by Gigi Amateau
With this first part of his plan in place, Gabriel set about finding good work in the countryside. Jupiter and Isaac were known to seek out the mildest of masters when hiring out, and neither would work for a man of cruel repute. A man’s manners meant nothing to Gabriel; what mattered was the job and the pay. He often said to his friends, “There is no such thing as a kind or gentle master. Besides, liberty is my only master and money its only means.”
Gabriel imagined what he would tell Nanny’s master, the old colonel, in three, maybe four years. “I am here to manumit my wife,” I’ll say.
“Manumit,” Gabriel said. “Our free and united life starts today.”
By the next Friday, Gabriel had arranged to hire on at a shop in Caroline County, twenty-five miles north of Brookfield. First he walked to the old colonel’s place to tell Nanny good-bye.
GABRIEL FOUND Nanny weeding the garden she shared with the other women. He crouched low in the brush at the edge of Nanny’s quarter and spied on her hoeing the hard patch of ground that the colonel let them work. In Nanny’s hands, the earth seemed eager to grow beans and peas, onions and okra, and squashes of all kinds.
He loved how Nanny made her garden different from the others. Where a boulder rose from the earth, Nanny worked around it. Gabriel had once offered to bring some men to dig up the rock so she could set her rows straight, but Nanny had refused.
“Makes a good place for me to sit and watch,” she had told him. “I like to use the earth how the earth wants to be used.”
So Nanny’s garden flourished in patches and circles and swirls, following the contours of the earth. Where the ground stayed wet, she set out thirsty plants — melons and cantaloupes. Where the sun would not relent, she put the light-loving okra and tomatoes.
Across the glade, he watched her until he needed to touch her, then he called out, “Nan! I’ve brought something for you.”
Nanny dropped her hoe and ran toward him.
Gabriel held out a sack. “For you, hardworking woman. I know you need fire to sew by at night.”
She peeked inside, then clasped her hands. “Pine knots!” She breathed in the pine aroma. “There’s enough in here to last for weeks.” Nanny kissed him on the cheek.
He hadn’t expected this kiss, not in front of everyone. His face flushed at the warmth of her lips on his face, and he said the first thing he thought. “I’ve been gathering pine knots my whole entire life. Ma used to would tell anybody, ‘Gabriel knows which ones burn long and bright. He must smell the resin.’ I reckon she was right, too.” He unlaced a raccoon dangling from his belt and handed the carcass to Nanny. “This, too. For you.”
With Dog’s help, he had found and killed two coons in their sleep. He had given one to the hound for a job well done, then had sent Dog on back to Brookfield. Gabriel told Nanny, “Too easy to not get some good meat for you on the way over. You’ll have to do the cleaning.”
Nanny took the sack and the kill. “Bringing me gifts on a Friday afternoon? Show me your permit, hammerman.” She teased him. “Mmmm, I know. Mister Gabriel does up his own passes!”
He reached into his pocket and handed her the paper that Prosser’s man had written, permitting him to travel the road to his job in Caroline.
She looked at the pass and touched the words. “Is my name on this paper? Show me where.”
“Won’t find your name on this paper. See this word? It says Caroline.”
Nanny screwed up her face. “You got another girl?”
Gabriel laughed. “I got something important to say, Nan. So just listen.”
Nanny nodded. “You always look up at the sky when you start tellin’ tales. I’ll know if you’re lyin’,” she warned him.
The other women in the garden stopped working then. One by one, they paused their shovels and hoes to listen to Gabriel.
He cleared his throat. “Ever since we talked at the spring about making a life, I’ve been planning. You won’t see me at the spring tomorrow . . . maybe not for weeks or even months. I’m going to Caroline County to hire out. Solomon will keep the shop running. If you need a thing, you go see him. You’re the only girl, Nan. You understand?”
She shook her head and pleaded, “Don’t go off and leave me. The other day at the spring — I shouldn’t have said a word about havin’ children. My feelin’s are just feelin’s. I can put them back. Please, don’t go. I —”
“Hush, now.” Gabriel put his finger to Nanny’s lips. “Would you choose me? That true what you said, Nanny?”
She lowered her voice. “The truest.”
