by Lisa Wingate
Finally, I follow the footprints up the slope.
The tracks turn and go down the road. Two people, still heading someplace afoot. Both got shoes on. The big tracks travel along straight, but the little ones wander to and fro, on the road and off it, showing there was no hurry at all. Don’t know why it’s a comfort, but it is. The footprints don’t go far before they turn off the road and start up some high ground to the other side. I stand and look, try to set my mind on whether I should follow or keep on straight. A swish of breeze blows from the dark sky ahead, and answers my question. A storm’s rising. We need shelter, a place we can lay up. That’s all there is to it.
Dog comes back. Didn’t catch the rabbit, but he’s got a squirrel he wants me to have.
“Good dog,” I tell him and gut the squirrel quick with the old hatchet, then tie it to one of the saddles. “We’ll have that later. You catch another one if you see it.”
He smiles in a dog way, and swings that ugly bare-skin tail of his, and starts off down the road along the foot tracks, and I follow.
The trail takes us up a little hill, then down again, ’cross a shallow creek where the horses stop to drink. After a while, more tracks come in from other directions. Horse tracks. Mule tracks. People tracks. The more that come together, the more they make a clear path, trod through the woods, down into the soil. People been walking in this way a long time. But always walking, or riding a horse or mule. Never a wagon.
Me and the gray and Ginger and the dog add our tracks to all that’s passed through before.
Rain catches us just after the trail gets better. Rain in kettlefuls and pails. It soaks through my clothes and runs rivers off my hat. Dog and the horses clamp their tails and arch their backs against it. I tip my head down, fighting the misery, and the only good thing is it washes the stink off of me and the saddles and the horses and Missy and Juneau Jane.
Now and again, I squint against the curtains of water, try to see, Is there anything around? But I can’t make out five foot ahead. The path turns to mush. My feet slide. The horses slip round. Old Ginger stumbles and flounders on her knees in front again. She’s so fretful about the rain, she gets right back on her feet.
We start up another rise, little rivers washing all around us. Water flows through my shoes, burns on the blisters there at first, then just turns my feet cold, so I can’t feel them at all. My body quakes till it feels like my bones might break in two.
Juneau Jane moans long and loud enough I hear it, even over the storm. Dog hears it, too, circles in behind her. Next thing, he’s back to lead the way, but I’m blinded enough that I trip over him and fall hands first in the mud.
He yelps, squirts out from under me, and skitters off running. It’s only when I’m climbing to my feet and pulling my hat out of the mud that I figure out why. There’s a place here. Little old place tucked in the trees, low roofed and built of cypress logs chinked with straw and tabby. The trail meets a half dozen other trails from other directions and leads us right to the front door of that little house.
Nobody answers when I step on the porch beside the dog, and call out, and pull the horses up close where they can shelter their heads at least.
Once I open the door, I know why, and what this house is. This the kind of place the slaves built with their own hands, way deep in the swamps and the woods, where their masters wouldn’t find it. Sundays, when the work gangs didn’t go to the fields, off they’d sneak to these hideaways, one by one, two by two. Meet up for preaching, and singing, and shouting, and praying, where they couldn’t be heard, where the owners and the overseers couldn’t stop them from crying out for freedom and how their deliverance was coming one day soon.
Here in the woods, a colored man was free to read from the Bible, if he could read, or listen to it if he couldn’t, not just be told that God gave you to your masters so that you could obey.
I thank the saints and get us out of the weather, quick as I can. Dog follows me back and forth ’cross the dirt floor, the two of us leaving trails of water and mud on the straw that’s been laid down. Can’t be helped, and I don’t suppose God or anybody would blame us.
Slabwood benches stand in quiet rows. Up front for the altar, the floor’s built up using four old doors that must’ve been on a Grand House back before the war. Three red velvet chairs sit behind the preacher’s stand. On the communion table, there’s a pretty crystal glass and four china plates, probably brung from a big house when the white folks went refugee because of the Yankees, leaving the place empty.
