What she shoulda said was, “Look, Daddy! Look what George did to me. Look what he done did.” But she didn’t.
She cared more about Charles than she did herself. Didn’t want his anger to get Charles hurt or worse. You cain’t be black and angry and not be punished for it. But I’m gon’ find a way to tell him. He’d want to know. Or, better, I’d want him to know. Ain’t fair that I’m the only one that got to go through this. He can do something. It ain’t fair that he can choose not to see and make excuses for what he do see, and ask other people who don’t know nothin.
“Woman problems,” Sister Lestine told him. That was why Josey hadn’t woke ’til noon three days in a row and was sleep again by sunset. Charles had gone to Sister Lestine when he first started worrying about Josey’s silences. He stood behind Sister Lestine’s house—the only woman on the row he trusted—wringing his hat, hiding, didn’t want to give the other ladies reason to gossip if they caught him talking private to her. And when she came in from the field, he scared her when he grabbed her and pulled her behind the building. Said he was worried about Josey and she had to help.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” Sister Lestine told him. And nothing Josey would likely want to share with him. But if Josey wanted to come by, she’d show her how to care for herself. Charles was too embarrassed to talk to Josey about it. Asked Sister Lestine to do it on his behalf. But when she offered advice, Josey told her she didn’t need help. She wanted to keep to herself.
See, Josey’s sacrifice of quiet was for Charles at first. But she needed to tell him what happened.
Needed to tell somebody.
She needed to tell Charles so he could kill George. And needed to make sure Charles didn’t get caught.
Charles could make a pretty metal flask for George and lace that gift with poison. Make the dying slow. A sickness. No. Make it look like an accident so there ain’t no chance George would heal or that the poison wasn’t enough. But I don’t really want Charles to do it anyway.
I’m the one.
The night after it happened, I went searching for George. I don’t know what I was planning to do but I was gon’ make it matter. When I got to Annie’s house, Slavedriver Nelson was already there. Annie was talking with him in her front room, told him from now on, he needed to come see her about collecting his weekly wage . . . ’til George got back. She told him that George “left for Virginia to join the fight in Fredericksburg,” and she didn’t expect him back soon.
I got time to plan better now.
“He’s a young man,” Nelson told Annie. “Not like me. He’s fortunate to serve his country.”
“Indeed, he is,” Annie said.
“Still surprises me, though, that George would go so soon,” Nelson said. “I thought it mighta been cause of what he done.”
“What he did?” Annie said.
“Well I—I . . . I didn’t see nothing, ma’am. Heard the two of you arguing and yelling last night, thas all. Heard you asking George about the scratches on his arms and neck. Heard you say, ‘What you do?’ More like, ‘What did you do!’ and, ‘Who’d you do it to?’ So I figured he left ’cause of something he done to a woman. But I see now that he left for something different entirely. A brave man, he is. If there’s anything I can do in his absence, let me know. You always been so good to me and my family.”
“The business in my house is none of yours,” Annie said.
He grinned. “Like I said, you’ve always been good to me and my family. And now that times are getting harder with the war and all, maybe I could forget what I heard.” His crooked smile rose.
Annie said, “You right about times being harder. War will be right here on this porch soon. It’ll be a time for all of us to fight for what we believe, and age won’t be a reason not to. Don’t you agree?”
By the next day, Nelson was fired.
CHARLES PICKS UP his shoes and the sock he couldn’t get on and brings ’em over to the table and sits across from Josey. He sets his shoes on the floor and raises a foot on top of the stool to put his other sock on. “I been waiting a long time for this day,” Charles say. “Cain’t hardly believe it. When I was yer age, this was a fool’s dream. How many of us you think gon’ be out there packed and ready to go? I bet you Miss Laura be first. She want to make up everybody else’s mind about where to go. She need to keep to her own business, that’s what. I reckon it’s gon’ be everybody from here to Montgomery.” He slides his feet into his shoes. “And Jacob Jr. said some niggas who got free early been breaking into other slaves’ quarters, stealing. Can you believe that? Who got less than us? You bet’ believe that if they come ’round here, I’ll cut ’em. So be careful. Especially when you out there alone. And only pack what you need. We’ll get food as we go. And . . .”
