Freeman, page 43
Sam fashioned four poles from sapling limbs and set them out in the river. When he checked the lines an hour later, he’d caught three catfish. Sam gutted them and cooked them over a fire while Tilda watched. When they were done eating, Sam handed Tilda his bedroll, which he had purchased in Little Rock. He gave it without a sound and she accepted it the same way. Sam lay on his back in the summer grass, folded his arm across his chest, and slept.
He awoke in the morning to find her watching him. Her eyes were intent, as if she were struggling with a puzzle she couldn’t quite figure out. When she saw him looking at her, she yanked her eyes away and busied herself scraping a mud spot on her dress.
“We should reach the spot today,” Sam told her. Her eyes questioned him. “The spot where Luke died,” he amended.
A hard look he couldn’t read settled upon her face. He produced the last of the dried meat he had bought in Little Rock and they had it for breakfast.
When they were done eating, Sam began saddling Bucephalus. As he worked, his thoughts turned themselves toward practical matters. What kind of shape was Tilda in? Could she take a long, hard journey across country on horseback? Especially living hand to mouth, as such a journey would require?
He could, he supposed, go to Buford—it wasn’t far—and ask Prudence for help. She would not have left for Boston yet, and she probably wouldn’t turn them away.
But Prudence had already done so much. He already owed her more than he could ever repay. Could he really go now and ask her to help him and the woman for whom he had abandoned her? He played that conversation over in his head a half dozen times. He could not find a way to make it work.
So they were on their own then. Fine. He would figure something out. Sweating from the exertion of cinching the girth with his one hand, he stood, his hand absently stroking the horse’s neck. Lost in thought, he didn’t hear Tilda behind him, didn’t know she was there until she placed her hand atop his. Startled, he turned, and nearly tumbled over into the brown eyes that looked up at him.
“I am sorry,” she said. “I had no cause to speak to you that way. Yesterday, I mean.”
“It is all right,” he said. “I understand.”
“Do you?” she took her hand away. “How can you? I am not sure I understand myself.”
“I just meant that I took no offense. You have the right to be”—pause, reaching for a word that made sense, finding none—“vexed.”
Her eyebrow lifted and he thought she almost smiled. “Vexed? Is that what I am?”
“Angry,” he said. “Hurt, furious, sad…” A sigh. “You tell me, Tilda. I do not know.”
“Nor do I,” she said. “So much has happened. I barely know how to understand it all.” Her gaze sharpened and she regarded him closely. “Why did you come down here, Sam?” she asked.
“You already know why,” he said. “I came here for you. All those years, I tried not to think about you, because thinking about you hurt too much. I had to make myself believe you did not exist. But then, when I heard them firing off for the surrender, all I could think about was you. I could no more make myself stop than I could sprout wings and fly. That is when I knew I had to come down here. I quit my job the next day.”
“How did you think you would ever find me?”
“I had no idea. I only knew that I had to try.”
She didn’t answer. She looked at him for a very long time and he had that sense again, of her eyes trying to work out a puzzle whose pieces just didn’t fit. Finally she said, “That’s a long way to walk.”
“It was about a thousand miles,” he said.
“Long way,” she repeated. She shook her head and went to fold up the bedroll.
When she was done, Sam helped her climb into the saddle and they were off. They traveled east at a moderate pace. Sam walked part of the way, leading the horse, in order to give the animal a break. Sam’s knee was stronger now, his limp barely perceptible. The ache in his foot remained, but it had become a normal part of his body.
Tilda still didn’t speak much, so Sam spoke to her. He had the impression that she enjoyed—no, that she appreciated—his talking to her.
So he told her how Miss Prentiss had sold him to a speculator 15 years ago who, in turn, sold him to a planter in Louisiana. The planter, impressed by Sam’s bearing, had made him a butler. Sam was on that place for seven years, holding coats, fetching cigars, dusting balustrades, serving soups. The planter had seemed quite fond of him.
It was a good life for a slave. Sam slept in the big house, supervised the household staff, ate the same food his master ate, albeit at a table in a corner of the kitchen. His new master trusted him, right up until the night Sam climbed out his bedroom window and ran for freedom.
“I never gave up on wanting to be free,” he told Tilda, as he led the horse past a field where colored men chopped cotton, their arms gleaming with sweat, their hoes rising and falling in ceaseless rhythm.
He had known better what he was doing this time, he told her. He painstakingly made contacts on the underground railroad. And so it was, hiding in cellars and crates, riding in false-bottomed hay wagons, he slipped inexorably north until that dark, moonless night a ferryman took him across the Ohio River. From Kentucky into Ohio. From slavery into freedom.
He had stood there on the banks of the river facing south, facing the land of his lifelong captivity. He had listened as the water lapped at the ferryman’s retreating barge, watched as the ferryman’s lamp grew smaller until it was swallowed by darkness. He had wept.
