A Perilous Proposal

by Michael Phillips

  Slowly he closed the door of the gun cabinet. He might try something after dark, Dawson said to himself. For the present he would have to content himself with fuming about the house. For the rest of the day he complained bitterly to his wife about the cruel lot of being at the mercy of such nigger trash, as if she herself were the object of his fury.

  Back in the barn, Micah set the gun down and hurried to make sure Jake had not received any ricocheting shot.

  “We gots ter git outta dis place, Duff!” said Jake, by now on his feet. “Dese blamed white folks is plumb crazy!”

  “They’re a man and daughter with some mighty twisted-up ideas, that’s for sure,” said Micah as he regained his breath. “Yep, it’s probably time we were moving on. You think you can sit a saddle?”

  “Don’t know unless I try. But it’s better’n bein’ dead. Dat’s a crazy man, Duff!”

  “Well, if you have too hard a time riding, we’ll stop again. But you’re right. We can’t risk one of these people doing something else stupid. We better wait till tonight and slip out when it’s dark.”

  “Why dat?”

  “You heard what he said. I think if given half the chance, he’d follow us and ambush us first chance he got. I’d rather he didn’t know which way we were headed.”

  “Dat’s right smart, Duff. I’m glad you thought ob dat. I don’t want dat man puttin’ no gun to my head when I’s asleep!”

  “I’ll round up our things and keep the horses inside and out of sight for the rest of the day. We’ll saddle them, and after they’re asleep we’ll head out across the field behind the barn out of sight from the house. Once we make the cover of the trees, we’ll move back and forth for a while so he can’t follow us and see how you are, then make camp somewhere till morning. How’s that sound?”

  “Anythin’ ter git outta dis fool place!”

  FREEDOM COUSINS

  16

  SOMETIME BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND TWO IN THE morning, with the light of a three-quarter moon glowing in and out from between a night sky half full of clouds, Micah Duff and Jake Patterson slowly walked away from the Dawson farm with their three horses. After reaching the trees, with some difficulty Micah helped Jake into the saddle. Then they continued on.

  They rode for perhaps two hours, then stopped to get what sleep they could before daybreak. By the time the sun was high in the sky, they had put enough distance between themselves and the Dawsons that they had no more worries about being followed. They stopped again and slept for most of the afternoon.

  Jake’s pain was not gone by any means. But he could sit in the saddle without it being too much worse. As long as they went slowly and he sat upright and straight, he managed fine. They did not cover many miles a day, but their progress toward Chattanooga was steady. Micah’s main worry was that they would encounter more Confederate troops, or Southern civilians like the Dawsons. If they encountered danger, in Jake’s condition they could hardly hope to make a run for it. Two blacks traveling alone in the South, one a runaway slave and both wearing Union blue, were anything but safe. Thus they kept to back roads and wooded areas, and traveled as much as possible at night. Whether they would ever catch up with their detachment, that part of his own anxiety Micah kept to himself.

  “What’s gwine happen ter me, Duff?” asked Jake as they rode slowly along. “When we git back ter yo men, I mean. After what happened, dey’s not gwine be none too glad ter see da likes er me agin. Dat man Billings, he’s likely told ’em a heap more lies ’bout me.”

  “You let me worry about Billings and the rest of them, Jake,” replied Micah. “Until you feel healthy and well and want to move on, you can stay with me as long as you want. If you help me tend the horses and learn to make coffee for the men, they’re not going to complain.”

  “But what ’bout da lies, Duff?”

  “Lies can’t hurt you, Jake, as long as you’re true yourself.”

  “But dey do hurt, Duff.”

  “I know. What I meant is that they can’t hurt the real you, the you that’s down inside that’s who you really are. So there’s nothing you can do except ignore them and be true yourself.”

  Jake rode on in silence. Micah’s words had stabbed deep into him. He wasn’t true inside, and he knew it. He had a terrible secret and it ate away at him. Micah sensed a change in the atmosphere and let the quiet do its work without disturbing it with more words. Several long minutes passed.

  “You think I’s be safe wiff yo men?” asked Jake at length. “Dey won’t do nuthin’ ter me?”

  “You’ll be safe,” replied Micah. “Most Northern men don’t mind coloreds like us as long as we don’t push them and get what they call uppity. I doubt even Billings will bother you again as long as you stay out of his way.”

  “But dey don’t like us, do dey, Duff?”

  Now it was Micah’s turn to grow reflective. “That’s a good question, Jake,” he said. “I don’t think I know the answer. They tolerate us . . . maybe that’s the best we can expect. I don’t know.”

  “Why you talk like er white man, Duff? You been ter sum kind er college er sumfin like dat?”

  “No, Jake, I’ve likely got no more education than you.”

  “You kin read, can’t you?”

  “Yes, I can read.”

  “Kin you read books, Duff?”

  “I can.”

  “You read any?”

  “I have.”

  “What kind er books?”

  “Stories about people and faraway places. I haven’t read that many books, Jake—just whatever I could get my hands on.”

  “How kin you talk so good, den, Duff?”

  “I decided I was going to learn how, and I did.”

  “You jes’ learned yo’self?”

