A Perilous Proposal (10 page)

“What's that to me?” said Taylor a little irritably. “You nursemaided him and we fed him for two weeks. He'll be okay, and we've got our orders.”

“He won't be okay, sir, not here. That Mr. Dawson will kill him the minute we're out of sight.”

“Jake should have thought of that before he went fooling around with the girl.”

“You really think he tried to rape her, Captain Taylor?”

“That's what the girl says.”

“Have you questioned Billings?”

“I saw no need to.”

“Maybe you ought to.”

“What are you driving at, Duff?”

“Nothing, sir. I just ain't sure Jake's that kind of young man.”

“They're all that way.”

“What do you mean, Captain?”

“Meaning no disrespect to you, Duff, you know well enough what I mean. Your kind is different. Kids like Patterson—they're all the same. You've got to watch them.”

“Is that how you think of me, Captain?” said the private.

“I don't know, Duff. I've never seen you around women.”

Duff did not reply. He turned and went to the barn to tend to his invalid. As he cleaned Jake's wounds and got a fresh sling around his arm and shoulders, he asked Jake a few questions. It was obvious Jake himself had no idea of the reports circulating about him. An hour later Duff again sought the captain.

“Captain,” he said, “I'm going to stay here with Jake for
a few days, at least until he can travel again.”

“What are you talking about, Private?” asked Taylor, none too happily. “I need you.”

“I know, sir. I'll rejoin you as soon as I can. But Jake needs me too, probably more than you do. His life may depend on it. I'm not going to desert him now.”

“The farmer won't be pleased.”

“He's exactly who I'm worried about,” said Duff. “Leaving him here . . . there's just no telling what he might do. Whatever happened, Billings hurt Jake bad, and he can no more travel than tame a wild horse right now. He'll either slow us down or we'll have to leave him somewhere else. That's why he's got to stay here, and why I'm staying with him.”

“Suit yourself, Duff,” said Taylor. “I could order you to come, and have you shot for desertion if you refuse.”

“That you could, Captain,” replied Duff. “But like I said about Jake, I don't think you're
that
kind of man.”

The captain eyed him seriously a moment. “You know what'll happen if any more Confederates happen along and find the two of you?”

Duff nodded. “The farmer will tell them about us, and the soldiers will kill us—probably hang us.”

“You want to take that chance?”

“I've got to, sir.”

“You want me to tell Dawson what you aim to do?” asked Taylor.

“No, I'll go talk to him,” replied Duff. “If he's going to be furious, he may as well hear that he's going to have two Negroes holing up on his farm straight from my own mouth. Then he can take his wrath out on me.”

Duff walked toward the farmhouse and up the steps of the porch. He knocked on the door. The farmer's wife answered it.

“Who is it, Bess?” called a voice from inside.

“It's . . . uh, one of the soldiers,” said the woman, glancing behind her.

The farmer came toward them from across the room. When he saw who it was, his face filled with rage.

“Get back, boy!” he shouted, hurrying toward the open door as his wife took a step back. “Don't you even think about stepping inside my house.”

“I had no such intention, Mr. Dawson,” said Duff.

“What do you want, then?” asked the farmer, his eyes squinting imperceptibly as he looked over the Negro standing before him. The man sounded more like a white man than a slave.

“I wanted to tell you, sir,” said Private Duff, “that two of us will be staying on a few days after the rest of our men move on. We will keep out of your way and—”

“Why do
you
need to stay on?” interrupted the farmer.

“The young man who was hurt out in the fields a little while ago—”

“You're talking about the nigger kid who attacked my daughter?”

“Yes, sir. He's injured pretty bad and won't be able to travel again for a spell.”

“He tried to rape her . . . and you want me to put him up!”

“I'm not at all certain he did so, Mr. Dawson. In any event, he is—”

“I'll see him rot in hell for what he did before I see him nursed to health under my roof!”

“We'll stay in the barn, sir.”

“You'll be nowhere on my property!”

“We have no choice, sir. You won't even know we're here.”

“And you won't be! We'll see how the two of you fare without twenty Yankee cowards keeping you from what you deserve.”

A voice spoke from behind them.

“What harm can it do, John?” said the man's wife. “A few more days won't make any difference.”

“You stay out of this, Bess!” snapped her husband.

Out of the corner of his eye, Duff saw the girl who was at the center of the storm watching them. Like her father's, her eyes were full of hatred toward him for no other reason than the color of his skin. Her expression confirmed in his mind the truth of what had probably happened.

With no more words between them, Private Duff turned and left the house. As soon as they were alone and Jake was feeling a little better, he asked him again what had happened with Billings. Again Jake told him. Duff explained what was being said among the men. For the first time he was almost glad Jake was confined to his back and in too much pain to get up. Had he been capable of it, Billings might soon have found himself in far worse shape. As it was, Jake could do nothing but rant and fume.

“But it ain't true, Micah!” he said.

“I didn't think it was, Jake.”

“You gotter tell 'em.”

“It wouldn't do any good, Jake. Once people's minds are made up about a lie, it doesn't matter what you say—you can't make them stop believing it. Most folks'll be convinced of a lie easier than they'll believe the truth. I believe you, Jake. You're probably going to have to be satisfied with that.”

“But it ain't right, Micah . . . it jes' ain't right!”

“Lots of things ain't right, Jake. It's something you've got to learn to live with if your skin is black. You and I aren't going to set the world right. The sooner we come to terms with the fact that lots of things aren't right, the sooner we'll be at peace with ourselves.”

