Freedom Stone

by Jeffrey Kluger

Today, Lillie had no choice but to leave the girl on her own—at least if she wanted to follow her plan. The battle that had claimed her papa had been fought in distant Mississippi, and most anyone who had any information about how he came by the coins that stained his name would either have died along with him or scattered with the army to fight in other states. The idea that the likes of Lillie could solve a puzzle like that seemed a fool thought indeed. And yet there was a place she could begin looking: the town of Bluffton.

  The wounded slave who’d served in Papa’s platoon and claimed to have seen the coins was a man named Henry who’d worked at a farm not far from Greenfog. He had no money to go north when he was freed, and he wouldn’t risk the travel even if he did—open roads in the midst of a war being no place for a one-legged former slave. When he’d come to Greenfog to bring the news about Papa, he’d said he was planning to settle instead in nearby Bluffton, where he was known and where he might even pick up paying work. If Lillie could somehow make her way there, she might be able to find him and learn something he wasn’t telling.

  Traveling to Bluffton, of course, would be well-nigh as hard as traveling to Mississippi, at least for Lillie by herself. But Bett went there all the time. As the oldest of the slaves and the one least likely to run off, Bett was well-trusted at Greenfog and was often given traveling passes that would allow her to run errands. The most important of those errands were her once- or twice-monthly trips to Bluffton, where she would pick up the flour, cornmeal and other supplies she needed for her baking. Usually, she’d take a slave child with her for help, and once, when Lillie was nine years old, she’d been that child. Now she’d have to persuade Bett to take her again.

  When the last of the mothers had dropped the last of the babies off at the nursery cabin this morning, Lillie craned her head outside to make sure they were gone, closed the door and, for extra measure, closed the shutter next to it too. Then she turned to Minervy, who was balancing a baby on her hip and glancing warily across the room at another one who had begun to fuss. Lillie spoke in a whisper.

  “Minervy,” she said, “I need your help.”

  Minervy regarded her suspiciously. “What kind o’ help?”

  “I need you to take care of the babies; I got to go do something.”

  “Do what?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Then it has to be something you shouldn’t.”

  Lillie shrugged. “Might be. All the same, I has to go.”

  “What’ll you do if the slave driver sees you?” Minervy asked.

  “I’ll get thrashed, I expect.”

  “What’ll you do if your mama sees you?”

  “I’ll get thrashed worse.”

  “And if someone comes by and asks me what become of you?”

  “Tell ’em I took sick and will be back directly.”

  Minervy’s eyes went wide. “Lillie, I can’t tell a fib like that,” she said, “at least not so’s I’d be believed.”

  “You got to, Minervy,” Lillie said.

  “But I can’t! It ain’t fair!” Minervy pleaded, her voice rising high enough so that the fussing baby began to cry. “We’ll get caught, and we’ll both get whipped!”

  Lillie took Minervy’s shoulders, looked into her eyes and saw the whole of the other girl’s fear there. She was about to tell her that she needed her help and that was that, but she stopped herself. Minervy was the uncommon kind of slave girl who watched herself so carefully she might well grow straight into her adult years without ever getting a taste of the lash, something she had told Lillie more than once she was determined to do. By asking her to lie now, Lillie could put her in the way of the whip she so wanted to avoid. Minervy was right: That wasn’t fair. If Lillie was going to make trouble this morning, she would have to make it on her own—and take the consequences on her own.

  “All right,” she said, releasing Minervy’s shoulders. “If anyone asks, tell ’em the truth. You don’t know where I gone.” She turned on her heel and slipped out the door before Minervy could say anything else.

  Lillie stood in the soft grass in front of the nursery cabin and looked around herself warily. The route she would take to Bett’s house would have to be a roundabout one—avoiding a direct run through the tobacco fields that would leave her open to getting spotted by Mama, or past the barns that might attract the notice of the slave drivers. Instead, she’d have to go a stealthier way, skirting the fields in so circular a path that she would brush up against the very boundaries of the plantation itself—an invisible line she dared not cross lest she be marked not merely a girl out on mischief but a runaway.

