Freeman, page 46
Prudence was conscious of white people gathering on the sidewalk now to stare at them with folded arms and crimped faces. Some bore expressions of hurt disbelief, as if grievously wounded by some great betrayal. Occasionally, she heard one of them say something like, “Look, isn’t that the Johnsons’ Jim?” or, “Look, there’s my Hattie big as day!” But they made no move to interfere, and that was all she cared about. Prudence ignored them.
Then the wagon came clattering down the street, such a rattle of wood and a thunder of hooves that people instinctively jumped out of the way. But Prudence stood her ground, watching it approach and draw to a stop next to her. She knew what was coming. Part of her relished it.
Sure enough, Bo Wheaton was at the reins. His brother Vern sat in the leather-upholstered seat behind him, bracing their legless father, who gripped the brass railing with knuckles that had gone white and leaned his choleric face as close to Prudence as he could without tumbling over. “You minx!” he cried. “You tricked me!”
And in that moment, it was all worth it, all the long hours negotiating for unseen land in an unknown place, haggling with Army quartermasters, begging trust from skeptical dark faces. Prudence hoped that wherever she was, Bonnie was watching. She mustered her sweetest smile. She even batted her eyes. “Why, Mr. Wheaton, whatever do you mean?”
Incredulity turned his features to ice; they did not move, except for a tiny, involuntary spasm of his lip. For a sliver of time, she wondered if he were having a stroke. Then he spoke in a voice cold and dead as yesterday’s cook fire. “You bitch,” he said. “Do not play the wounded innocent with me. We had an agreement and you deceived me.”
Only statues filled the street. Nothing moved. Every eye stared. Prudence was distantly aware that a phalanx of the colored men had assembled at her back, looking on in silence. She knew this through some sixth sense other than sight, for she did not once take her eyes off the glowering visage before her.
“I did no such thing,” she said. “You asked to buy a building from me.” She swept an arm to her right, still not turning away from Wheaton. “It is right there, ready for your occupancy. In fact”—she lifted a key from her bodice and lofted it, so that it landed with a soft jangle on the seat between father and son—“here is the key.”
“But you enticed our niggers—”
“These Negroes”—she paused, allowed air to fill the space between this word and the next—“are free men and women able to make their own decisions. That, I believe, was the outcome of the late war that your ‘nation’ lost so disastrously. And if, as free men and women, they have decided to accept my offer to help them resettle elsewhere, well, that is their right, is it not?”
“But what will happen to us?” It was a strangely plaintive cry, the bawling of an abandoned child. “You know very well, these people are our labor force. If you take them away, you cripple our tradesmen and shopkeepers! And what of our planters? It’s almost time for the harvest! Who will work our fields? Don’t you see? You will wreck our town!”
“And what is that to me?” asked Prudence, the flat calm of her own voice surprising her. “You should have thought of that before you passed that damnable ordinance, before you attacked my school, before you massacred a group of people who had done you no harm.” She took a step that brought her so close she could have kissed him, if that had been her intent. “You should have thought of that before you murdered my sister.”
Charles Wheaton blanched. “I have told you before: you cannot hold me responsible for what the rabble decides to do. It has nothing to do with me. Look at me!” he thundered, his arm falling to where his legs ended. “I am hardly in a position to do harm to anyone!”
“No,” said Prudence in the same flat voice, “you only sit in your mansion and allow it to happen, when you could stop it with a word, because the entire town takes its cues from you. You let the rabble do what you have not the guts to do, so that when it is done, you can hold up clean hands and pretend you were never involved and continue to believe yourself a gentleman, even though you most certainly are not.”
She stepped back. His gaze remained fixed on her. She had the curious sensation that there was no longer any animating intelligence behind those eyes, nothing beyond a feral rage at being challenged as he had never been challenged before. Wheaton seemed beyond even words.
Vern leaned across his father then. “Daddy, I don’t know why you waste time arguin’ with this highfalutin Yankee bitch.” His eyes radiated a feverish heat. “She wants rabble? Give her rabble. Hell, you give the word and these niggers won’t make it far as the river.”
For the first time in long minutes, Prudence allowed her eyes to stray. They took in Vern Wheaton, his weak chin, his moist lips, his features gnarled as oak roots with hate. From there, her gaze traveled across to his brother, Bo, who regarded her with sad eyes and a strange little close-mouthed smile.
Now she returned to the father. When she spoke, there was something off-handed in her voice, something casual and unconcerned that made Wheaton’s brow squeeze itself together. “Do you remember, Mr. Wheaton, how this town became enflamed by the false rumor I had armed a small group of Negroes who were guarding my school? You remember what they called it, do you not?”
“A nigger army,” he breathed. “What of it?”
“Well, Mr. Wheaton, if someone were to spread that rumor today, it would not be false.”
She actually heard his breathing stop. “You have armed them?” Prudence nodded. “Every one of them, man, woman, or child, who is old enough to heft a rifle, yes.”
Wheaton gaped. His gaze swiveled to the colored men massed at Prudence’s back, to the women watching him with folded arms, to the families huddled together in their wagons. They met him with a wintry silence.
