by T. R. Simon
Mr. Clarke nodded and said, “I know you think so, Mr. Peterson, but the law says differently.” He held up his left hand in a gesture of surrender while reaching into a pocket with his right. He carefully pulled out a piece of paper, unfolded it, and held it out. “This here is the deed to this land, and it belongs to Horatio Polk, who bought it from me outright for cash. The law says this land was mine to sell to him when the town of Eatonville was founded in 1887.”
“Your deed means nothing against a white man’s rights!” Mr. Peterson was shouting now.
“Is that so, Timothy?” It was the voice of Old Lady Bronson. She stepped out onto the porch from inside Mr. Polk’s cabin. Her silver hair, loose for only the second time I’d seen it in all the years I had known her, was a glowing halo against the night sky. Tiny as she was, I could feel the air electrify with her presence.
She stepped off the porch and walked over to Mr. Peterson until she stood a nose away from him. “Timothy,” she said, “it took you decades to come back. Did you think I must be gone, or did you forget about me altogether? Or maybe you thought I would have forgotten?”
Mr. Peterson was blinking hard, like he was trying to clear his vision, and his mouth was open but no sound was coming out.
Mr. Ambrose, who had been standing in shadow at the back of the group, came forward and stood next to Old Lady Bronson. Seeing him, the other white men exchanged wary glances. “I’m surprised, too, Timothy,” said Mr. Ambrose. “I would have thought this would be the last place you’d ever dare to come back to.”
“Lucia,” Mr. Peterson croaked. “Jude.” The fire fueling his rage seemed to be extinguished all at once.
One of Peterson’s posse frowned and, gesturing toward Mr. Ambrose, asked, “Mr. Peterson, do you know this man?”
Not waiting for Mr. Peterson himself to answer, Mr. Ambrose scoffed. “Know us? He’s the architect of our lives.” As he spoke, Mr. Ambrose casually reached behind his back and drew out his rifle, careful to hold it barrel-down. Then he turned to the riders and named them. “Jeffrey, Tulane, Bobby, Matthew, Macon. I suspect you don’t know this man at all. I’m guessing he paid you some money, gave you some whiskey, and promised you a good time stringing up an uppity colored man. But if you’ve come for Horatio, you’re going to have to shoot me, too. Are you sure you want to shoot me along with your colored neighbors? Are you sure you want to do that — for a stranger?”
The white men began shifting in their saddles. The hateful confidence they had come with appeared to be splintering. The one called Tulane spoke like a whiny child. “Jude, we ain’t white men no more if nigras can go ahead and buy and sell the land our fathers died for.”
“Our fathers, our uncles, our brothers, and our friends died for a lot of reasons,” Mr. Ambrose intoned slowly, “but none of them likely died to defend this murderer.” I don’t know whether or not they had been drinking, but the words of Mr. Ambrose certainly seemed to sober them. At the word murderer, all the men, white and colored, looked confused.
The land developer, looking from his client to Mr. Ambrose, seemed uncertain. “What are you talking about? And whether or not these people are familiar with my client doesn’t alter his legitimate claim to this land!”
Mr. Ambrose looked the land developer right in the eye and spoke in a steely voice. “In 1855, Timothy Peterson, the man you represent and whom the rest of you have decided to ride with, killed the woman I was going to marry, the woman who today should be my wife. I know this because Horatio Polk and Lucia Bronson were there. They saw him kill her then, which is why he wants nothing more than for you to kill Horatio now; he wants you to do his dirty work. That’s what kind of a liar and a coward he is.”
The men Mr. Peterson had gathered from Lake Maitland leaned forward in their saddles and whispered to one another. Mr. Peterson looked huffy and irritated. It was clear to us that he couldn’t hear what they were whispering, and that it was no accident.
“Tulane,” called Mr. Ambrose, “let me make this simple for you. If you choose to take the law into your own hands using the noose you’ve got tied to your saddle, I’ll choose to take the law into mine.” He raised the polished barrel of his rifle and pointed it straight at Timothy Peterson’s chest. “And my justice has been waiting a long, long time.”
