Freeman, page 12
“I doubt it,” said Sam. But he stood up anyway, pocketing the beef.
“You don’t believe in de Lawd?” asked Ben, eyes shining mischief.
“I am not hungry,” said Sam. Which was a lie. He simply couldn’t bring himself to eat the last food he had in some airy faith that something would magically present itself when they got hungry again. “Let us go see what they have down there.”
Half a mile down the river, they encountered an old white man, hair gray and long and sprawling from his scalp in dirty tangles, who agreed to row them across in his skiff. They paid him ten cents each for the ride.
After a few moments, as the old man grunted and sweated and pulled the far shore closer, they began to make out the town. Even from a distance, they could see that it was dead.
Fragments of wall unconnected to other walls rose from the earth with the grim singularity of tombstones, the names of businesses still visible on the brick. Livery. Harness maker. Dry goods. It went on like that for blocks. They watched in silence, the only sound that of water smacking the skiff.
Moments later, the old man left them standing upon the far shore. The earth was packed mud, cool beneath Sam’s bare feet. In silence, they climbed the embankment from the river, in silence they walked into the center of town, passing through the shadow of tombstones that had once been places, businesses, offices. Now doorways fed into space, windows that had once looked out upon sky and trees and people going to and fro lay smashed in the mud, walls towered nowhere for no purpose. It was a cloudless day. The sun shone down, pitiless. The scrape of Ben’s shoes on the dirt seemed unnaturally loud.
And then there came a squeal of laughter.
Sam looked up in time to see two Negro boys darting across the street, a little one chasing a bigger one toward the shadow of half a building. The bigger one disappeared, but at the sight of the two strangers coming toward him, the smaller boy stopped. He stared intently, as if he had never seen men before. Then the bigger boy reappeared. His eyes bucked at the sight of them and he grabbed the little one by the hand and yanked him away.
A moment later, Sam and Ben drew abreast of the remnants where the two boys had disappeared. They found themselves facing the two boys along with a man and a woman, standing in the middle of a de facto courtyard, staring. The boys were in front, the bigger holding the smaller with a protective palm splayed across his breastbone. The man was taller than Sam, muscular, head smooth as a brown egg, just like Ben’s. He had a rifle held casually across his shoulder, the muzzle pointing into the sky, a warning held in abeyance.
Sam said, “Good morning.” He touched his hat.
Ben said, “How y’all?”
The one with the rifle called out, “Passin’ through?”
“Yes,” said Sam.
“Ain’t much here.”
“Yes, I can see that,” said Sam.
“You don’t mind my askin’,” said Ben, “what y’all doin’ here?”
The woman spoke up. “We used to belong to Marse Morrison. He the biggest planter around these parts. We left his place when we heared them firin’ off for surrender.”
“Y’all are livin’ here?”
“We waitin’,” said the woman.
“What are you waiting for?” said Sam.
“Federals, I s’pose. Wait for the federals, find out what we s’pose to do now.”
“Anything in this town?” asked Ben. “Somethin’ to eat, maybe? Or someplace my friend can find a pair of shoes?”
“Don’t know nothin’ ’bout no shoes,” said the woman, “but we got venison. Brother here shot him a deer yesterday. You welcome to some stew.”
The one she called Brother gave her a disapproving look, his lips drawn up until they were just a knot of flesh almost touching his nose. Sam heard her say, “Shush that. We got plenty.”
Sam was about to beg off, but Ben moved forward, smiling at them. It was a real smile, not the strained parody of a smile he saved for white people. “Well, thank you,” he said. “Stew be just fine.”
Brother lowered the rifle from his shoulder as they passed. “Sorry ’bout that,” he said. “Can’t be too careful, nowadays.”
They entered an open space where a rough lean-to had been built from the detritus of destruction, planks of broken wood angled against the brick wall. It was, thought Sam, enough to keep the rain off, no more. The woman pointed and they sat at the entrance. Sam glanced inside and was surprised to see four or five books next to the bedrolls lying open on the dirt.
