Come August, Come Freedom (5 page)

Old Major unlatched the cart’s door. Mr. Prosser said, “Out you get! Hurry up. This will be your home for the next seven years, boys.”

The day’s adventure had distracted Gabriel, but now he looked to Old Major for help that did not come. Solomon began to cry, so Gabriel drew up the courage to utter two words: “Seven years?”

“What did you think? That we were making a day trip?” Mr. Prosser answered.

“No. I — thought —” Gabriel realized that he had thought only of traveling to the capital. “When will we see Ma again?”

Mr. Prosser grunted; his temper flared across his face. Mr. Prosser raised his hand to strike, and Gabriel drew back.

Get to the woods!
He thought he heard Ma whisper, but the best trees in the city were at the top of the hill or on the river islands. In the bottom of Richmond, he saw no woods thick enough to hide a boy but for a few minutes and not a single tree stand dense enough to ward patrollers away.

Even if I knew where to run,
Gabriel thought,
I’d have to get these shoes off first.

There would be no getting anyplace for now, but Gabriel had already made a city map in his mind.

It’s still not so different here,
he thought.
No paths through the forest, but alleyways aplenty. A creek for bathing and a riverbank for gathering. No great house always in sight, but the white shadow of the statehouse sitting high on the hill. And not one person’s been stopped, because they all have business here. Now I have my business, too.

GABRIEL STUCK
close behind Mr. Prosser, and Solomon behind Gabriel. Without knocking, and as if the place belonged to him, Mr. Prosser entered the small wood house.

The Henrico planter hollered into the empty front room, “Thomas Prosser here!” Then Mr. Prosser banged on the open front door with his fist and called out to the blacksmith, “Jacob Kent?”

A hearty man of powerful build, wearing a gray shirt that Gabriel figured used to be white, greeted them. The blacksmith also wore a leather apron around his waist; its pockets bulged out and flowed over with tools and nails and debris. From one, he pulled out a soiled cloth and dabbed his flushed, wet face.

Gabriel whispered to his brother, “That’s the pinkest man I ever saw.”

Solomon laughed and elbowed Gabriel’s ribs. “Shhh. He keeps the bones of boys gone bad in that apron of his.”

Gabriel noticed that the smith’s boots were black and cracked, just like Pa’s. Jacob Kent’s feet made even Mr. Prosser’s thin ones look like a lady’s.
Why, his head would touch the ceiling if he didn’t crouch down.
Gabriel realized he was staring, but he could think only of how the master smith reminded him of Pa.

“Welcome, sir,” Jacob Kent said to Mr. Prosser. “Are these my new smiths-in-waiting?” The blacksmith placed a callused hand on Gabriel’s shoulder.

Like Pa used to do.
Gabriel sighed.
I should be learning from Pa, not some old, pink smithy.

Once Mr. Prosser left, Gabriel felt brave enough to copy the gesture he had seen Thomas Henry use with Mr. Prosser’s friends, and he offered his hand to the blacksmith. “Hello. I’m Gabriel, sir, and this is my brother Solomon.”

Jacob shook Gabriel’s hand and met his eye. “Gabriel Prosser, good to know you.” The blacksmith nodded.

Gabriel looked about, and, still seeing no woods to get to but feeling ever more confident to speak, he said, “No, sir, not Prosser. I’m just Gabriel.”

“Well, just-Gabriel, welcome!” The blacksmith laughed, and Gabriel saw that Jacob Kent had also lost his own front teeth.

“Your younger brother, then?” Jacob motioned to Solomon, who shook his head no but managed to say only, “Older.”

“Just-Gabriel and Older-Solomon. All right, I’m straight now: the bigger one is the young ’un.”

Gabriel liked that Jacob Kent wore no wig but tied up his long black hair with a long black ribbon. Set against an unshaven chin and deep cracks in his face, Jacob’s pale-blue eyes surprised Gabriel.
Maybe he’s different,
Gabriel thought, but then he remembered Pa’s warning.
There is no such thing as a good and kind master.

“Are you our new master?” Gabriel asked the smithy. He didn’t let Jacob Kent answer. “Have we been sold away from Brookfield? Will we see our ma again?”

Jacob placed an arm around the shoulder of each brother and drew them nigh. “Hardly my own master, so no, not yours. I’ll be your teacher, just as I taught your father. Now, let me show you around my place. You two can show me how well you can hammer.”

The smith stopped in the breezeway between the house and forge and stared down at the boys’ feet. “Need to find you each a pair of boots like mine.” He laughed. “You’ll outgrow ’em in no time.” Jacob handed Gabriel a leather apron of his own, and Solomon one, too. “You’ll see your mother again. I promise.”

I could like a good and kind teacher very much,
Gabriel told himself.
Especially if Jacob Kent taught Pa.
That thought sparked the desire in Gabriel to learn all that he could. He would miss Ma and Dog and Kissey and Old Major, but mostly Gabriel intended to work too hard to pay attention to the lonely twinges of his heart. He also promised himself that he would learn the river city as well as he knew the forest countryside.

FROM JACOB
’
S
forge, Gabriel could hear the constant, distant roar of the James River falls, and he could see the reaches of the sycamore on the north bank near the river’s bend west. The autumn oasis of golden leaves and marbled bark collided with a white canvas of muslin sails from the ships that crowded Richmond’s port, bringing in goods or taking away riches. He missed swimming off the river islands on Sundays, as he had all throughout the early autumn, but the cold November river meant one thing less to distract him from the forge.

