A Place Called Freedom (1995)

29

ON THE DAY AFTER LIZZIE’S FAILED PARTY, MACK heard news of Cora.

It was Sunday, and he went into Fredericksburg wearing his new clothes. He needed to free his mind of thoughts of Lizzie Jamisson, her springy black hair and her soft cheeks and her salt tears. Pepper Jones, who had stayed in the slave quarters overnight, went with him, carrying his banjo.

Pepper was a thin, energetic man about fifty years old. His fluent English indicated he had been in America for many years. Mack asked him: “How did you come to be free?”

“Born free,” he replied. “My ma was white, although it don’t show. My daddy was a runaway, recaptured before I was born—I never saw him.”

Whenever he got the chance Mack asked questions about running away. “Is it right what Kobe says, that all runaways get caught?”

Pepper laughed. “Hell, no. Most get caught, but most are stupid—that’s how come they were captured in the first place.”

“So, if you’re not stupid …?”

He shrugged. “It ain’t easy. As soon as you run away, the master puts an advertisement in the newspaper, giving your description and the clothes you were wearing.”

Clothes were so costly that it would be difficult for runaways to change. “But you could keep out of sight.”

“Got to eat, though. That means you need a job, if you stay inside the colonies, and any man that’s going to employ you has probably read about you in the newspaper.”

“These planters really have things worked out.”

“It’s not surprising. All the plantations are worked by slaves, convicts and indentured servants. If they didn’t have a system for catching runaways, the planters would have starved a long time ago.”

Mack was thoughtful. “But you said ‘if you stay inside the colonies.’ What do you mean by that?”

“West of here is the mountains, and on the other side of the mountains, the wilderness. No newspapers there. No plantations either. No sheriffs, no judges, no hangmen.”

“How big is the territory?”

“I don’t know. Some say it stretches for hundreds of miles before you come to the sea again, but I never met anyone who’s been there.”

Mack had talked about the wilderness with many people, but Pepper was the first he felt inclined to rely on. Others retailed what were obviously fantastic stories in place of hard facts: Pepper at least admitted that he did not know everything. As always, Mack found it exciting to talk about. “Surely a man could disappear over the mountains and never be found!”

“That’s the truth. Also, he could be scalped by Indians and killed by mountain lions. More likely he could starve to death.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve met pioneers who came back. They break their backs for a few years, turning a perfectly good piece of land into a useless patch of mud, then they quit.”

“But some succeed?”

“Must do, I guess, otherwise there wouldn’t be no such place as America.”

“West of here, you said,” Mack mused. “How far are the mountains?”

“About a hundred miles, they say.”

“So close!”

“It’s farther than you think.”

They were offered a ride by one of Colonel Thumson’s slaves who was driving a cart into town. Slaves and convicts always gave one another rides on the roads of Virginia.

The town was busy: Sunday was the day the field hands from the plantations round about came in to go to church or get drunk or both. Some of the convicts looked down on the slaves, but Mack considered he had no reason to feel superior. Consequently he had many friends and acquaintances, and people hailed him at every corner.

They went to Whitey Jones’s ordinary. Whitey was so called because of his coloring, a mixture of black and white; and he sold liquor to blacks even though it was against the law. He could converse equally well in the pidgin spoken by the majority of slaves or the Virginian dialect of the American born. His tavern was a low-ceilinged room smelling of wood smoke, full of blacks and poor whites playing cards and drinking. Mack had no money, but Pepper Jones had been paid by Lizzie and he bought Mack a quart of ale.

Mack enjoyed the beer, a rare treat nowadays. While they were drinking Pepper said: “Hey, Whitey, have you ever run into anyone who crossed the mountains?”

“Sure have,” Whitey said. “There was a trapper in here one time, said it was the best hunting he ever saw, over there. Seems a whole gang of them goes over there every year, and comes back loaded down with pelts.”

Mack said: “Did he tell you what route he took?”

“Seems to me he said there was a pass called the Cumberland Gap.”

“Cumberland Gap,” Mack repeated.

Whitey said: “Say, Mack, weren’t you asking after a white girl called Cora?”

Mack’s heart leaped. “Yes—have you heard tell of her?”

“Seen her—so I know why you’re crazy for her.” He rolled his eyes.

“Is she a pretty girl, Mack?” Pepper teased.

“Prettier than you, Pepper. Come on, Whitey, where did you see her?”

“Down by the river. She was wearing a green coat and carrying a basket, and she was getting the ferry over to Falmouth.”

Mack smiled. The coat, and the fact that she was taking the ferry instead of wading across the ford, indicated that she had landed on her feet again. She must have been sold to someone kind. “How did you know who she was?”

“The ferryman called her by name.”

“She must be living on the Falmouth side of the river—that’s why I didn’t hear of her when first I asked around Fredericksburg.”

“Well, you’ve heard of her now.”

Mack swallowed the rest of his beer. “And I’m going to find her. Whitey, you’re a friend. Pepper, thanks for the beer.”

“Good luck!”

