Freeman, page 44
There was not a blessed thing he could do about it. Sam had never known a sense of failure so utter and complete, not even when his son was killed.
McFarland stood over him, sighted down the pistol. “Nigger,” he said again, in that awful, scraping voice of his. “You think you can take my property and get away with it?”
Sam’s hand sought the bag tied to his belt. His fingers fumbled about looking for it, kept closing on emptiness. He sighed, felt death rattling in his chest as he did. It had been a long shot at best, a long shot bordering on wishful stupidity, the idea that he could open the bag, seize the little gun, and fire it before McFarland pulled the trigger. But he couldn’t even feel the bag, and didn’t that speak volumes about the uselessness of his entire goddamned existence?
Sam’s fingers stopped fumbling for the missing bag. He met McFarland’s burning gaze with open eyes and a strange calm and waited for the gunshot.
It came.
It was not what he expected, not an echoing blast that followed him down into oblivion. No, it was a flat pop, not unlike the breaking of a child’s balloon. And now there was a tiny red hole in McFarland’s face, just below his left eye. His hand came up to inspect the wound. He looked about him in dazed confusion. Then his eyes went blank, rolling back til only the whites were visible. He swayed and then, like a tree, toppled onto the dirt so hard he bounced. He lay still and did not move.
Sam craned his head, saw Tilda moving forward now, the little derringer gripped in her right hand, smoke drifting from its tip. And he realized: She hadn’t been tugging at him; she had been tugging at the bag on his belt and screaming in feigned hysteria to cover it up. Tilda moved past him now, went to inspect McFarland. Sam saw her foot prod his ample belly and get no response. When she knew her tormenter was dead, Tilda flung the little gun away from her like something filthy and came to kneel next to Sam. Her face filled his vision.
“We must get you to a doctor,” she said.
“No use,” he said, and his voice rasped out of him like a rusted hinge. “Not going to make it. Hurt too bad.”
Her face hardened. “Do not say that. You will not die on me, Sam Freeman. You get up right now, do you hear what I’m saying? You get up!”
And she grabbed his arm and pulled him to a sitting position, ignoring his gasp. Sam’s shirt was matted to him by blood. The bullet had entered beneath his only arm. Working feverishly, she pulled off his shirt. She took her teeth to the cloth where it wasn’t soaked with blood and shredded a long piece. She looped this around his chest and tied it so tightly he gasped again. Sam watched all this activity with a detachment bordering on amusement.
When she felt she had controlled the bleeding as best she could, she came around to the front of him. “Now, you are going to stand up, Sam, and you are going to get on that horse.” And the amusement went out of him.
“I cannot,” he said.
“Yes, you can!” The very force of it made him flinch. He gulped and did not respond. “You will get up,” she told him, “and you will get on that horse, and we will go into that town and get you a doctor. Do you hear me, Sam Freeman?”
He nodded because he was scared not to.
She looped his arm over her shoulder, braced her own arm around his waist, and lifted. He had no leverage with which to push. He could only lean his weight on her and let her lift him.
It was impossible. It could not be done.
She bared her teeth, snarling with the effort. He felt himself rising.
Pain blinded him. He felt blood seeping from his wound, saw it soaking through her dress where her side was pressed to his. They were glued together by blood. She didn’t even notice.
Impossible. Could not be done.
But then he had his feet beneath him and he was still rising, the world reeling about him like children dancing around a pole. He clung to her, and she led him, his steps weak and faltering, to McFarland’s horse. She lifted his foot, placed it in the stirrup, lowered her shoulder to his backside and pushed, and pushed, and he took the pommel and pulled as best he could and somehow he was doing it, his leg coming up and over until he was seated in the dead man’s saddle. Exhausted. Sam collapsed against the pony’s neck.
Tilda was gone for a moment. When she came back, she was astride Bucephalus. She leaned over, took the reins of McFarland’s pony. “You hold on tight,” she told Sam.
