A Dream of Daring

by Gen LaGreca

  She skimmed through several volumes, decided on one, then extinguished the light and left through an open window. She carried the book delicately in her arm as if it were a newborn. By the next morning, he noticed, the empty space left by the book was filled again. Solo had apparently read it overnight in the kitchen, then returned it before it could be missed.

  The next night he observed the same scene in the library. This time Solo was holding a little book he recognized; it was one of his favorite plays, a comedy. As she read a passage, for the first time he saw her laugh. He walked toward the room from the hallway. Startled, she looked up at him standing at the door. The soft radiance on her face vanished, and her eyes filled with terror.

  He approached her, wondering what passage had made her laugh. As he touched the small volume and leaned toward her to see the page she was reading, she dropped the book into his hand and reached down for an object strapped to her lower leg, hidden under her clothing. In the next moment, a knife was pointed mere inches from his throat.

  He recognized the weapon, a hunting knife from his saddlebag. He stood motionless while his eyes studied her, the astonishment on his face turning to understanding. He guessed the reason why she feared his coming so close to her; he could only imagine the past horrors she had endured to provoke that fear.

  For a long moment, he observed the knife pointing at him. Then, ignoring it, he turned to the book and read the page she had been reading. He laughed too. “That’s one of my favorite scenes,” he said.

  She remained frozen. The knife stayed poised at his windpipe. He remained on his spot.

  “Where did you learn to read?”

  A hostile stare was his only answer. Sometimes plantation mistresses taught slave children to read, despite the laws forbidding it. He wondered if she had encountered a kind mistress in her past.

  “Here, take it.” He held the book out to her. When she didn’t take it, he dropped it on the table nearby.

  “I came to tell you that you don’t have to sneak in here through the window at night. You have my permission to borrow the books you want. And you can come in during the day and use the door.”

  He could read no other reaction on her face, except a terror that apparently would not disappear until he did. He turned his back on the knife and walked out.

  On another evening, as he came out of his room and was about to descend the staircase, he saw her downstairs in the parlor. She was looking in fascination at picture cards, gazing through the binocular lenses of a stereoscope, a small, handheld device kept there for viewing photographs. The stereographs presented two slightly different images of the same picture, side by side, one in front of each eye of the binocular viewer. The two images when viewed that way were perceived as a single picture with three-dimensional depth. In the parlor there were a stack of stereographs showing artwork, famous landmarks, and street scenes from cities around the world.

  He watched her viewing the cards, holding the device up to the window, straining to catch the last blue light of the day. He saw her read the descriptions of the scenes given on the cards. He remembered that he had stereographs of Philadelphia in his bedroom, and he returned there to retrieve them. He put the cards in his jacket pocket and went downstairs.

  As he reached the parlor, he could see the stack of picture cards spread out on the table near her. He knew well the photographs she was viewing—an outdoor market in London, a railway station in Paris, lively scenes with horse-drawn vehicles bustling down tree-lined boulevards, shops with windblown awnings and windows filled with merchandise, sidewalks jammed with busy pedestrians. The human activity captured in the pictures seemed to represent everything in the world that was closed to her.

  She was unaware of him. Her back was to the door as she gazed intently at a stereograph that held particular interest to her. In an effort not to startle her, he spoke softly as he entered the room.

  “Say, I thought you might be interested in something.”

  She whirled toward him. In her nervousness she dropped the stereoscope. It landed on the table, and the picture in the viewing slot fell to the floor. He bent down to retrieve it. When he straightened up, he found the hunting knife pointed at his chest.

  His eyes traveled from the knife to her face. Her enchantment with the pictures had turned to terror. He glanced at the picture he had retrieved. It was a photograph of a painting hand-tinted to show the vivid colors of the actual artwork. The scene was of a grand ballroom where beautiful women in bright-colored gowns danced with handsome men in tails. The artist had captured the lively sweep of their movements and the laughter on their faces. Tom observed the gaiety of the scene, then the desperate eyes of the woman before him.

  He dropped the card on the table and was about to reach into his pocket for the pictures he had brought. But his arm paused in midmotion when she raised her free arm up to grip the knife with both hands. For a long moment, the two stared at each other—a tall man with strands of gold hair spilling into his eyes and a petite woman with yards of wild russet curls—with the silver knife blade flashing in the twilight between them. He slowly continued with his action and took out the stereographs.

  “I thought you might like these pictures of Philadelphia.”

  He offered the cards to her, but she declined to take them, her fiery eyes locked on his, her fists white-knuckled as she grasped the knife.

  He dropped the cards on the table. She didn’t look at them but remained motionless. Then he turned around so that the knife was pointed at his back, and he walked out.

  At other times, he spotted her reading a weekly agricultural newsletter that he picked up in town. When she brought trays of food to and from the dining room, she made detours into the library. She checked the shelf where he stacked the newsletters after he’d finished reading them, and when a new issue appeared, she grabbed it. But the articles on planting times, plowing methods, soil preparation, hoeing, and the like didn’t seem to interest her. Instead, she turned to the back page, which carried advertisements for farm implements, along with notices of field hands for sale or hire . . . and rewards for capturing runaways. He wondered if she was looking for someone.

