A Dream of Daring (19 page)

That evening, when he
walked out to the veranda to guard Solo’s class, he realized that what had
started as an obligation to protect the school was now a pleasure. He liked
hearing the voices that filtered out to him, voices rich with a teacher’s
excitement for her topics and her students’ satisfaction at mastering their
lessons. As he walked toward the rocker that was his lookout post, he saw
Jerome standing there waiting for him.

“How did it go today,
chef?”

“I sells all sixty
squares.”

“Really? At five cents
apiece, you made three dollars.”

“I sells two pans mo’.”

“You what?”

“Miller Tavern order a
pan fer sellin’ in the saloon at ten cent apiece, and Mrs. Weatherby order pan
fer a party she havin’. So I got two pans to make fer them folks tonight.”

Tom stared incredulously
at Jerome.

“You mean, you made
nine
dollars
—in one day?”

“I buys some supplies
with it and got this left.” Jerome took seven dollars out of his pocket.

“Why, that’s more than
the overseers make!” An overseer might average twenty dollars a week.

Jerome fidgeted for a
moment as if something were on his mind, then blurted out: “Since you own
Jerome, then you mus’ own Jerome’s squares.” He held the money out to his
master. “This mus’ be yers.”

Tom’s eyes dropped sadly.
He hated to feel the way he did at that moment and wondered how anyone could
stand it. Then he looked up and spoke quietly.

“But I didn’t make the
squares. And I didn’t make you either.”

Jerome stood with his
hand out, the money in it untouched by Tom. “Beside, Jerome owe you from a ways
back.”

Tom knew what he meant.
It was the first time the slave had ever mentioned the money Tom had given him
to reach the Cincinnati safe house. Back then Jerome had changed his mind and
returned home sheepishly, squandering the money and his chance at freedom. Now
Tom felt as if he were looking at a different person.

He pushed the money back
to the slave. “How about if you buy your own ingredients and supplies? Then you
can keep whatever profit you make from your business.”

“My . . . 
bizness
?”
Jerome’s voice was barely a whisper.

“That’s what it’s called
when you make a product and sell it.” Tom smiled. “Just keep the kitchen
running for me, and you can go to town and tend to your own business whenever
you want.”

“Yes sir.” The words were
a gasp.

“
Nine dollars
in
one day! Come here. I have to show you something.”

The slaves were beginning
to file into the library for class when Tom brought Jerome to the blackboard.

“How many days will you
make the ride into town? Say, two days a week?”

“Least three. I kin do
three,” said Jerome.

“Okay, three days a week
times nine dollars a day means you could make
twenty-seven
dollars
a week. And that’s just for starters. That’s taking your sales on the first
day, which surely will grow.” Tom scribbled the numbers on the board. “Times,
let’s say, fifty weeks a year. . . . Good God, Jerome, you
could make $1,350 a year.” He wrote the total and circled it on the board.

Jerome’s eyes darted
incredulously from the board to Tom. The amount was like an ocean to a man who
had only seen puddles.

“You’ll have to subtract
your costs, but there’s still a big profit to be made here.”

Jerome studied the
numbers, speechless.

“You’re on to something
big, Jerome!” said Tom.

Solo entered carrying her
primer. She and Tom acknowledged each other in what had become their standard
greeting: a quiet exchange of stares. Her simple dress and ribboned hair reflected
in Tom’s eyes for one lingering moment. She paused to gaze back, then continued
to the desk as he left the room.

Jerome stood where Tom
had left him, entranced by the number circled on the blackboard.

* * * * *

By the beginning of May,
Jerome had a steady stream of customers. Several steamships, a tavern at Bayou
Redbird, and the general store in Greenbriar bought pans of chocolate squares
to resell at a profit in their locations. A dress shop bought the squares to
serve as complimentary treats to customers to gain an edge on its competition.
Then there were the bank customers who bought a square on the way in and
another on the way out. Children especially loved the squares. And plantation
mistresses bought pans of them to serve at parties.

Every shop in Bayou
Redbird and up the road in Greenbriar knew about Jerome’s chocolate squares. He
gave away some as free samples, he traded some for the supplies he needed, and
he sold the vast majority. He put his talent for talking to people to good use
and became an effective salesman for his product. He kept his recipe to himself
and enjoyed a brisk business.

