A Dream of Daring (30 page)

From the middle of the
group, someone rose to speak. It was a shy woman who worked in the fields. Tom
and the others strained to hear her timid voice. “I likes to ask iffen I kin go
to them classes goin’ on in the big house.”

Tom looked at Solo to
respond. The teacher nodded to acknowledge the would-be student. “Who else
wants to take classes? Stand up so I can see you.”

Solo’s sinewy body and
wild hair looked primal, while her voice, with its proper diction and grammar,
was pure intelligence. She waited, but no one else rose to join the lone woman
standing.

“If you want to be the
master of your own music, and the master of your own cotton, and the master of
your own comings and goings, you first need to be the master of your own
thinking
.
That’s what learning does for you. It teaches you how to think for yourself.
And it gives you
knowledge,
so you can take care of yourself. Now, how
many of you want to take classes? Stand up.”

Two others rose to join
the woman standing. There was what seemed like a long pause, and Tom wondered
if any more would rise. Then four more joined them. Then there were ten. Like
spring bulbs growing strong enough to break through the surface, twenty
standing slaves soon sprouted across the field.

With the help of his
cane, a gray-haired man with bad knees struggled to rise. Two teenage slaves
standing nearby assisted so that he could stand with them to request an
education.

Some of the ones who were
standing reached down to prod their friends and family to join them. More
figures rose to stand like silhouettes against the twilight-blue sky. Soon, so
many were giving their silent standing ovation to learning that the ones still
sitting seemed out of place, so they stood too. Many looked hopeful, others
looked scared, and some looked cynical. But in the end, they
all
stood
up to be counted.

Tom looked astonished.

Solo looked energized.
She spoke to Tom in the optimistic tone of someone eager for a new challenge
and already analyzing how to tackle it. “It can be done. I can move the house
servants’ classes to the early morning, then teach the field hands in sessions
in the late afternoon and evening.”

Tom nodded. Then he
assured the group, “We’ll hold classes for everyone who wants to learn.”
Silently, he resolved to build them a new, hidden classroom to keep secret what
was becoming a formal school. “We’ll work out a plan for everything we
discussed tonight.”

He turned to Solo. “It
appears you’ll be getting a lot of cocoa beans.”

She flashed one of her
rare smiles, and the moment seemed to him more like daybreak than dusk.

* * * * *

A few hours later, the
candles were extinguished in the cabins, and the slaves had retired for the
night. With the stars shining like medals pinned on the clear sky, and the
night creatures giving the woods its symphony, there were only three lights still
glowing at Indigo Springs.

Jerome’s light was
burning in the kitchen behind the big house. The man who ran Tom’s kitchen,
supervised various servants, and operated his own chocolate business frequently
worked at night. Especially after he had been away from the plantation during
the day, he made up missed chores, prepared chocolate squares for customers, or
read from his primer long after the others had gone to sleep. That night, after
Tom’s talk to the slaves, Jerome was in the kitchen, but this time he was
thinking about his future.

Solo’s light was burning
in the library. She spent many nights in the room with the dusty volumes that
were her cherished companions. They were the sages that took her on journeys
through history, the explorers that showed her the people and places beyond her
sight, and the poets that invited her into their fantasies. That night she was
reading a book of short stories to select one to present to her class.

The third light was
Tom’s. It burned in the workshop on the hill. That night he had felt an
eagerness to continue his work that he hadn’t experienced since the time of the
murder. After the day’s revelations at the Crossroads, he felt strangely free
of the guilt that had shadowed him since Barnwell’s death. After his evening
talk with the slaves, he also felt free of any allegiance to the precepts of
farming imposed on him by his father, Barnwell, and the others. With the new
work system at Indigo Springs, he would run
his
farm
his
way.

With his dejection gone,
he had felt almost lightheaded entering his workshop for the first time in
three months. Regardless of whether Sheriff Duran’s new suspect in Baton Rouge,
Ladybug, would lead to the recovery of his invention, he was now ready to move
on with his work, building a new prototype if he must.

