by Jon Walter
*
Later in the cabin, Lizzie uses her don’t-mess-with-me voice when she talks to me. ‘How come you can read?’
We’re sitting at the table and Henry’s there too, pacing in the darkness at the back of the cabin. So far I ain’t said a word, cos I can’t decide whether to trust ’em.
‘I guess I picked it up here and there.’
Lizzie shakes her head. ‘Reading ain’t something you pick up here and there. It’s gotta be taught.’
I take a sudden interest in the top of the table, see a mark and run my finger over it. Lizzie draws a deep breath like she’s losing her patience and she leans in close to me. ‘You’re putting us all in danger,’ she hisses. ‘Do you know that? Now, we don’t mind so long as we know the truth. We’ll take that risk. We’ll cover for you. We’ll even lie for you. But you got to be straight with us.’
I stretch a finger to the grease lamp, seeing how close I can go before it gets too hot. ‘Is that true of Sicely? Are you saying she’d lie for me too?’
Lizzie looks embarrassed. ‘You don’t need to worry about her. She likes to do right by Mrs Allen, but she knows who she is underneath that apron.’
‘That go for Hubbard as well?’
‘Why? What’s he said to you?’
‘He said he’d whip me if I told anyone ’bout where I come from. I went to him for help, soon as I got here.’
Lizzie and Henry exchange looks. ‘And you told him what?’
I’m thinking that I have to trust her. Henry too. After all, they’ve trusted me. They took me to the woods.
I take one last look at Lizzie before I jump in for good cos there ain’t no going back from here, I know that, so I say it slowly, hoping I won’t have to repeat a thing. ‘I told him I’m a free black, that I been taken away by force and sold. I reckon he’s already guessed I can read.’
Once I start, I can’t stop. I tell her ’bout the orphanage, ’bout Father Mosely and my brother Joshua. I tell her ’bout how I need to get back to him, but Connie said to wait. I tell her everything and she listens to me, hardly says a word herself, just listens to me, nodding and waiting till I come to a stop.
She takes hold of my hand and holds it tight. ‘They must have changed your name before they sold you. Did he do that?’ I nod and she pats the top of my hand as though she knew it all along. ‘So what’s your real name?’
‘Samuel.’ There. I said it out loud. It’s been a while since I’ve heard my own name, but it feels good, so I say it again. ‘My mother named me Samuel.’
Lizzie repeats it like she knew it already. ‘Samuel. Course it is. From the Good Book.’ She takes her hand away. ‘Well, we all still gotta call you Friday. You know that, don’t you? I won’t use it again, even when we’re on our own, but I won’t forget it neither.’
‘Why won’t they let us read, Lizzie?’
She gives me a straight look in the dim light, but it’s Henry who tells me, putting a hand on my shoulder before pulling up a chair and sitting down heavily. ‘They couldn’t treat us the way they do if they thought we was their equals,’ he tells me. ‘It don’t work. They’d be ashamed if they knew the things we could do. I mean, what with ’em being Christian people. They’d be too ashamed.’
Lizzie sucks at her teeth. ‘And I guess they don’t want another Nat Turner.’
‘Who’s Nat Turner?’
Her eyes go all huge in her face. ‘You never heard of Nat Turner? Boy, you do amaze me. One minute you know it all, and the next you don’t have a clue.’ She hesitates. ‘Well … Nat Turner … he weren’t no Moses, that’s for sure.’
Henry taps his finger on the table. ‘Nat Turner was a man who could read. He was a preacher too. The long and the short of it was that he got himself a posse of slaves and talked ’em round to going on the rampage. They spent two days riding through the countryside killing white folk. The whole thing was a bad deal from start to finish and it scared the living daylights out of everyone. When they caught him they said he was too clever for his own good, blamed it on him being able to read, reckoned he was half taught and only understood what he wanted to. They said a black man lacks the wisdom and insight to go alongside the knowledge you can get from books.’
‘And they been saying it ever since,’ adds Lizzie. ‘They saying we’re not up to the responsibility of reading for ourselves.’
‘But that ain’t true.’ I think of our classroom at the orphanage, brimming with black boys and all of ’em reading.