Behind the altar, a tall cut-glass window catches what there is of the daylight. It’s out of one of the doors on the floor. Oilcloth stretched on frames covers the rest of the windows. Newspapers been nailed to the walls at the back of the room. The chink must be gappy in that part.
It’s up there at the altar that I lay down Missy Lavinia and Juneau Jane, pull the velvet cushions off the chairs and put them under their heads. Juneau Jane shivers like a wretch, that wet shimmy stuck to her body with dirt and water and blood. Missy Lavinia is worse yet, and she still don’t moan or move. I lean close to her nose to see, Is she still breathin’?
Just the least stroke of air stirs on my cheek. It’s cold and feathery, and I got no good way to warm her up. Everything we have is soggy wet, so I strip us all down, hang the clothes to drip, and get a fire laid in the iron stove at the back of the room. It’s a fancy little one from a ladies’ parlor, with roses and vines and ivy leaves cast in the iron and a pretty skirt and bowed legs.
There’s a cook plate up top. After the stove heats, I’ll fix up that squirrel, feed Dog and me.
“Least we got kindle in here and plenty of split wood out front. Lucifers, too,” I tell him. I’m thankful the floor is dry, and the roof don’t leak. And when I get a good flame, I’m thankful for that, too. I crouch naked, bare and slick from the rain, and feel the fire’s heat even before it comes. Just knowing there’s an end to the cold makes it better.
After the stove’s drafted good, I drag one of them velvet chairs to the back of the room. It’s the big, wide kind for a lady to sit with her hoops, back when they wore such. A courtin’ bench, so’s she could arrange her skirts closer a bit if she wanted a beau to sit with her, leave it laid out, if she wanted to keep him off.
I pull my knees up in the chair, let my head rest, stroke my fingers back and forth against the red velvet. It’s soft like a horse’s muzzle. Soft and warm everyplace it touches my body. I sit and stare at the flame, thinking how good that chair feels.
Never sat in a velvet chair in my life. Not once.
I rub my cheek against it and soak the heat from the fire. My eyes get heavy and close, and I let go.
Two days of sleeping and waking and tending follow. Two days, I think. Might be three. I turn feverish myself late in the first day. Feverish, and tired, and even though I cook up the squirrel, I can’t keep much of it down. It’s all I can do to hobble the horses so they can forage, and get back in my dry clothes and wrap the other girls with the drawers and shimmies, and try from time to time to let the dog come and go or force a little water down Juneau Jane. Missy still won’t take any, but her little half sister’s getting stronger.
The first day I get my wits again, Juneau Jane opens her strange gray-green eyes and looks up at me from the red chair cushion, dark hair splayed out all over it like a nest of snakes. I can tell she’s seeing me for the first time and can’t make sense of where she is.
She tries talking, but I shush her. After all the days of quiet, even that much noise makes my head pound. “Hush, now,” I whisper. “You’re safe. That’s all you got to know. You been sick. And you’re still sick. You rest now. It’s safe here.”
I figure that much is true. Rain’s been falling, day after day. Water must be up high everywhere, and whatever tracks we left behind, they’re surely gone. Only worry is how long it might be till Sunday
, when somebody comes. I got no idea by now.
Question answers itself when Dog sits up and barks me awake early in the morning. Scares my eyes wide open.
Outside, a voice sings,
Children wade, in the water
And God’s a-gonna trouble the water
Who’s that young girl dressed in red?
Wade in the water
Must be the children that Moses led
God’s gonna trouble the water….
The voice is deep and strong. Can’t tell, Is it a man or a woman? But the song brings Mama to mind. She’d sing it to us when I was little.
I know I need to move, stop whoever that is from coming in here, but I can’t help it. I listen at a few words more.
They come in a child’s voice this time.
That’s good. Good for what I got in mind to do next.
Wade in the water, children, the little voice sings loud, not afraid.
Wade in the water,
And God’s a-gonna trouble the water.
