“John …” He sank down in his chair and held his head in his hands. “I have some letters at my house that I should like to place in your care, dear boy. Forgive me for keeping them from you, but it was your father’s dying wish.”
I sprang to my feet. “You were with my father when he died?!”
He looked up sadly. “We were all with James when he died.”
“I don’t understand. Please, Benjamin, speak plainly.”
“We shall get the letters and then all will be clear. Come,” he said solemnly.
“But we boarded up your house.”
“Bring a hammer. And take a candle with you as well. This cannot wait.”
As I knew the girls would still be awake, I rushed up the stairs and told them that Benjamin and I were going on a brief errand.
At his house, we ripped away the planks over one of his windows. Once inside, we retrieved from a locked iron strongbox in his cellar eight letters, all addressed to James Stewart. They were tied with a white ribbon grown yellow with age.
“In giving you these, I am emptying my pockets of blood-splattered stones,” he said. “They have weighed me down for years. Dear boy, the burden of spoken secrets is great, and of written ones even greater.”
Holding letters that my beloved father had read, I felt his presence as a pang so sharp and deep that I feared losing myself if I ever stopped feeling it.
I told Benjamin that I had always felt as though my father’s death, more than any other, had been an error of destiny. I confessed how much better a man I might have been had he been by my side all these years.
“James is gone,” Benjamin replied, “but the best of him still resides in you. I only hope you will not hate me when you read these.”
He linked his arm through mine as we walked back to my home. I read the letters in the sitting room, hoping that they might finally solve the riddle of the collapse of my parents’ marriage.
The first letter was dated October the Sixth, 1806, one month prior to that fateful trip to London by Midnight and Father. It had been posted to Papa from Bristol, England, by a Captain A. J. Morgan:
Sir, thank you for your letter of the Fourth of September. I believe I do know of a place of work that will meet most, if not all, of the sensible conditions you summarized. There is, in short, a good and prosperous gentleman by the name of Miller living near the port of Alexandria, whom I have had the pleasure to meet on several occasions and who will, I believe, be only too happy to take on a careful and obedient assistant. If you might tell me in your next letter when we may expect delivery of your property here in Bristol or, if you should prefer, at our offices in London, then I should be most pleased to carry out our plan as previously agreed upon.
The next letter, from the same Captain Morgan, was dated January the Twenty-Seventh, 1807, two months after Midnight’s death:
Per your instructions, I have successfully placed the property into the hands of Mr. Miller, who was most pleased to receive him. Though he is not speaking at present, the property will, I am sure, relent soon in this willful wickedness and prove most helpful. Mr. Miller is not too inconvenienced by his behavior, I should add, so do not worry yourself unduly. It is not uncommon for such transactions to render the primitive mind disoriented and unruly at first. Under the whip, however, all prove useful and manageable, you can be sure.
“Benjamin, what is this property that Captain Morgan speaks of?” I asked, afraid to hear what I knew now to be the truth.
“Please, John, just read on. Then we’ll talk.”
“But you
“Alas, I do,” he replied.
Apparently, Father had thought better of having sold his
I shall certainly endeavor to propose such a transaction to Mr.Miller upon my return to Alexandria, but I cannot guarantee that he will accept. Surely you were aware, sir, that once sold, you had no claim over the property in question?
Then, from July the Fourteenth:
The property is no longer with Mr. Miller, I am sorry to report. The apothecary was taken quite suddenly to God in late May, having been ill for a week with the yellow fever. His sons, having no use for your man, sold him to a local trader. I have made inquiries as to his present whereabouts, but I have been unsuccessful. I fear that we may have lost the trail for good. He may even have been sold further south. The United States is a very large nation and there are thousands of Negroes in every nook,I can assure you. Telling one from the other, even one as diminutive and yellow-huedas yours, will not prove easy,as most Americans are unused to the fine distinctions in primitives to which you so properly refer.
“Benjamin, my father … my father …” I was dizzy with panic, my thoughts spiraling toward a crime so monstrous that I could not believe it possible. “What in God’s name did Papa do?” I cried.
“I promise to tell you all I know, dear boy. But you must finish what you’ve started and read all of them.”
“My parents lied to me for years, didn’t they? And Midnight — oh, God, Midnight, what has happened to him? Where is he? You must tell me exactly where he is. I need to know now, Benjamin. Where is he?!”
“I cannot say. But the last letters speak of where he may have gone. You’ll see.”
My hands were freezing. I felt as though all of me had been turned to ice. I took the next letter from the pile:
It is believed that he must be in one of the Carolinas, perhaps in the city of Charleston, as several score Negroes were marched there to be sold shortly after Mr. Miller’s untimely demise, and your former property may have been among them.
Your offer of a reward is most generous, and should I discover more information as to his whereabouts, you may rest assured that I shall not hesitate to let you know.
“Sold? But how can that be? These letters,” I said, holding them up, “these damned letters must be forgeries! That’s the only possible explanation.”
He shook his head. “There is slavery in America even now. People of Midnight’s shade live in bondage inside Pharaoh’s empire of rice and cotton. They have been left behind by Moses.”
“But Midnight was no slave. He lived with us as a free man. Papa would never do … never do anything so … so — ”
Drawing in a deep breath, Benjamin said, “I could never bring myself to find Alexandria on a map, but I think it is a port town near Washington. That was where he was taken.”
“No, I cannot believe it. There must be some terrible mistake. Look, even I know that the slave trade in England has been outlawed for many years.”
“For two decades only. In 1806, when your father completed this transaction, the slave trade was still guaranteeing riches. Any African living in Britain without papers attesting to his free status might find himself kidnapped, shackled, and dispatched to the markets of America.”
“No, you are lying to me! Father could not have done this! Why are you hiding the truth from me? Was there an accident? Benjamin, did something terrible befall Midnight and Father in England?”
“John, please keep your voice down. The letters in your hands tell you all you need to know. They are … they
