The Triumph of Grace (23 page)

A
ll night, Grace tossed on her corn husk mattress in haunted sleep. Her dreams, harsh remembrances from the past, tangled together with strange things that never were.

Her mother, Lingongo, scolding, scolding, scolding. Then Mama Muco brought Grace's gazelle, Bondo, back to her, alive and well . . .

Her father Joseph, his face blotchy and red, sailing out of the flames of Zulina fortress, shouting curses at her. Then Heath Patterson's barn—Joseph again, this time with Lingongo beside him, their arms wide open, called out to Grace . . .

Lord Reginald Witherham running after her. Then Charlotte and Ena both put out their feet and together blocked his way . . .

Captain Hallam forcing her onto the slave auction block.Then Captain Ross jumped up next to her on the table, his Holy Bible open and in his hand a silk purse bulging with shillings.

Grace awoke with first light. She got up quickly and straightened her rumpled dress. The kitchen was clammy and damp. Outside, rain fell heavily. Grace started the fire in the fireplace.

"Uncommon weather this morning," John Hull said. He stepped up to the fire to warm his hands. "A late rain is fine, but we do not want a flood just as the crops are setting."

Grace fried up bread and pork back fat, and put it on a plate for her master's breakfast.

"The fire is warm and bright," John said. "A good morning to read, I dare say. Whilst you clean the dishes, I will find our place in the Bible."

Grace did not argue. John Hull was still her master. Anyway, the sooner their reading was finished, the sooner he would set her free. Free! After so much anticipation and hope, she hardly knew how to imagine it.

John read the rest of the book of First Corinthians, and then he read Second Corinthians.

"I'll see about the weather," he said. He pushed his chair back and opened the door. "More rain than before!" John called. He came back to the table and sat down. "This is most definitely a day to read."

John read Galatians. When he got to the end of chapter three, he read: " 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.' "

"What?" Grace asked.

John read the verse again: " 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.' "

"Is that true when you go to church on Sundays?" Grace asked.

"Is what true?" John said.

"That everyone is just the same. That slaves are the same as freemen. Women are the same as men."

John stared at her. Every Sunday morning he dressed in his best suit and put on his good shoes and went to the meetinghouse to hear the preacher preach. Of course he never took Grace along with him. Not a slave. Such a thing would never be allowed in the white Christian meetinghouse.

"Over at Brampton's barn, maybe five . . . six miles from here, a Reverend Abraham Marshall leads an African Church," John offered. "Baptist, I believe it is. I could take you over there, sometime."

"And you would stay and worship, too?" Grace asked.

"I said it is an African church," John said.

"I do not understand. If it is true what you read . . . If we are all one . . . why are things divided up the way they are?"

"I don't know, Grace," John said. "I do not know." He thought for a minute. "I surely do not know."

The rain didn't let up until late in the afternoon, and even then the ground was too water-soaked to allow for any work.So John Hull continued to read the short books of Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians. He also read all of Thessalonians, First and Second, all of Timothy, First and Second, and the short book of Titus. By then the hour was late and the fire had burned low.

"Philemon," John said. "It's only one page long. Let's read one more page."

As John read the Apostle Paul's letter to his friend Philemon, whose runaway slave he had met and whose case he was pleading, Grace's eyes filled with tears. John read verses 15 and 16: " 'For perhaps he therefore departed for a season, that thou shouldest receive him for ever; Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh, and in the Lord?' "

Grace burst into tears.

"What is it, Grace?" John said. He laid the Bible down."Please . . . I insist that you tell me what causes you such distress!"

And so Grace sobbed out her story. She told of her family compound in Africa where she was raised, of Lingongo and Joseph Winslow and Mama Muco. She told about the threatened marriage to Jasper Hathaway, and her escape from her first slavery. And she told of the slave rebellion at Zulina fortress, and of the survivors who built a village of their own. She told of the happy years there, of Cabeto and of Kwate, but also of the slavers who came and forced them all away. She told John about Cabeto and the other villagers who were chained up and forced aboard the slave ship, and of her promise to Cabeto that she would find him and they would be together again. She told of her year in London, and of the treachery of Lord Reginald Witherham. But she also told of the good people who had risked so much to save her, and to get her to America. Then she told of Captain Hallam, and of the auction block.

" 'Departed for a season,' " Grace wept, " 'that thou shouldest receive him for ever.' For a season, it says. And that's what I believed. But the season has been too long. And too much has happened that is too terrible. I do not think I will ever again receive my Cabeto."

