American Dreams Trilogy

by Michael Phillips

  “If you ask me, to sign those papers would be the biggest mistake of his life.”

  “Not if it is what God wants,” said Carolyn.

  “How so?”

  “In that case, not to sign would be an even bigger mistake.”

  Outside in the arbor, Richmond Davidson was engaged in one last brief skirmish with his old Adam. It did not last long. A few inward heart cries of resistance, a reminder of Christ’s prayer in the garden, a sigh that was yet full of pain though he had uttered the prayer so many times before, the whispered ‘Not my will’… and finally he turned back toward the house. He had no doubt that signing the notes would convince his cousins all the more that he was a fool. But doing so would only lower their opinion of him. To refuse would cause them to think of him as a hypocrite, and thereby lower their opinion of his God. And neither to save face, nor to protect his own financial standing, would he allow such a thing to happen.

  He found Carolyn and James still in his small upstairs study. He smiled, walked straight to his desk, sat down, and took up his pen.

  “They took the liberty to sneak in a clause,” he said to his wife, “in the finest of print.”

  “What kind of clause?” asked Carolyn.

  “A clause guaranteeing the notes with the land and the house.”

  “Surely you will not agree to that?”

  “No. I will not place such a burden on Greenwood. We are told to be innocent as doves but also wise as serpents. I will obey, but not to the point of honoring outright deceit. Modeling one’s life after Jesus, James,” he added to their guest, “does not mean being a fool, it merely means not seeking one’s own will. Although I do suppose,” he added with a slight smile, almost as if speaking to himself, “as I said earlier, it sometimes means being willing to appear the fool. In any event, Carolyn, have no worry—I will strike through this clause and initial it before I sign.”

  “But you will sign?”

  “I am afraid so.”

  “Oh, Richmond—,” Carolyn began. Then she remembered her own words to James and paused, closed her eyes briefly, and nodded.

  Sixty seconds later the deed was done. Richmond rose again and joined his wife where she sat on the couch.

  “Well, my dear,” he said, taking her hand, “it would appear that another of those crossroads in our lives has come.”

  She nodded.

  In one accord, they closed their eyes. “Our Father,” sighed Richmond, “you know our frail hearts. You know our desire to obey you in all things. Yet surely you know how hard it is to hear your voice aright. We pray that we have done so now. Thus we come to you again, laying ourselves, our lives, and our future before you. We place ourselves again in your hands, Father. We know to do so is our only good, our only joy. We give Greenwood to you and ask you to accomplish your perfect will in everything that Greenwood stands for. We give our sons and Cynthia to you, our people, our finances. Accomplish your purpose in all, Lord, and let us not stand in your way by clinging to our own ambitions that do not see as deeply into your will as we might. We thank you that you are a good and loving Father whom we can trust to do your very best for us in all things. May all men and women come to see your goodness in the end.”

  When his voice grew silent, Richmond and Carolyn sat for several minutes in silence. Such prayers, and the circumstances leading to them, always exacted a toll.

  James Waters, meanwhile, sat listening, quietly pondering what he had witnessed. But it brought him no joy. It stirred up too many feelings inside, too many memories… and, along with the discussion of Mr. Brown, too much uncertainty about much that he had not anticipated having to think about again.

  Sixteen

  For several days following Thomas’ discovery of the ramshackle raft, he and Seth went to the river almost every moment they could spare. Often Cherity entered into the enthusiasm of their work, sometimes she remained onshore watching, at other times she quietly read a book in the branches of a great oak up the bank to the background music of endless talk and sawing and splashing and hauling and roping and nailing being carried out below her. But nonetheless did her presence preside over the construction of what turned out to be almost an entirely new craft as it had in Seth’s airy dream fancy of the cloud vessel of the night.

  And a worthy craft it was as it gradually took shape!

  It was too heavy to dry-dock, but towing it back upstream they secured it to the decaying pier of the mill beneath which Thomas had discovered it. There they had set to work to make it seaworthy.

  They managed, with Cherity’s help, to tumble and roll two sizeable logs, each some eight feet in length, into the river. These, being dry and attached to opposite ends, raised the slimy watersoaked logs sufficiently to keep the whole thing floating on the surface. New ropes were brought from home to securely bind the logs of foundation, then great planks added and nailed across them laterally. Besides adding to her buoyancy, already envisioning adventures up and down the river for miles, these would make for a wide deck capable of supporting an entire ship’s crew, even keeping them dry if need be during excursions when perhaps the sun was not so warm nor the river quite so inviting as in the midst of high summer.

  A great launching was planned for the Saturday after the last of the stalks of wheat had fallen beneath the scythe. Word had already spread among the black children and youths of Greenwood, and Thomas, Seth, along with Isaiah and Aaron Shaw—the former, at eighteen, between Seth and Thomas in age, and the latter, at fifteen, two years younger than Thomas—were excitedly planning an inaugural voyage that would take them some two and a half miles downstream, and to a calm pool where they could swim away the afternoon, braving a final stretch of white water before the raft would be loaded by a dozen of Malachi Shaw’s men into the back of one of the Davidson wagons, and the wet and weary sailors in the back of another, to return to Greenwood via the land route.

