Come August, Come Freedom

by Gigi Amateau

  “I will, Ma. I will,” Gabriel called out to her, and then let go of Ma’s hand.

  She prayed again. Set your light upon Solomon and Gabriel, Lord, bring my boys home. Bring them home from Richmond and back to me one day.

  GABRIEL DREW in a deep breath through the space of his missing front teeth. Richmond, he thought. Solomon and me must be mighty important, going to Richmond.

  Since his birth at Brookfield, Gabriel had left the plantation only for worship or, sometimes, for a fish feast. Not once had Gabriel strayed from the countryside, and when he did travel to Young’s spring or Brook Bridge, he kept to the forest. Early on, Pa had taught him to avoid the roads because even those who held remit passes could still fall prey to the watch patrol. Even when he carried a permit, Gabriel was accustomed to hearing Ma or Pa or Martin shout, “Get to the woods!”

  No matter how thick the trees or dense the brush, he wasn’t scared of the forest, and he told himself he wouldn’t be scared of Richmond, either. Still, in the cart Gabriel sat so close to his brother — so close — that Solomon hung an arm and a leg through the bars to find himself more room.

  Both boys fidgeted to get more comfortable; Mrs. Prosser had dressed them each in Thomas Henry’s discarded clothing — itchy brown vests and knickers and well-worn buckle shoes that pinched their feet.

  Pressed up against his brother, Gabriel watched Brookfield disappear from sight. The two-story white manor house with eleven front windows and east and west wings — each with its own brick chimney — was the finest man-made place known to Gabriel.

  What will we see in the capital? he wondered. How long before we get there?

  The way was worn into a road packed hard over time by travelers from the countryside and around the state, going to the city to trade or visit. The bay mare could have gotten the boys to Richmond on her memory alone, for she and Old Major traveled there regularly on business for Mr. Prosser. In just over an hour, the cart had traveled six miles along the winding, wooded trace from Brookfield into the capital. Occasional sweet blasts of honeysuckle — Ma’s favorite — perfumed the roadside. Each time Gabriel caught a whiff, his confidence in his surroundings grew.

  Finally, Solomon pointed south to a low black cloud forming a long black line, just above the treetops. “There’s your Richmond,” Solomon said.

  Gabriel’s eyes grew wide. “Is the city on fire?” He drew even closer to his brother, who pushed him off and said, “Coal, stupid.”

  A coal cloud made of ash from chimneys and smithies and river mills draped the capital. The Richmond road was nothing but bare, fresh-cut earth; no rocks or brick led travelers from the woods into the unfinished city.

  Richmond had been the capital for only six years, since Virginia moved it there from Williamsburg to keep its seat safe from the British during the war. Hands from all over the countryside now came to help build houses and cut new roads. Mr. Prosser had even hired out Gabriel’s brother Martin to work on the capitol building, for, like the city itself, the statehouse stood partly unfinished.

  Gabriel thought Thomas Jefferson’s capitol, high atop Shockoe Hill, was much finer than Brookfield. All the land had been cleared around the white, rectangular building, with Roman columns that lined a sweeping portico looking out over the river.

  My brother helped make this place, and now Solomon and me will build the city, too.

  Gabriel stared at black men hammering the capitol roof alongside white and pointed out how others, together, rolled hogsheads of tobacco down the narrow Richmond roads. Soldiers of the public guard lazed about on the grounds, playing cards and slapping backs. Pigs and sheep wandered with no apparent purpose, content to follow along after whoever held the next probable meal, until some knowing hand prodded them back to their lowly places.

  As Mr. Prosser’s gig rounded the bend and turned down past the capitol, a strong rain came up. Without a green grassy field or a fine floral garden to hold the earth in place, the dirt piles and loose rocks bordering the capitol square right away began to slide into the narrow road. Two long ditches had eroded along each side of the nearly done statehouse, and now rainwater rushed to fill them.

  The shower had come up so fast that it caught the chattel and workers alike off their guard. The cows and sheep, pigs and chickens, that roamed the barren grounds scrambled over and up the ditches. They gathered on the capitol’s portico and huddled around its columns, depositing a muddy tangle of hoof- and footprints. Gabriel laughed out loud and wondered what the governor would think of the barnyard on the statehouse porch. Soldiers spilled from their barracks — parading across the capitol grounds in their long underwear — to snatch up the uniforms they had left spread out to dry on the hard clay that was now turning to muck.

