Freeman (12 page)

Standing there in the doorway of the barn, the man, Nick, had touched her arm. “What you gon’ do, Tilda, now you free?”

“I’m gon’ clear timber for Marse Jim,” she said.

“But you free now,” he said.

She gave him a look. Let him see in her eyes what she thought of fancy men spouting nonsense.

“You don’t believe it?” he said.

“I believe what I can see right in front of me,” she told him. “And right in front of me, there’s burnt wood Marse Jim says he wants me to clear.”

“You could come away with me,” he said.

“I don’t even know you,” she said.

“Ain’t much to know. I could make you happy. Shucks, I could make you love me.”

He grinned at her. Tilda had time to wonder what this man was sniffing around her for, tired as she was, ruined as she was. She shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said.

To her surprise, he flashed her another smile. “I ain’t done with you yet, Miss Tilda,” he said. “I’ll be back. Ain’t gon’ stop tryin’.”

She shrugged. “Love is long suffering,” she said. “Says that in the Bible.”

His eyes tightened with confusion and she could tell he was about to ask her what that meant. Then she heard the rumble of Marse Jim’s voice in the yard and went to tell him the mule was dead. And that ended all talk of freedom.

She is careful about that dangerous word, wary of it, the way you would be of a snake in the garden or a rat cornered in the shed. Still, she is intrigued—she can’t help it—and when they talk about it, the three of them whispering together in the darkness of the cabin, she can’t stop herself from imagining how it would feel simply to walk away from here and find some
place wholly her own, where she might make her own orders, set her own priorities, belong only to her own self.

But always, the soft fantasy of it runs up against the hard reality of the slouch-bellied, sour-breathed white man who owns her—owns her even though, if Nick is correct, nobody owns anybody anymore. Tell that to Marse Jim with his flinty eyes and his guns always near at hand, Marse Jim who heard what the reb officer had to say and then went right back to ordering them to go here and do this and fetch that, just like always, just like nothing at all has changed.

And maybe nothing has.

They are still colored, after all. Nobody has freed them from that.

For her, that decides it. Freedom is just a word. Oh, it sounds good. Sounds fine. But still, no more than a word, carries no more weight than that. It is a dreamy flight of fantasy. And she has no time for that. She has to live on the hard shores of reality. She has to
live
.

It surprises her some that she clings so fiercely to living after all that has happened, after all the reasons she has been given to loosen her grip. But there it is. Living is a hard lot. But, she supposes, it still beats the alternative.

“We’s done decided.”

This is Wilson, a disembodied voice in the darkness of the cabin, one night around midnight.

“Decided what?” she asks, although she already knows. It is six days now since the dangerous word was first spoken.

“Decided we’s gon’ be free.”

“Oh?” She lies on the narrow corn shucks mattress that might as well be ground for all the comfort it gives.

“Yes,” says Wilson, and from his voice, he is sitting up in the corner.

“Leaving tonight,” says Lucretia, and she is at his side.

“Ain’t no moon tonight,” says Wilson.

Tilda’s heart jumps. So soon? To make the decision, announce it, and then act on it all at once? Is that what freedom is? Just an excuse to be rash and reckless? “Marse will kill you,” she says. “He will catch you and he will kill you, sure as you’re sitting there. You know that.”

“Don’t know nothin’ of the sort,” says Wilson. “He ain’t but a man, same as me.”

“He’s a man with a gun,” says Tilda. “That is not the same as you.”

Wilson does not answer. After a beat, Lucretia pipes up, her voice tremulous. “We wanted you to come with us.”

“She won’t come,” says Wilson. “She scared.”

The contempt in his voice amuses Tilda. “Yes, I’m scared. You would be, too, if you had any sense.”

“You mean, if we was old like you?”

“
Wilson
!” Lucretia is scandalized.

“What? It’s true, ain’t it?”

Before Lucretia can answer, Tilda does. “It is true,” she says. Well over forty years lie behind her. If that isn’t old, what is? She is old, all right. Old enough that she cannot remember when she was ever as young as these two foolish children speaking to her out of the dark.

“I told you this was a waste of time,” Wilson says. His voice is bitter with reproach.

“Tilda, you don’t want to be free?” Lucretia sounds like a child. Innocent. Uncomprehending. Too young to know what happens when fantasies collide with realities.

“No,” says Tilda. “Marse will never allow it.”

“Waste of time,” repeats Wilson. Tilda has the impression he is pulling on Lucretia.

“All right,” Lucretia says. “All right.”

For a few minutes, the only sound Tilda hears is the two of them moving about, gathering their few meager things, she supposes. Then the door creaks open. The cold enters.

“You sure you won’t come?” There is a hopeful note in Lucretia’s voice that could break your heart if you let it.

Wilson cuts off any reply. “We got to go,” he says. And then, to Tilda: “You ain’t gon’ wake that man up soon’s we gone, is you?”

“How am I going to do that?” asks Tilda. “You didn’t tell me your plans and you slipped out of here while I was sleeping.”

He gives a grunt of satisfaction. The door closes.

She listens as their footfalls fade. She thinks of praying for them, the way she used to pray for everything. In the end, she doesn’t. She doesn’t want the prayer to fail, doesn’t need a new reason to be angry with God.

Tilda cannot even imagine taking the risk Wilson and Lucretia are, cannot imagine being so young, so in love, that crossing Marse Jim begins to seem a sensible idea. She cannot sleep. She doesn’t even try. She simply
waits. When the sun burns darkness from the sky, she rises with a soft grunt, wraps the thin sheet around herself and goes outside. She builds a fire. Tilda uses the last of the cornmeal to make corncakes. She makes four of them, like always.