Mr. Peterson caught his breath but didn’t say a word. Not one of the men who had come with him raised a finger or a voice to defend him.
The one called Tulane shook his head. “I don’t know what-all you done, Peterson, and I don’t much care, but you never said we’d be facing down Jude Ambrose and a couple dozen coloreds with shotguns. And you don’t got to do business with Jude, but I do. We all do.” He looked at the other men on horseback, and they all nodded in agreement.
Old Lady Bronson nudged the muzzle of Mr. Ambrose’s rifle away from Peterson and toward the ground. “Timothy,” she proclaimed, “I don’t need a gun to face you down.”
Peterson reached up as if to push her away from him, but she, the quicker one, slapped his hand down. The land developer let out a startled cry.
Old Lady Bronson’s laughter carried like the sound of a fast train. “You can’t escape your ghosts, Timothy.” Even from where we were hiding, I could see he was trembling. “Sooner or later they find you. It took almost half a century, but here you are. And you probably thought the choice to return was yours, didn’t you?” She shook her head, as if amazed by his stupidity. “I cursed you all those years ago. I cursed you and this land. Look around!” She gestured toward the fallow expanse of Mr. Polk’s property. “My curse isn’t even close to being finished. You’ve come back for nothing and you will leave with nothing. You’ll leave with less than you came with. I don’t care how far you run, Timothy. The justice behind my words will always find you.” And with that she spat at his feet. Every man there recoiled with fear; even white folks gave wide berth to the mysterious reach of hoodoo.
Peterson turned away from her fierce stare, turned to the men he came with, and for a minute struggled to speak. “Don’t you see?” he finally sputtered. “She knows the land is mine. Her and Horatio, they want to cheat me. She’ll do anything to cheat me. She hates me. She wants you to hate me.” He backed away from Old Lady Bronson, almost stumbling before grabbing the reins of his horse.
Old Lady Bronson stepped toward him again.
“You think hate will rule this day the way it ruled that night forty-eight years ago. You think hate is why I cursed you. You think hate is what I’ve been nursing in my bosom all these years, like the venom you’ve been nursing in yours. I did hate you, Timothy, but those were the feelings of a grieving girl. Since then I’ve traveled beyond hate, far beyond it, all the way to justice. Justice and hate can’t sit at the same table, so do not leave here in the smug certainty that I hate you. Hating you would make a mockery of my love — for my sister, for my people, for myself. No, Timothy. Leave here knowing that justice found you. That your crimes have been witnessed.”
Mr. Peterson seemed to crumple in on himself. He gathered the reins of his horse and retreated up into his saddle. From there he should have towered over Old Lady Bronson, but he only looked shrunken and small. “Shoot her!” he commanded to the men he’d duped into following him, but not a one moved. Any power he might have had turned counterfeit. Faced with mutiny, he kicked his horse in the ribs and fled back down the road toward Lake Maitland.
Old Lady Bronson looked at the land developer, who’d also climbed back into his saddle. “Tell me, boy.” Her voice was loud and clear as a bell. “Do you think this land is worth the price you’d have to pay to get it?” She was not asking a question. Rather, she was making a declaration of war.
The white man, overcome by Old Lady Bronson’s fierceness, offered no response. Avoiding all eyes, he turned his horse away and rode after Mr. Peterson.
Now leaderless, the men remaining murmured among themselves. Zora and I couldn’t make out a word from where we sat. Finally, the one called Tulane addr
essed Mr. Ambrose.
“You’ve known us all our lives, Jude. We was just out for a bit of fun. For sure, no harm was done tonight, so no need to speak on this again.” The others nodded their quick assent. Such was the ease with which they could choose to take life and then choose not to.
Those men rode away at a leisurely pace, as if they were returning home after a picnic. We watched the light of their torches shrink to dots and then disappear.
Every man’s eyes turned now to Old Lady Bronson, but no one seemed to know what to do or say next. It was she who broke the spell by placing her hand gently on Mr. Ambrose’s rifle arm. Before our very eyes, Mr. Ambrose collapsed like a hollowed-out shell. He took her slender hand in his large ones, and said, “Thank you, Lucia.”
