
Her eyes awed, Ruby touched the dark wood and ran her fingers over the carvings. “Where you get such fine wood?”
Obadiah smiled so widely that all of his big teeth and gums showed. “When you makin’ a box for white folks, they don’t much ask how much wood it take. I get a bit extra most of the time. Use it for my house, my cuttin’s.”
Ruby studied the carvings up close. “You got white folk and black folk cut in here.”
“Look real hard,” he said. “Maybe you see somethin’.”
Ruby’s eyes widened. “They be doing different things. Some chopping wood, some cooking, some riding horses, some dressed all up like they going to church. Coloreds and white.”
“Study the faces,” he insisted again. “See what you can see.”
She obeyed, but nothing came to her. So he touched one of the figures, ran his fingers around the man’s tiny face.
“I see it now!” Ruby suddenly said. “That be Mr. Tessier! His missus got his picture hanging on the wall in the manse. You’ve carved the master.”
Obadiah beamed and waved his hands over the shelves. “I done a carvin’ of everybody I cut a box for. All the folks that have passed in my years around here.”
“Black and white,” said Ruby. “In the same wood. Best hope no white folks ever see this. They might not like it that you put them in the wood with the coloreds.”
Obadiah stepped back. “Reckon not. But I tell you the truth. When I cut a box for them, it don’t matter what shade they got on their skin. After they get laid in the ground and stay there for a while, the bodies all end up lookin’ ’bout the same.”
Ruby smiled and studied Obadiah with a new appreciation. The man did have a wise way and a gentle hand. Add that to the fact that nobody told him what to do when he got up every day, and you had a worthy mate. True, like all free people of color, he still couldn’t leave the county without a pass from a white sheriff, and he couldn’t buy other folks’ property without special permission. But all in all, he still lived a life a whole lot better than hers, and his situation made hers a whole lot easier than it would have been without him.
The months since her marriage had passed quickly, with her labor at The Oak and her time with Obadiah more than filling up her days. Stella and Camellia proved steady friends. Ruby came to see them both as people of worth: Stella, a true companion, and Camellia, as close to one as any white girl could ever be with a darky.
Given her comfortable life, Ruby found it tempting to settle in and give up her hopes of running off to find Markus. After all, people treated her nice here, as well as back in Virginia. Obadiah loved her, gave her sweet gifts, watched after her as if she had gold dust on her skin. Sometimes, when she lay down beside him at night to sleep, she felt a peace running through her bones, a peace that made it hard to consider anything that might shake it loose. Yet, she didn’t want to give in to the feeling. To do so meant the loss of something she’d only learned about herself since the sale from the Rushtons’: the loss of her fiery desire to live as a free woman, to find her man and boy again and run off with them to a place where nobody could put chains on anybody, where nobody could tell anybody when to start work and when to stop, when to eat and when to sleep. She feared that if she lost that part of her heart, then she might as well go on and die, because that’s what had kept her alive ever since she got sold off from Virginia. But how do you keep such a thing burning in your soul, she wondered, when a man treats you as well as Obadiah treated her? When you had friends to talk to and a safe place to live and plenty enough to eat?
Ruby talked to Stella one day about it all near the middle of November, the way she didn’t want to go back to her old sense of comfort and ease. Buying and selling people, splitting them up from those they loved was wrong—no way around it—and she wanted to stay mad about it, no matter how settled she became.
“You know how I’ve been,” she said one day as they made apple pies. “Always asking Miss Camellia about roads and such. I did the same with Obadiah for a while. Found out all the ways in and out of Beaufort, which ones lead to Charleston, which to Columbia. Figured I’d need to know all that for when I run off to go to Markus.”
“I told you that runnin’ talk is foolish,” said Stella, laying out a crust. “They just catch you, haul you back, and give you a beatin’. Mark up that pretty skin you got. Hurt you bad.”
“I figured how much food I’d need too,” continued Ruby, ignoring Stella’s warning. “Figured it’d take about three, maybe four days, if it all goes good, to get to Markus. Then we will run off and go for Theo. I even saw a map once, in the telegraph office in Beaufort. Obadiah took me there while he sent a telegraph to a man up in Philadelphia whose wife had died down here. Obadiah was doing the box. That map showed the whole country of these United States, the oceans and everything, pretty map hanging on the wall. I saw our spot on it, down toward the bottom. I studied it while Obadiah did his business, saw where Virginia was, got it all in my head, how I have to go through North Carolina to get to my boy, Theo.”
“Hand me that bowl,” said Stella.
“I believe I can do it,” Ruby continued as she handed her the bowl and grabbed one for herself. “But now I don’t know that I want to do it. Oh, I still want Markus and my boy. But I don’t know—I got it fine here; Obadiah treats me nice. And it gets hard to keep Markus and Theo in my head. Sometimes I can hardly remember how they looked. That breaks my heart—the way the face of somebody you love with all your heart can just fade right away.”
