Come August, Come Freedom Page 5

  “I wrapped my arms around her,” Nanny told him. “I dragged Dolly off, away to my house, so she wouldn’t see. She thrashed all about. I just held on to her, let her dig into me. Look here.” Nanny loosened her blouse and showed Gabriel the scratches and cuts along her neck.

  He ran his fingers across Nanny’s collarbone. Gabriel wondered, if he kissed the marks over and over, might the wounds all disappear? If he held her tight enough, might she forget? “There’ll be a scar here,” he said.

  “I know.” Nanny brought her hand to her throat. “I don’t mind. Dolly could have clawed all the way to my heart, and I would not have let go of her.” Her gaze settled far away, across the meadow to someplace Gabriel could not see.

  “The missus stood over us, tellin’ Dolly, ‘Calm down. Joseph’s going to a fine home in South Carolina.’ Even the little master cried out, ‘Where is Joseph going? Why can’t Joseph stay here with me, Mother? Who will play with me now?’”

  Nanny rested the bridge of her nose between the braided muscles of Gabriel’s arms. She sighed, and he wished he could relieve her suffering.

  Sitting there, holding Nanny, Gabriel’s boyhood days washed over him, and he let the truth rise up. I should have seen the lie long before I did, he thought. Before Thomas Henry changed. Before Thomas Henry struck me with the man’s board, I was like Joseph. A plaything, but a plaything.

  A memory passed through Gabriel’s mind. In early childhood, he ate breakfast with Thomas Henry in the great house on many a morning. He slept on the floor in Thomas Henry’s bedroom on many a night, too. One morning when Gabriel and Thomas Henry got caught at the kitchen table with a plate full of cake crumbs, yet no cake before them, Kissey tore into the boys. They had eaten Mr. Prosser’s birthday cake — not just one piece between them, not just a piece for each of them, but the entire pound cake.

  “What in tarnation happened here?” Kissey had asked. “And before you go tellin’ me a lie, Thomas Henry, wipe that sugar from off your chin!” Then Kissey wagged her finger at Gabriel and clucked her tongue. “You ought know better. That’s all I have to say to you.” She yanked both children by a hand and dragged them before Mrs. Prosser.

  When Kissey told the missus, Ann Prosser licked her thumb and cleaned all evidence from Gabriel’s face. First, she addressed Kissey: “Are you not feeding him quite enough?” Then she spoke to Gabriel. “Child, were you very hungry? Is that why you ate the pound cake?”

  Gabriel had only followed Thomas Henry, but to Mrs. Prosser he just shrugged. He felt Thomas Henry staring at his back.

  Mrs. Prosser squeezed Gabriel’s hands. “Today is Mr. Prosser’s birthday. Did you know that Kissey fixed that cake up special for your master? I asked her especially to make Mary Randolph’s pound cake, and she worked very hard to do so. What do you say for yourself, Gabriel?”

  He looked over at the cook. “I liked your cake, Miss Kissey. Would you please make me one for my birthday?”

  Mrs. Prosser pretended to scold him. “Now, listen to me, Mister Gabriel: if Kissey baked for everyone at Brookfield, she would hardly have time for anything else. Besides, not everyone here has a birthday. Mr. Prosser wrote yours down in his book, Gabriel, but I’m afraid none of us knows Kissey’s, because she was born someplace far away from Brookfield.” Mrs. Prosser looked at Kissey. “Do you know your own birthday?” she asked.

  “No, missus,” Kissey answered, and raised her eyebrows at Gabriel, warning him to keep his mouth quiet.

  “See there?” Mrs. Prosser stroked Gabriel’s cheek. “No, love, cakes are just for the family.” She gently pushed Gabriel away and nodded for Kissey to take him. “I think you and Thomas Henry have had enough playtime today. Why don’t you run out to the south field now? They might need you to bring water; it’s unmercifully hot this afternoon.”

  That evening, after Mr. Prosser’s birthday dinner, Kissey fetched Gabriel from the quarter. “Young master askin’ for Gabriel. He’s scared to sleep by hisself, again,” Kissey said.

  Gabriel felt relieved that Thomas Henry still wanted to be with him.

