The black swan (23 page)

It was the same, only worse, when he tried to tell her about hauling slaves. "Oi seed slaves oncet," she said. "A-workin' in a turpentine camp down thetaway. They didn't

look so bad off. If they be a-wantin' to leave out o' there, they coulda."

"But these people we helped couldn't run away."

She looked at him stubbornly. "They coulda run if they'd a mind ta."

His explanations were useless. Johnnie Mae had her notions set, and facts weren't going to change them.

The next time he tried the direct approach. "What would you think of a . . . man who had killed another man?"

"Men alius be a-talkin' about their notches." She looked him in the eyes with avid interest, and his gaze fell. "He be yere fust man?"

"I didn't say Vd killed someone."

She looked at him a little longer. "Did he need killin'?'*

"I ... I don't know."

"He did or he didna. One or tother."

"It's not all that simple."

She shrugged. "He did or he didna."

Reluctantly, Adam nodded.

"Then ye done right. Don't fash yereself about it."

He wanted to tell her everything that had happened, how scared he'd been yet exhilarated, how sick-making it was to see life's blood he'd spilled flow into a pool too fast to sink into the ground. He needed to hand over the burden of guilt to someone who understood. He looked at her again, opened his mouth to speak, and closed it.

"Be ye too tuckered to lark about wie me?" She put out a long-fingered, tanned hand and slowly rubbed him beside the placket of his trousers.

Familiar with her now, he slipped his hand inside her shirt and made her nipples come erect. "What do you think, Johnnie Mae?"

She favored him with a slow, sweet smile that showed her uneven front tooth, that stretched the freckles on her nose and accentuated her cat's eyes. She was a girl of the sun, smelling of sunshine and of grass and of her tawny hair that gleamed like a shawl thrown over her shoulders. She lay back, her hair spread under her on the rough, thick grass, gazing at him through her eyelashes. She said simply, "Oi think ye be all man."

He kissed her breast and undid her shirt and pulled off her short skirt. He shed his trousers with newly acquired speed and stood over her. He was not pale now. He liked that, being tanned. He liked the feel of the sun on his

entire body. His penis made a shadow across her belly, and that pleased him. What he liked best of all was the way Johnnie Mae looked lying there under him, lazily inviting, yet proudly aware of the perfect picture she made no matter what she did. She posed deliberately, he knew; but then she had a lot to pose with.

"Play like Oi be a loidy, an' Oi don't want to do it wie ye, an' ye be makin' me," she pleaded. It was her favorite game. "Play like ye be a big ol' bear, an' ye wud wrostle me down. Play like Oi be the man, an' ye be the woman.'* Pretense was her excitement.

He dropped to ©ne knee beside her, and her hands promptly enclosed him. Then she laughed, let him go, and lay looking carelessly away from him. So he stroked her as she had taught him, fingertips running lightly down the inside of her arm to tickle her palm, then up the outside of her body to caress the full curve of her breast. She looked at him then, smiling faintly, and he kissed her at the corners of her mouth.

Johnnie Mae seemed to be at peace, enjoying him, waiting with pleasure-filled patience for her man. He thought he had never seen anything quite so beautiful. The words were out before he even thought them. "Johnnie Mae, I love you."

Her eyes caught his, and he saw the tears start. "Nobody ever said thet to me afore. Be thet coz we be a-playin' Oi'm a loidy?"

He began to kiss her face, the end of her nose, the edges of her eyes. Between kisses he let flow all the words he wanted to say to a girl he loved. "You're the sweetest . . . dearest . . . most beautiful . . .'*

Johnnie Mae lay with a look of dazed desire, hungry for his words as much as his lovemaking. He went into her slowly, prolonging his pleasure and hers.

It would be the last time. He hadn't told her, but maybe she knew it the way, animal-like, she sensed things.

They swam afterward, touching each other as they lay on their backs in the easy current. They came out and dried in the sun.

She knew. The way she dressed told him. "Be ye a-comin* back, Adam?"

He embraced her. "You know I'm coming back, Johnnie Mae," he said softly. "As soon as I can." He could make it

to Smithville by nightfall. He kissed her again. "I love you. Don't forget that."