True to his word, Jerome
also kept the Indigo Springs kitchen running. He had an assistant and other
kitchen workers who helped him keep Tom fed well and helped perform his other
duties. And he prepared a pan of chocolate squares once a week for Solo’s
class.

Tom had given the class
permission to look at the library books, and Jerome availed himself of that.
One day Tom found him at the shelves, staring at a page in one of the books. It
was the drawing Solo had passed around during her first class, showing the bake
shop in Paris.

Jerome smiled awkwardly,
as if caught in a moment that was personal. Tom put a sympathetic arm on the
slave’s shoulder.

“I reckon it be nice
a-bakin’ an’ a-sellin’ all them things in that winder . . .”—he
pointed to the shop window full of cakes and other
sweets—“. . . sellin’ them in
a . . . shop . . . like that.”

Tom thought of the
obstacles thrown in the way of Jerome’s dream. There were the laws prohibiting
manumission. There were the laws requiring the return of fugitive slaves. There
were the kidnappers in the North who seized blacks, whether they were free or
slave, and brought them South to sell into slavery. There was the treacherous
journey to reach Canada to escape the threat of being returned. As Tom’s
affection for the slave grew, so did his concern for his safety, should he ever
decide to take that second chance offered him. But Tom tried to hide his
trepidations so that Jerome’s dream could live. What would his own life be
like, he wondered, without
his
dream?

“Yes, Jerome, it would be
nice to make all those pastries and sell them in a
shop . . . one day.”

Before, Jerome had no
yearning. Now he did. That put him above certain free people Tom knew. He
thought of the lifeless face of Nash Nottingham, the man he’d once compared to
his slave. But Jerome, with his energy, his business, and his dream, could
never be compared to Nash again.

Later that night, there
were two lights burning at Indigo Springs. One was in the kitchen, where Jerome
was baking chocolate squares to fulfill customer orders. The other was in the
library, where Solo was preparing the next day’s lesson. No longer feeling like
an interloper, she now openly used the place that was her classroom and her
treasure trove. On the hill, Tom’s workshop was dark. Where was the light that
had burned there through so many heady nights of experiments—of making parts,
of seeing them fail, of disassembling them and trying again, and of finally
solving problems, with each one that was solved spurring new ones to challenge
him? Would he recover the device that had been born in that place? Would the
only man who knew its whereabouts ever reveal his secret?

Chapter
13

“We searched clear down
to the other side of Myrtle Road, then up past Morton’s Landing, then through
Clearwater woods . . .” Grant Sayers, a tan, athletic-looking
man, pointed to places on a topographic map.

Standing with the speaker
and two other men, Tom looked down at the map on his desk at the bank. His
three visitors all had a few days’ stubble and wore clothes suited for camping
out in the woods.

“We waded on foot through
Robin’s Creek, thinking maybe the thing had slipped into the water, but nothing
was there,” said the second man, pointing to another area of the map.

Tom nodded. “I see.”

“We asked permission and
looked through the brush on the Johnson, Straithmore, and Billing plantations,”
said the third man. “Of course, we also checked the wooded areas at the
Crossroads.”

“Me and my men covered
all the areas you laid out,” said Sayers. “I’m sorry, Mr. Edmunton.” The leader
of the team that Tom had hired to find his invention looked earnest and
regretful. “There was no hint of a mechanical device or a motor of any sort.”

Tom looked at him and the
others. “Thank you for trying.”

He opened the door of his
office and escorted his visitors to a clerk at a desk. “Please pay Mr. Sayers
and his men from my personal account,” he instructed the clerk.

Tom shook hands with the
men, then exited the bank. His face grim, he mounted his horse and headed up
the bluff to Greenbriar. He was too distraught to notice the spectacular puffs
of pink and blue hydrangea blooming along the road that first week in May. His
only awareness of time was that it was running out.

The high court had upheld
the guilty verdict against Ted Cooper. The sole person who knew the whereabouts
of his invention was to be executed the next day.

* * * * *

Tom climbed the steps two
at a time on the stairway to Cooper’s cell. There he found, sitting on a straw
bed, a thin, drawn, bitter, and hateful Ted Cooper.

