American Dreams Trilogy

by Michael Phillips

  “What happened?”

  “We buried our son and somehow managed through the next few weeks. My wife spent most of that time in bed and not once spoke to me. Gradually she regained her physical strength. She was so changed as to be unrecognizable—hard, cold, uncommunicative.

  “After some time she began leaving for long periods. I had no idea where she went. Whenever we saw one another she gazed at me with both hatred and fear. I think she had come to believe her own lies and had talked herself into being afraid of me. Whether this was conscious, or a subconscious response to the guilt of knowing she had smothered her own child, I never knew. To this day I do not know whether she ever fully knew the truth of what transpired that night.

  “Then I began to hear rumors that she had been seen out walking the streets alone at night, and worse, that she was taking up with men throughout the city willing to take advantage of her mental weakness. I did not see her for weeks at a time. Every time I did, her condition had deteriorated yet more.

  “A day came when a man called at the door. I thought I was about to be arrested. But he was a solicitor, not an agent of the police. He handed me a set of papers that had been filed against me for divorce. I cannot say I was completely surprised.

  “I went through an intense period of soul searching. I had always hated the idea of divorce. Yet I found myself in an impossible situation. At first I said to myself that I would not sign the papers. The idea of being divorced was repugnant to me. I tried to find my father-in-law in hopes of talking to him to see what I could learn about his daughter. He refused to see me. Through the solicitor, I managed to learn enough to convince me that the reports I had heard about her were true, that there were other men involved. Eventually I realized that if my wife had any chance of finding mental and psychological freedom, she would have to put this part of her life behind her. Whether that was possible, I did not know. But for me to refuse to sign and contest the divorce, and drag the matter into court, might destroy her. Was this a time to stand and fight, to defend myself, to answer the charges against me? Or was it a time to lay down my arms and put the conflict to rest? And all the while I was grieving the loss of our son. Can I say that it did not hurt to have such said against me? Surely not—every word of accusation was a slice of the knife into my very heart, for I had tried to love her. I don’t know, Seth, my boy, I don’t know if—”

  His voice caught and he looked away. Tears flooded his eyes at the agony of uncertainty that had accompanied his decision. He wiped at his eyes.

  “I will never be 100 percent certain that I did the right thing, Seth,” Richmond struggled to go on. “I was convinced at the time that it was best for her. In any event, in the end, reluctantly, I signed the papers of divorce. I never saw the solicitor, any of her family, or my wife again. It was as if from that moment, once they had me out of their life, they pretended I had never existed at all.”

  “Dad, I’m… I’m really sorry,” said Seth. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like. My problems with Veronica were nothing alongside what you had to go through.”

  “We each are given trials to bear, Seth. They cannot be compared in difficulty. Life is difficult for everyone. We must face with fortitude, courage, faith, patience, and hope—let us not forget hope!—those unique trials that come to us. Mine came to me and I had to face them. Yours came to you. More will come to us both, and we will have to face them. Through our response to them is character built.”

  “What was her name, Dad… the lady—your first wife.”

  “Naomi,” he replied in a melancholy voice, again dabbing at his eyes, “a beautiful name for a troubled soul.”

  Wyatt Beaumont reined in at the base of the Greenwood drive. The other five riders clustered around him.

  Their leader had just begun to lay out his plan of action, when he was interrupted by another horse suddenly galloping into their midst and pulling up abruptly, choking them with dust.

  Wyatt looked toward the newcomer with an expression of condescending irritation.

  “Scully, what are you doing here?” he said.

  “I figured there was some kind of trouble, Wyatt… I figured I could help.”

  “Well you figured wrong.”

  “Come on, Wyatt—I won’t be no trouble.”

  “We don’t need your help, Scully. Get back to town where you belong.”

  “Just hold on, Beaumont,” said the man in charge. “Another lookout might come in handy.”

  He turned toward Scully. “Can you do what you’re told?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right, you can stay. My name’s Murdoch, and you do everything I say.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Murdoch.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Riggs… Scully Riggs. What’s it all about, Mr. Murdoch?”

  “Runaways, Riggs.”

  “I knowed it! I figured they had some no-account coloreds here that didn’t belong! I knowed them Davidsons—”

  “Shut up, Scully!” barked Wyatt. “Let Mr. Murdoch do the talking.”

  “All right, here’s what we’re going to do,” said Murdoch. “We’ll ride straight in and hope to catch them by surprise. Likely as not, they’re hiding in their colored village with their own coloreds. Either of you two locals know where it is?”

  Wyatt nodded.

  “I do, Mr. Murdoch,” said Scully eagerly. “I sure do. I know right where it is!”

  “Good… then you two take Pete here and get to where you can keep an eye on the whole place. I want to know if there’s sudden activity there or if they try to get somebody out and into the woods. They’ll likely have signals arranged and things’ll happen fast. They make a run for it, you grab ’em or shoot ’em. You got a gun, Riggs?”

  “Yes, sir, but not with me.”

  “Pete, give him your pistol when you get in place.”

  “You want us to shoot, Mr. Murdoch?”

  “‘Course I want you to shoot. The price on this one’s head’s not worth the food it’d take to keep him alive.”