He nodded, unable to speak. Tilda urged the roan into a walk, McFarland’s horse following obediently behind. She glanced briefly down at the body of her former owner, then turned her gaze to the road ahead.
“Free at last,” she whispered.
And Sam, his eyes closed in a world white with pain, heard this and smiled.
Ahead of them, the town of Buford rose out of the cotton fields. Tilda glanced back. Sam was unconscious, drooling into the horse’s neck. She had to shake him hard to bring him back to her. It took a moment for his eyes to focus, to know her, to remember.
“We’re here,” she said.
He lifted his head, pain corrugating his brow, surveyed the street, then pointed to a big, dark building on a corner. “There is an alley behind that warehouse,” he whispered. A pause, wincing, gathering his breath. “There will be a little house on your right. Look for a flower garden.”
She was uncertain, but she nodded anyway, jabbed her mount lightly with the spurs. They moved forward under the cold white gaze of the moon.
Tilda found the alley. She found the house. She pulled Sam’s horse up alongside her own. “There is a doctor here, Sam?” she asked.
“There are…friends,” he gasped.
“You have no need of friends. You have need of a doctor.”
“I do not know the doctor in this town. They will.”
She was still uncertain, but she slid down from the horse, climbed the three steps to the back door of the little clapboard house, and knocked hard. There was a scuffle of movement from inside. The door opened and a white woman was there.
“I am sorry,” said Tilda, stepping back in surprise, “we must have the wrong house.”
“What house are you looking for?” the white woman asked.
“I do not know. Sam, he…that is, my husband, he said…”
“Sam?” Something Tilda did not quite understand lit the white woman’s eyes. There was recognition, and something more.
“You know Sam?” she asked.
“You must be Tilda,” said the white woman,
“Yes,” said Tilda, wondering how this woman knew her name.
“He did it,” announced the white woman, beaming. Her eyes were emerald. “He found you.”
“Yes,” said Tilda.
“Where is he?”
And Tilda realized that for just a moment, she had forgotten the urgency of her mission, lost it in her confusion over who this white woman was and how she knew things she couldn’t know. “He is there,” she said, pointing. “He has been shot.”
The green eyes rounded. “What? Why did you not say so?” And she brushed past Tilda without waiting for an answer, calling over her shoulder to someone still inside the house. “Ginny! It’s Sam, he is hurt!”
Now a wizened little colored woman appeared at the door. She appraised Tilda with a smile. “He found you,” she said.
“Yes,” said Tilda. Who were these people?
“Good,” she said.
The white woman, her voice soaked with tears, was taking command. “Help me get him inside!”
She went to help. From the right side of the horse, the older woman pushed Sam’s leg up and over until it cleared the horse’s head. Tilda and the white woman caught the weight of him and lowered him, gently as they could.
“I am sorry,” Sam kept mumbling, not quite conscious. “I am sorry.” Tilda wasn’t sure which of them he was speaking to.
They got Sam’s legs under him as best they could. Tilda took his right arm over her shoulders, while the white woman braced herself under the nub of his left. They had to turn single file to go up the three stairs and through the narrow doorway into the house.
“Take him to my room,” the white woman said. “It is through that hallway, the second door on the left.”
Sam’s feet scraped the floor, his head lolling forward. Occasionally, he moaned.
The room she led them into was filled by a four-poster bed with a faded print cover. At the foot of the bed, a steamer trunk sat open and full of clothes. Apparently, the woman was packing to go somewhere.
They backed Sam up against the bed. Tilda pushed him gently back while the woman lifted his legs. Sam landed in the bed with a groan. His skin was a dead gray. The makeshift tourniquet around his side was soaked with blood.
“What happened to him?” asked the white woman.
Tilda ignored her. “He needs a doctor,” she said. “Is there a doctor in this town?”
The old woman spoke from the hallway behind them, as there was not space enough in the tiny room for all of them. “They’s a doctor down the street,” she said. “He don’t mind treatin’ colored, neither.”