“Then I choose you, too. I’m a man, Nanny. Not Prosser’s slave man. Your man. Be my wife?” He gave her one final present, a hammered-out thin silver circle strung into a necklace with a length of twine. He remembered how when they were last together, he later regretted what he had left undone, so before she could speak a word, he took Nanny’s face in his hands. She shut her eyes, and he kissed her.
Her friends had all dropped their tools by now.
Gabriel smiled at the circle of women gathered around Nan. He wanted them all to hear how much he loved this woman. “I’ll work everywhere, anywhere, and for anyone willing to hire me. Give Mr. Prosser his share — how we agreed — and when I’ve saved enough to buy your freedom, you can start that life we imagined at the creek. After you’re free, then our children will be free. So says Virginia.”
When Nanny said nothing, Gabriel looked to the women for help. One of them nudged Nanny closer to him, but she remained silently weeping.
“Well, I just come down here to tell you my plan.” He picked up a stick and squatted down to write in the dirt. “There,” he said, then added, “I don’t need your name written on any pass.” He tapped his chest. “Nanny. Your name’s written here.” Gabriel turned to leave.
“Wait!” Nanny finally spoke. She reached out and rested her hand over Gabriel’s heart. “I’ll be here, Gabriel.”
He left Wilkinson’s place by the north trail through the forest. Even once the jays had stopped cawing and the squirrels had quit chirring after him, Nanny stood on her garden rock, waving. Then she bent to the ground and traced the letters in the dirt, first with her finger and then with the same stick that Gabriel had used to write her name: Nanny.
IN THE fall, well after the last harvest, Gabriel obtained a weekend pass and put aside his work. He rushed back to Henrico, tracking through the woods along a narrow rise in the land, toting his best tools, those hammers and tongs and wedges that he could not work without. He hurried back to see Nanny.
Gabriel did not need to keep a list of reasons why he loved her. His love for Nan was in everything within and around him. When he walked through the forest, he heard Nanny singing, not the wren. When his stomach churned with hunger, he didn’t crave Ma’s food or even Kissey’s, just a simple meal of Nanny’s making. The place on his chest where Nanny had last touched him burned for her. The bare November trees let him see far down the ridge, and for miles he told himself, Almost home. Almost home to Nan.
When, at last, the earth’s slope turned low and flat, he bayed for Dog. “Ah-oo. Ah-oo.” He called for the hound, and in the distance the dog called back.
He walked for another half mile, until he reached the Chickahominy Swamp. There, Gabriel sat down on the thick roots of a great old cypress to wait for Dog and to think of Nanny. Gabriel was tired. More than anything, he wanted to rest his head in Nanny’s lap. I’ll shut my eyes, rest here a minute. Just till Dog finds me.
The sun was setting when Dog’s wet nose nudged Gabriel awake. The air had grown cool, and the forest floor had turned moist. The hound walked with him back to Brookfield. On the way, the pair of them filled Gabriel’s belt with meat enough for Nanny and Ma. He gave Dog her fair share for her part in the hunt.
When he reached Brookfield, Gabriel checked in with Prosser’s man, then slipped away past the apple tree, down the hill, and into Nanny’s arms. On his first night back, they skipped the gathering in the
woods, and he started teaching Nanny the letters. She wanted to learn to read and write.
By the pine-knot fire and the light of one small candle, he took up a stick and wrote A on the dirt floor. “Apple,” said Gabriel. “Like our tree.”
“A. Apple,” Nanny repeated, and copied in the dirt.
“Now, B. Bear. Ever seen a bear in the forest, Nan?”
At C, he felt Nanny’s hand on his knee. He thought to get up and toss another knot onto the fire, but the heat from Nanny’s palm kept him still. “This one is called C. Say C,” he said.
Nanny brought her hand up to the back of Gabriel’s neck, and she kissed his ear. “I already said C.” She set her cheek on his shoulder.
He closed his eyes and tried to say the next letter, but he could only want more Nanny. More of her touch on his leg and more of her breath on his arm. Gabriel turned his face to Nanny’s; his mouth nearly touched hers. He had only to part his lips, and Nanny’s lips would be right there. When he dared to reach out just a bit more, she kissed him back. But such a rare and sweet stolen night by the firelight was not nearly enough time for them.
