All God's Children Read online

  She was fifteen the first time she ran. She waited until her mistress was asleep, then slipped out the window of the house and made off across the sloping lawn. Down through the beech trees. Down the row of pinewood cabins.

  She’d convinced Jubal to come with her. He was a field hand from Mister Wellman’s plantation and understood the roots and animals, which ones to eat, which to pass over. Cecelia knew all there was to know about the house, but beyond its walls, she grew uncertain. Her owner, Master Haverford, was a dry goods merchant, and at the parties he held for local planters, he’d have her perform. She’d recite verse she’d memorized, Dante or Ovid. Sometimes, she’d sing. And in the light of the planters’ blue, gawking eyes, she discovered something.

  It didn’t happen all at once. It took her months and years.

  It was like waking in the harsh glare of sunlight or waking from an illness to find your fever had broken. All the words her mistress taught her, all these lines of verse. As a child, she thought of it as a kindness, Mistress Anne teaching her to read the secrets.

  But here at Haverford’s parties, she began to see it wasn’t her the planters applauded. Cecelia would finish her recitations, but the crowd wouldn’t clap until Anne rose and bowed.

  That’s mine, she thought. You have taken it from me.

  Her affection for the mistress turned to ash.

  She began sneaking books from the library the same way some children snuck sweets; she kept William Cowper’s translation of Homer beneath her bed. Day by day, a new Cecelia began to form, and one night, reciting lines from Cowper, she stared out at the watching faces and realized she’d grown smarter than the planters, smarter than Haverford himself. Smarter than her mistress, who’d been like a mother after her actual mother was sold away. Anne’s lips moved as she read; Cecelia’s hadn’t moved since she first learned her letters.

  At night, she went back to the poem under her mattress, and he was waiting for her right there: cunning Odysseus. Wily Odysseus. She couldn’t read the Greek, but Cowper rendered the hero purely as you please: “for shrewdness famed and genius versatile.” Yes, she thought. Not crazy Ajax or pouting Achilles: those men were strong or brutish. Odysseus was a man of tricks. He used deception, a woman’s virtue.

  Her virtue, she thought.

  Just look at these pages: these yellowed pages right here. A moonbeam from the window to light the lines. In this poem, the sea was dark as wine; there were whirlpools and monsters among the rocks. The men were larger than gods, and the gods themselves were petty and murderous. She felt she was more of this world than Virginia. More of this world than these broken hills around her, piled with planters and their slaves. When she watched Odysseus weather the storm inside her brain, she didn’t see an olive-skinned Ithacan with black hair and a loincloth.

  She saw herself at the prow, staring back.

  The vision took root in her, and when she learned there were free negroes in the North, people with neither masters nor mistresses, people with their own lives and property, she decided she’d run away.

  Which was something folks did, but she couldn’t do it by herself.

  So, for an entire year, she spent her evenings with Jubal. She found he had an eye for her, and she liked his nimble hands. She talked and talked, painting a picture of life in the North, using her words for color, giving her portrait shape. She had no idea what life looked like in the North—she’d never been farther than Kingwood—so she made it whatever she wanted. The two of them lived inside it like a dream.

  And then Jubal wanted inside her as well.

  “First, we must run,” she told him, and Jubal needed no more convincing.

  He said they could run that night.

  * * *

  She stopped outside the cabin at the end of the row, crouched and waited for him to appear. She wore shoes inside the house, but she could move more quietly without leather crimping up her toes. She’d begun going barefoot whenever she could.

  She watched Jubal exit the cabin, then stand in the yard, glancing around.

  She liked that he couldn’t see her. She could be so slight and silent.

  She stood up and Jubal saw her. He walked over and took her hand.

  His touch surprised her. She felt herself go soft. His hand was large and strong, but he held her so carefully, like she was important and rare. She felt it go through her, softening her body, a softness that kept going down.

  Then they were walking. They were out among the pines. She’d imagined being frightened, but with Jubal, she didn’t feel afraid. Why hadn’t she gone sooner? Was she only waiting for him?

