Freeman, page 31
But she knew.
Walking down to the school—and how hard it was to stop using that word—was just what Miss Ginny had called it: an act of penance for all her sins of folly, arrogance and, yes, Lord, imprudence. So every day since it happened, she had walked the alley, come up the side of the building, unlocked the door, and entered upon a scene even her soul could not deny.
Shafts of sunlight tunneled the shadows, entering through the holes that bullets had punched in the walls. Glass still crunched under her feet, desks were still overturned, tables were still splintered, and papers still littered the floor from the brief struggle that had ensued when a few of the townspeople managed to force their way inside before the soldiers repulsed them. They had seized her. She still felt their hands upon her, still felt herself being carried away, her feet not touching the ground. And they had seized Bonnie. She still heard her sister scream.
Then Sergeant Russell lifted his rifle and shot and a white man fell dead with a bullet hole in his cheek and they melted off of her and she crawled back into the shelter of the school—crawled!—as soldiers swung the big doors closed, and she looked around for Bonnie.
And she looked around for Bonnie.
“Where is Bonnie?” she cried.
And Sergeant Russell lifted his shoulders. “We could not save her.”
“You must save her! You must go get her!”
“There are nine of us,” Russell told her. “There are hundreds of them.”
“You must save her!”
But they weren’t listening to her. The dead white man’s body was impeding the path of the door. Two of the soldiers rolled it into the street outside, and now the doors were being closed and the lock secured and chairs being used as barricades.
She heard a scream arise from somewhere outside. Then hail—no, bullets—coming through the door. Russell cried, “Get down!” She was slow to obey. A soldier tackled her to the floor, covering her body with his own. She could smell tobacco and onions. She could hear him breathing. Another soldier yelled, “I am shot!”
When the hailstorm ceased, Russell ordered them all upstairs. Someone scooped her up and carried her. Two others helped the wounded soldier, whose backside was squirting blood. They cleared a table, lay him atop it on his stomach, and one of them began attending to the wound.
There were windows in the loft overlooking the street. A rock sailed through, and a spray of glass splashed the floor. She heard, quite clearly, Bonnie’s scream. It did not sound human.
“Please,” she said. She was talking to Russell, who stood at the window watching the scene below, his face ashen and still. “Please save her.”
He looked at her. “Mrs. Kent,” he said, “I am not certain we will be able to save ourselves.”
Through the shattered glass, they watched the crowd mill about aimlessly for a moment. Then, as if they all decided at once, they moved south, toward the colored section. If they could not have the school, they would have the town and every colored face in it.
Prudence searched the mob for Bonnie. She did not see her.
They spent the night in the loft, for the most part too terrified to speak. Prudence could see the glow of distant fires, hear shrieks of pain that seemed like nothing a human throat could ever produce.
She thought of the mob not as a collection of maddened people, but as a single entity, a beast that prowled the colored section of the town, visiting devastation on anyone luckless or foolish enough to confront it. Because the animal did not listen to reason, the animal was insensate to pleadings and lament. The animal existed only to rend and tear.
And she had created it and set it loose.
She should have listened. She knew that now, walking the alley to the building that once had housed her school. But she had not listened, had she?
Up until that awful night now ten days past, her life had repeatedly taught her one lesson: too much time spent listening only allowed voices of timidity and cowardice to turn you from doing what you knew needed to be done, demanded to be done. In her experience, listening was too often just an excuse for fearfulness and inaction. If she had listened, after all, she would never have spirited a family of runaways out of Boston in a wagon with a false bottom, never have spoken out for the cause of abolition, never have known Bonnie as her sister.
And yet…
If she had listened, her sister would still be alive.
And then that next morning came, a dazed, hung-over morning wreathed with tendrils of smoke, and she finally ventured out from shelter with the company of soldiers, leaving the wounded man behind, and it felt very much as if they were the last people in all of God’s creation. Noah walking forth from the Ark could not have felt more lonely. Silence oppressed the town, clamped down on it as tightly as a lid to a jar so that she started a little when Russell ordered three of his men to go down to Socrates’s store, to break in, if need be, and send for help. His voice seemed unnaturally loud, an affront to the stillness.
As the soldiers ran to comply, Prudence asked Russell if she might check on Miss Ginny. He agreed with a curt nod and they moved up the street to the little house with the garden blooming in a riot of color out front.
Prudence knocked on the door. A taut voice answered her from the other side. “Get away from here, you devil. I got a gun and I’ll shoot you. Swear ’fore Jesus, I will.”
“Miss Ginny, it is Prudence.”
“Prudence?” The door opened just a sliver and the old woman peered out hesitantly. When she saw Prudence and the five Union soldiers standing behind her, she breathed a long sigh. “You all right,” she said, opening the door wider. “Thank you, Jesus.”
And then confusion creased her brow. “But where Bonnie?” she asked.
It was the hardest thing Prudence had ever said. “They took her last night.”
The old woman’s eyes filled. “She dead then.” Her voice wobbled like a child learning to walk. “God help her soul, but she dead.”
Prudence tried to reply, but her throat constricted, squeezing tight against the words. Nothing came out.
Miss Ginny grabbed her hand. “You need to get in here.”