  One afternoon, seeing him nowhere about the house and barn, Cherity wandered off in search of Seth. She had a pretty good idea where she would find him.

  She crept out of the wood on the bank above the old mill with a quiet step, then sat down to watch, full of many feelings she could not describe. The day before Seth had erected a tall mast beam vertically above the planks of the raft’s deck. Upon this mast he intended to fly the flag they had obtained yesterday from Carolyn, an old white sheet torn in half to just the right proportions.

  It was this flag, laying flat on the deck as he knelt before it, tin of red paint in one hand and small brush in the other, to which Seth had just added the final N. Almost the moment Cherity sat down to watch, Seth rocked back on his knees to inspect his work.

  From above, Cherity felt a stab of something undefined pierce her heart as she saw the words of red on the white sheet: T-H-E C-H-E-R-O-K-E-E M-A-I-D-E-N.

  Seeming to sense her eyes upon him, Seth turned.

  “Cherity!” he exclaimed, rising to his feet. “How long have you been there!”

  “I only just got here,” she replied, struggling to get the words out from the choking in her throat.

  “What do you think!” Seth asked with the exuberance of a thirteen-year-old. “How do you like her name?”

  “The whole thing is beautiful,” said Cherity, almost too pleased to be capable of a reply. “Do you think it will hold everyone!”

  “We could pile two dozen on here and it won’t sink.”

  “What is the chair for… tied to the base of the mast?” she asked.

  “That’s for you! I brought it from home… my mom said we could use it.”

  The spirit of excitement in anticipation of the voyage down the river, in the main house at Greenwood as well as the colored village, had mounted to a near frenzy of eagerness. Breakfast was scarcely over before Isaiah and Aaron appeared at the door. The four boys were at the river ten minutes later making final preparations.

  Seth’s first duty of the day was, its paint now dry, to hoist the white flag up the mast. That accomplishe
d, the four boys—two white, two black—stood a moment at attention, then all saluted solemnly.

  What boys can find to occupy themselves at a river, or at the site of an old mill, may be a mystery to mothers and sisters, but to the boys themselves the opportunities for activity and fun are endless indeed. Though the minutes waiting for the hour of launch went by slowly, there was little chance of boredom.

  At last, sometime around eleven, the sounds of running, yelling, excited youngsters and teens began to filter toward the river. At last the entire Greenwood family of whites and blacks, owners and former slaves, field hands and house servants and even old Moses, Maribel, Alexander, Carolyn, James, and Cherity in a carriage with Richmond at the reins, began to appear through the trees.

  No one wanted to miss this!

  Onboard as they came stood the four proud skippers, flag above them beginning to wave a little in the breeze. Some of the children dashed for the raft. Others ran straight out to the end of the pier and into the river with shrieks of delight, then swam to the raft and climbed aboard.

  Cherity walked down the pier. Seth turned toward her as she came, then extended his hand. She took it gently, then stepped down onto the deck and took her place in the chair of honor.

  Onshore the chaos of a dozen men’s and women’s voices shouted final instructions to their youngsters, while husbands helped their wives down the bank to the water’s edge.

  As the excited mass of black boys and girls scampered and climbed aboard, slowly the raft began to feel their weight and pitched slightly.

  “Aaron,” cried Seth, pointing to the light side, “move some of the smaller ones over there! Isaiah, you get to that corner, I’ll take this…. Tom, you stand there on the fourth corner.”

  Gradually they corrected the lopsidedness. The raft settled again level on the water. The babbling and chatter quieted. Soon all eyes rested on Seth.

  “Stay seated carefully, you younger children,” he said, glancing around at his wide-eyed passengers. “You mind anything Thomas or Isaiah or Aaron or I tell you. And Cherity too, for the raft’s named after her in a way, though not exactly after her. We’ll float down the river a while, then have a swim and then everyone under twelve will have to get off before the rapids.”

  “But massa Seff, I kin—” one eleven-year-old began to protest. He was immediately drowned out by a chorus of high-pitched black voices all proclaiming their swimming prowess.

  “That is the agreement made by your parents,” said Seth above the ruckus. “Anyone who does not agree may go ashore now.”

  A few groans and moans sounded. But they soon gave way to renewed shouts and cries of childish excitement and pleasure as Seth gave a shove against the shore with his pole.

  “Cast off the rope, Tom!” he cried. “Aaron… Isaiah—man your poles. Steady now… here we go!”

  Thomas flung away the rope attached to the pier, and with a few more shoves from the sturdy poles of the four skippers, The Cherokee Maiden slowly drifted out into the water and then began to glide away as the current took them down the river. Hardly able to make himself heard above the din around him, Seth called to his father where he stood with Carolyn and James Waters, all three smiling and laughing at the joy of the great launching.

  “Dad, we’ll meet you and Malachi at Baker’s Hollow to pick up the young ones!” he shouted.