She nodded and said, “Good-bye, Jude.”
Mr. Ambrose sheathed his rifle, untied his horse, and rode slowly away, his back a little bowed.
Now that all the white men were gone, the Eatonville men finally put up their guns. A few exchanged hugs, like brothers might. Mr. Clarke shook Old Lady Bronson’s hand like she was a visiting dignitary. Then, one after the other, the rest of the men did the same, right down to Teddy. After all the years I’d spent being scared at the mere mention of her name, I now found myself bursting with pride to know Old Lady Bronson. Zora took my hand and pumped it up and down in exaggerated imitation of the men.
Mr. Baker, Teddy, Micah, and Jake walked off toward their farm. With the threat gone and Teddy safe, the knot in my belly, tight as a fist, began to loosen.
Mr. Hurston, John, Mr. Clarke, and Old Lady Bronson walked Mr. Polk to his door. Once he was safely inside, Mr. Clarke and Mr. Hurston offered to walk Old Lady Bronson home. She thanked them but shook her head. “I’ve got some unfinished business” was all she said. They deferred to her will and then turned westward toward the heart of Eatonville.
Zora and I finally dared to stand and took in a deep breath of the air of the town that still belonged to us.
A soft chuckle spun us around. In the doorway of our stall stood Old Lady Bronson. She cocked her head at us, like a bird of prey. “Well, I reckon you girls can come with me, now.” It seemed her unfinished business was us!
We followed her dutifully but didn’t utter a word. Were we about to get a lecture? A scolding? Was she, personally, returning us to Zora’s parents?
The home she led us to was her own. She opened the door and we followed her in, half expecting to be led to a dungeon. Then she began lighting kerosene lamps. We were stunned. Inside, the cottage looked much larger than it did from the outside. Every wall, from floor to ceiling, was whitewashed and lined with books. Some of the bindings were worn, the leather tattered, and the color long faded like flags left out in the sun. Others were being held together by a thin cord or twine. The furniture was equally surprising: a table was covered in cloth the color of blue sky with jewel-toned flower-shaped patches sewn onto it; the backs of her wooden chairs were carved with the shapes of birds, work I recognized as that of our old neighbor Mr. Pendir. And in one corner of the room stood a wingback chair covered in crimson leather. The seat had worn down to muted brown, but the headrest glistened as if it had been oiled only yesterday. It was a throne, not of some flamboyant queen but of a monarch steeped in the study of life.
Zora walked slowly, reverently, to the nearest shelf of books. “These books aren’t in English,” she breathed, running her hand across their leather bindings.
Old Lady Bronson watched us, a satisfied glint in her eye. “They are in Spanish and French. The languages I grew up with.”
“Which one did you talk to Mr. Polk in?” Zora asked, her hand still caressing the books.
“Spanish,” said Old Lady Bronson with a small smile.
“Spanish.” Zora repeated the word as if it were an enchantment.
In my politest voice, I asked, “Miz Bronson, where are you from?” That evening, my childhood fear of her had been replaced by awe. She might be a witch, but she was also a woman who stood up to a lynch mob. The strongest magic she possessed was courage, and I longed for some of it to rub off on me.
“I was born on the island of Hispaniola. Like America, it was a slave country, but years before I was born, the slaves fought for their freedom and won. Half my island would reject that freedom, but Haiti, the land where my mother was born, has stayed free to this day.” She walked over to a round globe, so old some of the leather across the Atlantic Ocean had worn away. She turned it and pointed to a spot below what we knew to be Florida. “That was my first home. The place where I was born.”
Zora put her finger on the spot tenderly, the way you might caress a sleeping infant’s face. “Hispaniola,” she said quietly, more to herself than to us. “I would like to see Hispaniola.”
Old Lady Bronson leaned in close to Zora and lowered her voice. “If you really do, then keep your shoes pointing south while you sleep. On Sunday, light a candle next to a blue heron feather in the southeast corner of your bedroom. You’ll see Hispaniola, Zora Neale. That I can promise you.”
