Currents Page 3

  “I’m speaking to you. Bones?” he said.

  She stepped out and got in line.

  What did he call me? she asked herself.

  Miss Liza slid delicately off the horse and walked straight up to her. “Agnes May. That’s the name you were born with, silly. Bones is your nickname.”

  Just like that. Not a word to each other in weeks, since she’d had the beating of her life, and up Liza comes, as if nothing but time had come between them. And Bones had never before heard this name —Agnes May.

  “You can come up to the house some day after the crops are in, and we’ll play with my dolls,” Miss Liza said. “Mama says we can. You can bring Lovely, too.” She took Bones’s hand and placed two little black buttons in her palm. “These are for Lovely. Now she can have some eyes. Just press them onto her face.”

  Agnes May “Bones” Brewster smiled a little and said, “Thank you, Miss, I’m grateful.” Liza smiled a little, too, spun on her dainty slipper, and hopped back up on her horse.

  That night, Bones sat next to Granny on the cabin door stoop while Granny puffed away on the new corncob pipe she had made to replace the one Ben had stolen. They liked to sit together in the quiet just before bed to relax and watch the stars flitter in the sky.

  Granny had pulled off her shoes and dusted fresh herbs in them. Bones thought she always walked as though she had a stone in her shoe, but Granny said it was rheumatism that made her limp. Every week she placed fresh sprinkles of red pepper in her shoes, and on nights when her rheumatism really bothered her, she would drink a boiled tea made from the same dark flakes. This was just one of Granny’s remedies. She said you could get most everything a body needed from the fields and the woods. But Bones noticed that as she got older, Granny’s limp only got worse, especially when the weather was damp.

  Crouched in front of the cabin next to theirs was a tall, lanky boy a couple of years older than Bones. He was singing and picking softly on a banjo he’d carved from a gourd. “Rabbit in the briar patch, squirrel in the tree, wish I could go huntin’, but I ain’t free.”

  “Franklin, how you learned to play and sing so good?” Bones called over.

  “My pappy teach me before he sold,” he said, smiling sweetly at her.

  “You pappy teach you good, Franklin. I don’t know if my pappy could play music, but he could sure make furniture that was as beautiful as a song. Mama said he carved birds and flowers and fruit into the wood—fit for a queen!”

  “Um-hmm,” Granny agreed. “That man could turn an old pine knot into a rose with just a little old jackknife.”

  Bones opened up her hand and showed Franklin her carved heart.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  “It’s a peach pit! My pappy carved it special for me.” Bones smiled. “And it’s my pappy’s heart that he give to me when I was born.”

  “Well, now,” Franklin said. “You are sure right ’bout that. It is beautiful.”

  Bones loved this time of day, sitting with Granny. Sometimes the old woman would break her silence, telling stories about their ancestors and tales of Africa. She said her grandpappy had been a king in Africa where their people came from. When she got to puffing away on her pipe, she’d get all wound up and spout out wondrous tales of magical lions or tortoises and the awful tricks they would play on people.

  “How old is you, Granny?” Bones sat close to her wiry, little grandmother and picked at some pecans. “You gots a name besides Granny?” She had more important things on her mind tonight than stories of ancestors and talking animals.

  “I don’t know exactly how old I is, but I knows my name,” Granny answered. “It’s Lucy. Yes’sa. My mammy and pappy was borned in Africa, that’s what they told me. I was born on the Carter Plantation up-river, and when they sold me here, Mistress Carter said to be sure to tell ’em you’s borned Lucy Carter. Then they be sure to put you down in their slave book. But when they sell me to the Brewsters, they say they put my name in the book as Lucy Brewster. That because you take the last name of the folks who owns you.

  “Lawd, ole Masta Carter, he own so many Negras he didn’t know his own slaves when he seen them. He stops them on the road and say, ‘Whose Negras are you?’ They’d say, ‘We’s Masta Carter’s Negras.’

  “He’d say, ‘I am Masta Carter.’ And he’d drive on.” She slapped her leg and laughed. “But Missis Carter was good to us Negras. And they didn’t whip us like some owners did. But they done sold us if they don’ need us. Your mama and me, we so happy when you become a house Negra—because house Negras get plenty to eat. Like ham and extra corn bread. That’s why Queenie so fat! Lord. That woman think the sun come up just to hear her crow.”

