HE HAD BEEN SEARCHING for a miracle that would set him back on the right path, and it came from the place he least expected. Somehow, the doctor, whose own sad countenance was in need of a lift, got it in his mind that he would be the one to find Annie. At first Hemp thought: impossible. The doctor said the colored maid had told him about Annie, and Hemp knew he meant Madge.
Hemp tried to rein in his hope. This white friend of the doctor said there were millions of freed slaves. What did the word millions mean? There had been a lot of coloreds at the camp in Kentucky, and he wondered how many more would make a million. Crowds of people walked the streets of Chicago. Was that a million? He wanted to ask, but he was afraid he’d upset the man’s plan. So he began to figure in his head: if there were a million stalks of hemp spread across a field, it would stretch as far as he could see; a million trees would cover the entire state of Kentucky; a million cattle would make a man richer than God. New York. Virginia. Mississippi. Canada and far-off lands across the ocean. There might be a million places on earth where she could be. The number staggered.
The doctor directed Hemp to the office of a man he said could help. The morning sun cast angled shadows on the fronts of buildings. Hemp drove east on Michigan Avenue, past the Dearborn House, across Lake Street, turning south on Randolph. Michael counted the buildings, trying to remember the exact location of Peter’s office. W. H. Taylor Boots & Shoes. Chicago Times. B. Mann Apothecaries. D. A. Foote Silver Plater. F. Hudson, Jr. Wigs. The Courthouse. A barber’s shop, billiard saloon, tailor. There it was: above the hat store.
“Stop!”
Hemp slowed the carriage in front of a building at the corner of Franklin and Randolph.
The doctor stepped out and waved. “Come inside with me.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“I said, come with me.”
Hemp nodded and put on his hat. “Yas, sir.”
They entered an office. Two desks faced each other, their surfaces piled with papers. In the corner a hairless cat scowled at them from inside a cage.
“What is it?” asked a man sitting at one of the desks. He wore an overcoat, despite the day’s warmth. He did not look up.
“Now is that any way to greet a man who saved your life?”
“Servus!”
“Hey, wie geht’s?”
They shook hands.
“May I take a seat?”
“Please.”
Hemp stood beside the door.
“I have a discreet matter,” Michael began. During the war, Peter had gotten messages to soldiers for a price. If you could not wait for the post, and your intended recipient was on a remote battlefield, Peter could get a message through in mere days. If anyone could find Hemp’s wife, Peter could. He had connections all over the country.
“Anything you say will be held in strictest confidence.”
“You see that man over there? My driver?”
“You want me to ask him to leave?”
“He was a slave, and he’s looking for his wife.”
“And I’m looking for one of my missing cats. Now please tell me about your urgent matter. I will do all I can to help.”
“I’d like to help him find her.”
His eyes traveled over to the big man and then back to Michael. “Aren’t there people who do this sort of thing? Churches or relief societies?”
“There may be, Peter, but you know I don’t know anything about this. I don’t even know how to begin. Perhaps you could reach out to them.”
“Do you know how many slaves were separated from their families? It just isn’t possible to reunite them. There must be millions.”
“I just need to help one. Hemp?”
Hemp tried to anchor himself so he would not faint. Behind him, the front windows were so soiled, he could barely see the street below. The doctor’s friend peered at him from behind a hill of papers on his desk. The floor was littered with stacks of books. In a dark corner, the strange cat, wide-eyed and quiet, stared out from its cage. It made a sound, not quite catlike, and the wrinkled folds of its skin stretched as it raised its head.
“Can you come over here and tell this gentleman about your wife?”
Now that Hemp was being called to give what he considered nothing less than a religious testimony, he grew nervous. Suppose they found a Harrison relative who conjured up some unpaid debt owed the family. Hemp might be returned to Kentucky. And what if they discovered Annie was dead after all, and the widow just couldn’t find her on the other side. The doctor whispered to him, reassuring him that it would work out. Hemp sank into the offered seat, looked down at his hands. White lines webbed the skin of his palms.
“What’s that, sir? My wife?”
“Yes, the one you lost in Kentucky. This man is going to help you find her.”
“Help me find her, sir?”
“That’s right. He’s going to track her down.”
“Track her?”
“That’s right.” Michael smelled liquor on the driver’s breath. A little early for that, he thought.
“My wife, sir?”
“But first we have to give a description. So he knows what to look for.”
Michael nodded at Peter.
“I don’t know . . .”
“I saved your life, Peter. Your life.” Michael waved his cane in the air, and Peter ducked as if preparing for a blow.
Peter cleared space on the desk, took out a sheet of paper and a quill. He gave Michael a long look before beginning. “Tell me your name.”
Hemp did not know whether to give the man the made-up name or the name she would recognize him by. It angered him that the doctor had given him so little time to prepare. Something like this took planning, and he did not want this opportunity to pass him by because he could not think quickly enough. But if they were going to find Annie, he would have to cooperate.
“Truth is, what they called me was Horse.”
“That’s what who called you?”
