The Abolitionist's Daughter

by Diane C. McPhail

  “What is it, Emme?”

  “I am just low today,” she said.

  “Not the children? Or the baby?”

  “No, Rosa Claire and Lonso fuss over him like a mama hen with one chick. He’s as much sibling to them as they are to each other. I should be rejoicing, Lambert.”

  “But something’s amiss.”

  “I don’t have a name for it.” Emily paused, examined his face, lined with sawdust plastered in the rivulets of sweat. “It’s so strong.”

  “So are you, Emme.”

  “So many people suffering here about. Especially the women. I should be grateful.” She twirled a loose thread from his frayed cuff between her fingers. She must remember to turn those cuffs.

  “Maybe you’re afraid of things seeming too good,” he said.

  “That has words to it.”

  “Are you afraid because of the rift with—”

  “Don’t say it, Lambert. I don’t want to hear it.” Emily turned her back to his chest, letting his arms fold around her; her head tilted to the side, as he kissed her neck. She could feel the grit of the sawdust. The tree would be down with a few more strokes. She had interrupted his work.

  “All right,” Lambert said. “But that has words, too, even if you don’t want to hear them.”

  She pushed away from him. He held on to her and she stopped.

  “Come to dinner when you get that tree down,” she said. “Ginny has made a pot of corn-cob soup. I’ll be all right.”

  Lambert watched her walk away, knowing she would not—not so long as the rupture remained unhealed between her and Adeline.

  CHAPTER 40

  Within a few weeks the countryside would erupt first with the news of General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House and only six days later, on Holy Saturday, hordes of drunken men would spill out into the streets of Greensboro, cheering the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The face of the country and the face of Reconstruction would be forever changed.

  Beyond the porch overhang, the clouds stretched near to tearing. The rocker creaked as Ginny eased her back into it. The respite was fleeting. As Ginny rolled her head to stretch her aching neck, she spied the pot of nasturtiums, spindly orange and yellow, too dry even for nasturtiums. Ginny had nursed them in that pot all winter, trying to provide enough sun to keep a little joy in her cabin. In her fatigue, she tried to ignore them, but duty and the habits of a lifetime won. She rose and headed for the well.

  As the bucket sloshed its way up, Ginny turned at the sound of an approaching horse. She recognized Shaver, a slim, nervous man, the color of almonds, who had appeared one day from unknown origin or history and settled in to help Adeline. He rode Adeline’s blue roan.

  “You thirsty?” Ginny said, reaching for the gourd.

  “I am, thank ye,” Shaver said, dismounting.

  “What you need, Shaver?”

  “Nothing. Got news. Can’t say good or bad. Old Man Slate finally drunk himself to death. Miss Adeline told me to come on over and give the news to you, Ginny. Found him this morning in the shed.”

  Ginny nodded, puzzling on how, or even if, to break this news to Emily. “Miss Adeline all right?”

  “She’s all right. Not much different from any other day.”

  “Tell Miss Adeline I’ll ponder the news.” Ginny untied and retied her apron strings. “You be careful riding hereabouts. Got your papers?”

  “Hell, yeah. War’s over and I’m a free nigger, woman.” Shaver remounted.

  “Free nigger don’t mean you a safe nigger, now do it?” she said.

  The bucket teetered on the rim of the well. Ginny hauled it to the porch and poured a stream of water on the nasturtiums. News or no news, life demanded her.

  * * *

  A torrential rain came in the night. Benjamin’s tin roof had been alive with it, the air charged with the electrical energy of lightning. The morning dawned soggy and gray, the earth pulpy and scattered with debris.

  Sleep had been fleeting. The nightmare had shaken him like a hound killing a rat. In the dream, lightning had entered the room. Its flickering touched nothing, but held him prisoner, knowing that to put his foot out was to enter a river of lightning. He sat up, thinking he could wake himself enough to end the dream. Ain’t nothing but a dream, he thought. But as his eyelids sagged again, the swirling currents recommenced. So he asked out loud, “What you want from me?” The answer he heard was that something must die. In the middle of the floor stood a man with long dark hair and beard. He held out a hand and beckoned. Benjamin stepped into the river of lightning, astonished to find himself alive and free. The man disappeared. Benjamin was alone with his disbelieving hope.

