Freeman (50 page)

Just then, the boy stripped off his shirt and laid it aside. His back was a mountain range of black scar tissue, shining dully. It made Prudence gasp. “Devil take those who could inflict such marks on a child,” she said, and her voice had reduced itself to a thin hiss of outrage. “Devil take them all.”

“We are agreed in that much,” said Sam, turning away. He could not bear to watch the boy work, the scars on his skin riding up and down as he used a pitchfork to empty the wheelbarrow. Without a word, Sam hobbled through the big doors and went instead to stand outside and watch Main Street pass by.

Somewhat to his surprise, Prudence followed. “I pray you do not mind my company,” she said, when he looked down at her. “The boy’s injuries affect me.”

“I do not mind,” said Sam.

A welcome breeze stirred a stray wisp of bright hair across her face. Absently, she brought a hand up to smooth it back into place. Her eyes were somewhere else. “Devil take them all,” she whispered in that same scorched voice.

And then, just as if her words had somehow conjured it, Bo Wheaton, mounted on a black mare, came up the street from the direction of the
river. He stopped directly in front of them, not bothering to dismount. He touched his hat to Prudence, spared Sam not so much as a glance.

“Mrs. Kent,” he said.

“Mr. Wheaton,” she said.

“My pa sent me to ask if you have come to a decision on sellin’ your properties.”

She gathered herself. “You may inform your father that I am willing to sell,” she said. “I am simply awaiting confirmation from my sisters so that we may commence our negotiations.”

“Splendid,” said Wheaton. “That is most welcome news.”

“I wish I could be as pleased as you,” she said.

“I understand that you cannot,” he told her. “But I am confident you will eventually see this as the best possible outcome. We are of different stock, you Yankees and we Southerners. You do not understand us and we surely do not understand you.”

A pause. Wheaton’s expression closed, his face turning reflective, and for a moment, Sam thought he might have more to say. But Wheaton only touched his hat again, wheeled the horse around without another word, and headed back at a trot in the direction of the river.

“Devil take
him
, especially!” hissed Prudence, and the fury in her eyes was awful to behold.

Sam regarded her for a moment. Then he said, “I have lost much to men like that over the years. White men like that.”

Prudence met his gaze with eyes he could not read. “Yes,” she said, “I feel the same. I, too, have lost much to white men like that.”

He had a moment to wonder again if she was mocking him. A moment to decide that she was not. He allowed a silence to intervene, as he pondered what he was about to tell her—and why. He could find no reason to do so. Still, he said, “You asked a moment ago if I had seen a ghost. I suppose I had, after a fashion. When I first saw him, that boy in there reminded me of my son.”

Now she looked at him. “You have a son?”

Sam swallowed. “I
had
a son,” he said.

“He died?”

“Yes, he died, though I suppose it is more accurate to say he was killed—shot. He was about the age of that boy in there when it happened.”

“Oh, Sam, I am so sorry.” Her hand went to her mouth. “How awful. How long ago was this?”

“Fifteen years ago,” he said, and paused. She waited, looking up at him. He looked away.

“It was my fault,” he continued.

“How was it your fault?”

“I insisted on running away to freedom. He wanted to go with me and I allowed it, even over his mother’s protests. You see, we did not have to run. As mistresses go, Louisa Prentiss was far better than most. She did not allow her people to be beaten, she did not work them inhumanely, she did not break up families. She even allowed us to read. But for some reason, my soul still rebelled against the idea that I was owned by this other person, that I was required to accept the notion heaven had placed her in a station superior to my own. So I took my son and ran. The slave catchers caught us and he was killed.”

Sam paused a moment, reminded himself to breathe. “I should never have done it,” he said when he could speak again. “It was not so bad there. I should have been content and told him to be content as a slave.”

Her next words shocked him. “How dare you,” she said. “How dare you say a thing like that? Look again at that child,” she demanded, wheeling to point into the warehouse where the boy, oblivious, had begun mucking out the makeshift stall. “You saw those marks on his back as well as I did. But to be a slave does not simply leave marks on the skin. It leaves a mark here,” she said, tapping her chest. “I should think I, a white woman, would not have to explain that to you. I should think you would know it better than I.”

He stared down into her angry eyes. He felt his shoulders drop. He breathed. “You are right, of course. It is just as you say, and I should not need you to remind me of it. I don’t really. It is just…”

He stopped. He breathed again. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse, grainy like unsanded wood. “I am empty. Do you understand that? Do you know how that feels? I am tired and I am
empty
.”

Sam swallowed hard. He looked up into a sky he saw only dimly, through the blur of tears. “You made a great fuss over the fact that I was a man who would walk a thousand miles to find his woman. But what I never told you, Prudence, is that that man is gone. He is a stranger to me now. He is something I vaguely remember, but can no longer understand. I told you I was not going to continue my quest because I believe it is hopeless
and physically, I am unable. But that is only part of the reason. The rest of it, which I have hesitated to admit, even to myself, is that I have nothing left inside me, no dream of finding her, no hope for any sort of future. It is as if my soul has been hollowed out. Can you understand how that feels?”

He fell silent all at once, brought his eyes down to hers. They regarded one another for a moment. When she spoke, it was in a rasping whisper he barely heard. “More than you know,” she said.