John pulled the Bible back over to himself. He traced the words down the page with his finger. When he found the place, he read it out loud: " '. . . that thou shouldest receive him for ever; Not now as a servant, but above as servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh, and in the Lord?' "

For a long time, he sat in silence. Grace wiped her face with her sleeve and waited uncomfortably for him to speak.But still he sat.

Finally John read the verse again, slowly and distinctly: " '. . . a brother beloved, especially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in flesh, and in the Lord.' " He rubbed his hand over his face. "Grace," he said, "I don't think this is speaking to you."

"Why?" Grace asked. "Because I'm nothing but a colored woman? Just a slave?"

"No, no," John said. "It's not that at all. It's because he is talking to Philemon, and I am the one in Philemon's place, not you. This is talking to me."

"What?" Grace asked.

John laid the faded red ribbon in its place and turned back to the Old Testament. He continued to turn back section after section until he found the book of Micah again. He traced down with his finger to chapter six, verse eight, and read:

He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

"Maybe this is my chance to do what God requires of me," he said.

Y
our porridge is greatly improved," John told Grace.

Grace laughed out loud. "A small touch of salt," she said."But only a very small touch!"

Those were the only words John spoke to her before he left. He put on a freshly washed shirt and his Sunday shoes, and he yoked the oxen to the small two-wheeled cart. Grace opened the door a crack and watched him drive the cart down the road.

When the housework was finished, Grace went outside to care for the goats and feed the chickens. She collected four eggs in her skirt and brought them in the house for dinner.Her master still had not returned, so she went back to the garden to work until time to cook.

Noon came and went, and John Hull was not home, so Grace continued in the garden, clearing the weeds away from the vegetables. When the sun sank low, she washed the dirt from her hands and went to the kitchen to prepare supper.

By the time John finally returned home, Grace had set boiled eggs on the table alongside fresh tomatoes and a bowl of mashed vegetables.

"Tomorrow you should wash the clothes," John told Grace as he sat down. "And bake bread, too. The day after we will prepare for a long journey."

"Where will we go, sir?" Grace asked.

"Back to Charleston," John said. "To find Cabeto."

Grace put on the baggiest, most faded of the two dresses Lily Ambrose had given her. She didn't mind if that one got dirty, because she had already determined that Cabeto would never see her in it. She rolled up the floppy sleeves, took the bucket of hot water from the fire, and set to work scrubbing the clothes clean. Dirt and mud and cooking stains—she knew how to force them all out. Missus Peete had taught her well.

When Grace finished the washing, she took the wet clothes outside and spread them out over the split rail fences. Not the fences around the goat pen, of course. It would never do to have the goats nibble on Master John's clothes.

After that, Grace fried up a stack of flat bread. She cut slices of cheese and ham, which she wrapped in paper, and she boiled eggs. All the food she put into a box John Hull gave her. She ran out to the garden and plucked off as many tomatoes as she could carry, and she poked them around into the corners of the box.

How would they find Cabeto? And what would happen when they did? He was a slave, after all. Someone else's property.Grace longed to ask her master, but it wasn't her place to question him.

The next day, Mister Chase Ambrose and Missus Lily drove their wagon up the lane to John's house. Missus Lily inspected Grace's vegetable garden while Chase looked over the corn- fields and the growing hay. After Missus Lily helped herself to a basket of fresh vegetables, she moved over to the dirt courtyard and sat down on an upended barrel to wait while Mister Chase and John Hull disappeared into the barn.

Grace was stirring supper over the fireplace when she heard the Ambrose's wagon clatter away down the lane. Not too long after, John stomped his feet on the step outside and came into the house.

"I will load up the wagon at first light," he said, "and we can be off."

Grace laid out her master's supper. "Mister Ambrose will care for the goats and chickens?" she asked.

John pulled out his chair and sat down. "I sold the house and the farm to him," he said. "I won't be coming back."

Eight days back to Charleston. The trip didn't take as long as the trip out to Savanna, because this time the oxen only had to pull the two-wheeled cart instead of a fully-loaded wagon. John Hull had left the wagon behind with the farm.They went back across the river, back over the dusty roads, back past green fields. Grace still sat in the bed of the cart, but this time she rode more comfortably and unfettered.

One evening, as Grace and John ate a supper of boiled eggs and bread beside the banks of a river, Grace asked, "What will you do now, sir, without your farm?"

"I'll be a preacher," John said. "Just as I always wanted.Now that I can read."