  He asked if she was tired, and she liked that, but the next time he asked, there seemed to be something behind it.

  “I’m doing fine,” she told him, and he held her hand a little tighter, and they walked on.

  In several miles, they struck the Cheat River, and she felt his hand go slack. There was something hesitant in his touch.

  “What is it?” she said.

  He stared at the flowing water, at the rocks in the moonlight, jutting up like broken teeth.

  Then he raised his hand and pointed, and they were walking along the river’s edge.

  She’d worried that he’d outpace her; she’d not be able to keep up. Just her being smaller might slow them down. She was determined not to let that happen, and she was proud of her stride. They could keep walking and walking, all the way to—

  “Let’s sit down,” said Jubal.

  “I can keep going.”

  “Let’s sit a minute,” Jubal said.

  He hadn’t let go of her hand. They walked over to a clump of catberry and seated themselves on the ground.

  She was anxious to start again, but it was nice being close to him. It wasn’t just their hands touching: it was their arms, their hips, their legs.

  He leaned over and put his lips against her cheek. His lips were soft and damp. She wanted to tell him they should be going, but it felt good what he was doing, and he put his hands on her face and held it like a jewel. His fingers were trembling. She made this big man shake. She was fifteen, barely five feet tall, and look how he was shuddering! It was such a strong feeling, like beating him at a game. She wanted to see if she could make him tremble harder, and she put her lips onto his.

  And then the softness went all the way through her. She could hardly think. She was too much for him, just like she was too much for the planters. Her mind was too much, and now she found her body had power as well. Her small, soft body was too much for Jubal’s large, strong body. She made him shake and tremble until he cried out.

  * * *

  They lay there, her head on his chest, a hard pillow that rose and fell. Everything was humming down inside her, and she felt herself falling asleep. She wouldn’t let that happen. Soon she’d rouse him, and they would start again.

  When she heard the voices, Jubal had just started to snore. She sat up very straight, then placed her palm over Jubal’s mouth.

  Jubal pushed her hand away, but before he could speak, she shushed him. It wasn’t just voices now, but torchlight. Flaming pine knots coming along the river’s edge.

  She stared out through the leaves. There were three torches, orange and yellow in the dark.

  Her heart hammered against the ground. The air smelled of smoke and burning resin. Fear coursed through her, running in her veins like fire. Jubal’s presence didn’t help at all. She glanced over and saw he’d proned out beside her.

  “You just lie there,” she whispered. “You lie there real still.”

  She surprised herself saying this. The words were coming before she even thought to speak.

  Because, his eyes in the torchlight were wide open and wet. And the torches were coming closer. It was Haverford and Mister Wellman. There was another man with them that she recognized, though she didn’t know his name.
She’d sung for him at Haverford’s parties. The three men came up. She could’ve crawled out and touched their boots.

  But they walked on past. They passed the shrubs where she and Jubal lay and went walking up the river.

  She felt everything inside her lighten. She eased herself into the ground.

  Which is when Jubal stood and called out.

  “Marse Wellman,” he said. “It’s me.”

  It felt like ice water down her back. This man who was so tall and strapping.

  You are a coward, she thought.

  But in a few moments, Haverford and Wellman were pressed against them with their torches, and she was angry for ever trusting Jubal, for not seeing what he was.

  Because now Jubal was trying to make like it was some game that they were playing.

  “I had a notion for her,” he said. “We just walked out a ways.”

  Haverford stared. Then Wellman and his companion grabbed Jubal, each taking an arm, and started walking him along the river.

  Which left her standing there with Haverford, his face flickering in the light of the torch.

  “Answer me truly,” he said. “Lie and I will know.”

  She said nothing, just stared at his chest.

  “Did you come of your own volition?”

  She nodded.

  “He did not force you?”

  She said that he didn’t.

  Haverford sucked his teeth. He was making some decision.

  He said, “M’lady will never know of this. Do you understand?”

  She understood just fine: Haverford was not completely masculine. He subordinated himself to the wishes of his wife.

