Jesus included. I prayed they would just hang me. Yes, sir, I rightly hoped they’d send me off quick as a cotton worm’s sting.
On Saturday, the Fourteenth of June, we learned that we could go get the guns and swords we’d paid for. Mr. Trevor had left them under a blanket in a cove hidden by rushes, one mile south of Petrie’s Landing, at a place called Farmer’s Rock. We were told to never visit him again or try to contact him. Under no circumstances were we even to stroll by his house. So from that moment on, we were on our own.
Wiggie took ill at much the same time with some stomach pains that kept him out of his carriages for nearly two months. If I were to say that I caused his problems with some teas I worked up with a bit of jimsonweed greens, claiming it was for his rheumatism, would you think me evil?
Maybe it was a bad thing to do, but I had to get permission to drive myself to Charleston every fortnight, because I was sure Wiggie would never agree to carry guns. Keeping him attached to the privy much of the time was the only way I could think of.
Weaver and I stored the weapons in a space under the piazza — all but one, that is. I sneaked a loaded pistol into my room and kept it under my bed. Ever since Big Master Henry had stuck his snake up inside me, I’d been waiting for Edward the Cockerel to try the same. This time, I was going to be ready.
Our overseer, Mr. Johnson, was our only sticky problem, but we always waited till he was away from the Big House with the field hands before taking the weapons out of the carriage. Likely Crow or one of the other house slaves guessed after a while that something peculiar was going on, but none of them was about to betray us.
Then, near the end of August, something happened to give us a scare: A white man with a strange accent started asking nearly everyone in Charleston about my father. I found that out from Caeser Mobley, a Negro apothecary Papa used to visit from time to time. He told me what happened in a note he sent to me with a Negro coachman. Though he couldn’t write so well, I got the gist of it. The curious stranger was tall and wild-looking. Caeser guessed he was a slave-trader trying to trick Papa out of hiding. Or maybe some policeman trying to track him down and get himself a fat reward from Master Edward. The man had done a pretty fair imitation of a Low Country accent, but he must have been from up North. Mr. Mobley denied ever knowing my papa.
Whoever he was, he sure as hell was looking into things that weren’t any of his business, and at the worst possible moment. So I was praying it was the last we’d ever hear of him.
But that wasn’t what happened, don’t you know. No, sir. Because the very next day, near about time for the noonday bell, who comes riding up to the Big House, with a fancy black woman driving him, but the nosy stranger. I couldn’t know then that it was the same man who’d been asking after Papa, of course. But later, after the Negro woman left, he saw me, and his eyes popped so wide open with recognition that I knew it must be him.
XLV
An hour or so before sundown, as I sat panting at my desk in the infernal heat, writing another letter to my daughters and Mama, there was a knock at the door. Slipping on my trousers hastily, I eased it open and discovered Mr. Perrera.
“Mr. Stewart, Mrs. Robichaux permitted me to come directly to your room. I apologize for surprising you.”
“No, no, come in, sir. I’m pleased to see you.” I moved a chair away from my desk and placed it opposite the bed. “Please, sit, Mr. Perrera. I would offer you something to drink, but I have nothing at all. In this heat, I am unable to drink whiskey or even wine for fear of fainting and waking in an even hotter place ruled by the devil.”
We were both aware that I was trying to win him to my side with humor, but he did not seem to begrudge me this strategy and smiled as he sat down. I grabbed my shirt and said, “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”
“I came to apologize, sir. I was rude to you today.”
I dropped down on my bed opposite him. “No, not at all. An unkempt and sweaty stranger walking into your office and speaking a foreign language … I must have been a sight.”
“No, it was not that. It was — how can I say? — I keep to myself. So when you arrived, I was startled, that was all. And if I may be frank, I find that I do not always have so much in common with the other Portuguese here, so I tend to limit my interactions.”
“Indeed, sir, I am sure you are wise to do so.”
“So, Mr. Stewart,” he smiled again, “you mentioned a problem for which you needed help. Would you mind telling me what it is?”
I cannot say why I told almost the entire truth about Midnight, but I unburdened myself of it with alarming ease. I had not been aware of my own need to confess my kinship with him. The small death in my gut eased a little as Mr. Perrera listened attentively, and I began to see that the only relief I would find in America was in the arms of the truth of what I felt for my old friend. “Indeed, I have loved him over these seventeen years of separation no less than if he were my brother — or even a second father,” I concluded.
“Love comes to us unbidden,” Mr. Perrera replied. “Do you believe in destiny, Mr. Stewart?”
When I said I was not sure, he gazed out the window. “I find I only trust what has not been tainted by our history.”
I found Mr. Perrera a rather cryptic and unhappy man, one of those souls always looking for answers to large questions.
When tears came to his eyes, he wiped them away roughly and said, “I am sorry for this terrible display.”
“On the contrary, I think you are the first white person I have met in Charleston who has a heart.”
“Will you give me the pleasure of accompanying me to my home for supper tonight?” he asked. “I should like you to meet Luisa, my wife.”
“Now?”
“Yes, we live five miles from town. But it will take less than an hour to get there in my gig. It’s out front, waiting for us.” He seemed worried now. “You could stay the night with us,” he added. “And I think, Mr. Stewart, if you will accept some advice, we ought to leave with some haste. One never knows in Charleston who might be watching.”
Mr. Perrera had a fine chestnut mare that carried us swiftly across the country roads north to his home, a whitewashed house with a large piazza out front, just a hundred yards from a gentle tributary of the Cooper River. A broad oak tree and two smaller palmettos offered shade.
Luisa was seated on the stairs when we arrived. By then, dusk was descending quickly, but even in the failing light I could plainly see that she was a black woman.
Isaac’s two children were Hester, who was called Hettie, and Reed, who went by the name of Noodle. They ran to meet their father, begging him with squealing voices to lift them up. With the boy clinging to his back and the girl giggling in his arms, he kissed Luisa. She had deep-set, secretive brown eyes, high cheekbones that seemed to catch the last rays of sunlight, and a slender neck. She appeared irritated by my presence.
A hot supper was waiting for us, and to my apologies about creating a confusion, Luisa scoffed, saying that she was pleased to have a guest. She said that to be polite, however, and the stilted nature of our conversation over the meal convinced me to leave after supper. I would walk to the nearest town and ask for a room.
After the children were put to bed, I said, “Perhaps it would be better if I left. You are both very tired, and the nearest town must have an inn of some sort.”
“No, no, John,” Isaac said. “Trust me. Tell your story.”
Unsure of myself, I began by speaking matter-of-factly. Yet when I mentioned how Midnight had trumped my mother’s rudeness at our first supper together by saying that “Africa is memory,” my voice could not help but express my admiration for him. Luisa gave a noticeable start, as though she had been hit on the back.
“You see?” Isaac said to his wife in triumph.
