As she was beginning to think was usual, no answer came forth.
Who can I ask for advice? She ran the list of neighbors through her mind, but none of them could know she still had horses. Besides, she’d already offended most of them with her forthright views on the war. Why can’t I keep my mouth closed like Mama would have?
“So who can I get to look after things around here for me?” God, if you’d bring Zachary back, at least part of my burden would be solved. She felt the tears burning her eyes again. All she wanted to do right this moment was to lay her head on the desk and bawl.
The picture of Cavendar Dunlivey screamed its way into her mind, jerking her upright. His vow branded itself on her brain.
“You will not get the horses, nor me or my people.” A shudder made her teeth rattle at the remembered evil in his eyes. Her stomach clenched, and she tightened her jaw.
“You be needin’ somethin’?” Lucinda appeared in the doorway.
“Ah, no. Thank you.” Jesselynn’s heart hammering against her ribs like steel on an anvil, she forced a smile to lips too dry to stretch. Lucinda. How can I leave Lucinda?
But how could she take her and the other slaves who’d been part of her life since she was born? Her father had not traded in slaves. He’d inherited them from his father, and when children were born in the slave cabins, they became part of Twin Oaks. None had ever been sold, although several had been hired out to work for another planter. Tom the blacksmith was right now over at the Marshes’ fixing machinery. Sarah, who had healing in her hands with herbs, often served as a midwife around the parish, and Aaron, whose woodworking skills rivaled those of fine furniture makers, had spent the last six months at a cabinet shop in Lexington.
As her father had, Jesselynn gave those who worked out a part of their wages. The remainder had helped keep Twin Oaks going.
Could she sign the papers, copy her father’s signature?
She drew paper from the drawer and uncapped the ink bottle. Using one of his letters, she drew over the signature with a dry quill over and over to get the flow and feel of his hand. Then she tried it with ink. And tried again.
Bit by bit the signature drew closer to that of her father’s. Sweat trickled down her spine, and once a drop from the tip of her nose blurred the last line.
“Fiddlesticks!” She felt like hurling pen and pot across the room. Getting up, she strode to the window and looked out across the tobacco fields, the large leaves rustling in a breeze. If only she could stay until the field was picked and hooked across the rods in the barn for drying.
A horse whinnied, then the sound was cut off, most likely by a hand clamped on the muzzle.
She spun back to the chair. She had to leave tonight. Before they were discovered.
Tying her hair back, she returned to the desk. She wrote on both fronts and backs of precious paper, on old envelopes, and on the empty pages at the back of the journal she kept for housekeeping expenses and for recording the amount of preserves made, meat smoked, and eggs laid.
Her hand cramped. Again she rose and went to stand at the window. The sun stood directly overhead. Lucinda appeared in the doorway. “Dinner ready.” She glanced at the mess of papers by the desk and back to Jesselynn.
Jesselynn closed the walnut doors to her father’s study and followed Lucinda to the dining room, where everyone was already gathered. When she took her chair at the head of the table, they all sat and bowed their heads. No one laughed or whispered or shifted on a chair. The song of a mockingbird followed the cadence of her prayer. At the amen no one moved, they all sat staring at the plates before them.
“Is there somethin’ here that I’m not aware of?” She looked up as Lucinda set the platter of corn bread in front of her, the old woman’s eyes gazing straight forward. “Lucinda?”
“No, ma’am.”
Jesselynn felt like looking around to see who else the solemn-faced woman could be speaking to. “Where’s Thaddy, Ophelia?”
“I let ’im sleep.” Ophelia looked as though someone had whipped her, her eyes staring out of her drawn face.
“All right.” Jesselynn slapped her palms on the table. “What is goin’ on here?”
Button, Lucinda’s youngest grandson, jumped and started to wail. Ophelia shushed him, giving Jesselynn a look that screamed pure terror.
Jesselynn looked down the table to Meshach, who was studying his plate as if to memorize each green bean and corn kernel. Arms rigid, holding herself up as if all strength had drained from her legs, she turned slowly to look at Lucinda.
