Lily Fairchild. Don Gutteridge

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СКАЧАТЬ looked up at them, exposing his huge, sad eyes. Then he smiled the widest smile Lily had ever seen. “How c’n I thank yo’all?” he said.

      “Lily will bring you your food. You can stay up here long’s nobody comes ’round. You need somethin’, you just tap on this wall,” Papa said, demonstrating.

      “If’n you doan mind, suh, I prefers to stay down here. Down here I feels safe.”

      Papa didn’t reply. He turned to leave. “I got a sturdy lock on this shed door,” he said. “Lily’s gonna lock it every time she brings you what you need. Nobody’ll get in here. You’ll be safe. I gotta go to Chatham, to the Committee. Won’t be more than a day or so. We’ll work out a safe route once we know where those Yankee bastards are or if they’ve gone back where they belong.”

      “I’se gon’ stay right here, Mistuh Cor’cran, suh. I’se gon’ be all right now. I be no more trouble, no suh.”

      “I’ll be back in two or three days. You just keep your hopes up, Mr. Johnson. My Lily will take good care of you.”

      Papa showed Lily how to fit the key in the lock and open it. She felt trusted, like a grown-up, and charged with excitement. She wanted to learn more about the black men they brought across the River, about slavery, and these Yankee bastards who were chasing Solomon. But now was not the time, it seemed. While she prepared some cold beef, greens, and biscuits for Solomon’s supper, Papa prepared to leave again.

      Lily watched him reach the road that lead south, but instead of wheeling left he paused and looked up the line as if he were waiting for someone to catch up. Even from this distance Lily could tell that the jauntiness and intensity of purpose that had earlier quickened his gait and given an edge to every action, was now completely gone.

      The voices hailing Papa were recognizable long before the figures emerged against the fading light. This time, though, the Scotch cousins were accompanied by a third man who, despite his powerful, squarish slope, trod a respectful distance behind his betters. An official of some kind, Lily thought. Old Smoothie greeted Papa, and together the entourage continued at a ruminative pace towards Chatham.

      I’ll never tell anyone he’s down there, thought Lily. Ever.

      Two days passed with no sign of Papa. Lily rehearsed what she would say when Old Samuels or one of the LaRouche boys came over. No one appeared. The sun shone, and the bees settled nicely in their new hive. Lily and Solomon had the homestead to themselves.

      The first two or three times that Lily brought around his food, Solomon said nothing except “Thank yuh, Miz Lil, ma’am,” his eyes downcast or averted.

      “Why don’t you eat up here? The sun’s comin’ through.”

      Solomon, below, devoured his food noisily.

      “I can fetch a chair from the house, with a back on it.”

      The empty tin plate and clean spoon rose through the trap-door. “Thank yuh, Miz Lil, ma’am.”

      “Did you like the pickles, Solomon? Maman and me made them last fall.”

      A hand, seemingly detached, reached up and pulled the trap-door down like a mouth snapping shut. Reluctantly Lily gathered the utensils and with difficulty locked the outside door. She could feel him waiting to hear the comfort of its click.

      “Tell me what it’s like in the United States.”

      “Well, Miz Lil,” Solomon replied, finishing the last of the dills from his noon dinner and settling back a little on Papa’s chair. “Yuh wouldn’ wanna go dere, no ma’am. It’s an evil place, a wicked, wicked place –’da devil hisself don’t wanna dere.”

      “Is that why you left?”

      “Cain’t talk ’boud dat, Miz Lil. Jus’ cain’t.” He looked at the cellar floor.

      “It’s nice in Chatham. Maman says they got brick houses there. And board sidewalks. And schools for little children.”

      “Long’s they ain’t got no slaveholders, Ol’ Solomon be happy.”

      Lily was accustomed to posing many questions in exchange for few answers, but she barely noticed that as the afternoon eased westward and Solomon showed no inclination to escape, she was doing more talking than she ever had. It appeared Solomon was a good listener, unfailingly alert and eager for her words. So attentive an audience was entirely new to her; even Solomon’s sadness and hair-trigger jumpiness seemed to abate.

      She told him all the things she knew that were interesting and that he might need to know when he got his freedom down in Chatham. He got an earful about the LaRouches and the war against the Yankees, about Old Samuels and his miraculous all-day pipe; about the quilting bee at Maman’s last summer when the Frenchman drank too much hooch and dressed up like a priest in one of his wife’s black slips and scared the ladies out of their wits; about Maman then going after him with the skillet, ruining a whole pan of perch. “Now you tell me a story,” she said with gentle urgency.

      “Solomon jus’ like to listen, Miz Lily, ma’am. I’se accustomed ta jus’ listenin’. A body get used to it, he do.” She thought she caught the hint of jest in his eye.

      “But how am I to know a person if they don’t tell about themselves,” Lily said.

      “Nothin’ ta tell. My life ahead of me, missy. Got nothin’ behind me ’tall.”

      “But you were born. You had a mama and a papa. You lived somewheres.”

      “Had no papa, no ma’am; had me a wonderful mama, but no papa ever come round us.”

      “Why’d your mama give you a funny name like Solomon?” she said.

      “T’ain’t funny,” he said. “Come right from da Bible. Doan yo’all know da Lord’s Book in dese parts? What kinda place I come to?”

      “What kind of place did you come from?”

      “Hertford County, North Carolina, nigh Murfreesboro,” he said as if responding to an interrogator. “Work fer Mastah Cartwright. In da fields. I’se his slave, all da time.”

      Lily ached to know more, but prod as she would, she could get nothing further out of him. Indeed his original suspicion poured back into his face and demeanour as soon as she switched from telling to questioning.

      Later that day, after a shared but quiet supper, Lily reached over to pick up the plate and mug. Solomon’s left hand lay on the stool beside them. Lily let the petal of her right hand whisper to the ebony of his. Solomon jerked his entire body back as if he’d been lashed. The plate and cup clattered on the platform.

      When Lily recovered from her surprise, she said “Are you hurtin’ there, Solomon?”

      Solomon could not reply. He was trembling head to toe, a cottontail before the weasel struck blood.

      “I’ll let you be,” Lily said.

      As she turned the key in the lock, she heard him squeeze into his ground-hole.

      On the third morning he took his breakfast only after Lily had retreated. But at noon with the bright midsummer sun lancing СКАЧАТЬ