Sarny (4 page)

But we were already gone, headed through the broken town, me with my small sack and Lucy with her two hams, looking for the slave yards.

We found the yards and almost got to Greerson in time. Yards were pens with slat-board roofs on them, rings in the wooden walls for chains, chutes that came out to a central open area like there was on the plantation for working with the pigs and cattle.

Same as that. There was some smoke where somebody had tried to fire the pens but the wood wasn’t close enough to burn and it went out. The place was empty.

Or almost.

Out front of a small shack was the wagon with the chain rings in it, the wagon that took my children, and I felt the pull of it, felt that it had been close to little Delie and Tyler and thought maybe they were inside the shack but no, nothing there but papers thrown all over, boxes of papers.

“Oh Lord,” I said. “They’re not here.”

There was a sound from the back then. Sound like a hammer hitting meat to soften it
and I ran out around the shack into the main yard opening and there was Greerson.

Not alone though. There was a black man there, big man, hands like my Martin had, shoulders like a door, and he was holding Greerson up against the side fence with one hand and beating him with the other.

Didn’t look even mad, the black man. Just as cool were he at a job of work. Hold him with one hand, bring the other back like a club, like a hammer, like a cleaver.

Chunk!

In the forehead, in the face, slow hits that seemed to float, but each time Greerson’s head snapped back like a mule had kicked him and I forgot for a moment why I was there. Just watched. Then I thought, no, not yet, I need this man.

“Hold!” I said. “Wait. This man took my children and I need him to tell me where they are.”

The black man turned and looked at me. “He laid a whip on me. Laid a whip on all of us, but he laid it on me hard. I’m just taking it back. But I can finish later.”

He stood to the side but kept holding Greerson up against the fence by the neck. Greerson he just hung there and when I came close I could see that he wasn’t going to be doing any talking. His face looked like a
wagon had run over it and both his eyes had rolled back to just show white and what breath there was came in little jerks.

“Greerson—can you hear me? You remember coming for my children? Out to the Waller place? You remember that?” But he didn’t hear me, didn’t hear anything. “You hit him too hard. He ain’t there anymore.”

“I’m sorry,” the black man said, and he looked sorry too. “I didn’t know you were coming or I would have held back a tad.”

It was Lucy that saved me. I turned away and the black man went back to hitting Greerson and I moved out of the yard and was near crying, thinking of little Delie and Tyler. The wind blew four ways and they could have gone any of them. No way to know.

“In the shack,” Lucy said. “There might be something in all those papers about little Delie and Tyler …”

And I would have walked away hadn’t she said it, would have walked away and never thought of it, never known.

We went inside and started to work. I didn’t know what to look for, didn’t know where to begin, but Lucy just picked up a piece of paper and went to reading.

“Male, teeth show age not over eighteen, answers to name of Herman, no whip scars, to be at auction. Nope.” She threw it aside and
picked up another. “Female, teeth show age between twenty-five and thirty, answers to name of Betty, no whip scars, trained for house duties, to be at auction. Nope.”

That’s what all the papers were. Bills of sale, hundreds and hundreds of them, all records that Greerson kept for all the time he sold slaves.

It was soon dark, too dark to read, but Lucy she found an oil lamp with an unbroken chimney and some matches and soon we had light. Still hard to read but by holding the paper close to the lamp we could make out the letters.

Must have read fifty or a hundred of them when I looked up and Lucy she was sitting there crying, holding the paper.

“What’s the matter?”

“I just come across old Willy. You remember him?”

For certain I remembered him. Delie she said that she and old Willy once had eyes for one another. Soft old man used to carve willow whistles for the children in the quarters. Called them whoop-te-do whistles. Gray hair, gray beard, soft voice, soft smile.

“They sold him for fifty dollars,” Lucy said. “That was all. Fifty dollars …”

And it caught me then, what we were looking
at. I had been too much on little Delie and Tyler, couldn’t see past my darlings.