Mack went out of town. Fredericksburg had been built just below the fall line of the Rappahannock River, at the limit of navigation. Oceangoing ships could come this far, but less than a mile away the river became rocky, and nothing but a flatboat could negotiate it. Mack walked to the point where the water was shallow enough to wade across.

He was full of excitement. Who had bought Cora? How was she living? And did she know what had become of Peg? If only he could locate the two of them, and fulfill his promise, he could make serious plans to escape. He had been suppressing his yearning for freedom while he asked after Cora and Peg, but Pepper’s talk of the wilderness beyond the mountains had brought it all back, and he longed to run away. He daydreamed about walking away from the plantation at nightfall, heading west, never again to work for an overseer with a whip.

He looked forward eagerly to seeing Cora. She probably would not be working today: perhaps she could walk out with him. They might go somewhere secluded. As he thought about kissing her, he suffered a pang of guilt. He had woken up this morning thinking about kissing Lizzie Jamisson, and now he was having the same thoughts about Cora. But he was foolish to feel guilty about Lizzie: she was another man’s wife, and there was no future for him with her. All the same his excitement was tinged with discomfort.

Falmouth was a smaller version of Fredericksburg: it had the same wharves, warehouses, taverns and painted wood-frame homes. Mack could probably have called at every residence in a couple of hours. But of course Cora might live out of town.

He went into the first tavern he came across and spoke to the proprietor. “I’m looking for a young woman called Cora Higgins.”

“Cora? She lives in the white house on the next corner, you’ll probably see three cats sleeping on the porch.”

Mack’s luck was in today. “Thank you!”

The man took a watch from his waistcoat pocket and glanced at it. “But she won’t be there now, she’ll be in church.”

“I’ve seen the church. I’ll go there.”

Cora had never been a churchgoer, but perhaps her owner forced her to go, Mack thought as he went outside. He crossed the street and walked two blocks to the little wooden church.

The service had ended and the congregation was coming out, all in their Sunday best, shaking hands and chattering.

Mack saw Cora right away.

He smiled broadly when he saw her. She certainly had been lucky. The starved, filthy woman he had left on the Rosebud might have been a different person. Cora was her old self: clear skin, glossy hair, rounded figure. She was as well dressed as ever, in a dark brown coat and a wool skirt, and she wore good boots. He was suddenly glad he had the new shirt and waistcoat Lizzie had given him.

Cora was talking animatedly to an old woman with a cane. She broke off her conversation as he approached her. “Mack!” she said delightedly. “This is a miracle!”

He opened his arms to embrace her but she held out a hand to shake, and he guessed she did not want to make an exhibition outside the church. He took her hand in both of his and said; “You look wonderful.” She smelled good, too: not the spicy, woody perfume she had favored in London, but a lighter, floral smell that was more ladylike.

“What happened to you?” she said, withdrawing her hand. “Who bought you?”

“I’m on the Jamisson plantation—and Lennox is the overseer.”

“Did he hit your face?”

Mack touched the sore place where Lennox had slashed him. “Yes, but I took his whip from him and broke it in half.”

She smiled. “That’s Mack—always in trouble.”

“It is. Have you any news of Peg?”

“She was taken off by the soul drivers, Bates and Makepiece.”

Mack’s heart sank. “Damn. It’s going to be hard to find her.”

“I always ask after her but I’ve never heard anything.”

“And who bought you? Somebody kind, by the look of you!”

As he spoke a plump, richly dressed man in his fifties came up. Cora said: “Here he is: Alexander Rowley, the tobacco broker.”

“He obviously treats you well!” Mack murmured.

Rowley shook hands with the old woman and said a word to her, then turned to Mack.

Cora said: “This is Malachi McAsh, an old friend of mine from London. Mack, this is Mr. Rowley—my husband.”

Mack stared, speechless.

Rowley put a proprietorial arm around Cora’s shoulders and at the same time shook Mack’s hand. “How do you do, McAsh?” he said, and without another word he swept Cora away.

Why not? Mack thought as he trudged along the road back to the Jamisson plantation. Cora had not known whether she would ever see him again. She had obviously been bought by Rowley and had made him fall in love with her. It must have been something of a scandal for a merchant to marry a convict woman, even in a little colonial town such as Falmouth. However, sexual attraction was more powerful than social rules in the end, and Mack could easily imagine how Rowley had been seduced. It may have been difficult to persuade people like the old lady with the cane to accept Cora as a respectable wife, but Cora had the nerve for anything, and she had obviously carried it off. Good for her. She would probably have Rowley’s babies.

He found excuses for her, but all the same he was disappointed. In a moment of panic she had made him promise to search for her; but she had forgotten him as soon as she got the chance of an easy life.

It was strange: he had had two lovers, Annie and Cora, and both had married someone else. Cora went to bed every night with a fat tobacco broker twice her age, and Annie was pregnant with Jimmy Lee’s child. He wondered if he would ever have a normal family life with a wife and children.

He gave himself a shake. He could have had that if he had really wanted it. But he had refused to settle down and accept what the world offered him. He wanted more.

He wanted to be free.