“What … is … it?” The pause between each word lasted seconds that crawled like hours hoeing tobacco.
“You goin’ to leave us.” Lucinda tied her apron in knots.
Jesselynn sank down in her chair, sure now that the escaped strength in her legs would never return. She should have known better than to think she could keep something like this a secret.
“I thought we would talk about this later today.” The weakness traveled up her body, making her head float like a magnolia petal on the water. “I … I’m tryin’ to do what is best for all of us. Go on, eat your dinner, and then we’ll talk.”
“You not goin’ to sell us to dem slave traders.” Lucinda’s words snapped Jesselynn’s head around.
“Lord above, whatever gave you that idea? Of course I’m not goin’ to sell anyone. I’m tryin’ to puzzle out how I can set y’all free.”
“Don’ wanna be free. Wanna be here, like always.”
Jesselynn looked around the table to see all the heads bobbing. Lucinda indeed spoke for them all.
“I understand, I guess, so eat your food and then we’ll talk.” She knew she was probably the only woman in the parish, nay, in the entire state of Kentucky, who planned on discussing her plans with her slaves. She looked at the faces before her. Not too many others shared the dining table with black faces either. Such a thing hadn’t happened while her mother and father were alive. White folks ate in the dining room, and the others in the kitchen or their cabins.
A collective sigh rose, and then bit by bit, normal mealtime chatter picked up, starting with Ophelia and passing around the table from one to the next.
Jesselynn forced the corn bread, sliced string beans, and fried ham past the lump in her throat. Even the redeye gravy over new potatoes had a hard time going down. How could she explain to them what she needed to do? Meshach knew. Thoughts beat in her head like a broody hen beating off anyone come to steal her eggs.
“You don’t like de ham?” Lucinda paused in the gathering of plates.
“No, it’s fine. I just …” Jesselynn handed her plate up.
As soon as the table was cleared, everyone looked at Jesselynn. The time had come. Lucinda sat down and took a little one on her lap.
The silence vibrated like a plucked guitar string.
Oh, Lord, help me. Please give me the words.
“Y’all heard Dunlivey yesterday.” At their gasp she knew she’d started on the wrong tack. She took in a deep breath and began again. “When my father died, he made me promise I would take the horses out of Kentucky before the soldiers, either gray or blue, could conscript them, er, take them away. If we lose the horses, we will have nothing to start over with again after the war. Joseph and Meshach have been hiding them, as y’all know, but Dunlivey knows this place. If anyone can find them, he can.”
A gasp leaped from mouth to mouth.
“So, I will do as my father said. I promised him, and a promise is a promise.”
“Where you go?” Lucinda continued as speaker for all.
“I can’t tell you that. Not because I don’t trust you, but to help keep you safe. If you don’t know where I’ve gone, then …”
“Den we can’t tell no one.”
“That too.”
“One thing I can do to keep you all safe is give you your freedom papers. Then no one can sell or buy you.” Chatter started, but she raised her hands for quiet. “You don’t have to
leave here. I will pay you wages for stayin’.” Where she would get the money, she had no idea. Other than the tobacco crop. “Life will go on like always here. You all know what to do, many of you better than I do. Then when the war is over, we will raise horses and plant tobacco and soybeans and other crops, just like we always have.”
She hoped they believed her words, because right now all she could think of was leaving. She, who had never been beyond Lexington, had to find their way to Uncle Hiram’s in Missouri.
“Who goin’ and who stayin’?” Lucinda rocked the child she held to her bosom.
“Good question. I’d take all of you if I could, but we have to travel fast and at night so we don’t get stopped.” Fear tasted like blood in her mouth.
“I wisht I shot Dunlivey right ’tween the eyes.” Meshach muttered so quietly Jesselynn barely heard him, but the gasp from Lucinda confirmed her suspicions.
“There’d only be others.” Jesselynn looked from face to face. Tearstreaked, shaking, eyes pleading, all of them were her people, her family. Leaving them defenseless—the thought made her eyes burn, and the tears running down Ophelia’s cheeks called for her own tears.
