A Dream of Daring

by Gen LaGreca

  “You gals, you comes wid me. Mr. Tom, don’t you worry none. Jerome take charge o’ these good-fer-nothin’ servants, so they don’t cause you no mo’ trouble!”

  Jerome’s authoritative words and general swagger seemed to impress the women sufficiently. They followed him without a fuss.

  After being rescued by Jerome, Tom returned to the seed drill. He studied the harrow that covered the seed after it was dropped. He wondered if a wood block to compact the soil would be superior to the harrow in covering the seed, or if using both implements could result in a better-planted seed, which could reduce the quantity of seeds that had to be planted and in turn reduce and ultimately eliminate the arduous thinning-out later. He had been thinking about this before and had already made a wood block to attach to the seed drill. He looked around in the carpenter’s cabin and found it. He crouched down at the drill to install it. He wanted to test his ideas—

  “Mr. Tom?”

  One of his gardeners, Rubin, now appeared.

  “I wants to ask iffen me an’ yer housekeeper Ally kin git married.” Although slave marriages had no legal standing, Tom’s slaves bonded to each other the same as all other people did.

  The inventor looked stunned.

  “Kin we, Mr. Tom? Kin we? Oh, pleez, sir!”

  Rubin stood there timidly, pleading as if his life rested on the answer. He held a trowel, which he gripped fiercely, the whole of his anxiety coursing through his hand.

  “Mr. Tom, sir?”

  Tom was speechless at being asked to decide such a personal matter between two people. He had been home for eighteen months, but matters like this never ceased to unsettle him.

  Rubin’s shoulders slouched; his head jutted forward; sweat formed on his brow.

  Tom realized that his silence was intensifying the gardener’s anxiety, so he stood up, smiled, and patted the man on the shoulder. “If it’s okay with Ally, then it’s okay with me.”

  The man grinned, tremendously relieved. “Oh, she haves me, all right!”

  Tucking the trowel under his arm, he took Tom’s hand in both of his and squeezed it vigorously, just as a subject would grasp the hand of a ruler who had granted a wish.

  Tom turned the gesture into a handshake. “Congratulations.” Grit from the garden transferred from Rubin’s palm to Tom’s.

  “Thank you, sir. Thank you! I tells Ally us got yer say-so!”

  Tom watched his gardener bow to him, then scurry away. Why, he wondered, would he ever want to have this kind of say-so? When he could design a better seed drill to produce a crop cheaper and easier, why would he instead want to manage someone’s carrot patch? When he could design a new motor to transform farming, why would he instead want to manage someone’s footwear? When the mysteries of harnessing science lay waiting for men to discover them, how could anyone instead want to control the gardens, the blankets, the spouses—the lives—of others? He felt as if his slaves were shrinking his world just as surely as he was shrinking theirs.

  He didn’t understand men who wanted to harness other men, but he did understand the seed drill. He attached the wood block to the back of it and gathered the materials he would need to test his modification in the field.

  After changing into work clothes in the big house, Tom stepped out the front door to feel the sun hitting his face, promising a rain-free afternoon for his work. At the entrance, the sunrays hit Jerome too as he lay stretched out, fast asleep, in the horse-drawn wagon that Tom had ordered.

  “Okay, Jerome, nap’s over.”

  Jerome opened his eyes, looking dazed for a moment. Then he jumped out of the wagon, smiling confidently, as if nothing were amiss.

  The inventor checked the objects in the wagon: the seed drill, a bag of cottonseed, and some additional tools. “Looks like everything’s here that I asked for.”

  Jerome looked aghast at Tom’s clothes. He seemed shocked to find his master dressed in the coarse trousers, bulky shirt, and floppy hat that the slaves wore. Tom returned the disapproving look at Jerome’s attire; his ruffled dress shirt and satin vest were hardly suitable for the stable. Or perhaps Jerome planned on skipping his work there that afternoon.

  “Mr. Tom, you ain’t fixin’ to work in the fields?”

  “I am.”

  “Then you be needin’ hands?”

  “No.”

