A Perilous Proposal (12 page)

“Like dose two chunks er wood.”

“Just like that. Then he asked me which kind of person I wanted to be. I wasn't much more than a kid, but he always made me think about those kinds of things. Then he told me to start looking at animals. He said that the difference between animals and men was that animals don't have a choice about what they do. They just do what animals do. But with men it's different. We've got a choice whether to fall into harmony with the order of things in the world. When we do, the grain in our lives runs straight and true. When we don't,
we get all knotted and twisted up inside.”

“But what dat mean, dat fallin' in wiff da order ob things you's talkin' 'bout?”

“To find out what that natural order of things is, you have to know what life and the world means. That's when God comes into it. God must have made everything for a reason. It's like I was saying before, we've got to figure out what God means with things around us. We've also got to figure out what God means
inside
us. Why did He make us, Jake? Why did God make
you
?”

“I don't know . . . I figgered I just happened when I wuz born.”

“Nothing just happens, Jake. Everything means something because God made it. You
mean
something. Figuring out what life means is the same as figuring out what
you
mean. What's your life supposed to be about? That's what falling in with the order of things means—living in the way God means you to live. You ever heard about being created in the image of God, Jake?”

“I reckon so . . . but dat's jes' fo white folk—everybody knows dat, don't dey?”

“It's for everybody, Jake, but not too many folks think much about what it really means.”

“What duz it mean, den?”

“That we're supposed to be like God ourselves. That's what it means to fall in with the natural order of the world. That's why we're alive. That's our purpose. Even though we're just ordinary people who can't do it very well, we're supposed to try to act like God wants us to. We're supposed to be kind and nice and unselfish because that's the way God is. When we fall in with how God means us to be, that's when our grain grows straight and true. Life can't be a good and happy thing if we don't go along with that purpose. It's like the sap in a tree trying to go against the way it's supposed to grow. When you go against the way you're supposed to grow,
you can't help but grow crooked. There's twisted-up crooked people just like there's twisted-up and crooked trees. Then there are people whose insides are straight just like trees. That's what it means to fall in with the way things are supposed to be—growing the straight way we were meant to grow.”

“But we don't got no sap inside us tellin' us how ter grow straight like trees duz.”

“We
do
, Jake. We've got the best kind of sap inside us of all.”

“What dat?”

“God's life is inside us tellin' us a thousand ways every day how straight people are supposed to grow. That's the human sap growing in us—God's life and God's voice telling us how to grow into straight, true people.”

“I neber heard God tellin' me nuthin' like dat.”

“His voice is so quiet, most folks never learn to hear it, Jake. But it's there just like the sap in a tree. That's what I mean about finding out what things around us mean. When we learn how trees grow, that helps us know how people are supposed to grow too.”

Jake sighed and shook his head. “I don't know, Duff,” he said. “Dat's gwine take sum hard thinkin' 'bout. An' I ain't so shore I believe what you said dat you weren't neber a preacher.”

Micah just smiled and went about his work. He knew seeds were getting planted in the soil of Jake's heart, just like the bearded white man called Hawk had planted seeds in his. Now it was his own turn, Micah thought. If he kept gently watering them with hands of kindness, he hoped the seeds in Jake's heart would sprout and grow in time.

T
WISTED
G
RAIN

15

A
N HOUR LATER MICAH WAS OUTSIDE TENDING THE
small fire where he was making a stew for their supper from what meat he had left from his own supply and a few vegetables he had retrieved from the table scraps the farmer's wife had brought out to the pigpen that morning. The pig seemed fat enough, Micah thought, and wouldn't miss them. The moment Mrs. Dawson was out of sight, he had dashed for the trough before the old sow had been able to waddle to it from the other side of her pen.

He'd been outside a good long while. When he went back into the barn, he froze. There was Samantha Dawson across the dirt floor staring down at Jake, who was sound asleep. In her two hands she held the ax she'd picked up from the woodpile, where Micah had been chopping wood earlier that day.

Micah stood stock-still. She hadn't heard him. Even unable to see her face, it was clear enough what she was thinking.

Slowly she raised the ax into the air over Jake's head.

Micah waited no longer. He leapt and wrenched the ax handle from the girl's hand. Losing her balance, she toppled to the ground with a cry of anger and surprise.

She scarcely had time to recover her shock before a huge
black hand took hold of her arm and yanked her to her feet as if she weighed no more than twenty pounds. She spun around to see two great flaring eyes boring into hers from the middle of a stern black face.

“Let me go!” she cried, struggling to free herself from his grip.

“I will not let you become a murderer,” Micah said, still holding her tight.

“You let go of me! I'll kill you too if I get the chance!”

“If you want to let your hate eat you up, you foolish girl,” said Micah, “I can't help you, though I pity you for it. But you're not going to kill anybody.”

He let go of her and she made a dash for the ax. But Micah reached it first and stood to face her.

“Aren't you listening to what I'm saying, you stupid girl!” he said. “Maybe I can't stop you hating. But to let you destroy yourself by killing a man that did his best to protect you, that I can prevent. Now you get out of here and you think about what I said.”

“You evil nigger man—I hate you!” she screamed, then ran from the barn.

