by Joyce Hansen
Obi ran to him, with Peter and Thomas following. “My God,” Thomas gasped.
Three frightened children were huddled in the thicket. Their feet were tied with filthy rags, and the eldest child wore a long shift so old and worn it seemed as though it would crumble at a touch, like yellowed parchment. The two younger children, one of them a toddler, wore dirty shirttails and were partially covered with a dirty blue blanket. Sores and scars covered their arms and legs.
Obi kneeled in front of the biggest girl, who appeared to be about ten years old. He couldn’t tell whether the other two children were male or female. The girl cradled the toddler in her arms. The other child held on to the girl’s ragged dress.
“You the only one taking care of these children?” Obi asked.
She nodded, staring at the ground.
“Where’s your mama?”
“She dead,” the girl answered in a leaden voice. “They all dead.”
“Who? Your kin?”
“Everybody where we live. The white men come there. Pull everyone out the houses. Kill everybody.”
“How you know everybody was killed?”
“They was hanging in the trees. Everybody. Miss Emma, Mr. George, Daniel, their boy used to play with us. Mr. Edward, Miss—”
Obi patted her shoulder and stopped the recital. The images her words created were clear enough. Her story was the worst he’d heard so far.
“Lord, lord, lord,” one of the soldiers murmured.
Obi continued. “Where this happen?”
She still stared at the ground. “Pine Bluff.”
“In South Carolina?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“How you get away?”
“My mama and us hide in the woods. Then when the men leave the next morning, we see everybody hanging. All of them. Miss Emma, Mr. George—”
“I’ll get their names later. What happen to your mama?”
“We leave, and some white people help us. Carry us in a wagon. But my mama give out. She say though that we not from Pine Bluff. Say our home be in South Carolina. She tell us to go to the island. Our home is on the island.”
“What island?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“How you get here?”
“The white people give us to some black people and we walk and ride in boat and wagon with them. They leave us at the house down there.” She raised her head slightly and pointed to the courthouse. “Say someone there help us. But we afraid and hide in the woods.” She spoke in a flat monotone and stared at the ground again.
Why didn’t she cry? Obi wondered. How could she tell this story so plainly and simply? He gently raised her chin so that he could look at her. Her eyes held an odd stare, as though she wasn’t seeing him, even though she looked in his direction. He’d seen that same stare in the eyes of dying soldiers. She lowered her face as soon as Obi stood up.
“Have mercy,” Peter mumbled.
“These your kin?” Obi asked her.
She nodded. He touched the baby’s hand, burning with fever.
“This my sister, Araba.”
“What’s your name?”
“Grace. And that’s my brother Scipio.”
“You know your age?”
“Yes, my ma told me. I was born April 29, 1857. Scipio born December 17, 1863. And Araba, she born on February 3, 1867.”
The boy’s eyes were large and frightened as he searched the soldiers’ faces while clinging to his sister.
“Hey, little fella,” Thomas said, “everything’s fine now.” He rubbed the child’s head.
“He’s a handsome boy,” Peter said, taking Scipio’s hand.
They led the children down the hill, and Obi took them to a well behind the courthouse so that they could wipe their arms and faces. Obi and Peter pulled out their blanket rolls and let the children rest under a large shady oak near their post.
Peter took biscuits and fruit out of his haversack.
“When you last had something to eat?” Obi asked the girl.
“I don’t remember, sir. We drink some water when the people leave us at the building over there. One other day ate some berries, sir.”
The soldiers shared their rations with the children. “Don’t give them too much,” Obi warned them. “They get sick if you stuff them.” Scipio’s eyes gleamed when Thomas handed him a juicy plum. After they ate, they slept soundly and deeply. Obi checked a few times to make sure that they were still breathing. He didn’t think the youngest child was going to survive, though. She was feverish and hadn’t eaten anything.