  She set out at a light run and, despite her racing thoughts, found herself enjoying the feel of the grass beneath her feet and the fragrance of lavender on the air. Before she had gone more than a hundred yards, however, she once again noticed another smell—the smell of baking. It was crowded down by the flower smell rising from the fields, but it was there all the same, and as always, it was coming from the direction of Bett’s house. Lillie picked up her pace and ran low and fast, keeping her head down to avoid being seen and following her nose as much as her eyes. At last, she doubled around the west corner of the tobacco field and Bett’s cabin came into view. She stumbled to a stop in the scrub and low grass on Bett’s tiny lot of land and bent forward with her hands on her knees to catch her breath and slow her pounding heart. Then she straightened up and looked about.

  The slowbees were back—not many, just a few, so few that if you didn’t know to look for them, you might not see them at all. And the slowbees weren’t all that caught her eye. A dozen yards away, the little stream where Bett fetched her water gave off a deeper burble than it usually did, and even from here, Lillie could see that it too was behaving oddly, moving at a creep that gave it a look less of running water than of thick, cold syrup. Turning her gaze up, she saw that even the plume of oven smoke rising from Bett’s chimney appeared to have slowed itself, feathering out across the sky like ink spreading in water. The water and the smoke, like the bees, could have easily escaped someone else’s notice. Once again, Lillie heard the creak of the cabin door, and once again, Bett stood inside. But this time she opened the door wide and gave Lillie a fuller, more peaceful smile.

  “Now you can come in, child,” the old woman said. “I was wonderin’ what was keepin’ you.”

  Chapter Five

  LILLIE STOOD WHERE she was for a long moment, staring at the usually friendly sight of Bett and yet feeling reluctant to move. She had known the old woman for as long as she could remember and had always found her a gentle presence. Now, however, Lillie was strangely afraid. Bett seemed to notice that. She opened the door wider and ticked her head invitingly.

  “Come in,” she repeated. “There’s bread if you want some.”

  Lillie unrooted her feet, stepped across the grass and climbed the single step into the cabin. It was warm and close inside with the heat coming out of the oven, but Bett closed the door anyway, as if she already knew the reason for Lillie’s visit and reckoned privacy was called for. The little house looked the way it always looked, furnished with an eating table and two chairs, a dresser with a small looking glass above it, and a bed covered with a soft, woolen throw Bett had owned for years and years and years. Lillie had always liked the colors of the worn old blanket—greens and yellows and oranges and scarlets on a background of deep black.

  “Africa colors,” Bett would say. “Been sleepin’ under ’em my whole life.”

  The only part of the cabin that didn’t look as tidy as the rest was the area near the hearth where Bett did her baking. There was a small wall of shelves filled with a jumble of baking trays, mixing bowls, spoons, whisks and knives. Next to it was a separate shelf stacked with an odd collection of bowls and pieces of china that were far too fine for a slave’s cabin and in fact had come from the Big House. All of them were chipped or cracked or otherwise not suitable for the Master’s home and had been given to Bett as a gift from the Mi
ssus.

  “I expect these would look just fine in your kitchen,” the Missus had said with a broad smile when she passed the battered old things to Bett.

  “Yes, ma’am,” was all Bett had said.

  Beneath Bett’s shelves was a long, well-used worktable where she mixed her batters and kneaded her doughs. Resting on the table was a fresh tray of dark bread. Lillie could see a few curls of steam rising from it and, though Mama had given her a good breakfast of hoecakes and milk, she could feel her belly rumbling. Bett saw her staring at the bread.

  “You look hungry, girl,” she said.

  Lillie nodded mutely.

  “Sit then,” Bett said, gesturing to one of the two chairs.

  Lillie did as she was told, and Bett sliced off a thick piece of the fresh bread. She blew the crumbs off a plate sitting on the mixing table, placed the bread on it and carried it to the eating table. Lillie inhaled the heavy, yeasty smell and took a bite. The bread, as always, was just what bread ought to be. The crust was thick and flavorful, and fought with her a little when she bit it. The inside was cloud light. It was as if two foods had come together in a single one, and Lillie ate hungrily. Bett sat down and watched her and, after a long moment, spoke.