‘No.’ Henry lowers his voice. ‘I don’t see how it could be. But that don’t matter. What matters is that just the mention of his name would be enough for ’em to string you up. They’d hang you from a tree. I’m telling you, Friday, they wouldn’t think twice.’
‘Do you mean Hubbard?’
Lizzie shrugs. ‘Maybe. You better not let him find you with a book in your hand, that’s for sure. Not him, nor Mrs Allen. It wouldn’t be good for any of us.’
And suddenly I know why God has brought me here. It’s as if He’s right there in my head, telling me Himself, explaining why He has piled misfortune and misery upon my head. I understand that He got Father Mosely to lie and do terrible things so He could bring me here to live among slaves. It was all part of His plan. He didn’t mean for me to become one of ’em. No. He wants me to lead ’em. He wants me to show ’em the way out of their wilderness. He surely does. I can hear His voice. I can hear him telling me, I’m sure I can, and I take hold of Lizzie’s arm. ‘I can teach you to read,’ I tell her. ‘I know how. I could teach all of you to read if I only had the right books.’
Lizzie nods like she’s thought of it already, but Henry looks more worried than pleased. ‘That’s kind of you, Friday, it really is. But we couldn’t take the risk if we knew that we’d be caught.’
Lizzie shakes her head in wonder. ‘I can’t decide whether you been sent to us from heaven or from hell. Guess only time will tell.’
I leave the two of ’em sitting at the table, talking quietly and staring into the grease lamp as I lie myself down upon the mattress in the corner of our cabin.
God is so close tonight it makes me tremble. I can hear His gentle heart beating a rhythm in time with my own. ‘If I stay here …’ I tell Him, ‘if I do your bidding and I don’t run away … You got to look after Joshua … You got to look after him real good and keep him safe till I get back to him …’
God lets out a deep breath and it’s like a breeze across my face, touching my lips lightly and reaching up into my nostrils. And I know it means He will.
Chapter 10
These hands ain’t my hands. Not any more. They’re changing. I got patches of dead skin on the inside of my thumb and the tips of all my fingers. They’re growing larger too – growing stronger – turning from the hands of a boy into the hands of a man.
Not long ago they spent their days holding a book to my face. These days they pick and pluck till I’m good for nothing but sleep.
And I’m beginning to feel something different, a kind of strength creeping into me, so that if someone were to hit me hard, I think I could take it. I don’t think anyone wants to. I’m just saying that if they did, it might not hurt as much as it would’ve before. At least that’s what I think until I meet with the mule. Once the mule kicks me, I know all about it, cos this ain’t just any old beast of burden, this mule’s on a mission from God.
I don’t hear the voice of God for a little while after the night with Lizzie in the woods. That’s the way it works sometimes cos He’s a busy man. He’s got a lot of people He needs to talk to, and that means you have to figure things out for yourself.
God has a way of revealing Himself slowly, bit by bit, and you got to look out for the signs if you’re gonna know what He wants you to do. Often there’ll be a series of strange coincidences, all of ’em arranged by His guiding hand into a pattern. Once you spot the pattern, everything becomes obvious. Take, for instance, that meeting in the woods. Well, that didn’t happen
by chance. God led me there. He gave me Lizzie and took me to the woods so I’d see for myself that they couldn’t read. He knew Lizzie and Henry would come to trust me and I would trust them too. That’s why He revealed them to me. It was all part of His plan. It had to be. Same as the mule.
*
I’m in the field. I’m working alongside Connie and Albert. Hubbard is sat on his horse, watching us work, making sure we do everything right and we aren’t slouching. We’re still harvesting the cotton, and now I can pick as quick as anyone. When it’s time for lunch I’m sent to the house, same as usual, and I go by the path, the same way that I always do.
Well, I don’t see the mule until I almost walk right into him. He isn’t meant to be there anyway because it ain’t his spot. Normally he’s in the barn, skulking about like the no-good animal he is, or else he’s in the field complaining that he has to work. Only he ain’t in either of those places. He’s right here, standing at the corner of the barn, next to the path that takes you up to the house, but I don’t see him till it’s too late cos he’s standing on the blind side. First thing I know is when he kicks me and he gets me high up on the thigh, right on the muscle at the front of the leg, and I’m on the floor before I know what’s hit me.