“No,” Prudence managed to say. “I need to go and see for myself what has happened.”
“I would prefer it if you stay behind, Mrs. Kent,” said Russell. “The sights we are likely to see will not be fit viewing for a lady such as yourself.”
“No.” Winter snows lay thick upon that single word. “I need to see, sergeant, and I will. The only question is whether I shall be in the protection of Union soldiers when I do.”
He sighed. “Pity the man that marries you. You are a handful, you are.”
It was a grumble of defeat in which she once would have taken immense pride. But there was no pride left in her that morning. So she just waited for him to turn away and followed when he did. Together, Prudence and the soldiers wandered in silence through the remnants of mass madness.
The streets were littered with the detritus of other people’s lives. Prudence’s feet scuffed against other people’s papers, pieces of other people’s furniture, dolls belonging to other people’s children, ambrotype images of other people and their families staring up with solemn pride from fractured glass and broken frames. Houses were smashed and burned, the wood left blackened and deeply scored. In one house, flames still burned low, slowly dying for lack of fuel.
They found the bodies hanging in a single tree before the remains of someone’s home. There were twelve of them, tongues protruding, rope biting into their skin, necks elongated, heads turned to unnatural angles. No one spoke, or needed to. The only sound was the occasional creaking of a rope or angry buzzing of a fly. Prudence’s knees turned to water. Horror rushed up from her gut and she went to her knees to vomit in the dirt. One of the soldiers fell down beside her and did the same.
These people were not simply dead. They were ruined. They were desecrated. Burned. Gouged. Skinned.
There was Paul, head on his chest, face smashed in on itself, covered with a crust of blood.
There was Rufus, peppery old Rufus, deep wounds marring the smooth black crown of his scalp, creamy white bone showing through at the shoulder.
There was a man she didn’t know. Or maybe she had once; there was no way to tell. His body was only a husk, a hollow-eyed black thing so badly charred she feared the merest touch would turn it to ash.
Lord, there was poor little Bug, the big eyes distended now in the horror of his own grotesque death.
And there was Bonnie, the only woman, her hands empty and limp, her dress torn, her skin gray, her face bloody, her tongue between her lips, her eyes mercifully closed.
Oh, sister. Oh, Miss Bonnie.
Prudence took Bonnie’s hand. It was cold and rough with scars, the fingernails broken. She brought the hand against her forehead, closed her eyes and wept as she had not even wept when the news came that her husband had been killed at Gettysburg.
How many thousands of nights had they lain awake in the same bed, one having snuck into the other’s room? How many hundreds of childish confidences had they shared? How many dozens of arguments had they had? How many smiles and pouts and walks in the square and summer evenings on the front stoop watching the sky turn to gold and then to black as fireflies winked at them from the gathering shadows?
How many? Too many for it all to come down to this, a brutal death in a godforsaken Mississippi town.
“Cut them down,” said Sergeant Russell. “Someone find a Bible and give them a decent burial.”
He put an arm around her shoulder. “Come,” he said, and his gruff voice was oddly gentle. “That’s enough.”
A soldier had clambered into the tree and was using his knife on the rope that held Bonnie. Another braced her from below. The man in the tree sawed through the rope and Bonnie’s body folded itself over the shoulder of the soldier below. Prudence allowed herself to be led away.
She did not know what to do. For the first time in her entire life, she had no idea, no plan, no sure and certain sense of what came next. It was as if she no longer knew herself, as if she no longer was herself, as if something essential to who she was had died that same awful night.
Maybe just surety and certainty themselves. Maybe it was as simple as that.
The soft nickering of the horse drew her up out of herself, pulled her out of that morning and back into this one, ten days later. She glanced up and saw it by the light of the swiftly paling moon, a horse’s muzzle poking out from behind the building. It was a big roan and its one visible eye watched her with an almost human intelligence. When she paused warily, the horse whinnied again, as if urging her closer.
Prudence came forward slowly, until she was standing in front of the animal. She placed the flat of her palm on its forehead. “Where did you come from?” she whispered. And then she saw the dead man.
He was colored, lying with his face in the dirt, clothing torn, face bruised, and blood everywhere—even, now that she looked, smeared on the horse’s flanks. She knelt gingerly, seeking his face. She would be surprised if she knew it. Most of the colored men in town—most of the colored people in town—were still hiding in the woods and fields where they had fled the night the rampage began. This man was probably from someplace out in the country. She wondered if he was another victim of white people who had lost their minds. She had been told that the rumor of a marauding colored army had now spread far from town.
Prudence touched his face and something that could not happen did. The dead man moved. It was just a flicker of his eye—as if something unwelcome troubled his dreams—and for a moment, she tried to convince herself she hadn’t seen it. But there was still warmth in his skin, and his chest—she could see this even in the meager light of the newborn day—rose and fell in a frail rhythm. The dead man was alive.
She flew down the alley and back through Miss Ginny’s door, crying out her name. The old woman came out of her bedroom, eyes wide and shiny. “Land sakes, child. What’s wrong?”
“There is a man out there. He has been injured! We must help him!”
