May the Road Rise Up to Meet You: A Novel (52 page)

Then he places the billfold into Micah’s hands. Closes his fist around it.

That’s fifteen hundred dollars there from the Ladies Abolition Society of New York, he says, as if making an announcement. They’re good people, tryin’ to make some of this god-awful mess right, somehow. And you’re helpin’ them do it.

And Micah smiles just a little at him. Takes the billfold and stuffs it inside his coat. And knows that it’s his turn. To fix whatever he can.

Then Ethan reaches inside his satchel and takes out something else. A battered, leather-bound book, held together by a bit of string tied around it. Micah takes it and looks at its cover, unable to see anything like a title engraved on it anymore. Still, he holds it with two hands like it’s a thousand-year-old Bible. Suspecting. ’Til Ethan tells him to turn the cover open, and it’s confirmed.

The Odyssey
, Micah says, reverently. Out loud. I can’t take this with me, Ethan. He protests again. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to return it.

But Ethan only responds with a signal to flip one more page. And Micah does, reading the inscription aloud:

Ethan, I can’t accept this, Micah says, shaking his head. This is—

Not mine to hold on to anymore, Ethan interrupts. Books aren’t a possessing kinda thing, my sister always said. It was her idea to put that line there at the bottom.

Then this should be Aislinn’s someday, Micah argues.

It already was.

I mean … you know, little Aislinn, Micah says.

Oh, I’ve got another one I think she’ll like a whole lot better, Ethan answers with a smile. And it’s one that her namesake used to especially treasure. But that one there—that’s meant to travel with a man on a grand adventure.

What about your son? What if you and Marcella have a son someday? He asks.

Read the inscription again, Ethan says. It’s yours now. You can pass it on to whoever you want to, but it’s your turn to have it now.

And then, as Micah begins to muster up a final protest, Seanny comes back.

They’re getting ready to head off, he says. And Ethan shrugs his shoulders and smiles a little. Like they’d planned it all along.

Port Royal and the surrounding islands are like little droplets of Union in an ocean of Confederacy. But now there’s word of General Sherman marching all up and down their hindquarters with more than sixty thousand Union soldiers. And how he made it to Savannah a few days before Christmas, fixing to head this way through South Carolina. Mad as hell to get his hands on the place that started this whole damn mess. With nothing in between but a few old men and young boys with their muskets. And Micah listens to all the bits of information he can get, thinking that this will either be a whole lot easier than he thought. Or a whole lot harder. If the fight’s coming this way.

The merchant ship sets back off for New York the day after Christmas. And Micah stays behind. But Sean’s man Cormac introduces him to the Quartermaster Sergeant before he leaves. And then it’s just a matter of five dollars every day Micah wants to sleep in the back of the storehouse. Another five dollars if he’d like to eat. And Sean’s man Cormac just looks at Micah like this is how the world works.

But there is one thing that’s free. On Christmas night, Cormac comes
to the storeroom where Micah is alone. Hands him a rifle. Not just any rifle, a Spencer Repeater.

That can fire seven rounds before reloadin’. Cormac says. Sergeant says a man handy wit’ a gun can fire twenny thirty rounds a minute if he’s gotta.

And Micah half-smiles. Asks him what it costs.

Ahh, call it a Christmas present from me an’ Seanny … an’ yer man Squire Ethan.

And he offers Micah a slug from his whiskey bottle, but Micah declines.

Well, shovin’ off in the mornin’, besta luck t’ya, Cormac says, and gives him a slap on the shoulder. Happy Christmas too.

It’s two weeks before Micah’s on his way. Bribes his way onto a little supply boat headed to Edisto Island fifteen miles north. Corporal there, twenty dollars later, tells him about a rowboat. Where it’s hidden. How to get it to the mainland. Where to stash it. Tells him about the place called No Man’s Land.

Where th’Reb inland batteries an’ Union Navy gunboats beat hell outta ever’ now an’ then just to remind everyone we’re still here, he says. Mostly just us doin’ the firin’ now. Just for show, ’cause ain’t anybody there anymore.

And Micah hits the mainland in the late afternoon, stashes the boat. Walks a few miles inland. Figures he’s covered all there is of No Man’s Land, so he stops. Waits for dark. Then he’s on his way again. Ten miles or so along the Edisto River to Penny Creek. Which he reaches by the next morning. Hides himself for most of the day, sleeping some, then it’s back at it when darkness comes. And on to
Les Roseraies
.