That mule looks down his long old nose at me and I swear he sniggers.
That’s when I hear a woman’s voice. It ain’t the mule. It’s Mrs Allen, hanging out of an upstairs window in the main house and shouting down to me. ‘Friday. Oh my Lord, Friday.’ Her hand holds the edge of the window to steady herself, cos she sure is leaning a long way out. ‘Stay right there,’ she shouts, and ducks back inside the house.
I lie on the ground like a wet blanket and don’t move at all, just like she said. Moments later the door to the yard is flung open and out comes Mrs Allen, closely followed by Winnie and Sicely. She runs across to me, then she kneels and lifts my head onto her knees cos she must see that I’m looking faint and her golden hair falls down across her face so she appears something like an angel to me. ‘Why, you poor thing. Are you all right?’ She puts a hand onto my brow. I don’t know why.
‘It’s my leg that hurts, ma’am.’
‘I know,’ she says. ‘I saw the whole thing from the window. Sicely, take that mule to the barn right now and make sure it’s kept well away from everyone.’
Sicely looks down at me with the same face as that mule and I know she thinks I’m faking. ‘It’s just a mule, missus. It ain’t harmed none of us before.’
‘Do as I say, Sicely. It was an unprovoked attack. I saw it all.’
‘There’s something about me and mules,’ I try to explain in a weak voice. ‘They don’t like me. I’ve had trouble with ’em before.’
Mrs Allen lifts the leg of my breeches. She takes it right up over my shin and she don’t ask me or nothing, she just does it, putting her fingers up above my knee and feeling my thigh, finding the place where it hurts when I flinch.
‘Ouch!’
‘Does it hurt that much?’
I don’t know why she needed to ask. ‘Sure,’ I tell her. ‘It hurts a lot.’
Winnie leans over the two of us. ‘If it were broken, he’d be screaming,’ she offers in her gravelly voice.
‘He’d be squealing like a little pig,’ adds Sicely.
I don’t try too hard to be brave. Mrs Allen’s got nice hands. Gentle but firm. She slides the leg of my breeches back down my leg. ‘Can you walk?’ She taps the top of my head, indicating for me to get up, and I raise myself onto my elbows and then my knees. ‘You look a little shaky.’ She gives me a hand to steady me.
‘I feel shaky, ma’am, but I’ll be fine, I’m sure I will. Thank you.’ I get up onto my feet.
Sicely has her hands on her hips. ‘See. He’ll be fine.’
But Mrs Allen gives her short shrift. ‘I told you to take that mule away, Sicely. Now you go and do it.’ She takes me by the waist, helping me make a step or two, but I ain’t putting on a limp. Every time I put my foot on the floor, it hurts.
‘I think you may have been lucky.’ She lets me go, then watches me step gingerly and I wonder how much it must hurt when you’re not so lucky.
‘Winnie, will you get this boy some lunch?’ Mrs Allen walks back to the house. ‘Send him up to me in the library when he’s eaten. He’ll need to rest that leg this afternoon.’
When Sicely returns she puts my bowl down sharply on the table. I get soup with chunks of vegetables and I get fresh bread, but it would taste a whole lot better served with some sympathy. ‘What did you do to that mule that made him wanna kick you?’ she asks meanly.
‘I didn’t do anything. I told you already, they got it in for me. Bit like you have. Always have done and always will. They know it and I know it. It’s just how it is with me and mules.’ I pull up my trouser to show her the bruise and I think she softens a tiny bit cos you can see it plain as day and it’s gonna get worse as time goes by. She shows me up to the library without another word of malice, knocks on the door and delivers me through into the room.
Gerald and Mrs Allen are seated at a desk by the window at the far end of the library and between them and me there are nothing but books – shelves and shelves of books, the length and height of that lovely room. I’ve never seen so many books in one place, not even in Father Mosely’s office.
