Black Angels (26 page)

Caswell used to go to church with his mother every Sunday, and he'd heard about Jesus saying, “Love one another.” And He had never said anything about not loving people who were not White. So Caswell stood on the veranda and let the tears run down his face and over his chin. And he wept for his sister and his brother, and for Betty Strong Foot and for Mama Iona, and was not ashamed.

CHAPTER 42

DECISION 1874

And then the day came. The day when he was forced to choose. He awoke to the peace of Indian summer in Charleston, South Carolina. Hot sun shone through the curtains of his bedroom. October, still hot in South Carolina.

Lina knocked on his door with the news that breakfast was ready in the dining room. She always let him sleep as long as possible. She seemed glad to have him around the house, and he would always regret that he had not been able to say good-bye to her.

He heard only the early morning seabirds that had come into shore looking for food. Until he splashed water from the basin in his room on his face, he heard only those peaceful sounds. And then there were horses, and men talking to his father in hushed and excited tones right under his window.

Caswell was halfway through his breakfast before his father came to the table. Troy sat down to his coffee, and Caswell recognized the anger he had seen so often.

“Damn niggers have to be brought to their senses,” he said. “There's only one way to teach them who's in charge. They don't listen to anyone.” Troy reached for the preserves. Matilda quickly excused herself, even though she was not through eating, knowing things were going to be said that Troy didn't allow her to hear, and that he would have sent her out of the room had she not left.

Caswell chewed slowly. He didn't dare ask what had happened.

“I want you there tonight,” said his father. “You're seventeen now. It's time. The boys are all getting together. We'll put those niggers in their place. After dark, nine thirty. This'll be a good education for you.”

Caswell asked to be excused. Suddenly he wasn't hungry any more. There was little point in protesting or even making up an excuse for tonight. Troy had already made up his mind.

It was a very long day for Caswell. He spent most of it pretending to read, but really worrying about what was to come.

 

There were ten of them. The moon slid through the trees, making the white robes stand out in the night and the shadows more sinister than usual. Caswell felt the tension in the men and in his own body.

Some of the men carried unlit torches. There were two groups. One for the death, one for the burning.

“The nigger refused to pay, and then he disputed me,” one of the men said, in between chewing furiously on his tobacco. “He called me a liar. No nigger should get away with that and live!” He spit his chewing tobacco as far as he could.

The closer they got to the man's house, the worse Caswell felt. They were really going through with this thing. He stepped on a twig in the dark.

“Hush up, boy!” one of them said. “Surprise is the big thing.” This man was a friend of his father's, someone he knew.

Suddenly they stopped walking and each man put on a white robe and a hood, so Caswell could see only their eyes. He wasn't sure which one was his father now, or his father's friend. In the darkness an owl was disturbed from his gloomy perch and flew up into the night with a great flutter. Caswell's stomach turned over. He had no robe and no hood. He was to observe, to learn, they had said. He was told to stay in the background at the edge of the clearing, out of sight.

All of them surrounded the pitiful little cabin this family called home, ghastly men in deathly white in the dark. Suddenly a gun was fired. Someone lit the torches.

“Come on out here, nigger,” one of the men in white said. “Come on out and git your punishment! We'll teach you to think you can talk back to a White man in South Carolina.” A Black man came to the door. He had brought a lantern with him. Caswell could see by the light that the man was frozen with fear.

“Please leave my family alone,” the man begged. “They didn't do nothin.”

“Do we have to come in there and git your woman too?” The men were closing in toward the house.

The man stepped out onto the ground, and they surrounded him, dragging him deeper into the woods. Caswell heard the whimper of a child, and then somehow a torch was lit and thrown at the cabin. He heard the Black man screaming as smoke and flames leapt into the air. Caswell didn't know exactly what they would do to the Black man, but he knew that whatever it was, it would end with the man's death.

They had surrounded the Black man and started pulling his clothes off. Caswell lost his sense of who was doing what; white robes were everywhere. There was one scream of agony. Suddenly, Caswell felt like he was in one half of the world and those men in the robes were in the other half. Caswell could not see what the men were doing, but when he saw a flash of metal, he knew that they were cutting and slashing the Black man's body. He ran forward into the horrific noise. “Stop it! Stop it! Please stop it!” Caswell screamed. In the torchlight, he could see red stains on the white robes. No one heard him. No one even remembered that he was there. The men were in their own world of noise and blood and unleashed hatred.

When he looked up, the Black man was hanging from a tree and blood was everywhere, dripping from his naked body. The white-robed men were rejoicing, slapping each other on the back, laughing, screaming, pulling out their flasks. They were way past seeing Caswell. In the orange light from the fire, Caswell lost his dinner, and then, beyond knowing the sound of his own sobbing, beyond knowing which white apparition was his father, he ran through the darkness, intent only on reaching his horse and leaving his father's house forever.

CHAPTER 43

RUNAWAY

He rode hard for miles. When he realized he was not being followed, he stopped to rest his horse. The long days of childhood travel had taught him much about sleeping in the woods and finding his way. He was closer to North Carolina by now, but Virginia was three days away. As his horse rested, he thought. He made his plans.

He knew he'd never be able to go back home again. He smiled a sad smile and thought, I'm a runaway for sure now. Just like the captured slave I remember from my childhood. But I'm not about to hide out in the swamp, he thought. I'm going to find Daylily and Luke, and then, I'm going somewhere I can learn about love. There must be other people like me, who understand that this hatred has to stop. Suddenly it occurred to him. Seminary, he thought, that's where people learn about God. That's where I should go.

He would have to find some kind of work. To save money so he could pay for his training to become a clergyman. He had no friends in this part of the country. His horse pawed the ground, restless, defiant. That horse had been his only real friend all these lonely years. He had named him Strong Foot without telling his father why.

