The Healing (38 page)

Polly took a sharp intake of breath. “I’m all right.” She managed to lift her head. “Just my legs, mostly. I’ll get them to working directly.”

Master Ben was pleading now. “Polly, if you know to try anything,
anything at all, there’s nothing to lose. Granada said something about the way you healed Daniel Webster.”

Granada saw the mistress stiffen, scalding her husband with her stare. The girl wondered if the woman was more upset at her husband for begging a slave for her son’s life or for suggesting Polly use monkey medicine to save him.

“Master,” Polly said, “I only tried it that one time. I just can’t take that chance with a flesh-and-blood boy this far gone.” Polly looked up into Master Ben’s face. “I’m not going to kill your son.”

“You’ll be killing him if you don’t try!” Master Ben blurted. “Why … I’ll kill you myself if you don’t try. I’ll hang you before you ever get to Delphi.”

She went quiet again. Granada was afraid Polly was losing consciousness. Her body was going limp.

Her voice seemed to come from the grave. “All right, then. If I try,” she said, her speech halting, as she rationed her breath, “and if the boy dies, you have to hang me. You got to promise it. I can’t have it on my head that I killed your son.”

For a moment Master Ben was at a loss for words. “Have you gone mad?” he finally blurted.

Granada was in agreement. This was not like Polly at all. She was delirious. The girl looked into Polly’s face. Then she saw it. The old woman’s expression might have been one of near-death exhaustion, but the devil was in her eyes.

“Promise it!” she rasped.

“Promise her!” the mistress implored. “For God’s sake, Benjamin! I’ll promise her if you won’t.”

“My God, yes! I promise,” Master Ben sputtered. “We’re wasting time with this foolishness.”

But Polly gave no indication that she was ready to lift a hand to heal the boy. Granada could tell the woman was gathering her strength. Her breath was becoming deeper, more regular.

“And by the same turn,” she said at last, life seeping back into her voice, “if he was to live …”

“Yes, go on,” the master urged. “If he was to live … what?”

“If he was to live,” she said, her voice reclaiming some of its old vinegar, “I can’t let it be said that your precious
white
child owes his life to no nigger slave.”

“Goddamn, you are mad!” the master snapped. “I don’t care who he owes his life to.”

Polly held her tongue now. Granada couldn’t help but grin, amazed at the old woman’s gumption.

The mistress grasped the meaning before her husband. “Fool!” Mistress Amanda cried. “She wants her freedom. Promise it to her.”

Master Ben clenched his fist and his eyes flared. “I won’t be blackmailed!”

“I swear, if you let your pride kill another child—”

“Enough, Amanda!” The forked vein in the master’s forehead throbbed. Granada could tell he was still considering his options, but there was no other move to make.

“Fine!” he said, glaring at the woman. “You have my word. You go free if Little Lord lives. Is that what you want?
Now
can you see to my boy?”

“You swear it on your boy’s life,” Polly said, making things plain. The old woman began to straighten, shifting more weight to her own legs.

“I swear it on my boy’s life,” the master said, speaking the words like they were acid in his mouth.

Almost as an afterthought, Polly said, “And the girl, too.” She turned her face to Granada and gave her the faintest of grins.

Master Ben nodded his promise. “Now, will you do something before it’s too late?”

“All right, then,” Polly pronounced, standing on her own two feet now, still a little wobbly. “We understand each other. Now both of you get out of my way so I can save your boy. Go stand in that corner.”

Granada was astounded. Red-faced, both the master and the mistress followed Polly’s pointing finger.

Polly limped over to an armchair and fell back into the deep cushion
with a groan. She reached into her apron pocket and retrieved a small vial and began rolling it between her palms, warming the liquid.

“Granada,” she said, “you should have already had that boy’s leg cleaned. First, get him laid so his heart is higher up than that bite. Chester, you lift him to where Granada says. Sylvie, rip me three long strips of the mistress’s fine linen to bind the boy’s leg. Long enough to tie a good knot. Lizzie, you get ready to help me to my feet when I tell you.”

The room came alive with activity, everybody following their orders. Granada began by looking for more pillows to prop under Little Lord. She knelt to retrieve one off the floor that had somehow been kicked partway under the bed. She was in such a hurry she didn’t give what she saw there, lying wadded under the bed, a second thought. The sight registered only a vague unease, but it was something that could be attended to later when the immediate crisis had passed.

In a short time Lizzie had Polly standing over Little Lord, forcing some kind of potion down his throat. The boy gagged, managing to swallow only a tiny amount of the dark liquid.

Master Ben jumped to his feet. “He’s choking! What are you giving him?”

“Something that works better when I ain’t got nobody standing over my shoulder.”

The master took two steps back. It was obvious that no one was up to arguing with even a severely weakened Polly.

The old woman kept at it, giving Little Lord a small dose at a time, and then massaging it down his throat. After several repetitions, the boy swallowed without resistance. It was only then she bothered answering the master’s question.

“It got some skullcap and some snakeroot and some black sampson. Some other things Daniel Webster whispered in my ear. I’ll show you how and you can write it in one of your books. I reckon you done paid for it.” She looked at his wife and chuckled. “It even got a drop
or two of monkey blood. I calls it my monkey potion. Course you can name it what you want to.”

Granada had never heard of such a remedy. And how strange Polly would have it freshly made, ready to go. That’s when the nagging discovery from before forced itself into the forefront of her mind. She knelt down to look once more.

Her eyes had not been playing tricks. There it was. But it made no sense. How did Polly’s herb sack get under Little Lord’s bed?

Granada was certain Polly hadn’t brought it into the room with her. In fact, the sack should still be in the hospital, where it was when Bridger had dragged Polly to the stables. It should be where she had left it when she came in that last morning, tied at the neck and dropped in an iron washpot by the hearth. Granada had thought it strange at the time. The early hour. Polly being out in the weather. And why had she tied it off? She had never done that before.