Then the woman again,
Who’s that young girl dressed in white?
Wade in the water
Must be the children of the Israelite,
God’s gonna trouble the water.
I whisper the lines along with them, feel my mama’s heartbeat against my ear, hear her say real soft, This song ’bout the way to freedom, Hannie. Keep to the water. The dog, he can’t find the smell of you there.
The child sings the chorus again. It ain’t far away now. They must be almost to the clearing.
I get up and hurry to the door, press my hand hard against it, get myself ready.
Who’s that young girl dressed in blue
Wade in the water…
I swallow hard, think, Please, let them be good people coming up the path. Kind people.
They sing together, the big voice and the small one.
Must be the ones that made it through
Wade in the water.
Behind me, a scratchy whisper says, “Wade…wahhh-ter. Wade in…wahh-ter.”
I look quick over my shoulder, see Juneau Jane pushing herself up off that red velvet cushion on one wobbly arm so weak it wiggles back and forth like a hank of rope, her eyes open halfway.
And God’s a-gonna trouble the water, the child outside hollers into the air.
“Y-you d…don’t, b-believe…be…been redeemed…” Juneau Jane sways, fighting to push out the words and stay upright.
A cold feeling travels all over me, then hot sweat breaks after it.
“Hush up! Quiet, now!” I hiss. I pull open the door, stagger to the edge of the porch, and hang against a post. Two people come out of the woods—a stout, round woman with hands like supper plates and big feet in black leather brogans, white kerchief on her head. With her comes a little boy child. Her grandson, maybe? He’s skipping along with picked flowers in one hand.
The woman twirls a piece of feather grass at him, tickles his ear when he’s dancing by. He laughs hard.
“D-don’t come no closer!” I holler out. My voice is weak and won’t carry far, but they stop sudden, look my way. The boy drops his flowers. The woman snakes an arm out and, quick, tucks him behind her.
“Who you be?” She stretches to get a better look at me.
“We got fever!” I yell across. “Keep away. We got sickness.”
Woman backs up a little, pushes the boy with her. He hangs on to her skirt, peeks from it. “Who you be?” she asks again. “How you come in dat place? I don’ know who you is.”
“We travelin’,” I answer. “Been struck with fever, all us. Don’t come no closer. Don’t nobody come here, catch the sickness.”
“How many you is?” She lifts her apron, wads it over her mouth.
“Three. Other two’s worse off.” It ain’t a lie, but I sink against the post to look weaker. “Need help. Need food. Got money to give. You carryin’ mercy in your soul today, sister? We travelers, come in need a’ mercy.”
CHAPTER 14
BENNY SILVA—AUGUSTINE, LOUISIANA, 1987
“See,” LaJuna says as she pushes aside stacks of National Geographic magazines. She lays an Encyclopaedia Britannica on the billiard table, then flips up the cover, which has no pages or binding attached. It’s been used to house—or hide—a package wrapped in a worn scrap of wallpaper, gold-and-white flocked at some time in the past, but the remaining stripes are more of a glue stain than anything else. Jute string holds the whole thing together.
“Miss Robin didn’t even know about these, I don’t think.” LaJuna taps a finger to the bundle. “One time when I came in here—that was toward the end part, when the judge had good days and bad days with his mind—he says to me, ‘LaJuna, climb on up there to that top shelf for me. I need something, but somebody took the ladder.’ Now, that ladder’d been gone since the track broke, so I knew the judge wasn’t having a good day with his mind. Anyhow, I did like he wanted, and he showed me what’s in here. Then he looked at me and said, ‘I shouldn’t have let you see that. There’s nothing good to come of it and no way I can set it right. I want you to put this back where it was. We won’t touch it again unless I decide to burn it, which I quite likely should. Don’t ever tell anybody it’s here. If you do that for me, LaJuna, you can come take any other book anytime and keep it to read, as long as you like.’ Then he had me get him one of the encyclopedias, and he cut the encyclopedia cover right off the pages and wrapped it around this whole thing, and then we put it away.”