  “I reckoned today was the day you’d come,” she said.

  “I woulda come earlier if I coulda got away,” Lillie said through a mouthful of bread.

  “I know,” Bett said. “You want to talk about the boy—Plato.”

  Lillie stopped chewing and looked up, the appetite suddenly gone from her. She nodded. “How do you know?” she asked.

  “People talk, I listen,” Bett said. “You want to know if I can help you.”

  Lillie nodded again. “Can you?” she asked.

  “What is it you reckon I can do?”

  “I need to get to Bluffton,” Lillie said, putting down her bread. She leaned in and spoke low and fast as if someone might be listening. “I need to go soon. We was supposed to be freed, but since they say my papa done some stealin’, they ain’t never gonna let us go. I got to show he didn’t do it or they’ll take Plato away and we won’t never see him again.” Lillie never found it easy to talk about Papa without the talk turning to tears—especially when she had to repeat the lie about the stealing. But she swallowed hard and her eyes stayed dry.

  “What’s in Bluffton?” Bett asked. She pushed Lillie’s bread plate a little closer to her, but Lillie had lost interest in eating and Bett did not press her further.

  “A man,” Lillie said. “A slave soldier what might know somethin’.”

  “You think I can help you get there?”

  “You can,” Lillie said.

  “You think you can just walk about a place like that, askin’ questions like you was growed and free?”

  “I got to try. I can’t let ’em take Plato!”

  Bett sat back. “You’re askin’ a lot, girl,” she said. “And you’re askin’ for trouble too. No harm would come to me—even that Bull wouldn’t lay a whip to my back, and the Master couldn’t get more’n a coin if he tried to sell me off for misbehavin’. But you’d fetch a price and a flogging both if you got caught. And besides ...” Bett trailed off as if considering whether or not she ought to continue. Then she went on, but more gently. “And besides, how do you know they wasn’t tellin’ the truth ’bout your papa? It ain’t every slave man what comes by a bag o’ Yankee gold, ’less he took it.”

  Lillie’s eyes went fiery, and her tone went cold. “My papa weren’t no thief,” she said, rising to her feet, “and I won’t listen to no one call him one. He lived an honest man, and he died one too! And if you don’t believe me, we ain’t got nothin’ to talk about!” She pushed her chair back noisily, nearly knocking it over, and began to stalk toward the door.

  “Girl!” Bett called after her sharply. Lillie slowed, then turned back. “Sit back down!”

  Lillie hesitated and Bett’s stern tone and face softened to weary amusement. “Sit,” she said, with a tired wave of her hand. Lillie returned to the table and Bett looked at her thoughtfully.

  “No, child,” the old woman said at length. “I don’t reckon your papa was a thief. A thievin’ man’s always lookin’ about, as if he’s waitin’ to be caught at somethin’. An honest man got a steady way about him—and your papa was steady like a tree. You got his way about you, and you got his looks too—which I reckon pleases you less than if you had your mama’s looks. But you’re Ibo and your papa was Ibo, and your mama ain’t.”

  This was not the first time Bett had mentioned that Lillie was Ibo, and Lillie could never tell if she meant it as a good thing or not. “A lot of Ibo in you, child,” Bett liked to say if she caught Lillie wrestling with another child or otherwise making trouble. “Maybe too much.”

  Papa had had a lot more to say than Bett on the matter of the Ibo, and he had talked of it often. The Ibo were the African tribe that Bett’s people and his people—and so Lillie’s own people—had come from. It was something she ought to be proud of, he said. The Ibo were known as fine music-makers and storytellers and were said to be especially good with numbers, coming up with their own form of ciphering that was even better than the one the white men used. Best of all, at least to Lillie, the Ibo people didn’t see much difference between an Ibo boy and an Ibo girl, an Ibo man and an Ibo woman, reckoning any Ibo could hunt or plant or fight or tend as well as any other one. Full-grown Ibo women even went into battle alongside the men, facing the same enemies and carrying the same weapons. Bett used to say that she could spot an Ibo in any group of Southern slaves, and it was that readiness to tangle when they had to that set them apart. Sitting across the table from Lillie, she now looked in the girl’s face, seeming to study it closely.

