by Tara Conklin
As they walked, Missus gossiped about Melly, the spinster’s shame, and remembered her own oldest sister in Mississippi, homely and bookish, and what ever became of her? Josephine listened and nodded and thought of Nathan and the road to the undertaker’s. Could he tell her the route? She did not trust her memory to find her way again. This time the undertaker would not turn her away. Before, it had been her own fault, waiting so long to run, her belly low and heavy.
And Lottie? Now is the time, Josephine would say, there will be no other. I have seen signs of the redemption. The lump on Missus’ neck growing wider by the day; the sparrow with its head like an arrow; the doctor’s weeping skin, red and cracked, hidden beneath his suit. Did these not point to an escape? What would Lottie accept, what would she believe in?
JOSEPHINE PREPARED A SIMPLE SUPPER for Missus Lu, bread and broth, steeped mint and a teaspoonful of brandy, and put her to bed. Still no sign of Mister. An ebbing line of orange hung on the horizon, the emergent night sky luminous and clear. The hours of darkness stretched before her and they seemed immense, immeasurable. How far might she go? How many miles to the city of Philadelphia?
Josephine walked down to the cabins. The night felt thicker here than up by the house. The cooking fires flickered along the row. Shadowy movement and sounds of the field hands preparing their suppers, a piece of meat left from the week’s allotment, pig fat and beans, brown trout from the river, and the cooking smells mixed with the stench of the latrine. Otis worked by torchlight in the side garden where the field hands grew runner beans, carrots, collards, potatoes, squash. His back was bent, his hands in the earth. He looked up and nodded as Josephine passed.
Lottie and Winton sat outside their cabin. Josephine saw the silhouette of Winton’s form on the front steps, and then Lottie as she stood and walked toward the fire, her gait rolling and slow, her shadow long and misshapen in the wavering light. She pulled a spoon from her apron pocket and poked it into the black pot that hung over the flame. Josephine stepped from the shadows into the circle of light thrown by the fire
“Evening, Lottie.”
Lottie raised the spoon. “Oh, you gave me a fright. Don’t go sneaking up on me like that.”
“I’m sorry, Lottie, didn’t mean nothing. Will you come inside?” Josephine tilted her head to the cabin. Lottie opened her mouth as if to speak but said nothing, just nodded and followed Josephine.
They sat on three-legged stools, the cabin lit only by the firelight that winked from a square window cut into the wall. In winter the window was covered with burlap, but now it was left open to the air and insects, smoke and light. Two sleeping pallets lay against the far wall, covered by Lottie’s quilt. A small rough table sat beside the door and, upon it, a brown glass bottle held the bluebell stems that Lottie had picked that morning.
Lottie said, “Josephine, is it true the doctor came today for Missus? Calla seen him.”
“Yes, the doctor came. He said Missus is dying. And Mister run off, I don’t know where he went to. I am going, Lottie. I can’t wait. Please come with me, won’t you and Winton come?” Josephine heard the words come in a rush and they sounded simple and weak, not as she had hoped. She did not talk about signs of the redemption; there were no signs, just things that she saw without grand design or divine meaning, and she could not pretend now to Lottie that she believed otherwise. Fact was they all knew that a death meant sales. Who would be sold after Missus Lu was gone? Who would stay? Would Mister keep on at Bell Creek? They might all be sold, scattered to different parts.
Lottie shifted where she sat and looked away from Josephine, then back. “Oh child, how can we go? Winton’s leg barely serves him now, Jackson keep saying he’ll bring the whip down on account of it. And me, I’m too old for it.”
Josephine took hold of Lottie’s hand. “Please,” she said. “Please, Lottie.” She squeezed Lottie’s fingers, hoping to convey the truth that she found herself now unable to speak: I do not want to go alone. “Please. Come with me.” But Josephine saw no shift in Lottie’s eyes, no change in the thin line of her mouth. Josephine released Lottie’s hand; she knew what the answer would be.
“You go,” Lottie said, her voice soft but certain. “Papa Bo always said he’d never sell Winton and me, we’d always stay together, right here. We’ll stay. Jesus looking after me, don’t you worry none. You go on.”