  Granny’s nose wrinkled up like she smelled something funny, and she spit a long stream of dark tobacco out the corner of her mouth and off to the side of the cabin. Granny didn’t take much liking to Queenie. She said she put on airs because she worked in the big house.

  The old woman kept staring up at the sky. “Look like God just took a fistful a stars and throwed them up into heaven,” she said.

  There was a long pause, and then Bones, her eyes big, whispered, “Did you see it, Granny? Did you see your name in that book?”

  The old woman hooted with laughter. “Lawd no! I can’t read. But they told me so. All plantations got slave books. That’s how they keep track of all the Negras they own and all them that dies.”

  “You scared of dying, Granny?” Bones asked.

  “Oh, no, child. I figured out the secret to bein’ happy here on earth, and I figure the Lawd will show me the way when I go home to him.”

  “What’s the secret?” Bones asked.

  “Well, nothing would beat being free. That’s the first thing. But whether or not you’s free, I figure happiness is three things—someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to.”

  “What you got to look forward to, Granny?”

  “Why heavens, child! Someday I’s going to heaven and there ain’t nothin’ Old Mistress or anyone else can do to keep me from going.”

  Chapter Eight

  That night, Granny, Mama, and Bones lay together tight as a fist against the early autumn’s growing night chill. The field hands would be working seven days a week from now on to bring in the harvest. Bones would be sent to the fields for a while, too. Every man and woman that could be spared was set to splitting and stacking peach-tree wood for the next year. This winter they would use up all the stacks that had been drying since last year. The wood they cut now would dry and be used the following winter. Long, neatly stacked woodpiles were set outside the big house, and a separate one stood behind the slave quarters for their fireplaces. Master Brewster’s father had made sure when each cabin was built it had a chimney made of sticks, mud, and stones. When the winter set in, the slaves could have a few pieces of peach wood every day so that even if their cabins were never quite warm, they weren’t freezing. Bones knew that you had to plan seasons ahead when you lived off the land.

  Wild turkeys had taken to roosting in the trees outside their cabin, and they gobbled themselves to sleep every night. Granny’s chest rose and sank silently, too exhausted from the day’s work to snore.

  “Mama?” Bones whispered. “I named my baby doll Lovely because white folks use that word when they talk about somethin’ beautiful.” She thought the word left a soft tinkling sound in the air after it left people’s lips.

  “Why you call me by a funny name like Bones if that’s not the name I was born with?” she asked into the darkness.

  “Lawd child, why you always set to thinkin’ at night when my head is so tired?”

  “Why, Mama?” she demanded.

  “Old Mistress Polly call you that when she first see you. You was long—skinny legs and arms like a spider. She say you not a nice, fat little baby like her babies. You just all bones. ‘That’s what we’ll call her,’ she say, ‘Bones,’” Mama explained. “She has the say about names. Used to be a s
lave named Melissa here for a time. She had a nice little baby boy, and she named him Henry. Old Mistress Polly come to see him soon after he was born, and she laughed and said, ‘That little colored baby isn’t Henry!’ She say his name is going to be Shoofly. Can you imagine that? Old Mistress heard Melissa call her baby Henry once after that, and she slapped her face. Poor little baby was Shoofly after that. You learn quick not to argue with Old Mistress. They sell Shoofly the year after they sold his mama.

  “That’s why you been Bones ever since. It don’t matter what anyone calls you. They just words that disappear in the air soon as they said. They have nothin’ to do with who you are. Your mama knows just who you are,” she said. A soft smile spread across her face. “Don’t ever go against Old Mistress wishes again, Bones.”

  “I don’t like that Old Mistress Polly,” Bones whispered.

  “I know,” Mama whispered back. “But is a dangerous thing not to like her. So don’t never say that again.”

  They had almost drifted off when there was a shuffling noise outside the cabin.

  “Mama? You hear that?” Bones asked, sitting up.