  When Gabriel reached the great house and saw Thomas Henry sitting and waiting on the top porch step, he waved and ran up the stairs, glad in a way that he would sleep in the house, away from the bugs and away from Dog, who would most likely come home to the quarter with muddy legs, stinking of the marsh from her late-night hunt. But, most of all, he was glad things were good again with Thomas Henry. We are like brothers. Everyone says so.

  He had a new song to teach Thomas Henry and decided to teach his friend that night. We’ll sing in the dark, like always, he had thought.

  Yet Thomas Henry had run into the house without a word for Gabriel.

  Inside, Kissey put both boys in crisp linen sleeping shirts. To keep the mosquitoes at bay, she draped Thomas Henry’s bed with netting that hung from the ceiling.

  For Gabriel, she made a pallet on the floor.

  Gabriel loved Kissey’s pallets, and this one felt extra plump. When Kissey bent down to tuck the sheet under Gabriel’s chin, he put his hands on her round moon face and pulled her ear close to his mouth. “You can have my birthday, Miss Kissey,” he whispered. “We can share.”

  Kissey swiped at Gabriel’s nose. She pushed the tip of her thumb out between her fingers. “Thumbkin got your sniffer.” Kissey wagged the tip of her peeking-out thumb, and this made Gabriel giggle.

  “Take your leave now, Kissey,” Thomas Henry said.

  Kissey pecked Gabriel’s forehead, and once she closed the door, he snuggled down deep into the pallet to hide away from the bright-white light from the window, imposing itself on the darkness. The moon pierced through his closed eyes, so he pulled the sheet up over his head. He let the night hold him, and the night returned him to his own natural breath.

  He set his hands on his belly and felt his clasped fingers open wide apart when he inhaled and come back, touching, when he let his breath go. His even and steady breath drew him into the invisible world inside, where he was always just Gabriel.

  When he had about reached the tunnel that would take him through sleep, to the place where he could be his whole and true self, Thomas Henry jolted him back awake and aware of the hard floor.

  “After she sent you off to the field, Mother wore my tail out today, Gabriel, for eating Father’s cake. This is your fault, and you should have spoken up for me.” Thomas Henry rolled back over and leaned down to Gabriel. “You’re Mother’s pet. Haven’t you noticed?”

  Gabriel poked his head out from under the sheet. “I’m no one’s pet. I’m Gabriel.”

  “Mother should have whipped you worse than she whipped me. Of course you’re her pet. Who else would teach you to read?”

  Gabriel burrowed deep in the covers so that he couldn’t see Thomas Henry anymore. He could still smell Kissey’s kitchen scent from where she had tucked the bedclothes under his chin. The lingering of grease and flour and corn, mixed with Kissey’s skin, made Gabriel wish Kissey would come and take him back to Ma in the quarter. Even from the great house, he could hear Dog baying in the forest, and he wondered if Old Major had gotten a squirrel or a rabbit or a nasty opossum.

  Thomas Henry turned his back to Gabriel. He said over his shoulder, “You just remember this: Mother likes you so well because I like you, and if I didn’t, I might tell her all sorts of stories about the trouble you cause; then do you know what she’d do?”

  “No.” Gabriel’s stomach turned queasy.

  “She would tell Father to sell you, and you’d be sent away from Brookfield, just on her word. You’d never again see your mother or your brothers or Kissey or me. One day, Gabriel, I will be the master of Brookfield. I do whatever I want; just remember that.”

  This is my home, too, Gabriel thought at the time, and he rose up from his place on the floor. He went to find Kissey so she could console him.

  Now, all these years later, it was Gabriel doing the consoling. He put his arms around Nanny, who wept over Joseph and Dolly.
He recalled how Thomas Henry had tossed around in his downy bed after the threat. Then he understood; Thomas Henry had only ever loved him in the way that privileged people love their possessions.

  The conviction that had been growing in his heart for some years, which burned only stronger since he’d come back from Jacob’s forge, formed clearly in him now: I am my own master. Gabriel belongs only to Gabriel.

  A MONTH, a year, then two years, passed. People came and went, were bought and sold, from Young’s, from Wilkinson’s, and from Brookfield. In every season, Gabriel let Nanny cry for a child, for a mother, for herself. One Sunday, Nanny’s tears stopped.