  Gabriel welcomed the rain; he turned his face up. Maybe all this water will stretch out these shoes, he thought, and he stamped his feet in the puddle collecting on the gig’s floor.

  Two shackled oxen walked along so close behind them that Gabriel could feel the steam rolling out their nostrils on his legs. One of them grunted when Mr. Prosser’s mare stopped in the street to do her business. The men driving the oxen yelled, “Move it!” Then Old Major popped the mare to make her walk on.

  Around the bend from the capitol, a black tavernkeep chucked a white man right out into the road. The hairy drunkard landed in a hole with a great splash that soiled Gabriel’s shirt, but Gabriel didn’t care. He watched the drunk man tuck into his knees and cover his head with his hands in fear of getting trampled by the beasts in the road.

  It seemed to Gabriel that everyone in Richmond wanted to be in the road. And the road wanted to get to the river.

  Even up on Shockoe Hill, Gabriel could hear the James River roaring below them. He stood up in the cart, expecting to see great, high falls. But the falls of the James made a shallow, descending staircase of rocks, rapids, and ripples that caused its waters to swirl and spray around two forest islands. Tobacco warehouses and flour mills clustered around the falls to harness the river’s power and send the city’s goods downriver and out to sea, out to the world.

  As if they didn’t even mind the rain, some washerwomen squatted near Shockoe Creek with their baskets of laundry, quarreling with one another over who should do what to collect the now-drenched clothes and bedsheets that had been earlier laid out to dry across the grassy meadow below the market house. Gabriel saw no overseer to keep the peace or keep them quiet; the washerwomen went about their work, and they went about their fussing, too.

  Gabriel breathed in deep. He smelled the familiar burn of sweet, rich leaves. “Tobacco?” he guessed.

  Solomon scoffed. “Can’t you figure anything out for yourself?”

  Gabriel elbowed his brother and scooted all the way to the other end of the bench. He saw how everyone and everything in Richmond had someplace to be. Is everyone here free to work and walk where they please? Gabriel wondered.

  The youngest laundress, a girl no older than Gabriel, tried to shoo an old dog away before four dirty, wet paws could discover how freshly washed shirts make a fine, easy treasure to snatch. Drenched and matted, the dog cocked an ear and appeared to laugh at the washerwomen as it pounced and dragged a white sheet through a shallow freshet off the creek.

  “Rascal!” cried the young laundress, but the mongrel had vanished with its prize to someplace hidden, dark, and safe in Richmond. The mutt should have made Gabriel homesick for Dog, or even Kissey, or Ma.

  Instead, Gabriel thought of Pa.

  And because he did not know for certain where Pa was gone away to, only that he had last been sent to Richmond, Gabriel could not stop himself, when the gig passed by the mills, from looking for his pa in the faces of the big men unloading grain sacks.

  At the bottom of the hill, the powerful roar of the river excited Gabriel. He let himself imagine whether, if he kept still in the current, the bubbling white water might carry him all the way to his father, wherever that might be.

  Along Main Stree
t, Old Major sped up the cart to outrun the rain. The city people crowded together to cross the stone footbridge over Shockoe Creek. The mare forded the creek at the trot and doused the people good; the women squealed and the men cursed. Gabriel fell off his seat onto the floor.

  “Get up!” Solomon barked, but held his hand out to help his brother. “Now, act right or they’ll throw you in there.” Solomon pointed to an open-air jail near the market house. A tangle of arms and faces reached through its bars. Prisoners waved their limbs in the rain, straining to wash clean what they could of their rank skin.

  “What is that?” Gabriel asked.

  “The Cage, of course. It’s where they keep people who can’t stay out of trouble. Pa told me so; he told me all about Richmond.”

  No man in the Cage had even a square foot of space to himself. Some of the prisoners feigned sleep; others urinated between the bars and into the road. Gabriel tried not to look for Pa in there. He didn’t want any of those faces to be Pa’s.

  Solomon scooted over close to Gabriel. “Look.” He pointed. “See those eyes watching you? Runaways. Troublemakers. Thieves.” Solomon whispered in Gabriel’s ear, “Careful in the city, Little Brother.”