  “Hush, child. That nothin’,” Mama answered. “Lie back down.”

  But Bones slipped off the bed, sure that she heard Franklin’s cabin door creak open.

  “Maybe they has to go relieve themselves,” Mama whispered.

  “I hear voices, Mama. I hear a man’s voice.” Bones cocked her head and pressed her ear tight to the wall. The only people who lived in that cabin were Franklin, his three little sisters, his mama, Becky, and his granny. No man lived there since they had sold his pappy.

  Clutching Lovely in her hand, Bones opened the door just a crack.

  “Get back here, you hear me?” her mother snapped. “You gonna rile up the dogs.”

  She leaped out of bed and went over to kneel next to Bones in the darkness.

  “It’s Will,” Mama whispered, clearly exasperated. “Franklin’s pappy. Becky’s husband.”

  “What? But he been sold a few years back.” Bones blinked in the darkness.

  “I know. He sold couple miles down the river to Colonel Sam Smith, the same Colonel Smith who used to own Queenie. But he sneaks back about every month on a Sunday. They got that day off, just like us. He sneaks up the river to see Becky and their young ones. He waits in the woods. If he hears Franklin playin’ the banjo, that means it’s safe for him to come that night. If Franklin don’t play the banjo, it means it’s too dangerous, and he don’t come—he go on back to the Smiths’. He be leavin’ early in the mornin’ afore the turkeys and the roosters wake up.”

  “What about the dogs? Why don’t they bark?” Bones asked.

  “He brings two slabs of meat wrapped up in stinkweed that he picks from the riverbank. That way the dogs can’t smell it till he gets close. When he unwraps it, they done rather have that meat than chase after Will. And when he leaves in the morning, he unwraps the second piece and the same thing.” Mama laughed a little. “If them dogs ever run into Will, Masta be wonderin’ why they run up and kiss and love on him like he they long-lost friend. Ha!”

  Bones was too astonished to speak.

  “You must never ever tell nobody, Bones. They kill Will if they find him. You understand?” There was no mistaking the seriousness in Mama’s voice.

  Bones thought of the whip and the salt and vinegar and said, “I understand, Mama.”

  Mama smiled through the darkness. “Can always tell when he come, ’cause he brings her flowers that he picks along the way. Next day, Becky’s got them in her water cup.”

  “Did my pappy ever bring you flowers, Mama?”

  The smile slid off Mama’s face. “Sometimes. Been so long now I can hardly remember. They sold your pappy so far away he can’t bring me nothin’ now. Don’t have any idea where in God’s old world he be. Don’t even know if he’s still alive.”

  “I’m fixin’ to find him for you when I’m a little older, Mama,” Bones confided.

  “Don’t talk so foolish!” her mother scowled. “That kind of talk will get you in a heap of trouble.”

  “Well, then, you hafta wait to see him in heaven, Mama,” Bones said.

  “Maybe so, child, maybe so.” They went back to bed.

  Bones crept out just before dawn to peek at the cabin next door and secretly watch until Will snuck out into the dim light. Hidden against the back of the cabin, Becky wrapped her arms around him and kissed his face and his neck and his chest. Franklin slipped his long, lanky arms around his father’s waist and buried his head in his thick shoulder while his three little sisters clung on Will like newborn puppies. Bones had never witnessed such a complete family wrapped in so much tenderness.

  Finally, Will pulled away, unwrapped the meat, and tossed it at the waiting dogs before disappearing into the still dark woods.

  “My Will says the Northern states gonna fight for sure if the Southern states don’t set us Negras free,” Becky said the next day. Will had become the slaves’ lifeline to the outside world. He was a house slave at the Smiths’ plantation, serving in their dining room, which made him privy to dinner conversations. The Smiths entertained a great deal, and talk of trouble with the North was the topic of every dinner conversation with visitors lately. Bones now knew that Will relayed bits of information to his wife whenever he visited her, and she in turn passed it on to the rest of Master Brewster’s slaves.

  Becky spoke under her breath as she and Mama pulled their hoes up a long garden row. She whispered so Bones, helping in the fields today, wouldn’t hear.