Lives. These were lives. All the people we knew and didn’t know and Greerson, Waller, all the small evil men had been selling lives. Whole lives. My mammy, pappy, Delie, Billy—didn’t matter. All bought and sold, people bought and sold for money, for work, to work to death. Heard once that when they worked the men down in the cane fields south, far south, they figured on the men being dead by twenty and seven. It was the way they worked it out. After they were twenty and seven they started to break and it was easier to just let them die and get newer ones, younger ones.

People. People bought and sold and each of them on these little pieces of paper, each of their lives down to a slip of auction paper. “Answers to name of …”

Swore then, swore in my mind so I suppose it’s the same as swearing in the open and I hope God he don’t get to keeping too close a track on those things. Swore at all the evil that men could do and I cried some with Lucy, cried for the people on the small papers we read in the yellow light from the lamp.

We stopped for a bit and sat, getting sad, but then I shook my head. Crying wouldn’t
help. “We have to eat something now. So we can keep going.”

She took out one of the hams. We didn’t have a knife but there was broken glass from the windows and I found a piece and sliced two chunks, thick with fat and smelling of hickory smoke. The smell must have been more than I thought because twice men came to the door while we were eating. One white and the other the same black man who had been beating Greerson. The white man he just looked in and moved on, scared looking, a white face flashing in the lamplight and gone. The black man he came in and we gave him some ham and he chewed it quiet, sitting in the corner, didn’t talk to us, never a word and then he left, nodding his thanks for the ham while we went back to the papers.

More lives. We looked all night, paper on paper, and I stacked the ones we read in a neat pile. I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away meaning what they meant and just at first gray dawn, sun just starting to help the lamp, Lucy she found it.

“Two children, one boy answers to name of Tyler, girl answers to name of Delie, to be auctioned together or separately—”

I snatched the paper away from her and read but it didn’t say more. Just that, to be
auctioned. My babies, to be sold. Together or separately? Not that, not apart, not all of us apart. Where were they, when were they sold, who bought them, who bought my babies, my life?

Nothing more on the paper. I turned it over and over but it didn’t give nothing. Couldn’t think, couldn’t do, couldn’t make my brain get working again.

“We have to keep looking,” Lucy said. “There might be more paper on them.” And she picked up another piece, then another, and I nodded and we kept going, kept looking and finally, eyes burning from smoke and no sleep and reading in the dim light all night Lucy she found it again.

“Two young Negro children, answer to Delie and Tyler, sold to William Chivington of New Orleans without auction for three hundred dollars.”

I took the paper, hands shaking. Only thing else was the date. One day after they were taken from me. There was no auction. Greerson he must have been worried about what was coming. Wanted to get his money and run, only he didn’t run far. Just to his yards. Low man, low as a snake’s belly, he laid dead now in the yard where he caused so much misery.

But we had something now. We had a name, the name of the man who bought my children. We had a name and we had a place.

“Where,” Lucy asked, “is New Orleans?”

“It’s where we’re going.” Had hope now, had a name, a place. Had hope. Had
something
. “It’s where we’re going.”

“Easy say,” Lucy said, “hard do, this going to New Orleans business.”

She was right.

Was different then. No maps, no trains—least none that would carry us—no way to know how to go. We’d been on the plantation all our lives, all the lives before us, didn’t know anything but the fields and the quarters and what we read in papers and books we stole.

Suddenly all that was changed. We’re loose, we’re moving, we’re free, and I didn’t have a tiny idea in my head where we were going, which direction, how far—nothing but a name. New Orleans.

Figured it had to be south. Man buying my children wasn’t going to head north into the blue army. Had to go south.

I knew south. Place on your right when you face the rising sun, that’s south. North is on
the left, left side for freedom, south is the other. The bad way.

So I started walking. That night, right then, and Lucy she followed and we made less than a mile when I started in to weaving and Lucy said, “We’ve got to get some rest.”

I knew she was right. We’d been up so long I was seeing things, hants and specters and such, glowing in the road ahead, and my body just quit.