He glanced over the
shelves and worktable of the orderly cabin that looked like a machine shop.
Everything was as he had left it. There were the notebooks recording his
experiments and ideas, the texts on mechanics frayed from heavy use, and the
numerous articles on the latest advances in machine power. There was the first
gas-powered motor he had ever made: a mere flywheel, a belt, and a fuel
reservoir on a wood board.

There were extra parts
remaining from his tractor’s assembly: a few valves left over from the ones he
had painstakingly adapted from a steam engine for use in his engine block, a
scrap from a steam engine’s exhaust pipe that he had adapted to form his
cylinders, and two pistons made of iron. There was a crankshaft made in a plant
in Baton Rouge that he had used to fabricate various components of his device
to his specifications.

On his worktable he saw
the experiment with electricity that he had been conducting before leaving for
his trip. He needed a better ignition system. What was the best way to deliver
a spark to ignite the gasoline and start the engine? He was trying to find out.
He sat down and began working on the experiment as if he had just left it
yesterday. . . .

After a while, Jerome
extinguished his light in the kitchen; his white hat could be seen moving in
the darkness as he walked back to his cabin.

Solo fell asleep reading
in the library; her light remained on, its reflections bouncing off the
red-brown tangle of hair that covered the desk.

The big house looked
peaceful in the darkness, with its mossy oak branches brushing the roof and its
one soft light visible beyond the closed drapery in the library.

Suddenly a stranger
appeared, breaking the serenity of the night. He rode up to the big house on
horseback, carrying a burning torch. He stopped directly outside the lighted
room.

The trespasser was a man
who had been chastised, humiliated, fired, and cast out like a vagabond that
day. His sister had verbally boxed his ears in front of the others. Then a man
had taken his life and twisted it like the neck of a chicken. That man was
behind the curtain in the room he now faced. He had hated men like that his
entire life, men who had book learning, who had money, who spoke fancy, who
flaunted their silly manners, who thumbed their noses at him and made him feel
small. That day everybody thought he’d been beaten. But he hadn’t, he thought, sneering,
his breath reeking of alcohol.

Before tonight, the
hatred he had always felt for men like Tom was something he had to hold in
check. There was always somebody around that stopped him from expressing his
most urgent impulses—first there was his mother, then his sister, then Miss
Polly. That day, after the others had left their meeting, his sister hovered
over him like an angry hen. He couldn’t even whack a few of the worthless
slaves. That would’ve made him feel better, stronger, on top of things again.
That would’ve calmed him like a tonic. He tried another remedy, this one from a
bottle. But that didn’t stop the rage building inside him, ready to explode. In
fact, it stoked the fury he couldn’t contain and wanted so much to let loose.

That night he needed
another cure. They wanted him to be beaten, to stay beaten, and to just swallow
it. Well, tonight they’d know he was no patsy. Tonight he’d get respect.
Tonight he’d do what he was itching to do. Tonight the bastard behind that
curtain who dared to smash him would get
his
.

He leaned over the
gallery and with a sweep of his arm tossed the lighted torch inside the open
window. Then he whirled his horse around and galloped down the road.

The torch landed on the
floor where it caught on the drapes. Soon the flames rose to the windowsill.
The breeze blew the sparks against a bookcase. There the growing menace found a
feast to devour in the books. With a crackling that was merely a whisper,
insufficient yet to announce its fearful presence, the blaze proceeded
unchecked in its voracious path to strike, to spread, to engulf everything.
Within moments, it transformed the learned words of centuries into a raging
wall of flames—while the young teacher slept.

Chapter
25

On that clear night, with
the moonlight blinking between the trees, Tom finished his experiment, closed
his workshop, and headed home on his horse. As he was turning onto the path up
to the big house, he nearly collided with a man on horseback careening down the
road. Tom’s horse reared, almost throwing him. In a flash of moonlight, he saw
a face of pure hatred: Markham! The overseer galloped away, leaving a dust
storm and the stench of alcohol behind him.

