Balm (18 page)

“That boy yanked it clean off my neck. So I kicked him in the leg. Sure did. That's when everything go dark.”

“How you get it back?”

“Now ain't God funny. Nem mens took out from here so fast, they leave it behind. One of the sisters find it out there in the dirt. I got back my Madge, but I lost my sight. Now all I can do is hold it. Can't ever look on your face no more, even when you laying right here beside me. So you might as well head on back up that way and take it with you. I don't need it no more.”

“Say-ruh?”

“Hush now, take it.”

“What I want with a picture of myself?”

“You got one?”

“No.”

“Well, this here remind you what you look like, remind you who you is.”

Madge could not speak.

Sarah turned to face her. “What you aims to do with your God-given gift, girl?”

It was the first time her mother had ever acknowledged her hands. Madge blew out through her lips. She opened her mouth to speak, but she couldn't explain it, couldn't translate the kinds of hopes the city gave her. “I aims to heal.”

“Good. But I don't understand why you got to live in that city. Plenty to heal right around these parts. Ain't nothing up there that ain't right here.”

Yeah there is
, Madge wanted to say.
Trains and ships and palace hotels and gas streetlamps. Big churches full of respectable coloreds like Quinn Chapel and Olivet Baptist and the one Hemp belonged to.

“Stay here. Stay here with me.”

She was so busy thinking of Chicago that she did not see it sneaking up on her. The thing she'd always longed for. The childish
gimme
hand-delivered in her mother's bed on a hot July night. At long last. The proof. The asking. First the profile and now this. These words being handed her, this heartache in the strain of Sarah Lou's voice. It had been the absence of this very thing that had pushed her to leave Tennessee in the first place. That disgusted face over a tub of dirty underwear in a muddy front yard had been no kind of image for a daughter to carry.

Now she had something more.

But even with it nestled in her chest, stored where she could always remember it, she knew she would leave again. This time, there was no washing board to take the blame for Madge's sorrow, no hanging dresses needing a hand. Instead, there were just these words, this string tying them together. They lay there—two free women weighing two futures, with and without the other.

This time Madge would not leave because she did not receive a mother's love. She would leave because she had.

U
NABLE TO REACH THE RIGHTEOUSNESS HE
craved, Hemp took the other direction. The theft began soon after Richard reported that Madge had left for Tennessee. His driver's uniform and the stately rockaway lent him an official look, storeowners never suspecting him of wrongdoing. He stashed candies in his coat pocket, and while waiting for the doctor he unwrapped them and placed two on his tongue at a time. When he was done, he washed the sweetness down with a swallow of corn whiskey. He tried to convince himself that the less he thought of Madge, the easier it would be to erase the sin. He was wrong. He could not escape it. So he moved blindly through the days, convinced of his own depravity.

At the end of the month, he went to see the reverend, taking care not to stand too close.

“I hear you been sick,” the reverend said after they had settled into two large chairs in the front room of his house. His wife had offered them freshly made applejack and the room smelled cloyingly sweet.

“Yas, sir. I just gone back to work.”

“Mighty bad fever, I hear.”

“Annie ain't dead,” he said suddenly.

The reverend leaned back into his chair. “Ain't God something?”

“But I don't know where she at. Make me crazy.”

The reverend sipped.

“White man sin all over me. I ain't got nothing.”

“You got something, son. You got a choice now that you free. Time to make your own path.”

“I got a wife out there might be waiting on me. Ain't no choice in that.”

The reverend stoked the fire from his chair, leaned the poker back against the wall. “These is better times, but they still hard times.”

Hemp made excuses to leave. The reverend handed him his coat, and as Hemp left, he pocketed a quill. When he was outside, he faced home, then turned around and walked in the opposite direction.

H
E HAD BEEN SEARCHING
for a miracle that would set him back on the right path, and it came from the place he least expected. Somehow, the doctor, whose own sad countenance was in need of a lift, got it in his mind that he would be the one to find Annie. At first Hemp thought: impossible. The doctor said the colored maid had told him about Annie, and Hemp knew he meant Madge.