  Gabriel made himself turn away. “Ma said you’re supposed to take care of me,” he said, and he kicked Solomon in the shin.

  Before Solomon could kick him back, the cart stopped in front of a wooden shack along the north bank of the river, below the white water and beyond the courthouse.

  Old Major unlatched the cart’s door. Mr. Prosser said, “Out you get! Hurry up. This will be your home for the next seven years, boys.”

  The day’s adventure had distracted Gabriel, but now he looked to Old Major for help that did not come. Solomon began to cry, so Gabriel drew up the courage to utter two words: “Seven years?”

  “What did you think? That we were making a day trip?” Mr. Prosser answered.

  “No. I — thought —” Gabriel realized that he had thought only of traveling to the capital. “When will we see Ma again?”

  Mr. Prosser grunted; his temper flared across his face. Mr. Prosser raised his hand to strike, and Gabriel drew back.

  Get to the woods! He thought he heard Ma whisper, but the best trees in the city were at the top of the hill or on the river islands. In the bottom of Richmond, he saw no woods thick enough to hide a boy but for a few minutes and not a single tree stand dense enough to ward patrollers away.

  Even if I knew where to run, Gabriel thought, I’d have to get these shoes off first.

  There would be no getting anyplace for now, but Gabriel had already made a city map in his mind.

  It’s still not so different here, he thought. No paths through the forest, but alleyways aplenty. A creek for bathing and a riverbank for gathering. No great house always in sight, but the white shadow of the statehouse sitting high on the hill. And not one person’s been stopped, because they all have business here. Now I have my business, too.

  GABRIEL STUCK close behind Mr. Prosser, and Solomon behind Gabriel. Without knocking, and as if the place belonged to him, Mr. Prosser entered the small wood house.

  The Henrico planter hollered into the empty front room, “Thomas Prosser here!” Then Mr. Prosser banged on the open front door with his fist and called out to the blacksmith, “Jacob Kent?”

  A hearty man of powerful build, wearing a gray shirt that Gabriel figured used to be white, greeted them. The blacksmith also wore a leather apron around his waist; its pockets bulged out and flowed over with tools and nails and debris. From one, he pulled out a soiled cloth and dabbed his flushed, wet face.

  Gabriel whispered to his brother, “That’s the pinkest man I ever saw.”

  Solomon laughed and elbowed Gabriel’s ribs. “Shhh. He keeps the bones of boys gone bad in that apron of his.”

  Gabriel noticed that the smith’s boots were black and cracked, just like Pa’s. Jacob Kent’s feet made even Mr. Prosser’s thin ones look like a lady’s. Why, his head would touch the ceiling if he didn’t crouch down. Gabriel realized he was staring, but he could think only of how the master smith reminded him of Pa.

  “Welcome, sir,” Jacob Kent said to Mr. Prosser. “Are these my new smiths-in-waiting?” The blacksmith placed a callused hand on Gabriel’s shoulder.

  Like Pa used to do. Gabriel sighed. I should be learning from Pa, not some old, pink smithy.

  Once Mr. Prosser left, Gabriel felt brave enough to copy the gesture he had seen Thomas Henry use with Mr. Prosser’s friends, and he offered his hand to the blacksmith. “Hello. I’m Gabriel, sir, and this is my brother Solomon.”

  Jacob shook Gabriel’s hand and met his eye. “Gabriel Prosser, good to know you.” The blacksmith nodded.

  Gabriel looked about, and, still seeing no woods to get to but feeling ever more confident to speak, he said, “No, sir, not Prosser. I’m just Gabriel.”

  “Well, just-Gabriel, welcome!” The blacksmith laughed, and Gabriel saw that Jacob Kent had also lost his own front teeth.

  “Your younger brother, then?” Jacob motioned to Solomon, who shook his head no but managed to say only, “Older.”

  “Just-Gabriel and Older-Solomon. All right, I’m straight now: the bigger one is the young ’un.”

  Gabriel liked that Jacob Kent wore no wig but tied up his long black hair with a long black ribbon. Set against an unshaven chin and deep cracks in his face, Jacob’s pale-blue eyes surprised Gabriel. Maybe he’s different, Gabriel thought, but then he remembered Pa’s warning. There is no such thing as a good and kind master.

