Second Chances

by P. D. Cacek

  P.D. Cacek

  Second Chances

  FLAME TREE PRESS

  London & New York

  •

  To My Family:

  Blood related or love related

  you will always be in my heart.

  1872

  Hickory, Mississippi

  Millie kept her hands behind her back as she walked down the center aisle that separated the older children from the younger. The four older, three near-grown boys and a gal about her own age, were working on arithmetic while the six younger, all gals, were busy practicing their letters on slate boards.

  “Very good, Manda,” Millie said. The child was only a little mite, but Lord was she bright. She knew her letters and how to count to fifty without having to think about it, but her penmanship still needed a bit of work. “Best not to hold th’ chalk so hard or ya’ll likely snap it in half, which’d be a shame after them nice Quaker ladies give it t’us. Just ease up on your fingers.”

  The little girl looked up with a smile bright enough to blind the sun. There were smudges of chalk dust on Manda’s fingers and blue overskirt. “Yessum.”

  Millie reached out and tapped the board on the girl’s knees and watched the child slowly spell out her name. She was still holding the piece of chalk as if it was a chicken about to escape the ax, but Millie nodded.

  “There ya go,” she said and continued down the aisle and back up the hay foot side of the classroom, pausing to bask in the warmth that rolled out from the woodstove near the coming-in door. The heat felt good against the scars that crisscrossed the palms of her hands. She’d gotten them when she was no older than Manda and in training to become a kitchen slave. The Ol’ Missus caught her running her fingers across the linen tablecloth she was only supposed to carry out to the washroom.

  “What do you think you’re doing? Mustn’t touch! Mustn’t touch!”

  The Ol’ Missus was one for the switch and there were very few working in the house that didn’t carry evidence of it on their hides. The Ol’ Missus was a mean one and Millie hadn’t been sorry when, after the bluecoats came and freed her and the other slaves, the old woman went off her head and shot herself with the Ol’ Masser’s pistol.

  “Thou should forgive, Millie.”

  Millie felt her cheeks grow warm. Mrs. Benezet, who’d taught Millie reading and writing and such, was one of the Quakers who had come to live in the Big House now that the war was over, and Quakers believed in forgiveness. Fact was, they were about the most forgiving people Millie ever hoped to meet.

  And the kindest.

  Mr. and Mrs. Benezet and a whole mess of their Quaker friends came all the way down from Philadelphia to turn the Big House into what they called a ‘Way Station’ for anyone, colored or white, who needed a place to stay or a hot meal or just a kind word; and fixed up the old quarters so any of the freed slaves who wanted to stay, like Millie, would have homes that were solid and dry.

  Then they did something Millie wouldn’t have thought possible in a hundred years – they fixed up the old harness shed into a school to teach those who’d never known anything beside the whip and cold and hunger and pain that there was more they could be besides some other man’s property; that life could be good. And when she was ready, they made Millie the teacher. Mr. and Mrs. Benezet were the first white folks she didn’t fear.

  The first white folks she trusted.

  God must have been watching the day she ran off to make sure they’d be the ones to find her.

  She hadn’t planned to run, thought never entered her mind even when the overseer had snatched her up when she’d come out of the smokehouse carrying some fatback for ’Liza, the cook. He was drunk on ’shine and said she was stealing the fatback and when she told him, “No sir, I gettin’ it for the cook,” he backhanded her across the side of her head a few times to take the fight out of her before doing what he wanted.

  He’d about done her in so that she could barely walk, which got her another beating when she got back with the fatback all covered with dirt and leaves. She hadn’t let go of it even while the overseer was rutting on top of her, but that hadn’t stopped the Ol’ Missus switching her half to death for being ‘so utterly clumsy’. It was afterward when Millie’d finally crawled into the cabin and her mam was putting lard on her back and telling her she was lucky she was still too young to breed, that one of the field hands come running in, saying the bluecoats were right up the road and freeing every slave they came across, but that they all had to hide, because he’d heard that the Ol’ Masser was coming with a rifle to kill all of them before he’d let the bluecoats take his property.

  Millie remembered her mam screaming and snatching up the baby boy Young Masser got on her the spring before and telling her to run… “run t’freedom, child, they’s just up th’road, an’ don’t stop till ya find ’em!”

  So she ran and ran, but just up the road was a lot farther than she thought and she hadn’t known about miles or distances back then. When her strength finally gave out Millie collapsed in a ditch by the side of the road and closed her eyes, knowing the next time she opened them it would be to the glories of Heaven.

  Which was where she thought she was when she woke up in a bright white room, tucked into a feather bed beneath a thick quilt, and why she said what she did when a man with fair hair and a beard and gentle blue eyes leaned over her.

  “Dear God, ya brought me home t’paradise. Praise be your name.”

  The man she mistook for the Lord God had laughed softly, thanking her for her innocent mistake, and then the world went black again and she slept. And slept, and when she finally was able to keep her eyes open for longer than a minute and sit up without her head swimming, the man came back and said his name was Benezet and that he was a Quaker.