  Still laughing, Richmond waved in acknowledgment. Whether it was the sight of seeing white and black young people so happy together and so oblivious to their difference of race and background, or the quiet contentedness of mothers and fathers to see the joy on their own children’s faces amid realities of life’s toil of which their innocence was not yet aware, gradually a solemn calm settled upon the onlookers spread across the shore and bank. As the shouts and cries receded from across the water, softly now came the rich bass voice of Josaiah Black.

  “De—ee—ee-eep river, Lord,” he sang, drawing the words out with slow, melancholy pathos. Immediately he was joined by Nancy and the rest of the women, rising high with the crystalline clarity of their soprano tones.

  “My home is over Jordan.”

  Now came in Malachi and the rest of the black men, until men and women together drifted into three, perhaps as many as five different harmonies and variations of the simple well-known black melody.

  “I want to cross over into campground.”

  While The Cherokee Maiden drifted from sight, she continued on her way by the multitude of fifteen or twenty black voices spontaneously intermingling with a complexity and richness scarcely achieved by the most renowned cathedral choir, reaching the depths and scaling the heights of what God made the human voice capable.

  “O, don’t you want to go to that gospel feast,

  That promised land where all is peace?”

  Carolyn Davidson stood listening in awe. She had heard their blacks sing many times, indeed, heard the harmonies of their voices drifting up to the house from their village on most evenings. But never, she thought, had she heard anything that gave such a foretaste of heaven itself. And surely this intermingling of white and black foretold that kingdom where the equality of all humanity in God’s sight will be a reality rather than a dream.

  “Deep river, Lord,

  I want to cross over into campground.”

  As the strains of the old spiritual died away over the river, calm now in front of them, though in the distance the shouts and chatter accompanying the vessel could be heard, the onlookers remained quiet a moment more, then slowly began to turn away from the river and climb back up the bank.

  Only one there was among them whose heart was not filled with the joy of the occasion. Phoebe Shaw, holding the hand of her three-year-old son, realized that she had given up what remained of her childhood in a momentary season of foolishness. She was herself the same age as Seth. But she would never know the joy of youth again.

  “Come, Malachi,” said Richmond as they crested the embankment. “You and I had best be getting the teams hitched and on our way to Baker’s Hollow.”

  Meanwhile, onboard the craft which thus far had proved seaworthy for its twelve to fifteen passengers, several of the teenage black girls, rather than entering into the raft revels of the younger ones, sat demurely at Cherity’s feet. They had already grown in awe of Cherity from watching her in the fields and on horseback with Seth, amazed that any girl could be so skilled, so bold, so outspoken, so brave and confident around boys and men. To have called her a white goddess in their eyes would perhaps be an exaggeration, yet at the same time would not have been altogether off the mark. They sat at her feet as devotedly as if she were their mistress for life. On her part, however, Cherity was not content to sit silently while they stole shy glances at her. She engaged the three in such animated conversation that they were soon laughing and talking along with the rest. By the time they came round the bend and the raft slowed in the favorite swimming site known as Baker’s Hollow, Cherity was one of the first off the raft into the water. Amazed at her freedom and abandon, and after no little coaxing, Darya, Kanika, and Recene all followed. Their initial reservation soon gave way to laughter and splashing and diving and jumping along with Cherity and the rest, while the younger boys all swam to the shore, scampered up the bank, and were soon flying into the water with the aid of a great rope swing tied over an overhanging bough of oak.

  By the time Richmond and Malachi appeared an hour later with the wagon, though exhaustion had already begun to set in among some, groans and renewed protestations followed. It took the better part of yet another hour before The Cherokee Maiden could again be on its way for the second half of its voyage.

  Wyatt Beaumont rode toward the river with three or four of his friends. Scully Riggs, who always seemed to turn up and was not so easy to refuse, was tagging along with them.

  They were coming to fish, for Baker’s Hollow, because the water ran deep in two or three pools where the river slowed, offered not only the best swimming hole for miles, but also
the best fishing, and the trout were said to be biting.

  The shrieks of laughter that drifted toward them while they were yet a long way off sounded strangely foreign in their ears. Had a troop of black urchins invaded their favorite fishing hole! Unconsciously the small posse increased its pace, some of its number already itching for a fight.

  Before the river came into view, however, other voices could be heard among the rest—white voices. It was the sound of black and white laughing and making sport… together!

  Wyatt slowed as the hollow came into view from the trail fifty yards away on the bank above. He took in the scene below with disgust. The others rode up and gathered around him.

  “It’s the two Davidsons,” said Brad McClellan. “What are they doing with all those niggers!”

  “Let’s run ’em out, Wyatt!” said Scully. “We can run ’em out and teach that nigger-loving Davidson trash a lesson!”

  The young Beaumont heir sat silently taking in the scene, running the options through his mind.

  “Never mind,” he said at length. “They’ve scared the fish off by now anyway.”

  “But that don’t mean he got the right—”

  “Forget it, I said.”

  “Come on, Wyatt. Why don’t we have us a little fun?”

  “Shut up, Scully,” said Wyatt. “I’ll deal with Seth Davidson in my own way. Come on, let’s go.”

  He turned his horse around and led the small group of riders upriver to another hole, thinking to himself of some other means to exact vengeance on the Davidsons for their betrayal of Southern tradition than merely running them out of a swimming hole.