JOSEY’S ARMS FIDGET under the table like she’s opening a wrapped candy there. Charles say, “Come on now, Josey. Get up. Get ready.”
She keeps sitting and her arms keep flinching under the table. I follow the line of her arm down and under the table to her lap. Her midnight blue dress is stained darker in the middle near the place where one hand is resting. In the other hand she holds a sharp rock. Its edge is red. Blood slides down her bluish ring finger, gathering at the tip, quivering. It drips.
Charles say, “Be next week before we go. I reckon I could make a few more thangs to sell. We can save up and buy us some land. Build something nice.”
He bends over to pick up his other shoe from under the bench. “Josey!” he yells, finally seeing. He lifts her up by the arm ’til she stand.
“You do this?” he say.
The sharp rock falls. He turns her arm over, sees where she’s been sawing at her wrist, other partly healed marks.
The same cuts as on her legs last night during the nightmare.
“Why I cain’t feel nothin, Daddy?” she cry. “Why I cain’t?”
“Why you doing this, Josey?” He rips the bottom of his shirt and ties it around her wrist, through her palm. “Don’t do this.”
“I ain’t worth nothin, Daddy,” she cries.
“Everythang,” he say, hugging her. “Everythang, you worth.”
“I’m sorry, Daddy.”
He holds her away from him. “Are you sick, Josey? In your mind . . . are you sick?”
“We free, Daddy.”
“Does that scare you, Josey? You ain’t got to be scared. I won’t let nothing hurt you.”
“I was walking home . . .” Josey say. “I wanted to tell you. So many years we’d wanted this freedom. When you came home, I wanted to be happy, too. I didn’t want to ruin it . . .”
“Then don’t,” Charles say flat. He hunches his shoulders. “Don’t,” he say again, tired this time. Tired of being tired. Tired of his sacrifice. This one and the one he made for me the night I died. The night when Charles’s name was still Albert. The Scottish Banshee.
I had been dead for minutes or hours, I don’t know. Found Albert laid on the forest floor. He was wrung out from exhaustion there and wishing for dead, teetering between sleep and passed-away ’cause that night, Albert had followed me from the brothel and through the woods. I didn’t know then. He was chasing me, trying to reach me to save me, was somewhere between me and them bounty hunters. By the time he got to me, my labor had taken over and the dogs had closed in. He called my name through the darkness. It was the last time I stood alive. Saw him waving his arms for me to come his way when the spark in the dark took me. His was the last face I saw.
Seeing me fatal didn’t stop him from trying to save me. He shook me to bring me back, closed his hand over the bullet hole in my head, pushed down hard to stop the bleeding but it wouldn’t stop. He almost put his knee right on top of Josey when he moved from straddling me. She had been so still, so quiet in my arms. That’s when his face became like twisted rock behind waterfalls, tears and sweat—one river—poured over it. He grabbed a razor from his pocket and set its edge on the cord that connected Josey to me but a weakness s
et into his strong hands and he could hardly hold the handle, couldn’t get the razor to slide. It fell out his hands.
All he could do was scramble to the shadows when the footsteps overtook us. Bobby Lee would be the one to cut Josey free.
I stayed with him for a while and waited for him to fall asleep there, heartbroken. Watched him wake and cry hisself back to sleep that night, empty. His dry tears had crusted a straight white line from one eye, over his nose. It was cracked when Slavedriver Nelson rode up next to him.
Nelson yelled something at Albert but Albert didn’t move. The dark handle of Albert’s razor was still resting in his open hand but Nelson didn’t see it. Not even when he got off his horse and kicked Albert’s foot. Twice. Albert sat up the second time, looked around wild, called out, “Naomi!” then, “Charlie!”—a man we both knew from Cynthia’s.