Grace thought for a minute.

"But where will you live?" Grace asked.

"Nowhere," John said. "And everywhere. I will be what is called an itinerant preacher—one who travels around in the manner of the great Methodist Francis Asbury. I'll go where I am needed and stay wherever a home is open to me. It's a blessed life."

"Reverend Francis Asbury?" Grace asked. "Sir Thomas gave me a letter for him. I had it in my sea chest, but Captain Hallam wouldn't let me go back for it. Sir Thomas sent him word asking for help to find Cabeto."

John Hull shook his head slowly and smiled. "Should I ever meet the good reverend, I will tell him about you," he said.

On the eighth night, John stopped the oxen in a grove of trees alongside a small pond. "Wash yourself tonight, Grace," he said. "And put on your good dress. Tomorrow we will be in Charleston."

"A slave, name of Caleb," John Hull said to a white man who waited as two slaves loaded sacks onto his wagon. "Would you know of him?"

The man shook his head.

"Thank you kindly," John said.

He asked the same of an outdoor vendor, and of a fishmonger, and of two colored men who worked on the road. All shook their heads "no." He asked an overseer with a group of slaves, and a man and his wife on their way to St. Philip's Church. He asked and he asked and he asked, but everyone gave him the same answer: "No, I know nothing of that slave."

John asked two men sitting at tea in a small eating establishment, "My good sirs, would you know anything of a slave name of Caleb?"

"Macon Waymon's Caleb, would it be?" the pudgier of the two men said. "The one who works the cotton gin?"

John was so used to people shaking their heads "no" that he was momentarily at a loss for words. He quickly recovered himself and asked, "Lame, is he?"

"Yes," the pudgy man said. "That be the same slave."

When John Hull approached Macon Waymon with an offer to buy Caleb, Macon laughed out loud.

"
You,
sir?" Macon said. He looked John up and down with a most critical eye. "I do believe my price for such a slave as Caleb would be far beyond your reach."

But Macon Waymon happened to be in the company of his business partner, Samuel Shaw, at the time, and Mister Shaw found an immediate pretext to call Macon aside.

"This is an excellent opportunity for you to separate a foolish man from his money, and to chasten a careless slave at the same time," Samuel said to Macon.

"I don't want to sell Caleb," Macon said. "He knows how to keep my cotton engine running."

"He's a smart Negro, all right," Samuel said. "But he knows a lot more than how to work with his hands. He also knows how to work you."

Macon, color rising in his face, turned on his friend.

But before he could argue, Samuel said, "You are losing control of that slave, Macon. I see it, and the other slaves see it, too. They know he steals chickens from you just like you know it . . . and he takes whatever else he pleases, too, I have no doubt. He sleeps when he should work. The slave quarters rumble with rumors that he will run away, but you don't hear those rumors because you choose to close your ears to them."

Samuel brushed off Macon's blustered denial.

"Use your head, man," Samuel said. "You have two advantageous opportunities laid out before you. Do you know who this John Hull is? He's the fool farmer who bought Pace Williamson's slave that can read. Sell Caleb to him, but don't give him a receipt. That way you can insist the purchase never was completed and refuse to allow Caleb to go with him."

"Get the money for Caleb, and keep him, too?" Macon asked.

"Show your slaves that no one can outsmart you."

Macon Waymon furrowed his brow thoughtfully and rubbed his hand across his jaw. "Caleb is a valuable slave, Mister Hull," he said to John.

"I am prepared to give you a fair price for him," John said.

"Well, now, in my estimation, seven hundred dollars would be a fair price."

John gasped. "Seven hundred dollars? That is much more than I anticipated."

"As I say, Caleb is a valuable slave."

Macon glanced over at Samuel Shaw, who stood off to the side in the shade of the magnolia tree.

"What amount did you have in mind?" Macon asked.

"Well, I didn't know," John said. "I thought perhaps three hundred."

"Three hundred!" Macon exclaimed. "Even five hundred would be too little for such a one as he."

John Hull shook his head. For several minutes he said nothing.

"I can give you four hundred right now," John finally offered.

Macon sneaked another look at Samuel.

"Four hundred fifty," Macon said. "Not one dollar less."

John took his purse from his vest pocket. Carefully he counted out four hundred and fifty dollars, which he handed to Macon Waymon.

"Thank you kindly, sir," Macon said to John. "Go on down to the slave quarters. I shall get the receipt ready and meet you there shortly."