  “You goes youself?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “’Tain’t right, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “You needs to stay here an’ sit in that chair,” he pointed to the colonel’s rocker on the gallery.

  “And do what?”

  “Wait fer visitors.”

  “Why would I waste time waiting for imaginary visitors when I have work to do?”

  “’Tain’t proper, sir. Massas don’t work no fields.” He pointed with urgency to the colonel’s rocker. “Somebody gotta sit there! Entertain folks that come a-callin’, like yer daddy done, and his daddy ’fore that.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Jerome, since you seem to have nothing to do and you’re decked out for it, why don’t you sit there and wait for visitors? You can entertain them when they arrive. I have better things to do.”

  Jerome, in dress clothes, stood speechless as he watched Tom, in work clothes, head to the fields.

  The place Tom chose for his experiments was recently plowed and prepared for planting. It lay next to Greenbriar’s main plantation road, where he could see the progress of his plants when he traveled to and from town. He removed the seed drill from the wagon and surveyed the rich alluvial soil before him. With his field hands sowing corn in another area of the plantation and the main road quiet, he was happily left alone. He recaptured his concentration on the absorbing problem of how to improve cotton planting.

  He filled the hopper with seed, and then, using a harness, he pulled the device on foot across the field, stopping at various times to make adjustments. Soon he had the first few rows planted. He was so intent on his task that he was unaware of the sweat slowly soaking his shirt, the dirt marks smearing his face, and the soil splattering his pants. If anyone had traveled past him on the main road, he was unaware of it—until an open carriage stopped alongside him and a voice called out from a few feet away.

  “Look here! We have a new bondsman.” A white-gloved hand pointed to him as a male voice said mockingly, “Why, it’s Mr. Edmunton!”

  Tom looked up to see Nash Nottingham, his formal suit and frilled shirt fit for a courtier.

  “Is this what you’ve been up to, Tom? Is this why we’ve hardly seen you?” A hint of anger heated the sweet voice that used to sing to him in Philadelphia. Rachel was sitting in the carriage beside Nash, with her servant and his driver on the bench in front.

  Tom stared at the woman whose sparkle had once dazzled him. Three weeks after her father’s death, she still wore a black dress and bonnet in accordance with the rules of Victorian mourning, but with a low neckline reminiscent of the feisty spirit that had set its own rules at a time that seemed long ago.

  “My dear, it seems your good friend here would rather be in the company of little gadgets, nasty flies, and grimy soil than be in your exquisite presence,” said Nash.

  Rachel frowned at the remark. Nash grinned smugly, looking pleased that his words hit a nerve.

  “A cotton planter,” he added gaily, “knows how to live, old boy. He enjoys the company of beautiful women.” He bowed to Rachel, who smiled at the compliment. “And a cotton planter enjoys a life of amusement, indulgence, and finery far removed from grimy fields.”

  “How can you be a cotton planter and be removed from grimy fields?” Tom asked.

  “But really, Tom, you don’t have to labor in the dirt yourself, you know!” said Rachel.

  “I’m trying to figure out how to save labor, lots of it. Doesn’t that seem like a good way to spend an afternoon?”

  “Good heavens!” sai
d Nash. “We don’t need to save labor. We have too much of it already. Whatever would we do with all of it that you saved?”

  “I suppose this is part of that new age you dream about,” Rachel added.

  “It is.”

  “And whenever will you find time to join us in the current age? You remember, don’t you, the world we actually live in?” Her voice was teasing, but her mouth pouted reproachfully. “In case you haven’t noticed, some of our fruit trees are in bloom. Nash was taking me to see his orchard and to taste peach brandy. Why don’t you come along?”

  The crescent curve of Nash’s grin abruptly turned downward into a frown. “Why, Rachel, dear, I don’t believe Tom is interested in such niceties. I mean, look at him in those outrageous clothes with dirt on his face. He seems to revel in being an outcast.”

  “Do you, Tom?” asked Rachel. “Do you revel in being an outcast?”

  Tom stared at the young beauty with the red hair and satin-white skin. As his eyes dropped to the heart-shaped birthmark he knew so well, the memory of their past surfaced on his face.

