Part 30 (1/2)
”I can do that for you, Ma.s.sa Fletcher,” Gilbert said as he returned with the second box.
”Very good. But open the box you're carrying first.” Daddy dusted off his hands and returned to his chair, watching as Gilbert pried open the second box. A dozen bottles, filled with ambercolored liquid, nestled beneath layers of wood shavings. ”Ah . . . I see they all made it safely,” Daddy said. ”Uncork one of them, Gilbert, and pour me a gla.s.s.”
As I watched Gilbert scurry around the room waiting on Daddy, I realized that my father would never change. He couldn't change. His att.i.tudes toward Negroes had been born and bred into him, hardening and solidifying year after year until they had turned to stone. He would carry them to his grave. So many of the people he lived with and worked with carried the same att.i.tudes that no one even questioned them anymore. If the South won the war, nothing would change for the Negroes. Slavery would continue the way it had for centuries. And if Tessie and Josiah gave birth to another child, Daddy wouldn't even think twice about selling him, just as he'd sold Grady.
Many people would say I was wrong to think about deceiving my father, taking advantage of his friends.h.i.+p with Confederate leaders in order to help his enemies. They would say I was wrong to mislead Charles and his father about what I did at Libby Prison. But those who've been through a war will understand how right and wrong, truth and lies, can sometimes get confused in the smoke and mayhem of conflict. They certainly were no longer clear to me. What was clear, though, was that in G.o.d's eyes, my father was wrong to own people as his slaves.
”Are you home to stay this time?” I asked him.
”For a few months, anyway.”
”I think we should throw a welcome-home party for you. We can invite all your friends, share some of these treats you've brought.”
”That's a good idea, Sugar. I'm glad you thought of it. Thank you, Gilbert,” he said as the servant finally handed him his drink. Then Daddy happened to glance down and notice Robert's old shoes on Gilbert's feet. ”Good heavens! Why are you wearing such a disgraceful pair of shoes in my house?”
”They all I got, Ma.s.sa Fletcher.”
”Well, what on earth have you done to wear them out that way-walk to Texas and back?”
”They were probably poorly made to begin with,” I said. ”I couldn't afford to buy him new ones. Shoes are very expensive these days.”
My father fished another gold piece out of his pants pocket and tossed it to me. ”Here . . . catch. Take him downtown tomorrow and buy him a new pair. Buy yourself a new pair, too, if you'd like.”
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Gilbert and I didn't notice anything unusual the next morning as we headed downtown to a store on Main Street to buy his shoes. We caused enough of a stir all by ourselves, outfitting a slave with new shoes costing twenty-five dollars a pair. Slaves usually wore their master's castoffs, whether they fit him or not.
Had we driven past the capitol, we might have noticed the huge crowd of people milling in the square, armed with knives and axes and pistols. But we drove down Main Street, not Franklin, and we had no idea of the danger we were in until the mob poured down the hill into the commercial shopping district, clamoring for food. As they streamed past the window of the store we were in, shouting for bread to feed their starving families, the alarm bell in the square started to ring. I saw that the mob was mostly women-poor and ragged, some as thin as skeletons. Many carried ragam.u.f.fin children in their arms. The woman at the head of them was as tall as a man, wearing a hat with a long white feather in it and armed with a six-shooter. The women surged into bakeries and grocery stores, grabbing food off the shelves.
”What's going on?” one of the other customers asked as we crowded near the store window to watch.
The proprietor quickly locked the door. ”I think you'd better stay inside where it's safe, ladies. Those people look like rabble . . . and they're out of control.”
I watched in astonishment as the crowd flooded through the shopping district, looting the stores, grabbing bread and hams, loading their arms with b.u.t.ter and bacon and sacks of cornmeal. More people came running from their homes to join the band of women, including dozens of men who didn't look half-starved at all. They began plundering more than food, stealing shoes and tools and bolts of cloth.
I stood frozen in front of the window, watching as the rioters rushed toward the store where Gilbert and I had taken refuge. When they discovered that the door was locked, they picked up bricks and homemade bats to smash the window. Gilbert perceived their intentions a moment before I did, and he grabbed me around the waist, whirling me away from the window, s.h.i.+elding me with his own body as the window shattered in a hail of shards. The proprietor was struck by a brick, several of the others cut by flying gla.s.s, but thanks to Gilbert, I was unharmed. Then he stood in front of me, brandis.h.i.+ng a cobbler's mallet as looters poured into the store through the broken window, s.n.a.t.c.hing all the merchandise they could carry.
