Lawzy. She pulled out her little paper fan and tried to swish away the heat. August’s heat, that was all. Nothing more. Sure not anything to do with River. Or that dimple of his.
No sir.
Chapter Thirteen
Luther winced when the wagon bumped over a particularly uneven section of road. It was a wince of empathy, and indeed when he glanced over at Phineas, the chap’s face had washed pale. The poor fellow gripped his injured leg as if his hand could provide a steadiness that the mismatched horse could not.
What he wouldn’t give for his fine pair of grays and the curricle that waited in his stable. Gulliver here was unaccustomed to pulling a cart, and this ramshackle conveyance seemed as though it might fall apart at any moment. It hadn’t any spring to speak of, so each bump was magnified. The blankets they had used to pad the seat under Phineas likely did little to nothing.
When his companion’s eyes slid closed, Luther sighed. “Are you quite certain you’re up for this? It’s been scarcely a fortnight since you came to. You’ve pushed yourself so hard these past two weeks—”
“I’m sure.” Phineas’s eyes opened again, probably from nothing but stubbornness. “I have to get back. Report in, and let my family know I’m alive.”
“I realize that. But another week to regain your strength would be wise.”
Phineas shook his head, which was covered in a straw hat that didn’t exactly complement the uniform they had painstakingly cleaned and mended together the day before. The boy had looked at him aghast when he handed him a needle and thread, but Luther had only had to arch a brow to overcome his resistance.
Now he fought back a grin at the memory. Amazing how far the lad had come in nearly two months, most of which he had spent unconscious. He suspected the Phineas Dunn of July never would have put needle to cloth—at least not while there was a black man there to do it for him.
“I can’t wait any longer.” Yet his voice sounded so strained, so full of pain, and the color hadn’t returned to his cheeks. “I can’t explain it, Luther, but I know it’s time.”
Luther had the same feeling, but it kept battling against his logic. He’d thought perhaps it was merely impatience on his part. He’d been dreaming of Eva every night, awakened every morning keenly aware of how long they’d been apart.
Then he’d move over to Phineas’s cot, see how thin he’d grown, how weak he still was, and think that a long trip was the last thing to be attempted right now.
He glanced over at him now, noting how the gray jacket hung on him, the way his cheekbones had hollows under them—and that after he’d fleshed out a bit in the last two weeks. Before, he’d looked on the brink of death. The pale cheeks brought that impression back again.
Phineas caught his gaze, lifted a single brow. “I’m well.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Don’t sound so dubious. It’s only a bit of discomfort, that’s all.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Luther. Ever pause to consider how odd it is that you’re the one fretting?” He shook his head, even chuckled a bit. “What happened to ‘Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction’? Trust, my friend. The Lord has delivered me, and I am well.”
Luther relaxed his grip so he could look over, his jaw as slack as the reins. “Do you realize that in a single sentence you called me your friend, quoted Scripture, and, in so doing, reminded me to have faith?”
Though the expression Phineas put on resembled the haughty one he’d first employed upon his ignominious arrival, it was rather ruined by the amusement in his eyes. “I most certainly did not. It took three sentences.”
“Impudent pup.”
“Overbearing giant.”
A grin tickled the corners of his mouth, but Luther tamped it down. “Unmannerly pirate.”
Rather than get angry as he had last month, Phineas let his head fall back in laughter. “Even were I willing to grant that the Sumter was a pirating vessel—which I most certainly am not—I cannot think that my brief tenure upon it would earn me such an epithet, you judgmental blackmailer.”
“Blackmail? Take it back, you fiend. I most certainly did not blackmail you into anything.” But at least the exchange of insults had brought the color back to his companion’s cheeks.
Phineas sent him a friendly glare from under the brim of his comical straw hat. “You threatened to let me die if I didn’t help you.”
Again, Luther’s lips twitched. “You are quite mistaken, my good man. I only promised I would care for you if you swore your aid. I never once said I wouldn’t if you didn’t.”
“Are you calling me a liar? I ought to call you out here and now.”
At that, Luther had to snort. “And am I such a dishonorable lout that I would accept such a challenge, with you in your current condition? Nay, I was not so ill-raised. You couldn’t even walk your paces.”
Phineas rubbed a hand over his thigh. “Not to mention that you, Sir Giant, could probably snatch a bullet from the air and crush it in your mighty palm.”
Luther held up a hand and examined it. “A benefit of having bones made of steel, to be sure. You ought to have invested in some yourself.”
A laugh slipped from the lad’s lips. “That would have been handy.” He, too, looked at Luther’s hand, then swept his gaze up, as if measuring him. A new frown puckered his brow.
“Afraid I shall yet crush you?”
“Forgive me.” Phineas redirected his eyes straight ahead, his jaw tight again. “It is just . . . your size, while perhaps the greatest I’ve seen, is on the same scale as a few field hands we have had over the years—and unmatched by any white man I’ve ever met. I have heard people argue that God would not have designed the black man thus, if not to labor in ways we cannot. I never really gave it much thought before. But . . .”