  “You know,” she added, “outcasts make other people feel . . . uncomfortable.”

  “If people . . . two people . . . are happy being what they are, then why would they care if others felt uncomfortable with them?”

  “We all need people,” she replied. “Even you can’t escape that, Tom Edmunton. We need our family, and friends, and the pleasure of . . .”—she scoured the sky for a word to name her feelings—“. . . belonging.”

  “And our dreams? Where do they belong?”

  The two of them stared at each other as if there were an ocean between them.

  “Where do you belong?” Rachel asked pointedly. “Can we claim you in our world, Tom, at least for the afternoon?”

  “But Rachel, dear,” said Nash, “how could you want this fellow coming along? Why, he must reek of fertilizer!”

  “That doesn’t stop you from banking with me,” said Tom.

  The remark jolted Nash, who suddenly remembered his delinquent loan. “Oh, no offense, old boy. Between us, I think you’re a fine fellow.”

  “Between us, I didn’t know my standing was in question.”

  “Now, Tom, don’t get sore. Of course, you’re welcome to join us . . . if you must,” said Nash. His voice gave the invitation, but his face showed his distaste for it. “We can wait at your house while you . . . er . . . perhaps clean up a bit.”

  “Oh, do come, Tom!” added Rachel. “What could be so important about that field of dirt that you can’t take a few hours off to relax . . . with us?” Her face said: with me.

  “I’ll wait for another time of our choosing—you and me.”

  “You mean, another time when you have a minute to spare from the Holy Grail that’s your work—and you can deign to consider matters of much lesser importance!” Rachel snapped.

  “Look, old boy, you’ve lived too long in a strange place. Allow me to give you some advice.” Nash glanced at Rachel, as if more concerned with conveying his message to her than to Tom. “Down here, we planters know how to live like gentlemen. Labor is for the lower classes.”

  Nash smiled haughtily at Tom, then tapped his cane on the driver’s shoulder, and the carriage drove off.

  Where had he seen anyone as indolent as the man riding away with Rachel? Tom wondered. He instantly thought of his stableman. But Jerome was robbed of his self-direction and forced to labor against his will, so he had an excuse for his indolence. What was Nash’s excuse for a laziness that he practiced as diligently as others honed a profession? Tom wondered about the two men whose lives seemed as cool as ashes from which a fire had never raged. Why did the man at the top of society’s ladder seem as devoid of passion and purpose as the man at the bottom?

  And what happened to the fragrant vision that had stirred his own passion? Where was the exciting woman he knew in Philadelphia, with the bold dreams and joyful laughter, with an inner fire as vibrant as her tumbling red hair? Why was the bright splash of color that was Rachel so muted now that she had returned home?

  When he finished his work, the matter still lingered in his mind. He thought of the words of the factory owner who had been forced to close his business: You can’t change the soul of the South. Does the South stake a claim on its souls and recapture those that stray from its grasp? Does it hunt down not only its slaves but also its wayward sons and daughters . . . like Rachel?

  As Tom drove the wagon back to the big house, he saw another puzzling spirit, one that seemed engaged in its own clash with the soul of the South. He saw Solo riding one of his stallions around a large pasture.

  Her riding had begun shortly after her arrival at Indigo Springs. Despite being assigned to the kitchen, she had ventured into the stable one day in the late afternoon. She had declared that her tasks were finished and now the horses needed exercising. Then she proceeded to mount one and ride it around the pasture. Jerome protested such liberties taken on his turf, but she ignored him. The slave complained bitterly to Tom, but the master posed a question to his indignant stableman that he couldn’t answer: “What harm is she doing, Jerome?”

  After that, whether it was the horses or instead the rider who needed a spirited jaunt through the field, Solo exercised one of them each day as her self-assigned task.

  Tom wondered where she had come from, but she never offered any information. Often slaves of mixed race didn’t know their origins themselves. A planter or overseer would deny committing any indiscretions, so a child born of one could grow up ignorant of who its father was. And pressure to remove such an offspring from the reach of a suspecting wife could be so great that a mulatto child might be sold from its original plantation and separated from its slave mother as well. If Solo had been as unruly in childhood as she was now, she could have been sold repeatedly, shuffled from plantation to plantation.

