Currents (6 page)

“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.

“W
hy 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.