Clem spoke up then. “Doc Bates, you came!”
The lantern backed away, just enough to light the man’s chin and nose. It was Doc Bates. It was his lips, set in that smile of contentment. He reached to give each of us a hand out of the hole. When he saw me, he gently clapped my shoulder. “My wagon is outside. We must hurry. A medical man can only take the guise of his duties so far. My wife is consumed with her cotillion. She’s grown accustomed to my unpredictable night departures in the name of tending the sick, but tonight my alibi grows increasingly thin as midnight approaches, when I’m to deliver the Christmas Eve toast.”
Doc Bates was wearing a mackintosh coat and a tarp draped around his head and face to keep him dry. “As I approached the shanty, I believe the town clock was striking eleven. I’d hoped to arrive sooner, but I was slowed by this blasted rain,” he said. “If I can just get you boys across the river, you’ll be fine for a time. A little more than ten miles north of here, there’s a lady who makes brooms, Talley Pembroke is her name. She occupies a small cabin—a cabin with a broom hung on the front door—just south of Arlington. She’s a steadfast believer in the movement. She’s helped many fugitives, even the woman they call Moses, Harriet Tubman herself.”
We loaded onto the back of Doc Bates’s wagon, where he hid us under a bushel of onions and a feed sack of grain. The doctor threw a blanket over us. He tucked the blanket tight at the inside edges of the wagon bed. “Rest now,” he said. “You’ve got risky days ahead of you.”
Even with the bumps and thrusts of the wagon wheels under my head, I let myself sink into hopefulness.
Soon into the ride, the wagon wheels came to a sudden stop. I could hear Doc Bates clucking his tongue at his horse, Judd. But we stayed stopped. The wagon jerked, then shimmied. Doc Bates’s horse sounded a grunt from deep in his belly. Doc Bates swore. He came to the wagon bed, where he spoke to us through the blanket “We’re at the place where the river begins to shadow, but the river’s swollen. Judd has gone skittish on me. When water rises to a point, it frightens Judd, makes him downright obstinate. It’ll take the bulk of General Robert E. Lee’s Eastern Confederate army to move Judd now.”
Clem called out from under the onions, “Is he rearing, digging his hooves?”
The horse grunted a second time. “That’s it exactly,” Doc Bates said.
“Coddle him,” I called back.
Doc Bates tried to coax Judd, but the doctor was going about it all wrong. I could tell by the herky motion of the wagon, and the horse’s snorting, that Doc Bates was yanking Judd’s rein. Clem must have felt it, too. We both wriggled free of the blanket and stepped down off the wagon bed, back into the rain. Clem told Doc Bates to stand at Judd’s mount side while he and I stood on each side of Judd’s head.
The land beneath our feet was what Thea used to cad sow’s heaven—mud thick as molasses. Judd’s whole muzzle had gone tight. He gnashed his teeth. He was railing against all of us trying to wheedle him. Judd was just plain spooked. I tried to calm him. “Easy now. Easy, boy.” Judd looked to be seventeen hands, at least. His size alone made it hard to budge him.
“We ain’t got time for sweet-talk,” Clem said. “We gotta move him forward, best way we can.” Clem gave a single tug at Judd’s bridle.
“He’s too stymied, Clem,” I said. “The best way to encourage him is to still him first. Sweet-talk will get us across this river faster than anything else.” I patted Judd.
Then Doc Bates threw in his dib. “I know Judd better than anyone knows him. It’s no use. We should turn back, return to the shanty. You boys can spend the night there, hide out during the day tomorrow—it’ll be Christmas; folks won’t be about—then you can try again when night falls. Hopefully, the rain will let up, and the river will recede.” Doc Bates shuddered against the cold. He pulled his makeshift hood close around his face. He said, “As far as I can see, going back is the only way.”
Clem snatched at Judd’s bridle again. “I ain’t turnin’ back—not now. Not ever. We’ll wade across.”
The rain was flying down in spikes. It was freezing rain. The meanest kind of rain there is. That thorny rain hurling from the sky made things worse for poor Judd. He kept swishing his tail, trying to swat off the icy bother.
Doc Bates urged Clem. “The waters are too rough, and much too cold. If you try to wade across, you’ll be washed to the rocks, or die of hypothermia. And even if we make it across in the wagon, I’ve scant the time to get home. We can’t do it tonight. I’m imploring you to listen to reason.”
