by Jon Walter
Now I ain’t been too friendly since Hubbard found us on the river bank, but a smile still races around his mouth. ‘Do you wanna go swimming again?’
‘Sure. I’m ready for another lesson. Let’s say five o’clock? But be sure you bring this book with you.’ I show him the book in my hand.
‘Why?’
‘I got something I want to ask you.’
*
I wasn’t sure that Gerald would do as I asked, and when he arrives I still ain’t certain. He comes to the river with an armful of things – a baseball glove, the bat and ball, a blanket and a wicker picnic basket.
‘Did you bring the book?’
He lets everything fall to his feet except the basket, which he puts carefully on the ground. ‘I still ain’t sure this is a good idea,’ he tells me, and he opens up the lid. Inside there are four slices of bread and a little clay pot with a spoonful of butter, all sitting on a cloth. He reaches underneath and pulls out the book. ‘I had to sneak it out. I told Winnie I was having a picnic.’
I take hold of it greedily and open it up. There’s my dog. The first words I ever read.
Gerald says to me, ‘I take it you want me to teach you how to read?’
‘What?’ I weren’t expecting that, but it’s better than the reason I was about to give.
Gerald looks doubtfully at me. ‘I ain’t sure it’s such a good idea. I’ve never heard of it before.’
‘How do you mean? It ain’t illegal, is it?’
‘I don’t think so, no, but I can’t see why you’d want to. You’re lucky you don’t have to sit in lessons like I do.’
I shake my head solemnly. ‘It’s a matter of principle,’ I tell him. ‘You can’t find your way in the world if you can’t read and write. Didn’t your daddy tell you that? There’s no point in setting us free if we haven’t got the means to be independent.’
‘I suppose so. I hadn’t thought about that.’
‘It’d be good for you too. Think of all the things we could do better if we could read. Can you imagine how it’d be if you draft the papers for our freedom and we can actually read ’em when you hand ’em to us? That would show your daddy a real mark of intent, wouldn’t it? And if I learn to write, I’ll be able to sign my name on the contract of work too. Wouldn’t that be something? I bet your daddy would be pleased at that. Wouldn’t he?’
I can see the idea take hold, cos Gerald’s eyes start to shine. ‘You’d be the only slave here who could do it. That’s for certain.’
‘I’d be the first. Yes, I think your daddy would be pleased with that and he’d know for sure you’re a boy with progressive ideas just like his own.’
‘OK. I’ll teach you if you like.’ Gerald takes the book from my hands. ‘But you can’t let anyone know we’re doing this. Do you understand?’
I go to take it back. ‘You don’t have to teach me. I think can figure it out on my own if I have the book.’
But Gerald shakes his head. ‘No, Friday. That ain’t gonna work.’ He lays the book on the ground between us. ‘It takes a lot of effort at first. You got to learn all the letters. There’s twenty-six of ’em in total. Then you got to learn how they go together to make sounds. It ain’t as easy as it looks, and anyway you may not be able to learn it at all on account of being a Negro.’ He must see me bristle cos he quickly adds, ‘Leastways, that’s what I been told. I’ve never heard of a Negro who could read before; that’s all I meant.’
‘I knew a Negro who could read. I saw him do it myself. Heard him read from the Bible.’
Gerald pulls at the Confederate cap on his head. ‘Well, that’s good then, isn’t it? If he could do it, then so can you.’ He touches my arm. ‘I didn’t mean no harm, Friday. It’s just what people say.’ He closes the book and thrusts it back at me. ‘You’ll have to work hard though. It’s more difficult than swimming.’
‘Can you let me borrow the book in between? That way I can practise it in my own time. I’ll keep it secret – I won’t let nobody know ’bout it.’
Gerald bites at his bottom lip. ‘If my mother finds you with it, she’d have you whipped for stealing. I know she would.’
‘But I won’t let her. I’ll hide it so well that no one can find it.’ I open up the book and point to the picture. ‘I want to know ’bout that dog. Come on and tell me what it says ’bout the dog.’