She sucked another deep breath into lungs that refused to expand. The lump in her throat grew. “God will keep us all safe. The Bible, it—” She could go no further. “Excuse me.” The chair rocked behind her as she left the table.
“De wagon loaded,” Meshach said from the doorway to the study. Jesselynn finished the final signature, each one appearing more like her father’s as she wrote out the twenty manumission papers. Her hand cramped, and she was nearly out of ink.
“We’ll leave an hour after full dark. No one should be on the roads then.” She folded and slid the last sheet of paper in an envelope and wrote Meshach’s name on the front. “Here.”
He crossed the faded oriental rug and took it from her. “I don’ need dis.”
“You might.”
“Joseph out here like you said.”
“Good. Bring him in.”
In a moment the two black men stood before her, one as tall and broad shouldered as the other was skinny and stooped. Both of them clutched their hats in their hands, wringing the life out of the brims.
“Joseph, keep this someplace safe.” She handed him his envelope.
“Laws, Missy, I …”
“Now, Joseph, as a free man, you can leave Twin Oaks if you want, or you can take over Meshach’s job as overseer and make sure the tobacco is harvested and dried.” Please, God, let him stay.
“Where would I go? Dis my home.”
Relief attacked the stiffening in her spine. A momentary slump, a swallow, and she smiled around her clenched teeth. “Thank you, Joseph. Between you and Lucinda, I know you can keep Twin Oaks together. With the garden and the hogs to butcher, you’ll have enough to eat.” If you can keep it all out of the hands of either soldiers or scum. “We will leave you guns and lead for hunting.” And to keep off the scavengers.
“Supper ready.” Ophelia, a white cloth tied around her head, spoke from the doorway.
Jesselynn scooped the remaining envelopes into a pile and straightened them. She’d give out the rest at the table and down in the cabins.
When she entered the dining room, her gaze automatically noticed the empty sideboard. No three-branched silver candlesticks, no shiny servers. Lucinda and her helpers had done as instructed. Her father’s picture no longer hung on the wall, nor did her mother’s. Samuel Morse had painted them both years before.
Supper passed in a flurry of tears, instructions, and questions, many of which had no answers. Thaddy sensed the tension and insisted on sitting on Jesselynn’s lap, crying and shaking his head when Ophelia tried to take him.
“Ophelia, I want you to come with us to take care of our boy here.”
She glanced down the table to where Meshach was eating as if nothing untoward were happening. “I goes.”
Jesselynn followed Lucinda into the kitchen. “I have a mighty big favor to ask you.”
Lucinda turned, arms crossed over her ample bosom.
“Lucinda.” The words wouldn’t come. Jesselynn fought the tears and tried again. “While I want you to come with me, there’s no one else I can trust to stay here and take care of things. You are free now….”
Lucinda’s harrumph said more than a string of words. “Don’t need be free. Twin Oaks my home.”
“Mine too.” Oh, God, why do I have to leave? “Please, Lucinda, will you take care of things here for me?” Jesselynn knew if she let the tears come, they’d both be crying. “Please.” Her whisper barely squeaked around the lump in her throat.
Lucinda wiped the tears from her eyes. “I never see you again.”
“No, we’ll be back in time for spring planting.”
Lucinda shook her head slowly from side to side as if a great weight lay atop her knotted turban.
God, I can’t stand this. You know how often she has been right. She listens when you speak and hears what you say. Please, please say we will come back.
“I stay. And I pray for you ever day, and for us.” She swept her arm to the side, including all those to be left behind.
“Thank you. I will write.”
Lucinda nodded.
Jesselynn stood still a moment before heading for the door. She paused, looked back. “Winter will go fast and when spring comes, watch for us.”
They began loading the wagon after dark.
“Food all in de wagon. I packed a carpetbag for de baby. Yo’ dresses in de trunk.” Lucinda wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron.
“Thank you.” Jesselynn couldn’t bear to tell her right now that there would be no need for dresses. “Just in case anyone is watching this place, we must go on like nothing is changed. Those of you who stay here, you have to do the same.” Jesselynn looked at June, Lucinda’s daughter, whose skin wasn’t much darker than her own. While June was more rounded, they were about the same height.
