American Dreams (15 page)

"I will stay until he returns," he stated firmly, as if anticipating an argument from her.
 

"Yes."

"And when your father arrives ..."

Temple opened her eyes and felt her breath catch at the look on his face—so serious, so possessive. "Yes?" she prompted him.

"I want you to be my wife." His expression flickered, subtly changing, the dimpling crease appearing in one cheek and a hint of mockery glinting in his eyes. "Aren't you going to say anything?"

"I do not recall being asked anything," she replied, deliberately matching his tone, feeling gloriously playful.

"It is what you wanted. Marriage has been in your mind from the beginning."

"But it has not been in yours."

"No," The Blade admitted. "A wife, a home, a family—I didn't want that yet. When I was in the mountains, I followed the vein of gold wherever it led me, digging, crushing, hauling off the leavings—all for the rich yellow dust and few nuggets I found that made it worth it. To have the thing you desire, you must accept what comes with it."

"And do you desire me?" She wanted the words. She wanted to hear him speak of his feelings for her.

"Desire? That doesn't describe it." He pulled her close again, burying his face in her hair. "To breathe and not inhale the fragrance of your hair, to listen and not hear your whispered words of love, to look and not see the midnight brightness of your eyes gazing back at me, to touch"—he paused to trail the tips of his fingers over her cheek and onto her neck—"and not feel the satin smoothness of your skin, and ... to taste"—he brought his lips close to her mouth, brushing feather-light against her sensitive curves—"and not savor the wildness of your kiss, that would not be living, Temple."

"It is the same for me." Only with The Blade did she feel truly alive.

As her mouth moved against his, need whipped through him again, raw and urgent. Even as he satisfied it, it grew. In that moment he knew time would never lessen the feeling. That was the wondrous power of it—and the beauty of it.

 

When Phoebe and Shadrach failed to arrive for the start of school the next morning, Eliza rang the bell a second time. Unable to delay any longer, she began the morning lessons without them.

At the noon recess, the children ran out to play before the dinner meal was served. Eliza's thoughts turned again to Phoebe and Shadrach and their absence from morning classes. She found them in the kitchen with Black Cassie. The instant she appeared, Shadrach darted a look at her and bowed his head, concentrating all his attention on the potatoes he was peeling, his hunched shoulders conveying the impression of both guilt and dejection. When Eliza turned to Phoebe, she, too, was reluctant to meet her eyes.

"You were not at school this morning," she said. "I missed you."

"We's had to work," Phoebe mumbled.
 

"We
had to work," Eliza corrected.

"Yes'm." She ducked her head and shot a quick, sideways glance at the buxom woman next to the hearth's cookfire.

Sensing something was wrong, Eliza wondered if they thought she was going to punish them for not attending classes this morning. Surely by now they had learned she wasn't given to corporal action. "You come early tomorrow and I will go over the lessons we had today," she promised, injecting extra warmth into her voice to assure them she wasn't angry.

Shadrach finally looked up, a hurt and resentful expression in his dark eyes. "We can't come no—anymore." Again he lowered his gaze, then mumbled, "Our mammy says so."

"But... why?" Stunned, Eliza turned to Black Cassie.

"They ain't gwine t' come t' that school o' yours no more."

"But they have learned so much," Eliza protested. "Shadrach is one of my brightest students. How can you deny them this opportunity to receive an education?"

"She thinks those white men will come back," Phoebe offered tentatively.

Astounded and mildly angry, Eliza stared at Cassie. "Surely you are not going to allow those bullies to frighten you into keeping your children out of school? This is not Georgia. There is nothing they can do."

"Oh, yes, there is. You don't know, Miz 'Liza, but I does," Cassie declared. "They ain't gwine t' allow no darky chillun t' be edjicated. They'll stop it, sure as night comes. But they ain't gwine t' hurt my babies, 'cause my babies ain't gwine t' that school no more. They knows their place, my babies does. An' they's gwine t' stay in it, too."

