Come August, Come Freedom (8 page)

Nanny took in a deep breath, then blurted out to him, “Even knowin’ what happens to a family . . . if I could choose any man in the world to make my child, I would choose you, Gabriel.” She confessed and then sucked in her breath, trying to recapture those words.

She broke from Gabriel’s hold and ran from the green-apple tree, down through the greener hillside, toward the spring. In but a few strides, Gabriel caught up and took her hand.

“Is that an invitation, Nan?” Gabriel finally asked. “Or just a thought?”

Nanny answered him by kissing the scar on the inside of his forearm, a mark shaped like the scythe the people used every day in Colonel Wilkinson’s field.

He rubbed his thumb across the raised bean of skin and explained. “My first good burn. From forging my own hammer. I needed a longer handle and a heavier head than what my teacher gave me, so he told me to make my own, and I did.” He opened his hand to show her more. “My second good burn — forging a rosette for a gate. I thought I had doused the thing in water, but I hadn’t.”

She bent her face over the delicate brown flower singed into the pale pink well of Gabriel’s palm. Nanny kissed that scar, too, until Gabriel let go a deep, contented sigh.

She touched the old gash on his forehead, the one made by Thomas Henry. “Not a burn,” Nanny said.

“No, it happened when I was a boy.”

They walked beside each other in silence along the hillside. He couldn’t help but let himself daydream a future day, one when Nanny and he might go down to the brook, a free man and his free wife. By then, he would have told her all the stories of all his scars and marks — his missing front teeth, the long gash down his brow, and the deep marks across his back. He imagined a night when he would have Nan all to himself. On that first night, he would let her explore all of these places with her eyes and her hands and her kisses. Whether scars of his trade or marks of the lie, he would give Nanny the whole of what he carried in his heart and on his person.

Gabriel smelled the promise of plum and apple and pear come wafting up from Young’s orchard. He linked his arm with hers. Neither of them heard the final notes of the last hymn rise up from the preachment at the spring. Gabriel stopped walking and pulled Nanny close to him.

She pressed the bridge of her nose into the contour of his shoulder. “I see the life I want,” she said, “but how can it come to be?”

Gabriel had no answer for her. In just a few minutes, she would be gone from him for another week. He pulled her tighter into his arms and rested his chin on her head. “I been knowing you a long time, Nan,” he said.

All of the forest seemed to recognize what passed from his heart to hers. The canopy let enter a golden glow, shining out from the clouds and directly down onto them. The smallest of yellow warblers and its fellow songbirds darted out of the creek’s soft edges; their voices filled Gabriel with hope.

He shook his head and smiled.

Nanny pushed on his arm. “What?”

He twirled her the way he did when they danced in the forest. “Just thinking. Wondering ’bout how our child might turn out to be.”

“Be like half you and half me.” Nanny let herself go free of Gabriel’s hold and ran to catch up with Colonel Wilkinson’s other women. The sunset’s fading and their friends’ leaving reminded them that there was always work left undone.

“Nan!” His words and his thoughts parted ways, both chasing after her.
Will you marry me?
he had meant to say, but Nanny was too far — gone away back up the hill. Now Gabriel knew something else about himself.
I belong to Gabriel, yes. And I belong, also, to Nanny.

HE RAN
back to Brookfield.
Nanny
loves me, and I am different,
Gabriel thought.

What did she say, exactly?
He tried to recall.

Dog greeted him at the apple tree. She jumped and bounced, begging Gabriel to turn back and take her night-hunting in the forest. He patted the hound on her flat head and caught Nanny’s words by the tail before they slipped away down the creek.

“If I could choose any man . . . I would choose you.”

He stopped beneath his tree to imagine his Nanny, again and again. Dog curled up at Gabriel’s feet, content to groan herself to sleep.

Was Nanny smiling when she told me? No, she looked sad. But then she reached for my hand. Did she say my name? Did I squeeze her hand back, or did she pull us along the hillside? Why didn’t I kiss her on the lips?

He recounted every step of their walk until he could recall only how the creek and Nanny’s face were alight with the gold of the sky, the flowers, and the spring birds.

The whole world is different,
he thought.
I need a plan.

He roused Dog. “Come on, girl. We got work to do.”

He knew then that he
would
marry Nanny, and that he would love her forever. Now he needed only to figure out how they could have the free life they imagined. Even though it was Sunday night, Gabriel itched to get to the forge. He always had plenty of smithing to do, but now he had a new problem to solve.

In the back corner of the forge, away from the hearth and out of reach of the anvil, repair work for Kissey and Ma and Mrs. Prosser waited on Gabriel, waited on a day like this one, when there were no horses to shoe, no broken-down buggies or carriages to interrupt him.

Broken pots and pot handles, trivets and andirons, gave Gabriel seamless hours of Sunday-night work to think and plan. In his smithy in the woods, there was no master smith to wake, no setting up but for himself. Even so, Gabriel started his work with the anvil beat.

