Freeman, page 33
None of what the old woman told her contradicted the fundamental truths Prudence had been taught to believe: her father had been saved by a colored freeman who took him in and treated him like a son. Her father had gone South every year to buy the freedom of some poor man, woman or family held in slavery, and he had loathed slavery. All of it was true and yet, all of it was now a lie.
And the biggest lie, she realized, might be herself. She herself might be colored, and this wizened little woman with chestnut skin might be her grandmother.
“Who knows about this?” she asked.
“Some of the old folks,” said Miss Ginny. “Not so many of the young ones. Some of the older ones, they wanted to tell you, but I ain’t let ’em. Had to think on it, first. Ain’t everyday you tell someone she might be colored. Or part colored, which is the same thing.”
The sound of her own voice surprised her. “But I am white,” whispered Prudence. “For goodness sake, Ginny, look at me and you will see not a trace of African blood. I am white as paper. I have red hair. There is no chance my mother could have been colored.”
Miss Ginny shrugged. “Maybe,” she said. “I suppose that’s what make this such a pickle, child. We’ll never know for sure.”
The awful truth of that settled over Prudence like a shroud. Miss Ginny saw. “Do it bother you,” she said, eyeing Prudence closely, “knowing you might be part colored?”
“Of course it does,” said Prudence. “It is a lot to consider.”
Miss Ginny reflected on that for a moment, then nodded to herself and stood. “Then I leave you to it,” she said. Pause. “Are you sorry I told you?”
She wanted reassurance, Prudence knew. And that was surely odd, because Prudence did, too. “I do not know,” said Prudence, and there was a new helplessness in her voice. She was grateful when the little woman didn’t speak again, just hobbled back down the street, empty lemonade glass in her hand.
Prudence felt Bonnie’s absence with a knife blade’s keenness. If only her sister were there, she would know what to say, would know how to push and cajole and even vex Prudence in a way that helped her to understand the mysteries of her own heart.
“Honey,” the old woman had said, “they all that sort of man.”
But not John Matthew Cafferty, she had wanted to insist, wanted to cry. Not her father. Not the man whose teachings had been the very cornerstone of her. Not him, too.
They all that sort of man.
But maybe she was right. Maybe they were.
Look at him: He had not acted from lofty principle. He had not acted from noble ideals. No, he had only acted from the guilty conscience of a small man whose misbehavior led to a tragic thing. And for all those years, he had allowed her to believe otherwise, had accepted accolades from the abolitionist societies, preached with fire for the cause of freedom, beamed in the adoration of his friends, his daughters, her.
So long had he lived this lie, she thought, that he probably forgot it was not true. No, he had passed the lie down to his daughters like some loathsome family trait and they, unknowing, had lived it as well. Her confidence, her sense of self and of place, seemed relics from another life. She knew nothing. She was no one.
Prudence had no idea how long she sat there. But when next she became aware of herself and her surroundings, the long shadows were melting together. In a few minutes, the light would be gone. Mechanically, she took the chair and the empty glass inside and lit a lamp.
Pushing absently at the tears that trailed down her cheek, Prudence went to check on the half dead man. She would make sure he was still breathing before she went upstairs to her makeshift bed in the loft and tried to read herself to sleep.
The circle of light fell on him. She leaned over to take a look and her heart kicked painfully. His eyes were open.
Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh my Lord,” she said. “You are awake.”
He answered her in a rasping whisper. “Who are you?” he asked.
And Prudence could only laugh.
“My name is Mrs. Prudence Cafferty Kent,” the white woman said.
“Where…?” His voice had become a mere rumor of itself. He was so weak. And Lord, the pain. His every joint and limb and square inch of skin pulsed with echoes of the same angry throb. Yet apparently, he was alive. The idea rather surprised him.
“Do not try to speak,” the woman said.
He had a sense of having lived this episode before. It took him a moment to place it. Then he remembered the day he had awakened in the hospital in Philadelphia to find another white woman, Mary Cuthbert, leaning over him. He had always marked that moment as his restoration to life. Apparently, life still was not finished with him. Sam swallowed dust. “Where am I?” he asked.
“You are in Buford,” said the woman. “We found you outside. You were beaten badly. We did as much for you as we could.”
“‘We?’”
“Ginny. A freedwoman. She is a friend.”
“You saved my life,” he said.
“We did what anyone would have done.”
He doubted this, but did not say. “May I have water?” he rasped.
“Yes, of course,” she said.
She disappeared from his sight for a moment and returned with a glass of water. She lifted his head—God, how it hurt—and brought the glass to his lips. The water was warm, but he drank it greedily, then automatically brought his left hand up to wipe his wet cheeks. Instead, the stub of his ruined arm came into view and he remembered. He sank into the cot with a grunt that had nothing to do with physical pain.
“Are you all right, Mr….?”
“Freeman,” he said. And saying it, he could not help reflecting how haughtily he had once pronounced that name. How proud it had made him then. Now it was only a name. “Sam Freeman,” he said. It was only then that he caught it. She had called him “mister.” No white person had ever called him “mister.” Not even Mary Cuthbert had ever called him “mister.”