When he gets there, he walks right toward the cabin where he and his Momma and Daddy and Isabelle lived. Got his Spencer Repeater in his hands, loaded. Case whatever overseer they got running the place gets any ideas. But the slave quarters are practically abandoned. Just a tiny puff of smoke coming from their old cabin. It’s gotta be way past midnight, but he knocks anyway. Then a little louder. Then pushes open the door a little.

Whoosat?

He doesn’t recognize the voice.

Who you? Micah says. Cocks the Spencer Repeater to let the man know what’s what.

Thomas. Dis my cabin, Suh. Man says. Suh, Micah thinks. First time he’s been called that. Laughs a little. Laughs more when he starts remembering Thomas. One of his Daddy’s old friends, if he’s the same one.

Micah steps forward a few feet. The fraction of light from what’s left of the fire catches his face. And he can see Thomas, too.

Hello, Thomas, Micah says.

Micah? Man asks, after squinting for a while. And Micah nods, half-smiling. Saving the full-on smiles for Momma and Isabelle. But happy enough to see a friend again.

They sit down once the shaking hands is done. Micah’s got to explain a little bit about how he got here, but asks right off where Momma and Isabelle are. Thomas tells him they’re all right.
Better’n most since they both workin’ in the Big House
. Isabelle’s a pretty young lady now and works in the kitchen. His Momma does some cleaning and all the taking care of Massa’s Momma.
Who ain’t altogetha right inna head, no more
. Then it’s the long road of filling in how things’ve been here. How they were for Micah. Backtracking all those years.

Oh, yo’ Daddy be proud as ca’be t’see ya now, son, Thomas says. What a fine strong man you done turned outta be. Mmm-hmm.

And that brings up the point of Daddy. Ain’t likely, but Micah asks if there’s any word on him. Thomas’s face goes cold. Sullen. And it’s like Micah knows somehow. Knows it can’t
all
be this easy. Thomas shakes his head.

He gone, son, Thomas says. Folks say he jumped ’at train ’long th’Savannah-Charleston line. Th’one takin’ him south wit’ that dealer what bought him up at th’auction. Musta been tryin’ t’get on back here to his fam’ly, what I figger. He jump as they comin’ on the riva crossin’. Kilt him, it did.

And Thomas’s words take the air out of Micah’s lungs. Make him purse his lips tight and shake his head some as he stares at the fire.

Some folks say he done it on purpose-like, Thomas goes on. Knowin’ he wasn’t gon’ see his fam’ly no mo’, he jus’ couldn’ take it. But that ain’t th’man I knowed for thirty years. Nosuh. He was comin’ back t’find y’all. That’s what it was. Sho’nuff. Don’t you go listnin’ to none a’that.

There’s nothing more said about his Daddy after that. Nothing more said about much anything. And Micah sleeps for only minutes at a time, lying there beside the smoldering fire, a few feet from where he slept as a boy. He knew he wasn’t gonna see his Daddy here. But he didn’t know he was
never
gonna see him. And what bothers him most is knowing his Daddy ain’t gonna get to see his son a free man after all. And that anger fills him again. Like he wants to take that Spencer and walk up to the Big House right then and start taking out the white folks. Just ’cause. Don’t matter that these particular white folks got nothing to do with his Daddy and him getting sold off. ’Cept that they didn’t buy the place fast enough. Before so many pieces got sold off first.

Next morning Thomas is getting set to go off to work. Only twenny-two slaves left on the place, according to him. What with some getting sold off, some running off. They plant only what they can, corn, sweet taters, beans. Just a fraction of the rice they used to. Micah asks about the indigo field, and Thomas shakes his head.

Summa the fiel’ han’s growed sweet taters there, he says. But it ain’t nothin’ but a patcha overgrowed shrubs now. You an’ yo’ daddy’s work … like it ain’t …

He stops. Well now, he says, nodding his head like he’s trying to convince himself of a thing. Well now, I s’pose it did ’mount to somethin’. You a free man. ’Bout as free as any colored man I ever know’d. Comin’ back here wit’ a fancy rifle like you meanin’ t’do somethin’.