“Lottie.”
“You run fast and get yourself up north. I’ll know how you’re getting on. Jesus’ll tell me, He will.”
The moonlight glowed on Lottie’s cheeks. “Good-bye,” Josephine said.
She reached forward and hugged Lottie. There was nothing else to expect, Lottie would never leave. She knew how to get by, her quick fingers, her careful heart. Jesus coming for her, Lottie was waiting. But Josephine could not wait, not another day.
Josephine felt light-headed now, her skin stretched too tight across her face. She stepped out of the cabin into the night air.
Winton still sat on the step, and she stopped there, placed a hand on his shoulder. “Good night, good Winton. You take care now.”
He nodded at her, winked. “Night, Josephine. We’ll be seeing you.”
Josephine walked past the fire and down the row of cabins, looking for where Nathan slept. It was not often that she came this way. She visited only with Lottie and Winton and whoever might be sharing their supper that night, but never with the others. Now there was only Jackson; Calla; young Otis; Therese; and Nathan, for a time, until his owner called him back. But the empty cabins echoed with the sounds of the others: Calla’s children, Lottie’s Hap, Jonas, Nora, Louis, Annie, Constance, May, the children Josephine had played with, James and Solomon and Harriet and Sue, all dead or sold, gone far off, who knew where. Apart from Lottie, Winton, and Louis, Josephine held no feeling for any of them. She had not known their fears or joys. Over the years she’d hear of a baby born, a broken leg; she’d hear of these things but took no part in them.
Lottie always said Missus looked to Josephine as a daughter of sorts, but Josephine didn’t see it that way. She was just like the horse, the chicken or cow, something to be fed and housed, to do what it was born and raised to do. Josephine was not of one world or the other, neither the house nor the fields. This she could not explain to them, not even to Lottie or Winton, that she belonged nowhere.
Nathan stood outside a cabin, his mouth rolled in chewing though he held no plate in his hand and there was no cooking fire lit. Josephine approached him slowly across the hard-packed earth, but he gave no notice of her until she stood just before him. He shifted his eyes toward her, spat onto the ground, nodded his head.
“Evening,” said Josephine.
“Evening.”
“Can I sit with you a minute?”
He spat again, a wetness scudding across the dirt. “Come on,” he said, and sat upon the cabin steps. There were no sounds from within; he slept here alone. A nervousness grabbed her then, a thought that if Jackson saw them together, he might suspect her plan. Josephine had no business speaking to Nathan—a house girl, a hired hand. But he was the only one who could help her. She would have to be quick.
Josephine sat beside Nathan on the steps and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her skirts falling onto the step below. With no fire she saw Nathan only by the ambient light from the row, the moon. His face seemed very dark, the whites of his eyes glowing against the skin, the pupils wide, his hair cut close and jagged. “Nathan, where did you go when you ran? Can you tell me?”
“Why you wanting to know? Are you really going to run?” His voice was hollow and unkind.
“Yes,” Josephine answered firmly. “Tonight. I tried once for the undertaker’s and I reckon I’ll head there again, but I need to be sure of the route. I want to know where I’m headed.”
“The undertaker?” Nathan gave a low chuckle and Josephine saw the yellow of his teeth and the black wad of tobacco as his lips pulled away. “I know the road.” He stood and walked into th
e darkness behind the cabin. There was the rustling of underbrush, a snap, and he returned holding a stick of dead poplar. He took a grease lantern from a hook by the cabin door and lit the wick, and Josephine saw his face clearly now in its glow. His eyes were cold, set in deep sockets of shadow, as if he stared out from the bottom of a hole.
“Here. Look at this careful. Set it to heart.” Nathan took the pointed end of the stick and began to trace a map in the dirt for Josephine. Bell Creek and the road that ran north-south. To the south, the Stanmores’ place. And to the north, tending west, the road forked, then a second fork, two more farms, and then the undertaker’s. “Here’s where you’re headed.” He marked a big X in the earth. A simple farmhouse, Nathan said. Unpainted, a barn beside it, a low fence of stones, a hen house beside the barn. Seven or eight miles, maybe ten or twelve. This was the one area of uncertainty. “I never made it that far,” Nathan said without emotion. “The undertaker, he’ll take you from there, send you to Philadelphia, or up the Ohio banks.”