Hemp tried to rein in his hope. This white friend of the doctor said there were millions of freed slaves. What did the word
millions
mean? There had been a lot of coloreds at the camp in Kentucky, and he wondered how many more would make a million. Crowds of people walked the streets of Chicago. Was that a million? He wanted to ask, but he was afraid he'd upset the man's plan. So he began to figure in his head: if there were a million stalks of hemp spread across a field,
it would stretch as far as he could see; a million trees would cover the entire state of Kentucky; a million cattle would make a man richer than God. New York. Virginia. Mississippi. Canada and far-off lands across the ocean. There might be a million places on earth where she could be. The number staggered.

The doctor directed Hemp to the office of a man he said could help. The morning sun cast angled shadows on the fronts of buildings. Hemp drove east on Michigan Avenue, past the Dearborn House, across Lake Street, turning south on Randolph. Michael counted the buildings, trying to remember the exact location of Peter's office. W. H. Taylor Boots & Shoes.
Chicago Times
. B. Mann Apothecaries. D. A. Foote Silver Plater. F. Hudson, Jr. Wigs. The Courthouse. A barber's shop, billiard saloon, tailor. There it was: above the hat store.

“Stop!”

Hemp slowed the carriage in front of a building at the corner of Franklin and Randolph.

The doctor stepped out and waved. “Come inside with me.”

“What's that, sir?”

“I said, come with me.”

Hemp nodded and put on his hat. “Yas, sir.”

They entered an office. Two desks faced each other, their surfaces piled with papers. In the corner a hairless cat scowled at them from inside a cage.

“What is it?” asked a man sitting at one of the desks. He wore an overcoat, despite the day's warmth. He did not look up.

“Now is that any way to greet a man who saved your life?”

“Servus!”

“Hey,
wie geht's
?”

They shook hands.

“May I take a seat?”

“Please.”

Hemp stood beside the door.

“I have a discreet matter,” Michael began. During the war, Peter had gotten messages to soldiers for a price. If you could not wait for the post, and your intended recipient was on a remote battlefield, Peter could get a message through in mere days. If anyone could find Hemp's wife, Peter could. He had connections all over the country.

“Anything you say will be held in strictest confidence.”

“You see that man over there? My driver?”

“You want me to ask him to leave?”

“He was a slave, and he's looking for his wife.”

“And I'm looking for one of my missing cats. Now please tell me about your urgent matter. I will do all I can to help.”

“I'd like to help him find her.”

His eyes traveled over to the big man and then back to Michael. “Aren't there people who do this sort of thing? Churches or relief societies?”

“There may be, Peter, but you know I don't know anything about this. I don't even know how to begin. Perhaps you could reach out to them.”

“Do you know how many slaves were separated from their families? It just isn't possible to reunite them. There must be millions.”

“I just need to help one. Hemp?”

Hemp tried to anchor himself so he would not faint. Behind him, the front windows were so soiled, he could barely see the street below. The doctor's friend peered at him from behind a hill of papers on his desk. The floor was littered with stacks of books. In a dark corner, the strange cat, wide-eyed and quiet, stared out from its cage. It made a sound, not quite catlike, and the wrinkled folds of its skin stretched as it raised its head.

“Can you come over here and tell this gentleman about your wife?”

Now that Hemp was being called to give what he considered nothing
less than a religious testimony, he grew nervous. Suppose they found a Harrison relative who conjured up some unpaid debt owed the family. Hemp might be returned to Kentucky. And what if they discovered Annie was dead after all, and the widow just couldn't find her on the other side. The doctor whispered to him, reassuring him that it would work out. Hemp sank into the offered seat, looked down at his hands. White lines webbed the skin of his palms.

“What's that, sir? My wife?”

“Yes, the one you lost in Kentucky. This man is going to help you find her.”

“Help me find her, sir?”

“That's right. He's going to track her down.”

“Track her?”

“That's right.” Michael smelled liquor on the driver's breath.
A little early for that
, he thought.

“My wife, sir?”

“But first we have to give a description. So he knows what to look for.”

Michael nodded at Peter.

“I don't know . . .”

“I saved your life, Peter. Your life.” Michael waved his cane in the air, and Peter ducked as if preparing for a blow.