Granada shivered when she remembered how the muddy bottom of the sack had sagged with the weight of its contents.

But how? she thought as she reached for the sack.

“Silly me!” a voice from behind announced as a hand snatched the sack from Granada’s fingers. “That’s where my mop rag got off to.”

Granada swiveled around to see Lizzie stooped behind her, grinning and clutching the muddy sack close to her chest. In the light of the lamp it was clear that her good eye shone as brightly as a brand-new day.

G
ranada watched hard and silent as Polly packed her tote sack.

The girl was corralling her courage for the moment she would be forced to make her stand.

“We got to travel light,” Polly said as she retrieved a jar from her trunk, “so make sure you got a knife and some twine handy in your pocket. Fetch two small bowls and a few stoppered bottles and pack them in that nice hunting pouch Little Lord give you for going away. Maybe some scraps of burlap would be good to have. Such things as that. And don’t forget your pick and digging spoon. Everything else the road will give us.”

Granada didn’t move. Since the day Polly got that moccasin to bite Little Lord, Granada suspected there were more secrets crawling around than snakes in the yard.

The girl held her sulking stare until Polly at last glanced up at her. Granada set her jaw.

“Granada,” she asked, “why ain’t you doing like I say? Best to leave while we can.” She laughed. “You know how the pharaoh changed his mind that time he let Moses go!”

“I might not want to go.” Her voice did not tremble as much as she had feared.

“What do you mean you don’t want to go? You’re free now. You can go anywhere you please. Nobody can make you stay here.”

Granada crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t know the first thing about no Freedomland.”

“I
told
you Freedom ain’t no place you go to!” Polly said. “You free if you stay. You free if you go. You free to be a slave, if you got a mind to. From now on, Freedom is anywhere you stand.” Polly sighed heavily. “You still mad at me because of what I did to Little Lord?”

“How could you do that?” Granada blurted. “It was you made that snake bite him.”

“You hurting for Little Lord or you mad at me because I didn’t tell you about the snake potion?”

“Everybody knew! I had to figure it out myself, but now I know what you done. Silas come in the kitchen out of the storm with your sack of snakes under his coat, didn’t he? And then he give it to Lizzie. And then Lizzie took it up to Little Lord’s room and put a snake in his bed, didn’t she? That about right?”

“Yes, that’s about right,” Polly admitted.

“You told everybody but me!”

“You might have tried to save Little Lord from getting bit. I didn’t know for sure.”

“Did you know
for sure
Little Lord wouldn’t die?” Granada asked.

“No, not for sure.”

“But you didn’t care. Like he was just a tangle in your weave?” Granada looked at the floor. “And Rubina’s baby. Was she just a tangle? She was one of the people, weren’t she, Polly? And … me? I reckon you thinking I’m a tangle, too.”

“No, baby.” Polly walked over and stroked her hair. “Them things ain’t got nothing to do with you. This is bigger than you. Bigger than me. Them things is about all of us.”

“You talking about the weave of things,” Granada said, sniffing. “But Sylvie and Chester is in my weave. And Little Lord and the mistress. They all here. And my momma, she’s here. And her momma. This is the place I know. And I can heal folks now. They need me here.”

“Yes, they do.”

“But what if nobody needs me where you going? What if you die? You almost did already. And then there won’t be nobody to look out for me. Whoever owns that Freedomland might up and send me to the fields.” Surely they had fields and swamps in this new land. Maybe worse.

“That why you so scared? Because you thinking you don’t have a say in things? You thinking I’m making you go?”

“Ain’t you?”

“No, ma’am.”

Granada swallowed hard. “You letting me stay?”

“I ain’t
letting
you do nothing.” Polly laughed, but then her voice turned serious. “Granada, you got so much to learn about Freedom. You got to make up your own mind now. You are a free woman. If you come with me, you got to come as a free woman, not a slave and not a child that’s dragged this place and that, being told what to do. But either way, going with me or staying put, it’s going to be your first step as a free woman. You the one got to take it.” Polly smiled. “I can chew your food but you the one got to swallow.”

“I don’t
have
to go?” Granada asked.

“Going with me or staying put,” Polly repeated, “neither one right, neither one wrong. It all hangs on the woman what does the choosing. You the one got to make it right. But I’ll warn you now. Getting free is easy. Staying free ain’t.”

Polly nodded once, the way she did when she was through with arguing. The old woman reached into her ginghamed bosom and retrieved the leather pouch that hung around her neck by a string. She carefully removed a folded piece of parchment and held it out to Granada.

“These your Freedom papers. Mail rider brought them in from Jackson this morning. Signed by the white men who claim to have say-so about Freedom and such.”

Granada didn’t reach for the packet at once. Instead she shoved her hands into her apron pockets, still not sure what Polly was up to. A warm November breeze wafted through the trees outside the window.
She heard a gentle sprinkling as the wind loosed a thousand droplets of water that had held tight to the leaves since the last downpour. Polly waved the paper in the girl’s face. The draft of air made her blink.

“Go on ahead. They yours.”

Granada refused to touch them, not knowing what touching Freedom even meant, what it bound her to.

Polly unfolded the paper and pointed with her bony finger. “See here? What’s that name say?”

“Granada Satterfield,” the girl read, amazed her name was known in someplace called Jackson, beyond her world of levees and swamps.

“That’s your slave name,” Polly said. “That’s going to be the second thing you do as a free woman. You got a right to call yourself what you want to. Granada, from now on you get to hear what you want to. See what you want to. Think what you want to. And you can stand where you damn well please. It’s not my place or nobody else’s to tell you these things no more.”