Stella halted and stared at her. “Now you’re talkin’ good. You got to let the past go its way. You livin’ here now. Nothin’ to be done about Markus. Theo either, for that matter. They got their own lives to lead, and the Lord will take care of them just like the Lord took care of you.”
Ruby folded the edges of the piecrust. “I feel like I’m letting them down, though,” she said sadly. “I believe they’re expecting me to come—Theo especially. You know, he saw me in the vision … saw me and Markus coming for him.”
“You got no way to do that,” said Stella. “You got no money; you are a colored and a woman on top of that. How you expect you can get away from here when nobody else can do it? You too weak for all that, too frail.”
“Maybe Markus will come for me,” Ruby announced hopefully.
“It been over a year,” said Stella. “Maybe long enough you
need to put that hope in the grave where it belongs.”
As they finished up the pies, Ruby let the talk of running drop. But the temptation to give up her dreams to go after Markus and Theo only got stronger. When the end of November drew close, the weather turned nasty, rainy, and cold, with clouds low in the sky. One day Ruby found herself in the parlor of the manse in midafternoon. The fire was burning, but not really enough to make her warm, so she pulled her shawl close to her shoulders. For once nobody else was around. Ruby moved slowly, a feather duster in hand, but not too busy. The sound of a horse thumping in the muddy yard brought her to attention. Who was riding on such a day as this?
She stepped to the window and saw a man in a gray rain slicker on a soggy brown horse. The man rode right up to the steps, his slim body straight in the saddle, his black derby hat low to keep the rain off his face.
Leather Joe appeared out of the slashing rain as the man dismounted and took his horse away toward the barn. The man tipped his hat to Leather Joe, then stepped onto the porch.
Glad for company to break up the dreary day, Ruby moved quickly to the door and opened it. The man tipped his hat once again.
“Greetings,” he said. “My name is Sharpton Hillard, and I’m here to talk with Mrs. Marshall Tessier.”
“She not here,” said Ruby. “She’s in Charleston, where she stays most of the time. Master Trenton is with her.”
Hillard nodded. “It’s my understanding that the overseer is a Mr. York?”
Ruby eyed him suspiciously. “You talk funny.”
Hillard’s lips twitched slightly. “I’m not from these parts. Hail from Richmond now, and Washington, D.C., the great capital of our nation, before that.”
Ruby’s eyes lit up. “I started up in Virginia. Richmond.”
“A fine city in spite of its Southern leanings.”
Ruby looked around, as if expecting someone to slap her. “You best not say that kind of word out loud. Somebody here might take some offense.”
Hillard nodded gravely. “Forgive my tongue. Sometimes I let it out-run my judgment. Now, I asked about Mr. York.”
“He’s down at the house by the biggest of the barns this time of the day, I expect. Keep a desk down there, do his business.”
Hillard tipped his hat again. “Thank you for your help,” he said, easing down the steps. “When I go through Virginia again, I will think of you.”
Ruby watched him go, her curiosity high. Why did a man from so far away want to see Mrs. Tessier? Mr. York? Especially a man who plainly didn’t take to all the ways of the South?
Although she knew she shouldn’t do it, Ruby couldn’t stop herself. As Hillard disappeared around into the rain, she pulled her shawl tighter, slipped off the porch, and hurried after him. Maybe she’d learn something if she listened, she figured … something that would make a good story when she talked to Stella that night.
Sitting in a hard chair behind a boxy desk in a two-room building about twenty feet from the barn, Hampton York lifted his face from a ledger as he heard a knock on the door. Rain drummed on the roof, and a fire crackled in a hearth a few feet to the right of the desk. “Yep,” yelled York.
The door opened and Hillard entered. “I’m Sharpton Hillard,” he said quickly. “May I have five minutes of your time?”
“What’s the nature of your business?” asked York, suspicious of any man out in such ill weather.
“May I sit down?” Hillard took off his hat and pointed to a chair on his side of the desk.
York examined Hillard head to toe. Not a lot taller than a hoe handle and just about as thin. His nose looked a little off-center from his brown eyes, as if somebody had stuck it on without reference to the rest of his face. A rain slicker covered him to his waist. Black wool pants ran down to his muddy boots.
York took out a fresh pack of tobacco, pulled off a chew, and offered it to Hillard, but the man refused.
“Look,” York said, putting the tobacco in his cheek and laying the pack on his desk, “I’m a busy man. Lots on my mind.”
Hillard sat down without permission, put his hat on his knee, and ran his hands through his thick brown hair. York fiddled with his papers, his nerves tight. Hillard seemed a little too sure of himself.
Hillard cleared his throat. “This is a delicate subject. But I’ve come here concerning the disappearance of a man back in November, a year ago.”
York’s hands stopped, and his eyes narrowed. His face turned blank, as it did when he played poker and he didn’t want anyone to read his emotions. “You think we’ll fight a war anytime soon?” he asked, hoping to change the subject. “I hear the fire-eaters in Charleston talkin’ about it pretty good, seceding and all.”