For a few years, he told her, he had lived quietly in Ohio, where he found work as a stevedore. Then the war broke out. He yearned to fight from its beginning, but it took two long years before the Union began recruiting colored men. Finally, Sam had gone to Philadelphia to enlist, had seen action, then had taken ill with a wasting disease and been sent back to Philadelphia to die, but somehow lived instead, with Mary Cuthbert’s help. And there his life had stood until the news came that the war had ended, and on a day’s notice, he had abandoned everything to come looking for her.
“I should have come sooner,” he said.
“How could you have done that?” she asked. “You were a runaway. They would have captured you and taken you back.”
“Still, I should have tried,” he said. “When I think of what you were going through while I was reading books in a Philadelphia rooming house…”
“It is not your fault,” she told him.
“Yes, but…”
“It is not your fault,” she said again, staring down at him for emphasis.
In his mind, he knew she was right. But his mind had no power to convince his heart. His heart had but one response to every line of reasoning he tried to put forward, one answer it gave with pitiless insistence.
Raped and beaten. Over and over again.
Raped.
Beaten.
Over and over again.
God.
He tried to imagine what she had gone through, but he couldn’t. He realized that in some cowardly corner of his being, the failure made him glad. He hated this McFarland with a sudden intensity that vibrated him like a tuning fork. Look what he had done, this slave owner, this trader inhuman souls. He had killed Tilda in every way except actual body. Had killed the sureness, the quick laughter, the deep compassion and loving warmth of her, and left in their place only this cold, mute stranger who regarded the world with an almost animal wariness.
Sam had never felt this way about any man. He had not even known it was possible to feel this way, to be filled with so much loathing. And he knew with a sudden stark certainty that he would kill this man if he ever got the chance, would do it happily and without hesitation.
But he would never have that chance, would he? The realization left a hard little knot of disappointment in his throat. He swallowed. “Tell me about him,” he said.
“About who?” she asked.
“This McFarland person.”
She stiffened. “I would rather not,” she said. “No good can come from talking about that one. It only makes me sad and reminds me of days I would rather not recall.”
“All right,” he said. He should have known better, he thought. He should have known she would find the thought of him too painful to bear.
A minute passed. Then she said. “I will tell you this much, because I think you need to know: he will not give me up without a fight. You keep saying how he has no legal authority to take me back, now the war is over and slavery is done. What you do not understand is that those kinds of things mean nothing to Jim McFarland. That is not the way he thinks.
“He was always bad, but toward the end of the war, he saw his little boy killed by a group of Yankee raiders, and I think it unhinged him. He is not right in his head, Sam, do you understand? He refuses to let go—maybe he can’t let go—of the idea that colored people are slaves, always. Always, you hear me? No matter what the government or the law says. And if you will not be his slave, then he will kill you, pure and simple. I saw him do it, Sam. When we got word of the surrender, Wilson and Lucretia, two young ones sweet on each other, thought they might go away and have a life on their own. He tracked them down like some kind of bloodhound and shot them in cold blood, shot them down like mad dogs. I saw him do this, Sam.”
He met her eyes, which were earnest and wide. “He is searching for me, Sam. I guarantee it. Do you have a gun?”
Sam said, “No.” Then, remembering, he amended. “Well, I have a little derringer a friend gave me.” He patted the bag hanging from his belt. “I keep it in here.”
“If he comes upon us, you must be prepared to shoot him without hesitation. Do you hear me? Do not try to talk to him, do not try to reason with him. Just shoot him if you see him. Do you understand?”
Her intensity shook him. “Yes,” he said. “I understand.”
Her eyes questioned his. Then, apparently satisfied with what she had seen, she turned back, once again pinioning her hands beneath her arms. He left her alone with her thoughts.
It was early afternoon when they reached the Prentiss plantation. Orienting himself from there, Sam turned the horse off the road and into the woods. He was back in the saddle by now and the sun, when it managed to pierce the latticework covering of leaves overhead, warmed the left side of his face; thus he knew they were traveling north. The woods were different seen in daylight 15 years later, but he was certain this was the route he had traveled with Luke.
They rode in silence for hours into the deep woods, into a past that was never far enough from Sam’s memory. His son, his handsome, spirited son in whom was met the best of Tilda and Sam, had paced him through these trees, following the North Star shining on the handle of the little drinking gourd in the sky.
How eager Luke had been to be free. How impatiently he had listened in the days before they ran, as his mother raised objection after objection, demanded to know why they couldn’t just be happy with a mistress who treated them well.
Well treated or not, Sam would say, they were still slaves. Then he quoted the Frenchman: “‘No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others.’”
She would just roll her eyes and say, “I’m sorry I ever taught you to read.”
But their son, their beautiful Luke, would listen, enraptured, drinking in the words like icy water on a scalding day. And when they had run, he had done so with abandon, leaping ahead as if he could not wait to be free. He was every inch his father’s son. And it had gotten him killed.
Here.
Sam had wondered if he would recognize the spot when he saw it. Now as he reined the horse in a sun-splashed clearing, he realized all at once that he need not have worried. The stain this place had made upon his memory was indelible. Awkwardly, he climbed down. The soil was spongy beneath his feet.
Tilda said, “Sam?”
He said, “It happened right here.”
