Another survivor—Tom the blacksmith—observed that the law had hunted Lander for months. He was the intended target. Lander’s rhetoric inflamed passions; he fomented rebellion; he was too uppity to allow to run free. Tom never learned to read but liked to show off his volume of Lander’s Appeal, which the great orator had signed to him.
Joan Watson was born on the farm. She was six years old that night. In the aftermath of the attack she wandered the forest for three days, chewing acorns, until a wagon train discovered her. When she got older, she described herself as a student of American history, attuned to the inevitable. She said that white towns had simply banded together to rid themselves of the black stronghold in their midst. That is how the European tribes operate, she said. If they can’t control it, they destroy it.
If anyone on the farm knew what was to come, they gave no sign. Saturday proceeded in lazy calm. Cora spent most of the day in her bedroom with the latest almanac Royal had given her. He’d picked it up in Chicago. He knocked on her door ’round midnight to give it to her; he knew she was awake. It was late and she didn’t want to disturb Sybil and Molly. Cora took him into her room for the first time.
She broke down at the sight of next year’s almanac. Thick as a book of prayer. Cora had told Royal about the attic days in North Carolina, but seeing the year on the cover—an object conjured from the future—spurred Cora to her own magic. She told him about her childhood on Randall where she had picked cotton, tugging a sack. About her grandmother Ajarry who’d been kidnapped from her family in Africa and tilled a small corner of land, the only thing to call her own. Cora spoke of her mother, Mabel, who absconded one day and left her to the inconstant mercy of the world. About Blake and the doghouse and how she had faced him down with a hatchet. When she told Royal about the night they took her behind the smokehouse and she apologized to him for letting it happen, he told her to hush. She was the one due an apology for all her hurts, he said. He told her that every one of her enemies, all the masters and overseers of her suffering, would be punished, if not in this world then the next, for justice may be slow and invisible, but it always renders its true verdict in the end. He folded his body into hers to quiet her shaking and sobs and they fell asleep like that, in the back room of a cabin on the Valentine farm.
She didn’t believe what he said about justice, but it was nice to hear him say it.
Then she woke up the next morning and felt better, and had to admit that she did believe it, maybe just a little.
Thinking Cora was laid up with one of her headaches, Sybil brought her some food around noon. She teased Cora about Royal staying the night. She was mending the dress she’d wear to the gathering when he “come sneaking out of here holding his boots in his hand and looking like a dog that’d stolen some scraps.” Cora just smiled.
“Your man ain’t the only one come around last night,” Sybil said. Lander had returned.
That accounted for Sybil’s playfulness. Lander impressed her mightily, every one of his visits fortifying her for days after. Those honeyed words of his. Now he had finally come back to Valentine. The gathering would happen, to an unknowable outcome. Sybil didn’t want to move west and leave her home, which everyone assumed to be Lander’s solution. She’d been adamant about staying ever since the talk of resettling started. But she wouldn’t abide Mingo’s conditions, that they stop providing shelter to those in need. “There ain’t no place like here, not anywhere. He wants to kill it.”
“Valentine won’t let him spoil it,” Cora said, though after talking with the man in the library it seemed he’d already packed up in his mind.
“We’ll see,” Sybil said. “I may have to give a speech my own self, and tell these people what they need to hear.”
That night Royal and Cora sat in the front row next to Mingo and his family, the wife and children he had rescued from slavery. His wife, Angela, was silent, as always; to hear her speak, you had to hide under the window of their cabin as she counseled her man in private. Mingo’s daughters wore bright blue dresses, their long pigtails entwined with white ribbons. Lander played guessing games with the youngest one as the residents filled the meeting hall. Her name was Amanda. She held a bouquet of cloth flowers; he made a joke about them and they laughed. When Cora caught Lander at a moment such as this, in a brief lapse between performances, he reminded her of Molly. For all his friendly talk, she thought he’d prefer to be home by himself, playing concerts in empty rooms.
He had long, dainty fingers. How curious that one who’d never picked a boll or dug a trench or experienced the cat-o’-nine-tails had come to speak for those who had been defined by those things. He was lean in build, with glowing skin that announced his mixed parentage. She had never seen him rush or hurry. The man moved with exquisite calm, like a leaf drifting on the surface of a pond, making its own way on gentle currents. Then he opened his mouth, and you saw that the forces steering him to your presence were not gentle at all.
There were no white visitors this night. Everyone who lived and worked on the farm was in attendance, as well as the families from the neighboring colored farms. Seeing them all in one room, Cora got an idea of how large they were for the first time. There were people she’d never seen before, like the mischievous little boy who winked at her when their eyes met. Strangers but family, cousins but never introduced. She was surrounded by men and women who’d been born in Africa, or born in chains, who had freed themselves or escaped. Branded, beaten, raped. Now they were here. They were free and black and stewards of their own fates. It made her shiver.
Valentine gripped the lectern for support. “I didn’t grow up the way you did,” he said. “My mother never feared for my safety. No trader was going to snatch me in the night and sell me south. The whites saw the color of my skin, and that sufficed to let me be. I told myself I was doing nothing wrong, but I conducted myself in ignorance all my days. Until you came here and made a life with us.”
He left Virginia, he said, to spare his children the ravages of prejudice and its bully partner, violence. But saving two children is not enough when God has gifted you with so much. “A woman came to us out of the bitter winter—sick and desperate. We could not save her.” Valentine’s voice rasped. “I neglected my duty. As long as one of our family endured the torments of bondage, I was a freeman in name only. I want to express my gratitude to everyone here for helping me to put things right. Whether you have been among us for years or just a few hours, you have saved my life.”
He faltered. Gloria joined him and gathered his body in hers. “Now some of our family have things they want to share with you,” Valentine said, clearing his throat. “I hope you’ll listen to them like you listen to me. There’s room enough for different notions when it comes to charting our path through the wilderness. When the night is dark and full of treacherous footing.”
The farm’s patriarch withdrew from the lectern and Mingo replaced him. Mingo’s children trailed him, kissing his hands for good luck before returning to the pews.
Mingo opened with the story of his journey, the nights he spent begging the Lord for guidance, the long years it took to purchase his family’s freedom. “With my honest labor, one by one, just as you saved yourselves.” He rubbed a knuckle in his eye.