  “What about the local coloreds—the ones of this man Davidson?” asked the fellow called Pete.

  “A darkie’s a darkie,” replied Murdoch. “If a few of them get shot by accident… who can tell the difference? That’s the price they pay for trying to help runaways.”

  “Is that when you decided to come back to America?” Seth asked his father.

  “Not immediately,” replied Richmond. “I didn’t know what to do. I still hoped to complete my law degree at Oxford. Yet everything had changed. My life was in chaos.”

  “I’ve felt that way lately too,” sighed Seth.

  “Shortly after the divorce was final,” Richmond went on, “I received yet another blow, the news that my older brother, Clifford, was dead. With the same letter from my father—your grandfather Grantham—came the urgent request that, as I was now divorced, I return home to help with the plantation. My parents were growing older and there was no one else to run Greenwood when they were gone. My professional career ended at that moment. Despondent and utterly broken, I sailed for New York.”

  “Is that when you met Mom?”

  “Shortly thereafter,” nodded Richmond. “I happened to be in Richmond and was walking along a sidewalk next to a small church where her father was preaching. I had never been interested in spiritual things but I might certainly be said at the time to have been searching for some meaning in life. I wasn’t thinking about God. But neither was I opposed to thinking about him. If God had anything to offer a despondent young man like me, I was willing to listen. For some reason the open door of the church drew me, and I walked inside. I sat down in the last row, and as the service progressed, there were no great voices of angels. But I heard things that made me think seriously about just who God might really be. The service ended and I kept sitting there thinking about what I had heard. When next I looked up, the church was empty except for one young lady with a sad expression pickin
g up the hymnals.

  “Mom?”

  Richmond nodded. “Somehow we began to talk,” he said. “Our conversations continued the following week, and the week after that. I asked her many questions. At first she said she had no answers. But gradually she explained many things to me, even though she did not hide the fact that she had doubts of her own. It was obvious to me that there was concealed pain in her life too that made her doubt the very truths she was telling me. You’ve heard the old saying, that sharing the gospel is nothing more than one thirsty sinner telling another thirsty sinner where to find water. Well your mother and I were two lonely thirsty downcast souls, and neither of us knew where to find water. Yet gently and tenderly God took us by our hands and led us to himself.”

  The silence this time was lengthy.

  “What did happen to Uncle Clifford?” asked Seth at length.

  “He was out riding and apparently fell from his horse,” replied his father. “His head struck a rock. He was dead when my father found him the next day. My father saw prints from another horse. But if Clifford was with anyone else at the time, it was never discovered who it might have been.”

  “And what about old Mr. Brown?” asked Seth. “It happened up by his place, didn’t it?”

  Richmond nodded. “That’s the strange thing… there is no way he could have been involved in anything nefarious. But the fact is, he was never seen again. My father always said—”

  The sound of horses galloping up the driveway put a stop to their conversation. Richmond rose and walked out of the shade of the trees.

  Some inner caution prompted Seth to remain where he was.

  Thirty-Eight

  The name’s Murdoch,” said the lead rider without prolonged introduction. “I’m looking for a man by the name of Davidson.”

  “I am Richmond Davidson,” said Richmond, glancing over the group of men. He had never seen most of them before, though he observed Wyatt and Scully among them. “What can I do for you?”

  “I track runaways, that’s what,” replied Murdoch. “We got a report that there might be some from the Carolinas that came through here. I’ve been tracking an ugly cuss for about a week that goes by the name of Jackson Riles.”

  From where he and his father had been seated, Seth was not able to make out the conversation in progress. But he knew he had seen the man before. It only took a few seconds to place him as the bounty hunter who had questioned his mother about runaways when they’d taken Lucindy north to Pennsylvania. Quickly he rose, ducked behind a few trees, made for the arbor, and, still keeping out of sight, ran for the side of the house.

  Seth burst into the back door, and ran through the kitchen in search of his mother.

  “Mom,” he said when he found her upstairs, “we’ve got to get everyone hidden… hurry!”

  “Who, Seth… what’s—”

  “Get them into the cellar and the kids up into the attic and out of sight—is Nancy here with them? And keep them away from the windows. There’s a man outside who’s looking for runaways!”

  Carolyn dashed up one more flight to the rooms where they had put their recent arrivals.

  “Hurry, all of you!” she said. “Don’t make a sound… follow me. Bring all your clothes, bring everything… not a word—hurry! Nancy, take the children upstairs… keep away from the windows!”

  A great scurrying of bodies, children, babies, men, and women suddenly turned the house into a beehive, with enough questions from the youngsters to prompt at least a half dozen more Shhh! warnings from Carolyn and the other adults.

  Mary and Maribel, meanwhile, were in the basement room with Eliza when Carolyn appeared.

  Mary looked up. “Miz Liza’s baby’s comin’, Miz Dabson!”

  “Oh no… not now!”

  “I’s jes’ ’bout ter sen’ fo’ you. She started ’bout ten minutes ago.”

  Seth was flying down the stairs, doing his best not to pound so loudly he would be heard outside. He ran through the basement hardly aware of the drama of life taking place, and into the tunnel they had built to the outside. Moments later he was making for the colored village.