Just before dusk, when the polls closed and the voting ended, Obi woke the children so that they could begin the seven-mile trip back to Beaufort with the soldiers. Peter, unusually quiet, shook his head as he watched the children. “This just the beginning. Now the fight is no longer brother against brother, but white against black.”
“Maybe the girl exaggerates,” Thomas said.
Obi and Peter glanced knowingly at each other. “You from the North and ain’t never been a slave. You don’t know how it is,” Obi said. “I know that child speak the truth.”
Obi lifted Grace and Araba onto his horse, while Scipio rode with Peter. The boy’s eyes, no longer fearful, were wide with excitement.
The small detachment of soldiers followed Obi. Grace and Araba fell asleep in his arms as the mare trotted along at a steady pace. His mind wandered to Easter and Jason, never far from his thoughts. He hoped that they hadn’t witnessed the kind of horror these children had seen. Maybe he should have taken Jason when he and Easter had run away. And if he had, perhaps they’d all be together now. He pushed the thought away and concentrated instead on the woods encircling the road leading back to Beaufort. Obi held the girls securely and quickened the mare’s pace. That odd unsettling feeling he’d had all day that something special was going to happen might really be a warning of danger, he thought to himself.
However, something special had happened; Obi just didn’t realize it as yet.
Chapter 2
Twelve labors of Hercules faced the Freedmen’s Bureau.
—W.E.B.DU BOIS, BLACK RECONSTRUCTION
It seemed as though Obi had just fallen asleep when he heard Thomas yelling in his ear, “Wake up, man, and go see about them children. I’ll let the major know so he can file a report.”
When they’d returned to headquarters the night before, Thomas had advised Obi to let the children sleep in one of the cabins that served as temporary shelters for the refugees. They weren’t supposed to allow civilians to sleep in the house, but Obi insisted on bringing the children inside the large comfortable home on Bay Street that served as offices for the bureau and living quarters for the soldiers. Obi made space for them in a small storage room. “You stay here till I come get you in the morning. You be safe here,” Obi had told them.
Obi rolled off his pallet. He, along with Thomas, Peter, and five other men of the 104th, slept on pallets on the floor of the spacious, airy room, once an elegant sitting room. “This the best floor I ever sleep on,” Obi had said when he first saw their quarters back in 1866.
He dressed quickly and walked down the corridor to the room where he’d left the children. They still slept soundly on Obi’s and Peter’s blanket rolls. Obi woke them and led them down the long corridor and out of the back door to the water pump at the rear of the house.
Obi reached for Araba. “Let me take her. She’s very sick.” He wanted to let Miss Jeffries, the northern missionary who worked for the bureau, examine her. Grace held her sister tightly. Her distant eyes suddenly focused on him, glaring with determination. “No. I can’t. Mama said we must all stay together.”
Obi could have easily snatched the child from her, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that. “Clean yourselves. There’s a water pump behind that fence. I’ll be right back,” he called after them.
He then rushed back to the house and ran upstairs to the supply room, where barrels were filled w
ith old dresses, trousers, and shirts, donated to the Freedmen’s Bureau by northern missionary societies and churches. Quickly rummaging through the garments, he picked whatever seemed appropriate. He returned to the children and draped the clothing over the fence.
“When you done, put these clothes on, then sit down at the table near the kitchen shed.”
“Yes, sir,” Grace answered.
Obi got a glass of buttermilk from the cook for himself, and asked him to give the children breakfast when they came to the kitchen shed. As he walked from the kitchen down the cobblestone passageway that led to the front of the building, he heard the horn sound seven times, giving the signal for everyone to report to their posts.
Obi approached the iron gates that opened onto the street, and saw that the line was long. He knew that the moment he took his post in front of the large sign that read BUREAU OF FREEDMEN, REFUGEES AND ABANDONED LANDS, people would swarm around him. Every morning as he opened the gate he scanned their faces, always looking for a familiar countenance, listening for a familiar name.
He approached the throng of blacks and a few whites and wondered how some of them had found their way to the bureau. Many were crippled, sick, half clothed, and half starved.