Luther sighed. “You may as well ask why He gave us a brain, if He intended us only to labor in your fields. Or better still, ask if, since the small white man is so perfectly sized for work in the mines, all white men should not be forced into that labor.”
“It is hardly the same.” For the first time in weeks, the chap’s voice took on a note of stiffness. “Perhaps our overall smaller stature would make us a good size for the tight shaft of a mine, but we can hardly perform that labor without injury or illness.”
Of all the . . . “And the slaves in your fields are never injured? Never ill?” Every muscle going tense, Luther shook his head. “I have prayed over countless blacks escaped from the South, Phineas. I have heard their tales of woe. Workers in your rice fields have a life expectancy of only five years. Over ninety percent of the babes born to slave women on those plantations die; far fewer survive than are needed to replace the workers who fall each year. Is that what you call well-suited? If so, I think perhaps I shall purchase a dictionary for you.”
“But blacks are all but immune to malaria and yellow fever, which fells any white workers who dare to step into the fields in the summer. Does that count for nothing?” Again, Phineas’s hand rubbed absently at his leg. “The work must be done, and so someone must do it, or none of us would have food to eat.”
“But there is a difference between choosing to work in those conditions and being forced to.” Luther made a conscious effort to relax his grip on the reins. “Your ancestors began enslaving the West Africans because they already had experience growing rice. But in Africa, they chose to do it. They were not forced, with a whip always hovering over them. They worked for themselves, for their families, for their neighbors.”
“Their neighbors were often the ones who sold them, so forgive me if I ask you to spare me such tales meant to evoke empathy, when the truth behind them sheds as terrible a light on your people as on mine.” His face had washed pale again, and the muscle in his jaw pulsed.
“Mankind can have black hearts, it is true, no matter the color of their skin.”
Phineas didn’t seem to hear him. His gaze r
emained locked ahead, his hand remained on his leg, rubbing, and his face remained tight. “Some of us do all we can to be fair. Our people do work for themselves. How do you think any ever bought their freedom otherwise? We allow them to keep their own gardens, their own livestock. They’re allowed to barter and sell in the towns. To build their own fortunes, even to find their own employment in the cities and keep most of their wages.”
He believed it, Luther could see that. Believed those concessions made it all fair and right. “And because you let them have their own gardens, you think it means you needn’t provide them any food. They must toil fourteen hours in the blistering sun in your fields, then repair to their own little plots and toil some more. And if their crops fail, well, then they starve. If they can’t produce enough to sell, well, then their children have no clothes to wear that winter. Because though their masters fancy themselves guardians and parent figures, they certainly never bother to spend any of their coin on them.”
Phineas turned sparking eyes his way. “We are not all monsters just because we own slaves.”
“And we are not all beasts just because our skin is of a deeper hue.” He motioned to the field beside which they drove, with the scores of bent brown backs tending the tobacco plants. “You think none of those men have dreams, or would if they were given the chance? That none would like to go to sea, or to read a book? Paint a picture, write a symphony? Do you think none would make excellent physicians or solicitors or teachers? But those dreams are the very things you fear. You fear they will steal your workforce away, and so you deny them the chance to know such a future exists for them. You deny them the most basic of human instincts—to learn. Aristotle says—”
“I declare, Luther, I can tolerate your incessant reading and quoting of Scripture, it being the Word of the Lord and all, but if you take to quoting some long-dead Greek, you may have this here crutch swinging toward your head.”
Luther looked from the crutch propped on the bench beside Phineas to the young man’s strained face. He couldn’t have said why the boy’s anger made him want to smile again. “All right then, no Aristotle. Fair enough, I suppose, since I now have you quoting Scripture. You were a most attentive pupil while unconscious.”
Phineas grunted, but his stature relaxed again. “Pupil indeed,” he muttered.
Up ahead he could see where the fields gave way to civilization, where the town sprang up between the tobacco plantations and the seaport. Not much longer, and the cessation of the bumps would no doubt improve Phineas’s mood, along with his well-being. But in the meantime . . . “If you don’t want to discuss the philosophy, then let us examine a specific case. You. And me. Would you deny me the life with which the Lord blessed me?” His question came out as little more than a rumble. “If it were up to you, would you strip me of my education, my freedom? Put me in your fields?”
The glance Phineas spared him was brief, distant. But not as biting as it might have been. “If you don’t cease your infernal sermonizing and lecturing once in a while, I just might wish it.”
Luther pressed his lips together and deliberately frowned to keep himself from cackling in victory. Try as he might, Phineas didn’t deny some facts, anyway. It was a start.
Though the way the man shifted and turned slightly, the wary look on his face made Luther’s suppressed mirth die away. “What is it?”
Phineas blew a long breath through his lips. “You do realize, don’t you, that you’re going to have to give up the appearance of freedom? There’s no way they’ll let you in the Confederate States as a free black, even in my company, even if I signed for you. We’ll have to get papers forged saying you’re my slave, bought in . . . I don’t know, Florida or something. Somewhere legal. It’s the only way they’ll let you in—and we’ll have to use a false name for you, too, if they’ve put your rightful one on a no-entry list.”
Luther’s hands tightened on the reins again. “All of my thirty-five years I’ve been free, and now I must pretend to bondage?”