Peter cleared space on the desk, took out a sheet of paper and a quill. He gave Michael a long look before beginning. “Tell me your name.”

Hemp did not know whether to give the man the made-up name or the name she would recognize him by. It angered him that the doctor had given him so little time to prepare. Something like this took planning, and he did not want this opportunity to pass him by because he could not think quickly enough. But if they were going to find Annie, he would have to cooperate.

“Truth is, what they called me was Horse.”

“That's what who called you?”

Michael considered himself an educated man. Yet it had not occurred to him that the colored men he saw walking the streets had stories of their own. They were not unlike Germans who had survived revolutions. This man had been called Horse. And he had renamed himself Hemp because he came from a Kentucky hemp farm. He must have thought it would help her find him. The strategy would never work, but Michael respected the attempt.

Hemp did not want the doctor to see the shame of his past life. He did not want him to look at his hands and see hooves, at his ankles and see hocks. But the name brought it all back.

He spoke softly. “Everybody, sir.”

“Horse?”

“Yas, sir.”

Even though he was looking at the floor, he saw the two men exchange a look and he could only guess what they were thinking.

“All right, then. What was your master's name?”

“What was the name of the town where you lived?”

“When was your wife sold?”

“When did you leave the camp?”

“What was your wife's name?”

Hemp readied himself to cross a thicker line. To utter her name in the presence of these men was to soil it.

“Tell you what. Why don't I just stay quiet while you tell me your story.”

Hemp looked over at Michael. Even with all the questions, Hemp still did not understand which story the man wanted. Did he want to know how he'd first come to live on the Harrison farm as a boy? The day he gave the preacher the chair? The day the women were sold? Searching for her in the camp? Walking until his feet bled? He looked
at the doctor for direction. So this was the price of finding her: letting a white man trample on his memories. He wished he could speak with Annie in his mind, the way the widow spoke with spirits. He wanted to tell her not to worry, that he would protect her with all his might. He would do it this time, though he had failed to save her before.

“Go on,” Michael said. “Tell him everything.”

Michael saw the distrust in the colored man's eyes. They were asking him to exhume, and Michael understood. He had done the same in his sessions with the widow. Michael reached out and touched the driver on the shoulder.

“Go on,” he urged.

“We worked Master's land together, but then they sell her and the girl off. I don't know where she gone to. Then we hear about the camp and I went to go and join the army. I heard the cabins at the Harrison farm done been emptied. So I come here.”

“You mentioned a girl. You have a daughter?”

He nodded. “She did. Yas, sir.”

“What was her name?”

“Herod. But I do believe she dead.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“All right, then,” Peter continued. “Did she have any other family?”

“No, sir.”

“Any identifying marks or scars?”

“A dog took half her ear once.”

“What kind of work is she likely to look for?”

“All we ever work was a hemp farm. That's the work she know.”

Michael wondered why helping a former slave had not entered his mind before. Just the act of being there, occupied by this new task, gave him purpose. He had not thought about his brother all day.

“I believe we have everything we need,” Peter said.

Hemp stood and hurried out.

“Where do you intend to start?”

“Well.” Peter tapped the paper. “I hope you understand the chances of finding this woman are low.”

“I understand.”

“I'll place an advertisement in some newspapers. It's likely she works for some white family. I'll send someone to that farm in Kentucky to see if she returned. Many of them went back after the war. Harrison is dead, but some other member of the family may have inherited the land and resumed work. This will all be very expensive, you see.”

“There is nothing to worry about in that regard.” Michael extended a hand. “I do appreciate this, Peter.”

Hemp stood outside waiting. The horse stamped its feet, and Hemp fed the beast from his hand. He knocked a clod of mud from his pants.

As they rode off, Michael opened the window. Warm air swept into the carriage. He tried not to look at the driver differently, tried not to picture him carrying stalks of hemp across a field. He looked through the front window and saw the muscles in Hemp's neck flex, the broad back. He closed his eyes. This had begun as a way to make up for his own failings, but now he was really beginning to care about this man.

Dear God, let this work
, he prayed.