Then Wheaton’s eyes found Colindy. “Sass,” he said, drawing the one syllable out in a homey burr that made him sound like a disappointed father, “certainly you are no part of this foolishness?”
Colindy took a step forward, separating herself from the wall of women with whom she stood. “Mr. Wheaton,” she said, “I think you need to go.”
He stared at her as if she were some new and unknown thing. As perhaps, thought Prudence, she was.
“One other thing,” said Prudence. “You may recall, or at least know of, Sergeant Gideon Russell. He was the Union soldier who sheltered in the school with me the night your rabble burned the colored people out of town. He sent a company of Union men to deliver these wagons. They are waiting to form up with my caravan about a mile north of here and accompany us as far as Memphis. So, should you be tempted to take your son’s rather intemperate advice”—she looked at Vern—“you might wish to keep that in mind.”
Again he stared. His mouth moved, but did not make a sound. It was as if he had used up his entire life’s store of words. Prudence said, “Good day, Mr. Wheaton.”
His father was still struggling to form language when Bo Wheaton settled the matter. He flicked the reins and the wagon rattled off. Prudence stared after them. The street was too crowded for Bo to turn the wagon, so Prudence had no idea what route they would take to return home. She had a sense of them driving until they fell off the side of the world. But that was their problem. She clapped her hands together and spoke loudly enough for the entire street to hear.
“All right,” she said, “enough dallying. It is time all of us were on the road.”
The late-day sun struck gold from the waters of the Mississippi. The paddle-wheel slapped at the river with a steady cadence Tilda had long since ceased to hear. Nor did she hear the hammering of the engines or the squealing, grunting, and lowing of the animals in the cargo hold one deck below. She sat with Ginny at a table on deck, watching.
Prudence had somehow found and purchased a wheelchair for Sam in Memphis. She had wheeled him to the railing so he could watch the riverbanks pass them by. Prudence sat next to him. They were talking, their heads close together. Tilda was too far away to know what they said. Occasionally, Prudence dabbed at Sam’s brow with a cold compress.
A white man in a foppish hat happened to see her do this and apparently took exception. He said something to Prudence, whereupon her eyes flashed, and whatever she said in response caused him to recoil. He went on about his business at a quick step. She had a sharp tongue on her, this Prudence. Tilda felt an admiration she didn’t want to feel.
“Who is she?” she asked.
Confusion creased the folds of the old woman’s eyes. “What you mean, ‘who is she?’ You know who she is. She Prudence.”
“No,” said Tilda, “what I mean is—”
Ginny cut her off. “What you mean is, did she sleep with your husband? Was they lovers?”
Tilda looked at her, feeling transparent. “Yes,” she said.
Ginny drew back. There was a moment she seemed to spend just contemplating her next words. Then she said, “When we found Sam, he was more dead than alive.”
“Yes, I know,” said Tilda.
“No, I don’t think you do,” Ginny told her. “I don’t just mean his body was hurt. I mean, his spirit. He was near ’bout at the end of his rope. Done walked a thousand miles, been shot, stabbed, stomped on, done lost his arm, almost lost his foot, lookin’ for someone he ain’t seen nor heard from in 15 years. Lookin’ for you. And after all that, he was near ’bout to givin’ up. She felt the same way. She done come down here to start a school for colored, come down here with high hopes and big plans, and all it got her was death. They killed Bonnie. That was a black girl she called her sister, girl that she growed up with her whole life.
“So if you ask me what they done for each other, I tell you like this: they healed each other. They helped each other be whole again. That’s what they done.”
“Were they in love?”
Ginny’s smile bore secrets and sorrows. “I asked him that once,” she said. “He told me he was very fond of her.”
“I see,” said Tilda.
“No, you don’t understand that, neither. He said he was fond of her. I asked him if that meant he walk a thousand miles trying to find her if she was ever lost. He couldn’t give me no answer. And we both knowed that was a answer in itself. You see, he could have stayed with her. He could have said, ‘I done enough to find Tilda, been through hell to find this woman and I ain’t found her yet. Can’t nobody in the world fault me if I choose to stay here and be happy my ownself.’ But instead, he chose to keep looking for you. What you think that mean?”
Ginny’s gaze was direct. Tilda no longer saw it.
Was it just a little more than a week ago that she had stood in the cook-house with Honey in the predawn darkness, trying to get used to this mad new idea that she, beaten and tired old thing that she was, was a woman someone might come looking for? It had unsettled her, had seemed a thing too large and foolish to believe. She felt it again now, that same sense of disquiet, as if her entire understanding of herself, of who she was and what she meant, had somehow shifted right before her eyes.
Tilda had never thought of herself as a woman someone would choose. But apparently, she was.
And then, she was standing. And then, she was walking toward the railing where Prudence tended her husband.
They looked around at her approach. Prudence smiled. “There you are,” she said. “Perhaps you can break the stalemate. Sam is not happy with the name I have chosen for the town we are founding in Ohio. Tell me what you think.”
Tilda said, “Beg pardon?” Words seemed leeched of meaning somehow.
“I want to call it Freeman,” said Prudence. “Freeman, Ohio.”