LaJuna picks at the knotted jute with chipped-up candy apple red fingernails, but the twine is stiff and tightly tied. “See if there’s some scissors in that top drawer. Judge always kept a pair in there.”
A pang of conscience forces me to hesitate. Whatever is inside that bundle must have been very private. It’s none of my business. None. Period.
“Never mind.” LaJuna’s fingernails do the trick. “I got it.”
“I don’t think you should. If the judge didn’t…”
But she’s already laying open the wallpaper wrapping. Inside, there are two books, which she places side by side. Both leather bound, one black, one red. One thin, one thick. The black one is easy enough to recognize. It’s a family Bible, the old-fashioned kind, large and heavy. The red leather book is much thinner and bound along the top like a notepad. Faded gold letters on the cover read
Goswood Grove Plantation
William P. Gossett
Items of Significant Record
“Now that little skinny book…” LaJuna’s still talking. “That’s stuff they bought and sold. Sugar, molasses, cotton seed, plows, a piano, land, lumber, horses and mules, dresses and dishes…all kinds of stuff. And, sometimes, people.”
My mind goes numb. It can’t quite register what I’m looking at, what this is. “LaJuna, it’s not…we shouldn’t…The judge was right. You need to put this back where it was.”
“It’s history, isn’t it?” She’s as casual as if we were talking about what year the Liberty Bell was cast or when the Magna Carta was written. “You’re always telling us that books and stories matter.”
“Of course, but…” Something so old should be handled with only freshly washed hands or white cotton gloves, for one thing. But if I’m honest with myself, I know it’s not the archival concerns that bother me; it’s the contents.
“Well, these are stories.” She skims a fingernail along the edge of the Bible and opens it before I can stop her.
The Family Record pages at the front of the Bible, perhaps a dozen or more, are filled with the artful script of old dip pens like the ones I’ve collected for years. Names occupy the left column: Letty, Tati, Azek, Boney, Jason, Mars, John, Percy, Jenny, Clem, Azelle, Louisa, Mary, Caroline, Ollie, Mittie, Hardy…Epheme, Hannie…Ike�
�Rose…
The remaining columns list birthdates, death dates for some, and odd notations, D, L, F, S, plus numbers. Names are sometimes listed with dollar amounts beside them.
LaJuna’s half-red fingernail hovers over one, not quite touching it. “See, this is all about the slaves. When they were born, and when they died and what number grave they were buried in. If they ran away or got lost in the war, they got an L beside their name and the date. If they got freed after the war, they got an F, and 1865, and if they stayed on the place to be sharecroppers, they got an S / 1865.” Her hands flip palms up, as matter-of-factly as if we’re discussing the school lunch menu. “After that, I guess people kept their own notes.”
A moment passes before I can process the information and stammer out, “You learned all that from the judge?”
“Yeah.” Her features arrange in a way that conveys the slightest bit of uncertainty about the mysteries the judge left behind. “Maybe he wanted somebody to know how to read it, since he decided not to show Miss Robin. Can’t say how come. I mean, she knew this place was built by people who had to be slaves. Miss Robin was way into doing research about Goswood. The judge just didn’t want her to feel guilty about stuff that happened a long time ago, I guess.”
“I guess…maybe,” I echo. The lump in my throat is itchy and uncomfortable. Part of me wishes the judge would have taken responsibility for nailing shut the coffin on this piece of history and burning the book. Part of me knows how wrong that would’ve been.
LaJuna pushes on, dragging me along on a trip I don’t want to take. “Now, see where there’s no daddy listed? Just a mama and then somebody’s born? That’s where the daddy was probably a white man.”
“The judge told you that?”
Her mouth thins and an eye roll comes my way. “Figured it out on my own. That’s what the little m means—mulatto. Like this woman, Mittie. She hasn’t got a daddy, but, of course, she had a daddy. He was the—”