The Loom (17 page)

John folded into himself and pressed the damp corners of his eyes. He took a moment to breathe it in, but peace was gone. It had followed Lydia with his love.

How much would it cost?”

“Excuse me?” Dr. Kelly stared at him.

All that planning, all that praying, and this was the best he had? Greeting the doctor in the early-morning hours at the edge of his colonial before he had a chance to set his feet in the place he should’ve been.

“I’d like to know what I’m worth. So I can buy my freedom.”

“Buy your what?”

His stomach churned at the thought of purchasing something that rightfully belonged to him or turning over wealth into White hands that Brown backs labored for, the insult of which sent him running the second time. He needed money for when he made it North, he reasoned, but the thought of MaDora convicted him. It was her wish that someone walk free. Walk free, not run away.

“I’d like to buy my freedom, sir,” he said again, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

“Is that right?” Dr. Kelly looked him over and paused. He cocked the heel of his boot against the side of the house and twisted against the frame. “How much you got?”

“How much I need?”

Dr. Kelly frowned. His thick, dark brows wrinkled low over his eyes.

“You’ve got to have a price, sir.”

“Well over five hundred, John. Well over.”

“Would you take a thousand for two?”

“A thousand?” He laughed. “Where, on God’s creation, did a Colored get a thousand dollars?” When John didn’t reply, he sobered. “You saying you got a thousand dollars, John?”

“I’m saying if I get it, would you take it?”

He was no fool.

“Sure.”

John stared at the doctor, tried to read his face.

“Sure, I would. Who wouldn’t accept that kind of money?”

“So we have a deal?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Free?” Lydia hunched on their makeshift bed, tugging red and yellow patches of quilt into a small hill between her thighs. She cared little about the folds of her skirt bunched up all improper around her waist. Just focused on the word they had so often beckoned that was finally showing up for good. “Is that right?”

“That’s right.” John smiled and nodded calmly like he was waiting until it grabbed hold.

“We’re going to be free?” The thought overwhelmed her. It was all she ever wanted. For her, for him, for all the bound to be loosed. This man she loved would no longer belong to anyone. Free for Isaiah. She smiled her first real smile in weeks, one that spread from the heart.

She clapped her hands and flung her arms around his neck. “Free!” she squealed. He spun her off the bed and around like a child. Collapsing against the wall, he propped her legs up again around him.

“Free,” she whispered in his ear. Her head was still spinning in another world.

In the dim candlelight, she couldn’t see, only tasted salty tears. She touched her fingers to his cheek. Wet warmth trickled down her wrist.

“Lydia… This is it. What you’ve always wanted. I’m so happy for you.”

“What we’ve always wanted, right?” She slipped from his embrace to her feet.

“Yes. This is for us.”

“For us.”

“Dr. Kelly said he’d take a thousand dollars for the two of us.”

It couldn’t be true…

“We’re going together. We’re going to walk out of this place together with our papers.”

She imagined them in their own world and thought back to Jackson’s manor. They’d never have wealth of that kind, but a place of their own, yes.

It was too good. She wanted to believe.

“Don’t you see? It’s happening, Lydia. It’s really happening.”

“But what if he changes his mind—”

“What if he doesn’t?” He touched his finger to her lips and whispered, “What if he doesn’t?”

What if he doesn’t…?

“If he does, we’d run, wouldn’t we? Together.” Or apart. She could release him to go without her if she had to. Whatever she had to do.

“I don’t know, Lydia.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I mean, it’s dangerous. You know good and well what I’m saying. They almost killed you. Lydia, they’ve got dogs, guns…”

She had nothing to say.

“Are you listening to me? Baby, this is serious. We’ve got to do this right. Lydia. Are you thinking about all of that?”

“I am but it doesn’t matter.”

“What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t matter what they’ve got. I’ve got something too.”

“What you got, Lydia?” John leaned forward. “What you got?”

“Fire.” Lydia rose to her feet and paced around. “I got fire.” She swiped her hand through her hair. “I don’t know if you understand, but I’ve got this burning that I can’t put out. I don’t think nothing’s going to put it out but being free. Not until we can live like we were meant to. Until I get free, it’s going to burn. I tell you, it’s burning a hole right through me and I’m serious, John, if I don’t get out of here soon, it’s not going to be good. Not for nobody.”

