The Dark-Thirty (2 page)

“Your mama was freed by her master when she was born. I never told you before now, because I didn’t want you running off when you were too young to take care of yourself. You’re twenty-five and the law says I have to let you go.”

“I’ve always known I was free,” Henri said. “My mama told me many times before she died.”

“Will you be leaving Pin Oak?” Amos asked.

Henri sighed. “No, because Charlemae belongs to you, and she couldn’t come with me. I’ll stay and keep running Pin Oak—but for a salary. And I want to use that salary to buy Charlemae’s freedom.”

“A wise decision,” Amos said, smiling.

As long as Amos lived, Henri was safe. Then one Christmas, Amos took sick at the dinner table.
Believing it to be indigestion brought on by too much eggnog, Henri helped Amos to his bedroom. By the time they realized it was something far worse, it was too late.

“He’s asking for his son,” Dr. Shipp said, turning first to Henri, then to Harper. After an embarrassing moment, the doctor said to Harper, “He’s asking for you. Do hurry. He’s near death.”

Brushing past Henri, Harper went into his father’s bedroom. “I’m here.”

Amos held out his trembling hand, and for a split second Harper wanted to embrace his dying father and forget everything that had gone wrong between them. Instead he stood in stony silence. “Henri …” Amos struggled to say “Tell him …” But Amos McAvoy died before he could finish.

“Henri to the last,” Harper hissed. “Not even a parting word for me.” He sat in the darkened room for a while. Then he started laughing, a chuckle that turned into a shrill giggle. When the doctor and Henri rushed in to see what was happening, Harper looked at them with wild eyes. “I am the master of Pin Oak.”

“Did he say anything about freeing Charlemae and
my son?” Henri asked some weeks after the funeral. “He promised Charlemae and me—”

“No. In fact,
my father
suggested I sell you,” Harper lied. “But of course I’d keep Charlemae … and your baby. Does that bother you, Henri? Knowing you’re just a slave after all?”

Harper looked for signs of hurt in Henri’s face. He saw only his father’s contemptuous green eyes staring defiantly back at him.

“Go, get out.” Harper waved Henri away.

But his brother didn’t leave. Though Henri saw no point in telling Harper he was a free man, there was another matter he needed to discuss. “There’s something you should know,” he said with urgency in his voice. “Pin Oak is in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” Harper asked, growing nervous.

“For the past two years the crops haven’t come in healthy—too much rain one year, not enough the next. Still, Master Amos said if we toed the line, cut a few corners, and brought in a good crop this year, we could get through these hard times.”

Harper turned his back on Henri. “How dreary. Do what you must to keep the place going.”

But meanwhile Harper continued to spend Pin Oak’s money, on good whiskey and bad deals. It wasn’t long before the bank threatened foreclosure.

Driven by years of anger and resentment, Harper met the bank’s demand payment by selling the most valuable asset he had—Henri.

“You fool!” Mr. Kelsey, a longtime family friend at the bank, shouted when Harper told him. “Why didn’t you sell the silver? Sell all the furniture? Not Henri. Would a carpenter sell his saw?”

But the deed had been done. Harper sat in his office listening to a slave sing a mournful tune.

He, too, longed to steal away to a peaceful place, if only for a moment. He drifted off to sleep.

“Harper.”

Opening his eyes, Harper saw his father—no, it was only Henri. “Do you think you might try saying ‘sir’ or ‘Massa Harper,’ ” he said sarcastically.

“I’ve come once more to plead with you to reconsider.”

“Sorry, but there’s nothing I can do. I sold you.”

“But that’s just it. You can’t sell me,” Henri said carefully. “I’m free, because my mother was free. You know the law. When my mother died, your father came to New Orleans to get me, but he knew the condition of my birth. That’s why he couldn’t sell me. Neither can you.”

Harper’s eyes stretched wide with anger and frustration. “Wh-where are your papers?” he asked incredulously. “Can you show me some papers?”

“Here.”

Harper read the document and swore. “He never told me. You mean you were always free to go? Why didn’t you just leave?”

“I couldn’t abandon Charlemae and our baby. Besides, Master Amos was letting me build cash credits to buy my family’s freedom. I should be close to my goal.”

“I can’t imagine my father making such a deal.”

“Master Amos must have kept records. Won’t you at least have a look?”

Harper ignored the question. He rubbed his
temples. “The dealers are coming tomorrow,” he whined. “Oh, they do terrible things to people who renege on sales. What must I do?”

“Give them their money back.”

“I’ve spent it.”

But slowly an idea formed in Harper’s head. As it grew and took shape, he smiled. “Since you’re free, I’ll give them Charlemae in your place. If you want, you can follow her and offer your services to her new master. I’ll keep your son, of course. That seems a fair deal, don’t you think?”

“What? Why?”

“Why not? You always got everything you wanted. But now I’m in charge.”

Henri started to walk away but turned back. “You always envied me, but there was no cause,” he said. “How do you think I felt having to call my own father Massa Amos? I used to watch you whine and fret, and he’d remind you that one day you’d be master of Pin Oak. I ran Pin Oak for him, kept it afloat, but in the end he called you to his bedside.” Henri shook his head. “You never understood.” Then he left.

Dawn brought the slave dealers, as promised.

“Beautiful morning, don’t you think?”

“We’ve come for the buck,” one man said gruffly.