Outside, firemen turned their hoses on the rioters, but that only seemed to make them more violent, and they turned their weapons against the volunteers. Then the Home Guard came running to the scene, alerted by the ringing alarm bell, armed with rifles and bayonets.
”Better look away, Miss Caroline, in case this get ugly,” Gilbert warned. I stepped back from the window a few more paces, but I didn't want to believe that the guards would actually use their bayonets or open fire on civilian women and children.
There was a louder shout above the chaos, and the crowd parted right outside our store to let Governor Letcher pa.s.s through. ”What is the governor saying?” someone asked the store owner. He had stepped cautiously toward the window to listen, holding a bloodied handkerchief to his head.
”He says he's giving them five minutes to disperse or the guard will open fire. n.o.body is leaving, though. The looting has stopped, but even with bayonets pointed in their faces, no one is leaving.”
The tension was as sharp and brittle as the fragments of gla.s.s beneath our feet. But before the five minutes were up and the guard would be forced to fire, President Jefferson Davis arrived. Gilbert and I edged toward the window to watch as Davis climbed onto a wagon that had been turned sideways across the street.
”Go home,” he shouted to the crowd. ”The Yankees are the enemy, not one another.”
”We're hungry!” someone called. ”We can't afford to feed ourselves or our children.”
”But if you steal,” the president replied, ”then farmers won't bring any food at all into the city. We'll starve for certain.” He reached into his pockets and pulled out all of his change, flinging money into the street. ”Here . . . take it. It's all I have. I don't want anyone injured, but this lawlessness must stop. You have five minutes to disperse or you will will be fired upon.” be fired upon.”
Davis took out his pocket watch and held it in his palm, waiting. The first three or four minutes seemed to pa.s.s very slowly as no one moved. Then the crowd gradually began to drift away, leaving only the Home Guard and a very relieved president and governor when the five minutes were up. I sagged onto the nearest chair, feeling weak.
”Those thieves didn't steal your new shoes, did they, Gilbert?” I asked shakily.
”No, Missy, they right here on my feet.”
”Good.” I remembered how Gilbert had pulled me away from the flying gla.s.s, how he'd protected me from the looters, and I vowed I would repay him someday. I would help win his freedom.
”I believe we've done enough shopping for one day,” I told him when my strength finally returned. ”Let's go home.”
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More than a month after I said good-bye to Robert, I sat in the drawing room one evening, reading one of my father's new books, when Gilbert tiptoed into the room and whispered in my ear.
”There's someone outside who needs to talk to you, Missy. Says he knows your friend Robert.”
Daddy, who'd had more than one after-dinner drink, was snoring loudly in a chair beside me, his book falling closed on his lap. I followed Gilbert out to the backyard.
The middle-aged man waiting for me in the shadows by the carriage house was beefy and florid-faced, with reddish hair and beard. He wore suspenders and a shopkeeper's ap.r.o.n and smelled very strongly of fish.
”My name's Ferguson,” he said, lifting his hat. ”A Lieutenant Robert Hoffman sent me a message saying I should contact you.”
”Where is Robert? Does this mean he made it home safely?”
”I have no idea. I never met the gentleman. And the less you and I know about each other, the better. My contact in Was.h.i.+ngton said to tell you he spoke to the lieutenant. Said maybe you'd be willing to supply us with some information that would be useful to our cause.”
I suddenly felt as though a million eyes and ears were watching us, listening to us. ”I don't have any information at the moment, Mr. Ferguson. But if I did . . . how would I get it to you?”
”I sell fish at a booth in the farmers' market on Eighteenth and Main. Know where that is?”
”Yes.”
”Fold the information inside a bank note and hand it to me when you pay for your fish.”
I glanced around nervously and saw Gilbert standing at a respectful distance, guarding me. I noticed that Ferguson had left the backyard gate open, as if prepared to flee in a hurry if he had to. I was embarking on a dangerous course.
”Is that all?” I asked.
”If either of us is caught, we're gonna swear on our grandmother's graves we never met.”
He tipped his hat again and hurried off into the shadows. When the gate closed quietly behind him I knew I had just opened a door through which I could never return.
Chapter Twenty-one.