  In the wake of the dream, Benjamin had slept, a hard sleep that left him exhausted. When he heard Lucian stir in the early dark, he had difficulty rising. The bed, the sheet, his nightclothes all felt laden with the storm. As he followed the sounds of Lucian’s preparations, Benjamin pulled at his lower lip with his fingers. He rubbed at his thigh, aching now with the wet weather.

  He stood watching his son thrust his few possessions into a damp croker sack.

  “Morning, Daddy,” Lucian said, tying the sack and depositing it by the steps. He braced himself against the post and faced his father. “You gone be all right, Daddy. Samantha got you now.” His voice was hoarse.

  Benjamin did not answer. He searched the dim outlines of Lucian’s features, seeking the soft face of the boy who no longer existed. “Where you gone go, son?”

  “North. I don’t know, just north.”

  “Got your papers?”

  “Don’t know as I need them, but I got them. Miss Emily give them to me yesterday. Look all official, by the judge’s hand and signature. Reckon he fix them a long time ago. Papers for a boy. Description don’t match me no more, but I don’t reckon it matters. War over and we all free, anyway, thanks to Mr. Lincoln, even if he dead. Miss Emily give me some Federal dollars. Don’t know where she got them or if they worth the paper they on. Don’t reckon she had many, but she give me what she had. She say, ‘You take care.’ Bout all she say. Seem like she want to cry and she went on back in the house.”

  “North is a big place,” said Benjamin, pulling at his beard.

  “I know.”

  “Long way from home, boy.”

  “Ginny fix me eight days’ ration. I got it all in the sack.”

  Benjamin walked to the edge of the porch. He took his clay pipe and handed it sideways to his son. Lucian took it.

  “Judge give me that when he first bought me. Brought me here with a load of scars, just a good-size boy. He say, ‘Benjamin, a man needs a good pipe.’”

  Lucian put the pipe in his pocket and picked up the coarse sack. One step down, he turned and put his free arm around his father. Benjamin’s arms hung slack at his sides.

  “You know where home is,” Benjamin said. “You ain’t no prodigal son.”

  Lucian nodded. He lifted the sack to his shoulder and stepped out onto the wet road, the pools of the night’s deluge mirroring his reflection and the indiscriminate light of a colorless sky.

  CHAPTER 41

  From the porch, Emily surveyed the patchwork of wild color and bloom that covered her yard now. The transplants from the woods that had survived filled the space in unregulated drifts. The paths through them created a living puzzle for the children, and for her. She loved to wander among them, see what they might do next to surprise her. Perhaps it was time to add some domesticated flowers. She remembered marigolds and nasturtiums growing in profusion around Ginny’s cabin and other slave cabins along the row at the end of the fields. She had loved their brilliance, loved going to Ginny’s, holding her hand, smelling the smoke and lamp oil in the house, the greens cooking on the fire. In spring Ginny might present her with violets or pansies, their intriguing faces wet and dipped in sugar, for a treat. In the summer, oxalis, lemony and acidic, leaves and stems and blooms equally seductive to the tongue. Sometimes Ginny gave her l
ettuce from the slave garden with nasturtium blossoms wrapped inside, a peppery lettuce sandwich, the color of jewels. The flowers were always at Ginny’s or one of the other slave cabins, never at home. The women would have gladly planted around her house, but the judge would not have it. After her mother’s death, there were things he could no longer bear, despite his inherent goodness and a burning love for his children. The riot of flowers his wife had loved was beyond him. Emily determined to ask Ginny for nasturtiums, for pansies, oxalis, and daisies.

  Easter arrived and with it, a picnic by the creek for the children. Emily lay against the moss, which was lush and damp. Through the canopy of leafing branches, she could see the alternating color of the sky: blue and white and blue again, brisk winds sweeping the clouds across the wide expanse. She closed her eyes, the air on her cheek like the touch of a child. The children’s laughter mingled with the murmur of the water running its familiar way across the stones.