Eliza wanted to argue with her, but she was suddenly haunted by the image of the way those men had looked at Shadrach and Phoebe—the ugliness in their eyes. Had the children been in more danger yesterday than she had realized? The slave codes adopted by the Southern states, including Georgia, not only labeled the education of Negroes a crime, but also called for harsh punishment for any violators. Considering the way these bands of Georgian vigilantes had terrorized the Nation with their beatings and robbings, Eliza was forced to concede that Cassie had cause to fear for her children. She could not, in good conscience, ask the woman to expose them to danger again.

"I understand," she said and quietly left the kitchen. She felt guilty and frustrated—frustrated because there was nothing she could do to change the situation.

 

She missed them, especially Shadrach's rapt face looking back at her. The first three days, Eliza kept watching the window, hoping he would be outside listening to the lessons as he once had. But he never appeared.

The haunting nightsong of a whippoorwill echoed plaintively through the darkness as Eliza retraced her steps to the log school to retrieve a shawl she had inadvertently left there. She sighed deeply, wondering if Shadrach and Phoebe felt as cheated as she did; they, out of the chance to learn, and she, out of the chance to teach them.

Glancing ahead, she noticed a faint glow lighting one of the windows. Had someone set fire to the school? Eliza experienced a stab of fear. The Georgians—was this how they intended to stop her from teaching slaves? She quickened her pace, then broke into a run. As she hurried up the steps, she heard a scuffling movement inside the school.

She flung open the door, demanding, "Who's there?"

When she crossed the threshold, someone scrambled out the side window. Eliza halted, stunned to discover the room was pitch-black. There was no light. But the intruder had been real, of that she was certain. She ran to the window just as the saucer-shaped moon came out from behind a cloud and revealed a small, dark figure racing madly for the big hickory tree and flinging himself behind its broad trunk.

She swung away from the window and looked about the shadowed room. In the dim light, Eliza saw something on the floor. She went to investigate and found a primer and a candle. The melted wax was still pliable and warm. Eliza picked up the book and smiled.

"Shadrach," she whispered and clutched the book to her breast. "Dear little Shadrach. You want to learn, don't you? You will not be frightened off. Not to worry. I will help you, and no one shall ever know. It will be our secret. I promise."

She relit the candle and carried it to her desk. Blotting the tears from her eyes with one hand, she dipped the pen in the inkwell with the other and carefully wrote out the instructions for the next day's lesson, deliberately not addressing it to anyone and leaving it unsigned. She placed it atop the primer, set the candle near it, then retrieved her shawl and left the school.

As she passed by the hickory tree on her way to the house, something scraped against the bark. "You gave me a frightful scare, Mr. Moon," she said in a very loud voice. "I thought someone was in the school, but it was only you, wasn't it? I am glad I went in, though. I had forgotten to leave the instructions for tomorrow's lesson on my desk."

Eliza strolled past the tree, not even looking to see if Shadrach was still behind it. The next morning, the instructions, primer, and candle were sitting on her desk,
almost
exactly where she had left them. From then on, every day she left a different textbook on her desk, along with a set of directions and a new candle.

 

 

 

13

 

 

On a fine spring morning in late March, when the forsythia was a blaze of yellow and the blossoming dogwood spread a web of white lace in the woods, Will Gordon returned. Temple was on her way back to the big house after tending to the sick in the Negro quarters when she saw him riding up the lane.

Beside her, Shadrach paused to look down at his bare feet and the tender green blades of grass poking up between his toes, the weather now warm enough that the slaves no longer wore their winter shoes.

Temple pressed her woven basket containing bandages, herbs, and ointments into his hands. "Quick. Go tell everyone my father is back," she said, not taking her eyes off the approaching horse and rider.

Shadrach dashed toward the house with the news.

She veered off the brick path and cut across the lawn to welcome him home. Just short of the front entrance, he saw her and reined in his horse while he waited for her to reach him.

Suddenly the front door opened and Kipp and Xandra ran out, followed closely by Eliza and Victoria, with little John in her arms. Temple quickly reached them. Eliza stepped back, allowing them to rush forward and embrace him in affectionate welcome.

"I am glad you came home," Xandra declared, holding on to the leg of his trousers while Will shifted his youngest son to the crook of his other arm. "I missed you."

"I missed you, too." Will stroked the top of her head in a loving caress.

