A Light to My Path (57 page)

She pulled him down on the bed again and said, “Now, I want you to tell me about all the people you’ll see up in Richmond, starting with your mama. I’m gonna draw pictures of George for all of them, so they’ll know what he looks like.”

“Let’s see, there’s Mama … and Eli … and Esther …” he said, kissing her between each name. “And I have some unfinished business with Massa Fletcher.”

“What?” she said, pushing him away. “What kind of business?”

He hesitated, afraid to tell her. Her look of surprise changed to one of understanding—then horror.

“Oh, Grady, no. I thought you were all done with hating people. I thought you were wanting to see your mother and Eli—”

“I am. But I have to see Massa Fletcher, too. I been waiting all these years to face him.”

“But why? What difference will it make after all this time?” When he didn’t reply she began to cry. “You’re still wanting revenge, aren’t you? You’re gonna kill him! Don’t try and deny it, Grady. I can see all the hatred that’s still in your heart for that man, and it scares me. Please don’t do it, Grady. Please, just forget about him.”

“He deserves to die!” Grady heard the deadly chill in his own voice.

“And what about us?” she asked, swiping at her tears. “When they arrest you and hang you for murdering him, what’s gonna happen to George and me?”

“I didn’t get caught when I killed Coop.”

She closed her eyes. “Please don’t do it, Grady.”

“Do you want your money back?” he asked, holding it out to her. “Are you changing your mind about giving it to me?”

“No. I want
you
back—the free Grady who isn’t storing up a big load of bitterness in his heart anymore.”

Grady understood why she was upset, but he was no less determined. “I have to see him, Anna. I don’t think I’ll ever be right with myself until I do.”

She gazed at him for a long moment, love and sorrow shining in her dark eyes. She turned away from him again. “Then go,” she said softly.

“I’ll come back to you, Anna. I promise.”

Richmond, Virginia

Anxiety gripped Grady as he stood in the bow of the ship and gazed at the charred wreckage of Richmond. He barely recognized the city that had once been his home. All that remained of the bridges that had once spanned the James River were stone pilings. Block after block of buildings in Richmond’s downtown area had all been destroyed, reduced to skeletons of toppling bricks with vacant, empty window frames. Piles of rubble lay everywhere, from the river’s edge to the hill where the soot-covered capitol building still stood. And everywhere that Grady looked, he saw white women clothed in black and the now-familiar sight of ragged, homeless slaves. As they sifted through the debris, they wore the haunted, frightened expressions of castaways adrift on a rudderless ship.

Clearly, Richmond’s inhabitants had suffered greatly. The scars that the burned and broken city bore were proof enough. Grady could only imagine what his mother and other loved ones must have suffered. The thought filled him with dread.

He began the long, circuitous walk through the rubbleclogged streets with deep foreboding, the stench of burning still thick in the air, even after all these months. But his panic began to ease as he turned onto Broad Street and hurried up the hill. The area of Richmond where he had once lived looked unkempt but relatively undamaged. He passed St. John’s church and turned down the familiar street where Eli had always turned. Massa Fletcher’s house still stood on the corner at the end of the block.

Grady paused and drew a deep breath when he saw it. Then he quickened his pace, jogging around to the rear where his family lived. The wrought-iron gate stood open, and he hurried through it and into the stable.

And there was Eli.

Grady’s eyes filled with tears at the sight of him. Eli didn’t hear him or see him, and Grady stood watching for a long moment as Eli adjusted the bridle on one of the horses. His every gesture was so familiar, so beloved, that it seemed as though Grady had left only yesterday. But Eli’s movements were slower and stiffer now, and his hair and beard pure white. He had once seemed so tall and powerful, but now Grady was taller than Eli was.

When he could speak, Grady called out his name. “Eli …”

He turned, and recognition lit Eli’s eyes the moment he saw him. “Praise God,” he murmured as he walked toward him. “Praise Massa Jesus; He brought our Grady home.”

They hugged each other fiercely, clinging to one another for a long, long time. At last, Eli pulled back to face him. “You still hiding God’s Word in your heart?” he asked.

Grady remembered Joe’s warning not to let the devil tell him that he wasn’t forgiven. He smiled and tapped his chest. “It’s in there, Eli. God’s Word is still hiding in there, just like you taught me.”

“Praise God … thank you, Massa Jesus,” Eli said as he embraced him again.

Grady drew a deep breath, afraid to hope. “Is my mama here? Is she okay?”

“Tessie’s doing just fine,” Eli said with a broad grin. “She’s married to my son, Josiah, now, and they’re living in a little house of their own not too far from here. I’ll take you there. But we better go see Esther first, or she’ll have my hide for sure.”

Eli led the way down the path from the stable to the kitchen. The yard where Grady used to play with Caroline looked different, the boxwood hedges and flower gardens plowed up and replaced by a vegetable patch. The magnolia tree in the rear of the yard was still there, but it seemed not to have grown in the twelve years Grady had been gone—or was it because he had grown taller himself?

“Esther, look who’s here!” Eli called, pushing open the kitchen door. “Grady’s home!”

“Grady?
Our
Grady?” she cried. “Oh, bless the Good Lord in heaven!” Esther flew at him, hugging him so tightly that Grady thought his spine would snap. It felt wonderful. “Look at you!” she murmured. “All growed up into a man. A fine, handsome man, too!”

“Don’t break all his bones, Esther,” Eli warned. “Tessie’s gonna want a piece of him, too. I’m gonna take him right on over there to see her as soon as you’re letting go of him.”

Grady longed to see his mother, but he needed to go to the Big House first. As he steeled himself to confront Massa Fletcher, Grady felt every muscle and nerve ending grow tense and alert, the way he used to feel as he’d marched toward an enemy encampment, his rifle loaded and ready.

