Currents Page 4

  “Oh missus, oh my Lawd!” Queenie bent down and tried to scoop her up. Ben rushed over and helped. But even before she righted herself, Old Mistress’s head spun around and caught Mama’s eye as the slightest smile quickly vanished—undetected—from the slave’s lips.

  Ben and Queenie made a mighty fuss over their mistress, brushing her off and escorting her back into the house. But Old Mistress didn’t say a word, and never took her eyes off Mama, following her with a squinty gaze until Mama disappeared into the slave quarters.

  Once inside their cabin, Bones, still shaking, threw herself against the cabin door while Granny turned to Mama. She wagged her head and hissed, “Lucky she didn’t sees you grinnin’, or you’d be sleepin’ in the boneyard tonight!”

  Chapter Ten

  “I can’t spare any men to cart off your chairs, Polly,” Master Brewster said as he tossed his breakfast napkin on the table. “You know that we need every hand we have to bring in the crops and chop wood this time of year.”

  Bones rushed to quietly sweep the crumbs that fell from his napkin onto the rug.

  “Jack,” Old Mistress fussed to her husband. “Nellie Hale said if we drop the two chairs off at her house she would have her shop fix them. The rungs are snapped out, and the seats are about to give way. We have Thanksgiving dinner coming up, and I don’t want any of our guests to crash to the dining room floor because we don’t have our chairs in proper condition.”

  Bones kept quiet, but she could see someone was going to have to take the chairs to the Hales’ or there would be no peace at Stillwater.

  “Have Mabel go, then—she knows the way,” Master Brewster said. “I cannot spare one man.”

  “I suppose I could do that. She can wash the windows another day,” Mistress said. She turned suddenly and looked down at Bones before swatting her on the back of the head.

  “Lord, stop that wiggling, child!” Bones wasn’t sure if she should apologize to her mistress or keep still. She decided to keep quiet. The other slaves had taught her that silence was usually best.

  “The girl is driving me out of my mind around the house, always wiggling and twisting her feet and hands,” Old Mistress carried on. “I tied her to a chair a few times, but it didn’t do a lick of good.” Mistress smiled at the thought. “Have Mabel take Bones with her to help, and get the child out of my house for a few hours. And Jack, please make sure you write passes for both Mabel and Bones before you go out in the fields. With all this fuss up North, more and more Negras are being stopped and checked. Just last week, two of the Johnson slaves were in town without passes and were thrown in jail till Frank Johnson went on down and got them out.”

  “I know, I know,” Master Brewster muttered as he disappeared into his study to write the passes.

  An hour later, Mabel sat up tall on the bench seat of the wagon, the two dining room chairs carefully wrapped in old blankets and resting on straw in the back. Her bony fingers, swollen with rheumatism, had a tight grip on the reins.

  “You ever been to the Hale farm?” Mabel asked, trying to make a little conversation with Bones as the wagon bumped along the dirt road.

  Bones laughed. “I never been off Stillwater in all my life.”

  “Most the slaves haven’t. Ha.” Bones knew Mabel was proud that she had often been sent on errands off the plantation. “It’s not a long way,” she said. “We’ll be there and back again before lunch.”

  “Is we headed north?” Bones asked.

  Mabel glanced at her from the corner of her eye. “Why you want to know such a thing, gal?” Bones just shrugged her shoulders, and they drove the rest of the way without talking. Old Mabel filled the time singing some of her favorite hymns, and Bones chimed in whenever she knew the words.

  The Hales’ home wasn’t nearly as grand as Stillwater, but it sat up high on a hill above the river, with long fields rolling down to the water’s edge. Bones counted about half a dozen slaves with their backs bent, working in the fields.

  Hound dogs ran out from behind the barn and jumped up and down around the wagon, howling and barking at the intruders.

  “Shoo! Get away from here,” Mabel hissed. “Where’s Mrs. Hale? Old Mistress Polly told her we’s comin’ sometime soon. I don’t like dogs ever since I was bit as a child.”