  Carolyn turned back toward the terrified troop of runaways who had followed her downstairs. Three of the children were staring at her. Ella Mae and her four had returned to the attic room. “Elijah… the rest of you,” said Carolyn, “you’ve got to keep the little ones quiet until we find out what is going on. The basement will be safe. Go into the little room there and close the door.

  “But, Miz Davidson, what ’bout Eliza?” asked Eliza’s sister.

  “We will take good care of her. If Mary and Maribel need your help, they will—”

  Carolyn paused. “On second thought, Janna, you take Maribel’s place right now. I think I had better take Maribel upstairs so that everything will look normal.”

  Outside, Richmond’s interview with the bounty hunter Murdoch continued.

  “I don’t know how you got the idea there are runaways here, Mr. Murdoch,” Richmond was saying, “unless it is the fact that our colored folk are free. They work for us now as hired employees. It is true that some of them have gone North, but with our full knowledge and permission.”

  “Yeah, I heard of you, Davidson,” rejoined Murdoch with a sneer. “We all heard of you and despise what you done. You’re a traitor to the South.”

  “I don’t happen to see it that way, Mr. Murdoch. I like to think that perhaps what we have done here is ahead of its time. Freedom will come to Negroes throughout the South eventually. We see no reason not to embrace the future peaceably.”

  “Well, it don’t matter. It’s not your own darkies I’m looking for,” said Murdoch, boring his eyes into Richmond’s, probing for any hint that would tell him that the man was lying. “Once you give them their papers, there’s not much I can do about it. No, Davidson, I’m looking for runaways that’ve got nothing to do with you, unless you’re hiding them. Then they’ll have everything to do with you—’cause you’ll go to jail and they’ll hang. So you had better tell me the truth.”

  “You are certainly welcome to have a look around, Mr. Murdoch,” said Richmond.

  “We intend to, Davidson… with or without your permission. Boys,” he said, turning to the men with him. “Search the place. If you see anything that looks suspicious, come get me.”

  As they spoke, Richmond noted both rifles and ropes with which their horses were equipped. With Seth’s experience with Wyatt’s gang of hoodlums so fresh, it was clear that the stakes in this dispute were increasing daily. The freedom of blacks was no mere political issue—life and death were involved.

  Lord, he prayed silently, keep bloodshed and death from Greenwood. Blind the eyes of these men, Lord. Do not let them find what they are looking for.

  From the corner of his eye he glanced toward the house.

  “Would you and your men perhaps care for a julep?” he said. “I’ll just go in and tell my wife—”

  “We’re not looking for your hospitality, Davidson,” growled Murdoch. “But maybe we will just go see your wife.” He urged his horse on toward the house as his three men dismounted and ran off in the direction of the barn and other buildings. Richmond hurried after him.

  He caught Murdoch as he was walking up the steps onto the veranda. He led him inside. Carolyn and Maribel stood in the entryway as if expecting them. Murdoch looked them over, gazing up and down over Maribel’s form with angry contempt.

  “What are you staring at?” he said.

  “Nufin’, suh,” replied Maribel in a trembling voice, though in truth her eyes had drifted down to the gunbelt strapped to the man’s waist.

  “Then why are you standing there looking like you’ve got something to hide?”

  “I don’ know, suh… I’s jes’ standin’ here wif da missus.”

  “You live here?”

  “Yes, suh.”

  “You seen any strange coloreds around?”

  “No, suh.”

  “And you�
��d tell me the truth whatever I asked?”

  “Don’t know, suh. A body can’t likely say what she’d do effen she ain’t gotter do it, can she?”

  “I thought as much. You’re a liar like all the rest.”

  Without further question he turned, spotted the staircase and quickly strode up the stairs two at a time. Richmond sent Carolyn a quick glance. Her eyes were wide with fear. With her head she gestured imperceptibly toward the cellar door, hidden by a tapestry hurriedly hung on the wall in front of it. He nodded, then followed Murdoch. By the time he reached the second floor, Murdoch had already kicked two of the doors wide with his foot and was searching roughly inside them. He continued from room to room, rudely knocking open closet doors, looking under beds, and tossing chairs and blankets about.

  “You got a lot of furniture and wardrobes and linens for just one family,” he said.

  “There are several servants who live with us in the house,” replied Richmond. “We have our two sons, and our daughter has not been gone long… and we occasionally have guests.”

  Murdoch continued through every room, did the same on the third floor until he was satisfied, then descended the stairway back to the ground floor.

  “You don’t mind if I have a look around down here, do you, ma’am?” he said to Carolyn where she stood waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

  “No, sir.”

  He paused and eyed her carefully. “Do I know you?” he said.

  “I don’t think so,” replied Carolyn.

  “I could swear I’ve seen you someplace before. Well, no matter—it’ll come to me. That’s why I’m good at what I do, I remember faces. I can even tell one darkie from another, which most white folks can’t.”

  He proceeded to search the ground floor in the same manner as he had those above it. Three or four minutes later he walked toward the door. “Sorry to inconvenience you, ma’am,” he said to Carolyn, “but I’ve got a job to do.”