“Before we go, Eli … is … um … is Massa Fletcher around?”

Eli studied him for a long moment, as if trying to read his thoughts. He nodded slowly. “Yeah, he’s here. Been gone to the islands for a couple of months, but he’s back home now.”

“I need to see him.” Grady turned and walked quickly toward the house before he could lose his nerve or change his mind. He’d never been inside the Big House before, but he walked through the back door without knocking, as if he belonged there. He peered into several small, deserted rooms off the rear hallway, then followed the aroma of cigar smoke to the front foyer and to an office near the door.

George Fletcher sat behind his desk, reading a newspaper. He looked thinner and older, more gray-haired than Grady remembered. When Fletcher looked up and saw Grady in the doorway, he dropped the paper and rose to his feet.

“Who are you? What are you doing in my house?” His voice was stern, commanding, but Grady didn’t flinch. He had learned how to look a man in the eye—even a white man.

“I’m Tessie’s boy, Grady… . Your son.”

Fletcher slowly sank down in his chair as if the strength had drained out of him. Grady continued to stare defiantly, face to face, refusing to lower his eyes. The embers of twelve years of simmering anger and hatred stirred to a roaring blaze at the sight of the man who had caused him so much suffering. He waited for Fletcher to speak first.

“So. You’ve come back.”

Grady nodded. “I’ve been in the Union Army for the past three years, the Thirty-third United States Colored Troops. They promoted me to sergeant.” He walked into the room and stood in front of his father. He was just a man, a defeated man, in spite of his attempts to act stern. “I helped kill Rebels like you and bring an end to your precious Confederacy,” Grady said. “And I helped Abraham Lincoln set all your slaves free.”

Fletcher’s hand trembled as he laid his cigar in the ashtray. “What do you want?”

“Justice,” Grady said quietly. “And I want to know why you sold your own son to a slave trader.”

Fletcher looked away for the first time. Grady was surprised to see his jaw tremble with emotion. “I didn’t want to do it,” Fletcher said hoarsely. “My wife—Caroline’s mother—was very ill. She knew that you were … She knew who you were, and it upset her to see you every day. She wasn’t able to give me a son. I thought it might help her get well if I …” His voice trailed away. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.”

Fletcher spoke the words so softly that Grady wasn’t really sure he’d heard them. He stared in disbelief. Fletcher finally met his gaze again and repeated it. “I’m sorry for selling you.”

Now it was Grady who had to look away. He had expected anger, resentment, even contempt, but not regret.

“Well, it’s too late for apologies,” Grady said, exhaling. “I been dreaming of this day, planning for it all these years. First I want to hear you beg for your life the same way my mama and I begged you the day you sold me. I want to make you suffer just a little of what I been suffering all this time—the beatings, the whippings, the weeks spent in filthy slave cells without a soul who cared if I lived or died. And after you beg and plead and feel some of the fear I been feeling day after day for all these years … then I plan to blow your brains out. Right here in your big fancy house. The house I was never good enough to step inside, even though half of the blood in my veins is the same as yours—white man’s blood.”

Fletcher closed his eyes. Grady expected to see fear in them when he opened them again, but instead he saw resignation. His father looked old and tired, the fight all gone out of him. “I know some of what you suffered,” Fletcher said quietly. “I spent time in a Union prison camp. But I won’t beg for my life.”

“You deserve to die!”

Fletcher shrugged. “We all do.”

Grady thought of Edward Coop’s lifeless body—of the guilt that had haunted him after he’d murdered Coop. Grady knew that he deserved to die for killing him. But Jesus had taken the death penalty for him so that he could live.

For some reason, as Grady gazed at his father, he saw his own son. And he realized that if Fletcher hadn’t sold him all those years ago, he never would have met Anna, never would have had a son.

“I’ve dreamed of killing you,” Grady repeated. “But I’m not going to. I have a son of my own, now. I want to live as a free man, not hang for giving you what you deserve. I want to be a father to him. I want to show him what a real father is like.”

Fletcher’s jaw trembled with emotion. “What’s his name?”

“It’s … it’s George. But—” Grady started to tell him that it was just a coincidence, that his son wasn’t named after him, but Fletcher gripped the arms of his chair and suddenly pulled himself to his feet. Grady was stunned to see tears in his eyes. His father walked over to a bookshelf, pulled down a volume, and opened it. It was hollow inside and hid a drawstring bag. He tossed the bag to Grady. He felt the jangling weight of coins.

“What’s this?” Grady asked.

“Open it.”

Grady loosened the strings enough to see dozens of large, gold coins inside. He glared at his father. “Why are you giving me this? Are you trying to soothe your guilty conscience by buying me off?”

“I know you won’t believe me … but I loved your mother. Tessie was—” He paused, clearing his throat. “I’m giving it to you because you’re a Fletcher.”

“I don’t want your money,” he said, holding out the bag. “I ain’t gonna help ease your guilt.”

Fletcher shoved his hands in his pockets. “Then give the money to your son. He’s a Fletcher, too.”

Grady studied his father for a long moment, surprised to find that he felt only pity, not hatred. George Fletcher would have to give an accounting to God for what he had done—and hadn’t done. The way Edward Coop had. The way Grady himself would, someday.

Grady knew there had been a time in his life when he would have thrown the money in Fletcher’s face, too bitter to take anything from a white man. There had been a time when he would have taken the gold and demanded even more in payment for a lifetime of slavery. But he didn’t do either of those things. His father was asking for forgiveness in the only way he knew how—and if Grady wanted God’s forgiveness, then he had to forgive his father, as well.

Grady put the bag of coins in his pocket and slowly turned away—a free man at last.