It’s later that afternoon when he sees Isabelle. Thomas gets word to them both, and Isabelle’s the first one that can slip away from the Big House to come an’ see her brother. First time in more’n eleven years. And it’s like Thomas said. She’s grown up into a pretty young thing. Got Daddy’s color. Got Momma’s high cheeks and full nose and eyes. Taller than her, though. Just a few inches shorter than Micah. And they hug. And she cries. And he does all he can not to let himself do the same. Not at all like it was eleven years ago, no snippin’ at each other. None of her getting under his skin, talking all the time. He couldn’t ever feel that way again, he knows.

They get just a few minutes. And then it’s late that night before Momma can slip away. And it’s nothing but tears then, even from Micah, Thomas even, choking up before he leaves to give them some
time. There’s crying over Daddy. Momma doing most of it, but joyful like, like he’d be so proud to see his son. But she’s got to be proud for both of them now.

His time with Momma is so short, he doesn’t even make plans for when they gonna run off. But when she’s gone back to the Big House, Micah and Thomas get to talking. Micah tells him about how he got here, and how the Union Navy ain’t more than twenty miles away. Micah figures him and Momma and Bellie’ll leave the next night. Make the river by the morning after that. Then hide out just like he did. Next night it’s on down the river ’til they in No Man’s Land and free, mostly.

Then Micah asks Thomas if he wants to come with them, and for a very short moment he sees Thomas’s eyes light up with the thought of it. But then it’s all the reasons why he hasn’t run off before this. The dogs. The Home Guard. The long walk with little food. And Micah explains it all to him, like he’s got it all worked out, and ’sides, with Sherman comin’ this way, it ain’t like they gonna bother running after a couple of women and a fifty-five-year-old man. But when they go to sleep, he can tell he hasn’t convinced him. And he thinks what a sad thing it is to have been worn down to such a point. So many years of being a mule that he can’t even lift his head high enough anymore to see what’s right in front of him.

No matter how much she tried, there was no gettin’ around the fact that it was two years to the very day since her world changed forever. She had stopped being a little girl long before that, on that day with Mista Grant and all the stuff runnin’ off with Gertie and on the auction block. She’d become somethin’ like a woman in those few days, leastways in how she saw the world, no longer wide-eyed and figurin’ things might be different than they were just by wishin’ them to be so. Then when she came to live with the Kittredges, she still held on to
hopes, dreamed a little even, enough at least to make herself into what she became. But two years ago, when Micah ran off and she got too scared and confused to go with him, she stopped bein’ something else altogether.

It took her a while to figure out what it was that got changed that day. She wasn’t a girl then, so it wasn’t that sort of amusement with things, the kind Justinia still sometimes had, that Mary lost that day. No, for Mary it was something altogether different. It was like she stopped waitin’ for life to unfold itself to her, like she stopped expectin’ things, anything, stopped expectin’ altogether. And not expectin’ had its good points, in that year after Micah was gone. It helped her steel her heart enough to just get up in the mornin’ same as always, an to listen to Justinia dreamin’ ’bout her great big future without thinkin’ much of her own. But not expectin’ was a sad sort of thing, too, an that first year without Micah was about the best actin’ she’d ever done, pretendin’ all she could that things were just wonderful all around, pretendin’ she was just as happy as Justinia, almost anyway, to see her fall in love with Lieutenant Farnsworth.

They were a pretty couple, what with how Justinia’d grown out of that little-girl face and the little-girl ways and become a gold-haired beauty. She had her father’s long face and her mother’s green eyes and, more than anything else, a smile she took to wearin’ almost all the time. And she was gettin’ all her twenty years around her, with how she’d seen plenty of things in these last years of war and workin’ at the hospital. And still she smiled. That hadta have more than a little to do with Lieutenant Farnsworth.

Seeing Juss and the Lieutenant together, when he was gettin’ over his wounds from Gettysburg and she was walkin’ to the hospital to see him all the time, made Mary think of the sort of love she’d had with Micah. Then the Lieutenant was gone again just after Christmas that year, just like Micah’d left her, gone without Justinia knowin’ whether she’d ever see him again. Only difference was that Justinia didn’t have a chance to go with him, like Mary did, and when he was gone, Juss still kept her smile about her almost as much as she had before. And that was the time Mary got to changin’, seein’ how Juss still let her heart get all warmed up by that love she had for the Lieutenant, even worried as much as she was that she’d never see him again.