“Now’s the time, Cooper.
Now’s the time to honor Wiley Barnwell and the friendship you once had. As a
last act of contrition toward him, as an act of justice, as an act of honor
toward his memory, now’s the time to tell me where you hid the invention that
he died for.”

“Go to hell.”

“Wiley Barnwell wanted
that device to get its hearing. He gave his life for it. In the name of
anything he once meant to you, now’s the time to atone for his death by
enabling my tractor to live.”

Cooper rose and walked to
the bars of his cell, his eyes darting like daggers at his visitor, his mouth curling
in contempt.

“You know as much as I do
about how and why Barnwell died that night. If that humbug you spew about Wiley
defending your contraption is true, that brings
dishonor
to his memory.”

“In the name of a new
discovery that you’ll never be able to claim, in the name of letting its
rightful owner bring it into the world, in the name of its immense importance,
which you recognized by taking it, you
must
tell me its whereabouts.”

“I had no intention of
bringing that confounded device into the world. If I had my way, it’d be buried
on the bottom of the bayou. That’s
my
honor.” He smirked. “You dare
speak to
me
of honor?
I’m
the one who’ll die with it tomorrow!”

With all the strength
remaining in his emaciated body, the once-vibrant planter thrust his clenched
fist between the bars. Tom backed away, missing the punch. The convict clutched
the bars, casting a long shadow that crept over Tom. With a shaky voice, Cooper
gave his farewell:

“May you burn in hell for
the mistake you’re making!”

* * * * *

The grandfather clock in
the dining room chimed six. Tom sat alone, his untouched plate of food pushed
away, his elbows on the table, his hands over his face. His despair contrasted
sharply with the cheerful vase of spring roses on the table. Cooper’s execution
the next day would dash his hopes of finding his own budding centerpiece, the
invention that was to bring a fresh season to mankind.

When he raised his head,
he realized that Solo had been standing at the open door, observing his silent
agony from the hallway. The layout of the house—the main hall slicing through
the center of the first floor—with the parlor, dining room, library, and other
rooms opening onto it—made for frequent encounters between them.

She seemed concerned
about him, with questions on her face that didn’t reach her voice. She knew
nothing of his invention, the murder, the trial, or the impending execution. He
brought home no newspapers and said nothing of his personal affairs. Since the
night of the crime, he had received no visitors. His life apart from their
interactions, he realized, was as mysterious to her as her past life was to
him.

“If you’re not feeling
well, I could cancel the class tonight—”

“Why, no. I’d like to see
the class go on.” A softness seeped into his voice, breaking through his
despair.

She nodded and went on
her way.

His manner toward her
bore no resemblance to that of a master addressing a slave or even of an
employer speaking to an employee. The fact that he never ordered her to do
anything but rather let her do whatever she pleased as an equal living in his
home tempered her hostility. Without a target, she had to put down her arrows.

In the six weeks since
her class had begun, it had more than doubled in size. Tom had made more trips
to nearby towns to buy additional primers and other supplies. Some servants
were permitted to bring their well-behaved children to class with them. In all,
twenty-five people now crowded into the library for Solo’s lessons. Finishing
their daily tasks properly was their ticket of admission, so the quality of
their work had improved as well. By the eager way the teacher prepared and
delivered her lessons, Tom knew she would welcome a chance to add more classes.
He was determine to find a way to expand what was a growing school, as well as
to keep it hidden from the outside world.

He enjoyed seeing the
students engaged in their lessons, writing words on their slate boards—
cat
,
dog
,
chair
,
table
—and reading simple sentences that
appeared with matching illustrations in their primers—
See Mary skating. See
Anne sewing. John and William are hard at work. John has a hammer. William has
an ax.
The teacher would intersperse a poem about a beautiful scene, an
essay about a major city, a few pages of history, a scientific
experiment—whatever suited her. The group listened, their faces aglow, like
eager travelers being taken to new attractions. The teacher described sights
and events she had never seen, sounding as knowledgeable as a seasoned traveler
and with the spirit of an adventurer. This was how Tom discovered that beneath
the charred lives of his bondsmen, their souls still flickered. And this was
how he got to know the unusual new presence that in some way had stoked him and
them alike: Solo.