Just then, Strong Foot seemed to be trying to say something to his rider, and then Caswell began to listen to the countryside, the sun just rising, the dried cornstalk on his left. Ten years, the tenth summer, and harvesttime . . . before the first frost.

“This is it,” he said to his horse. “This is the day.” The horse turned toward the north and Virginia, and Caswell gave the bay his head. They were free.

CHAPTER 44

THE TENTH SUMMER, 1874

Daylily hadn't thought about the tenth summer for a long while, at least not consciously. But she thought about Luke and Caswell every day in one way or another. She hadn't thought that three, then four, then five years had gone by, but she wondered every day whether Luke was dead or not. Had he made it through the war alive and whole? And what had happened to Caswell? Would he still call her his sister?

She wondered whenever she saw a running stream or the stars in the night sky, or ate fresh rabbit meat, or cooked a stew like Betty Strong Foot had taught her. She wondered if they would ever see each other again. Life with Mama Iona was good, and God had given her a whole new family, an education, and a wonderful job teaching her people how to read, children and old people who were eager to learn.

If she thought back all the way, she'd marvel at how she used to sneak to read just because she was Black, and how Granny almost died from a beating because she was teaching people to read. Knowing Granny's sacrifice made Daylily more and more determined to teach for the rest of her life.

She still had her little skirt and jacket Betty had made out of Confederate uniforms. At first, when she got way too big for it, she let Vina Madison wear it, but after that she put it away to keep. It was the one thing she had from that time that would bring it all back as if it had happened yesterday. It was a small reminder of Betty's cabin, Betty's love, and it brought Luke and Caswell very close to her. She kept it in a cedar trunk that Mama Iona refused to trade for food, because it had been made by Zach's own hands.

There came a day, then, that brought her up short. It was early October. Corn in Virginia had been harvested. They were making ready for the first frost. One day out of many others when there was something special in the air, in the way the sun shone off the dried cornstalks as she walked to the schoolhouse. In the smoke from someone's stovepipe, she smelled breakfast.

But this day, she didn't think about how to divide her ham and biscuit between those children who didn't have any lunch, or about whether the school could pay her next term. She thought about how many years it had been since that day they had walked into Harper's Ferry. Ten summers. It had really been ten summers, and now it was early fall. She realized with a start that it was time to go. She would set out in the morning.

CHAPTER 45

BEFORE THE FIRST FROST, 1874

Luke had worked for Percy until he was seventeen, and then he told the retired lieutenant that he had found work that would give him a better chance at life. He wanted a skill, and he could work in the railroad yard. He did not want to be a servant for the rest of his life, but he didn't want to say that to Percy. They had parted as friends, and Luke would always be grateful to Percy.

As Luke walked down the street in Winchester, Virginia, he noticed three children walking together. They touched his heart. He never saw children without remembering. He never got through a day, really, that something didn't remind him of Daylily's giggle and Caswell's natural stubbornness. He still carried sadness with him that he had not been able to say good-bye to them ten years ago. And he carried a pain in his left leg from the skirmish he had been in. One pain kind of brought the other one, always reminding him of what he had left behind in his youth.

But his limp was the last thing people noticed when he stood up to speak on the race question. His voice was strong, and his spirit was even stronger. He knew the war had been kind to him. He had seen enough battle to know that, even in one year. Others who were left living had missing parts and worse.

Luke had no bitterness about his wound. He was glad he had been able to help bring freedom, if only in a small way, and the wound was a symbol of that. Every time he thought of those days with Daylily and Caswell, he thought how much he would love to tell them about what he had done when he left the Madisons'. About how he had become a water boy for the Union troops, carrying water under fire, until he was shot in the leg. He wondered if they were still there with Mrs. Madison or if they had been split up by White folks.

This morning he was excited. He had learned that Frederick Douglass was coming to Richmond to speak. Luke planned to be there in the front row, learning everything he could about how to help in the struggle for complete freedom. Things were really bad these days, White folks were angrier than ever, and something called the KKK had taken the place of the overseer's lash.

He was on his way to work. And he was lucky. Colored didn't have much to pick from. They got the last jobs. Luke was working at the railroad yard, lifting and hauling railroad ties to help with the rebuilding. He limped, but that didn't keep him from being strong enough to be a good worker. In his heart, he knew his real work was freedom building, and he carried a kind of light with him that other people couldn't understand but followed anyway. He knew he had this light and he counted it a gift, a second sight almost. He carried with him always the memory of Aunt Eugenia and his mama, Betty Strong Foot, Daylily and Caswell. What he did, he did as much for them as for those to come.

All at once, he noticed that the children he had seen were going in the same direction he was. Two boys and a girl. And then he remembered. Ten summers. The tenth summer was here. The corn was already harvested, and it was time. They had not had a cold snap yet.

He couldn't let them down. He had to be there. If he hitched a ride on the way to Harper's Ferry, he could walk the rest of the way. Work would have to wait. And Mr. Douglass would have to wait. He had made a promise to Daylily that he wouldn't get killed, and he had to keep that promise.

CHAPTER 46

REUNION

As he felt his way through the woods, following the river and dodging low hanging branches, Caswell couldn't help feeling excited. It still amazed him that they had all survived that ten days in the woods and all their adventures at Betty's. He had been a baby, really, and the others weren't much more.

He was the first to arrive. His heart sank when he didn't see anyone as he approached the cabin. Suppose they had forgotten? Or maybe Luke did go off and get himself killed, and maybe Daylily grew up and forgot both of them. Maybe she was married and had a house full of children and a husband who wouldn't let her come. As he thought about it, he was sure that's why she wasn't there. Of course she'd be married. Who wouldn't want Daylily for a wife, and what kind of husband would have her running out to the wilderness to meet two men?