Suddenly, Tom saw smoke
billowing from the direction of the big house and heard a woman scream. He dug
his heels into the horse and raced up the road. The only person in the house at
that hour would be its other resident, who slept in the tutor’s room and lived
in the library:
Solo!

He reached the end of the
road and gasped. His house was a fireball blazing in the gray night, with
flames shooting out the library windows and smoke clouds funneling into the
sky. The blinding flames, the choking fumes, and the desperate screams of a
trapped woman catapulted him into action.

He leaped off his horse
and jumped onto the gallery. Then he pushed open the front door. He ran down
the smoke-filled hallway to the library door, where red flames curled like
serpents’ tongues around the frame, daring him to approach. His blond hair
turned a sooty gray, his eyes burned with smoke, and his face smarted from the
intensifying heat by the time he reached the door. A molten beam fell, barely
missing him as he rushed into the inferno.

Inside the library the
fire raged. The furniture burned, and scorched ceiling beams caved inward,
threatening to collapse. At the far end of the room he saw the source of the
screams. Solo, half hidden by the smoke and half spotlighted by the flames, was
trapped. Behind her, the windows were blocked by white sheets of burning
drapery. Bookcases to the sides of her were aflame, as was the desk in front.
Encircled with hellfire, she looked like a woman being burned at the stake. She
tried to grab a clear edge of the desk to push it out of her way, but the
crackling fire quickly spread to her spot and her hands reflexively shot away
from the sting of the heat. Tom veered clear of a shaking chandelier to
approach her.

“Tom! Tom!” she
exclaimed, choking, searching for an opening in the flames to reach him.

“Look out!” he shouted,
pointing to her side, where a bookcase came crashing down. She moved away from
it in time. The burning books tumbled out, turning the words of centuries into
dozens of little torches spilling onto the carpet, igniting new fires along the
floor. Tom saw her small figure trapped behind the growing wall of flames
closing in on her.

He moved back toward the
door, where he found a table still untouched by fire, draped with a tablecloth,
with a lamp and flower vase sitting unharmed on top. In one swift pull, he
grabbed the tablecloth, sending the lamp and vase crashing to the floor, adding
to the commotion. He returned to Solo and used the bunched cloth to smother the
fire on a corner of the desk. Then he gripped the heavy piece with the cloth
and flipped it over. It crashed against the wall, making a temporary pathway
free of flames under it. Solo ran through the clear patch of floor into his
arms. They rushed to the door, racing against flames that were spreading across
the ceiling in the same direction. The flames prevailed, and the door frame
collapsed in front of them. Their exit was now blocked.

Tom looked around,
frantically wondering what to do next. There were no windows clear of the
flames. He saw he could reach the stone fireplace, and rushed toward it.
Coughing, choking, trying to keep his bearings in the thickening smoke, he
grabbed an andiron and smashed it repeatedly against a wall. He made a hole,
then kicked it out, widening it to give them passage into the hallway.

“Watch out!” She gasped,
pointing to the ceiling.

Fire-eaten ceiling beams
gave way and fell near them. He covered her head with his arms. The chandelier
came crashing down, shattering across the floor, sending glass shards flying
into the mix of smoke, flames, and heat. A ceiling beam grazed Solo’s shoulder,
setting her sleeve on fire. Tom knocked the beam away, then hit Solo’s sleeve
repeatedly with his hand to choke the flames. He picked her up and pushed her
through the opening in the wall; then he leaped out after her. The two of them
raced down the hallway. Weakened by the effects of the fire and smoke, choking
and staggering, she fell. He picked her up and carried her to the back door of
the house.

In the heavy smoke, they
met a man who was charging in.

“Get out! Get out,
Jerome! We’re okay,” Tom ordered.

Seeing that the home’s
residents were headed for safety, Jerome turned and exited with them. He ran to
the plantation bell to summon the other slaves.

