A Perilous Proposal (17 page)

Something had to be done with them.

For now he would secure them away from the house until he could think. The man on the porch was just coming to himself. Jake hauled him some distance away. With additional rope from the barn, he tied him to a tree. He went back
for his companion. He carried him out of the house slung over his shoulders, followed by Mrs. Dawson holding the ax handle with instructions from Jake to conk him on the head as hard as she could if he uttered a peep.

He dumped him down like a sack of potatoes near his friend. Mrs. Dawson walked slowly back toward the house. Violent threats and curses followed from both men as he tied the second to another tree. Their words deepened Jake's conviction that, if they managed to get free, his actions would mean death to all three of them.

Then Jake returned to the house. He found Mrs. Dawson sitting on the steps of her porch quietly weeping.

“We gots ter think 'bout buryin' yo husband, ma'am,” he said softly.

She nodded.

“I'll see ter it, ma'am, effen you'll jes' show me where . . . dat is, effen you'd take no disrespeck from a colored person like me carryin' him an' such-like.”

She shook her head. Still crying, she rose. Jake followed as she led him away from the house to a small plot about fifty yards from the house, where a hedge and small garden surrounded a small grassy area. In the middle of it three or four grave markers rose out of the ground.

She pointed down. Jake nodded.

He returned to the barn, found a shovel and pickax, and returned to the site. An hour later he walked into the kitchen. Neither of the women were in sight. From somewhere he heard the sound of weeping. He stooped down and first picked up the stiffening body of the black boy and carried it outside and deposited it out of sight from the house in the vicinity of where the men were tied. He returned for Mr. Dawson, hoisting up what remained of the same man who had once tried to kill him and carried it to the grave he had dug. Being as careful as he could under the circumstances, he
lowered the body off his back and half dumped, half laid it beside the hole.

Jake straightened himself, exhaled a sigh, then thought it best to speak to the man's widow before proceeding. He had never buried anyone. He didn't know exactly what to do next.

Gingerly he walked back into the house. With tentative steps he followed the whimpering sounds to one of the bedrooms. He peeped cautiously inside.

“Mrs. Dawson, ma'am,” he said, “I's right sorry ter disturb you in yo grief . . . I's sorrier den I kin be, but duz you want me ter build him a box ter go in . . . or duz you want me ter jes' put him inter da groun' da way he is?”

The honest simplicity of Jake's question, and the practicality of response required, did not exactly bring the stricken woman out of her misery. But at least it forced her to confront the next moment with a decision. And once a decision has been made, any decision, the next moment is always easier to face.

She sat up on her bed, sniffed, and wiped at her nose and eyes with the handkerchief in her hand. She looked at Jake with something resembling a forlorn smile.

“It is very kind of you to help us, Jake,” she said. “I don't know what we would have done if you hadn't come when you did. We would probably all be dead.”

She drew in a breath and tried to steady herself.

“I . . . think we will not need a coffin, Jake,” she said after a moment. “Is the hole plenty deep?”

“Sumthin' like three er fo feet, ma'am.”

“That should be fine—thank you. Just put . . . my, uh, my husband to rest as he is.”

“Yes'm. Shud I cover him, ma'am?”

“Yes, Jake, that will be fine.”

“Duz you want ter say a few words, ma'am, or shud I jes' go ahead?”

“Go ahead, Jake. I don't think I can stand to see his face
again . . . like . . . like he is. I will be along in a few minutes.”

Jake left the house and returned to the small family plot. As he was filling the grave and covering it over with the last of the dirt, he heard steps behind him.

He set the shovel aside as Mrs. Dawson came and stood beside him. They stood in silence for several minutes. Slowly Samantha came from somewhere and stood silently beside her mother.

“God bless you, John Dawson,” said his wife at length. “You were a man who never learned to give your anger to the God who made you. In the end it cost you your own life—”

At the words, Jake's head jerked toward her. But he remained silent.

“—but you were a good husband,” she went on without noticing. “I never went hungry. You were gentle and kind to me, and though you would rage and fuss about so many things, you never raised your voice or your hand at me. I loved you when I first met you, and I loved you when I woke up this morning. For all your faults . . . I never stopped loving you.”

She choked on her words and began sobbing again. Slowly she knelt to the ground and gently placed her face near the fresh-turned earth, then whispered again, “Oh, John . . . I love you.”

Several minutes more she remained kneeling at the side of the grave, then slowly rose.

Crying herself now, Samantha went to her knees, gently reached out her hand, and placed her palm on the fresh dirt. “Good-bye, Daddy . . . I love you too.”

For the rest of the afternoon, Jake tried to keep his distance. He did not want to intrude. A couple hours later, Mrs. Dawson approached him where he sat beside the barn.

“Would you like something to eat, Jake?” she said.

“Dat I would, ma'am. Dat's right kind ob you. I ain't had much ob nuthin' fo two days.”

“Come inside, then,” she said. “I've been trying to clean up a little. I've got some meat and cheese and milk and bread and fruit on the table.”

Jake followed her to the house.

“What should we do about the two men?” she asked as they walked.

“Dere any lawmen in dese parts?” Jake asked, though he wasn't sure he wanted to put himself anywhere near a white man's jail.

“Our sheriff was killed in the war. Him and so many others. . . . No one's taken his place.”

“Well, I can't kill dem, ma'am. But you ain't safe so long as de're here. Dat is . . . less you'd like ter kill 'em, ma'am. I wudn't have no objections.”

“I couldn't possibly do that,” said Mrs. Dawson with a shudder.

“Neither could I, ma'am.”