Hillard shrugged. “If the Southern states try to leave the Union, I expect some bloodshed. A lot counts on who gets elected president next time around. But that’s still a long way off.”
York spat tobacco juice into his cup. “You come a long way for somethin’ that happened a year ago.”
Hillard tapped his hat. “I’ve spent the time going from town to town, asking questions.”
“You say your man disappeared? You figurin’ he’s dead maybe?”
“I’m surprised you’d guess that, but yes, that is my fear.”
“But you’re not sure about it?”
“No, not at all.”
“Where’s the last place anybody saw him?”
“We last heard from him in Charleston. He was supposed to go to Savannah, traveling by horseback. He disappeared somewhere between the two towns.”
“You sure he got started to Savannah? That he didn’t go off somewhere else?”
“Not completely, but why would he go anywhere else?”
“You tell me. What was his business? Any motive for him to head off somewhere you didn’t expect?”
Hillard tapped his hat again. “He had a motive, I’ll say that.”
York chuckled slightly. “They always do.”
“We have reasons to think he didn’t run off.”
York put in a new chew of tobacco. “You keep sayin’ ‘we.’ I take it you work for somebody?”
“That is correct.”
“Who?”
“I’d rather keep the name of my employer to myself, least for now.”
“Suit yourself.” York rolled the tobacco in his jaw until it settled. “I got another question. Why you so bent on findin’ this gent? He kin or somethin’?”
Hillard raised an eyebrow, and York watched him with steady eyes, his mouth still.
“He carried five thousand dollars,” Hillard finally said. “My employer would like to find that money.”
“I reckon he would,” said York, leaning back. “That’s a sizable sum. That’s his motive for runnin’ too, I expect. Take that money and go. How you think I can help you?”
Hillard tapped his hat. “I’m not saying you can. But I’m going all over this area. Have already checked in Savannah, Charleston, Beaufort. Now I’m visiting plantation to plantation, farm to farm, anybody and everybody who might have some information about this.”
“Makes sense,” said York.
“But you can’t help me.”
“Reckon not.”
Hillard pushed back his chair, put on his hat, and stood to leave. “I met the sheriff down in Beaufort,” he said suddenly. “Walt is his name, I think. He said I probably should come by here.”
“He say why?”
“No, nothing direct. Just that since yours was the biggest in the area, I should make sure to see you. I got the feeling he knew something, maybe, but didn’t want to say it to a stranger.”
York chewed hard but tried to look calm. “Walt’s a good man. Not much of a lawman, though. A little too lazy for it.”
“You mind if I ask around your place?” he asked.
York paused. He didn’t like the idea of Hillard nosing around The Oak. Not that he worried about Ruby; a darky knew to keep quiet about white folks’ affairs. But what if h
e talked to Josh? For all he knew, Josh had already talked to Walt. “Why don’t I do it for you?” he suggested, hoping to get Hillard off the property before Josh met him. “Save you a little time.”
Hillard tapped a thigh as he considered the offer. “That’s real gracious of you, what with you being such a busy man and all.”
“Glad to do it. I’ll nose around a mite, see if I hear anythin’. Where should I find you if somethin’ turns up?”
“Why don’t I come back through here in a few weeks?” said Hillard. “If I don’t find any answers by then.”
“That’ll do good.” York stood up. “Come see us again if you need.”
Hillard moved toward the door, and York followed him. As Hillard reached the door, he turned quickly back to York. “You ever hear of a man named Wallace Swanson?”
York froze, his face shocked. Hillard waited—a hint of a smirk on his lips. York grunted, then found his voice. “Why you askin’?”
Hillard reached in his pocket, pulled out a tintype, and showed it to York. “You by any chance know this woman?”
York found it hard to control his breathing. His hands tightened into fists before he could stop them. “You askin’ a lot of questions for a stranger.”
Hillard smiled lightly. “Simple questions, though. You know Swanson or this woman?” He held up the picture again.
York pondered whether to answer. If Hillard asked around, he’d find out from most anybody that he’d once known both Swanson and the woman in the picture. Perhaps Hillard had already done that. Either way, he might as well tell the truth; better to do that than have Hillard catch him in a lie. “I’ve been in their acquaintance—sure, both of them. But that was a long while back. What they got to do with your missin’ man?”
When Hillard smirked again, York decided he didn’t like the man. Too high and mighty, as if he knew something nobody else had yet figured out.
“I’ll be in touch,” said Hillard, opening the door.
“You do that.”
Hillard left, and York stepped to the porch. He spat into the mud as he watched the other man splash toward the barn. For a few seconds he thought of following Hillard, of going quietly after him, catching him off guard, and shutting him up for good. A truly bad man would do just that: shoot Hillard in the back and bury his carcass in the muddy ground where nobody would find it. A dead man could do him no harm.
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