Tom rolled over on the
ground with Solo, stifling the patches of smoldering flames on the two of them.
He was on top of her when they stopped rolling. His eyes searched her
smoke-covered dress, her hair entangled with debris, and the surface burns on
her arms. “Are you okay?” He stroked her hair and stared into her eyes, waiting
for reassurance.

“Yes.” With her arms
around his neck, and with her brilliant eyes and white teeth the only shining
spots on a face covered with soot, she smiled at him.

He slid his arms around
her waist, buried his face in her neck, and held her close. Feeling her supple
body, he sighed in immense relief from the still-vivid image of her caught in
the flames and the dread that he would lose her. He raised his head, and their
eyes locked for a moment.

She began coughing. He
picked her up and carried her away from the smoke, putting her down on the
grass near the pond.

They caught sight of the
wiry figure of Jerome. He had summoned the slaves, along with the store of
lightweight leather buckets kept in the tanner’s shed specifically for use in a
fire. Jerome was forming a bucket brigade. Tom and Solo saw him lining up men
from the pond to the house to haul a stream of buckets onto the fire. Jerome
was also forming another line, of women and boys next to the men, to pass the
empty pails from the house back to the pond for refilling.

Tom’s eyes, two blue
beacons on a smoke-covered face, watched intently the procedure Jerome was
organizing to save the house.

Solo read his thoughts.
“Go. I’m all right,” she assured him.

He observed her
condition. Her voice was weak and hoarse, she coughed intermittently, and she
had a few superficial burns. She needed to rest and clear her lungs of smoke,
he figured, but otherwise she looked unscathed. “You’ll be okay?”

“Go!”

“Stay out of the smoke
and rest.” In a flash, he was gone.

Battling his own
coughing, he joined the growing group of slaves by the house.

Like the captain of a
distressed ship, soaked to the waist in water, with a shirt still unbuttoned in
his haste to respond to the emergency, Jerome moved about from the pond to the
house, until everything was set. Then he positioned himself last in the line to
receive the buckets, and he directed the water onto the flames. As he threw
bucket after bucket on the fire, he continued to monitor the human assembly
line and give orders to new slaves arriving. He summoned one: “Git more
buckets. Git every last one o’ them—outta the stable, outta the barn, outta the
well house, outta the kitchen. Go!” He summoned another one: “Git lanterns; we
need light here. Go!” He turned to another slave: “Git—” Just then Tom
approached, and Jerome abruptly stopped speaking, deferring to his master. “Oh,
’scuse me, sir.”

“You’re doing fine,
Jerome. Continue.”

Jerome looked curiously
at Tom, then smiled and resumed. “Git the ladder from the stable. Go git it,
quick!”

Soon, more buckets
appeared for the brigade and lanterns dotted the landscape. The ladder came,
and Tom climbed up to douse the flames on the roof. Jerome forked off part of
the brigade to supply Tom.

Hearing the bell and
seeing the smoke, Nick and the field hands came running. They brought another
stack of fire buckets from their area. Nick organized his slaves into a second
brigade and joined Jerome and Tom at the house.

* * * * *

The prodigious efforts of
the people of Indigo Springs proved fruitful. Before long, the flames were
extinguished, and the smoke clouds drifted away from the house. The relentless
rumble of the advancing flames and the frenzied sounds of the people fighting
it were now still. The library was significantly damaged, but the rest of the
house was saved.

Despite Tom’s admonition
to stay clear of the smoke, Solo joined him and the others to peer at the
damage. The library was a disaster of fallen planks, smoldering debris, a
partially caved-in ceiling, blackened carpeting, and singed furniture. Books
charred to varying degrees were scattered everywhere. Those items that had
escaped the fire were covered with soot. Everything was doused with water.

The slaves from the
brigades approached. Soaked from standing in the pond and exhausted from
hauling the buckets, they silently took in the scene. Tom had never seen the
slaves push themselves with so much drive. He stood with the charred remains of
the library behind him and the bedraggled, muddied slaves before him, and he
smiled at their victory.