“Sit down, Lydia.”

She stared at him. His face was gentle but his voice was strong.

“Sit down.”

Slowly, she lowered herself onto the blanket across him.

“Lydia, listen to me. Listen to me. You’re a smart woman, but you don’t know everything. There are folk who would kill you so quick, step over your body, and sit down to supper the very next second. They ain’t thinking about you. You hear me? So you’ve got to think about yourself. I’m thinking about you.” John leaned in close to her, inches from her face. “Enough talk about fire. If you got a fire in your chest, you best blow it out before they do.”

Several minutes passed before she nodded, understood.

Stay put. She saw Lou’s face, remembered her words. She didn’t agree, but she understood.

John knelt beside her and rubbed her knotted shoulders.

Whether he grasped how she felt or not, he was hers and he loved her. She saw it in his eyes, heard it in every word.

She reached for him, wrapped her hands around his face, his neck, his back, tighter, and pressed herself into him, deeper, everything a lady didn’t do, but love kept her holding on.

An hour later, she watched him slide to his side next to her on the rumpled quilt and close his eyes, his hands tucked between bent knees. She wrapped herself over him and found sleep hard to find.

It had been a mistake. A bad choice. An error of his ways. Simply a wrong decision.

Michael glanced back at the slave house, the dark fingers that pulled the door shut behind him, the half smile he would blot out before he treaded the path of oaks and maples home.

Each night it was a different place. Every evening he was unsure where he would lay his head. He had no inkling in whose arms he would find solace, whose legs would be wrapped around his when he awoke. It gave him a shot of energy, made the monotony of life bearable. Was it not a tedious plight, a cruel test of the will that subjected a man to move through each day doing the same thing? Waiting to aid the ill, walking the tobacco fields, riding through endless meadows of corn, seeing the same slaves, doing the same work? Strolling through the gardens? He swallowed. It was still difficult going to the bed of flowers, thinking of Beatrice sprawled there on her side. Another dead body he had stumbled upon. He had held that woman. Had felt safe, satisfied, in her arms for a while. She was the only one he had returned to, for weeks, for months, for years. One more touch. One more kiss.

One more time. He had…loved her? No. No, but he cared. He did care for her…and their child.

In his forty years, he had never really loved anyone. Not because he didn’t want to. He wanted to love, desperately. With everything, he wanted to find some kind of peace, some type of joy in the heart of another as much as the next person. Wanted to fall in the arms of the feeling and never rise again, drop deep into the heated abyss of affection like everyone else. He had gazed into the eyes of every woman he’d bedded and hoped she would be the one who would take him there. In every soft pair of arms, thin or thick, dark or light, he hoped he would find it. With each pair of lips, he hoped he would taste the one thing that was missing. He searched for it on every pouty mouth, every curved figure that came into his presence. He wanted it. Desperately. As much as anyone else. Who didn’t want love? Somebody to hold. Somebody to understand. Somebody to stay by his side.

He sighed. Emma had done just that.

Michael crossed over the dirt road, deciding to take the long route back to the house and the woman he had bought with a handshake. One grip, one squeeze, and here he was, miserable in the world.

He had wanted the house, a solid piece of property with good bones on acres of land that would have taken a boy with a broken mother and no inheritance a long time to acquire otherwise.

He had so little in the beginning.

He was only nine when he found his father, a bootlegging womanizer, dead in the tall Bermuda grass beneath his bedroom window.

When he saw the back of the man, he thought to run to get his mother, someone, anyone, but he stayed staring at a head of clipped brown curls, the checkered wool shirt he had worn fishing the week before, torn and soiled now, and a pair of denim trousers with a faded circle on the back pocket where his pa’s tobacco canister hid. Even still, he needed to know for sure. Anything could have happened. Anything can make it not true. Maybe a vagrant had robbed him, stolen his clothes. He hoped, held his breath and mustered up the courage to lift his foot. The heavy Brogan quaked in the air until his calf ached and he pushed the hard toe of it against the back pocket. The body rocked then steadied. Michael leaned in closer, his heart thumping against his chest like a wild hare. He stood and kicked once more, hard and deliberate, swinging the man onto his back.