  I belong, Emily thought. I am here. She turned her head and watched the children from this strange perspective: their chase, Lambert with them, dodging. Aimee tripped and Emily started up, but Lambert caught the girl in his arms and lifted her high in the air. She joined in his spontaneous laughter. Lambert set her down, dodging Lonso’s tag. Lambert caught his breath, patted Rosa Claire’s curls, and smiled over at Emily. He removed his hat, slapped it against his pant leg, and tossed it onto the moss beside her.

  “I’m about out of wind, children,” Lambert said, and sat down beside Emily. The children protested, pulling at his arms and shirt. “No,” he said, “you all know how to play tag without me. Nothing I can teach you about that. I’m going to make sure this pretty lady lying here in the shade is all right. She just might be in need of resurrecting.”

  “You are my resurrection,” she said.

  Lambert sat facing Emily, one arm around his knee. He peered up at the sky. Pushing his hat aside, he lifted her hand from the moss, kissed her palm, and lay it across his knee. Her roughened fingers caressed his. “You are your own resurrection, Emme. No one can do that for you.”

  She smiled, his words sinking deep into her. “I always liked Easter,” Emily said. “Maybe it’s the time of the year—the first new leaves. So fragile, yet so alive, all at once.”

  “They do make these old woods light,” Lambert said. Indeed the world had taken on a celestial kind of glow.

  “You can feel the wind breathing,” she said, “blowing on things, like the fluff of a ripe dandelion.”

  A gale of laughter broke from the children, the sound rippling across the creek. Emily turned her head as Lambert lifted his.

  “Lambert,” she said, “I want to make a child. I want a child to start its life this very day.”

  “Well, in that case, Emme,” he said, rising, “we’d best get these children home and fed and settled down.”

  “I can’t imagine they need feeding,” Emily said. “But they can peel their eggs. They’ve had enough fried chicken today to be laying eggs themselves!”

  Protests rose as Ginny gathered the boiled blue eggs the children had discovered along the creek, putting them into the various baskets, not all of which Emily recognized. The children mustered quickly, clamoring over whose blue egg was whose, but with a sense of fairness, Emily noted, handing off extras to those who had less. No one went wanting today. Their young world had been so altered by war, so shattered by events of which they had little awareness, but the children were exulting in this good day.

  “Yes,” Emily said, walking ahead of Lambert, reaching back for his hand, “let’s us be at home. You and me at home.”

  * * *

  “What you doing, Samantha?’ Benjamin hardly limped now when he walked, but going up the steps into the cabin was still difficult.

  “I’m going,” she said. A croker sack bulged with her few possessions. He could see the corner of the Bible she couldn’t yet read where it poked at the fabric. “You going with me?”

  “Going?” Benjamin took hold of her shoulders, and she lowered her bundle to the floor beside the bed. “Where you think you gone go?”

  “I’m going where I ain’t never been a slave, Benjamin. I’m going to another life.”

  He dropped his hands, clasping her elbows. “I ain’t never had another life, Samantha. This is my home. Judge rescued me when I was just a boy. Been here ever since. Been growing old right here. Growing old with you.”

  Samantha surveyed the room.

  “I ain’t never had a life of my own,” she said. “Never had a life that didn’t belong to somebody else.”

  “But you free now, Samantha. And you got a home. You got me. What you thinking?”

  She faced him. “I’m thinking I want to be somebody I ain’t never been. I been sold and bought, and sold again. I been beat and I had the lash. And I got you. And yes, a home. What I ain’t never had was me. Without all that hanging on me. I’m going north and find me a place where don’t nobody know me this way. And I want you to come.”

  Benjamin sighed and slumped onto the bed. He rubbed his forehead, shook his head. When he raised his face, his cheeks were wet with tears.