Gabriel spent the next three years working throughout the region, making Nanny’s freedom money. Every week, every month, every year, brought them closer to their dream. When he turned twenty-two, Gabriel could wait no longer. With almost all of Nanny’s freedom money saved up, Gabriel went back up to the great house.
GABRIEL HAD new business at the great house. Having saved what he thought nearly enough to free Nanny, he would now seek Mr. Prosser’s permission to marry her. He thought he had best keep his freedom plan to himself, at least until Nan and he were husband and wife. He knew if he straightaway told Mr. Prosser of his intention to manumit Nanny, the old man might withhold his blessing.
Do this right and we’re one step closer. After we jump the broom, then I’ll go see Colonel Wilkinson about buying away Nanny.
In his years of working and saving, Gabriel had thought only of how to get what he wanted. The money in his pocket made him feel powerful. Powerful enough to believe.
We’ll live in the city. I’ll work with Jacob awhile, till I save my own freedom money. Then I’ll make my own shop, and Nanny can have a room for her sewing.
But a vicious fever had torn through the city and the countryside. From Brookfield, the cruel monster had taken away Old Major and other elders from the quarter and even those littlest ones, born weak from the start. Ma and Kissey were lying out in their huts, too low to work, too ill to worry about Prosser’s man. Dog, Old Major’s friend for life, was lying out, too, by the graves. She sat atop the mound of earth covering the place where she’d watched them set Old Major in the ground. No one could get near Dog now, not even Gabriel. Her righteous, ferocious self had come around fully, back to wild.
On Saturday, when Gabriel went up to see Mr. Prosser, Venus showed him to the counting room, not Kissey.
When Gabriel asked about Dog, Venus just shook her head and clicked her tongue. “She went along her whole life just playactin’ nice, I guess. She figure without Old Major she got no chance. Got nothin’. Gone back to her true colors, I reckon. Snarlin’ and showin’ those nasty teeth. Hurt somebody now, for sure.”
When Mr. Prosser closed the door, Venus took Kissey’s old place. The planter invited Gabriel to sit, but Gabriel remained standing. A fine log fire roared high in the fireplace. Mr. Prosser adjusted his chair and draped a wool throw across his shoulders.
“What’s your business with me today, Gabriel? I haven’t much time.”
Gabriel could see Venus waiting there on the other side of the closed door. Her dress hem did not calm him in the same way Kissey’s would have, but he smiled at her trying to do him right. Seeing her there helped him gather his nerve.
“Sir, I’m here asking your permission to marry Colonel Wilkinson’s Nanny,” he said.
Mr. Prosser leaned back in his chair and wrinkled his brow. Tears of sweat collected along the planter’s upper lip. The master looked ample worried, but Gabriel had ample time to wait. He let Mr. Prosser search his face. He let the master take in each scar and hoped he’d recall the story of every mark. Gabriel left his lips just apart to show the gaps in his mouth, so Prosser could see and remember.
Gabriel rested his gaze on the mantel and on the oil painting of a young Thomas Henry standing beside a dog who was not Dog. He wondered if the portrait would hang there for years or decades or even centuries to come. He wondered if future Prossers and kin might say, “That’s little Thomas Henry Prosser; he’s the one who squandered the family fortune.”
He pondered what surname he might choose for his own family when he and Nan were free to adorn their own mantel and their own names in any way they pleased.
“Your presence here this morning is unsettling to me, Gabriel,” the old man said at last. “I dreamed a terrible dream last night. All morning, I’ve been given over to a great anxiety. Sit.”
Gabriel took the wing chair facing Mr. Prosser and the doorway. He heard Venus rustling in the foyer — her way of warning him to keep still and ready.
“I take seriously my responsibility to provide for the care and protection of all my family here at Brookfield. Have I not been generous with you ever since you can recall?” Mr. Prosser asked him. “Are you not happy, Gabriel?”
He knew what Mr. Prosser meant by “family.” Mr. Prosser often called Gabriel’s people family, though he had never known Mr. Prosser to tie his wife or his son naked to a tree limb, then leave them lying out in winter to wait for a whipping.
