A Perilous Proposal (18 page)

In turmoil he walked back toward the farmhouse several hours later, relieved to have the day of inner conflict behind him.

He found Samantha Dawson alone in the kitchen.

“Mama's gone into town,” she said as Jake entered and removed his cap. “She told me to give you something to eat.—Here,” she said, setting a dish down on the table in front of him.

Jake thanked her and sat down. Another place was set at the table, but she made no move to join him. Finally Jake spooned out a portion of stew and began to eat.

“You gwine eat anythin', miss?” he asked.

“I'm waiting for my mama,” she replied, her back turned.

Jake ate a minute or two in silence.

“Why'd you lie about me, Miz Dawson?” he said after several slow and thoughtful mouthfuls. “Before, I mean . . . when I wuz here wiff da soldiers. Why'd you say I dun what you an' I bof know I didn't do?”

“Why do you think?” she said, slowly turning around. “Because you're colored.”

“But why'd dat make you tell a lie 'bout me?”

“It wasn't really a lie.”

“Wha'chu mean by dat?”

“It's the kind of thing you
might
have done.”

“How kin you say dat? You neber seen me afore dat.”

“You're colored. Your kind does evil things.”

“I neber touched a girl wrong in my life,” said Jake.

“Well, you probably would have if you'd had the chance. Colored people smell different and rape people and say coarse things and don't talk right and act like animals.”

Jake stared at her in disbelief.

“Where'd you learn such nonsense as all dat? I doubt you eber eben knowed a colored person. You learn all dat from yo daddy?”

“Where I learned it's none of your business.”

“Do you hate me now, Miz Dawson?” Jake asked.

“I don't know—maybe not now.”

“But you still think dose things 'bout me?”

“You're colored. What else can I think?”

“Are you afraid ob me, den?”

“No,” she replied with a hint of a smile.

“Ef blacks do all dat you say, den you must be terrified ob me.”

“I keep a gun in my room,” she said. “If you try to come in, I'll shoot you. Mama doesn't know. Daddy always said she was too soft-hearted for her own good. So when you and she weren't looking I took one of those dead men's guns and I've got it hidden if I need it.”

Stunned, Jake stared back at the young woman.

“Why haven't you killed me, den? You's had plenty ob chances.”

“I don't know. Maybe because you're helping Mama. And you did chase those men away, and I suppose that counts for something.”

“But not enuff ter make you see dat I'm a normal person jes' like you?”

She laughed as if he were a child.

“But you're not like me. We're nothing alike. I'm white, you're colored.”

“So colored folks can't neber be the same in yo eyes, no
matter what dey be like on da inside, is dat it?”

“Of course not,” she laughed. “Everybody knows that. Even slaves know they can never really be like white people.”

“Dere aren't no mo slaves, Miz Dawson. I's free now too.”

“I heard something about that. But that can't make you be like me, not ever.”

Not reassured by her words and the disclosure about the gun, Jake made himself a new bed in the loft of the barn for the remainder of his stay. He did not want to be quite so accessible in case she changed her mind about tolerating his presence for her mother's sake.

He began making plans to complete enough of the work around the place so that Mrs. Dawson could get by, and then he'd move on. Samantha's mother would gladly have hired him as a permanent hand, for he had shown himself capable and trustworthy. But knowing her daughter kept a pistol under her pillow, or in the drawer of her nightstand or wherever it was, was all the convincing Jake needed that he could have no future here.

And he had not forgotten his mother's words.

As Jake prepared to leave, Mrs. Dawson shook his hand warmly. “Thank you for everything, Jake,” she said.

“I'm mighty obliged to you too, ma'am,” Jake replied. “You been a good frien' ter dis wanderin' colored boy.”

“Well, I imagine you'll do all right for yourself now, Jake. And I want you to take this.”

She reached out and handed him a fistful of money. Jake stared at the pile of coins in his hand.

“I can't take dis!” he said. “Dere must be a fortune here!”

“I want you to have it. It's only twenty dollars.”

“Laws almighty, Mrs. Dawson, dat
is
a fortune!”

“I don't want you to starve before you find what you're looking for.”

“I won't starve. I knows how ter work.”

“That you do, and you've been a big help to me. Now take the money.”

Jake put the coins in the pocket of his trousers with awe and gratitude.

“Best of luck to you, Jake.”

C
AROLINA

25

A
S JAKE PATTERSON CONTINUED HIS SOJOURN IN
response to his mother's dying charge, he was much closer to his long-undefined goal than he realized. And with Mrs. Dawson's directions, within weeks he had crossed into northern Georgia and eventually across the Savannah River into the hilly western region of South Carolina.

To his inquiries now, he was met with, “Why
dis
be Carolina, son . . . you's
in
Carolina.”

Now that he was in the place he had so long sought,
Find Carolina
could no longer guide his steps. What was he to do now that he was here?

With the change, he began to think more and more of his father. What would he do if he actually
did
find him? What would he say?

Was his sole responsibility to deliver his mother's final message? Would he then turn his back on the man who had given him life? Would he just walk away . . . never to see the man again?