“I’ve never seen a finer
bucket brigade anywhere,” he told them. “I’ve never seen a finer bunch of
firefighters than right here.”

The slaves stood before
him, some without shirts or shoes in their haste to come and help. Their bodies
looked spent, but their spirits seemed lifted by his words and their deed; they
looked as proud as if they were wearing the imposing uniforms and shiny hats of
a true fire regiment.

“This house is still
standing thanks to the extraordinary efforts of all of you.” He looked at the
group with heartfelt gratitude. They seemed to sense it and smiled in response.
“Jerome, I think some rum is in order.”

That brought a wild cheer
from the slaves.

“Yes, sir!” Jerome, ever
full of energy, charged ahead toward the liquor storeroom with a platoon of
thirsty slaves following him.

One of Solo’s students
brought a bowl of water with rags to wash the burns on her teacher’s arms.
Sitting on the grass, Solo accepted treatment, trying not to flinch from the
sting. Tom walked over and bent down to observe the lean figure. She was
covered with soot, but what he saw were the flashing eyes and the hints of
glowing skin and glossy hair beneath the grimy surface, and he realized that
from their first encounter, at the height of her wretchedness, he had always
seen her inner luster.

“How do you feel?”

“Tom . . . ”
She had forgotten the
Mister
. “I
feel . . . happy . . . really
happy . . . to still be here.” Her words were spoken
simply, without the trimming of a smile, but her lingering glance at him held
gratitude for his rescue of her.

Both of their voices were
softened with affection. In the aftermath of an event that had torn down walls
in the house, he wondered if it had also torn down walls in the places where
their feelings lived.

Nearby, students from
Solo’s class were coming out of the house with books. They had found ones with
only minor damage, which they carried gingerly, like sacred texts. They gently
patted some of the books with rags to dry them from the water damage. They were
gathering a collection of saved books on a clean blanket.

Tom walked toward them,
and Solo followed.

“These will dry, Mr. Tom.
They’ll be good agin,” said Tom’s butler.

“We can save these,” said
the gardener, pointing to a little stack.

“Remember this one, Miss
Solo?” The weaver held up a slightly charred volume. “This has a chapter you
read to us.”

Solo nodded, smiling.

As the butler and the
gardener were about to go back into the house, Tom stepped in front of them.
“What are you doing? You can’t go in there.”

“But Mr. Tom,” said the
butler, “what if the ceilin’ falls down? Then the books will be done for.”

“If the ceiling falls
down, then
you’ll
be done for!” He raised his voice so everyone would
hear his admonition. “No one can go in the house until it cools down and we can
assess the damage. Right now, it’s too dangerous.”

“But, sir, our primers
are still in there—” the weaver protested.

“We’ll buy more, and
we’ll rebuild the library, which is now your classroom. We’ll build a bigger
and better library.” He smiled.
And we’ll build it to contain a secret
underground room where I can hide your class
, he added to himself.

Solo stepped forward. Her
students looked at her with affection. She said between coughing, her voice
still hoarse, with Tom holding her arm for support: “There are a few hours left
before dawn. Have a little rum; then go back to your cabins and get some
sleep.” Battling her weakness from the ordeal, she raised her voice in triumph.
“You all get a perfect grade in firefighting!”

She smiled fondly at her
students as they left to join the others at the storeroom.

Tom’s hand lingered on
Solo’s arm. “When we started the classes, I asked you to make them care about
something.” He pointed to the books on the blanket. “You have.”

She smiled with
satisfaction.

While the slaves were
having their drink, Jerome had slipped away, leaving his apprentice in charge.
Now the chef, who had changed into clean, dry clothing, walked over to Tom and
Solo. He carried a sack, which he put down by his side; then he bent down to
remove a few items among articles of clothing.

Tom’s eyes absorbed the
purposeful gait and the items in Jerome’s hand. He looked with astonishment at
his slave, anticipating what he was about to say.