‘Here.’ Gerald takes hold of my finger and places it on the letter D. ‘That there’s a D. Sounds like duh. And you use it for DOG. You hear that? DOG.’ He runs my finger along the line of words. ‘THE DOG RAN. That’s what it says. That’s the words, and there’s a picture there to help you. Go on. You say it.’
I repeat the words slowly back to him, making ’em sound like they are difficult and new, making me sound like I don’t know a thing.
‘Now, listen, we’re running ahead of ourselves here.’ Gerald turns to the alphabet page and shows me all the letters, laid out from A to Z. ‘This is where it all starts. This is the beginning. See the shape of these? Well, this is the alphabet written out as ordinary letters, but you can have the same letters looking different if they’re capitals. Like the D for dog. Do you see that? That’s because it’s the start of a sentence, and every new sentence has to begin with a capital letter and end with a full stop.’
He makes it sound so hard I start to doubt that I already know what he’s telling me, but that only helps with the pretence. ‘I ain’t sure I understand. A capital letter’s taller than the rest. Is that right?’
Gerald breaks into a smile. ‘You learned something already.’ He ain’t a bad teacher, though not as good as me.
When we’re finished with the lesson we ease ourselves into the river, on account of my bruised leg, and I float on my back, do it all by myself and I don’t need his help when I put my head in the water either.
I wonder if I can hear the engines of the Yankee boats that I know are coming up the river on their way to free me. I can’t hear a thing – but now I don’t mind so much if they take their time.
*
It ain’t easy to look natural when you got a book all up inside your shirt or tucked into the top of your breeches. I got the primer hidden about me like a dirty secret and I ain’t used to lying to people, so I go the long way back to the cabins, hoping I won’t meet a soul. When I see Albert, I have to head for the latrines and I sit in there a long time, so he’ll be gone once I come back outside.
Father Mosely used to always say that if something makes you feel bad then you’re definitely sinning. Well, I feel bad about this. I don’t like sneaking around behind Mrs Allen’s back and I don’t like lying to Gerald either. I’m getting him to thieve for me and I’m treating him like a fool.
But God wants me to do it. It’s all in His name. It’s all about doing His good works – though right now it don’t feel so good.
I tell myself that slavery ain’t good. Treating people like they’re no better than a mule, that’s a much bigger wrong than stealing a book, and anyway Mrs Allen’s got no need for it. She’ll have it right back on her shelf once we’re finished and she won’t even know it has gone. So really it ain’t stealing at all – it’s only borrowing.
Lizzie’s alone in the cabin when I get there and we sit at the table with the book in front of us. We don’t open it. We just sit there looking at it. ‘It’s a primer, Lizzie,’ I say eventually. ‘It’s a book for teaching reading and writing.’
That might be what it is for me, but it ain’t for Lizzie. For her that book is a whole new world of opportunity and it could be a whole heap of trouble too. Either way, she’s too scared to touch it and she keeps her hands folded on the tabletop in front of her. ‘Where’d you get a thing like that?’
‘It’s from the house. Gerald got it for me.’
Lizzie stands up from her chair, all alarmed. ‘Why’d he do that? That’s no good, Friday! He’ll tell on us! He’s bound to!’
‘No, he won’t, Lizzie. It’s all right. C’mon and sit do
wn. Gerald don’t know about the rest of you learning. He thinks he’s teaching me to read and he’s doing it cos he wants to be my friend. He won’t tell Mrs Allen.’
‘What if you both get caught?’
‘Then it’ll be me who takes the blame. C’mon and sit down. C’mon and let me show you.’
Lizzie sits back down but she’s shaking her head. ‘There’s no point showing me. It won’t mean anything to me.’
I open the book anyway. I take hold of her finger and put it on the page, but she pulls it back. ‘No … I don’t want to touch it.’ She puts the knuckle to her teeth. ‘It don’t look the same as other books I seen.’ She points a finger. ‘What word is that one there?’
‘Oh, that ain’t a word, Lizzie. I been misleading you. This here’s the alphabet page. It’s got all the letters you might need to make a word.’ I flick through a few pages. ‘See here? These are words. That one there says pillow.’
‘It does?’
‘Yes, it does.’