The woman introduced her family. The one with the gun was named Eli. She called him Brother because he was her brother. Her name was Sarah, but he called her Sister for the same reason. The boys were both hers. “They daddy got sold away a few years ago,” she said softly, pausing for a moment to watch as the boys chased one another through the open space where the building had been. “Don’t rightly know where he is now. They uncle they daddy now, I expect.”
“Not knowing where family is,” said Sam, “is something I am sure many of us have experienced.”
“Whoo, how he talk,” said Sister with a laugh. “He talk ’most white, don’t he, Brother?”
Brother ignored her. He regarded Sam with a sharp expression. “You lookin’ for someone?”
“We both are,” said Sam as he accepted a steaming plate ladled from a stewpot. “He is trying to find his daughter and her mother and I am trying to find my, well, wife, I suppose you’d say.”
“You s’pose?” said Brother, not bothering to hide his scorn.
“Well, there was not any real ceremony. There was nothing to make it legal.”
There was something almost cruel in the smile that curled Brother’s lips then. “You need some white man with a Bible to tell you who your wife is?”
Sam considered this. He thought of Tilda as she had looked holding their son, a contentment stealing across her face such as he had never seen, as if she could live in that moment the rest of her life and it would be enough, would be all she needed, ever. “No,” he said, “I do not.”
“Yeah,” said Brother, “I didn’t neither.”
“Guess ain’t a one of us ain’t lost somebody,” said Ben, quietly. He blew on a spoonful of stew.
There was a moment. Then Sarah said, “Sam, you don’t mind my askin’, do you know where your wife is?”
He shook his head. “The last time I saw her was on the old place in Mississippi. That was a long time ago.”
“I knew where Fletcher was, I might try to find him,” she said. “’Course, I got the boys to think of.”
“Need to give that up,” said Brother. His voice was granite, a cudgel dashing hope to death like some small furry animal.
“I know,” said Sister, her voice small, ashamed of itself. Sam had the sense he had wandered into the middle of some argument that had been going a long time. Would be going a long time yet.
“I just miss him sometimes,” she said. “That’s all.”
Ben had been chewing thoughtfully on a mouthful of venison. Now he nodded at the books. “Y’all likes to read?”
Sister smiled bashfully. “Naw, we can’t read. Them for the boys, for them to learn on.”
“Took them from Marse,” said Brother. “From his library. Him and Missus done run off, scared of the federals, so we took the wheelbarrow, put some books and things in there ’fore we lit out.”
“Don’t know what we gon’ do with ’em,” said Sister, laughing. Her teeth were brown, with wide gaps between them. It occurred to Sam that she was probably not nearly as old as she looked, that she might even have been pretty once. “We sure can’t traipse around the countryside pushin’ no wheelbarrow.”
“Man owed me that much, though,” said Brother, and his voice had narrowed to a thin sliver of ice. “All them years I worked for him, he treated me like some kind of mule or horse or somethin’? He owe me that much and a whole lot more.”
Sam said, “Do you not fear that he will come after you?”
Brother cast a meaningful glance toward the rifle, leaning against the brick wall within easy arm’s reach. “I hope he do,” he said. “You can see books ain’t all I took from him.”
“Brother angry,” said Sister.
“Damn right I am,” said Brother. The curse caused Sister to suck in her breath. He cut his eyes toward her and after a moment he said, “Sorry about the language, Sister, but it the truth.”
Suddenly, Sam was eager to get going. He forked up the last of the venison. The meat had a dark, full taste, and it occurred to him that he had not eaten so fine a meal in a very long time. He held up his plate. “Is there someplace I can wash this for you?”
In response, Brother snatched it from his hands and flipped it back against the brick wall, where it broke in several large pieces. “Missus’s plates,” he explained. “We put some of them in the wheelbarrow, too.”
Ben looked from Sam to Brother, carefully speared the last of the meat from his own plate and put it in his mouth, and then tossed the plate casually against the wall, where it shattered, the pieces landing atop the remains of Sam’s plate. They all looked at him. He gave them back a blankness that made them laugh. “Hell with ’em,” he said.