"We lay a cairn to mark a memory." She gathered a pile of rocks from the riverbank, placing them with skill to form a pyramid.

Adam watched, curious and a little amused. "What are you doing?"

"It be a tryst stane," she said, preoccupied with her effort.

He knelt beside her. "A tryst stane?"

"It be a marker o' a time when a man an' a woman have a memory ta keep. Ye wud be puttin' a wee small treasure *neath it, Adam. Have ye a token ta mark the memory?"

He fished through his pockets. He came up with nothing more precious than a small penknife, but it was pretty, with a mother-of-pearl handle iridescent in the sunlight. He placed it under her pyramid of rocks. Across the small mound he clasped her hands, no longer wanting to leave her ever.

Johnnie Mae was wiser and had said her good-byes. Gently she kissed him, loosened her hands from his grasp, and walked slowly away from him. She didn't stop to see him leave. When Adam looked again, she had rounded the bend and was gone.

He went to Smithville. As he knocked on Zoe's door, he wasn't certain how she would greet him or what he would say.

She threw herself at him, her arms tight around his neck. "Adam, forgive me! I'm so glad you're home. You must be hungry! Where have you been? No, I didn't mean that. I won't ask. I'll ask you nothing. I don't deserve to know." "Ma! Quit chattering—I can't say a word." "Oh, Adam . . ." she began, then clasped her hands, pressing them against her lips, her eyes begging for forgiveness. "I thought you might go to Garrett and Leona rather than me. I was wrong. Terribly wrong and hurtful to all of you.'*

He walked with her into the parlor. "You weren't wrong. Ma. I didn't know what I was getting into. But now I understand. I've been through the worst of it." "You want to join Garrett. And what of college?" He grinned at her. "I'm gping to school this fall." "OK, Adam!" She smiled broadly and hopped up from her chair.

He held up his hand. "But only for two years. Then I go to sea. That's where I belong."

Garrett was still confined to his bed. "Good to see you!'* he said heartily, when Adam came in. "Leona told me what happened after we got back from Cline's. I'm sorry, Adam. It was a difficult thing for you to face alone."

"Perhaps it was to the good. Uncle Garrett— **

"Garrett," he said firmly. "I prefer to think of you as my friend. A man has little choice in nephews but a great deal of it in friends. I'd like to count you among my best."

Adam felt a pleased blush scorch its way up from his neck to his forehead. "Thank you, sir," he gulped. "I'm— I'm truly honored."

"Now, young man, that understood, let me say that I don't mean ever again to involve you in the Underground against your will. It takes more than a flair for leadership and adventure. Leona and I saw your strength, and we made an important decision for you. We were wrong, A man should be dedicated to the beliefs and principles behind a cause. Unless you know why you believe a credo and you know the kind of man you are, it is impossible for you to be responsible for that cause."

"I may have come further in my thinking than you know, Garrett," he said diffidently. "The catcher . . . when I shot the catcher ... I never saw a man die like that before. I kept thinking, I did that. I killed him. All the things he might have done kept coming to me. His family and friends, hunting, fishing—I took it all away from him."

Garrett looked sharply at him. "But you do understand it was necessary?"

"It's different for me. I wanted to kill someone once. I even prayed it would happen. It was Edmund Revanche, the man who mutilated Tom and killed Ullah. I thought I had a right to kill him for what he had done."

Adam was absorbed in his talking, thinking it out as he spoke. Garrett looked on with warm interest as he waited for Adam to reach the conclusion for which he struggled. Slowly Adam raised his head, looking directly at Garrett. "I think that is like slavery, Garrett. There's not so much difference. It's taking a life and ending all the wishes and hopes a man has and thinking you have a right to do it. Well, not quite the same, but—"

"No, don't belabor the question. Go on." Garrett said.

"I couldn't help what happened with the catcher. But I can help what happens to people like Jane and Marcus. Well, maybe if I don't, then that's the same as ... I mean, if I let them be caught and returned to their masters, then I am helping him keep them captive, and they can never be anyone except who he tells them they are."