  “I expect you aim to do this thing,” she said.

  Lillie nodded.

  “And I expect you won’t let me be if I don’t give you some help,” Bett added.

  Lillie shook her head no.

  Bett sighed and then stood, pressing her palms down on the table to help herself rise, grunting with the effort. “I’m too old to be of much use to you myself,” she said, “but maybe I got somethin’ that can serve.”

  She made her way over to her baking shelves and took down a small, reddish jar, holding it carefully in both hands. The jar looked like ordinary Carolina clay, but it was shaped like it had been made with another land in mind. Bett carried it back to the table, set it down and took the lid off. She withdrew a small cloth bag and opened the drawstring that kept it shut. Then she tipped the bag into her hand, and a shiny chip of black stone fell into her palm.

  “That,” she said, “is a piece of Africa.”

  Bett slowly tilted the chip this way and that. It had a surface that looked as if it had been polished, and it reflected light like a bright coin. “Your papa never knew what part of the Ibos’ land his people come from,” Bett said, “but I knew where mine was from. A place not far from the ocean, where the ground was cut through by rivers and streams. The water always ran fast and bright there, and my papa said his papa told him it tasted fine too—what a cloud would taste like if you could squeeze it down tight and put it in a bowl. Still, there was one place the water didn’t run so quick, and that was on my granddaddy’s land. When it flowed through there, it flowed like syrup. But if you scooped the water out and poured it on the ground, it spilled as quick as any water ought to. Ever see any other water behavin’ like that?”

  Lillie nodded.

  “I reckoned you had. My granddaddy never could understand why his stream behaved that way. Then he dug beneath the mud where the fish and turtles fed and found black rock everywhere just like this chip—long, hard bones of it runnin’ through the ground. The Africans called the rock firestone, ’cause it come from the hot rocks the mountains spit out. Granddaddy reckoned it was the firestone what held the magic that slowed his river, figuring stone that flowed fast and then turned hard could share its changin’ nature with the water. He broke some bits offa
the rock and carried them with him for luck. When the slavers caught him, he hid two of the chips under his tongue and promised himself he’d never spit them out—not when he got chained, not when he got whipped, not when they closed him in the belly of a ship and carried him across the ocean. He held on to ’em till he was sold to a plantation where he could hide ’em well and pass ’em on to his children and to their children who came after.”

  “And this here piece is all that’s left?” Lillie asked softly.

  Bett smiled again. “No, child,” she said. “I got the other one too.”

  Bett stood again and gestured to Lillie to follow her. She walked the three steps to her still-hot oven and crouched down in front of it. Lillie did the same, flinching at the heat coming out of the bricks. Bett pointed into the oven and Lillie followed where her finger indicated. At first she noticed nothing, but then she saw what Bett wanted her to see: a single brick in the oven wall, just the same as all the other bricks except that in the middle of it was a shiny piece of black stone, about as big as a small coin. The stone was plain to see once you knew where to look, but no one other than Bett would ever have cause to use her oven, much less crouch down low and peer inside.

  “I reckoned I needed a place to keep at least one of ’em safe,” Bett said. “So I baked me a brick and mortared it in where no one would ever look. What I didn’t figure on was that when I lit the fire, the magic o’that stone would get carried on the smoke. It flows out of the chimney and just like it slowed my granddaddy’s river—”

  “It slows the bees!” Lillie finished. “And the stream and the smoke!”

  Bett nodded.

  “What about the whip—the one what missed Cal?” Lillie asked.

  “That too,” Bett said.

  “But how did you make it work just right—so the whip didn’t hit nothin’ but the air?”

  “That sort o’ thing comes with practice. Part of it comes from just when you light the fire and just when you put it out. Part of it’s how you bake. If I bake my bread the regular way, I can slow things down a little; if I bake it too long, I can slow ’em down a lot. I can even bake it too short and speed things up. There’s other things them stones can do too, but they don’t bear foolin’ with.”