He looked at her with new interest. “You are not from here,” he said.
“I am from Boston,” she said softly. “I came two months ago when the war ended to start a school for the freedmen.”
“That was a noble gesture.”
“The school is closed now,” she said.
“Closed? Why?”
She straightened. “We will talk about that another time,” she said. “For now you must rest. I will go and tell Ginny you have awakened. She will be pleased to hear.”
The white woman stepped away from him, closing the door on further questions. Sam had the impression she was in a hurry to get away. He lay there in the stifling heat, every movement a torture, questions with no outlet circling in his mind. What day was it? How long had he been here? How badly was he hurt? Who was this woman and why had she seemed in such a hurry to get away? What was this place?
He turned his head—about the only movement that did not cost him pain—and allowed his eyes to rove the vast room by the light from the lamp Mrs. Kent had left behind. In the corner, in some kind of makeshift stall, Bucephalus dozed. The big doors looming above were pocked with holes. They could almost have been bullet holes. The vast room was filled with broken and overturned desks. The floor was a carpet of papers covered with childish scrawls.
And he realized with a start that this was it. This was the school she had spoken of.
My God, what happened here?
He resolved to ask her when she returned. But he was so weak, so tired. After a moment, he dozed.
Sam’s screams rang through the old warehouse, wordless shrieks of mingled rage and fear that jolted Prudence out of a light sleep and sent her trotting down the stairs from the loft. She found him, the shadow of him, just visible in the thin white light of the moon, sitting upright on the cot, his breath pushing in and out of him in great, fast gusts, his entire body trembling as if wracked by some arctic chill. She paused a few feet short of him.
“Mr. Freeman?”
He did not look her way, did not answer, seemed to have concentrated his whole will simply on the act of being.
“Mr. Freeman?”
“I apologize for having wakened you,” he said finally, still not looking at her. “I did not know you were up there. I had a bad dream.”
“You had a nightmare,” she said. She sat on the cot next to him.
He nodded. “I had them often when first I left the Army. I have not had one for a very long time.”
“What did you dream?”
He looked at her. “I dreamt of the men who attacked me.”
“You were attacked? Well, I feared as much from your injuries. What happened to you?”
He didn’t speak. She waited. It took a long moment. She waited. “I went back to the place where I was…owned,” he said. He paused before the last word as before a hostile door.
“Why would you do that?” she asked.
“I went looking for my wife,” he told her. “I have not seen her since I left that place 15 years ago. I was hoping she might be there still.”
“But you did not find her?”
“No. I found only my old mistress and a gang of white men who set out to stomp me to death because they thought I was part of some Negro militia.”
At those words, Prudence felt some unspeakable cold shiver her blood. “Is that what they called it, Mr. Freeman? A Negro militia? Were those the exact words they used?”
He glanced at her with sudden interest. “Well, no,” he said. “They called it a…”
She spoke into the pause. “They called it a nigger army,” she said. “They used that odious word, did they not?”
“Yes,” he said, “they did. But how did…?”
Prudence did not hear. “Damn them,” she hissed, stabbing to her feet. She felt fire in her cheeks and tears in her eyes. “Damn them all to hell.”
“Mrs. Kent? Mrs. Kent, what is wrong?”
She mashed at the tears. “I am sorry, Mr. Freeman. I am so very sorry.”
“I do not understand.”
“I am afraid I am to blame for the attack upon you.”
“I still do not understand.”
Prudence sighed. “I told you I had opened a school here, did I not? The people hereabouts—the white people, at least—sought to frighten us off. And when the attacks became too much to bear, I allowed some of the freedmen to establish a guard here and very foolishly sought to arm them, though I never did. It was from this that rumors grew that we were raising, as you call it, a Negro militia, and planning an insurrection. Once begun, the rumor took on a life of its own. It spread throughout the countryside, far from town.”
“This was your school,” he said, “this building.”
“Yes,” she said. “They destroyed it. They destroyed half the town. Many people were killed, many injured just as yourself. All because of me.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I know it,” she said.
“You are wrong,” he said. “These people require no excuse for violence. Their own wretched anger and bitterness are all the reason they need. Had it not been your so-called Negro militia that inspired them to attack this place, it would have been something else, trust me. Look at me if you do not believe that. Look at my arm.”
“I had assumed you lost it in the war.”
Sam shook his head. “I lost it just some weeks ago.”
“What do you mean?”
“Someone shot me in Tennessee. A white man mistook me for another Negro man he was hunting.”
“You rode here from Tennessee?”
He shook his head again. “No, I walked here, from Philadelphia. My former mistress gave me the horse to help me escape the men who tried to kill me.”
Prudence’s mouth came open. “You walked from Philadelphia? Why, that must be a thousand miles. That is the most astonishing thing I have ever heard.”
“I told you,” he said. “I was looking for my wife. I needed to find her.”
“Needed? Past tense?”