They walked into the kitchen. Mrs. Dawson told Jake to sit down. She put a plate in front of him. Jake's teenage appetite was ferocious, and he set about the provisions in front of him without delay.

“Can't you take them someplace, Jake?” asked Mrs. Dawson.

“Where, ma'am?” he asked, his mouth half full of a chunk of bread.

“I don't know, somewhere out in the woods . . . somewhere far away.”

“I don't want dem chasing me down an' killin' me, ma'am.”

“No, of course not—that's not what I meant. Couldn't we put them in a cart or wagon and haul them miles away and leave them?”

“What's ter keep 'em from comin' back an' doin' more mischief?”

“Yes, you're right . . . then what
are
we going to do with them?”

In the end, the plan they hatched was not without risk but was the best they could think of short of simply murdering them.

That evening, Jake hitched up a small wagon and loaded the two men, tied as tight as he could bind them, along with their dead friend, into the back of it. Just before dark that same night, he blindfolded them just as tight, then he set out with Mrs. Dawson at his side. They left the farm, moving south. As the night progressed, with Mrs. Dawson guiding Jake with silent directions, all the while speaking many misleading clues as to their route and various landmarks along the way, they gradually made their way in a wide arc until their actual direction was due north. Having grown up in the region, Mrs. Dawson knew every inch of the territory for miles. By the time they reached one of the ridges of the Cumberland about six miles as the crow flew from her home, she was confident they would need a magician to find their way back.

She motioned Jake to circle a few times, then stop. The night had been long, and the day preceding it even longer. She was exhausted. But the long hours of darkness had given her the chance to dwell somewhat upon her own thoughts concerning the tragedy that had overtaken her.

Jake dragged the dead body out onto the ground, then pulled out the two black men, shoved them onto the ground, and removed their blindfolds.

They squinted in the moonlight. At last they began to see the dim form of Mrs. Dawson standing over them.

“I am going to leave the two of you here with your friend,” she said. “If you can get yourselves free, then God help you. If you can't, dying on this mountain is no more than you deserve. I will spend the rest of my life praying to be able to forgive you for what you have done. I don't know whether
I will succeed or not, but perhaps the Lord's grace will give me strength. But be assured of this, I know how to use my husband's guns. If I ever see either of you at my home again, I will shoot you dead. God be merciful to your souls.”

She turned and climbed back up beside Jake on the wagon. He flicked the reins and they rattled off into the night, heading north, listening to vile shouts and profanities and threats behind them. When she judged that they were out of earshot, Mrs. Dawson directed Jake how to make his way again in a wide circle. At length they found the road south that led them back in the direction of her home.

R
ESPITE

24

I
T WAS ONLY TWO OR THREE HOURS BEFORE DAYBREAK
when Jake and Mrs. Dawson again rode into the yard of the home that had been visited by death and tragedy the day before. Mercifully Bess Dawson was exhausted. Sleep overcame her almost before she collapsed on her bed.

Jake unhitched the team, then sought his former bed of straw in the barn. He did not wake until nearly noon. He found Mrs. Dawson in the kitchen, red-eyed again but strong, as women of all eras have had to be in times of death.

“I reckon I, uh . . . oughter be movin' along,” said Jake. “Duz you mind ef I cud hab jes' a little somethin' ter eat afore I go?”

“Of course not, Jake,” she replied with a sad smile. “I will put you up a few things.”

She paused and a strange look came over her face.

“Do you . . . do you
have
to go, Jake?” she asked after a moment.

“Uh, I don't know, ma'am . . . I don't reckon, but . . . wha'chu mean?”

“Only that . . . I would be,” she began, seemingly embarrassed, “—that is . . . my husband was mending a stretch of fence
he was concerned about, and . . . I'm frightened of those men, and . . .”

She stopped and looked away. For a Southerner to ask for the help of a Negro was about the worst form of degradation imaginable. But being married to John Dawson for more than twenty years had done much to wear away whatever pride might once have existed in the heart of Bess Dawson. She was not above asking a near stranger for help. After what had happened, she saw Jake not as a black but as a fellow human being whom she needed, and maybe whom she could help a little too. How could they consider themselves strangers after what they had been through together?

“Actually the truth is,” she struggled to go on, “I would . . . I'd be obliged if . . . if you would stay for a while, Jake. I could give you jobs to do . . . it would be a big help to me.”

Jake nodded. “No, ma'am,” he said, “I ain't got ter go—I ain't in no hurry ter git anywheres. I don't eben rightly know where I'm going anyway.”

Mrs. Dawson sighed, in obvious relief. “Then sit down and have something to eat.”

Jake remained at the Dawson farm a month.

What Samantha Dawson thought of the arrangement she never said. But Jake suspected well enough from the way she looked at him that she was anything but pleased. Her father's brutal death, however, as well as her own close brush with what would likely have ended in her own, had moderated her anger toward him. She was proud and arrogant, but not completely stupid. She knew that what her mother had said after slapping her across the face was true. Jake had saved their lives, and possibly protected her from rape and becoming the mother of a colored baby. If she would never be capable of actually thanking him, that knowledge at least allowed her to tolerate him.

Mending the broken fence turned Jake's thoughts toward
his own mother and what had happened back at the Winegaard plantation. And the secret . . . the terrible secret that no one knew . . . the secret that haunted him . . . tormented him with the guilt of Cain. Was he too destined forever to be a wanderer . . . running from his past, trying to escape what he could never escape—the hidden evil within his own self?

He threw down the hammer in his hands and clasped his palms to his ears, desperately trying to silence the accusing voice. But it could not be stopped. For it was the voice of his own conscience.