“What do you…?”

But she wasn’t listening anymore.

“Calvin,” she called out to the boy, “I shall be at Miss Ginny’s house. Come get me when you are finished and I shall inspect your work.” She walked away without waiting for an answer. Her steps were lively.

Sam had just managed, clumsily, to get the saddle up on the horse’s back when there came a knocking at the side door. He opened it and Prudence was there.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning,” he told her.

“May I come in?”

In reply, he stepped aside. She entered, her right hand nervously rubbing her left upper arm. “I wanted to apologize,” she blurted, turning immediately to face him.

“There is no need,” he told her.

“Yes, there is,” she insisted. “I had no right to speak to you as I did yesterday, to lecture you that way. I do not know what had gotten into me.”

“If anyone should apologize, it is I,” he said. “I acted as if I were the only one who understood loss. That was foolish of me. You have lost your entire school.”

She gave him an odd look at that. He went back over to Bucephalus to confront the challenge of cinching a saddle with one hand. The cot stood in the center of the warehouse. He had stripped the bedding and left it folded neatly on the edge of the old desk.

“You are leaving us today?” said Prudence.

“I would have come to say farewell,” he said, fumbling at the straps.

“Do you think you are equal to hard travel again?”

“My knee tires easily, my foot still aches some, but yes, I am up to it”—a pause—“thanks to you.”

“At least you will not have to walk,” she said, watching dubiously as he stood there, trying to decide how to cinch the saddle. “Come,” she finally said, crossing toward him, “let me help you with that.”

“No,” said Sam. He spoke more curtly than he’d intended and she pulled up short. He sighed. “No, thank you,” he amended. “It’s not that I do not appreciate the offer of help. It is just that I won’t have any help getting to Philadelphia. I shall need to be able to do this myself.”

She nodded. “You are right, of course.”

She came and stood above him as he bent down, trying to manage the two straps with one hand. Knowing she was there somehow made the fumbling worse. He pulled uselessly on the strap in his hand, then gave up with a sigh. “Keep trying, Sam. You will find a way.”

He looked up at her. “I have been a fool,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I thought of it after we spoke yesterday. This quest has always been useless, and it is not just because I do not know where Tilda is and do not know if she still lives and do not know if she still wants me. Even if I knew she was alive and I knew precisely where she was, it still would not matter. Even if she still wanted me, that, too, would not matter.”

Her brow furrowed. “I do not understand.”

“It is simple, really. I have come to realize it was not just her I was trying to get back. No, I was trying to get back what was. I was trying to get back the life we once had. But time does not work that way.” He sighed. “In Virginia,” he said, “I saw an old colored woman. She was looking for a baby that was taken from her 20 years ago. She asked everyone if they had seen her daughter. The poor wretch could not bring herself to understand that the baby was no longer a baby, that if she yet lived, she was a grown woman by now, likely with children of her own. You cannot go back to what was.”

Prudence smiled her sorrow. “But perhaps you will find something new.”

“You don’t know,” he said. He turned from her, not wanting to see the pity in her eyes.

“I do,” she said. “Finding something new is the best hope you have. It is the best hope either of us has.”

His eyes came back around. “What do you mean?”

“Leave the horse a moment,” she said. “Come with me. There is something I want you to see.”

And so it was, moments later, he found himself walking down a ruined street on the far eastern end of the town. She walked several paces ahead, her back arched, her shoulders square as a box. He limped behind, leaning on a walking stick like a man 30 years older.

Every house on the block was a blackened cavern gutted by fire, the yards strewn with the burned remains of family life—pots and pictures and shoes and lamps. The stuff of people’s daily existence, gone over now to debris, to pieces and relics owned only by the sun and the breeze.

Prudence stopped. She spoke to him without turning around. “I had many students who lived on this block,” she said. “Of course, the rioters said they only sought to disarm the Negro militia they thought I had armed with rifles.”

“Nigger army,” he corrected. “That’s what they called it.”

She turned. Her face held a sad, beautiful dignity. “Yes,” she said, “that is what they called it, but I wish you would not use that word.”

It made him feel small in his bitterness. “I suppose you are right,” he said.

She turned again without a word and again he stared at her arched back and squared shoulders. They walked for a moment, then Prudence stopped. “This is the tree,” she said, standing before a twisted old oak guarding the end of the block. Sam went to her, stood a few feet behind.

“They hanged twelve people in this tree,” she said, her back still to him, her arms folded tight. “They did terrible things to them, things I cannot speak of, but I still see them in my mind whenever I close my eyes. They hanged Rufus, who was one of the men helping us guard the school. They hanged Bug—that’s what everyone called him, a little boy, so eager to learn, as they all were. They hanged Jesse, who worked for us at the school. And they hanged Bonnie.”

All at once she gasped, then lowered her head, and he knew she was weeping. Her body shook with the force of it.

“Who was Bonnie?” he asked softly.

It took a moment. “Bonnie was…a colored woman. As I told you, my father became an abolitionist. But he did not just demand that the slaves be set free. He would actually buy slaves and set them free on his own. He bought Bonnie when she was but a little girl and brought her to Boston.
We were raised together, she and I. She was my very best friend. She was my sister, in all but actual fact.”