After a while, Marse Jim stumbles out of the cabin. He staggers off without a word to use the privy, returns, and draws up short. “Where are they?” he asks.

Tilda, sitting at the fire eating the last of her corncake, shrugs. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen them this morning.”

He grabs her arm, yanks her to her feet. “Don’t lie to me,” he says.

“I’m not lying,” she says.

He punches her in the face. She sees lightning, crumples to the ground, hands covering her bleeding mouth. The bad tooth in the back falls into her throat and she chokes on it. She is on her knees desperately harking at the tooth as he stalks off. She hears him inside the cabin, muttering angrily to himself. “Think I’m a fool? Think I’m a fool?”

Tilda spits out her tooth as Marse Jim steps out of the cabin. He has the slouch hat pushed down on his head, two pistols wedged crosswise in his belt, the Sharps carbine in hand. She is still on the ground. She is afraid he is going to shoot her. He doesn’t look her way. “Been expecting this,” he says, cracking open the breech on the carbine, dropping a cartridge in. “Ever since them two came through here the other day talking about nigger freedom, I been expecting this.” He is speaking to himself. He is speaking to the morning.

“Marse?” She has clambered to her feet. Her bones ache. “What are you going to do?”

“Goin’ after them, of course.” Bending down, he grabs up the three remaining corncakes from the shovel blade she cooked them on, slips them into his pocket. “Come on.”

“What do you mean, Marse?”

“You don’t think I’d leave you here by yourself, do you? You’d run away just like they done.”

“Oh no, Marse. I’ll be right here waiting on you when you return.”

“I’m not a fool,” he says. “Man comes through here sayin’ the federals have won, you think that means I’m supposed to just give up my property without a fight? Well, I don’t know if the federals won or not. Lot of rumors go round in wartime and most of ’em’s bullshit. But this much I can promise you: I ain’t gon’ just stand by and lose what’s mine.”

She has never heard him give a longer speech—or bother explaining himself at all, for that matter—to a Negro. Might as well explain yourself to the dead mule, that’s how he thinks. He motions with the rifle barrel. “Let’s go,” he says. She knows better than to say another word. Her jaw aches where he hit her. She leads him out to the main road. The footprints are fresh and clear in the soft soil. She is glad she didn’t pray.

How many hours ago did they leave? Six? Maybe seven? Is there a town six or seven hours from here? Some bustling place Wilson and Lucretia can lose themselves and hide out from Marse Jim? Otherwise, they have not a chance. He will find them and he will beat them without mercy before he drags them back.

They walk a footpath through a forest of loblolly pines. After an hour, it carries them out to a main road rutted by wagon wheels and pitted with footprints. She has not been this far from the main house since the day she was brought here, years ago. She allows herself to hope Marse will lose the trail on a busier road, but he does not hesitate even an instant, trudging forward with his head down, reading the road, muttering to himself occasionally. “I see you,” he whispers to the road. “I see you there.” She believes he does see them. He is like some implacable thing, immune to the doubts and needs that might slow other men, less determined men. He just keeps on going.

She wonders if he was like that in the war, moving forward no matter what was exploding around him. Or did he hunker behind breastworks, did he tremble and wet his pants when the order came to advance across some field toward some copse of trees thick with Yankees? She does not think so. She cannot imagine him trembling or unsure.

Not a word passes between them. The first hour becomes the second, becomes the third. When the sun stands high in the sky, he stops at a freshwater pond, sits on a fallen tree and produces the corncakes from his pocket. He eats one, places the other two beside him.

Tilda is so hungry her stomach is on a first name basis with her backbone. He has not said she can have one of the corncakes, but he has not said she can’t, either. She gathers herself and takes the risk, walks up to where he is sitting and picks one up. She has to eat, doesn’t she? She deserves to, doesn’t she, traipsing about out here God knows where?

He doesn’t so much as look her way. But as she is walking off with her prize he says, “You didn’t go with them.” Not a question.

She calculates quickly, decides it is safest to stay with the lie. “Didn’t know they was gone, Marse,” she says. “They slipped out without telling me.”

He grunts in response. After a moment he adds, “You were smart.”

It chills her. She waits, but he doesn’t say more. Instead, he finishes the corncake, cups his hand to the pond and takes a drink, then starts off without a word. She takes a drink, then follows him.

After two hours, they reach a town. This is Buford. She remembers this place. She was auctioned here, sold off by a woman who had always claimed she didn’t believe in selling her people. She always called them that—her people, not her slaves or her niggers. Of course, she reconsidered her refusal to sell when money grew tight. Suddenly everything was open to negotiation. So it was that Tilda had wound up the property of this shambling trash-heap of a man, had gone from a place where she was allowed, once chores were done, to sit with a book and read, to a place where chores were never done and there was not a single book in the house.

Marse finds his way unerringly to a tavern, tells her to wait for him outside. “Don’t you get any ideas,” he says, index finger pointing in her face.

She swallows. “I won’t,” she says.

She doesn’t.

For two hours she sits out there, listening to the clink of glasses, the braying laughter of white men. It turns cold, begins to rain. She huddles beneath the awning, watches white and colored come and go. A group of federal troops wanders by, laughing at some joke between them. They stand taller, straighter, than any men she has ever seen and she has to fight down an urge to run to them, tell them everything, beg them to take care of her. But what if they send her away? What if freedom is only a lie? Then she would have only committed suicide, wouldn’t she?