Tilda said, “I think”—she saw Sam grimace—“that is a wonderful idea.”
Prudence nodded triumphantly. “Well, then,” she told Sam, “that settles it. Freeman, Ohio it is.”
“Fine, then,” said Sam, and Tilda could barely hear his voice. “Apparently, I am unable to talk you out of it.”
There was a moment. No one spoke. Then Tilda saw an understanding settle in Prudence’s eyes. Prudence clapped her hands together as she stood. “Well,” she told Tilda brightly, “I think I shall take a walk. Would you mind keeping our friend company?”
“No,” said Tilda, “I would not mind that at all.”
A squeeze of her arm. Then Prudence walked away. She went to the opposite side of the deck, stood at the railing. After a moment, she pulled a letter from her pocket. She had read it a dozen times in the week since it arrived, read it enough that she could recite it by heart, had no need to see the words on paper. But she opened it anyway and read:
My dearest sister:
I can only imagine what you have been going through since that woman told you about Father’s indiscretion. I am sure you feel great disappointment with him, but also, I would wager, you have endured a period of wondering about your own identity.
Do not judge him too harshly, Sister. You saw him ever through the eyes of love as a favored youngest child and so perhaps you failed to realize it, but he was only a man and as such, heir to all the weakness of men. Yes, he owned slaves. But remember, he set them free. Once he really had a taste of what it meant to own human beings, he wanted no part of it. He saw that while the institution debases the slave, it also debases the owner. I am persuaded that while many men see that, very few have the courage to act upon it. Our father did. On balance, he was a good man, Sister. He did much good in the world. I implore you to keep this mind.
I am glad you have chosen to share this burden with me. I believe I may be able to ease your mind.
Fourteen years ago, when you were just a girl, a letter arrived for Father. I used to watch him often without his knowing; he was away so often, I think I felt that if we were not careful, one day he might go and never return. For that reason, I developed the habit of spying on him. As he read it in his study that day I was watching secretly from the door, and I saw a great change come over him. His shoulders slumped, his mouth drooped open, his eyes became glassy. So alarmed was I that I contrived to pretend I had just wandered into the room and I asked him what was wrong. He told me it was nothing. I knew better. I bided my time until he was distracted elsewhere in the house. Then I crept into his study and read the letter.
It was from a convent in Springfield. A Sister Mary Catherine was writing to let him know that some little girl he had placed in her care had died suddenly of a fever. On reading this, I was filled with questions: who was this girl and why had Father placed her in the convent’s care and why had he never spoken of her? But there was no one I could ask—least of all, him. So there the mystery remained.
As I grew older, I suppose I figured it out, but I kept the truth from myself, kept it in the back of my thoughts where I need never confront our father’s deepest secret. Your letter forces me to do just that and at the same time, removes any last smidgen of doubt I might have had. As is your way, sister, you have stumbled headlong and heedless into the truth and I suppose I should thank you for it. The Bible says the truth shall make us free.
Here, then, is the truth: our father had a fourth daughter, a little mulatto girl he never claimed. She died in a convent orphanage when she was 12. Our sister’s name was Hope.
Now, as for you—I was six years old when you were born, and I do not remember much. But I do remember when they let me hold you for the first time; I thought you were awful—such a horrid, wrinkled little thing. And I remember the ghastly pallor of our mother’s face and how she died not two hours later.
So if the revelations of this woman in Mississippi have left you questioning your own identity, wondering if you might secretly be a little mulatto girl whose mother was a slave, you may be at ease, Sister. Nothing of the sort of is true. You are who you have always been—my impulsive and imprudent and very much beloved Sister, Prudence.
I hope these words set your mind at ease. I very much look forward to seeing you again.
With all my love, I remain, your sister, Constance.
Prudence was gazing at her sister’s signature when Miss Ginny approached. The wind was tossing her thin white hair all about her head. “What’s that?” she asked, nodding toward the letter.
Prudence didn’t reply at once. She could see her oldest sister, her brow furrowed, sitting at the writing desk in her bedroom scratching out these words she hoped would bring Prudence comfort and save her from any more time spent wondering about her own identity, wondering if she was who she’d always thought she was. But, thought Prudence, she need not have bothered. Somehow, an odd thing had happened. Somewhere in the month of preparing this mass exodus of every Negro in and around Buford, Prudence had stopped wondering. Prudence had stopped caring.
It was skin, she decided. Only skin. And it had no power to add or subtract or otherwise alter her fundamental understanding of her own self. She was who she had always been.
“It is just a letter,” she told Ginny. “From my sister, Constance.”
As she spoke, she opened her hand and allowed a breeze to take the paper. The letter sailed high, then began to fall, tracing looping curlicues in the air until it deposited itself in the waters of the Mississippi and, soon after, was gone.
“Why you do that?” asked Ginny. “You didn’t want to save it?”
Prudence felt herself smiling. “There was no need to save it,” she said. “There was nothing in it I need.”
Tilda sat in the chair facing her husband, facing the man who had come looking for her. She dipped the compress in the pan of cool water, wrung it out, and placed it on Sam’s forehead. His brow was on fire.
“We were just talking about you,” he told her.
“About me? Why?”