  The door swung open and a tall, lean woman with blonde hair tied up in a bun stepped out on the porch. “Well, Mabel. I do declare you have brought the chairs and a little helper,” Mrs. Hale said.

  “Yes, ma’am. I has the chairs wrapped up safe in the back, and this here is Bones,” Mabel said. “And my mistress sent over five jars of peach preserves for you all.”

  “Well, well, then. Queenie’s peach preserves! Doesn’t get any finer than that!” Mrs. Hale stepped down from the front stairs and sent the dogs scurrying around to the back side of the house with a sharp command. “Why don’t you bring the jars of Queenie’s preserves inside, and I’ll have my girl Cleo fix you and your girl a glass of lemonade. Then you can be back on your way.”

  She stopped a moment. “You got your passes?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mabel answered.

  “Good, good. Did anyone stop you on the way over?” Mrs. Hale looked directly at Mabel.

  “No. No, I think they used to seeing old Mabel out in the cart,” she explained. “And they know I’m doing errands for my mistress.”

  “I do believe you are right, Mabel. Well, go around the back way to the kitchen and have my girl give you a glass of lemonade to share with this one,” she motioned to Bones.

  “Noah.” She waved at a thin, bent slave standing behind her. “Carry the two chairs down to the shop to be repaired. This little Bones child can help you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Bones jumped off the wagon and swung the back open to help with the chairs. If she did just as she was told, she might be able to accompany Mabel on other errands. She had been careful on the way over to commit the route to memory.

  Noah picked up one chair, and Bones carefully carried the other as she followed him down the hill to the big barn.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Why they call you Bones?” Noah asked.

  “Well, my name is really Agnes. You may call me that, please. Bones is just my nickel name.”

  “Ah.” He laughed. “Nickname, I think you mean.”

  The barn was two stories high, with six stalls for the horses along one side. On the opposite wall were laths and sawhorses and neat piles of different-sized wood planks.

  “Gots some chairs that need fixin’,” Noah said to a tall black man bent over a table with his hammer. Two little boys fussed at his feet, playing with scraps of discarded wood.

  “Pappy, can we help with the fixin’?” the younger of the two asked.

  The man laughed and shook his head. “Not this year. Some year when you’s older, son.”

  He took the first chair from Bones and the second from Noah, who wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Much obliged, Fortune. I don’t have the wind that I used to have,” Noah said.

  Bones’s feet suddenly felt stuck to the barn floor as if they were nailed there.

  She stared—thunderstruck—until the tall man who Noah had just called Fortune turned his head to look at her, and she saw the long, lumpy scar where his left ear had once been.

  “What you lookin’ at, girl?” he said, smiling. But Bones couldn’t speak.

  “Pappy. Pappy, why can’t we help?” the youngest boy asked Fortune.

  “No. Go out in the fields and take some water to your mama. She be lookin’ for you about now,” he said. “Shoo. Go on now.”

  “I’ll take them out, Fortune.” Noah sighed as he led the two little boys out of the barn.

  “Can I do somethin’ else for you?” he asked Bones. She still stood there, her mouth open and hands trembling by her sides.

  “You are Fortune?” she whispered. She didn’t recognize the voice that came out of her mouth, it was so strained and shaky. />
  “That’s what they call me. Why? Who are you?”

  She forgot her own name for a moment. Finally she whispered again. “Bones. Agnes May. I am Agnes May Brewster, and I have been lookin’ for you.”

  He fell backwards against the sawhorse and stared back at her.

  “Oh, my Lord,” he said. She noticed that his one remaining ear stuck off the side of his head, same way hers did.

  Feeling a little stronger, she shook her head from side to side and said softly, “That all you got to say, Pappy? I been plannin’ and schemin’ to find you almost my whole life. Mama and Granny has missed you somethin’ awful. And all this time. All this time you was right down the road.”

  “Bones,” he uttered, looking down at his big hands.