Obi, standing erectly with his legs slightly spread apart, hushed everyone as they called out to him for help. “If you don’t listen, you won’t know where to go. When you walk inside, the first door to your left is for food rations; the door on your right is the office for people looking for relatives or for people who want to register their name so relatives can find them. The large middle room is for people who need clothing, blankets, and housing. If you need to see the major about work contracts, then go to the back, a soldier will direct you to the major’s office.”
As usual, when he finished, someone yelled out, “What you say?” Obi sighed and patiently repeated the directions. During the busy morning, Obi also directed the cook to give the children porridge and milk, and after they ate he took them to see Miss Jeffries. She cleaned their sores, cut their knotted hair, and rubbed ointment on their scalps for head lice. Obi rummaged through the barrels again, found several blankets, and made pallets for the children in a corner of the large room near the windows opening on to a veranda. They still seemed weary. “You all rest for a spell,” he said. They lay down, holding on to one another. The girls’ dresses were too large, and Scipio’s trousers could have held one more little boy.
“Corporal Booker, I need to talk to you.” Miss Jeffries pulled him aside. “I think the youngest child has malaria. And the others are weak and will be sick too if they aren’t cared for properly.” She sighed and shook her head. “I think they’ve been beaten as well. They have old bruises and thick welts on their backs, arms, and legs. Maybe we can send them to the Orphan House in Charleston on the next steamer. They’re overcrowded, but they might find space.” She gazed at Obi thoughtfully. “Maybe the oldest girl could earn her keep. She could be bound out to a family. I don’t know about the baby. We have to pray for her.”
“Can they rest here for a while?”
“Yes. And they can sleep in the school cabin tonight. It’s clean and safe. Don’t you worry, Corporal. They’ll be fine.”
Obi started to walk away, knowing that no one could take better care of them than Miss Jeffries. She called him back. “Corporal Booker?”
“Yes?”
“This is a kind thing you’ve done for these children.”
“I didn’t do anything so special. Would help any children I find starving in the woods, ma’am.”
She folded her arms and smiled. “But, Corporal, I think you did something special. The little fellow chattered on and on to me about how you saved them, fed them, and bought them new clothes.”
Obi laughed. “Guess the clothes new to him. He never see them before.”
Later on that day when he was taking a group of people to the storeroom for rations, he decided to check on the children. As he left the room and a cluster of cabins, he heard a little voice calling him—“Cupple Booker, Cupple Booker.” Scipio left a group of children he’d been playing with in front of the cabin used as a schoolhouse and raced toward Obi with a big glowing smile. Obi was suprised that after merely a few hours of care, the boy’s eyes looked so lively and healthy. He rubbed Scipio’s head. “Corporal,” Obi gently corrected, “not ’cupple.’”
Obi and Scipio walked toward Grace, who sat on a small bench outside of the cabin, holding her sister. He thought she smiled, but then her eyes took on the strange faraway gaze.
“You all doing good?” Obi asked.
“Yes, sir,” Grace said.
Obi peered at Araba and touched her forehead. She was still feverish.
“The lady give her some medicine.”
“And Cupple Booker”—Scipio pulled Obi’s jacket—“we take a wash in the tub and she rub something stink on us.”
“Scipio, you hush now,” Grace said. “She say it good for us.”
Obi smiled. “That make you clean and cure them sores. You all be good now,” he said as he walked away. Scipio started to follow, but Grace called him back. Then she said, “Thank you, sir.”
As Obi returned to his post at the front of the house, he saw Thomas walking toward him, carrying an armload of papers. “I rather be guarding something than wading through all of this junk,” Thomas complained.
“What is it?”
“Old bureau and army records from Hilton Head. Some of these go all the way back to ’sixty-three.”
Obi peered over Thomas’s shoulder. “I want to look through them.”
