Freeman (38 page)

But did it really make a difference? The result was the same either way. The result was suicide.

Preacher Lee stood. “Don’t see why we gettin’ all excited,” he said. “Ain’t our decision to make, is it? Mrs. Kent, this your place. What you want us to do?”

All eyes turned to her. Prudence came to her feet in the middle of an expectant silence. Her eyes traveled the room before she spoke. Finally she said, “You are mistaken, Preacher. This is
our
place, not mine. I came here to listen. And what I think is that the decision should be made by the men who do the actual work of guarding this place. I will abide by whatever you all decide is best. How many of you think we should maintain a sentry on the school?”

The hands went up immediately. All eight of the guards.

“So,” said Prudence, “I suppose it is unanimous, then. No need to ask if any of you think it a useless provocation.” And now, she did regard Bonnie with just the flicker of a smile.

“You are making a mistake,” said Bonnie. “All of you, you are making a mistake.”

Another man spoke now—light skin, a high forehead, a thick mat of black hair. “We understand you worried about us,” he told Bonnie. “And don’t think we not grateful. But you need to worry ’bout your school and all them chil’ren you teachin’ to read and write and cipher. That’s what make this worth it. And ’side from that boy shot Jesse, you ain’t had no more problem with white folks messin’ with y’all since word got out we was watchin’ this place. No more busted windows, no more dead cats. They ain’t done nothin’ since then but talk. Ain’t that right?”

Bonnie nodded. “Yes,” she admitted, “that is right.”

He drew back in satisfaction. “Then that’s all you need to worry about. Don’t worry about us. We be fine.”

The men’s laughter was loud and easy. And triumphant. Bonnie realized it all at once: there was nothing they could do here. Nothing she or Paul might say would persuade these men. She smoothed down the wrinkles in her skirt just to give her hands something to do. “Well,” she said, “I suppose it is settled then. I’ve papers to grade at home. Good night, gentlemen.”

Bonnie ignored the alarm in Paul’s eyes. He wanted to stay and fight it out. Could he not see there was no point? All at once, Bonnie felt older than her years.

“Miss Bonnie?”

She turned and Jesse was gazing down on her with buttery eyes. “Yes?” she said.

“Ain’t want you to think we didn’t appreciate you worryin’ about us. We surely do.”

This brought nods and noises of assent from around the room. “I know,” she said. “And I understand why you are doing this. I still think you’re making a terrible mistake, but I understand.” And then, to Paul: “Mr. Cousins, would you see me home?”

Bonnie went down the stairs. After a moment, she heard him following. She could feel the questions brimming inside his chest but he didn’t speak until they were outside and away from the building. Then he said, “Why you do that? Why you walk out?”

She stopped. The moon was a useless sliver of white slipping between the clouds and all she saw of him was shadow. But she did not need it to know the look on his face. Stricken indignation. “What else was there to do?” she said. “We had lost the argument,” she said. “You saw that as well as I.”

“We could have tried,” he said.

“We would have failed,” she said. “We already had.”

“White folks scared, Bonnie. They do terrible things when they scared.”

“I know,” said Bonnie.

“No, you don’t,” he told her. “You think you do, but you don’t.” She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. The dark shape that was Paul spent a moment just breathing, almost as if he had forgotten she was there. Finally he announced, “I can’t do this no more.”

Alarm spiked Bonnie’s chest. “What do you mean?” she asked, though she already knew.

“Can’t work for y’all. You tell Miss Prudence I won’t be comin’ ’round no more. It’s too dangerous. I
ain’t
scared to die, you understand, no matter what that fool up there say. But I can’t feature dyin’ for no reason, dyin’ for something that’s already lost. That don’t make no sense to me.”

“I see,” said Bonnie slowly. And it brought her to the edge of a question she did not know how to ask.

What about us? What about the shy glances we have exchanged as I have taught you to read? What about you meeting me to walk the half block home after a hard day at school? What about us sitting on Miss Ginny’s porch together for hours on a Sunday afternoon, watching the street pass by? What about this soft, sweet thing that has been growing slowly between us?

“I shall miss our friendship,” she said. She could not ask those questions. This was as close as she could come.

“I’m gon’ miss that, too,” he said. His voice was husky again.

Bonnie gazed at the shadow above her, wishing she could see his eyes. But they were as enwrapped by darkness as the rest of him. Miss Ginny’s house was only a few feet away. She moved toward it. Paul moved with her.

Her life had changed so much, so fast. The woman she had been in February, laughing and gay and living in a wealthy white family’s mansion, would not have known what to make of this woman she was in June, a tired schoolteacher walking a dirt street in a Mississippi river town escorted by a rough man barely removed from slavery.

How imperiously she had sat in the wagon as it stood before the abandoned warehouse the day Prudence addressed a crowd of Negroes pressing close. How regally she had looked down on them. In every word and deed and stray look, she had made clear that she was here only from a sense of moral duty—and not even her own. It was Prudence’s determination that had brought them here. Bonnie had simply trailed along like a wagon after a horse.

She was so uncomfortable with these Southern Negroes, with their outlandish voices and unfettered laughter, their raucous worship and unlearned minds, their ignorance of words and places and ideas she took for granted. And she had never understood until, perhaps, just this night, the simple strength of them, the abiding courage of them, the unadorned wisdom of them.

Beg pardon, ma’am
, the soft-voiced big man had said,
but you don’t understand
.