Moments later, Prudence rushed back down the alley, Miss Ginny as close behind her as age and infirmity would permit. The horse was still where she had left it, as was the man. Prudence was almost surprised. She had half expected to come back and find nothing at all, proof she had hallucinated the whole thing. Miss Ginny came up behind her. She looked closely. “You sure he alive?” she said.
Prudence nodded. “Yes, I am certain of it,” she said. “He has been dreadfully injured, though.”
“Yes, he has.” She pointed. “You see that?”
Prudence came closer and saw what she hadn’t before. The stranger was missing an arm. “My God,” she said, “what happened to him?”
“Time for that later,” said Miss Ginny. “Got to get him off the street. Whoever done this to him might be lookin’ to finish it off.”
Prudence hadn’t thought of that. “How can we do that?” she asked. She could look at him and know there was no way she could lift him, much less carry him back down the alley.
“Got to drag him,” Miss Ginny said. “Use the horse. Take him into the warehouse.”
Warehouse. Even distracted as she was by dilemma, some part of Prudence caught the word and it pricked her like a needle. Warehouse, not school. She shook her head, impatient with her own thoughts. “Dragging him could worsen his injuries,” she said.
Miss Ginny pursed her lips. “Can’t get too much worse than it already is,” she replied.
Prudence found a rope inside the warehouse. She tied one end to the pommel on the horse’s saddle, the other to the man’s shoes. Then Miss Ginny led the horse, slowly as possible, gently as possible, while Prudence supported the man’s head, and they dragged him inside. Prudence had the sense they were hauling not a man, but a thing—a sack of flour or beans. At one point, Prudence paused and knelt to check him, convinced the ordeal meant to save his life had taken it instead.
“He dead?” asked Miss Ginny, and Prudence almost thought she detected a note of hope. But she shook her head no. “Stubborn man,” Miss Ginny said. And now the note in the old woman’s voice was of admiration.
It took them a few minutes, but finally they had him in the old warehouse. Prudence ran down to Miss Ginny’s house for some linens and they made him a pallet on the floor. Then they knelt beside him and got to work.
From a cabinet in the loft, Prudence retrieved medical supplies left over from the days when the old warehouse had served as a military hospital. They cut his clothes away, gently dabbed the blood and grime from his skin, and dressed his wounds. The worst of them was a gash in his lower back.
Miss Ginny made a small fire in the potbellied stove from pieces of paper and splinters of desk, heated a knife blade, and then pressed it to the skin. There was a hissing sizzle that made Prudence wince. But Miss Ginny’s hands worked with a deft dexterity that magnetized Prudence’s eyes. “You have doctored wounded men before,” she said as the older woman lifted the blade to survey her work.
Miss Ginny glanced at her. “Too many times,” she said. “In the war.”
She applied the hot metal to bare skin again. The man barely flinched and Prudence found herself wondering, and hating herself for the thought, if all this effort would not prove itself wasted. He had been through so much—you could see the map of his sufferings in the bruises and scars that covered him to the very bottom of his feet. How much could a man take and still live? Or want to?
After a moment Miss Ginny said, “I’m finished. How is he?”
Prudence lay her ear against the stranger’s broad back. After a moment she said, “He is still breathing.”
“Too stubborn to stop,” said Miss Ginny. She beckoned to Prudence. “Come here, gal, and help me up.”
Prudence stood, then braced Miss Ginny as the older woman came to her feet, grunting with the effort.
Prudence nodded toward the figure on the pallet. “Do you think he will live?”
“That’s betwixt him an’ God,” Miss Ginny said. “I expect they arguin’ over that right now.”
“I hope he does live,” said Prudence, still looking down. “There has been enough dying here.”
“Lord know that’s true,” said Miss Ginny, one hand massaging an ache in her right flank. “I’m going down to the house, rest a bit. You stayin’ here?”
“Yes,” said Prudence.
“Expected you would,” said Miss Ginny. “Tie the horse up yonder,” she added, pointing to a corner of the room. “Get him some water. I get some oats for him later.”
“I will,” said Prudence.
But she didn’t move, not at first. For a long moment after Miss Ginny was gone, she simply stood there watching the half-dead man. Something familiar tugged at her and it took a while before she knew it for what it was. For the ten days since the rampage, she had wandered about without it, and for a woman whose life had so long been marked by moving forward, always forward, toward definable goals, the absence was disconcerting. Purpose. She felt it again. It was a small purpose, perhaps, in the grand sweep of things, but it was purpose nevertheless—and she held to it with a fierceness and a firmness.
Purpose.
She would keep this stubborn man alive.
The day sat on the verge of twilight, but you could not tell by the heat. It still shimmered in angry waves off the dirt road, glanced painfully off window glass and the belt buckles of passersby. On a chair in front of the warehouse sat Prudence, her blouse wet and gray, sweat drooling off her brow. She fanned herself miserably with an ornamental fan her father had once brought home from Philadelphia.
Inside the warehouse, she knew, the temperature was even worse and she felt guilty for sitting out front while the half-dead man lay insensate on a scavenged cot inside. But she had spent the last half hour trying to ensure his comfort. She had changed his dressings, then raised him into a sitting position and spooned water and soup broth into him.