“Over here,” Lucy said. “There in the corner of that fence there’s some slick willow. Here, lay down and rest.” She took her extra shift out of her sack and I laid in it, smelling of ham. I closed my eyes and wanted to say thank you, wanted to tell her I had my own shift in my own bag and she didn’t have to give me hers, but nothing came, no hants nor specters nor even dreams. Just sleep.

Somebody shaking me, pounding me around, and I had in my mind a picture of Greerson getting beat against the fence in the yard until my eyes snapped open. Gray light, small chill of morning air, not quite dawn.

“Come on!” It was Lucy. “There’s going to be a battle. Come see.”

I still had sleep in my brain or I wouldn’t have gone. Didn’t have time to be watching
no battles with my children gone. But I was never one to think straight when I woke up so I followed Lucy up to a small rise a stone’s throw away.

“I came up here this morning just before first light to take care of my doings and there they were fixing to fight. Looks like the whole army.…”

Wasn’t the whole army. I read on things about the war later and learned that it would have been considered a small battle, compared to Gettysburg or Antietam.

But it looked big then. Below us was a shallow valley, went out about a mile and rose in trees on the other side. Trees just starting to show. Closer to us, less than half a mile, were two lines of men.

I wasn’t good at counting then. Hadn’t learned numbers except to slave count. Count to five, make a mark, count to five, make a mark, then count the marks. Way to count chickens or ducks or portions of corn flour. Counting that way, slave counting, I came to over a hundred men on each side.

The ones on the left were an even line, blue coats, almost clean. The other side the troops were ragged looking. Some had gray on, most just tatters of homespun or linsey and ‘most half of them were barefoot but they stood in a
straight line. Out front there were officers on horses and I wanted to go.

Wanted to leave but I couldn’t. Like watching a storm coming. You knew it would come, knew you had to get in under something but you couldn’t stop watching.

“What are they waiting for?” Lucy said and I looked and saw her eyes were shining like she was going to get food. Maybe more.

“You want this?”

She nodded. “They’re all white, ain’t they? I hope they all kill each other. Wouldn’t bother me if every damn one of them died.”

She said it soft, almost like she was praying, and there was a time, knowing only Waller, there was a time when I would have been with her but I shook my head. “They’re all white but all whites ain’t bad.”

She stared at me. “Why,
listen
to you—have you gone feeble?”

I pointed. “Half of them are fighting to keep you in slavery but the other half are dressed in blue. Fighting to make you free. Fighting and dying and for you …”

They were done waiting.

The ragged side raised their rifles and fired. Some blue men fell. Then the blues fired and some of the ragged men fell. Then they all reloaded and fired as fast as they could. Sounded like a rattle, a giant rattle being
shaken or somebody tearing all the coarse cloth in the world. So loud you couldn’t think.

Before it fairly started the smoke was so thick you couldn’t see. Just red flashes and the tearing noise and then loud yelling, yips and yoops, and then some of the raggedy men could be seen running from the smoke, running away.

Then quiet except for screams. I thought it was from more fighting but a soft morning breeze came up and blew the smoke off and I could see the screams were from the wounded.

Laying all over the ground like broken toys, busted dolls, some crawling, pulling with their arms because their legs didn’t work. Terrible damage. Only been three days of war and freedom and all I’d seen was terrible, terrible damage. Waller with the bayonet through him, bodies in the ditches by the road, Greerson dead, burned buildings and now this, butchered and torn men, men with parts coming out of them, dragging on the ground, dying, screaming.

Lucy her smile was gone and she must have been thinking like me because she said, “Freedom sure costs a heap, don’t it?”

I thought we ought to go help. Either side it didn’t matter. Men treated that way need help, some comfort, but two wagons came
from around the hill said Ambulance on the side in big letters and started picking up wounded men from both sides.

“We’ll go now, I ’spect,” I said, and stood and started walking. Lucy she hung back a bit then caught up with me and her eyes were shining again only this time for different reasons. Crying, soft tears. She didn’t say anything about it for over a mile, walking south, and then she just repeated herself.