  Then they were walking, following the torches, Jubal walking between the flames. When they reached the outbuildings, she stopped next to Haverford and stood watching as Wellman bound Jubal’s hands behind his back, lashed his ankles together, then kicked him onto his stomach.

  She realized she’d be forced to watch what was about to happen. That Haverford was instructing her, just as Wellman was punishing Jubal. That this might well be happening to her. If only Haverford willed it.

  Because now Wellman had a knife. The other man held the torches, pressing his boot into the small of Jubal’s back. Wellman knelt, pinched Jubal’s left ear, tugged out on it, then sliced it free of Jubal’s skull. He paused a moment, holding it by the lobe. It looked like a sliver of mushroom in the light. He tossed the ear aside and sliced away the other.

  Cecelia couldn’t breathe. There wasn’t enough air, or she couldn’t pull it inside her. If she had, she might’ve screamed.

  Jubal hardly made a sound, just lay there huffing. She wondered if he understood what had happened to him. His eyes looked like he’d gone very far away, and she felt she’d done this to him, though her intention was the opposite. She’d wanted to get them to a place where such a thing could never happen, not even in their dreams.

  Then Haverford was speaking.

  “A man may do as he pleases with his property. It might be, with all m’lady’s attentions, you have forgotten this. Do not forget. I’d recommend you have no further truck with field niggers. Do you understand me?”

  She nodded. She understood his entire wretched race.

  “Very well,” said Haverford. “That is very well. Do not mistake my mercy for lenience, or Mr. Wellman’s actions for cruelty. You might take it as a lesson.”

  * * *

  She took it as a lesson, and the lesson was this: other people were weak. Trusting them was weakness. If you wanted something, you had to get it by yourself.

  And so the next time she ran, she did it all alone.

  DUNCAN LAMMONS

  —TEXAS, 1827—

  Once we’d put together enough money, we boarded a schooner and set sail.

  The boat was chartered by Carlysle and Smith. In addition to a few passengers, it carried replenishments for the Mexican army. We had a good wind and put in at Matagorda Bay not three days later, anchoring at the mouth of the Lavaca. But it wasn’t until I glimpsed that foreign shore that a question occurred to me.

  “What will happen if Mexican troops stumble on us?”

  “I’ve wondered that myself,” Noah said.

  “Will they arrest us?”

  “Well,” he said, “we’ll be traipsing around their country without a by-your-leave. They might could lock us up as vagrants.”

  “I’d think the charge would be a sight more serious than vagrancy. They might well brand us spies.”

  Noah shook his head grimly. “Reckon we should’ve thought this through before now?”

  Of course, the truth was that we hadn’t wanted to consider anything that might weaken our resolve.

  I said, “How ’bout we don’t stumble on any Mexican soldiers?”

  “It’s a deal,” he said.

  By and by, a couple settlers saw our schooner, rowed out and took us in to shore. My first step onto Texas soil was planted in dirt the color of coffee grounds. You almost could eat it, I remember thinking, but that night our hosts fed us a supper of venison sopped in honey.

  The next morning, Noah and I set out for Colonel DeWitt’s colony, farther up the river. As we marched along, we’d pass herds of antelope, droves like I’d never seen.

  I began to think, if anything, Sterling Robertson had undersold this fair land.

  But when we reached DeWitt’s Colony, I had the first inkling our new paradise might be a few apple trees shy of Eden. The settlers we found here lived in constant terror of Indians, housing themselves in rough log cabins with dirt floors and no windows, everything crawling with lice. Colonel DeWitt greeted Noah and myself with warmth, taking us into his home and feeding us at his table. Our first morning, several men invited us on a hunt, which, at the time, we thought rather neighborly. We soon found this was just routine: all day long, the men of the colony stalked the woods, shot game and enjoyed themselves mightily, and all night they lay on the dirt floors of their cabins, shivering.

  And there was plenty to make you shiver: shrill owls like I’d never heard, the laughter of coyote and the lonely cry of wolves. In the morning, we rose and drank coffee and shook off our nightly terrors with the pleasures of hunting.