The incident unnerved both invalid and his protector. In spite of Jake's condition, things had suddenly taken a serious turn. Micah began to think that maybe it was time for them to move on.

But the day was not over yet.

His daughter's shrieks and hysterical reports that the man in the barn had attacked her brought the boiling furnace of rage within the heart of the father to the surface. Above his wife's terrified objections, he ran to the gun cabinet. He stormed out of the house a minute later. He had every intention of emptying both barrels of his shotgun into the chests of the two niggers who had dared defile his home.

He charged into the darkened barn. Hastily he struggled to adapt his eyes to the dim light. Fortunately for Jake, he did
not wait long enough. The explosion that brought Micah running from where he had been working blew a hole six inches across through the thin board of a wall about two feet above where Jake lay.

Jake cried out in terror. Even as echoes from the shot and Jake's yells were still reverberating in his ears, John Dawson heard the sound of running footsteps behind him. He spun around to meet them. But suddenly he felt the barrel of his gun wrested from his hands. The instant it thudded to the floor, a fist smashed into the side of its owner's head just above one ear. The blow sent him sprawling to the ground.

A string of horrible obscenities burst from Dawson's mouth. He leapt to his feet, his vision even less dependable now than it had been a moment earlier, and charged at Micah like an enraged bear. John Dawson was a powerful man with great skill with his fists. Had they been outside in the sunlight, it might well have been that both blacks would have been dead within five minutes. As it was, however, having just come inside out of the bright afternoon, he was no match for one who had been working in the barn's darkness. Micah received two or three glancing blows to shoulder, side, and back of the head. But in the end, several more sharp, wellaimed jabs from his own fists sent the farmer again to the ground, this time flat on his back. As his eyes at last began to adjust to the light, he found himself staring up into the wrong end of his own shotgun.

“Look, Mr. Dawson,” said Micah heatedly, his righteous anger at last fully aroused, “maybe I won't kill you to keep Jake alive. His life is not worth more than yours. But neither is it worth less. Now I'm going to give you a chance to get up and walk out of here before you do any more mischief. I don't know what evil has gotten into you and your daughter. But if you try to hurt him again, I'll put you in bed beside him with the other barrel of this gun if I have to. Then maybe I'll have to nurse you both back to health and teach you some respect
for your fellow man by making you lie beside one black man and take food and drink from the hands of another. I'd rather it didn't come to that. I don't want to hurt you, but if that's what it takes to keep you both alive, then I'll do what I have to do. I bear you no animosity, Mr. Dawson. I'm appreciative of your hospitality. But I will not let you hurt that boy.”

Almost beside himself with wrath to hear a black man lecture him, Dawson struggled to his feet. “You are a dead man, you hell-bound nigger!” he said, spitting the words out with venom. “You're both dead or my name's not John Dawson! I'll kill you with my own two hands!”

He strode angrily from the barn and across the yard to the house.

Hearing the shot and fearing for what it meant, his poor wife met him at the door and followed him with a barrage of anxious questions. He shoved her away with a rude remark and for the second time in less than ten minutes made straight for the gun cabinet. By the time he had another gun loaded, however, a vicious throbbing had begun in his head. His right eye had also begun to swell shut. Along with this came the reminder that the black man in the barn still had the shotgun with one loaded barrel. And, as long as he remained in the barn, would have the advantage of the light.

For all his raging bluster, he was not yet quite ready to die. He had not heard a word Micah had said. He had no doubt that the wild man out in the barn would blow a hole in his head if given half the chance. He still had no inkling that in Micah Duff he had probably encountered the gentlest man he would ever meet.

Slowly he closed the door of the gun cabinet. He might try something after dark, Dawson said to himself. For the present he would have to content himself with fuming about the house. For the rest of the day he complained bitterly to his wife about the cruel lot of being at the mercy of such nigger trash, as if she herself were the object of his fury.

Back in the barn, Micah set the gun down and hurried to make sure Jake had not received any ricocheting shot.

“We gots ter git outta dis place, Duff!” said Jake, by now on his feet. “Dese blamed white folks is plumb crazy!”

“They're a man and daughter with some mighty twisted-up ideas, that's for sure,” said Micah as he regained his breath. “Yep, it's probably time we were moving on. You think you can sit a saddle?”

“Don't know unless I try. But it's better'n bein' dead. Dat's a crazy man, Duff!”

“Well, if you have too hard a time riding, we'll stop again. But you're right. We can't risk one of these people doing something else stupid. We better wait till tonight and slip out when it's dark.”

“Why dat?”

“You heard what he said. I think if given half the chance, he'd follow us and ambush us first chance he got. I'd rather he didn't know which way we were headed.”

“Dat's right smart, Duff. I'm glad you thought ob dat. I don't want dat man puttin' no gun to my head when I's asleep!”

“I'll round up our things and keep the horses inside and out of sight for the rest of the day. We'll saddle them, and after they're asleep we'll head out across the field behind the barn out of sight from the house. Once we make the cover of the trees, we'll move back and forth for a while so he can't follow us and see how you are, then make camp somewhere till morning. How's that sound?”

“Anythin' ter git outta dis fool place!”

F
REEDOM
C
OUSINS

16