“Read them tomorrow night. We’re going to a Republican rally tonight at Captain Small’s home. Find out about the election if they’ve finished counting votes,” Thomas said as he raised one leg on the step and rested the papers on his knee.
“By that time they get lost or someone throw them away by mistake. I have to read them tonight. You and Peter tell me about the meeting.”
Thomas was almost a head shorter than Obi, but with a broader and thicker body. “Obi, the future is looking good,” he said, “and we’re moving forward, but you’re letting the past drive you backward. I’m sorry you lost the girl, but you need to put your mind on your future. Easter, Jason, all of that is your slave past. You picked a new last name for yourself—Booker. You need to pick a new life for yourself too.”
Obi shook his head and partially closed his deep-set eyes. “I have to learn what happen to them, Thomas. I need to know whether they dead or alive. I have no life without them.”
Thomas looked thoughtfully at his friend, not understanding Obi’s obsession. “Obi, suppose Easter is married with a husband and children of her own. Suppose a family has adopted Jason. Suppose, God forbid, they are both dead.”
“Then I dead too.” Obi glared at Thomas. “I think about that all the time. But now I live to find them.” He leaned over Thomas. “You never been a slave. My slave past be my present too.”
Thomas wished he could help his good friend, who seemed to be growing more silent and alone with each passing day. “You couldn’t help what happened to you in the past. You didn’t have a chance or a choice.” He tapped his forehead. “But you have some say-so over this part of your life.” He stood up straight, adjusting the papers. “You need to free your mind now.”
“You can never know what it feel like to be a slave, Thomas. You know your family. I don’t want to hear the lecture again. You tell me what happen at the meeting. Put them papers in the office where I can find them.”
When the bureau closed that evening and the last needy person was helped, Obi was so anxious to look over the records, he decided to go to the office and read a couple of pages before he ate supper. Under the light of an oil lamp, he thumbed through the pages and stopped at a list of names of people who’d registered with the bureau in 1865.
John Powell and Mercy Powell, lived in Savannah, Georgia. Present residence, Wentworth Street, opposite Grace Church in
Charleston.
Information wanted of my husband, Anderson Walker. When last heard from, September 2nd, 1864, was at Athens, Georgia. His former owner was Ferdinand Phirwell. Send information to Lucy Walker, 430 King Street, Charleston, S.C.
Toney Johnson, presently residing at 624 Prince Street, Beaufort, S.C.
Virginia Robinson, presently residing at Port Royal, S.C. Contact her through Freedmen’s Bureau, Hilton Head, S.C.
As he skimmed the names, Obi saw a group of entries from people living on the Sea Islands. He recalled that Grace said she came from an island. He might, he thought, as he searched for Easter and Jason, come across an entry where someone was looking for three children. He came to the end of the 1865 list from the islands and found nothing; however, one entry caught his eye.
Esther and Jacob Jenkins, presently residing at New Canaan, Santa
Elena Island, S.C., contact General Store, New Canaan.
Though he was tired and his eyes were beginning to burn, after reading a few other names, he went back to the Esther and Jacob Jenkins entry.
He’d been to Santa Elena Island. It was close to Beaufort and one of the first islands he visited. He found out nothing and hadn’t heard of New Canaan. But there were many little villages that he hadn’t heard of. He read the entry for the second and third times. Esther and Jacob Jenkins. Was it possible that someone wrote her and Jason’s name wrong? It would be an easy mistake to make. Esther instead of Easter. Jacob instead of Jason. Jenkins instead of Jennings, their former master’s last name. And knowing Easter, she’d choose Jennings for a last name. Often the Yankees had trouble understanding their speech. He tried to dismiss the entry again, but he couldn’t ignore it.
He copied the information before putting out the lamp and leaving the office. After he ate, he’d come back and look through more of the pile. He had leave time next month and would go to Santa Elena Island again and find New Canaan. It was probably merely a coincidence that the names were so similar, but he had to be sure. He’d always had the feeling that Easter and Jason were on one of the islands.