Josephine studied the map, memorizing the turns of the road.
“Don’t run, girl, you’re a fool. You know what those patrollers do to a girl like you?” He laughed, a low chuckle that chilled Josephine’s skin as though thunder were coming. “They eat you up, they won’t even bother cutting your heels like they done me, they’ll just tear you up when they catch you.” He brought his face in closer to Josephine and she smelled the earth of the fields on him, the heat of that day’s sun on his skin. His pupils stretched very wide now, only a sliver of white showing.
“Not a one makes it free. Not a one. We all get caught, one way or another, on the road, in town, someone say they help you, but lead you into a trick. Ain’t no difference anyhow, up north and here, no freedom for the likes of us. You a fool to think it.” He spat again and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Nathan pulled himself up from the step, walked with his shuffling limp into the cabin. He did not say good night, just shut the door behind him. Josephine stood, smoothed her skirts with her hands, walked away from Nathan’s cabin and up along the path. Her feet sank in the mud as she half-walked, half-ran back to the house.
Tonight. Now.
It did not shake her, what Nathan had said. Freedom was a curious thing. Were the chickens free, running their fool heads off in the yard? The horse, that still must fit the bit between its teeth? Was Missus free? But what else to dream for? There was no dream of Josephine’s that did not contain a place where she might sit and look upon a field or a bird in flight or a person and ponder the lines of that thing, to capture them in pencil or charcoal or ink or pigment. Just to sit for a moment, herself, no one claiming her time or her thoughts or the product of her mind and hands. What other word to call that if not freedom? Not a one is free, Nathan had said, but Josephine did not believe that could be true.
She felt clearheaded, her steps sure. The night air, the chill moist ground, the sliver of moon filtering through streaky clouds, all was as it should be. An owl called and underneath all the night sounds was the hushing rush of the river’s flow. Each step carried her away from the cabins, toward the house for the last time. Never again mount these back steps, open this door with rusty hinge and cracked doorknob, place her hand against this cutting table scarred with knife points and pig’s blood, steady herself, feel her breath come too fast, calm herself. Never again this stone floor chilled and tough against the tough soles of her feet. Never again the enclosing air of this place, the dead air that clogged her throat and made her eyes weep, the still, dusty air that hung around the fine furnishings and the cracked china and seemed full of all those who had come before her, all those the house had sheltered and seen into the ground.
A mess from the supper she had prepared earlier for Missus Lu greeted Josephine in the kitchen, a pile of washing in a basket, the fire going cold. She walked past it all, then up the stairs.
As Josephine neared the attic steps, she heard a creak of floor from within the studio, a rustling. She turned and saw a light burning from beneath the closed door. Missus. Missus must have woken.
Josephine hesitated. The attic steps were close, her pack nearly ready. She could go now, leave Missus working alone, tread lightly and be out the door, down the road, fast and silent. But Missus might call for her and what then? If Josephine did not answer, would Missus go to the cabins? Would she ask Jackson for help? Or would she wait for Mister to return and then send him to track Josephine down? How much time would she have?
Josephine opened the studio door and a fog of heat hit her. The windows were closed, a fire burned in the grate. Missus stood in her nightdress before the easel, a canvas propped against it, and her hand held a brush dripping with red.
“Missus, it’s late. This room is stifling. You need to keep your strength, the doctor said. Please let me get you to bed.”
“But I was so cold in my bed, Josephine,” Missus said with a child’s petulance. She did not turn to face Josephine. “I needed to warm myself.”
“Missus, I will fetch another blanket. Please now, come on with me.” Josephine spoke too as though Missus were a child, with a tolerant calm.
“But look at this. I must finish it, look.” Missus gestured toward the canvas before her: a still life, a scattering of potatoes and chestnuts, an apple and two pears grouped without symmetry or grace. “There are so many I have never finished. This one, I must finish just this one.”