From instinct, he closed his fist around his razor and slid it under his foot. Nelson shoved his shotgun in Albert’s chest.
“Who do you belong to, boy?” Nelson said. “You a runaway?”
“Char . . . Char . . . Charlie,” Albert stuttered. “A man was found dead in Conyers. Charlie Shepard, his name. Charlie . . .”
“I can’t understand a word you saying, boy. Where your papers?”
Albert stood up slowly and reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out his wrinkled freed-man papers, then dropped ’em. When he bent over to pick ’em up, he lifted his foot off the razor and slid it in his shoe, gave his papers to Nelson. “So you free?” Nelson said. “Then you need to find your way off my property. I give you less than a minute.”
Albert nodded and reached for his papers.
“Now, hold on, boy . . .” Nelson said. “These papers say Albert Pyle. But you said you Charlie. Which is it?”
Before Albert could respond, George came riding up. He was just about eleven years old then. He said, “A man just gave a baby to Annie! A girl baby. I’ll be an uncle!”
“Must be the full moon tonight,” Nelson said. “Folks just flooding in. Tell your sister I’ll be there directly.” When George snapped his reins to start his horse, Nelson turned back to Albert, said, “If you a runaway, boy, you got thirty days to be claimed. And if nobody come, you the property of the Graham plantation. So which is it, boy? Your name? You lie to me and you gon’ have worser problems.”
“Charlie,” Albert said, lying. “My name. It’s Charles.”
“Well, Charles. You got thirty days for somebody to come claim you.” And just like that, Albert gave up his freedom to be near Josephine.
Because he loved me.
“THIS A TIME to be happy,” Charles now say. He takes her hand. “The choice is yours, Josey. What you do with it, is your choice. Tell me you’re happy,” he say, desperate. “Tell me you can be free. Tell me it’s over. Tell me that makes you happy.”
Tears flood her eyes. “I’m happy.”
20 / APRIL 1863
Tallassee, Alabama
SWAYING FLOWERS THEY are. Women and children, men and babies being blown up the road toward the Grahams’ slave quarters. They wear their oranges and yellows and bright blue garments like they been saving up a rainbow since Africa. They’re from here and everywhere, all of ’em choosing to start their journey to freedom from this place. And it’s real this time.
More people are on their way, through battlefields and their fires, filing up the road in a colorful funeral march, letting this past go. Four months of waiting since Lincoln’s signed paper set us free. It’s time for us to blossom the way God meant us to. Even in ash.
Charles pulls Josey through the rainbow sea of people. The two of ’em are the only ones dressed in white. The crowd peels away as Charles forces his way through, zigzagging around folks who won’t move at his loud, “’Scuse me!”
His naked black head is a foot taller than everyone else dressed in color, so when he moves it’s like a bee walking on petals. They make their way to the front where the preacher stands on top of a wooden box getting ready to speak. I float down to join ’em, stand next to Josey, find her po-faced and pale white. Her color matches the beam of Charles’s smile.
A skinny brown woman in orange glides through the crowd and stops behind us. The baby on her hip is in orange, too. She drops her packed bag and stands on her tiptoes while a man in a straw hat shimmies around her and holds her waist.
Ada Mae and Everett wait across the yard handholding. They been a pair for a few weeks now and there are rumors they’ll marry soon, rumors that the war is nearing, rumors that the North is recruiting negroes. We heard thirteen thousand soldiers lost their lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia, most of ’em Union soldiers, the North. It happened at the river crossing just before Christmas. A victory, folks here say. And a slaughter. So now, the North is recruiting any life, black or white, and when the fighting gets near enough, Everett say he gon’ enlist, too. He’ll join the escaped negroes that left months ago. But for those of us who are still here—black, white, and free, the war is all worry. ’Til it comes. At least Everett will have a weapon now. For the rest of us, our only weapon is hope.