But Clem was past the point of listening. He kept tugging and tugging, and riling Judd.
That’s when I started in with singing softly.
“I’ll meet you in the mornin’
When I reach the promised land. . .”
I don’t know how “Old Chariot” knew to come to me then, but it came with a force as strong as the rain. Surest way to ease a stubborn horse.
“On the other side of Jordan,
For I’s hound for the promised land.”
Clem came to my side of the horse. He got right up in my face. “What in damnation are you doing?”
“I’m settling Judd so’s we can cross.”
“This ain’t no parlor game, Rosea Keep with your foolin’, and you’re gonna get us killed out here.” Clem huffed. “Slave catchers love to brag. And the catchers round here will have a good time tellin’ folks ’bout the fool nigras they found at the river.”
“I ain’t foolin’, Clem. Singing’s what softens a mule-headed horse.”
Clem’s mouth was all twisted. “I was right about you, Rosco. You ain’t nothin’ but a critter. I should have left you behind.” Clem shoved me. Shoved me hard.
I shoved Clem back. “You want to fight me, Clem? Right here in the rain? On Christmas Eve? With a swelled-up river, a white man who don’t feel like waiting around, and a stubborn horse, solid as a smokehouse, got his hooves dug into the mud?” Now I was up in Clem’s face. I shoved him a second time. “C’mon, then, Clem, fight me.”
Clem startled backward. But it was what Doc Bates did next that surprised Clem even more. Doc Bates took my lead. He started in singing. Quiedy, but enough so’s Judd could hear.
“When that old chariot comes,
I’m going to leave you,
I’m bound for the promised land,
Friends, I’m going to leave you.”
Judd got real still. He nosed the water. Then he stepped in, enough to cover his front hooves. Clem went back to Judd’s other side. He curled his fingers around the rein and guided Judd’s steps. I joined Doc Bates in singing.
“I’m sorry, friends to leave you,
Farewell! Oh, farewell!”
Judd was trying to find his footing. He stepped careful, but steady. Clem wasn’t singing, but his lips couldn’t help but shape the words. Judd moved past us, further into the water. Doc Bates mounted to his driver’s seat. He motioned us back to the wagon, where we buried ourselves under the onions and grain.
With his backbone pressed to mine, Clem surrendered to his own mule-headedness. He sang softly with Doc Bates and me.
“But I’ll meet you in the morning,
Farewell! Oh, farewell!”
27
Summer
December 31, 1862
A NEW YEAR’S COMIN’, but something in me feels older.
Soon after Rosco and Clem got to be missing, Thomas Farnsworth sent out a pack of search dogs to find them. He gave Rance, Parnell’s overseer, a snatch of Clem’s shirttail and a tattered patch from Rosco’s britches. “Have your dogs sniff out every twig and burrow from here to the Potomac,” he ordered. “Do whatever it takes to find those two.”
On the day after Christmas, the catchers came back, saying they got as far as the Rappahannock, but because of the cold and the rain, the dogs lost Clem’s and Rosco’s scent. Rance told Farnsworth there was no use in keeping up the hunt. “Them boys is long past gone,” he said.
M
ama worked sadly and silently in the cookhouse. When she wasn’t workin’, she went off to her prayer place, usually in the late-night hours and early morning, right before Chief got to crowing.
Today Mama and Thea took to polishing everything in the front hall—the doorknobs, the spindle-back bench, the standing clock—which were usually Rosco’s house duties. Mama put me to polishing the balusters, another one of Rosco’s chores. The three of us worked quietly, sullenly. Mama was the one who spoke first. Spoke like she’d been mulling on her thoughts. “I know Thomas Farnsworth’s kind,” she said. “Same kind as Briggs Thornton, the master who sold me to Gideon. Them’s white folks with hard, hard hearts. If they bring back them boys, they’ll bring ’em back dead. Ain’t no question about it.”
There was hurt in Mama’s eyes like I ain’t never seen in my mother. I looped my dust rag over the banister so’s I could take a rest on the bottom step. But I wanted Mama to rest, too. I took her hand and held it. “Come sit with me, Mama.”