“The two of you go get him,” the white woman said. She addressed herself to the old lady and added, “At this point, seeing me might just inflame matters.”
The old woman nodded. “Yeah, you probably right about that. Don’t want him to let Sam die just ’cause it’s you askin’ for help.”
“I shall stay here and keep an eye on him,” said the white woman.
“All right, then. Come on, gal,” she told Tilda. And Tilda had no choice but to follow the little woman back out into the night.
“Who are you?” she asked as they cleared the house. “Who is that white woman? How do you know Sam?”
“He ain’t told you?” mused the little woman. And then, softly, answering her own question: “No, I expect he wouldn’t. My name Ginny Campbell. Used to slave down here, but I been free for years. Got the manumission papers from my marse before the war. That white woman, she Prudence Kent. Rich girl lived up North in Boston. Her daddy taught her to hate slavery and when the war ended, she come down here to start a school for colored. Run into trouble with the white folks here. They killed people, they tried to burn her school. So now she goin’ back to Boston.”
She regarded Tilda with an expression Tilda couldn’t read. “That’s who we is. Now, as to how we knows Sam: it was just like tonight. We found him in that alley yonder, face down in the dirt, more dead than alive. Bunch of white men had set on him, stabbed him, beat him near ’bout to death. Prudence nursed him back to health. He was here a few weeks.”
“Was that when he lost his arm?”
“No. That was already gone when we met him. Got it shot off him in Tennessee, he said.”
“He has been through a lot,” said Tilda.
“Yes, he has. Still goin’ through it, I expect. What happened?”
“My former master did not want to let me go. He came after us and shot Sam from ambush.”
“Come after you?” She was opening the picket gate of a house. “Ain’t he knowed the war over? Slavery done.”
“He was not the type to care about such things,” said Tilda.
“What happened to him? Your old marse?”
“There was a gun in this little bag Sam carried.”
“I know. Prudence give it to him.”
“I shot him with it. Killed him.”
A sharp nod of satisfaction. “Good,” Miss Ginny said.
They followed a brick path around to the back door. Miss Ginny knocked and after a moment, a white man appeared, rail thin and with a halo of silver hair flying in all directions. “Ginny?” he asked. He was hooking his spectacles over his ears.
“Dr. Brown, we need help,” said Ginny. “They’s a man at my house. A gang tried to rob him as he were ridin’ into town. They done shot him up bad.”
The doctor’s eyes widened as they fell upon Tilda’s blood-soaked dress. “Let me get my bag,” he said.
Fifteen minutes later, the doctor shooed Prudence, Ginny, and Tilda out of the tiny room where Sam lay breathing heavily and closed the door behind him.
The three women stood together in the hallway in a moment swollen with awkwardness, looking at one another. Then, without a word, Tilda walked away. She went outside and sat on the back porch of the house, her knees drawn up to her chin. No one came to join her, and for this she was glad. She was blood-soaked, filthy, and exhausted, her mind aching from trying to think a hundred things at once. Tilda drew in a deep breath, released it slowly, made herself watch and think nothing as heaven circled slowly above.
She did not know how long it was—an hour, maybe—before the door opened behind her. The white woman—Prudence, she reminded herself—was standing there. “The doctor is still in with him,” she said. “I drew you a bath. It’s in Ginny’s room.”
She closed the door without awaiting a response. Tilda sat there a moment longer. Then she got up and went inside. There was no one in the kitchen; the two women were in the front parlor, and the door to Prudence’s room was still closed.
The door to the next room, however, was open, and when Tilda peeked around, she found the metal tub at the foot of the bed, steam drifting lazily from the water. A scrub brush, a towel, and a bar of soap sat on a table. A dress—it was pale blue and so crisp she thought it might never have been worn—had been laid out on the bed.