Is that why he had followed “Find Carolina”—only to deliver
her
message?

Such questions did not exactly form themselves in Jake's brain. But he felt a subtle change coming in ways he could
not define, even in ways he was not yet aware of. He felt increasingly uneasy, on edge, almost like someone was watching him . . . like
his mother
was watching him. Had it now become a quest not merely to discharge a final duty
as
a son, but to discover what it meant to
be
a son?

Only time would answer such an important question.

Mrs. Dawson's twenty dollars lasted him a long time. He spent his newfound wealth sparingly, and continued to work at whatever jobs presented themselves, mostly in small towns along the way. As he grew stronger and learned more of the ways of how things stood between blacks and whites, and as he gained confidence, his range of skills also increased. He was strong and capable. No one could be around him long without realizing that he possessed an uncanny sense with horses. He never stopped to ask himself if he had inherited the gift from his father.

His sleeping accommodations were usually a bed of straw in either barn or stable, usually clean, mostly dry, and he expected no better. Sleeping under the stars was no hardship. He had been doing so for years.

Continually he moved on. He knew that his father had taken care of horses too, shoeing them and tending them when sick and sometimes training them for special uses. He began seeking out large ranches and livery stables, asking for work himself but also hoping to find the trail of another black man who may have come before him who was known for his skill with horses.

He worked for several months in Anderson, moved on to Greenwood, then south to Aiken, Orangeburg, north to Sumter, then west across the Wateree River. But nowhere did he hear anything. He spent the end of 1864 around Columbia, then again began to move northward, through Camden and Kershaw, eventually crossing the border into North Carolina as spring began to blossom throughout the South.

Through March and April, he moved through Robeson
and Cumberland counties, always looking, always listening. Gradually he began to realize how futile his search was. He was looking for one black man who might have changed his name, who might be dead, whom he probably wouldn't recognize if he saw him anyway.

Deep, undefined emotions still drove him on. He heard that the war had ended. He was now able to travel and work more openly.

As spring advanced, he was working in a livery stable in the town of Monroe. There he chanced to make the acquaintance of a black family traveling north who said they had heard of a freedman named Patterson.

“Where?” asked Jake.

“Don't rightly know, son. North of Charlotte sumplace.”

“In da city?”

“Don't think so, young feller. Some town north er there. He was in a livery too, as I recolleck.”

Jake was on the road again the next day, passed through Charlotte, where he worked for another week to earn money for food, then began walking from town to town as he moved out of the city to the north. He stayed for a week or two in every town of any size, picking up what work he could and asking the blacks he encountered if they knew a man called Patterson. As soon as he was satisfied there was nothing more to learn in one place, he moved on to another.

Increasingly reminded that he had forgotten what his father looked like played tricks on Jake's mind.

Thoughts and memories and images began to haunt him with more regularity. He did not seek them, but could not prevent them. The face of his mother was now with him always—smiling, loving, but watching . . . a gentle sadness in her eyes. She was sad because she saw the anger in the heart of her son. She was in a place now where he could hide nothing from her. She
knew
. But reaching out from the grave into
his memory, she was powerless to heal his bitterness and make it go away.

With images of her came also unbidden images of his father, vague and shadowy and distant—smiles and laughter, and loving caresses from a father's hand. But when they came in his dreams, Jake pushed them away, silently rejecting the very touch of love he so desperately longed for.

Jake Patterson was a soul in torment. Yet whenever Micah Duff's words returned in his brain along with his mother's, he forced them away.

He began to dream horrible dreams of the man attacking his mother, and always they ended the same, with her cries for help. But Jake was not there to answer them. Then again came Micah's words—“
You're full of anger deep inside. You're trying to run from it, trying to hide from the light. But you can't escape it
.”

Sometimes he awoke screaming out terrible curses in the night, as if to banish his inner demons of anger and guilt by sheer force of will.

But deep inside he knew he was living a lie. His own words to Micah returned to haunt him too—“
She's dead because of him!
”

But it was all a lie. He was blaming his father when he had no one to blame but himself.
He
had caused her to die. Not his father. There was no one else to blame . . . only him. But to admit it would be to relinquish the object of his anger. And that he was not yet ready to do.

The spring of 1865 gradually warmed and gave way to summer. Jake turned seventeen, and a look of dawning manhood had come to his eyes and cheeks. But it was a hard look. He rarely smiled now. And he still had to face manhood's greatest challenge—discovering who he was, and what he was going to do about it.

In North Carolina he made inquiries in every town he came to. By June he had gone through a dozen or more towns
without learning a thing. Finally he came to a small town some twenty miles from Charlotte. Walking through it for the first time, he was used to the stares and looks as he asked if anyone knew where a black man might find work.

Some whites ignored him, some answered rudely or cursed at him, some spit at his feet. The more respectable merely turned up their noses and moved as far away from him as circumstances would allow. But here and there one answer might lead to another. The fellow blacks he met were always friendly.

Eventually, it seemed, something always turned up.

F
ATEFUL
D
ISCOVERY

26