Freedom Stone

by Jeffrey Kluger

  The mug began to fill with a white foam that rose to the lip and overflowed, spilling down over Lillie’s hand. Several women in the crowd let out a scream; Lillie trembled, but held still. Bett turned to Evers and Nate, who now regarded the mug in open fear.

  “You two has to drink it,” she said. “Each of you, two big swallows.”

  Both men stood frozen, then Evers stepped forward. He held out a trembling hand, and Lillie passed him the mug. Quickly, before he could change his mind, he took two big gulps. He closed his eyes tight, then slowly opened them and lowered the mug. He broke into a wide grin with flecks of foam covering his lips, which he wiped clean with his sleeve. Then he extended the mug to Nate, who stared at it. For long seconds, Nate stood absolutely still and then, seemingly to his own surprise, he broke.

  “And what if I did take that necklace?” he shouted. “Ain’t nothin’ but a peach pit! I reckon I could make it just as good if I cared to!” He threw the necklace to the ground. “Fool old woman!” he snapped at Bett. Then he wheeled around and stalked off.

  The people in the crowd burst into laughter and closed around Evers, clapping his back. He scooped up the peach gem, blew the dirt off it and shined it against his shirt. Bett smiled and then forced her face to turn stern.

  “Now, shoo!” she said to the crowd. “Shoo, the mess o’ you, before Mr. Willis sets his whip boys on you.”

  The slaves, laughing and chattering, dispersed, and Lillie stood uncertainly, not sure if she should leave as well. Bett caught her eye and nodded for her to stay. When the last of the crowd had gone off, the old woman turned to go back inside, laughing to herself.

  “Shoot,” she said. “Weren’t nothin’ in that cup but bakin’ soda.” She turned to Lillie and winked. “That’s an old Ibo trick too.” Bett climbed the two small steps into the cabin, and Lillie followed her there.

  After the shouting and shoving of a moment ago, the one small room that was Bett’s small world seemed sleepy and subdued—and Bett, for that matter, did too. With her baking work done for the week, she would spend today the way she spent most Saturdays—napping and strolling and keeping to herself unless someone paid a visit. She eased herself down at her eating table and rubbed her eyes wearily, and Lillie suddenly felt ashamed that she’d come to bother her with her own problems.

  “Trouble outside’s over, and you ought to have your peace,” Lillie said. “I expect I should go.”

  “You go and whatever you come here to get done will stay undone,” Bett answered. “And judging by that face you’re wearin’, it’s somethin’ important.”

  Lillie hadn’t realized she was showing any expression at all, but now that Bett called her attention to it, she could feel the way the whole of her face was stretched like a drum. She tried to let her eyes and mouth ease into a smile, but it was a counterfeit thing and Bett laughed kindly.

  “Give me a smile when you got a real one,” she said. “Why not just say what you come to say.”

  “It’s Henry,” Lillie said. “I got to go see his family, and I got to do it soon.”

  Bett nodded. On the way back from Bluffton, Lillie had described the conversation she’d had with Henry and the deal the two of them had struck, and Bett had seemed troubled by the plan. Henry was right, Bett had warned, that the worse the war grew, the less the South could count on the mails. And the other part of the agreement—Lillie going to Orchard Hill—seemed to Bett to be the worst kind of folly. But Lillie had repeated her decision that she aimed to try anyway. Bett said nothing after that, and Lillie had not known whether that meant she’d been convinced that the idea was a good one or simply decided that Lillie had made up her mind anyway so there was no point arguing. Lillie hadn’t wanted to ask, lest she get an answer she didn’t like.

  “What plantation you say they live on?” was all Bett asked now.

  “Orchard Hill.”

  “The Master give you leave to go there?”

  “No’m.”

  “The overseer?”

  “No’m.”

  “I reckon you ain’t goin’, then.”

  “I got to go,” Lillie protested. “I got to tell his kin he’s alive—otherwise, he ain’t gonna send my letter!”

  “I know that, child,” Bett answered, “but you can’t rightly explain that kind o’ thing to Mr. Willis. And if you try runnin’ without askin’, he’ll catch you, beat you and sell you sure.”