Sam didn’t answer the question and she was embarrassed to have asked it. After a moment, Prudence sat back down on the cot.
“Such devotion is inspiring,” she said. “What is your wife’s name?”
“Tilda,” he said. “Her name was Tilda. Is Tilda, I suppose, assuming she still lives.”
“You have suffered a great deal searching for her. We could see in the marks on your body.”
Sam’s head came up and he regarded her with eyes that seemed to see all the way through her. “Yes,” he said, “I have. But then, many of us are suffering just now, each in his or her own way. I suspect you know this as well as anyone. Suffering is hardly unique these days, is it?”
She felt the sting in her eyes and willed it back. He had spoken more truly than he could ever know. “No,” she said, after a moment, “there is nothing unique about suffering.”
She allowed him two more days to regain his strength. On the morning of the third, she came to him and told him he must get up, must exercise if he ever hoped to recover. He protested that he was not yet ready. She insisted he was. He pointed out that he knew his own pain better than she. She listened for an impatient moment, then to his surprise grabbed his forearm and pulled. Biting back a shriek of pain, Sam came to his feet.
Alone in the stifling warehouse, they practiced walking. She told him to lean on her, but Sam shook his head and said he would use a walking stick. She was a white woman and this was Mississippi. He knew better than to even stand too close to her, much less to put his arm around her.
Sam thought that was the end of it. But she made an impatient sound and to his horror, circled her left arm around his waist. Sam was alarmed at her sudden closeness, her cheek pressing against his chest. “Mrs. Kent!” he cried. His heart punched heavily and his arm didn’t know where to go.
She looked up at him. Her eyes were green and annoyed. “What is it, Mr. Freeman?”
“I cannot do this,” he said. “I am a colored man and you are—”
“You are a colored man and I am the white woman who is trying to help you walk again. Or do you propose to spend the remainder of your days lying on the floor in an old warehouse? Shall we train the horse over there to bring you water and empty your chamber pot upon your beck and call?”
Sam pushed an angry gust of breath through his nostrils. “There is no need for you to mock me,” he said. She was an exasperating woman.
“Do you think I care that you are angry?” she said. “If so, please be assured that I do not. Your fears are unfounded. We are behind locked doors. No one can see you inside here with your terrible brown hand touching my precious white skin. Now, you will lean on me, Mr. Freeman, and you will walk.”
He stared down at her, searching her face for something that wasn’t steel. He didn’t find it. Sighing, muttering in anger, he draped his confused arm upon her shoulder and took a step. A bolt of lightning shot immediately from the small of his back. He squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on breathing as the flash of fire was seconded by smaller eruptions from the healing contusions that covered his entire body. His knee rebelled at the full weight of him and he could not straighten his leg. Sam had not known it was possible to hurt so badly in so many places and yet still live.
In the darkness of eyes closed, he heard her voice at his ear. “That’s the way, Mr. Freeman,” she said. “Keep going. Do not give them the satisfaction of leaving you a cripple.”
He opened his eyes. “The satisfaction they sought was to make me dead,” he said.
“Then you have already frustrated them once,” she said. “Consider how gratifying it will be to do so again.”
“The most gratifying thing,” said Sam, “would be never to see them again.” The pain was ebbing. He steeled himself, knowing the lightning would come again with the next step. And then he took that step.
“So you intend to leave Mississippi?”
“Yes,” he said, “just as soon as I am fit to travel.” Tears were leaking down his cheek. “What of you? Have you not had your fill of Dixie?”
“I have not decided,” she said. “Perhaps I will return to Boston. I truly loathe the thought.”
“Why is that?”
“I hate to let them run me off,” she said. “We do not know each other well, but if we did, you would know that is not in my character.”
“I believe I am coming to know something about your character, actually.”
The shadow of a smile passed her lips. “Come,” she said, “let us take another step.”
She braced him and he lifted his foot and brought it down, grinding his teeth as pain cut a jagged path down the length of him. For a minute, he exhaled his agony in winded gusts. Not long ago he had been a man who could and did walk a thousand miles. Now he had become a man who had to measure the steps and suck in his breath even to make it to the end of an old warehouse and back. It was a humbling thing.
“Tell me about Tilda,” said Mrs. Kent.
He gazed down into her disconcertingly direct gaze.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean that it is not every woman a man would walk a thousand miles to find. You must have loved her a very great deal.”
“I did,” he said.
“I once had a man who loved me a great deal,” she said. “My husband Jamie. He died in the war.”
“I am sorry.”
“I would like to think he would have loved me well enough to walk from Philadelphia to Buford as you did, Mr. Freeman, but I honestly do not know.”
“Please call me Sam,” he said.
“I will, Sam, if you will call me Prudence.”
“Well, Prudence, I am certain your husband would have walked those miles. When you love someone, distance is immaterial.”
She gave him a dubious look. “That is an easy thing to say, Sam. It is much more difficult to imagine yourself actually doing it. Especially after 15 years. So much can change in so many years. Many men—I daresay, most men—would not have undertaken what you did.”