  “It’s all right, Bones saw Will comin’ and goin’ last night,” Mama said.

  Becky stopped short and looked fearfully from Bones to Mama.

  “Don’t worry, Becky,” Mama said. “She knows not to tell. She won’t tell no one at all. Will you, Bones?”

  “I swear.” Bones nodded vigorously. “Don’t want nothin’ to happen to Franklin’s pappy like what happened to mine.”

  But Becky still looked nervous. “You ever say anything, Bones, I swear—”

  “I won’t!” Bones promised. “I promise! I never say nothin’. Ever.”

  Becky nodded, but she still glared at Bones as if she would thrash her if she ever broke her promise.

  She turned back to Mama and finished her story in a low voice. “Will says settin’ slaves free is all folks who come visitin’ from the North talk about.”

  Mama made a face. “No white man I ever know gonna fight for no Negras. Humph.”

  Bones was silent, but she was taking in every word.

  “It’s true, Grace. He says it’s true,” Becky insisted. “They gonna set us free. Only reason we don’t hear talk abouts it around here is cause that old Wolf Woman makes sure none of us around when they talkin’ about anything. When they serve meals here, they have to scamper right out of the dinin’ room. No waitin’ around where we might hear somethin’ said.

  “My Will, he stands around the dinin’ table at the Smiths’. He hears all the white folks’ dinner talkin’. He says that’s all the white folks care about these days. The North stirrin’ up talk of a war if the South don’t set us Negras free.”

  “What does that mean? Free. I ain’t never been free,” Mama hissed. “Don’t know what that look like.”

  “Well, I guess I don’t know either. But we’s learned a lotta hard things in our life, Grace.” She smiled slyly. “So I guess we could learn how to be free.”

  Chapter Nine

  A low rumble of thunder rolled down the river. The air smelled of coming rain.

  “Move along,” Ben shouted as the last of the slaves dragged themselves up the dusty path from the fields to their cabins. Granny and Mama walked side by side, their hoes slung over their shoulders, their faces seamed with dirt from the fields. Bones lagged behind, swinging the wooden water bucket, still half full so they would have water that night.

  House slaves in black jackets were taking in the glass lanterns from the porch tabl
es so they wouldn’t blow over if the wind kicked up. Off to the side of the house, a washerwoman took down the last of the dry sheets from the lines, snapping each one in the air before folding it into her basket.

  Mama spied Old Mistress Polly first, and her eyes narrowed. Old Mistress was hurrying down the tree-lined path toward the big house with Queenie by her side, issuing orders while waving her hands in the air. They were coming from the direction of the smokehouse, where several months’ worth of salted pork, beef cuts, and ham hung from the ceiling beams. Bones figured she must have been giving the cook instructions about the coming week’s meals. It was the first time Mama had seen Old Mistress since she had ordered Ben to beat Bones. The hair stood up on Bones’s neck. Please Mama, she thought. Just keep moving and don’t look at her, or it’ll be nothin’ but trouble.

  All the slaves knew better than to look Old Mistress in the eye. Heads bent, they stared down at the ground and straggled along in silence. Bones peeked at her out of the corner of her eye, but then quickly stared down at the ground in front of her. Just ahead she saw Mama’s head turn toward Old Mistress. Don’t look, Mama. Bones wanted to scream. Don’t look at her!

  “And a nice ham for Sunday dinner. Do you have all that?” Old Mistress asked.

  “Yes’m,” Queenie replied, wagging her head.

  Old Mistress seemed to notice the slow-moving group for the first time. She stopped short when she recognized Mama, and her wolf-gray eyes suddenly focused carefully on the other woman’s face. Mama, expressionless, bent her head back down and stared straight at the ground. Bones could feel her heart beating through her shirt. Wolf Woman was intent on trying to read if there was any sign of danger lurking in Mama’s face, and she leaned forward a bit too carelessly. The toe of her leather-buttoned boot turned under and caught the hoop of her skirt. She did a little hop to try to save herself, to no avail. Her arms swooped about like a bird. She fell forward, caught herself, rocked backward, and spun around once before she finally fell. Her petticoats flew up over her head, and she landed on her elbows.