In the counting room, Gabriel’s heart and mind worked to one accord. He had come seeking Mr. Prosser’s mercy, not his wrath, so he answered, “I am most happy when I’m with Nanny. Sir.”
Mr. Prosser laughed to himself. “Ah, yes. You’ve come for a gift!” The planter man coughed once, then twice, and with the third he gave in to a violent hacking fit. Venus slipped into the room and placed a glass of water in the master’s trembling hand. The girl nodded for Gabriel to hurry with his request, then left the two men alone again.
“I’ve been loving Nanny since I first saw her when I first went to Richmond.”
“I knew you visited Wilkinson’s at night lately.” Mr. Prosser crossed, then uncrossed, his ankles and leaned forward. “But tell me, what do you think about Venus? I have long hoped you would take Venus.”
Gabriel shook his head no before Mr. Prosser could finish speaking. He looked to the door, thankful some other business had pulled Venus away. Still, he softened his voice before he spoke so that she would not hear. “Thank you, sir. I love my Nan, and besides, Venus is too trifling a woman for me.”
Mr. Prosser leaned his head against the chair back and groaned. So much time passed that Gabriel cleared his throat to try and rouse the master from sleep.
Venus entered the room again and startled Mr. Prosser awake.
“Yes, yes,” the planter said. “I give you my permission. I’ll speak to Wilkinson on your behalf, though I expect the old colonel will take no issue. He’s getting the better part here. You must know I’ll have no claim on any increase from this marriage.” Mr. Prosser picked up his pen to write their agreement in the book, then set it down again. “Venus, I can’t get warm today. Send Old Major in to tend to this fire.”
Venus and Gabriel exchanged glances. “Old Major passed over, Marse. Gone home now,” said Venus.
Mr. Prosser rubbed his eyes. “Did I not just see him there at my window? Well, I’m tired and nervous today.” The master sighed. “I need a good strong cup of coffee. Or some soup. Now, tell me, how is your mother?”
“Comin’ ’long, sir. Mam be back up here to the house before long,” Venus answered.
“Good, good. I miss having Kissey near.” He sank deep into his chair, then remembered Gabriel. “I’ll do your bidding with Wilkinson. Are we finished?”
“Thank you,” Gabriel said. Then he rushed to add, “Venus here, she loves Mr. Burton’s Isaac, sir, and it’s a k
nown fact he loves her back. Isaac’s a good, strong man and will care for her.”
Before Gabriel could wink at Venus and slip out of the counting room, Mr. Prosser grabbed Gabriel by the wrist. “Wait.”
“Sir?”
“I dreamed of your damned father last night. He came to my bed drenched by rain. Laughing.” Mr. Prosser described the ghostly encounter. “I asked what business he had with me, then his face became yours. On waking this morning, I prevailed upon Venus to check the floor for dampness, to see if he had come back and haunted me in the night.”
Gabriel envisioned Pa’s bony face. Even now, he met up with Pa every night in his sleep. He had often wondered if he would speak a single word or simply fall into Pa’s embrace when they would finally reunite, way up yonder. He wanted so badly to tell his father, Pa, I’m going to marry Nanny at Young’s spring. I’m going to set my Nan free.
He said to himself, We’ll hold hands when we jump the broom. Three times, then she’ll be my wife. Forever, Pa. Like you and Ma, forever.
“I also dreamed of my father in the night,” Gabriel said, and ran from the counting room. Mr. Prosser had kept the room so hot, now Gabriel felt dizzy and out of breath. Outside, he leaned against the cold, white wood planks of the great house, then he set off past the quarter to Young’s spring to meet Nanny.
He knew she would be waiting. Seeing him there, smiling his snaggletooth smile at the top of the hill, Nanny would come running toward him. He would call out, My bride, my bride, over and over when he saw her blue skirt hiked up to give her long legs room to sprint up the hill. She would jump into his arms when she reached him, then he would swing her around and around and love her right there on the still side of the hill. Afterward, Nan would complain about being cold. He would bring all of her into his lap until she felt warm again.
But when Gabriel did reach the apple tree, he changed his mind. The smell of fallen, fermenting fruit longing to return to the earth bade him turn around back to the quarter. Nan will wait.