Zora’s face was aglow. Right here in front of us was the biggest mystery in all of Eatonville: a woman who straddled two countries, three languages, and worlds seen and unseen.
“Miz Bronson —” Zora began.
Old Lady Bronson interrupted. “I think you two have earned the right to call me Miz Lucia.”
“Miz Lucia,” Zora said shyly. Her voice softened as she asked the next question. “Who was the woman Timothy Peterson killed?”
Miz Lucia sank into the red leather armchair, motioning us to sit before her.
“My sister.”
Nothing she said could have shocked me more.
“But Mr. Ambrose said he was going to marry her.”
“He was. That’s true.”
“But, then, your sister would have to be white.”
“She was.”
“Your sister was white?” Zora put words to my disbelief.
“Yes. We had the same father,” she gently explained. “It was a secret we didn’t discover until I was fourteen years old.”
Zora pressed further. “Why would Mr. Peterson shoot her, Miz Lucia?”
“He shot her because she was trying to escape north with me.”
She reached over and took a small, round framed photograph from the table next to her chair. “This was Prisca.”
Zora took it and we stared at it hard. “You have the same eyes,” Zora said.
Miz Lucia nodded.
I took the photograph so I could peer at it more closely. I trembled. “She’s dressed just like the lady in the woods!”
Miz Lucia looked at me sharply. “You’ve seen her?”
Zora looked surprised, too.
Taking turns, Zora and I told Old Lady Bronson everything about our trip to the old plantation and the strange sounds and sights we had seen by the pond.
Miz Lucia sat back, quiet and watchful, for several long moments.
“I still owe you a story, Zora, but today you have earned more than that. You’ve earned the truth that I kept from you two nights ago.” She took a deep breath. “I can remember the sharp taste of salt in the air. We stood in front of the ship at dawn, the day already hot. . . .”
For the next half hour she told us the story of how she was born free and became a slave. What she described was cruel beyond anything I had imagined and soaked me in sorrow. It was clear to me now why the men in the Hurston living room would so willingly risk their lives to protect Eatonville. Freedom was life; slavery was a living death. Miz Lucia had known both in one lifetime. Even as night riders and hatred could still snatch our safety away, Zora and I, by the grace of forty years, had only known lives as free people.
“Why didn’t you move away from here?” I demanded. “Why would you stay in a place with such painful memories?”
“Because everyone I love is of this land. Because of Horatio, because of the community that grew up around me, and because of Prisca’s memory. I g
ave my own daughters wings and watched them perch both near and far. But I stay because no one will ever have the power to make me leave a place ever again.”
“And Mr. Polk?”
“Horatio and I became kin on this land. And when it came up for sale, he bought it. It was the only other time I heard him speak in the past fifty years.” There were tears in her eyes as she said this.
I recalled the way Mr. Polk had looked at Old Lady Bronson the night he was stabbed. He loved her the way I loved Zora. He would do anything for her. The family you’re born to is your lifeblood, but the family you choose is your heart.
By looking only at the outside of the lives of Miz Lucia and Mr. Polk, I had failed to truly see them at all. I had mistaken Mr. Polk’s silence for muteness and Old Lady Bronson’s strength for malevolence.
“Timothy Peterson changed a lot of lives the night he killed my sister,” she continued. “All our lives altered because a boy wanted to prove to his father that he was man enough to own other human beings.” She shook her head. “Slavery is over, but tonight you saw how it still haunts us.”
I spoke up now. “I understand the how, but I still don’t understand the why.” Then I asked the question I had been burning to ask my whole life. “Why do they hate us so much?”
Old Lady Bronson reached down and took my chin in her hand, firmly yet gently. “They have to hate because you can’t take another person’s freedom with love.”
It was a simple answer, yet contained a universe of truth.
Zora still had a million questions, so Miz Lucia brewed a sweet pot of hot lemon with mint and poured us cup after cup through Zora’s many questions. Miz Lucia gave generous helpings of answers, and we listened like devoted students. It was the first time we would sit at her knee like this, but it would not be the last. For Zora it would mark an awakening to learning, a lifelong striving to understand the world beyond our town and our ways.