‘Are you feeling better, Friday?’ Mrs Allen smiles and beckons me towards them. I’m thinking she’s gonna sit me down for an afternoon’s rest in one of those empty chairs, but she’s got other ideas. ‘I thought you could clean the books and dust the shelves for me. It should be less stressful on that leg. I’ll bring you up some water and a cloth and show you what needs to be done. Dust the shelf. Then the books should be taken out, wiped with a damp cloth and the shelf cleaned before they are dried and returned. If you work along the bottom shelves you won’t need to stretch and you can rest your injury.’ She smiles sweetly, and though it ain’t how I imagined, I can’t complain cos compared to working in the field, this is child’s play.
It’s only when I begin the task that I realize what a gift God has given me.
There are books here that I never dreamed existed. I get to handle big red leather volumes with descriptions of every bird and animal under the sun, all of ’em with pictures drawn in ink so you can see what they look like. They’ve got a book with maps of the world and books about people too, all sorts of people – some of ’em I heard of but most of ’em not. I take one out called A Peek at our Neighbors, by a man who calls himself Uncle Frank, and I wipe it down, opening the cover to sneak a look inside when I know that Mrs Allen won’t notice me. I put it back and crawl further along the bottom shelf, the feather duster in my hand, being careful to not spill the bucket of water as I bring it along on the floor behind me.
I get to the storybooks and there are all sorts. There’s a book about a man who goes hunting a great white whale and another one for children, called The Wonder Book for Boys and Girls. I have to be careful that she don’t see me looking, but she’s at the far end of the room, setting Gerald a math problem, though by the sound of it he ain’t interested in learning. She asks him, ‘If one Confederate soldier can whip seven Yankees, how many soldiers can whip forty-nine Yankees?’
Gerald pleads with his stepmom. ‘I been working hard for hours, Mother. Can’t I stop and have a break?’
‘No, Gerald,’ Mrs Allen scolds him. ‘You’ve got another thirty minutes of math before I’m gonna let you go, and if you choose not to concentrate then I’ll keep you even longer.’
I read the opening line of the book. ‘Beneath the porch of the country seat called Tanglewood …’ Those words take me to a world I can only imagine, but I know I can’t go there, not right now, so I close up The Wonder Book for Boys and Girls, scared she’ll see me with it open in my hand.
I get to my feet and flick a duster at a book of poetry bound in black leather. My leg doesn’t hurt too much. I hardly notice it at all as I take the books from the shelf
, wipe ’em down and dry ’em off before putting ’em back the way they were.
I know God’s with me when I crouch back down to begin a new shelf. I know it as sure as if He’d placed the book in my hand Himself, cos the first book along is a primer. I recognize it as the very same one I was taught with. I’ve opened it so many times I could recite it with my eyes closed. The first pages have got the alphabet written out, all of the letters in both capitals and small. I turn the pages slowly, remembering the feel of the paper. It’s got a version of the alphabet in print, and another as though written by hand, so you can see how the shape of the letters might be different, depending on whether you might be reading a letter or something set in type.
I sit down on the floor and turn to the first page proper, but I already know what’ll be there and I’m right – there’s the drawing of that big old dog running hell for leather ’cross that field with his tongue hanging out and underneath, clear as anything, the first words I ever learned to read. THE DOG RAN. Surely this is too good to be true?
‘What are you doing, Friday?’ Her voice shakes me out of my spell and I look up from the book to find Mrs Allen standing over me. She’s got a strange expression, kinda edgy and her eyes are nervous.
I move my finger from the word DOG, make it look like I don’t know a thing. ‘This one’s got pictures, missus. See?’ I run my finger cross the page, pretending to stroke the dog.
Mrs Allen reaches down and closes the book. ‘Put it back, Friday. I asked you to dust the books, but that does not require you to open ’em up. They’re not for you. Those books are for those of us been blessed to read.’
‘Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.’ I slide the volume back into its place as Mrs Allen walks out of the room, but as soon as I know she’s gone I go across to Gerald, who’s been sat at the desk watching what went on between the two of us. ‘Can I meet you by the river?’ I ask him.