The other one took an ankle cuff and chain from his pack. “Fetch him.”

“There’s a slight problem …”

“We’re listening.”

“Unfortunately, Henri is a free man,” Harper said apologetically. “Seems he was born free. The sale I made was illegal.”

One of the men spat tobacco juice. “Whoever heard of a free nigger in Tennessee? We’re taking him, papers or no. Go fetch him.”

A nod from Harper sent a slave child scurrying toward the quarters. Within seconds he returned, yelling, “They gone. They gone!”

“Who’s gone? Where?”

“Henri, Charlemae, and the boy. They gone. Cabin empty.”

The dealers mounted quickly. “You got dogs?”

“I do.”

“Get your horse. We’ll track ’em.” And they rode off.

“I don’t ride,” Harper called. “I’ll be along in my carriage.”

The men followed Henri and Charlemae through the orchards and along Topps River.
Their trail was easy to follow. The dogs reached the clearing first. They had cornered their quarry.

The runaways had climbed a steep cliff and were huddled on a ledge jutting out over the crashing water. Their backs were to the falls, with no chance for escape.

The dogs barked and tried to climb the wet, slippery rocks. Henri called out to the lead dog. “Blue!” Hearing his voice, all the dogs stopped yelping and wagged their tails in friendly recognition.

The slave dealers bolted into the clearing. Harper followed minutes later.

“Come down from there, boy!”

“We got no time for this. There ain’t no place else to run. So bring yourself down with the woman.”

But instead of backing down, Henri and Charlemae inched forward to the edge of the cliff. Then, after handing the baby to Henri, Charlemae leaped into the water. A split second later, Henri, the boy clutched tightly to his chest, leaped too.

Harper scrambled from his carriage and struggled to climb the cliff. Finally reaching the spot where Henri had stood moments before, he
looked down, and his frightened brown eyes searched the churning waters.

Suddenly, miraculously, Harper saw a large beautiful bird rise out of the mists. It hovered overhead, circling. Another bird, a female, joined her mate. Screeching loudly, a fledgling flapped frantically to stay in flight. The parents waited patiently until the little one gained confidence. Once the three were airborne, the birds circled, then flew north.

“No,” Harper cried. “Come back. Come back. You always win!” The ledge began to crumble. The men tried to call to him, warn him, but it was too late. The ground gave way, taking Harper McAvoy into the crashing waters below.

They found his body downstream. But they never found a trace of Henri, Charlemae, or their child. The authorities called Harper’s death a terrible accident. The others were listed as suicides.

But the driver who had been part of the search told a different story. Down in the quarters, he told about a slave family who leaped into Topps River Falls but weren’t killed—they were transformed into beautiful birds who flew away to freedom.

*   *   *

Legends grew up around Pin Oak. After Harper’s death, the house went to Mr. Kelsey at the bank, but it was destroyed by fire during the Civil War.

Olive Hill had grown up in the shadow of Pin Oak ruins. Two of the six Doric pillars and a burned-out chimney were all that was left of the stately old mansion. Whenever Papa had gone fishing, Olive liked to tag along behind him through the plantation grounds and down to Topps River Falls. There he would tell her the legend of Pin Oak.

After twenty-five years of telling it, Papa’s Pin Oak story was always the same. Olive never tired of hearing it, and she had even made it the subject of a paper she was writing. For months she’d searched through old records, documents, books, and papers to see how much of the real story she could reconstruct.

The diary of Benjamin Stone, a well-known abolitionist and “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, had just been published, and it contained information she needed. When the Reader Bookstore called to tell her that her copy had arrived, she hurried over to pick it up.

Driving to the mall, Olive mentally sorted
through all the details she’d uncovered about Pin Oak. Henri, a mulatto, was the son of Mary DuPriest, a free woman from New Orleans. Mary had died in 1840, and Amos had brought Henri to Pin Oak, although by law the boy was free. Years later Amos had made Henri overseer and put him in charge of Pin Oak operations—ordering, planting, harvesting, and selling crops. Henri had married Charlemae and they had had a son. It was speculated that the family had plunged to their death in Topps River Falls in a failed attempt to escape the plantation—though their bodies were never found.

Meanwhile, during the 1850s, the Underground Railroad was active in Tennessee. Through a network of conductors, runaways were led from one safe house to another, until they reached free soil.

Olive speculated that Henri might have made contact with Benjamin Stone. Conductors sometimes used old spirituals like “Steal Away” to send a signal that an escape was being planned.

A cave located behind Topps River Falls was a well-known hiding place used by the Underground Railroad. Stone no doubt knew about it and might have told Henri the night before the planned escape. Perhaps Henri and Charlemae
tried to make it appear as though they jumped to their death while actually leaping to a hidden ledge and crawling to safety in the cave. Stone could have then led them to the next station and finally to freedom.

This explanation for the missing bodies seemed plausible to Olive, and she hurried home as soon as she bought the book to see if the facts supported her theory. As soon as she walked in the door, she threw off her coat and dropped it in the middle of the floor. Excitement made her hands shake as she flipped the pages of her book, looking for relevant dates, names, and places. “Pin Oak! Here it is!”

As the last rays of sunlight filtered through the window, Olive turned on the lamp beside her chair and curled up with Benjamin Stone’s diary. He wrote:

Y
ou ask how we all got free ’fore

President Lincoln signed the paper?

Write this what I tell you.