  Once late at night, he had returned home after another futile search for the invention. As he went upstairs to his room without having eaten, his despair mixed with his hunger to form anger. He swore silently at Ted Cooper: the thief, the killer, the man who was a trespasser in his life.

  He approached his bedroom and was startled to find . . . a trespasser. He had never before seen Solo in his room, and he sensed this was the one place she would definitely avoid. But there she stood, leaning over a lamp on his dresser, reading something he had left in his room. It was the latest issue of the agricultural newsletter. Apparently, she was so eager to see it that she couldn’t wait for him to finish his reading and bring it to the library. From the open door, he saw her face through the dresser’s mirror, her eyes moving intently across the back page. Hearing him approach, she looked up to catch his face in the mirror, staring at her.

  The image of her in the looking glass held him. He saw the dark eyes, the wild mane, and the auburn skin of a grassland filly unbridled. And yet he saw an intelligence that caused her to devour books, a curiosity that made her yearn to see pictures of the world, and a pressing need to find something . . . or someone.

  Slowly, he walked toward her. In a flash, she pulled out the knife she carried with her and whirled around to face him. He walked closer, until the blade was mere inches from his chest. Then he walked closer still, till the blade touched his shirt. His nerves frazzled from his long, fruitless day, in a split-second move he grabbed her arm with one hand and seized the knife with the other. Roughly, he pulled her against him and dug his fingers into her arm. She winced.

  “If I were what you think, do you really believe this knife would protect you?”

  She stood before him, trembling helplessly. Her eyes—dark, moist, and filling with stark terror—seemed to lo
ok through him, to an inner horror, a nightmare of her own that was scorched onto her memory.

  He too felt a horror as he towered over her with the knife. How could anyone stand this? he wondered. How could anyone want to make someone else feel helpless and afraid? How could anyone feed off that? He thought of the murder, the theft, the mayor’s words, the factory owner’s warning—the fear and violence around him that he couldn’t escape. Her terror seemed to weigh on him in the same way.

  She lowered her face, unable to bear her inner torment, to shake it off, or to hide it from him.

  The sight of her plight drained the anger from him. He sighed. He loosened his grip on her arm and took her hands in his. He put the knife back into them. He aimed it at his throat. She looked at him, astonished. He squeezed her hands reassuringly, then released them.

  “There, do you feel better now?” he asked softly.

  She kept the knife pointed at him, but her face became calmer and her grip on the blade softer.

  He gestured to the newsletter, with its ad page flickering in the light on the dresser.

  “Are you looking for someone?”

  There was no reply.

  “Someone who might’ve run away?”

  The nightmare was receding; her composure was returning. Her face was once again becoming mysterious, her feelings unreachable.

  “Can I help you find who you’re looking for?”

  His voice was lost in the tangle of curls that brushed against him as she turned and rushed out of the room.

  He could still feel the cool breeze that her whirling hair left in the air. It was still palpable . . .

  He realized it was the cool wind of the early March day blowing across his face as he left the carpenter’s cabin. But his mind still lingered on that incident in his room. Was it just something from a violent past that had resurfaced to frighten her that night, or was it also something in him . . . in the way he looked at her? That evening in his room, he had glimpsed his own reflection in the mirror, and he was surprised to see on his face a feeling he hadn’t acknowledged to himself—and emphatically didn’t welcome. As he stood outside the carpenter’s cabin, he resolved to avoid the volatile new presence in his household.

  Just then he heard her arguing with Jerome.

  “You need to brush the knots out of their manes,” she said, agitated, coming out of the stable with her adversary, “and wash the mud off their legs, and clean their hooves better. You keep the horses scraggly, and you groom yourself like a prince, when it should be the opposite. At least the horses are worth something.”

  “An’ you needs to put mo’ molasses in th’ gingerbread, so it be sweet like you ain’t. An’ stew the meat longer, so it be tender like you ain’t!” Jerome jumped around, pointing an angry finger at her. “Jus’ ’cause you sour and tough don’ mean yer food gotta be too.”

  “If the gingerbread was sweeter and the meat more tender, how would that help the horses?” she asked.

  Jerome spotted the inventor watching them. “Mr. Tom! This hellcat, she need to hold her tongue!”

  Tom sighed as they walked in his direction. He felt as if he were watching a play unfold from a seat in the audience. There was no director of the action, he thought, feeling no urge to assume that role.

  “Stablin’ ain’t woman work. Git back to the kitchen!”

  “Why don’t you go to the kitchen? You’re always talking about it. You’re always eating Mr. Tom’s food. You’re always telling me how to make it better.” She paused, as if suddenly realizing something. “It seems you want to be there.”

  Jerome stopped walking, struck by the words. Tom stared at him, struck by the words too. The three of them were speechless. Solo had observed something that was obvious, yet it had never occurred to any of them.

  She continued, her voice showing her own surprise at the notion. “Yesterday you chopped almonds and added them to the cake batter. The day before you added more onions to the stew. Today you put herbs in the soup. You do something like that every day.”

  “Cookin’ ain’t man work, Missy!”