‘Is that a difficult word?’
‘I’d say about average. There’s some that are shorter and others that are longer. You see how these words here are grouped together? That’s a sentence. And then there are paragraphs. That’s where all the sentences fit together, like verses in the Bible, but this book ain’t so advanced that it’s got paragraphs.’
Lizzie shakes her head and closes up the book. ‘There’s too much to learn,’ she says.
‘It gets easier once you got a few things to build on. And you won’t need to worry. I’m a good teacher. I can teach you how to do it.’
‘Uh-uh!’ Lizzie’s mouth makes the shape of an O. ‘It’s not for me! I never meant for it to be for me! I meant it for my kids. I want you to teach Gil. Sicely too, if she’ll do it, though she may not.’
‘Sicely ought to do it.’
‘She don’t like to do things that the missus don’t allow.’
‘I know that. Do you think she’ll tell Mrs Allen?’
Lizzie shakes her head. ‘Even Sicely ain’t so proud she’d see her own brother flogged.’ I’ll have to take her word on that. ‘Anyway,’ she continues, ‘what I’m saying is that this is something for the kids.’
She fetches Henry and he sits for a while, turning the pages without saying a word, then all of a sudden he’s got a plan. ‘We’ll do it on a Thursday night and a Sunday after the missus has said our prayers. I’ll send Benjamin, Lily and Charles to join Gil. You should be able to begin as soon as Hubbard leaves.’
That reminds me that Hubbard has a wife and daughter over on the Hope plantation and he has a pass to see ’em on those days. He’s gone for most of the night, getting back before dawn for the next day’s work.
So that’s how we begin – with me teaching the kids.
We wait till Hubbard leaves, and when Henry gives the all-clear they come around to Lizzie’s and I sit ’em on the floor to start the lesson. They all got their own grease lamp, so they can see the words of the book when it’s passed to ’em, and all the time Henry keeps a watch outside in case anyone should come by and see the light. One night, when were finished and he came back inside, he told me that our cabin glowed in the night like a little star of learning. That’s what he said – it really was.
After two weeks of lessons Henry sends along his eldest, Mary, and George comes along too, on account of the two of ’em being inseparable. I put ’em in a row of their own behind the little ones, to show ’em some respect.
I teach the alphabet the way we used to do it at the orphanage, by singing the letters to a tune so it gets inside your brain and stays there. I have ’em humming that tune before they go to sleep and when they get up. I get ’em humming it out on the swing, knowing they got to say the letters in their head so no one can hear ’em. It ain’t long before they know the sounds of all the letters and some of the words that you can make with ’em.
‘Anyone know a word beginning with F?’ I ask one night, but all they do is giggle and laugh. I don’t know why it’s funny.
*
One time, Joshua said to me, ‘I know more swearwords than you.’
We were sitting in the orphanage yard, our backs to the privy on a hot afternoon and I swatted away a fly. ‘That ain’t nothing to be proud of.’
‘You just saying that cos you don’t know ’em. I can do a whole alphabet of swearing. Billy’s been teaching me. Bet you ain’t even got one for A.’
‘Don’t be an ass.’ I smiled at him, all sarcastic. ‘Everyone knows how to cuss, Joshua. It don’t mean you’re clever.’
‘Huh-oh! You said ass.’ Joshua put a hand across his mouth. ‘Now you’re gonna have to burn in hell with me.’
‘I was only saying it to prove you wrong. Everyone knows that word. It’s no big deal.’
‘I got another one for A.’
‘No, you ain’t. There ain’t another one.’
‘Adventuress. It’s another word for prostitute.’
Well, I could not believe my ears. ‘Stop it now! Do you hear me?’
‘I got three for B.’
‘No, you haven’t. And if you do I don’t want to hear ’em.’
‘Boat-licker, blazes and bastard. Billy told me I’m a little bastard. He says I got to be.’
‘If he says it again, you come and tell me and I’ll take him to Father Mosely’s office. That boy’s no good for you, Joshua. You hear me? He ain’t no good at all.’
‘Cockchafer!’
‘Stop it.’
‘Drafted!’