 

The news of his return from the federal capital spread rapidly through the countryside. By the noon hour, a dozen visitors were at the dining room table, including The Blade and his father, Shawano Stuart. All were eager to hear the results of the delegates' sojourn in Washington and to relate the latest happenings at home.

"The situation has grown worse while you were away, Will."

"Yes," another spoke up. "A dozen or more white men were arrested for violating the licensing law, including several of the missionaries—Samuel Worcester, Isaac Proctor, and Nathan Cole."

"A comic sight it was, too, Will," The Blade inserted dryly. "Men armed with muskets rode up to the missions, led by a wagon carrying a large drum. A boy not much older than your son Kipp banged away on it while another man marched behind it tootling away on a fife. They arrested the men—without warrants—let them say good-bye to their families, then marched them off to Lawrenceville."

"I was told they were released," Will said, an eyebrow arched in question.

"They were. The judge dismissed the charges against them. Since missionaries are also postmasters, he considered them to be federal employees, and therefore not subject to the Georgia licensing law," Eliza explained. "When Na—Mr. Cole stopped by afterward, he assured me he was treated well. He also said several prominent Georgians were very sympathetic and expressed strong disapproval of such actions."

"But even they want the Cherokees to remove," the man across from her asserted.

"You should hear the songs the Georgians sing, Father," Temple declared, then proceeded to give him a sampling of the latest air.

 

" 'Go, nature's child.

Your home's in the wild;

Our venom cannot grip ye

If once you'll roam,

And make your home

Beyond the Mississippi.' "

 

"Have you forgotten the other one they sing?" The Blade mocked.

 

" 'All I ask in this creation

Is a pretty little wife and a big plantation

Way up yonder in the Cherokee Nation.' "

 

"No, I have not." For an instant, her dancing gaze met the challenge of his, then fell away.

"Is it true what they say, Will?" Shawano Stuart said in English, out of courtesy to Eliza. "The raiders have grown bolder?"

"I... have read some of the accounts published in the
Phoenix?
Will admitted.

"Then you know how they have ridden down some of our people and tried to trample them under the hooves of their horses," said one man. "They shot an old man who did not move swiftly enough to open a gate for them. Another hanged himself when he saw it. I think he was too saddened by all that has happened and could not bear to look upon more suffering by our people."

"No one is safe anymore," another insisted. "When they came here to your plantation—"

"What?" Will snapped, his head coming up, a frown creasing his face. "When was this?"

For an instant, there was silence in the room. Temple started to answer, but Eliza was quicker. "The Georgia Guard stopped by earlier this month. I saw no need to inform you about it since they caused no trouble and left almost immediately."

Temple smiled. "You would have been proud of the way she stood up to them, Father."

Conscious of his gaze on her, Eliza felt uncomfortable and awkward. She found it embarrassing when Temple went on to relate, in detail, the incident at the schoolhouse.

"You have my deepest gratitude, Miss Hall," Will said quietly when Temple finished.

"It is quite unwarranted, I assure you," Eliza replied briskly, trying to deny the blush that rosed her cheeks. "Your daughter has greatly exaggerated my role and downplayed her own."

"Somehow, I doubt that," Will countered, a hint of dryness in his voice. "But I can see that you have no wish to discuss this." With a turn of his head, he directed attention away from her, much to Eliza's relief.

Soon the conversation concentrated again on a general discussion of the current situation: the number of livestock that had been stolen—estimates ranged as high as five hundred head of cattle and horses—houses that had been burned to the ground, and the white squatters who had moved onto Cherokee property in anticipation of Georgia's planned survey and lottery.

To add to their grief, wagonloads of whiskey were being brought into the Nation by peddlers, in total disregard of the Cherokee laws prohibiting the sale of liquor. Georgia had already declared the laws to be unenforceable, effectively hamstringing the Nation's courts and its Light Horse police force with penalties for any who disagreed. Many Cherokees, despondent and demoralized by the current plight, had turned to drinking, sometimes becoming violent under its influence. Gamblers, too, frequented the Nation in increasing numbers, cheating other Indians out of what the pony clubs didn't steal.