Early on, he had observed
her giving a lesson on a topic that he hadn’t requested but was grateful she
addressed. “This lesson is on the meaning of something important, called
honor,” she had explained to the class. “When you give a person your word on
something, and you keep your word, that means you have honor. And if you have
honor, it means that no one is higher than you. Someone who has a million
dollars or twelve thousand acres of land isn’t any higher a person than you
are, because you have honor. You know, honor isn’t something you have to show to
a slave catcher, or to anyone who’s trying to hurt you. Honor is something you
show to someone who’s trying to help you, and whom you don’t want to harm.

“Now, I want you to show
honor toward me and toward the person who makes these classes possible. I want
to ask for your word of honor about our school, that you’ll keep it a secret
among us here, a secret that doesn’t leave Indigo Springs. Will you keep that
secret, on your honor?” She looked all of them, one by one, and they each
nodded to her, pledging their honor. By the solemnity on their faces, they
understood what she was trying to convey.

As he sat in the dining
room, unable to eat, he thought painfully of someone else’s honor. Senator
Barnwell had promised to protect his invention when he transported it to the
Crossroads. He had been honorable and kept his
word . . . protecting the invention far more than merely on
his trip. He had protected it with his—

“Excuse me, Mr.
Tom . . . Mr. Tom?” The butler appeared at the door.

“Yes?”

“You have a visitor. Mr.
Kenneth Gale is here for you.” Tom noticed the improved quality of speech of
Solo’s student.

“Oh, yes. Show him to the
parlor.”

As Tom rose from his
seat, Solo reappeared at the door, concerned. “I saw a man come in. The
library’s set up for the class,” she whispered.

“Don’t worry; I know
him.” He straightened his tie and coat. “He’s just coming to bring me
something. He won’t be going anywhere near the library.”

Down the hallway, the
butler was placing a hat on the table in the foyer and escorting a man who
carried a large painting into the parlor.

* * * * *

Tom was so eager to see
the painting that he neglected to close the parlor door behind him or to greet
his guest properly.

“Why, it’s beautiful!” he
exclaimed, taking the painting from the artist and holding it up before him.

“I’m delighted you’re
pleased, Mr. Edmunton.”

Tom moved an antique
clock from the fireplace mantel and put in its place the picture. Then he
stepped back to observe the effect. “That’s the perfect spot for it!” he said,
observing the portrait of Wiley Barnwell that he’d commissioned.

“It was good of Mrs.
Barnwell to make her painting available to me, so I could produce this copy for
you. She told me how much it means to you.”

“Yes.” Tom’s eyes
lingered on the work. “You did a fine job, Mr. Gale.” The host reached for a
decanter of brandy that sat on a tray with glasses. He poured two drinks and
handed one to the artist.

Tom extended his glass
toward the figure of Barnwell, whose vivid eyes were eerily staring out at
them, making his presence palpable in the room. The artist also raised his
glass to the painting.

“To a most admirable man,
a man who was my father’s friend and who became like a father to me,” Tom said
solemnly. “Long may his image grace this home!”

Tom began to lower his
glass, as if he were finished. The artist lowered his and was about to drink
when Tom raised his glass again as if a sudden impulse drove him to say more.
The visitor followed suit, looking curiously at Tom, whose calm was vanishing,
with anger lines now crossing his brow and fury filling his eyes.

“To the man whose life
was
suddenly . . . tragically . . . ripped
from us!” Tom moved closer to the portrait and looked deeper into the painted
eyes. “Tomorrow, your death with be avenged when your murderer hangs by the
neck for his merciless crime!”

The men downed their
drinks.

In that moment, three
months of inner torment found an outlet. In one violent stroke, Tom flung his
glass into the fireplace, shattering it.

He regretted the act when
he noticed Solo staring at him from the hallway, looking alarmed. Was she
startled by the anger inside him . . . an anger that
surprised him too? She vanished before he could read anything more on her face.

Recovering, he took out
his billfold and paid the artist. The men shook hands as Tom escorted his
visitor to the foyer and out the door.

The inventor summoned
Jerome and arranged for the slave to replace him on the gallery that night as
the guard for Solo’s class. Then, weary and despondent, Tom climbed the
staircase and retired to his room. He remained there for the rest of the night.