I walked away from him. I told him I didn’t want to hear another word of it or God would surely strike him down.
But all the time I was trying to think of a word that might begin with an E.
*
Gerald lies back on the grassy bank to dry himself off. ‘You’re doing good with your swimming.’
I shake the water off my legs and sit beside him. ‘Now I’m treading water I reckon I’ll learn real fast.’
‘Reckon you’re right,’ he tells me. ‘Your reading’s coming on good too. You must be practising it a lot on your own.’
‘I do.’
‘How’d you find the time?’
‘You wanna know a secret? I read it on the latrine.’ Gerald makes a face like that’s about the most disgusting thing he’s ever heard. ‘Fifteen minutes in the morning and the same every evening. I’m as regular as clockwork.’
‘Don’t you have people knocking on the door?’
‘I might be getting a reputation, that’s true enough, but the way I see it, it’s worth it.’
Gerald shrieks with laughter. ‘Ooh! They must think your guts are something rotten!’
‘Some people’ve been steering clear of me, that’s for sure.’
I’m laughing along with him and I don’t remember when it became so easy for me to lie. ‘Say, Gerald?’
‘Yeah?’
‘What about the writing? You gonna teach me how to write as well? It ain’t no good me reading if I don’t know how to write.’
The next time we meet he brings a piece of slate and some chalk so I can write the letters out. He tells me I can keep it like I knew he would, and I get my class to pass it around and write out the first letter of their own names.
And then something new happens. I start to hear the adults humming my alphabet tune when we’re in the field and I begin to wonder whether they doing the letters in their heads. I ask Albert straight out. ‘Hey, Albert, you humming my tune?’
Well, he gives me a little ABC, whispers it in my ear when we’re bent down sawing at the trunk of a tree. Turns out George has been teaching him and he can go all the way to J. He says he’ll know the whole thing come Sunday. A few days later Lizzie and Henry tell me they want to learn too and so I arrange for the parents to sit in the back of the cabin and soon enough I’m giving ’em their own class for an hour after the little ones have finished and gone off to bed.
*
Today I taught Lizzie to read the wo
rd Jesus.
I taught George how to write in sentences and he even remembered to use a capital letter and a full stop.
See! I’m doing it, God! I’m doing just what you asked me to. And that’s all you can ask for any day, to keep my brother safe.
Chapter 11
It’s Sicely who brings us the bad news, same as it always is, when she comes running to the fire pit, shouting out that Mrs Allen can’t sell our cotton.
Mr Wickham had turned the missus away from the market only this morning on account of an embargo issued by Jefferson Davis himself. ‘They won’t let us sell our cotton,’ Sicely tells us, all breathless and wide-eyed. ‘They reckon it’s unpatriotic and we should hold onto it so the English don’t have a choice ’cept to join the war and break the blockade. Wickham said we ain’t gonna give ’em any cotton till they beg for it.’
She has other news too. Tells us she saw a train pull into town full of the wounded and dead from the war. She says the hospital is full of broken men looking sorry for themselves, and there weren’t enough wagons to carry all the coffins from the train, there were that many. That’s what she tells us.
Lizzie shakes her head and sucks at her teeth. ‘Things’ll get a lot worse before they get any better, that’s for sure.’
In Connie’s cabin they got a different view. ‘I told you they were losing the war.’ Connie smiles broadly and leans back into his chair like he’s sitting in rays of warm sunshine.
Antoinne lights a grease lamp so we can see ourselves more clearly. ‘I’ll be gone soon. You wait and see if I ain’t.’
‘You’ll be dead soon.’ Connie taps his pipe on the table and takes a pinch of fresh tobacco. ‘That’s what you’ll be if you can’t wait. I told you before and you oughta have the sense to control yourself. It won’t be long now.’
Antoinne paces about the room, unable to stay still. ‘All I got to do is get behind those Yankee lines and there ain’t nothing they can do about it. I’ll be a free man and I’ll have my rights.’
‘And how you gonna do that? This is the most dangerous time to go. They’ll be strung out along the river waiting …’ Connie looks crossly at me. ‘You still itching to get away as well?’