Tilda stripped gratefully out of the filthy dress that was the only thing she had worn, day and night, for five months. It fell from her in a heap, like a blood-caked, sweat-stained, mud-spattered old skin. Her body itself felt not much cleaner, felt as if it were crusted with all that had happened to her, all the agony she had seen and felt, all the terrible things that had been done to her and that she had done, the life she had endured for these past five years.
Absently, Tilda wiped a tear that slid down her cheek. She stepped carefully into the steaming water, lowered herself slowly. It was like walking into the embrace of God. Gratefully, Tilda leaned her head back. She closed her eyes.
“The doctor just left.”
At the sound of the voice, Tilda’s eyes came open. At first, she thought only a moment had passed, but then she realized the water was cool. She had drifted. Now she twisted around. Prudence was standing in the doorway.
“He got the bullet out,” Prudence said. “He said it is a miracle Sam survived.” A tiny, private smile. “He is still sleeping, but I thought you would like to spend the night in the room with him. I made a pallet for you on the floor.” She indicated the dress on the bed with her chin. “That belonged to my friend. It should be about your size. I thought you could fit it. What would you like me to do with your other dress?”
Tilda glanced at the dirty old skin lying on the floor behind her. “It is fit only for burning,” she said.
Prudence nodded with a smile. “I was hoping you would say that,” she said. She picked up the dirty thing and took it with her. As the door closed behind her, Tilda came up out of the water. She dried and dressed herself quickly and went into the room where Sam lay. The other two women were there, standing at the side of the bed. They turned when they heard Tilda behind them. “I think he gon’ be all right,” said Miss Ginny. She squeezed Tilda’s shoulder as she stepped out of the room so Tilda could enter.
Something in her chest unclenched when she saw her husband. Color was returning to his cheeks and the bandage around his chest was clean and dry. His face was relaxed, no longer pinched by pain. “He looks peaceful,” Prudence said.
“You nursed him to health once before,” said Tilda. She didn’t bother making it a question.
Prudence glanced at her. “Ginny told you about that? Yes. We found him down the block lying in the alley. He had been set upon.” A pause. “That dress is very pretty on you,” she said.
Tilda looked down, admiring the blue fabric that swirled around her ankles. “Thank you for letting me use it,” she said.
“You can have it,” said Prudence. “There are some other things I would like to give you as well.”
“But your friend…”
“My friend…” Prudence paused. “My friend passed away,” she said, “but I know she would join me in wanting you to have her things.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes,” said Prudence. “In fact, you would honor us if you took them.”
“Thank you, again, then.”
Prudence touched Tilda’s shoulder, moved past her to the door. “Get some sleep,” she said. “It is after midnight.”
Tilda spoke without looking at her. “You are fond of Sam,” she said.
The white woman paused at the door. “Yes, very fond,” she confirmed. “I nursed him back to health so he could go and find you.”
Tilda’s gaze lifted upon an expression she could not read. She was exhausted. “Good night,” she said.
“Good night,” said Prudence. And the door closed behind her.
Alone in the dark, Tilda stripped out of the clean blue dress and lowered herself to the pallet. She pulled the rough cover up to her chin. There was something reassuring about the sound of Sam snoring lightly above her. She found Sam’s hand and held it.
The sun was high in the sky when Tilda awoke. It took her a moment to know where she was. The smell of bacon and eggs cooking in the hearth was so tempting she could almost have wept for joy and for a moment, she thought this was what had awakened her. Then she realized: it was Sam.
“M’thirsty,” he mumbled, again.
She stood up where he could see her, took his hand in hers. Sam turned his head and to her joy, she saw him recognize her. “Tilda,” he said. And then, “What happened?”
“You got shot.”
“Again?” The distress in his face was almost comical.
“Yes,” she said. “I brought you here to your friends, Miss Ginny and that white woman.”
“Prudence?”
“Yes, I believe that to be her name,” said Tilda. “They were very kind. They got you a doctor. He got the bullet out.”
“McFarland?”
“He will not be bothering us again, Sam.”