  Micah nodded. “That’s how I learned to read too.”

  “Why did you do it, learn yo’self to talk better?”

  “Because I noticed that folks treat people different because of how they talk. I figured that if I could talk better, maybe folks would treat me like somebody they could respect. I don’t know whether white folks can ever really respect a colored man the same way they do one of their own kind. But I know they treat me with more respect now. And I figure that’s a good thing.”

  “You think I cud eber talk like you, Duff?”

  “If you want to, Jake. People can do anything they want if they set their minds to it. You could learn to talk better and read books and do whatever you want. Anybody can.”

  Being around Micah Duff, watching him, listening to him, and now riding beside him was already changing Jake Patterson far more than he realized. Slowly he had invisibly begun to absorb one of the most valuable lessons anybody can learn in life—that a person can change and grow and improve himself and make something more of himself than he is. Micah didn’t always say it in so many words like he just had about reading and speaking. But being around him just made Jake feel like life was a good thing. It made him realize that there was always something more you could find if you looked for it and wanted to find it. Micah’s heart and brain were alive and awake with ideas and thoughts and possibilities and challenges. Slowly that awakeness of heart began to rub off on Jake.

  “You got kin, Duff?” asked Jake.

  “Nope. I’m alone, Jake. How about you?”

  “My mama’s dead.”

  “How’d she die?”

  “A white man killed her,” said Jake moodily.

  “What about your daddy?”

  The very word he hadn’t heard in so long brought undefined emotions of anger and resentment to the surface in Jake’s heart. Micah instantly felt a change come over his young companion.

  “My daddy lef’ us when I was a kid,” said Jake. “He’s supposed ter be in Carolina sumwheres. Dat’s where I’m boun’, effen I eber git dere.”

  “What kind of man is your daddy?” asked Micah.

  Jake didn’t answer. Micah sensed that the cloud that had come over Jake’s countenance had da
rkened all the more as a result of his question.

  “Well, if you and I are alone in the world,” said Micah cheerily, “at least until you find your pa, then we’ll be family to each other, Jake. We’re all from the same people anyway, all coloreds like us. We came from the same place. That makes us cousins, Jake, you and me and all blacks . . . cousins in this fight for freedom we’re part of.”

  They reached the outskirts of Chattanooga about ten days later. Coming so near such an important Southern town increased the danger to them. They had to find the Union regiment quickly or else move on and head north.

  Stashing Jake and two of their horses in as out-of-the-way a place as they could find—near a stream where there was water and surrounded by thick woods—and dressed as a civilian, Micah set out to scout around the town.

  He knew the general kinds of terrain suitable for the encampment of a large number of troops. Captain Taylor had said they were to meet the regiment near a junction some five miles north of the town. It took him most of the day to find them, and it was with great relief that at last he saw uniforms of the Union blue with the Stars and Stripes waving overhead. Only a portion of the Northern regiment had yet arrived. Some four or five hundred troops were encamped in a small valley. Questioning one company after another, he finally walked into the familiar camp of Captain Taylor’s small Illinois detachment.

  “How’s the kid?” asked the captain after they had greeted one another.

  “He’s doing okay,” replied Micah. “I’ve got him hidden out a few miles away. I wanted to find you first. Your permission to keep him with us a while longer?”

  Taylor eyed him without expression.

  “I’m convinced he’s innocent in the affair with Billings, sir,” said Micah.

  Taylor shrugged. “You may be right, Duff,” he said. “I suppose it hardly matters. It’s over now. But if you’re not right, he could spell trouble.”

  “I’ll vouch for him, sir. He’ll cause no trouble as long as he’s with me.”

  “All right, then, Duff. You can bring him back to camp. But I’m going to hold you to what you just said.”

  “Fair enough, sir,” nodded Micah. “Thank you.”

  THE FREEDOM WAR

  17

  JAKE PATTERSON REMAINED WITH MICAH DUFF AND Captain Taylor’s Illinois company for three years. No more trouble arose with Billings.

  There were no major engagements with the Confederate Army, only a few brief skirmishes, for the rest of that year. Throughout the winter of 1861, the war quieted down almost completely. As winter gave way to the spring of 1862, however, with both sides now at full strength, major bloodshed loomed on the horizon.

  In September of that year, President Lincoln issued a stern ultimatum to the rebel states of the South: Return to the Union or all slaves would be declared free.

  His words were met with ridicule and resentment throughout the South. But he intended to back them up.

  Thus, in January of 1863, the president issued his famous decree setting every slave in the land free.

  Suddenly, astonishing news began to spread like a brushfire through the South. “Dat ol’ mancerpashun proklermashun,” as the blacks called it, had abolished and outlawed slavery itself! Whether the decree could be enforced against the newly formed Confederacy remained to be seen. But blacks themselves took the new law from Washington as if it had come from God himself.

  The dream of Jake Patterson’s mama had come true. Her son now knew something she had prayed for but never experienced for herself—that precious thing called freedom.

  Many couldn’t believe it at first. Most of the older slaves didn’t know what to make of it. What did it all mean? What was to become of them? What were they to do?