  “What happens if I’ve used up all the sorrow God gave me?” Nanny asked Gabriel. She lamented the wall enclosing her heart. “I’d hardly remember the looks of my own sisters if I didn’t see my own face in the creek.” She leaned against Gabriel’s strong arms.

  He held her close enough to him so that her heart could keep its mournful beat with his. “It’s all right to look at your own hurting, Nan. You’re safe with me,” he said. His face burned. Makin’ a fool of myself.

  Nanny took in a deep breath, then blurted out to him, “Even knowin’ what happens to a family . . . if I could choose any man in the world to make my child, I would choose you, Gabriel.” She confessed and then sucked in her breath, trying to recapture those words.

  She broke from Gabriel’s hold and ran from the green-apple tree, down through the greener hillside, toward the spring. In but a few strides, Gabriel caught up and took her hand.

  “Is that an invitation, Nan?” Gabriel finally asked. “Or just a thought?”

  Nanny answered him by kissing the scar on the inside of his forearm, a mark shaped like the scythe the people used every day in Colonel Wilkinson’s field.

  He rubbed his thumb across the raised bean of skin and explained. “My first good burn. From forging my own hammer. I needed a longer handle and a heavier head than what my teacher gave me, so he told me to make my own, and I did.” He opened his hand to show her more. “My second good burn — forging a rosette for a gate. I thought I had doused the thing in water, but I hadn’t.”

  She bent her face over the delicate brown flower singed into the pale pink well of Gabriel’s palm. Nanny kissed that scar, too, until Gabriel let go a deep, contented sigh.

  She touched the old gash on his forehead, the one made by Thomas Henry. “Not a burn,” Nanny said.

  “No, it happened when I was a boy.”

  They walked beside each other in silence along the hillside. He couldn’t help but let himself daydream a future day, one when Nanny and he might go down to the brook, a free man and his free wife. By then, he would have told her all the stories of all his scars and marks — his missing front teeth, the long gash down his brow, and the deep marks across his back. He imagined a night when he would have Nan all to himself. On that first night, he would let her explore all of these places with her eyes and her hands and her kisses. Whether scars of his trade or marks of the lie, he would give Nanny the whole of what he carried in his heart and on his person.

  Gabriel smelled the promise of plum and apple and pear come wafting up from Young’s orchard. He linked his arm with hers. Neither of them heard the final notes of the last hymn rise up from the preachment at the spring. Gabriel stopped walking and pulled Nanny close to him.

  She pressed the bridge of her nose into the contour of his shoulder. “I see the life I want,” she said, “but how can it come to be?”

  Gabriel had no answer for her. In just a few minutes, she would be gone from him for another week. He pulled her tighter into his arms and rested his chin on her head. “I been knowing you a long time, Nan,” he said.

  All of the forest seemed to recognize what passed from his heart to hers. The canopy let enter a golden glow, shining out from the clouds and directly down onto them. The smallest of yellow warblers and its fellow songbirds darted out of the creek’s soft edges; their voices filled Gabriel with hope.

  He shook his head and smiled.

  Nanny pushed on his arm. “What?”

  He twirled her the way he did when they danced in the forest. “Just thinking. Wondering ’bout how our child might turn out to be.”

  “Be like half you and half me.” Nanny let herself go free of Gabriel’s hold and ran to catch up with Colonel Wilkinson’s other women. The sunset’s fading and their friends’ leaving reminded them that there was always work left undone.

  “Nan!” His words and his thoughts parted ways, both chasing after her. Will you marry me? he had meant to say, but Nanny was too far — gone away back up the hill. Now Gabriel knew something else about himself. I belong to Gabriel, yes. And I belong, also, to Nanny.

  HE RAN back to Brookfield. Nanny loves me, and I am different, Gabriel thought.

  What did she say, exactly? He tried to recall.

  Dog greeted him at the apple tree. She jumped and bounced, begging Gabriel to turn back and take her night-hunting in the forest. He patted the hound on her flat head and caught Nanny’s words by the tail before they slipped away down the creek.

  “If I could choose any man . . . I would choose you.”

  He stopped beneath his tree to imagine his Nanny, again and again. Dog curled up at Gabriel’s feet, content to groan herself to sleep.