And she had felt, in that moment, transparent, seen-through, revealed. All pretensions and assumptions laid bare.

You got to do somethin’ to give it meanin’, or else, it ain’t nothin’ but a word. How you gon’ know you free if you doin’ the same things you was before?

Could she, could Prudence, could some philosopher with the gift of eloquence, ever have explained the meaning of freedom quite so well? But then, who understands freedom better than a slave?

It had not occurred to her that she might learn from Southern Negroes. Or that she might grow fond of one of them in particular. But she had.

As if he knew she was thinking of him, Paul took her hand. He had never done this before. She felt something electric move through her blood and she was unnaturally aware of the feel of his hard and calloused skin. They paused again, standing at Miss Ginny’s gate, and when he spoke, anxiety had gnawed his voice down to the bone.

“Miss Bonnie,” he said, “I know this the most foolish thing I ever done, but if I don’t do it, I’m gon’ hate myself.”

Somewhere, a dog was yapping. Looking down toward the river, she could see where the gaslights began, a yellow glow illuminating the other end of the street, the end where white people lived. In the darkness on this end, she waited, dreading.

“This real forward of me,” he said, “and if you offended, I can’t blame you. I got no right saying it and I knows that.”

“Say it,” she said and her heart crouched in her chest, bracing for impact.

“I’m goin’ away,” he told her. “Don’t know where, but I know I got to go. Trouble comin’ to this town, comin’ to them mens we just left, sure as we standin’ here, and I don’t want to be around to see it. But before I go, I just wanted to tell you, well…I like you, Miss Bonnie. I like you in a special way. I know you’s educated and got your pick of fellas and me, I can’t read, nor write, got no prospects, don’t even know for sure where I’se goin’ when I leave here.” He paused, as if suddenly hearing himself, hearing the hopelessness of what he said. “Lord, this so foolish,” he muttered.

Bonnie said, “Paul, I—”

“No,” he said, “let me finish, please. What I’se tryin’ to say is, these few weeks I spent with you, well, they ’bout the best few weeks of my whole life. And when I go, you the only thing I’m gon’ miss. The
only
thing. I hate to leave you. And I just wish, well, they was some way you could come with me. You be welcome. More’n welcome, in fact.”

Bonnie was amazed how close she came to saying yes. How much some part of her wanted to say it. The woman she had been in February would have been appalled at the idea. The tired woman she was now in June stood in a darkness pricked by lightning bugs, and allowed herself to wonder for the fraction of a sliver of a moment if it were possible, if maybe she could…

But she could not, could she?

Prudence needed her. Bug and Adelaide needed her, too. Besides, something sensible and stolid whispered from behind her ear, she barely knew this man. Yes, she was fond of him, but was fondness reason enough to take so reckless a leap from the precipice of her very life?

He spoke into her hesitance. “You gon’ say no,” he said. “I don’t blame you.”

“I haven’t any choice,” she replied.

She felt him smile. “I know,” he said. “Knowed it when I asked you. But like I say, I had to just the same.” He opened his hand. She drew hers away.

“Paul, it is not that I am not flattered.”

“You ain’t got to explain.”

“And it is not that I am not fond of you.”

“I said, you ain’t got to explain.” His voice had hardened. “I knowed it was foolish when I asked you, but I couldn’t help myself.” He fell silent. She still couldn’t see his eyes. She wished she could.

“Paul,” she said, and then didn’t say any more.

“Good night, Miss Bonnie,” he told her.

And what could she do, but move away? He waited while she let herself in to the tiny house. When she closed the door behind her, she heard the soft scuffing of his shoes going away. She stood quietly in the darkness, waiting behind the door, until the sound of him faded in the distance.

That day began like every other day, with Prudence walking to school in the soft, muddy light of a new dawn. She had the world to herself and the only sound in it was her footfalls tapping wood.

Prudence loved early morning. The day stood still and gave you time to gather yourself without regard for the fears and worries of other people. There were few things more paralyzing than fear and worry, and she could not understand why other people—even Bonnie—withstood them so readily. The world was what it was, the future would be what it would be, and there was not much you could do to change either. So you did what you knew was right, you accepted the consequences, and you did not look back.

It vexed her sometimes when people called this rashness. It was the only way she knew, the only way that made sense in her mind. Life could be lived in but one direction. Forward. Always, forward.

How else had she absorbed the jarring revelation that Cyrus Campbell was someone other than the genial savior of lost boys whose example was the bedrock upon which her family was founded? She had allowed it to slide to the bottom of a mind filled with more important things to think about, the same place she stored the pain of losing Jamie and Father.

It wasn’t that the loss of them had not left a scar upon the truest part of her. Rather, it was that she could not allow those things to deter her. To do so would be to double the loss because it would mean losing not simply the men—a fate over which she’d had no power—but losing also the things they had stood for and cherished.

And that she could not allow. She had a mission and she would not fail. Prudence paused as she always did when the big building at the end of the block rose above her, the unpainted wood just becoming visible in the light of a sun that still lay half-hidden in the cotton fields to the east. A splash of whitewash still spread itself across the front wall. Perhaps, Prudence thought, she would have the whole building painted once school was out and the children were picking cotton. Some gay color that lifted spirits instead of squashing them down.

She opened the side door and stepped in. At the top of the stairs, a shadow detached itself from the other shadows and came down toward her. “Good morning, Alex,” she said.