“Hush, there’s time tomorrow, and the day after that.”
Missus Lu turned away from the canvas, and her face appeared shadowy and bright in equal measure from the light thrown by the fire. “Josephine, I will be gone tomorrow. I can feel it. I can’t keep my thoughts straight, I ache here, and here, and here.” Missus touched her neck, her forehead, her breast. “There is something I must tell you, Josephine, and you will hate me for it. I am afraid you will hate me, and nothing I can do now will save me.”
“Missus, salvation belongs to us all,” Josephine said and her thoughts were of Lottie, the hope that such a belief was true.
“Does it? Does it, Josephine?” Missus laughed, her mood shifting, Josephine saw the flash of her eyes, the tears swallowed back. “You have no idea. You do not even have God, you never have. I hoped you’d read the Bible, that is why I taught you your letters. I wanted you to understand the natural order, that God wants us all to be true to our place in life. But you refused Him.”
Missus dropped her brush to the floor. It fell with a soft whoosh, splattering red paint against her ankles, the floor, the wall.
“Shush now,” Josephine said, frustration cornering its way into her voice. She could not stop the rising urge to run from this room, before Mister returned, before the night progressed too far toward dawn. “Missus Lu, come to bed.”
“Yes, take me to bed, I must lay back now. I can’t stand any longer. Josephine, there’s something I must tell you. I must tell you.”
They staggered from the studio, Missus leaning heavily on Josephine’s shoulder, her feet dragging behind. Josephine led Missus to her bed and laid her down. Missus’ chest rose and fell with her breathing, her hair was damp with sweat, her cheeks flushed pink. Josephine took a blanket from the chest at the foot of the bed and folded the bedclothes, the extra blanket, neatly under Missus Lu’s chin. Neither spoke. Only creaks and groans as the house settled into night.
As Josephine stood to leave, Missus grabbed her hand. “Josephine, I must ask your forgiveness. I cannot leave this world without it. Please, please.”
Josephine paused and sat down again upon the bed. A flush of power filled her, as it would in the studio when she stood with brush in hand, Missus hovering over her shoulder, watching every stroke, breathless. “Why, Missus? What cause would I have to provide forgiveness? You have offered me only kindness.”
“Truly, Josephine? Is that truly how you feel? You know that all this, I have no part in it. I can’t even bring a child into this world. I’ve only ever had you, and I know you
’re going to run. I know you’ll leave me soon. I won’t tell Robert. I won’t tell a soul.” Missus twisted her head sharply to the side, exposing the reddened lump to Josephine. “Just scratch it please, would you? It itches so, I cannot bear it.”
Josephine remembered the boy in the field: a good deed for a dying boy. Josephine reached for Missus’ hand and guided it to the spot. “See, Missus, you can reach. Here.” And Missus’ fingernails scrabbled at the raised hump, the skin pinking in thin strips beneath the pull.
“That is all, Josephine. Thank you. Good night, my dear. Go. You can go on now.” Missus’ eyes closed, her breaths lengthened.
As she watched Missus Lu settle into sleep, a pure rage gripped Josephine, at Missus’ granting of permission, at her presumed powers of release. Would Missus deny her even the authority of her own escape? It was the sighted beggar stealing from the blind and Josephine felt a fracture open in her chest, a sliver of space that grew wider with each breath and a darkness spilled forth into the room. Missus’ eyes danced behind the thin skin of her lids, and Josephine wondered what dreams dwelled there, memories of her suppers and her rich daddy, of Mister courting with flowers, of Papa Bo’s sermons and his promise to them all, everyone who bowed to the Lord’s will, of heavenly redemption. Josephine placed her hand above Missus’ mouth and nose, the fingers hovering just above the skin so that Missus’ heat was on her palm and the breath moist in the cupped hollow of her hand. To smother Missus would be an easy thing. She had no strength, there was no one to hear it done. The darkness flowed from Josephine, and for a moment she let herself be carried by its spirit of vengeance. Never had she felt this way before and wasn’t it thrilling, wasn’t it right, the power of her hate.