  “I’m old,” he said. He wiped at his face with the back of his hand. “Ain’t no way to tell what’s waiting out there. You seen all them hungry folks tagging out after them Yanks. Seem like it’s supposed to be so much better, but I don’t know that. I ain’t sure them Yankees care so much about us colored, for all they fine talk and valor. Maybe some do, all they dead in this war. Sometimes I’m not sure we’re what this war’s all about.” He straightened his back. “I can’t hardly let you leave, Samantha.”

  She came and sat beside him, took his hand, lay her cheek against the back of it. He put his arms around her.

  “Closest thing I’ve come to being a person is here with you, Benjamin. But I got too much yearning for something more, for being somebody without no history. That’s freedom and I want it. And I want it with you.”

  “Now my boy’s gone, you all I got, Samantha. You my home now.” He tilted his head. “You got a plan?”

  “Some of Conklin’s people going north, ’stead of following after the troops. It’s about six of us.”

  “Just like that?” he said. “No goodbyes?”

  “Just like that. You try saying goodbye and you be too torn up inside to go. All them folks you love gone be all right. They ain’t your people, Benjamin. I am.” She handed him a sack and began to help him gather bits and pieces of his meager life. “And you and me, we gone be all right.”

  He kissed the small scar at her temple, where some mistress from her tangled history had hit her with a walking stick.

  “I can’t hardly let go,” he said.

  Samantha hesitated, then held out her hand. He smiled at her and took it.

  * * *

  The shovel clanged against the barn as Mason dropped it and eased himself to the ground. Gauging by the height of the sun, it must have been nearly noon and the trench only half done. Mason was tired and slower than he had been before the Slate lynching. More than the gunshot wound, the lynching itself and Hammond’s murder clutched at him. He knew the men in that mob, the men of his town. Some he saw daily. But there was nothing to charge them with. They knew as well as he whose gun took aim at Hammond’s head, whose finger pulled the trigger. And in the mêlée, whose hand had almost killed him, too. He had not witnessed whose hands had made the knot, slipped it over Charles’s head, whose horse had held him so briefly at the end of the rope. He was sure it had been Jeremiah. Maybe Conklin’s horse. He would never be certain, though his instincts felt it. He’d been in a pool of his own blood by then. But the men who had been there knew. So he held himself distant. And they, in their guilty knowledge, skirted him wide. With the war, a good number had gone elsewhere to kill and be killed. Jeremiah had fled into the Confederate army, into his false safety and ironic justice. Those slaves who’d brought Judge Matthews’s body home were all trustworthy men, but each one had seen a slig
htly different thing. Putting it all together, Charles had outright ambushed a good man and deserved to hang, but not like that. No, not like that. Mason sighed and braced himself with the shovel to get to his feet. He stood there, thinking not of his garden, but of guns, bone and gut, visceral secrets not meant to be exposed.

  However, this was the life he had chosen. Greensboro was still frontier, with all its hope for new life and its escape from the unforgiven past. Respectability and goodness mingled with drunkenness, thievery, fistfights, and whores. And Mason was the sheriff, chosen to settle violence, if it could be settled. If not, he delivered word to the widow or the mother, should there be one. He officiated hangings, except this one that so haunted him. He had grown tired. Tired of quarrels and squabbles, hostility and conflict. Tired of bearing cruel news.

  Among the memories was Adeline’s face framed in the window of the jail door. He had unlocked it and let her in. He had seen her face when the bullet shattered Hammond’s brain. That face haunted his nights, when he woke sweating and fighting for breath. He had not seen Adeline cut Charles from the tree, but he dreamed it, over and over. In the dream, Charles would still be alive, his face black, his tongue protruding, but alive. Mason would hand Adeline the knife and watch her hack at the rope. He would be too paralyzed to help. The body would plummet, Charles’s hollow eyes fixed on Mason.

  He might have spared her. He could have kept the bolt in place. He could have said no and she might have gone home. Adeline had known what could happen. She’d had a choice and she took it. He’d had a choice and he made it. If he had forced her to go, had brought her dead sons home to her, the face in his memory would still be terrible, only in a different way. Instead, Mason carried the sight of her face with Hammond’s head exploding in her hands.