  How could the words freedom and colored possibly go together? And yet as time went on, gradually they became accustomed to the amazing truth—if they wanted, they could turn their backs and walk away from their masters and never have to do anything they said again.

  They were truly . . . free.

  Within months of the news Jake wasn’t the only colored on the move. The world of slavery had been turned upside down. Blacks everywhere were traveling and looking for work and trying to accustom themselves to a new way of life without “Massa” controlling every detail of their lives.

  But their newfound freedom did not bring them an easy life. If Massa wasn’t telling them what to do, neither was he feeding and clothing them and providing them a place to live. Those who chose to stay on with their former masters now had to be given nominal pay for their labor, since they were no longer slaves. But those who stayed found that freedom brought corresponding obligations. And those who chose not to stay found that life on their own could be a hard, and dangerous, thing.

  In the midst of the war, more and more former slaves set out on the long trek north. There they hoped opportunity would be waiting for them.

  But for the present, Jake Patterson’s quest had been interrupted by the war. His newfound home and family was with the 23rd Illinois Company. He had not been trying to get to the North anyway, but to Carolina. Right now, the Carolinas were not a safe place for a young black traveling alone.

  As the war progressed, Jake continued to grow. By the time he was fifteen he had put on six more inches and another twenty pounds and was as big as Micah Duff himself.

  All his life, especially since his flight from the Winegaard plantation, Jake had regarded the white man as his enemy. But among Captain Taylor’s men, with Billings now gone to join another regiment, he discovered a different kind of white man, who spoke in a different tongue, and who treated blacks with respect, sometimes even kindness. These blue-clad soldiers of the North saw themselves as liberators and friends to former slaves. They wanted to help them, not hurt them. And just as surely, as the war progressed, he learned that the grey coats of the Confederacy hated blacks, whose freedom was the cause of ruining the Southern way of life. While a Northern soldier in blue would usually help a black in need, a Southern soldier in grey would be happy to kill him if given the opportunity.

  The more he was around horses, as the slow dawning maturity of youth advanced him little by little toward adulthood, hints and reminders of his father came back to him. A vision might come to him of his father in the distance speaking gently into the ear of a jittery horse to calm it down. At another time came the vision of a man bent to one knee speaking tenderly into the face of a young boy. The words of such images remained a mystery. Jake’s memory of the incidents was too faint to recall them with clarity. But they aroused within him a feeling of curiosity and wonder. And then came the faraway sense that it had something to do with horses.

  Little did Jake realize that in a host of unseen ways his father had passed on to him a rare gift with horses. It was to understand and be understood by them. Not realizing why, more and more Jake was drawn to his father’s occupation. But in spite of his love for the noble four-footed creatures, reminders of his father remained bitter in his memory. Instead of cherishing the tender visions, he refused to see them with the innocent eyes of happy childhood. Instead he overlaid the memories with the anger of his later youth.

  Instead of bringing healing, as such memories could have done, they only deepened the anger fomenting beneath the surface in his heart.

  But the memory of his father and horses had one benefit. The more useful he became to Micah Duff in the care of the horses, the more respect he gained among the rest of the men.

  “You got some knack with horses, Jake,” said one of the soldiers as he came upon Jake walking out of the makeshift corral one day. “Where’d it come from?”

  “Don’t know,” answered Jake. “Jes’ one ob dose things, I reckon.”

  Jake did not add that his father had also been gifted with horses. He did not want to admit that perhaps he was more like his father than he realized. All the while his work subtly drew him in unseen ways closer to his father’s memory. In time he would grow to understand much about his
father by staring into the great eyes of his horse-companions, knowing that his father shared the same special bond with the unspeaking creatures that he felt.

  LIGHT

  18

  ONE MORNING JAKE WOKE EARLY. IT WAS STILL mostly dark. The merest hint of something that would eventually be sunrise was off in the east. It was more like the thought of light than light itself.

  Jake lay in his bedroll staring into the darkness. Gradually he became aware that someone sat not far away. As the hint of dawn slowly grew, he saw that it was Micah Duff. He was just sitting there staring toward the east.

  Jake got up, walked over, and sat down beside him.

  “Wha’chu doin’, Duff?” he asked.

  “Waiting for the sunrise,” answered Micah.

  “Why?”

  “It’s my favorite part of the day,” replied Micah. “Every chance I get, I like to watch it all the way from darkness to the first of the sun’s rays shooting over the horizon.”

  “But dat don’t explain why.”

  For a long time Micah did not answer. He continued looking east. Jake sat beside him, watching the approaching dawn too, though not seeing everything in it Micah did. Before long the chilly grey of morning had come. After a while longer, a slight glow of orange started to show where the earth met the sky.

  The glow increased, then focused its intensity more and more into the one place that, in another twenty minutes or so, would explode with fire from the heavens.

  “Just think of all the things light does for us, Jake,” said Micah at length.

  “Like what?”

  “Look how the darkness runs from it.”

  “How you mean?” asked Jake.

  “When the sun starts coming up every morning, the darkness begins to evaporate and all the shadows run and hide. Look around us—the darkness is disappearing. We were sitting in the dark just a little while ago, Jake. But now look—the light has chased it away!”