  The women had no such recreation. In truth, they had no recreation at all. There was no cotton crop as yet, and so nothing for them to spin. No books or papers, no churches or schools. No garden or dairy or poultry. They spent all their time tending sick children and cleaning the game we brought in, crouching in filthy dresses with their arms slathered in gore while the men laughed and drank off the reserve of whiskey. I’d never seen women treated so, and I thought of my mother and felt guilty about the circumstances that’d caused me to leave her.

  But I soon learned this was least of the outrages in DeWitt’s Colony. Our third day with the colonel, he asked Noah and myself to accompany him deer hunting, a gesture any host on the frontier might make to entertain his guests, but I suspected he wanted to recruit us as members of his settlement and rightly assumed wild game would speak loudest to our ears.

  Two other men went with us that morning: one named Stephens, the other Reynolds. Stephens seemed a fine enough gentleman, but Mister Reynolds talked too much for my liking. And he kept eyeing my rifle.

  Finally, he couldn’t help himself any longer.

  “Is that a Hawken?” he asked.

  I told him it was.

  He puckered his lips and I watched his eyes meander down the maple stock to the cheekpiece and on to the iron butt plate.

  “That is an awfully lavish gun to cart about,” he said. “I’d never go hunting with such as that.”

  “Is that right?” I said.

  He nodded. “I had nothing so fine when I was your age. I carried my brother’s old smoothbore until I was nearly thirty.”

  I didn’t see h
ow my rifle was any concern of his, but there is a kind of man who always mocks what he envies, as if by finding fault with it he can cure himself of jealousy.

  Of course, I didn’t say that. I just wanted him to be quiet. Anything worth shooting would be frightened off by his wabbling.

  By noon, we’d taken two young does—the first, my kill; the next, the colonel’s—and we were gathered round the second deer, dressing it out, when Stephens went very still and raised a finger to his lips. He pointed through a screen of persimmons where, in the distance, a wild pig was rooting.

  It was large enough to make a feast all by itself, dark black with pale streaks on its snout.

  I heard Reynolds say, “You’ll never get close enough to put a ball through that thing.”

  “They’re skittish,” the colonel admitted.

  Noah said, “Duncan here can drop it where it stands.”

  At this, Reynolds gave a snort. “Thomas Plunkett couldn’t make such a shot. That must be 300 yards.”

  “It’s a deal farther than that,” said Stephens.

  “Closer to 350,” said the colonel.

  “It is 220 yards,” I told them. “200 from here to yon gulch and another twenty to the pig there.”

  Stephens and the colonel turned to look at me, then glanced back at the pig, as if adding the yards one by one.

  “Can you really hit it?” DeWitt said.

  I shrugged. As much noise as they were making, I was surprised the creature hadn’t already bolted.

  “If he puts a ball anywhere near it,” said Reynolds, “I will eat my hat.”

  The colonel smiled. “That sounds like a challenge, Master Lammons. Do you accept?”

  I didn’t say whether I accepted or I didn’t. I took up my powder horn from where it hung around my neck and began to measure out a charge, patched a ball, got it started, then rammed it down the barrel.

  I got down onto my knees, then proned out on my belly behind the little doe’s carcass, using her neck as a rest. Noah and the others watched me, but I shut them out and focused on the pig. We were upwind of the beast and thus far it hadn’t shown any signs of spotting us. It would walk a few steps, lower its snout to root, then walk a few more. I made sure my heels were touching the earth, pressed my hips against the ground and started my breathing, watching the pig another moment, watching how the leaves hung motionless from the persimmon trees, then focusing on the blade sight at the front of my rifle until the pig became a dark blotch of color in the distance. At 200 yards, my hold would have to be about three feet above the animal’s back, aligned with the pig’s right shoulder. I brought my gun up a hair and set my front trigger. Then I drew a final breath, began to release it, and when I got down on a good empty lung I slowly pressed the trigger—I wanted the actual shot to surprise me.