Brother nodded, still laughing. “Hell with ’em all.”
“Hell with ’em,” said Sister, eyes shining with her own mischief, one hand covering her mouth as if to hide the profanity that had just slipped out.
Sam was more certain than ever that she had, indeed, been pretty once. “To hell with them,” he said, completing the circle.
As the laughter renewed itself, he wondered if this wasn’t all a kind of madness, this idea of being free, of being governed only by your own wits and wants, of saying to hell with white people. A glorious madness.
It scared him a little. “We should be going,” he said. Ben, wiping amusement from the corners of his eyes, nodded. They thanked Sister and Brother for the meal and walked on, leaving the family standing before the lean-to in the shadow of a brick wall that had once framed a building that was no longer there.
“Hell with ’em,” said Ben, softly reminiscent.
“That is easy to say,” said Sam.
After a moment, Ben said, “Yeah.”
The street was packed mud, a gift from a recent rain, cool underfoot. But Sam knew he had to find something for his feet soon, else the miles and the rocks would tear his skin and leave him hobbling. He could not hobble all the way to Mississippi.
“Maybe shouldn’t of been so quick to throw that shoe away,” said Ben, as if he could just pluck Sam’s thoughts from a stack in his mind. “Might maybe could of fixed it someway.”
“Maybe,” said Sam, not liking the idea that his thoughts had somehow become transparent, “but there is nothing to be done for it now.” He found himself almost whispering the words. Something about the stillness of the dead town, the vast emptiness of it, seemed to demand that reverence. Not even birds flew overhead. As the business district gave way, they entered an area where houses had been reduced to frames, the wood deeply scored and still stinking of fire.
“They burned all the secessionitis out of this town,” said Ben. Sam didn’t answer, his eyes slowly searching the ruined landscape.
“Look there,” he said, pointing. It stood on the next block, the one house among dozens that was more intact than not. The front of it had been smashed, probably by a shell, and was collapsing in on itself like a drunkard. But the rest of the house was untouched. Even the paint looked fresh.
“You think maybe they some shoes in there?” asked Ben.
“There is only one way to find out,” said Sam, starting forward so abruptly that Ben had to hurry to keep up.
The front door was impassable. Sam walked slowly around. The windows were open. From the rear, it looked as if the owners had simply been called away and might return at any moment. Sam paused, fighting himself, wrestling down his own intuition.
The two men mounted the steps to the rear porch. Sam pushed at the door. It swung inward easily and without sound.
They found themselves in a parlor that smelled of smoke and shadows, of air that had known neither light nor movement in a very long time. The shades were drawn. It was hard to tell in the darkness, but the walls looked to be a sunny, incongruous yellow. The furniture was sturdy and serious. Decorative vases lined the shelves. Framed photographs watched the darkness. Sam took one down. He found himself staring into the face of a white woman, her eyes kindly above the hint of a smile, as if something unseen by the camera amused her greatly. She was seated. Towering behind her was a man, heavily bearded and with piercing eyes, one large hand resting proprietarily on the woman’s shoulder.
In her lap was a baby. It had moved before the exposure time lapsed, rendering its face an indistinguishable blur. You could not even tell if it was a boy or a girl. The child looked like a ghost of its own self, like a presentiment of death.
Ben was on the stairs. “Come on,” he said. “They gon’ have any shoes, they most likely be up yonder.”
His voice was unusually taut and Sam knew he felt it, too, the whisper of wrongness stirring the hairs in his ear at every step. Someone—someone white, even worse—had lived here not so long ago. The furnishings the two men walked among, the things they handled, the very air they breathed, belonged to someone. And though it was unlikely those people would choose this precise moment to return to their ruined home, there was, nevertheless, a sense of invasion in walking in their places, touching their things, being here when they were not.