Michael considered himself an educated man. Yet it had not occurred to him that the colored men he saw walking the streets had stories of their own. They were not unlike Germans who had survived revolutions. This man had been called Horse. And he had renamed himself Hemp because he came from a Kentucky hemp farm. He must have thought it would help her find him. The strategy would never work, but Michael respected the attempt.
Hemp did not want the doctor to see the shame of his past life. He did not want him to look at his hands and see hooves, at his ankles and see hocks. But the name brought it all back.
He spoke softly. “Everybody, sir.”
“Horse?”
“Yas, sir.”
Even though he was looking at the floor, he saw the two men exchange a look and he could only guess what they were thinking.
“All right, then. What was your master’s name?”
“What was the name of the town where you lived?”
“When was your wife sold?”
“When did you leave the camp?”
“What was your wife’s name?”
Hemp readied himself to cross a thicker line. To utter her name in the presence of these men was to soil it.
“Tell you what. Why don’t I just stay quiet while you tell me your story.”
Hemp looked over at Michael. Even with all the questions, Hemp still did not understand which story the man wanted. Did he want to know how he’d first come to live on the Harrison farm as a boy? The day he gave the preacher the chair? The day the women were sold? Searching for her in the camp? Walking until his feet bled? He looked at the doctor for direction. So this was the price of finding her: letting a white man trample on his memories. He wished he could speak with Annie in his mind, the way the widow spoke with spirits. He wanted to tell her not to worry, that he would protect her with all his might. He would do it this time, though he had failed to save her before.
“Go on,” Michael said. “Tell him everything.”
Michael saw the dis
trust in the colored man’s eyes. They were asking him to exhume, and Michael understood. He had done the same in his sessions with the widow. Michael reached out and touched the driver on the shoulder.
“Go on,” he urged.
“We worked Master’s land together, but then they sell her and the girl off. I don’t know where she gone to. Then we hear about the camp and I went to go and join the army. I heard the cabins at the Harrison farm done been emptied. So I come here.”
“You mentioned a girl. You have a daughter?”
He nodded. “She did. Yas, sir.”
“What was her name?”
“Herod. But I do believe she dead.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
“All right, then,” Peter continued. “Did she have any other family?”
“No, sir.”
“Any identifying marks or scars?”
“A dog took half her ear once.”
“What kind of work is she likely to look for?”
“All we ever work was a hemp farm. That’s the work she know.”
Michael wondered why helping a former slave had not entered his mind before. Just the act of being there, occupied by this new task, gave him purpose. He had not thought about his brother all day.
“I believe we have everything we need,” Peter said.
Hemp stood and hurried out.
“Where do you intend to start?”
“Well.” Peter tapped the paper. “I hope you understand the chances of finding this woman are low.”
“I understand.”
“I’ll place an advertisement in some newspapers. It’s likely she works for some white family. I’ll send someone to that farm in Kentucky to see if she returned. Many of them went back after the war. Harrison is dead, but some other member of the family may have inherited the land and resumed work. This will all be very expensive, you see.”
“There is nothing to worry about in that regard.” Michael extended a hand. “I do appreciate this, Peter.”
Hemp stood outside waiting. The horse stamped its feet, and Hemp fed the beast from his hand. He knocked a clod of mud from his pants.
As they rode off, Michael opened the window. Warm air swept into the carriage. He tried not to look at the driver differently, tried not to picture him carrying stalks of hemp across a field. He looked through the front window and saw the muscles in Hemp’s neck flex, the broad back. He closed his eyes. This had begun as a way to make up for his own failings, but now he was really beginning to care about this man.
Dear God, let this work, he prayed.
25
HEMP DID NOT KNOW WHAT TO CALL WHAT happened to him in the middle of the night. Not dreams or visions. He actually traveled in time. Looking down at himself, he considered the wide peak of hip before taking flight and moving over state lines. A snaking river, bean-shaped lake, branches of railroad. The prairie, trees, hills of bluegrass, a red house sitting on the bank of a creek. An old man rocking in a chair on a covered porch.
Stalks that grew tall as trees, men waiting for the cool of fall when they would take up the hooks, hacking as near to the ground as possible, careful not to curl the tools back into their legs. A swift chopping sound. The crack of hemp stems in his fingers, the brush of fiber, the weight of the hackle, dust clogging his eyes and nose, sun scorching his neck. The stalks left in the field to rot long enough for the casing to soften, until the ritual gathering of them into stacks for drying time.
Come daytime, Hemp’s two selves merged again into a new world where the shapes of things eluded him. He could not read, was not a learned man, and it unsettled him that the world did not work as predictably as the planting seasons. He knew how long a hemp crop took to mature, how to measure the lift and droop of a leaf. But he was rattled by the tolling courthouse bell, the rails, the telegraph, unnecessary things interrupting God’s order, and though he no longer feared being pressed back into slavery or listened out for the fearsome howl of dogs, he still looked over his shoulder, saw things that were not there. He lived in a house not much better than a slave cabin, and thought with dread that, perhaps after all, free and slave were not so different.