  “Maybe I don’t got to ask, nor get caught,” Lillie said. She leaned in close and lowered her voice to a whisper, though the two of them were alone in the cabin. “There’s a slave party at Bingham Woods next Saturday. I can jump out o’ Samuel’s wagon on the way, get myself to Orchard Hill and get back before anyone knows—even Mama.”

  Bett pursed her lips. “It’s a long way to Orchard Hill by foot. Too long for a slave child sneakin’ by night.”

  “Maybe,” Lillie said. “Or maybe not.”

  She cast her eyes over at Bett’s cooking supplies and then at the stove, which was cold and dark. Bett followed her gaze and looked back at her, shaking her head.

  “It don’t do for you to mess with that,” Bett said. “That ain’t a bakin’ soda trick; that’s real. I tol’ you I don’t want to use no oven charms ’less we don’t got no other choice.”

  “But I don’t got no other choice.”

  “You do got a choice, but it’s a hard one. You can stop thinkin’ ’bout your papa. You can pay mind to where you is and what’s left o’ your family. That’s what a slave does.”

  “But I ain’t a slave!” Lillie cried. “I ain’t supposed to be! My papa weren’t no thief! That’s the stone truth and no one’s gonna hold my family nor sell my brother on account of a lie! No one!” At that, the frustration and the fear and the sorrow got the better of her, and she erupted in tears, burying her face in her hands and giving way to all that seemed to weigh down on her. Bett slowly rose, put her hand on Lillie’s back, then took her head and cradled it against her hip. Lillie wept softly into Bett’s apron.

  “All right, girl, all right,” Bett said softly, stroking Lillie’s hair. She took Lillie’s face in her hands and turned it up to her, then ran her thumb across the girl’s cheek, rubbing away a tear. “I expect we can try a little bakin’ this mornin’.” Lillie beamed but Bett held up her hand. “But this is work. It ain’t play. And it can’t be my bakin’; it’s got to be yours—leastways, if you want the magic to do what it needs to do.”

  Wordlessly, Bett went to her oven, picked up a few pieces of firewood and a few sticks of kindling, stacked them inside and set them afire. Lillie watched as the flame popped and grew, and drew a breath as Bett’s particular wood in her particular oven gave off a smell she’d long since learned to know meant fine baking was coming.

  “We got to wait for that to heat proper,” Bett said. “Meantime, you tell me what you want to do with this charm we’re workin’.”

  “I don’t know,” Lillie said. “I reckon I wanna slow down the slave party at Bingham Woods so’s I can get to Orchard Hill and back in time.”

  Bett shook her head no. “Can’t do that.”

  “Why not?” Lillie asked.

  “Your business is at both places. Can’t slow down one without slowing down the other. It’d be like two legs walkin’ different ways.”

  “Then slow them both.”

  “Can’t do that neither,” Bett said. “Not enough charmin’ in the world to slow down even one whole plantation, never mind two of ’em.”

  “So there ain’t no point,” Lillie said, her shoulders slumping.

  “There is,” Bett answered. “Long as we quit thinkin’’bout gettin’ other people movin’ slower and instead get you movin’ quicker.”

  Lillie hadn’t thought of that, but Bett had told her it was possible to do such a thing. Bake firm, Bett had said, and things slow down. Bake loose, and they speed up. All at once, Lillie felt uneasy. It was one thing to think of sending magic somewhere else; it was another thing t
o imagine conjuring it up and taking it on herself. But if that was what Bett said she had to do, she had to do it. She swallowed hard and squared off her shoulders.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  Bett laughed. “Not so fast, little Ibo. That’s a bread we can’t bake till just before we needs it. Meantime, if you’re the one what’s sending this charm, we got to see what kind o’ magic you got in you first. We’ll try some simple slow-bakin’ today, and we’ll start with somethin’ easy like a cake.”

  Bett stood and went to her shelves, where she took down her mixing bowls and measures. She summoned Lillie and instructed her to open the bags of flour and other ingredients, then handed her scoops and told her how much to take from each bag. Bett let Lillie do the measuring and pouring, instructed her in the beating and folding, and let her manage that too. It was tiring work, and Lillie found herself feeling grateful that Bett had decided against a bread, which would have required a lot of hard kneading. When the batter was done, Bett allowed Lillie to dip her finger in and sample it. It tasted fine, and Lillie gazed into the bowl with more pride than she’d imagined she’d feel.

