Sam waved his hand dismissively. “He’s the butt of humor now. He’d been at the end of his career even before”—here he paused—“the incident in Tennessee.”
Cora nodded. Red’s act of murder was not spoken of. The railroad discharged him once they got the full story. Red wasn’t bothered. He had new ideas about how to break the stranglehold of slavery and refused to give up his guns. “Once he lays his hand to the plow,” Royal said, “he is not one to turn back.” Royal was sad to see his friend ride off, but there was no bringing their methods into convergence, not after Tennessee. Cora’s own act of murder he excused as a matter of self-protection, but Red’s naked bloodthirstiness was another matter.
Ridgeway’s penchant for violence and odd fixations had made it hard to find men willing to ride with him. His soiled reputation, coupled with Boseman’s death and the humiliation of being bested by nigger outlaws, turned him into a pariah among his cohort. The Tennessee sheriffs still searched for the murderers, of course, but Ridgeway was out of the hunt. He had not been heard of since the summer.
“What about the boy, Homer?”
Sam had heard about the strange little creature. It was he who eventually brought help to the slave catcher, out in the forest. Homer’s bizarre manner did nothing for Ridgeway’s standing—their arrangement fed unseemly speculations. At any rate, the two disappeared together, their bond unbroken by the assault. “To a dank cave,” Sam said, “as befits those worthless shits.”
Sam stayed on the farm for three days, pursuing the affections of Georgina to no avail. Long enough to mix it up with the shucking bee.
—
THE competition unfolded on the first night of the full moon. The children spent all day arranging the corn into two mammoth piles, inside a border of red leaves. Mingo captained one team—the second year in a row, Sybil observed with distaste. He picked a team full of allies, heedless of representing the breadth of farm society. Valentine’s eldest son, Oliver, gathered a diverse group of newcomers and old hands. “And our distinguished guest, of course,” Oliver said finally, beckoning Sam.
A little boy blew the whistle and the shucking began in a frenzy. This year’s prize was a large silver mirror Valentine had picked up in Chicago. The mirror stood between the piles, tied with a blue ribbon, reflecting the orange flicker of the jack-o’-lanterns. The captains shouted orders to their men while the audience hooted and clapped. The fiddler played a fast and comical accompaniment. The smaller children raced around the piles, snatching the husks, sometimes before they even touched the ground.
“Get that corn!”
“You best hurry up over there!”
Cora watched from the side, Royal’s hand resting on her hip. She had permitted him to kiss her the night before, which he took, not without reason, as an indication Cora was finally allowing him to step up his pursuit. She’d made him wait. He’d wait more. But Sam’s report on Terrance’s demise had softened her, even as it bred spiteful visions. She envisioned her former master tangled in linens, purple tongue poking from his lips. Calling for help that never arrived. Melting to a gory pulp in his casket, and then torments in a hell out of Revelation. Cora believed in that part of the holy book, at least. It described the slave plantation in code.
“This wasn’t harvest on Randall,” Cora said. “It was full moon when we picked, but there was always blood.”
“You’re not on Randall anymore,” Royal said. “You’re free.”
She kept ahold of her temper and whispered, “How so? Land is property. Tools is property. Somebody’s going to auction the Randall plantation, the slaves, too. Relations always coming out when someone dies. I’m still property, even in Indiana.”
“He’s dead. No cousin is going to bother over getting you back, not like he did.” He said, “You’re free.”
Royal joined the singing to change the subject and to remind her that there were things a body could feel good about. A community that had come together, from seeding to harvest to the bee. But the song was a work song Cora knew from the cotton rows, drawing her back to the Randall cruelties and making her heart thud. Connelly used to start the song as a signal to go back to picking after a whipping.
How could such a bitter thing become a means of pleasure? Everything on Valentine was the opposite. Work needn’t be suffering, it could unite folks. A bright child like Chester might thrive and prosper, as Molly and her friends did. A mother raise her daughter with love and kindness. A beautiful soul like Caesar could be anything he wanted here, all of them could be: own a spread, be a schoolteacher, fight for colored rights. Even be a poet. In her Georgia misery she had pictured freedom, and it had not looked like this. Freedom was a community laboring for something lovely and rare.
Mingo won. His men chaired him around the piles of naked cobs, hoarse with cheers. Jimmy said he’d never seen a white man work so hard and Sam beamed with pleasure. Georgina remained unswayed, however.
On the day of Sam’s departure, Cora embraced him and kissed his whiskered cheek. He said he’d send a note when he settled, wherever that was.
They were in the time of short days and long nights. Cora visited the library frequently as the weather turned. She brought Molly when she could coax the girl. They sat next to each other, Cora with a history or a romance, and Molly turning the pages of a fairy tale. A teamster stopped them one day as they were about to enter. “Master said the only thing more dangerous than a nigger with a gun,” he told them, “was a nigger with a book. That must be a big pile of black powder, then!”
When some of the grateful residents proposed building an addition to Valentine’s house for his books, Gloria suggested a separate structure. “That way, anyone with a mind to pick up a book can do so at their leisure.” It also gave the family more privacy. They were generous, but there was a limit.
They put up the library next to the smokehouse. The room smelled pleasantly of smoke when Cora sat down in one of the big chairs with Valentine’s books. Royal said it was the biggest collection of negro literature this side of Chicago. Cora didn’t know if that was true, but she certainly didn’t lack for reading material. Apart from the treatises on farming and the cultivation of various crops, there were rows and rows of histories. The ambitions of the Romans and the victories of the Moors, the royal feuds of Europe. Oversize volumes contained maps of lands Cora had never heard of, the outlines of the unconquered world.
And the disparate literature of the colored tribes. Accounts of African empires and the miracles of the Egyptian slaves who had erected pyramids. The farm’s carpenters were true artisans—they had to be to keep all those books from jumping off the shelves, so many wonders did they contain. Pamphlets of verse by negro poets, autobiographies of colored orators. Phillis Wheatley and Jupiter Hammon. There was a man named Benjamin Banneker who composed almanacs—almanacs! she devoured them all—and served as a confidant to Thomas Jefferson, who composed the Declaration. Cora read the accounts of slaves who had been born in chains and learned their letters. Of Africans who had been stolen, torn from their homes and families, and described the miseries of their bondage and then their hair-raising escapes. She recognized their stories as her own. They were the stories of all the colored people she had ever known, the stories of black people yet to be born, the foundations of their triumphs.
People had put all that down on paper in tiny rooms. Some of them even had dark skin like her. It put her head in a fog each time she opened the door. She’d have to get started if she was going to read them all.