If she could become a boy, surely June could become her.
“June, come with me.”
“Yessum.” Eyes rolling, the young woman rose from the table where she’d been plucking a chicken.
“Now, there’s nothing to be afraid of,” Jesselynn said as they mounted the stairs. “I have an idea that might make things look normal around here. After I’m gone, I mean.”
“Don’ want you to go.” The whimper lashed at Jesselynn’s shoulder blades.
“I know. I don’t want to go either.” She crossed her room to the chifforobe and pulled out the other of her mourning dresses. “Put this on.”
“Can’t do that.” June took three steps back, folded hands clasped to her breast. The shaking of her head made her kerchief shudder.
Jesselynn breathed deep and sighed. “Yes, you can. You and I are about the same size, and if you wear my clothes and a straw hat like I always do, anyone watching this place will think I am here.” And not come hotfooting it after us. Anything to buy time. Every time she thought of Dunlivey watching the big house, she wanted to hide under the bed.
“But you be gone. I can’t be you.”
“Please, June, for the sake of everyone at Twin Oaks, try the dress on.” She held the dress out until June reached for it as if she were being told to put her hand into flames. Jesselynn dug in the chest of drawers for a camisole and petticoat and handed them to the shaking woman beside her.
“Come now, you and I used to play dress-up together, remember? You’ve worn my clothes before.”
“I know, but dat was playtime. This for real thing.”
“Just be glad I’m not making you wear that corset.”
When June finally stood dressed in the black silk dress and a white apron, Jesselynn looked at her with eyes slitted. “You fill it out far better than I do.” She motioned to her chest area. Taking the straw hat off its peg, she clamped it onto June’s head. “Sure do wish now I’d worn a sunbonnet. That way no one could see your face at all.” She stepp
ed back and, hands on hips, nodded. “Go ahead, look in the mirror. What do you think?”
June fingered the material of the skirt. “I think I done gone to heaven, dis here stuff feels so fine.” She smiled at the woman in the mirror. “Pretty dark for a nigger like me.”
“Don’t use that word, June. You are a beautiful free woman who is doing Twin Oaks a big favor.”
Tears pooled in June’s eyes and one slipped down her cheek. “Thank you, Miss Jesselynn, from de bottom of my heart.” She smoothed the silk over her bosom and down to her waist. “I do my best till you gets home again.”
Several hours later, Jesselynn was wishing Lucinda were half so cooperative. She breathed in wind for a sigh big enough to blow the woman down and let it out slowly. “Lucinda, no matter what we all think and want, I have to take the horses to Uncle Hiram’s in Missouri like Daddy said. I promised. You know that.” While Jesselynn thought this discussion had been taken care of in the kitchen, she was learning otherwise.
“Oh, lawsy, my baby get herself kilt fo’ sure.” Lucinda threw her apron over her head.
“Lucinda, please get the scissors.”
One dark eye peeked over the white hem. “Why?”
“Just get them, please.”
Jesselynn had tried on two pairs of her father’s boots before Lucinda heaved her bulk back up the stairs. By stuffing the toes with cotton and wearing two pairs of socks, it looked like she had footwear more in keeping with her new life. Now for the hair. She pulled out the seat to her mother’s dressing table and sat down.
Handing Lucinda the comb, Jesselynn sat with her eyes closed. “Cut it off short like a man’s.”
Lucinda took the scissors and comb, all the while muttering and shaking her head. She stepped back. “I can’t do dis thing. Hair like dat, no way, Missy. Lucinda won’ be party to such goin’s on.”
Jesselynn’s eyes snapped open. She straightened her back and narrowed her eyes, sending sparks bouncing off the mirror and catching her mammy full force. “Will you help me or won’t you? I have to save the horses, for without them we will have nothing after the war is over. You know what marauding soldiers would do to a young woman traveling with fine horses like ours.”
Daughter of Twin Oaks Page 5