Sam nodded, replacing the photograph on the buttery yellow shelf and following Ben. The stairs did not creak at the weight of them. The silence felt unnatural. It made you want to speak, want to snap your fingers or knock on wood just to hear the noise it made, just to assure yourself you still were there, still real.
“Don’t like this,” said Ben.
“Nor do I,” said Sam.
“We find you some shoes, you better hold on to ’em this time.”
It was a feeble joke and Sam knew it for what it really was. A need to throw words against the silence.
“I will,” he said. “You may depend on it.”
The stairwell gave onto a hallway that crossed it at a perpendicular angle. There were windows at either end. Someone had pulled the shades here, as well.
There were five doors, three lined up on the opposite side of the hall, two flanking the stairwell. Ben moved to his right, toward the first door. Sam followed.
Ben turned the knob, pushed the door open. This was a bedroom, a boy’s bedroom, to judge from the troop of painted wooden soldiers encamped on the gleaming wooden floor at the foot of an unmade bed. Clothes littered the room, spilled from the open top drawer of a dresser. There would be no men’s shoes in here. Sam and Ben backed out of the room, Ben pulling the door closed behind him.
“Look like they had to leave in a rush,” said Ben.
“Perhaps,” said Sam and his voice felt loud. “However, it could be the boy just isn’t very tidy.”
He tried the door across the hall. The handle was slimy in his sweaty fist. The door swung open into the cool darkness of what had apparently been a reading room. Books crowded the shelves. The rocking chair next to the oil lamp was inviting. Despite himself, Sam stepped forward, intending to read just a title or two. Ben caught his arm. “Can’t wear no books on your feet,” he said.
Sam looked at him. Sweat beaded his bald scalp. Ben’s mouth was a line strung taut between his cheeks. Sam nodded and they left this room, too. There were three more doors to check. Sam led them down the hall to the middle door. He tried it, it opened.
This was where the shell had hit. Most of the far wall was gone. Half the floor had collapsed into the porch below. A bed and a dresser lay strewn on their sides like the contents of a pocket dropped onto a table at the end of a wearying day. Ben pressed him from behind, but Sam warded him off with an arm and closed the door. “There is nothing in there,” he said. “The room was destroyed by the same explosion that destroyed the porch down below.”
Ben released a sigh that was almost a groan. “Two more,” he said.
They moved down the hallway to where the last two doors faced one another. “You take that one,” said Sam. “I will take this one.” Ben nodded, stepped into the other room. Sam tried his door. It swung open easily. Then his throat constricted and for a moment, he could not speak. His hand came automatically to his face to cover the smell.
She was there, the woman from the picture. She lay on the bed, fully dressed, staring at him with eyes that had been dead so long they had retreated into their sockets like some beast into its cave. There was a hole in her chest and her blouse was stiff with blood that had dried brown. The man lay on his back across her legs, his arms flung out from the great mass of him, as if to shrug at eternity. A black pistol lay on the floor where it had fallen from his left hand. The gunshot wound was in the temple. You could see chunks of desiccated tissue in the dried spatter on the wall.
“Oh, my God,” said Sam.
“Lord Jesus,” said Ben, suddenly at his side.
Sam had seen violent death before. He had seen it take men in midstride so that suddenly they flew backwards as if they had struck something human eyes could not see. He had seen it corkscrew men down to the ground, spurting blood and crying for their mothers. He had seen shells explode and men fall to the earth in pieces and chunks, like bloody confetti from some devil’s parade. But that was the battlefield—that was men contesting with other men and every man holding onto his life against other men trying to take it.
He had never seen death where a man brought it into the ordinariness of his very bedroom and inflicted it upon his wife and then himself. It was a species of horror he had never imagined.
“They seen the end comin’ and knowed they was gon’ lose,” said Ben. “They couldn’t stand it.”
“Yes,” said Sam, “but to take their own lives…?”
“Guess they rather that than live under ‘nigger domination,’ as they say.” Ben had moved past him and now flung open the closet. It was as empty as the dead woman’s eyes. “Somebody already been here,” he said. “Cleaned everything out.”