  “Now spit in it,” Bett instructed.

  “What?” Lillie asked.

  “Spit,” Bett repeated. “It don’t have to be a lot.”

  “That’s our cake!” Lillie protested.

  “And until you spit into it, a cake’s all it’s gonna be. You want it to be more’n that, you’ll spit like I tell you.”

  Lillie sighed, then leaned over the bowl. She regarded the batter she’d worked so hard to whip up—and spat square in the center of it.

  “Now stir it up,” Bett said, and Lillie did that too.

  “The thing about fooling with how time runs,” Bett explained as Lillie wiped away a bit of spittle that had clung to her chin, “is that them Africa stones in the oven ain’t always enough. I didn’t know it myself till a few years back when I was tendin’ a baby for one of the mamas who was workin’ late. I was holdin’ him on my hip with one hand and stirrin’ my batter with the other, when he let go some dribble right into the bowl. It weren’t much and the batter was good, so I baked it up anyway. By the time I was ready to take it out of the oven, them bees outside my window was movin’ so slow you’da thought they was hung on strings. One o’ the most powerful charms I ever sent.”

  “I can’t reckon how spit can do that,” Lillie said.

  “This ain’t regular spit; it’s the sugar spit. Children got it, grown-ups lose it.”

  “I thought spit was spit.”

  “It ain’t,” Bett said. “Never bothers you wipin’ off the wet chin of a baby, does it?”

  Lillie shook her head. “Done it plenty o’ times in the nursery cabin.”

  “How about the chin of an old lady? Old as me, say.”

  Lillie didn’t want to give offense, but wrinkled up her nose all the same.

  “Just so,” Bett said. “That’s the sugar spit at work. When I wanna cast a particular strong charm, I gotta have one o’ the small children taste the batter first, so’s I can save some o’ their spit on the spoon.”

  “But I ain’t a baby no more,” Lillie said.

  Bett shrugged. “Give me a peck right here,” she said, indicating her lips. Lillie bent forward and gave Bett a small kiss, then straightened back up. Bett licked her lips thoughtfully. “You got it, child,” she said. “You got it still. Probably not for much longer, but for a while yet you do.”

  Bett slid the batter into the oven and turned back to Lillie. “Now we got one more thing to do,” she said. Wordlessly, she filled a small pot with water, poured a large scoop of sugar into it, and picked a handful of red berries from a bowl. She mashed the berries in a cup and scraped them into the pot. Finally she placed the pot on the stove above the oven flame and waited until the water came to a boil. She then stirred up the mixture—which was now a sticky red juice—and motioned to Lillie to follow her outside, where she placed the pot on the forked branch of a tree to cool.

  “What’s that for?” Lillie asked.

  “To call the hummingbirds.”

  Bett and Lillie reentered the cabin and spent the better part of a peaceful hour drawing in the sweet fragrance of the small, rising cake and looking out the window at the pot in the tree. At almost the moment that the smell of the cake became so powerful Lillie’s mouth began to water, two tiny green hummingbirds flashed into view outside. Lillie caught her breath. She’d always found hummingbirds enchanting—almost magical—and sometimes fancied that they were fairies, the living, winged wishes of small boys and girls who were taken by a sickness when they were very young and were rewarded with an eternity of lightness and flight. She watched the small, iridescent birds as they hovered about the pot, their wings moving so fast they were almost invisible as they darted toward the sugar water and back from it, dipping their long, slender beaks in for a drink.

  But all at once, the hummingbirds weren’t darting so quickly, their wings weren’t beating invisibly. They seemed now as if they were moving in a dream, drifting to and from the pot at a creep, their slow, graceful wings pumping once, then twice, then three times at the air. Lillie gasped and turned to Bett, then turned back to look outside. Just as she did, she saw something else—something large and black and ugly darting through the air. It was followed by an angry call, one that Lillie had heard before.

  “A shrike!” Lillie said—and as she said it, a black bird, far larger than the hummingbirds, dove into view, having arrived too late for the charm to take hold of it. It vanished once more and then dove once more, and this time headed straight for the hummingbirds, which were still imprisoned by the charm.