Her eyes rounded. She slipped down off the horse, stood next to him. Sam pointed. “We were sleeping right there,” he said. “The slave catchers came through there and woke us. Luke tried to run and a trigger-happy fool shot him. He fell right there, near that log.”
Sam half expected to see his son’s bones still scattered about the spot where he died, his skull grinning at them as if in macabre greeting. But apparently, someone had retrieved the body and buried it. Perhaps Miss Prentiss had it done.
Tilda was walking slowly about the clearing as if in a daze, as if she no longer knew herself or her surroundings. She gazed around and Sam had the impression she was memorizing this place. Then she paused, facing him. “Did he suffer?” she asked.
Sam shook his head. “No,” he said, “it was quick.”
She nodded, paced around some more. Sam stood, holding the reins of the horse, watching her. None of it felt quite real. He had the odd sense of having stepped back through a rip in time. He half expected to see himself and Luke sleeping on the ground, to hear the thunder of hooves as the slave catchers came upon them, to watch Luke lunge for freedom, to live the most awful moment of his life all over again.
He found himself struggling to breathe. Then Tilda went to her knees on the spot where Luke had fallen. Her head sagged. After a moment, she began to cry. Her shoulders shook.
Sam went to her, stood behind her. He rested his hand lightly on the back of her neck.
“He was such a good baby,” she said. “Do you remember?”
“I remember.”
“He never cried nor fussed the way other babies do. But Lord, that boy was so busy, once he learned to scoot around on his own. He wanted to see everything, explore everything, get into everything. You had to be constantly looking out for that one, otherwise, there was no telling where he might end up.” The memory made her laugh a little. Then laughter turned back to crying.
Sam heard himself say, “I am sorry.” He didn’t recognize his voice. It felt heavy and lifeless in his throat. Then he realized he was weeping.
“I am sorry,” he said again. “I should never have filled his head with that foolishness about being free. I should have listened to you. Miss Prentiss was not so bad, really. There were many others who were a great deal worse. I should never have run and I should never have taken our boy. You were right. We should have stayed there with you.”
She didn’t answer right away and Sam wondered if he had hurt her by bringing up the old arguments of so long ago. He was braced for her to scream at him, to jump to her feet, wheel around and slap him hard. Instead, she spoke quietly and said something he did not expect. “No, Sam, you were right. You and that Frenchman you used to always quote. ‘No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others.’ I think I was just too scared to see.”
She looked up at him, holding him with her eyes. “I don’t blame you for what happened to our son,” she said. “Oh, perhaps I did when it first happened. But I was so angry then, Sam, so hurt. I thought I was losing my mind with the pain of knowing my baby was gone. It took me years, but after a while, I realized: I cannot blame you, because it was not your fault. You were right. It is slavery that was wrong. Maybe belonging to Marse Jim helped me understand that.”
After all these years of hating himself for what had happened, all these years wrestling with guilt and shame and now, to hear those words…
It was not your fault.
…he couldn’t…he didn’t…
You were right. Slavery was wrong.
His mouth fell open, his thoughts fell silent. And all at once, his legs went wobbly and loose until they gave way, no longer capable of supporting his weight. Sam Freeman felt something go out of him then, felt something lift off of him, and without meaning to, he sank to his knees next to Tilda.
Kneeling in the spot where their son had died, Sam held his wife, she held him, and together they cried for a long time.
Three hours later, their shadows dragging behind them, Sam and Tilda walked side by side down a dusty road, Sam leading the horse. They didn’t speak much, but this silence was not hard and somber like what had sat between them since Little Rock. This was a silence shared, not imposed, a silence made of contemplation.
Sam felt so many feelings at once he couldn’t even name them all. But they coalesced into a rough-hewn hope, a sense that maybe the future, which had always seemed so bleak and endless to him, might actually hold something else entirely, might even hold some hard-earned measure of happiness. They had done the thing that frightened him most, and they had emerged holding one another, giving one another strength.
It made him think, for the first time in a very long time, that anything was possible, anything could happen.
Anything at all.
“Nigger!”
It shattered his reverie like glass. A hateful word, a guttural voice.
Sam was still turning when the pistol barked and he felt something punch him hard in the ribs.
Tilda screamed, the horse bolted, and he heard himself thinking distractedly that the animal would never have made a good cavalry mount. Too easily spooked. Then, the ground came up to catch him. He found himself looking up at a slovenly white man in a slouch hat who stepped out now from where he had been waiting for them among the trees at the side of the road. This, then, was Jim McFarland. Sam realized bitterly that for all Tilda had told him about this man, warned him about this man, he had not truly listened. He had still managed to walk blithely into ambush.
He ordered himself up, ordered himself to his feet, but his body was not listening to orders anymore. It wouldn’t move. He could only lie there watching as the man came forward. Tilda was kneeling at Sam’s side now, pulling at him, tugging at him. Her mind was gone. She was screaming something that was no longer words. McFarland glanced at her with a terrible contempt. Then he swung the back of his closed fist at her head and she flew away.
Get up! Sam ordered. But still his body refused to obey. His wife was about to be taken from him by this animal.
Raped. And beaten. Over and over again.