  He asked Millie if she knew what a Quaker was and she said it must be the name of an angel.

  Millie could still remember the tears that filled the man’s eyes.

  “No, child,” he’d told her, “I’m only a man.”

  Maybe so, but Millie suspected the Quakers were as close as a body could get to the Lord God himself and still be breathing.

  The Quakers were good people. Not only did they take her in and heal her up, but fed and clothed her and taught her the magic waiting for her beneath the covers of books.

  They taught her what freedom meant.

  They taught her hope.

  That had been eight years ago come summer and now she was a woman grown who could read and write and was teaching others the way she’d been taught. She had purpose and a place in the world.

  Millie allowed herself a slow deep breath and a smile as she lifted the small lapel watch Missus Benezet had presented to her the day she finished up her teaching studies.

  It was just a bit after two, but winter days were short and Millie knew the shadows would already be gathering under the trees. In an hour or so it’d be so dark along the wooded path that it’d be impossible for the children to get home without stumbling.

  Besides which, Millie wanted to get home to finish up reading the book of poetry Missus Benezet had given her. The poems were the most beautiful things Millie had ever read, even if she couldn’t recollect what some of them were going on about. But that didn’t matter, it was the way the words floated around inside her head that made them as irresistible as molasses on fresh bread.

  Letting the dainty little watch drop back against the top of her pinafore, Millie picked up the iron poker from its place against the wall and used it to open up the stove’s metal grating. The poker felt comfortably warm in her hand, but she could feel it getting hotter as she stirred up the c
oals. No use in putting on another log if she was going to end class sooner rather than later. The coals would do to keep the schoolroom warm enough while they finished up.

  After closing the door, Millie laid the poker back against the wall and clapped her hands together as she walked back to the big wooden desk Mr. and Mrs. Benezet had bought from a catalogue and cost a whole five dollars.

  “A’right now,” she said as the children looked up. “It’s gettin’ late and I smell snow comin’ on the wind, so I’m gonna let y’all out early so set down your boards ’n’ chalk an’—”

  Millie planted her hands firmly on her hips and waited for the whooping and hollering and scraping of hobnails against the wood floor to end. The oldest girl noticed first and hushed the others.

  “Shh! Miss Millie ain’t done talkin’!”

  Silence – or as close as it was going to get with the promise of going home still hanging in the air.

  “That’s better,” Millie said and let her arms drop. “Now, I think we should end today by practicin’ th’ song we’re gonna sing for Mr. Benezet’s birthday this comin’ Sunday after meetin’, ’lessen ya’all’d rather just screech like hooty owls.”

  “No, ma’am, Miss Millie,” Abraham, the second to oldest boy, said, “we wanna sing proper.”

  There was just a little seat-squirming as the rest of the children nodded in agreement.

  “A’right, then. Now ’member, the boys start and gals do the answers and then everybody gonna do the chorus together. Ready? Fine, ev’one stand on up and take a deep breath in….” Millie took a deep breath and watched her students do the same. “An’—”

  The children’s voices came out as screams when a gunshot blast echoed into the classroom.

  “Come on outta there!”

  The children made other sounds now – softer, trembling sounds Millie remembered too well. She raised her hands.

  “Hush up!”

  They hushed, their eyes wide and scared, but quiet. It was the other voice, the one outside that continued.

  “You deaf? I said come outta there!”

  There was another shot, this one tearing a small chunk off from the top of the coming-in door. The screams erupted again and this time Millie’s joined them.

  “Guess they ain’t deaf after all.”

  Laughter outside, crying inside.

  “Miss Millie?”

  “Shh!” Putting a finger to her lips, Millie motioned the children toward the peg wall where they’d hung their coats and scarves and hats.

  “Get bundled up now, good and warm,” she said, “and head out the back door. Hurry on home an’ don’t stop for nothin’…nothin’. Y’all hear me?”

  “Yessum.”

  “But Miss Millie, those men—”

  “Don’t you be worryin’ ’bout those men, hear? You older ones take care of the lit’l uns and tell Mr. Benezet ’bout this.” Millie clapped her hands hard enough to make the old scars sing as if they were fresh. “Make sure you tell him what happened and ask if he’d please come on down t’th’ school. Mr. Benezet’ll take care o’ those men. Now, ’member, don’t none of you stop for nothin’. Hurry up!”

  “We know you’re in there, gal, you and all them little chicks. Come on out and maybe we’ll let ’em go.”

  Millie herded the children out the back door that led to a narrow path between the two privies and out through the woods. It would be hard traveling to make it back to the Big House, but they wouldn’t be seen by anyone at the front of the building.

  “G’on now.”

  The oldest boy stopped just outside the door. “Ain’t you comin’, Miss Millie?”

  “I’ll be right behind you. Hurry up and mind the lit’l uns.”

  Millie wished the trees hadn’t dropped all their leaves as she watched the children slip away, but the good Lord must have been watching because a mist was rising to cover their escape.