  “No!” Lillie screamed, but she was too late. The shrike speared one of the hummingbirds on its beak, tossed its head angrily, and threw the tiny creature to the ground. Then it swooped down, grabbed the small green body in its talons and flew off. Bett spun around, grabbed a broomstick, and swung it into the oven, smashing the cake. Instantly, the remaining hummingbird was freed from the magic and darted safely away. Lillie dropped her head into her hands, too horrified to look anymore. Bett came up behind her and rested what felt like a trembling hand on her hair.

  “Charms is powerful, child,” she said. “They’s also dangerous. I guess it’s best you know that now.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  SARABETH HAD biscuits, ham and red-eye gravy for breakfast on the day the slaves were going to have their dance at Bingham Woods. She didn’t particularly care for biscuits and never really had, though you couldn’t have gravy without having something to soak it up. The ham was good—not too smoky like it had been the last time. She’d asked her mother to tell the kitchen slaves not to leave it in the smoke as long as they had before, and judging by the way the ham tasted this morning, it seemed like they had obeyed. There had also been grits—which Sarabeth’s father had urged her to eat but which she had simply pushed around her plate—and sweet tea, which had not been sweet enough and which Sarabeth had thus let stand as well. Her little brother, Cody, who never seemed to mind what he ate, finished what was on his plate and in his glass and then began eating and drinking from Sarabeth’s as well. The Master scolded him and instructed the parlor maid to serve the boy properly. Then he scolded the parlor maid for not filling the boy’s plate and glass in time and causing his breach of manners in the first place.

  None of this put Sarabeth in a good frame of mind, but the fact was, she’d been in a cross temper from the moment she’d come downstairs this morning. A disagreeable breakfast was bad enough, but on a day like today, lunch and dinner did not seem likely to be much better. With the dance on all the slaves’ minds, her mother would allow most of the house servants to go back to their cabins even earlier than usual for a Saturday to prepare for the evening. Only the two older kitchen slaves would be left in the Big House, where they would be minding the slave children who were too small to go to the party. As was the custom, the kitchen slaves would cook up a fancy little
dinner of honey cakes and pork for the children, so that they wouldn’t fuss too much about being left behind. Often, the children were even told to wear their own fine party clothes if they had them, which made the dinner all the more special.

  Sarabeth’s father thought the little dinners were a nuisance, but Sarabeth’s mother looked forward to them. She liked to think of herself as a good Missus, and she thought most highly of herself when she felt she was pampering the slave children. “They’re so pretty when they’re small,” she’d say. “I wonder if their parents see it.” Often on the day of a party, the Missus herself would spend the afternoon in the kitchen, directing the two old slaves as they prepared for the children’s meal.

  What all this meant for Sarabeth was that the kitchen slaves would be busy all day, her mother would be working alongside them and both lunch and dinner would be simple, hurried affairs. In the evening, in fact, she’d probably dine entirely alone. Her father would be going off to Bingham Woods to drink and smoke with the Master of the plantation, as well as with masters of other nearby plantations who would come to enjoy the cigars and the whiskey and would return the courtesy by bringing along their own whip men, who would help keep order among the slaves. Cody would be staying home, but he’d be eating with the slave children, occupying the chair at the head of the kitchen table, just like the Master he’d one day be. The Missus invited Sarabeth to join them all in the kitchen, but she wanted no part of such childish affairs.

  “Little children are little beasts,” she’d said. “I’m too old to dine with them.”

  It was, of course, at just such a dinner years ago that Sarabeth and Lillie had become good friends, with Sarabeth seated at the head of the table and Lillie, after a time, always seated at her right. The Missus would allow Lillie to arrive before the other children so that she could go upstairs to Sarabeth’s room and help her dress. When they had grown and Lillie was old enough to attend slave dances herself, Sarabeth would be the one doing the helping, visiting Lillie’s cabin to tie ribbons in her hair and admire her as she spun in her only fancy dress. Eventually, the Master and the Missus told Sarabeth to stop, since it was a slave girl’s job to dress the Young Mistress, not the Mistress’s job to dress the slave girl. The two girls played less and less after that, until the day came that they didn’t play at all.