  Was Nanny smiling when she told me? No, she looked sad. But then she reached for my hand. Did she say my name? Did I squeeze her hand back, or did she pull us along the hillside? Why didn’t I kiss her on the lips?

  He recounted every step of their walk until he could recall only how the creek and Nanny’s face were alight with the gold of the sky, the flowers, and the spring birds.

  The whole world is different, he thought. I need a plan.

  He roused Dog. “Come on, girl. We got work to do.”

  He knew then that he would marry Nanny, and that he would love her forever. Now he needed only to figure out how they could have the free life they imagined. Even though it was Sunday night, Gabriel itched to get to the forge. He always had plenty of smithing to do, but now he had a new problem to solve.

  In the back corner of the forge, away from the hearth and out of reach of the anvil, repair work for Kissey and Ma and Mrs. Prosser waited on Gabriel, waited on a day like this one, when there were no horses to shoe, no broken-down buggies or carriages to interrupt him.

  Broken pots and pot handles, trivets and andirons, gave Gabriel seamless hours of Sunday-night work to think and plan. In his smithy in the woods, there was no master smith to wake, no setting up but for himself. Even so, Gabriel started his work with the anvil beat.

  Ping, ping, ping. Ping, ping, ping.

  Gabriel pinched off the broken handle from Kissey’s teakettle. He pulled on the bellows to make fire, calling forth a great sigh from the great leather lung. He thought of his own torn-apart family.

  Maybe Pa messed up, talking about everybody being free. What if Pa had hired out and worked to free Ma and me and my brothers? Would Pa still be with us? Would he and Ma be free? Would all of us?

  Clang, clang, clang. Ping. Clang, clang, clang. Ping. By now, Gabriel knew other men — blacksmiths, coopers, and carpenters — who had made their own money doing extra work, hiring out in the city or around the countryside. Some even saved up to buy freedom for their wives.

  I can read and write; I can count and hammer. Just like the washerwomen told me that day by the creek: Hire myself out and make my own money. Work much as I want and buy what I want. All I want is Nanny. Make enough money to free Nanny. Simple. I will deliver Nanny and, maybe, myself.

  Clang, clang, clang. Ping.

  Now Gabriel realized that to be truly with Nanny, the way a man wants to be with his woman, first he must leave her. He must go and make enough money to buy her freedom. Later, he would worry about buying his own.

  Clang, clang, clang. Ping.

  If the old colonel owns Nanny, our children will belong to the old colonel. So says the law. If Nanny owns Na
nny, our children will belong only to themselves. So says the law.

  Gabriel knew that his value in the marketplace would bring top pay, and he knew that his master, Mr. Prosser, was even thirstier for cash than land. While Virginia law allowed Mr. Prosser to rent Gabriel to another man, the Commonwealth forbade Gabriel from moving about, hiring out on his own. Even so, such practice was common among skilled slaves like Gabriel and greedy men like Mr. Prosser.

  Gabriel knew of no other man who could match his own talent or his own strength. How he wished he had listened to the laundresses from the beginning.

  Clang, clang, clang. Ping.

  No more time to waste. I’ll hire out here in Henrico. I’ll work in the city and all over the countryside for smiths or planters or even carpenters. Wherever a job can be found, I’ll work seven days a week — all day, all night — to save for Nanny. Shoeing horses, mending fences, digging on the canal or forging bullets — I’ll work for Nan. When I have saved up, I’ll make Nanny my wife, then set her free.

  He dunked the repaired handle in the water barrel to set its shape. The next morning, with his plan well established in his own mind, Gabriel took the mended teakettle to Kissey. In turn, the grateful cook arranged a private visit for Gabriel with Mr. Prosser.

  Kissey, showing gray at her temples but still well in control of the household, showed Gabriel to Mr. Prosser’s counting room. Even after she closed the door to give them privacy, Gabriel could see Kissey’s starched black dress hem pressed against the gap at the bottom rail of the door.

  Kissey’s looking after me, he thought. If my talk with Mr. Prosser turns bad, Kissey will interrupt with urgent business.

  Neither Gabriel nor the cook need to have worried. Mr. Prosser hungrily agreed that Gabriel could hire himself out as he pleased. The two settled on a monthly allotment for Gabriel to turn over to Brookfield — anything above that, Gabriel could keep. They both understood that their agreement was neither binding nor legal.