  “Are you our new master?” Gabriel asked the smithy. He didn’t let Jacob Kent answer. “Have we been sold away from Brookfield? Will we see our ma again?”

  Jacob placed an arm around the shoulder of each brother and drew them nigh. “Hardly my own master, so no, not yours. I’ll be your teacher, just as I taught your father. Now, let me show you around my place. You two can show me how well you can hammer.”

  The smith stopped in the breezeway between the house and forge and stared down at the boys’ feet. “Need to find you each a pair of boots like mine.” He laughed. “You’ll outgrow ’em in no time.” Jacob handed Gabriel a leather apron of his own, and Solomon one, too. “You’ll see your mother again. I promise.”

  I could like a good and kind teacher very much, Gabriel told himself. Especially if Jacob Kent taught Pa. That thought sparked the desire in Gabriel to learn all that he could. He would miss Ma and Dog and Kissey and Old Major, but mostly Gabriel intended to work too hard to pay attention to the lonely twinges of his heart. He also promised himself that he would learn the river city as well as he knew the forest countryside.

  FROM JACOB’S forge, Gabriel could hear the constant, distant roar of the James River falls, and he could see the reaches of the sycamore on the north bank near the river’s bend west. The autumn oasis of golden leaves and marbled bark collided with a white canvas of muslin sails from the ships that crowded Richmond’s port, bringing in goods or taking away riches. He missed swimming off the river islands on Sundays, as he had all throughout the early autumn, but the cold November river meant one thing less to distract him from the forge.

  Jacob Kent demanded his place be kept orderly and clean. It was Gabriel’s job to straighten the smithy at night and ready the work in the morning. He liked rising in the dark, arranging the charcoal in the heart of the forge, waking the great bellows, and making ready the fire.

  The washerwomen also made their wash fires, over by Shockoe Creek, before the sun made day. Each morning, rain or shine, August heat or November cold, Gabriel would visit the creek to collect water to fill the horse trough outside the smithy door. The youngest laundress, a girl named Nanny, who had been sold away from her family in the mountains, taught him where to find the coolest part of the creek. Every day, Gabriel and Nanny spoke of fire and water and nothing more.

  When his morning chores were complete — the fire built, the floor cleaned, and the anvils ready for the comi
ng day — he would walk back to the Shockoe and there fill three ceramic jugs with drinking water. Once the water jugs were set within easy reach of each anvil so that Jacob, Solomon, and he could refresh themselves throughout the long day, Gabriel would wake Jacob and Solomon with three full strikes to his anvil.

  Ping, ping, ping. Gabriel signaled when the fire was hot and the forge ready. Ping, ping, ping. He wondered if the whole of Richmond waited to hear his anvil beat, for his wake-up bell would often bring in a horse or two to be shod, a rifle or a pistol for repair, or an urgent plea to fix a broken-off key. Nearly all the workings of the capital city could be made or repaired with a fire, an anvil, and a hammer or two.

  At the start of each day and in between jobs, Gabriel and Solomon forged nails. So many new houses and public buildings and shops were going up that Richmond could use every nail the boys would make and more. Between them, the two brothers produced eight thousand nails a week. Fifty thousand would not have satiated the capital city.

  When Jacob was pleased with their work, he let the boys know. “Very nice. Coming along,” he would commend Solomon.

  Once, when Jacob examined a long nail forged by Gabriel, the teacher purposefully pricked his finger on the tip. “You’re scaring me, son,” he said, and sucked the blood the nail drew. Jacob pushed his eyeglasses higher onto his face with the back of his wrist and shook his head at the work Gabriel presented.

  “Beg pardon, sir?” Gabriel said. He thought his own work finer than his brother’s, yet the teacher had complimented only Solomon.

  “Show me how you did this.” Jacob shot up his wild, curly eyebrows and nodded for Gabriel to forge another.

  Gabriel set the plain rolled iron in the fire. He pulled the bellows — what Jacob called the lung of the smithy — so that it would blow a deep breath over the coals.

  “Back off a bit, son. That’s good. Coax the fire — don’t force it,” said Jacob.