  Approaching the big house, Tom watched the young woman ride. She was absorbed in her task and unaware of his wagon on the road. He thought he detected a quiet exhilaration coloring her otherwise mysterious face. The fear and contempt that hardened her features when she was among humans seemed to soften in the company of horses, a species she obviously preferred. It seemed as if she could drop her guard with the large, benign creatures that sought nothing from her except a little kindness.

  Despite repeated scolding from Aunt Bess and the other elder servants, along with shocked stares from the younger ones, Solo liked to wear men’s clothing, which allowed her the comfort to move around and ride in the manner she preferred. As she jaunted along bareback, straddling the horse like a man, she looked strangely alluring in her oversized shirt and baggy trousers, with her white sleeves rolled to reveal the metallic sheen of her arms and the sash holding up her pants tightened around her waist, stressing its trimness. Tom saw lustrous rosewood hair tumbling down the coarse shirt and slender legs outlined under the pants. He sensed the whole of this beguiling image in an instant emotional reaction, which he hastily suppressed before it could lodge inside him.

  But he couldn’t stop himself from contrasting the sight of Solo in trousers to Rachel in crinolines. Solo was tied by slavery and had nothing, yet her spirit somehow seemed free. Rachel was free and had everything, but her spirit somehow seemed . . . constrained.

  He wondered what to do with the odd new addition to his plantation. In the four weeks since her arrival, he had tried giving her different tasks, but she failed at all of them. In the kitchen, she displayed an uncanny bent for overcooking and underseasoning the food. This enraged Tom’s declining octogenarian cook, who still had sufficient faculties to demand the girl’s removal. Solo did a stint at housekeeping, which came to an end when she broke a prized vase passed down from Tom’s grandmother. She was assigned to ironing but burned an heirloom tablecloth. She proved equally inept at weaving and sewing.

  Unable—or unwilling—to find a place in the household, she was returned to the kitchen, where she remained recalcitrant. To Jerome’s
vexation, she liked being near the horses and gravitated to the stable. No doubt feeling protected—and emboldened—by Tom’s edict against any physical attack on her, Solo found fault with Jerome’s care of the animals and argued with him constantly.

  “What Jerome gonna do wid that she-beast hangin’ ’round the stable, sir?” Jerome had complained repeatedly. “Her don’t like this nor that, tellin’ Jerome how t’do his job. ’Tain’t right, Mr. Tom. She needin’ to git to the fields!”

  The problem weighed on Tom as he reached the big house and brought the seed drill back to the carpenter’s cabin. He set it on the worktable to make another adjustment. As he worked, his thoughts wandered to the problem with the girl. It would be unfair to the others if he allowed Solo to continue shirking work. With cotton planting about to begin in earnest in a few weeks, now was the time to send her to the fields. But he couldn’t do it. He had discovered something about the girl that prevented him from sentencing her to a life of field labor. To his astonishment he had learned that unlike any other slave at Indigo Springs, this odd misfit of a girl was literate. Although he operated a major agricultural business engaged in international trade, in the whole of his labor force he had no job for the literate.

  It was by accident that he had discovered she could read. After her arrival, he noticed late at night from his second-floor bedroom that a light was burning in the kitchen cabin behind the big house. That light burned long after the slaves had finished their tasks and gone to sleep. Then late one night, he went downstairs to use the library, the great study on the main level that held his parents’ sizeable collection of books. To his surprise he saw a light filtering out of the room. From the hallway, he saw the slim figure of Solo at the bookshelves. A lamp flickered near her on a table. It highlighted her face as she gazed with the wonderment of a child at the musty volumes.

  He thought of classical paintings of woodland scenes with a huntress whose physical appearance matched the setting. In the same way, Solo seemed to match the setting of his library. Her bronze skin blended with the earth tones of the room’s drapery, and her red-brown hair matched the massive rosewood bookcases in color and luster. The huntress who forayed into his library seemed to belong there.