Throughout this plantation field, folks got sheets knotted on the ends of sticks or thrown over their shoulders like satchels. Inside ’em are needed things—food, clothes, skins of water, and a few tokens, reminders that they are the only survivors of slavery. That said, more than one man’s got nothin; ain’t taking nothin, don’t want nothin, they got all they need—their lives and their freedom.
The preacher say, “As we go from this place, let it not be in fear. The Bible say, God does not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind. We are strong. We’ve endured. And now, God has touched President Lincoln and softened his heart so that he be like Pharaoh and set us free. He’s given power and bravery to the heroes that are carrying out God’s will for our great land. I say to you, don’t be afraid. We go with God to wherever he leads us. He has brought us this far in His love and grace and He will lead us home. Amen?”
Charles say, “Amen.”
The whole crowd say, “Amen.”
The woman in orange yells, “But where we go?”
Preacher leans toward her. “Praise God . . . that’s the blessing,” he laughs. “Go where you want. Federal law say you are free. But be cautious. There’s still a war raging, north and south, and there’s safety in numbers. Some of us from the Brown plantation are going north. Others going west.” He opens up to the crowd, say, “Come with us to the lands of milk and honey, away from this place of our captors. Will you come?”
The crowd cheers.
“Make two lines,” Preacher say. “On the right—those going north. The left—those of you who want to go west.”
The crowd rumbles, excited, knocking into each other, going left and right. Charles leans down to Josey. “What you say, Josey? North or west?”
She points.
“West it is,” Charles say, picking her up and pushing his way to the left.
Shots ring over the crowd.
Charles throws hisself over Josey. Other folks duck and scatter. Some clump together. Others lay out on the ground. But Preacher holds his spot on top of that box and let the gunfire come.
Slavedriver Nelson sits on his horse, Maybelle, with his gun in the air, his whip on his side. Twenty or thirty whites are with him. Nelson say to the crowd, “Since when are slaves allowed to gather around like this?”
A black boy yells, “We ain’t slaves no more. We free.”
“Is that right?” Nelson say, and trots out to him. “Where you from, boy?”
“Brown plantation. President Lincoln signed the ’Mancipation Proclamation and free us.” The boy casts his arm out to Nelson. “Here’s the papers.”
“Right,” Nelson say, pushing ’em away. “Maybe they free the niggers of the Brown plantation but niggers from the Graham plantation, the Henderson plantation, and the Reed plantation ain’t going nowhere.”
Preacher say, “You can’t keep ’em here.
It’s against the law.”
Nelson prances Maybelle to Preacher, bends down and looks him in his eye. He unbuttons his whip. “Is you presuming to tell me what the law say, boy?”
“Naw, suh,” Preacher say.
“This here’s the Confederate States of America. Lincoln ain’t the law here. This war will prove that.” Nelson trots around to the back of Preacher. “Now then. Take your nigras and you leave here before we punish y’all as runaways.”
Preacher say to the crowd, nervous at first, then loud. “Don’t matter where we leave from. We’ll start our journey from the fields of the Brown plantation. If anyone wants to join us, we’ll be there ’til morning. We are free.”
“You disrespecting me, boy!” Nelson say, pointing his pistol at Preacher now. “I just said they ain’t leaving and you just now invited ’em to come. Did I hear you right, boy?”
Preacher don’t say nothin.
“You couldn’t just shut your black fuckin’ mouth, could you?” Nelson cocks his gun. “You inciting these slaves to run? Is that what you doin?” He knocks Preacher’s hat off with his pistol.
“Naw, suh,” Preacher say.
“Yes. Yes, you wuz.”
One of the white men fires in the air. Its sharp pop sends all the horses in a panic. Maybelle, too. She rears up and throws Nelson. Maybelle comes down hard on one leg, shrieks and collapses, screeching in pitches that ears cain’t endure.
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