Mama shook her head. “Ain’t no room for slackin’,” she said. “We’s got to keep with our work.”
I tugged on Mama’s hand. “Only for a minute, Mama.”
When I coaxed Mama to the stair step, I said to Thea, “Mama and me, we need us a solid prayer.”
Thea came to the steps and bowed her head. I lowered my head too. Mama followed. I was still holding Mama’s hand.
Thea set to praying. “Almighty Lord, watch over young Rosco and Clem. Guide their feet to safe soil. Show them. Protect them. Work in and through their eager spirits. And help us, Lord, to have faith in the promise of freedom for all of us still living here at Parnell’s plantation. In your Almighty name, we pray. Amen.”
When Thea’s prayer was through, Mama and I spoke at the same time. “Amen,” we said softly.
When we got back to work, Thea told Mama and me that her prayer was already working. “Rosco and Clem have reached higher ground. I know it in my marrow,” she said.
A piece of calm came to Mama’s eyes, and Thea went on and on about Rosco and Clem, and how she was for certain they were “safe in the everlasting arms.”
Later, in the quarters, I wondered about Thea’s strange ways. How could she know things she couldn’t fully see?
Then an odd little thing happened. Something that gave me reason to take up a kernel of belief in Thea’s know-how.
In the days after Rosco and Clem fled, Cornelia, my corncob dolly, was the only one who brought me true comfort. Every morning, after Mama left the quarters, I propped Cornelia on the oak stool near my pallet, so’s I could do all kinds of talking to her. I told her how my belly had a hurt deep as Parnell’s well, from missing Rosco and Clem. Told her I didn’t know if I could keep up with learning letters without Rosco. Told her I didn’t rightly know if I even wanted to bother. Cornelia, she listened good, took in all my grief.
But when I got to talking about giving up on letters, Cornelia fell clean off the stool. She landed facedown with a tiny smack, right onto my pallet. On the spot where I lay my head, near where she had been hiding on Christmas morning when I first found her.
In falling, Cornelia’s little dress flipped up its skirt, turning it back like a hand playing peekaboo. That’s when I saw them—tiny letters embroidered onto the underside of Cornelia’s skirt. Tiny letters that danced along her hem.
Them letters were dancing for me. They were tellin’ me something. They were making words I knew, words I’d seen before.
My dolly’s dress hem said, Summer is a blooming flower.
The embroidery stitches were jagged, but they’d been put in place with the care of a hand that was trying its best. And them stitches, them special words, were all for me.
It was Cornelia’s dress hem that eased me to trusting on Thea’s wisdom. Maybe she was right about Rosco and Clem. Maybe the two of them had made it to some better place. Maybe they were in Serendipity, the promised land, where there ain’t no masters or hatred. Where everything’s beautiful.
Them embroidered words made it hard to think on nothing but good. Especially with all the mutterings about. Ever since Rosco had told us that Abraham Lincoln was planning to put his name to a freedom paper, I’d heard more and more folks saying it was really gonna happen. Gonna happen on New Year’s Day, people said. Folks were calling Lincoln’s paper the Emancipation Proclamation, a paper that said all nigras livin’ under the Confederacy would be free. Every single one of us—free. Just like that.
Some of the Parnell slaves—moslly older folks-said we shouldn’t put no trust in such pig-slop, that the whole thing was all a big hoax.
But Thea, she had her seer-woman view on things. “Freedom’s comin’ ahead at the horizon,” she said. “I can feel it from deep down.”
The hearsay about the president’s proclamation had everybody in a stew. When Thomas Farnsworth heard that the proclamation was soon to be official—he got wind of it soon after Rance told us Clem and Rosco weren’t nowhere to be found—he had Mama pack his satchel so’s he could go back home to Louisiana. Right before Missy Claire’s brother left, he swore the South was dying a slow death. “We’re surely losing the war, and now this threat of freeing the slaves,” he’d said. Then he said he had no choice but to leave Parnell’s so’s he could keep his own plantation in order till “the final sickening demise.”
Missy Claire begged Thomas to stay on, but he refused. He left just as he came, possum eyes lookin’ every which way. Once her brother was gone, Missy returned to her days in the parlor. Mama was pleased as pie to see Thomas Farnsworth go. She went right back to running things, the way she’d done after Parnell got his heart-shock.