  “The hog doesn’t care who cooks it,” she replied.

  “’Tain’t done. I ain’t never seen no man in th’ kitchen.” He turned to Tom. “Ain’t that right, sir?”

  “Why, no, Jerome. Men do cook.” Tom seemed surprised at the slave’s remark, but reminded himself that Jerome had seen little of life outside of Indigo Springs. “There are male cooks in taverns, on ships, in hotels, and even on plantations.”

  “The best ones work in fancy places,” added Solo.

  “You little squirrel, how’s you knowin’ ’bout them fancy places?”

  “Men who cook in fancy places are called chefs,” she said. The last word sounded as if she’d said kings.

  Jerome listened curiously.

  Tom watched a change occurring in the two of them. Jerome’s ready grin and sweet-talk were vanishing; he seemed earnest. Solo’s crusty aloofness had softened; she seemed friendly.

  “Didn’t you ever see the picture cards in the house?”

  Jerome stared at her blankly.

  She turned to Tom. “May I . . . ?” She pointed to the big house.

  Tom nodded.

  Like a butterfly, she vanished soundlessly and just as swiftly returned, holding the stereoscope and a few picture cards.

  She placed the first card in the viewing slot. “Here’s a famous restaurant in Philadelphia, where people go for fancy eating.”

  The slave looked through the viewer at an opulent room with a glass chandelier and small linen-covered tables set with sparkling silverware and flowery china.

  She placed another card in the slot. “These are the cooks who prepare the food for this restaurant.”

  Jerome carefully examined a row of men in white uniforms with white hats standing proudly behind a table filled with platters of food. There was a black face in the group.

  “Say, that be a slave there in Philerdelfi?”

  “I think he’s free,” she whispered somberly.

  They looked questioningly at Tom. “That’s true,” he said, a touch of pity in his voice.

  Jerome peered through the lenses, studying the image with a childlike fascination. It seemed as if Solo had stirred something buried under the cool façade that was Jerome.

  She lifted the card and pointed to a caption on the photograph. “It says, ‘Executive Chef William Roberts and his culinary staff.’ ”

  “You kin read?” Jerome seemed as astonished as Tom had been to learn that. The stableman’s eyes panned to Tom; his eyebrows arched in an unstated question.

  “That’s what it says, Jerome.” Tom confirmed.

  “Which one be Mr. Chef William?”

  “He’s the one with the tall, straight hat. He’s the head of all the cooks. The others have short, floppy hats, but Chef William’s hat is different.”

  Jerome took another look through the lenses at the man with the hat that looked like a tall, white crown.

  “I can make you a hat like that,” she said enticingly.

  “I thought you couldn’t sew,” said Tom.

  She flashed one of her rare, brief smiles.

  “Here’s another picture of the chef,” she said to Jerome.

  She changed the card in the viewer. The new one showed a closer image of the leader of the kitchen. Chef William was alone in the shot, holding a beautifully decorated layer cake. The man’s proud face and the imposing toque on his head created a regal presence.

  Jerome scrutinized the pictures. When he finally put the stereoscope down, the rings around his eyes showed how tightly he had held the viewer to his face.

  “I can make you a hat like Chef William’s, so you can be the chef of that kitchen.” She pointed to the little cabin behind the big house. “Then I can get out of that hot, greasy place and be with the horses instead. I can trade places with you.” She turned to Tom, as if suddenly remembering that his opinion might be important. “If that’s
okay.”

  Jerome turned to him too. Their dark probing eyes stared into his blue ones.

  “If the hog doesn’t care who cooks it, neither do I. Whoever wants the job should be the one to do it,” said Tom.

  He and Solo looked at Jerome. There was a long pause, a furrowed brow, and an intensity in the eyes of the slave who seemed to be engaged in a new mental activity: making a choice about his life.

  “I reckon that be me.”

  Tom looked at Solo. “I suppose the horse doesn’t care who feeds it either.”

  She nodded, and the matter she had engineered was settled.

  The next day, Solo made Jerome a handsome toque. She had removed the rim from an old top hat of his and used it as a frame. She lengthened it and covered the top and sides with a starched white fabric. Sensing there was something important about the hat, she and Jerome waited for Tom to appear outside the big house to make a little ceremony of its launch.

  Tom wondered about the change that the affair had brought about in them. Her open hostility and Jerome’s stealthy defiance seemed tempered. He wondered about the thing inside them that all the laws and whips of the South couldn’t touch, the thing that gave them dignity and made them masters of themselves.

  “This hat has twenty pleats,” she said, counting aloud the vertical folds she had placed in the hat.

  “Whut them fer?”

  “I once read that they can stand for the number of recipes the chef creates. Some chefs have a hundred pleats on their hats.”

  Jerome’s eyebrows arched in wonderment. “Don’t the chef make recipes already there?”

  “Cooks make recipes that are already there. But somebody has to create them. That’s how the chef earns his pleats,” she said.

  “Tha’ so, Mr. Tom?”

  “It sounds reasonable to me, Jerome. It seems there are pleats to earn in every line of work.” He smiled at a new, speechless Jerome, who beamed like a peacock about to fan its feathers.