  “Agnes. Call me Agnes. Why you never come to see us?” she asked.

  “I got caught running so many times. I run again, Bones, and—”

  “Agnes!” she exclaimed, feeling stronger still.

  “Agnes. I run again, and they kill me the next time.” He turned his head so she could see more clearly where they had taken an ax to his left ear.

  “What about my mama?” Bones asked.

  He looked up. “How is she? She have another man?”

  “No. Still waiting for you, which is more than I can say for you. You got another woman, I see. You got two children?”

  “I gots three children now. Just had another baby last month.” He spoke the words so low she wasn’t sure she heard them right.

  Tears welled up in Bones’s eyes and ran down her face. But she didn’t make a whimper.

  “Don’t tell your mama,” he said, after a long pause. “Let her think I’m in Alabami or someplace far away.”

  Bones looked around at the half-finished pieces of furniture. A dresser with intricate carvings of flying birds on the drawers. A mirror at least six feet tall carved with looping ribbons and roses waiting for a second coat of gold leaf. Sure never seen anything more beautiful, she thought.

  She reached in her pocket and pulled out her carved peach-pit heart and held it out for him to see, staring hopefully up into his face.

  “What’s that?” he asked. “Whatcha got there?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Is that a peach pit? Huh. That one looks real fine. Whoever did that is good with a carvin’ knife. It’s kind of shaped like an apple. Is it supposed to be an apple?”

  “It’s a heart,” she said softly, her bottom lip trembling. “Mama said you made it for me the day I was born.”

  “I did?” He looked at the carving like he’d never seen it before. “Well, if I did that, I sure did a fine job.”

  It took everything she had not to throw herself into his arms. But she had already lost so much today. She was afraid that if she let go, she wouldn’t be able to stop everything inside of her from just spilling out and even after it was all gone—it wouldn’t change a darn thing.

  Mabel’s voice soared through the silence, calling her name. “Bones! It’s time to go. Get on up here now.”

  Bones’s mouth was as dry as a cracker, but she managed to say, “Alls the places in the world I dreamed you’d be, alls the places—but I never dreamed you be right down the road.”

  “I’m sorry, Agnes,” he said. “You a beautiful little girl—look just like your mama. I’m just so sorry how it all come about.”

  She couldn’t answer him. After all this time, there was just nothing else she could think to say. So she turned around, left the barn, and crawled into the back of the wagon.

  “Sit up here and keeps me company, Bones, if you want.” Mabel offered, slurping down the last sip of lemonade.

  When Bones didn’t respond, she muttered, “Suit yourself.”

  Bones lay in the back of the wagon, her head propped up on a small bale facing the Hale farm. She stared as it grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared within the horizon. Usually, her hands or feet twitched or fidgeted, but every bit of her energy was focused on thinking about what she would do now. She was as still as the pieces of straw that she lay on. Did he know that he was only a few miles from Stillwater? Had he known that? If he did, would he have come to them like Franklin’s pappy? Did he still love her mother? Had he jumped the broom with this new woman? Had he ever loved Bones—longed for her the way she longed for him?

  This was the end of something, she knew, and it made her heart ache. Granny told her that happiness depended on three things: someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to. Bones had Granny and Mama to love. Every slave had more than enough to do. I’ll have to find something else to look forward to now, she thought.

  The wagon rattled up Stillwater’s drive just about noontime, and Mabel dropped Bones off by the backfields.

  “Old Mistress say to drop you off when we get back so you can carry water to the field hands.” She shook her head. “Can’t says you been much company, girl.”

  “You enjoy your ridin’ this morning?” Mama came up beside Bones, her face creased with dirt and sweat and a broad grin spread across her face. “You all right? Look like you saw a ghost instead of enjoying a morning off work.”

  “I’m fine Mama, just old Mabel’s driving was so jerky it make my stomach sick. I’m fine now. I’ll get some water when I go to the river and be just fine,” Bones said, slinging the empty water jugs over her shoulders and running down to the riverbank.