Jacob Kent demanded his place be kept orderly and clean. It was Gabriel’s job to straighten the smithy at night and ready the work in the morning. He liked rising in the dark, arranging the charcoal in the heart of the forge, waking the great bellows, and making ready the fire.

The washerwomen also made their wash fires, over by Shockoe Creek, before the sun made day. Each morning, rain or shine, August heat or November cold, Gabriel would visit the creek to collect water to fill the horse trough outside the smithy door. The youngest laundress, a girl named Nanny, who had been sold away from her family in the mountains, taught him where to find the coolest part of the creek. Every day, Gabriel and Nanny spoke of fire and water and nothing more.

When his morning chores were complete — the fire built, the floor cleaned, and the anvils ready for the coming day — he would walk back to the Shockoe and there fill three ceramic jugs with drinking water. Once the water jugs were set within easy reach of each anvil so that Jacob, Solomon, and he could refresh themselves throughout the long day, Gabriel would wake Jacob and Solomon with three full strikes to his anvil.

Ping, ping, ping.
Gabriel signaled when the fire was hot and the forge ready.
Ping, ping, ping.
He wondered if the whole of Richmond waited to hear his anvil beat, for his wake-up bell would often bring in a horse or two to be shod, a rifle or a pistol for repair, or an urgent plea to fix a broken-off key. Nearly all the workings of the capital city could be made or repaired with a fire, an anvil, and a hammer or two.

At the start of each day and in between jobs, Gabriel and Solomon forged nails. So many new houses and public buildings and shops were going up that Richmond could use every nail the boys would make and more. Between them, the two brothers produced eight thousand nails a week. Fifty thousand would not have satiated the capital city.

When Jacob was pleased with their work, he let the boys know. “Very nice. Coming along,” he would commend Solomon.

Once, when Jacob examined a long nail forged by Gabriel, the teacher purposefully pricked his finger on the tip. “You’re scaring me, son,” he said, and sucked the blood the nail drew. Jacob pushed his eyeglasses higher onto his face with the back of his wrist and shook his head at the work Gabriel presented.

“Beg pardon, sir?” Gabriel said. He thought his own work finer than his brother’s, yet the teacher had complimented only Solomon.

“Show me how you did this.” Jacob shot up his wild, curly eyebrows and nodded for Gabriel to forge another.

Gabriel set the plain rolled iron in the fire. He pulled the bellows — what Jacob called the lung of the smithy — so that it would blow a deep breath over the coals.

“Back off a bit, son. That’s good. Coax the fire — don’t force it,” said Jacob.

Gabriel turned the iron bar now and again until it glowed a devilish white. He rested the iron at a sharp angle against the face of the anvil, making sure to keep his hand firm so that no light, air, or heat could escape. Then Gabriel hammered the end, drawing the iron out long and thin. When the plain bar felt the weight of a nail to him, he used a small wedge to mark the cut and hammered until the thin piece fell away; then he set about turning the iron sliver into a sharp nail.

Clang, clang, clang. Ping. Clang, clang, clang. Ping.
Gabriel hammered out the tip with an even, steady pace, never missing his mark except on every fourth strike, to settle the hammer in his left palm. Even when Gabriel’s hands started to cramp from gripping the hammer and the iron, he kept on heating, turning, hammering, and setting the shape with water.

Soon, four edges emerged. With great patience, he drew out an even square. When the square met with his satisfaction, Gabriel pressed one edge hard against the anvil. With perfect pacing, his hammer drew forth a perfect tine tip. Then he slipped the nail through the pritchel hole at the anvil’s heel, upsetting the iron into an almost-square nail head. After giving it a final dip in the water, Gabriel presented the nail to Jacob.

The master blacksmith shook his head. “Know smiths who’ve worked for years — smiths been on their own for a good long while — who still can’t hammer so well.” Jacob took the nail from Gabriel, heated it, and smoothed the metal clean. This was how Gabriel learned — by doing what needed doing and presenting the work to Jacob.

When a farmer from Varina, east of the city, brought in scrap metal to sell or trade — for Jacob Kent believed everything could be reused — Gabriel stood near the teacher to learn all he could about the properties of old steel or iron. When the governor’s aide brought His Excellency’s steed for shoeing, Gabriel knew to stack the old shoes in the great pile for melting and repurposing later.

What he loved most about the forge, though, was that Jacob and his customers were patriots. Even more than Gabriel enjoyed swimming or fishing in the James River, he craved the bold talk of the men who filled the dark smithy. While visitors to the forge brought with them new problems to solve, they also often brought new thoughts on the building of America or the spreading of freedom.

All sorts of men gathered there. Artisans, black and white, free and slave, used the forge as a sort of trading place. When coopers and carpenters stopped in to have their tools sharpened or repaired, they borrowed and bartered in the smithy yard while they waited. Bonded hammermen spent short residencies in the forge, too, whenever Jacob needed help with big jobs — such as anchors or chains for ships in port. Free black men searching for work by the river counted on Jacob for odd jobs. All of these men and their business at the forge kept Pa’s spirit present and constant before Gabriel.

Gabriel and Solomon grew into fine blacksmiths, and each brother made what he could from the trade. Smithing soothed Solomon’s worried mind into a still and easeful peace. Hammering set Gabriel’s active mind afire.