Ping, ping, ping. Ping, ping, ping.

Gabriel pinched off the broken handle from Kissey’s teakettle. He pulled on the bellows to make fire, calling forth a great sigh from the great leather lung. He thought of his own torn-apart family.

Maybe Pa messed up, talking about everybody being free. What if Pa had hired out and worked to free Ma and me and my brothers? Would Pa still be with us? Would he and Ma be free? Would all of us?

Clang, clang, clang. Ping. Clang, clang, clang. Ping.
By now, Gabriel knew other men — blacksmiths, coopers, and carpenters — who had made their own money doing extra work, hiring out in the city or around the countryside. Some even saved up to buy freedom for their wives.

I can read and write; I can count and hammer. Just like the washerwomen told me that day by the creek: Hire myself out and make my own money. Work much as I want and buy what I want. All I want is Nanny. Make enough money to free Nanny. Simple. I will deliver Nanny and, maybe, myself.

Clang, clang, clang. Ping.

Now Gabriel realized that to be truly with Nanny, the way a man wants to be with his woman, first he must leave her. He must go and make enough money to buy her freedom. Later, he would worry about buying his own.

Clang, clang, clang. Ping.

If the old colonel owns Nanny, our children will belong to the old colonel. So says the law. If Nanny owns Nanny, our children will belong only to themselves. So says the law.

Gabriel knew that his value in the marketplace would bring top pay, and he knew that his master, Mr. Prosser, was even thirstier for cash than land. While Virginia law allowed Mr. Prosser to rent Gabriel to another man, the Commonwealth forbade Gabriel from moving about, hiring out on his own. Even so, such practice was common among skilled slaves like Gabriel and greedy men like Mr. Prosser.

Gabriel knew of no other man who could match his own talent or his own strength. How he wished he had listened to the laundresses from the beginning.

Clang, clang, clang. Ping.

No more time to waste. I’ll hire out here in Henrico. I’ll work in the city and all over the countryside for smiths or planters or even carpenters. Wherever a job can be found, I’ll work seven days a week — all day, all night — to save for Nanny. Shoeing horses, mending fences, digging on the canal or forging bullets — I’ll work for Nan. When I have saved up, I’ll make Nanny my wife, then set her free.

He dunked the repaired handle in the water barrel to set its shape. The next morning, with his plan well established in his own mind, Gabriel took the mended teakettle to Kissey. In turn, the grateful cook arranged a private visit for Gabriel with Mr. Prosser.

Kissey, showing gray at her temples but still well in control of the household, showed Gabriel to Mr. Prosser’s counting room. Even after she closed the door to give them privacy, Gabriel could see Kissey’s starched black dress hem pressed against the gap at the bottom rail of the door.

Kissey’s looking after me,
he thought.
If my talk with Mr. Prosser turns bad, Kissey will interrupt with urgent business.

Neither Gabriel nor the cook need to have worried. Mr. Prosser hungrily agreed that Gabriel could hire himself out as he pleased. The two settled on a monthly allotment for Gabriel to turn over to Brookfield — anything above that, Gabriel could keep. They both understood that their agreement was neither binding nor legal.

With this first part of his plan in place, Gabriel set about finding good work in the countryside. Jupiter and Isaac were known to seek out the mildest of masters when hiring out, and neither would work for a man of cruel repute. A man’s manners meant nothing to Gabriel; what mattered was the job and the pay. He often said to his friends, “There is no such thing as a kind or gentle master. Besides, liberty is my only master and money its only means.”

Gabriel imagined what he would tell Nanny’s master, the old colonel, in three, maybe four years.
“I am here to manumit my wife,” I’ll say.

“Manumit,” Gabriel said. “Our free and united life starts today.”

By the next Friday, Gabriel had arranged to hire on at a shop in Caroline County, twenty-five miles north of Brookfield. First he walked to the old colonel’s place to tell Nanny good-bye.

GABRIEL FOUND
Nanny weeding the garden she shared with the other women. He crouched low in the brush at the edge of Nanny’s quarter and spied on her hoeing the hard patch of ground that the colonel let them work. In Nanny’s hands, the earth seemed eager to grow beans and peas, onions and okra, and squashes of all kinds.

He loved how Nanny made her garden different from the others. Where a boulder rose from the earth, Nanny worked around it. Gabriel had once offered to bring some men to dig up the rock so she could set her rows straight, but Nanny had refused.

“Makes a good place for me to sit and watch,” she had told him. “I like to use the earth how the earth wants to be used.”

So Nanny’s garden flourished in patches and circles and swirls, following the contours of the earth. Where the ground stayed wet, she set out thirsty plants — melons and cantaloupes. Where the sun would not relent, she put the light-loving okra and tomatoes.

Across the glade, he watched her until he needed to touch her, then he called out, “Nan! I’ve brought something for you.”

Nanny dropped her hoe and ran toward him.