  The cool water filled up the clay vessels that hung at each end of the rawhide string around her neck. She thought about what would happen to her if she fell into the river and let it carry her on downstream. Baltimore, she remembered from the maps she’d studied in Liza’s room. She would float right on down the James River to Baltimore and then on out to sea. Nothing holding me here now, she thought, except Mama and Granny.

  That night she dropped her carved heart in its bottle under the bed pallet and crawled on top to think things through. She’d just have to adjust her plans. No need to be figuring out the southern states anymore. But all her learning wouldn’t be for nothing. She had a new destination in mind now. Someday. Maybe she’d go when she was a few years older. She’d start readjusting her plans now.

  North.

  Someday that’s where she’d head. North.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Finish dustin’ everything in the dinin’ room and then do the same in Masta’s study,” Queenie ordered. “But don’ go movin’ anything from its place, you hear?” She tucked a stray hair under her freshly ironed bandana turban. Bones noticed that while Queenie was always trying to tame her unruly hair, it had a mind of its own. Little pieces sprung out the sides or top of her head no matter how tightly she pulled it into a bun or how much she tried to vanquish them beneath her turban. Now that her hair was turning gray, her efforts seemed even more fruitless.

  “I hear,” sighed Bones, tucking a few rags, beeswax, and a bottle of linseed oil in the pockets of her apron. “Queenie, how old is you?” she asked suddenly. “And is that the name you borned with?”

  “Why, I don’ know how old I is. But I knows my mammy was Nellie and my pappy was John, and I was born in the summer. They gives me the name Queenie. I got five sisters and five brothers, but I don’t know where any of them is. They got sold off before me. I don’t know I been sold till Masta call me to the big house and tell me. I belong to Masta Brewster from then on.”

  She gave the young girl a gentle push. “Humph. It a funny thing, but the jaws is the only part of the body that likes to work. Better get to you chores or you be sold off ’cause you nothin’ but a lazybones. I got my cookin’ to do here.” Queenie carefully shaved pieces from a block of sugar, placing them into a wooden pestle and grinding the sweet slivers to a fine consistency with her mortar. There would be a tart for dessert tonight—filled with figs glistening under a coating of honey, fresh from the plantation’s hives.

  “Be extra careful around the glass bowls and dishes,” Queenie called out. “You drop and break somethin’
and Old Mistress—she’ll whip you again.” Bones, with Lovely swinging from her neck, let the kitchen-house door flap shut behind her.

  She worked quickly, inhaling the faint honey smell of the beeswax as she swirled it in round, shiny circles on the dark wood furniture. She moved each of the tall glass hurricane lamps, dusting and polishing under each as she went along.

  After finishing the dining room, she carefully moved books in the study, dusting each one before putting them back exactly where they came from. She couldn’t help it—her eyes read the words on the front of each book. But she was careful not to look as if she was reading them, in case old Wolf Woman was lurking around the corner. She was almost finished when she picked up a small red leather volume to dust it. The title written across the front of the book in large black letters caught her eye.

  Slave Birth Records, Brewster Plantation

  Bones wasn’t sure what the word records meant, but her fingers froze around the book. Slave birth. She stood motionless, listening for any sound of the Wolf Woman before slowly turning around. She was alone. She placed the book on the table so if she was caught she could quickly close the cover and act as though she were simply dusting. She couldn’t read the first page when she opened the worn leather cover. It was written in the curly letters that Miss Liza had told her were called cursive. Turning the pages, she discovered neatly printed entries for every slave that had been bought or born or died at Stillwater Plantation. A page was allotted to each slave in order to record their name, birth date, if and when they had been sold, and the date of their death.

  She closed the book and pretended to dust under the table. Had she heard breathing in the hall outside the room? She turned and looked but saw no one and went back to the little book. Flipping the pages as silently as a thief, she came at last to her name. AGNES MAY BREWSTER. She stared gap-mouthed, tracing the letters with her finger, her name fairly blooming off the page.