Phineas grimaced. “And that accent of yours would give you away in a heartbeat, so you had also better pretend to muteness.”
His nostrils flared, filling his nose with the scent of tilled earth and green plants. “My grandfather fought in your Revolution with the British so that his children would be free. My cousin was married to the daughter of Olaudah Equiano, the most influential African in England, made so because of the voice he put to paper detailing the horrors of slavery—a book that spurred the abolitionist movement. And you really would have me give up my voice. Give up my freedom.”
“No.” Phineas’s voice was soft. “Only the appearance of it. Only in company. I know of no other way to get you to your Eva.”
Eva.
Luther squeezed his eyes shut, summoned up the image of her flawless, beautiful face. She was worth any humiliation. Any sacrifice. “So be it.”
“Good, because that plan will have to begin as soon as we reach town. I must be the one to buy the tickets.”
Luther managed only a nod.
“And we’ll have to find someone to forge that bill of sale too. I don’t suppose you know of anyone? I imagine a minister like yourself—”
“I know of someone. I was forced to employ his services for my last attempt to make it onto your beloved Georgian soil, though clever documentation wasn’t enough.” And his fingers clenched ever tighter at needing to resort to such tactics yet again.
Phineas sighed, shifted. “Luther, I . . . I’m sorry it has to be this way. I am, and I hope you believe that.”
He nodded again, but acknowledging that the planter’s son beside him possessed a bit of fairness did little to make reality less harsh. “I’ll do what must be done . . . gratefully, with thanks to you for upholding your end of the bargain.”
“You saved my life.” Phineas’s voice was soft and held a bit of bemusement. “And you . . . or maybe it wasn’t you, but somehow or another, something shifted during the last months. Nothing looks the same anymore.”
Praise be to you for that, Father God. “Perhaps nothing is the same anymore, Phineas.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” He finally removed his hand from his leg, though only to wipe the sweat from his brow. Then he turned his head toward a passing buggy, inside which sat a young couple, the woman’s arm looped through the man’s as he held the reins. They both laughed, looking caught up in their own tropical world. Didn’t so much as look toward Luther’s cart. Phineas sighed again. “I should have acted sooner, not been afraid of her father’s disapproval. Had I proposed to her before I left—or better still, married her—then I wouldn’t be so afraid she’s moved on already, thinking me dead. The mourning period would give me time to get home.”
Poor chap. Luther at least knew that Eva would never turn to another, not of her own free will. She’d wait for him to find her. She’d know he’d upturn the entire earth if necessary, so she would bide her time. Pray and wait.
Of her own free will, anyway. Though if the master she was sold to in the States was anything like the one she’d been cursed with in Cuba, her will may not be taken into account.
Chest tight, throat even tighter, Luther forced that thought away and committed her again to the Lord. When he found her, they’d work through the horrors, no matter how bad they were. No demons would come between them, and nothing would keep him from reclaiming her, freeing her. Taking her home. With the Lord’s help, he’d make it right.
And he’d just have to believe that the same would be true for Phineas. “If she loves you even a fraction as much as you love her, she’ll still be waiting.”
“I’m not so sure she does.” His eyes slid closed, his face reflecting his pain—pain Luther suspected was as much from his heart as his leg. “She loves the man I was—the one who went off on adventures, who was willing to battle the enemy for a taste of glory. The one she could make a hero in her stories.”
“Your leg will heal, Phineas. You’ll be that man again.”
“My leg might heal. But I don’t know that I can ever be that man again.” He winced when they jolted over a bump, hissed out a breath.
Luther did his best to steady the cart. “What is it you don’t know if you can get back? The sense of adventure? The yearning for glory?”
“No. The trust. The trust in those supposed to fight beside me.” He shook his head and repositioned his leg. “I wasn’t just fighting against the Yankees, Luther. I was fighting with my brothers, for my home. And those brothers turned on me.”
“Not all of them. You told me your officer—”
“Enough of them. Two, out of a crew of six. My closest friend included.”
“Spencer.” Luther loosed a long breath and steered the horse around another groove in the road. “You said his name often. I pieced together that he was the one to turn on you, but I didn’t realize you were particular friends beforehand.”
“Maybe we weren’t. I don’t know anymore.”
In the past fortnight, as Phineas struggled to regain his strength, to get on his feet, never once had Luther heard such despair in his voice as he did just then. Such defeat. But then again, he’d had something tangible to focus on, and he hadn’t had to think about what he’d find at home, just about how to get himself there.
Still, he trusted Luther. He might not yet recognize it, but he did—Luther would be willing to swear to that. Trusted him with his life, and now trusted him with his thoughts. Trusted him to do his part. Surely that meant he could trust his own kind again.
Or perhaps it only went to show that the Almighty had one well-tuned sense of irony.
Chapter Fourteen
SEPTEMBER 15, 1861
And then,” Cordelia said in her most compelling voice, leaning forward so she could pitch it low and still be heard, “they heard a rustling in the swamp grasses. A gentle splash. Then utter silence—no insects chirping, no animals skittering. Nothing. Nothing but the sound of danger thrumming through the air.”
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