Jake let out a long sigh. But he was still angry.

Duff left him. He also knew it would do no good to tell Captain Taylor. He had seen the look in his eyes too. Though
he was as tolerant and respectful of blacks as any white man Micah Duff had ever known, he was still not likely to be quite fair-minded enough to take the word of a black boy none of them knew over one of the white soldiers under his command. There were limits to what you could expect, even from good white men like Captain Taylor. Micah Duff had learned long ago that there were times it was best just not to make too much of a fuss.

Before the sun had climbed an hour off the horizon the following morning, Captain Taylor and his small Union company continued their march to the southeast. Behind them they left two black men in the barn of a white Southerner who would gladly have seen them hanging from its rafters if he could figure out a way to accomplish it. If he'd had any neighbors nearby, he most likely would have gathered a lynch mob to hang them both before the day was out. His daughter would happily have helped, though his wife would never have stood for it.

But alone, he was not quite brave enough to try it. John Dawson may have been a bigot, but he knew well enough that he was no match for Micah Duff.

R
ECOVERY AND
R
EFLECTION

13

T
HEIR FIRST DAY ALONE PASSED WITHOUT INCIDENT
.

Neither Micah nor Jake saw so much as a glimpse of John, Bess, or Samantha Dawson.

Micah had kept three horses behind and enough supplies to last them as long as it took to get Jake back on a horse and for the two of them to rejoin the company before it reached Chattanooga. There Captain Taylor's small detachment was to join a larger Union regiment making its way down from the North.

There was nothing to do and Jake could hardly move. Micah did not want to leave him alone for even five minutes. He was reasonably sure his movements were being watched from the house. The man Dawson was no murderer. But prejudice strikes deep and makes otherwise good people do evil things, which, if they were sitting in a church, they would not even attribute to a demon. So Private Duff would take no chances. Hate was too powerful a force, and Jake in too vulnerable a condition, to regard their situation lightly.

Not only was he a prudent man, Micah Duff was not the sort who could stand to be idle. By late afternoon on that first day, he was already growing bored. He stood and slowly wandered about the barn. It was so quiet that the afternoon sun,
sending slanted shafts of light into the darkened place that was their temporary home, added to the silence. He noticed where their men had been and had moved things about to make themselves comfortable. He began setting everything back to its original condition. Slowly other things came to his attention. A frayed harness hanging from a peg, a broken wheel of a buggy, several stalls whose boards were split or loose . . . all these he noticed as he wandered about the barn.

When Jake groaned and came awake some time later, he saw Micah across the dirt floor nailing up a new board he had just cut for one of the stalls.

“Dat you, Duff,” he said hoarsely, “—wha'chu doin' dere?”

“Hey, Jake,” said Micah, turning and walking toward him in the dim light. “I'm just trying to make myself useful. I figured I might as well fix up a few things in exchange for these folks' hospitality in letting us stay here. How you feeling?”

“Bad, Duff. I's hurt everywhere.”

“I don't doubt it. That's why you've got to lay still and let me take care of you.”

“Why you do all dis, Duff . . .
why
you helpin' me like dis?”

“You'd do the same for me, wouldn't you, Jake?”

“I don't know . . . I reckon. But dat still don't tell me why.”

Duff laughed lightly, set down the hammer in his hand, and sat down on a bail of straw beside Jake's makeshift bed. He sat for several minutes, but gave Jake no idea what he was thinking. When he finally did speak, what he said wasn't at all what Jake had expected.

“I'm helping you, Jake,” he said, “because I've had a hard life.”

Jake stared up at him where he lay.

“Wha'chu talkin' 'bout?”

“Just what I said.”

“What dat got ter do wiff it?”

“Everything.”

“Dat don't make no sense,” said Jake. “Why dat make you want ter help me?”

“I suppose to most folks it might not make sense,” said Duff. “But that's my answer to your question.”

“What made yo life so hard, Micah?” asked Jake. “You don't look like nobody dat's had ter suffer dat much.”

Micah smiled. “There's all kinds of pain, Jake,” he said. “Not all pain comes from a whip across your back. There's lots of different kinds of suffering, lots of different ways that life can be hard. Not all of them are easy to see.”

“You said you wuzn't no slave. I don't reckon dere's a much harder life den dat.”

“No, I wasn't a slave. And I'm thankful for that. But there's pains that hurt inside—hurts no one else sees. They can hurt in their own way too, maybe even worse sometimes. Everybody's got hurts, Jake. Some you see, some you can't. But in their own way, everybody's life is hard.”

“I neber thought 'bout dat. You reckon life be hard . . . even fo white folks?”

Micah nodded. “Yep, even for white folks, Jake . . . life is hard even for white folks.”

Jake took in his words as if he'd never considered such an idea before.

“But I still don't see,” he said after a minute, “how dat'd make you want ter help sumbody like me dat jes' comes along dat you don't eben know,” he said after a bit.

“All right, I'll see if I can explain it,” said Duff. “It's like this, Jake . . . when life gets hard—whether you're white or black doesn't make any difference—folks have got a choice what to do about it. I didn't always know about choices. But when I was eleven, that's when I realized what a big thing
choices were. After that I started watching people real close. You know what I saw, Jake?”

“No . . . what?”

“I saw that it wasn't the pain or the suffering or the whippings or the hardships that made the difference in folks' lives. I saw that it was something else.”