This morning, when Mama brought Missy her tea service—I followed behind Mama, carrying the place linens—Missy spoke real firm to Mama. She said, “Kit, don’t you believe a single word of that ridiculous gossip about the president’s intentions. All this talk that’s been circulating is nothing but political conjecture. You’re to pay the rumors no attention. Is that clear?”
Mama set Missy Claire’s tray in front of her. She didn’t answer Missy one way or the other. She just poured her tea. Then, as Mama turned to leave, Missy Claire spoke again, more gently this time. She said, “You know, Kit, you can be free right here with us. There’s no good reason to ever leave this plantation— ever. Besides, you’re pretty much a free woman right now, anyway.”
I saw Mama flinch. She stood in the parlor doorway for a long moment. She kept her back to Missy Claire. Finally, she spoke. “No, Missy Claire, I’m not truly free. But my mind is free, and I’m free to make up my mind anyways I want. So, if Mr. Lincoln’s ’mancipation comes to pass, I’ll use my God-given free will to decide where freedom suits me best.”
Missy Claire was stunned to silence. She folded her arms tight in front of her. She made her way to the parlor window, parted the curtains, and stared out.
That night, when all was quiet in the quarters, I whispered soft to Cornelia, “Mama is a blooming flower, just like me.”
28
Rosco
December 25, 1862
THE STINK OF ONIONS HAD settled to my clothes, but at least the rain had stopped. Morning was cold and clear and new. Me and Clem had traveled on foot till we found the cabin with the broom on the door. When we knocked, a little white woman answered. Wasn’t no more taller than I was, that woman. She had tiny teeth the color of butter, and a smile as big as the Rappahannock. Her face was bright, with straight-at-you eyes, blue like the morning sky. She seemed glad to see us. “Thank goodness!” she exclaimed. “Firewood, firewood! I prayed for firewood, and here it is on my doorstep. A Christmas wish come true.”
The little white woman hurried us inside. She was talkin’ fast, like she had a lot to say at once. We couldn’t get a word in, couldn’t ask if we’d come to the right place. “You boys look hungry. Sit a sped—eat. And then we’ll get on with the firewood.” A small table with three chairs stood toward the back of the cabin, near the hearth. The woman s
lid two of the chairs away from the table. She slapped their seats, then settled herself to the third chair. “Sit now,” she said, “rest a spell.”
All kinds of brooms hung from the walls and ceiling. Clem’s eyes were shifting from me to the brooms to the butter-toothed lady. Finally he asked, “Are youTalley Pembroke?” She reared back on the haunches of her chair, so far back that I thought she’d tip over and land on her head. But she had full control of her chair, even as it wavered. “I’m as Talley Pembroke as they come. Who are you?” she wanted to know. She came back to sitting on all four legs of her chair. She leaned in on one elbow and studied both of us.
“My name’s—” I started to answer, but Clem raised a hand to stop me.
“Never mind who we are. Dr. Horace Bates sent us to see you.”
Now Talley Pembroke raised a hand—raised two hands—to shush Clem. “No need explaining.” She rose from her seat, rummaged through the larder, and returned with a slab of corn bread and half a boiled chicken. Me and Clem wolfed that food like tomorrow wasn’t ever gonna come. Sure beat a rain-soaked ash-cake and a hunk of salt pork that had gone cold.
When the last of the chicken was gone, Talley handed Clem an ax. “There’s a pile of wood out back that needs busting. You chop”—she pointed two fingers at me—“and your friend here, he’ll stack.”
Clem stood up sharply. “You got it all wrong. We’re here for—”
Talley folded her hands in front of her on the table. “I know just why you’re here. And as much as I’d like to sit and shoot the winter breeze with you two, I can’t afford to. I’m suspect all over this county. Any colored who comes to me has got to give the appearance they work for me.” Talley pulled two coats off a pair of hooks in the corner and offered the coats to us. “The best show of work is hard work. Work nobody can question.”
So we worked. We chopped and stacked all day, taking turns with the ax. Come dusk, I thought I would drop from exhaustion. And come nightfall, I nearly did. Talley let us quit only when the sky grew too dark to see. I stoked her fire while she fixed us a supper of mashed turnips and more corn bread.
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