Gracefully, he carried the body that reminded a white man of an animal while he listened to men speaking in languages he had not known existed. Omnibuses rattled. A horse urinated, steam from the hot liquid rising into the air. The man nudged the horse with a dusty boot. A paperboy yelled on a corner, waving a crumpled paper. Another child sold coal out of a dirty sack. No one saw Hemp, despite his size. In Kentucky, he would have been stopped by now, a white man calling out to ask his business. In the cupola above, a lookout yelled that a ship was approaching. The street shook, the city bracing for new arrivals. Hemp descended a leaning board, took twenty-five steps, turned left, then right.
As he walked through the city he thought for the umpteenth time of their last meeting, how he had insulted her. When Madge walked inside, wiping the wet snow from her forehead with the back of her arm, Hemp had been tempted to do it for her, still not understanding why this woman meant so much to him. She had not erased the ugly as Annie had done, but she did cause him to skip thoughts. The men he lived with were all out working, so he had cooked for Madge in the small house. He lit the fire and unhooked the frying pan from the wall. While the oil heated, he dredged the gizzards in flour. He took up two ears of corn from a basket in the corner and ripped off the husks. He picked off a worm, dug out the rotten kernels with his fingernails. The bitter smell of frying gizzards filled the house, and he opened a window. Children clucked in the alley, and a rock crashed into the window. Their chatter turned to wailing, and he shut the window to keep out the noise.
When the gizzards were browned, he scooped them out with a spoon and put them on two plates, grease puddling underneath.
“Let me wash up,” she said.
He took the bowl outside and refilled it. She rubbed her hands together.
“The corn ain’t fresh,” he said.
“I’ve ate worse.”
She dried her hands.
“Sit down,” he said gently, placing two plates on the table.
“That hotel should’ve made you waiter ’stead of letting you go.”
He poured water out of a pitcher, feeling simple, more at ease than he had in weeks. He knew she was worried about the turn their friendship had taken, and he was hoping to make it up to her by cooking this dinner. But he could not deny his selfish reasons, either. He wanted to taste that feeling Madge gave him—not asking more than he could give, freeing him from the hard love that bound him to his wife. Annie had scraped the ash from his elbows and knees with a rough stone and then rubbed oil on all the raw places. Madge, with her dark eyes and flash of smile, gave something different—a spiritual thing. Their connection began because she lent him an ear, but it was sustained by an easy give-and-take. He had lain with her twice now because it was naturally what a man did, though it had been a sin, as big a sin as he had ever committed.
Madge crunched into her ear of corn, speaking as she chewed. “I think that doctor like you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Driving is good work, Hemp.”
He kept his mouth full so he would not have to think of what to say.
“And your cooking ain’t bad, either.”
“You need something else?” he asked, though little remained.
She shook her head, and as she picked corn from her teeth he resolved to make her a pick. He thought of all he’d taken from women: Annie and the ones he’d bedded before her. Now that he was free and able-bodied, he intended to pay his debts.
She said to him, “I got something to tell you. I’m going back to Tennessee.”
“Tennessee?”
“To be with my womenfolks.”
A grain of corn threatened to lodge in his throat.
“This thing we got between us ain’t right, Hemp, and you know it. You got to look for your wife, and I’m in the way.
”
“You roped me.”
“Now don’t talk like that.”
“You tricked me. You knew I thought you was Annie.”
“You didn’t have no fever that night.”
“I was sick, and you was supposed to be healing me.”
“You lied to me about Annie’s girl.”
“What?”
“Hemp, what happened between you and that girl?”
“I told you.”
“The widow say you and her did something—”
“Goddamn that woman!” He knocked a chair over. “Nothing, I swear it. I kissed her. That’s all. I ain’t proud of it, but it happened. It ain’t my problem that white woman don’t believe me.”
Her eyes reddened and she looked down. “I’m sorry, Hemp.”
His voice was hoarse. “You ask me about the driving work like you ain’t come in that door aiming to destroy me tonight.”
Their chests rose and fell together.
“You got a man down in Tennessee, don’t you?”
“A what?”
She was crying, and he looked up at the ceiling because he could not stand it. Above him, a string of web hung limply as if something had flown by and broken it.
EVEN AS HE WAITED FOR NEWS about Annie, Madge stayed on his mind. One thing was for certain. If he found Annie, he would have to leave that root woman alone for good. As he followed the doctor into the man’s office, he could not stop shaking. He believed Annie was alive, but he was beginning to think white men were not miracle workers, that maybe even Jesus was not white. It had been a month since they began their search, and Hemp’s belief had waned. He desperately needed to know where the righteous path lay—to the left or to the right. If Annie came to Chicago to join him, he would have to tell her about Madge. He would have to be honest. He had not anticipated how his rising feelings for the girl would affect him, how she confused and muddled his head.
“Do you have news?” the doctor asked as soon as they walked in the door of the man’s office.
Peter stood when Michael approached the desk. The cat was no longer caged. It crouched on the edge of the desk, its head turned toward Michael, blue eyes wide with suspicion. It made a sound like a dog’s growl in the back of its throat, as if ready to spring.
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