In frustration he drew his hand across his face. He was sure of what he believed, but the elements of that belief, the various links and separate thoughts that combined to form the overall feeling of rightness, were still not clearly defined for him. They tied his tongue and came out in fits and starts.

"I have heard those thoughts spoken more eloquently, Adam, but never more sincerely or truthfully. God bless you, boy."

Adam glanced quickly away from Garrett's misting eyes, blinking rapidly as he cleared his own, but he couldn't keep the pleased smile from his face. "You said once that the water.route is the best way to haul slaves."

Garrett listened, again curious as to where this young man was about to lead himself.

"I'm going to the university for the next two years, but after that I am going to get my mate's papers and then my master's papers."

"And then all you need is a ship."

"It'll take me a while, but I'll get my ship."

His uncle smiled with satisfaction and decision.

"Well, when I do," Adam said, looking straight at him, "I'd like to haul the slaves by water, Garrett."

Chapter Fourteen

The platform for the Wilmington and Weldon train looked crowded as Zoe, Leona, Garrett, Tom, Angela, and Mammy all stood together wishing Adam good luck at the university. Adam boarded the train and found a seat by the window. The waving of good-byes continued for as long as the train could be seen.

As his family disappeared from sight, others who had not been there to bid him good-bye came to mind. He,

Ben, and Beau had always planned to go to the same university, study the same subjects, and apply for their mate's papers at the same time. Now everything had changed but himself. He would have to go on alone.

As the train took him farther north and inland through a fine October day, Ben and Beau continued to occupy a great portion of his thoughts, giving ground only when a longing for Johnnie Mae would overtake all thoughts and reduce him to feelings.

Adam left the train at Raleigh and took the coach the remainder of the way to Chapel Hill. From the first moment when Adam entered the building where he would begin his classes, he was aware that it was a separate world to which he now belonged. Within the campus at Chapel Hill there was an entire small society, enticingly different from the rural backgrounds most of the students had left behind them. Both days and nights were crammed with the learning of things wonderful and tawdry, and all valuable to growing up. Here were men who spent their days fostering the mental processes of reluctant young minds. This was not the sea, it was the land of education, but it had its own kind of exhilaration.

By the end of the first week Adam knew he would always remember and cherish the two years he was to spend there. With all the enthusiasm and eagerness any professor could ask for in a student, he plunged into his studies. He occupied his days with modem languages, chemistry, and studies for public service.

In the evenings, though he didn't know it, Adam began to spend his leisure hours as Tom had spent his with Edmund and Ross. There were late afternoons of cards, evenings of courting young women in hopes of finding some who were nice but not too proper, and there were mornings of half-laughingly nursing thumping headaches as the previous night's adventures were recounted and appraised with new friends.

But when the laughter wasn't there and the sense of adventure had vanished, Adam always felt terribly alone. Apart from a few hastily scrawled letters, Adam had heard nothing from Ben and Beau. Now it seemed important that he should have. Theirs was a dream shared, one that should have had its beginning this autumn. And yet it hadn't. Though determined as ever to fulfill that dream, Adam felt

torn from those he loved, painfully aware of the hundreds of miles that separated them.

At moments like these, in place of the usual hilarity of college fun, there came a mellow kind of longing for the countryside, the people he had left. And under it all there was a young man's yearning for the shrouded greenery of the swamp and the low, husky laughter of his sunshine girl.

Johnnie Mae's image grew in his mind. With distance her backwoods dialect seemed quaint and endearing to him, her quick wanting of him more a sign that she had loved him deeply than an immediate physical desire to have her passions slaked. The vision of the rope bed in the corner of her cabin haunted him. Without him there to fill it, whose body would rest by her side, being warmed and soothed by her knowing hands?

Adam knew that his having told Johnnie Mae that he loved her had not been enough. A man who loved a woman gave her more than childish promises. By Christmas he was convinced that he truly loved Johnnie Mae and wanted to marry her.

In January of 1854 Adam returned to Crusoe Island. Certain he would find her at the creek, swimming as she had been with him that last day he saw her, he went there. The little cairn she had built and called a tryst stane still stood near the spot where they had lain together, but Johnnie Mae was nowhere in sight. He walked down the spongy path.