  Not escape, Millie reminded herself, because they weren’t slaves anymore so no man had the right to them. It was the law, Mr. and Mrs. Benezet and their friends told her that, and the law would protect her.

  Maybe so, but the law was far away and the men with guns were just outside.

  Another shot peppered the door. “Last chance, wench. Come out or we come in.”

  “Ain’t no man my massa,” Millie reminded herself as she closed the back door and turned. “Ain’t no man got a right over me.”

  “Gal! Get yer ass out here.”

  Millie crossed the room slowly, stopping only long enough to pick up the iron poker from its place by the stove before opening the buckshot-riddled door.

  There were four of them, four big men sitting on tall black horses. Four big men sitting on tall black horses with squirrel guns across their saddles and flour sacks covering their heads with only the eyeholes cut out. She couldn’t tell who they were.

  Nightriders is what Mr. Benezet called them.

  Haints is what she and the others called them. Ghost men that rode out in the dead of night with flaming torches in their hands yelling like hell’s own devils and doing what they pleased just like they were still masters. They’d already paid a visit to the Big House back in the spring, sitting on their tall horses and yelling promises about horse whippings and hangings before they set fire to a tarred cross they planted in the kitchen garden.

  Millie had nightmares for a week after that and wouldn’t have been able to make the walk to the schoolhouse if Mr. Benezet hadn’t been beside her.

  “They will not hurt thee, Millie,” Mr. Benezet told her each and every morning, even after she was able to walk by herself. “Thou hast the same protection under the law as do I and all free men and women. Thou art free and safe and no man, especially no man who feels the need to hide his face, can take it from thee.”

  The words had given her strength, but they seemed only a memory now that she was standing all alone in an empty schoolroom looking out at four big men carrying squirrel guns with flour sacks over their heads and sitting on four tall horses.

  One of the horses shook its head, the bit and bridle rattling, and Millie jumped.

  The Haints laughed.

  “Well, lookee there,” one of the men, Millie couldn’t tell which, said, “we got us a lit’l jumpin’ frog.”

  “An’ me without m’gigging pole,” another said, and all of them laughed again.

  “Now that’s too bad…I do so love me some frog legs.”

  “Think there’ll be enough t’go ’round? This one looks a mite skinny.”

  And they laughed some more.

  Millie tightened her grip on the poker. “What’cho want?”

  The men stopped laughing.

  “Well, now, what do we want? How ’bout a song? I do so miss hearin’ them songs your kind used t’sing, ’minds us of the good days.” One of the men moved his horse forward a few steps. “How many chicks ya got in there, gal?”

  Millie pulled the door closed behind her. If the Haints thought the children were still inside the schoolroom, they might not do anything.

  “They just babies,” she said, lifting the poker so the men could see it. “Ain’t done nuthin’ to be bothered with.”

  “Now did we say we was gonna bother ’em?”

  One of the Haints spurred his horse closer and Millie raised the poker. The man stopped the horse.

  “Looks like we got a fighter, boys.”

  Millie lifted the poker higher. “Go ’way! This here school b’longs to Mr. Benezet and his friends. This Quaker land!”

  The man on the tall horse leaned forward over his saddle. Millie saw bright blue eyes peeping out at her through the holes in the flour sack.

  “Wasn’t and shouldn’t be. Him and his damned Quaker abolitionists ain’t any better’n the rest o’them carpetbagger sumabitchs. Now, put that po
ker down and get over here. You do what you’re told and we’ll make it easy. Keep sassing us and it’ll go hard.”

  Millie didn’t know why she did it or even realized that she had until the poker flew out of her hand and hit the ground a few feet in front of the Haint with enough force to spook his horse.

  It twisted its head away from the sound and jerked to one side quick like a cat going after a mouse. The man fell off backward, startling the other horses and sending his own mount hightailing it down the road. It took a moment for the three other Haints to get their horses under control so they weren’t looking at the man on the ground, but Millie was and saw his face when he pulled the flour sack off his head.

  “Goddamn your worthless—” He looked up at her, looked right up into her face and then there was no mistaking who he was.

  “Mr. Leeworth.” She’d only whispered the name but the man, the lawyer who had sat at Mr. and Mrs. Benezet’s table and broken bread with them, and who had smiled at Millie when he watched her sign her name to the papers he’d drawn up that said she was a free woman, glared up at her from the schoolyard dirt. His face was all red and twisted up like a mad dog’s and Millie wished he’d put the flour sack back on over his head.

  It would have made it easier for her to forget who he was when he stood up and pulled a tiny derringer from his waistcoat pocket.

  “Goddamn you and your kind,” he said and pulled the trigger.

  It was such a tiny bullet it felt like someone had just thumped her in the middle of her chest. It didn’t even hurt; it just made her sleepy and all she wanted to do was close her eyes.

  MILLIE

  1854(?) – October 18, 1872

  PART ONE

  IMPOSTERS

  October 2017

  Chapter One

  Arvada, Colorado

  The man on the screen quarter turned his chair to study the enlarged headline that had appeared behind him…

  THE DEAD RETURN