Hunting Midnight

Gazing at me sternly, she said, “Go on, Mr. Stewart, tell me more.”

She listened to talk of my early life rather as though I had something to prove to her. I resented this but said nothing. Afterward, she explained: “There are many white men in South Carolina who feel affection for their Negro servants. Particularly their black mammies. But you are only the third white man I have ever met who speaks with love and respect — and kinship too.”

“I knew you would see it that way,” Isaac said with a smile, standing up to give her a kiss on the top of her head.

“The other two?” I asked.

“Isaac and a minister from Charlotte I once met. His passion for a Negro maid was such that it changed all his ideas about slavery. He was obliged to give up his ministry to marry her.”

I’d kept for last the story of how Midnight had saved me from Hyena. Recounting it to them was to change everything.

I was speaking of how the Bushman had funneled pipe smoke in my ears when Luisa exclaimed, “But I know that man! I’ve seen him do just that. He was well-known throughout the Low Country. His name was not Midnight when I knew him, but Samuel.”

I jumped up. “You know Samuel? Is he alive?”

Luisa gazed up at me hopefully. “If it is the same man, he used to live at River Bend — a plantation near here. He was renowned as a conjurer and healer.”

“River Bend lies up the Cooper River,” Isaac said. “About ten miles away, I’d guess.”

“He was a wonder,” said Luisa, her eyes shining. “Every black person around here knew of him. I even visited him once with a friend who had been taken ill. I do not know if he is still alive. Last I heard of him, he’d disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Completely vanished. I would guess it was about three years ago. They say he may have escaped. But his daughter still lives at River Bend, I believe. I cannot recall her name. She — or someone else there — will be able to tell you if there’s been any word of him.” She paused for a moment to think. “He was just as you described, though older, of course. And he walked with a limp, occasionally using a cane.”

“And he spoke — he was not a mute?”

“No, no, he was quite well-spoken, as I recall.”

My heart was pounding so loud that I could not hear what my hosts were saying. My head seemed enclosed in glass. When I came to, I was sitting in a chair before a low fire crackling in the hearth. I’d nearly fainted, Isaac told me. He forced a glass into my hand. “Drink this, John.”

I did as he said. It was brandy, and it burned. He and Luisa stood whispering behind me. Getting to my feet, I asked, “How do I get to River Bend?”

Isaac turned to Luisa. “If I were to walk to Charleston tomorrow, would you take John in the gig?”

“I could not oblige you to walk to Charleston,” I interrupted.

“I don’t mind. Honestly, I do it sometimes. It’s good for my legs. I’d accompany you myself, but I must go to my store every day.”

Luisa took my hand, gripped it hard, and gave me a hearty smile. “It will be my honor, Mr. Stewart, to take you to see where Midnight lived.”

*

That night, sleep would not meet me halfway. I was remembering too many things of long ago. Indeed, on that night, unlike any other night, as we used to say at Passover, I could not fathom how I had reached the present. It seemed as though I had fallen all the way here in a single instant.

I went to the parlor and found Luisa seated at the dining table, drinking a cup of tea.

“You could not sleep either?” I asked.

She started, reaching a hand to her heart. I apologized for frightening her.

She laughed. “Your stories,” she said, shaking her head as though perplexed. “I’ve been thinking about them and their similarities with my life.”

She poured me a cup of tea. I said, “You mentioned that Samuel was well-known in the Low Country. How is it that no one knew of him in Charleston? I asked in scores of shops and churches. I even asked a Negro apothecary.”

“The Negroes you asked were undoubtedly protecting him. You are a white man, and you were asking after a black man who has disappeared, who might be in hiding. There are runaways hidden for years in attics, in root cellars…. We’ve had two here ourselves. So anyone loyal to Samuel would have lied to you. The others may genuinely not have heard of him.”

“Then his daughter may lie to me as well — particularly if Midnight spoke badly of my family.”

“But after all you have said, I’d expect him to be eternally grateful to see you. You intend to try to purchase him, I presume.”

“Aye, but I have not told you everything. Something terrible took place between Samuel and my father.”

“John, you must tell her the stories you’ve told us — they will change her mind. She will hear her father in your voice. And you must speak to her when she is alone. If she is with others, even other slaves, she may feel constrained in her reactions to you.”

“It may take some time to get her alone — and to convince her. I shall need to invent some reason to stay for a week or two at River Bend.”

Luisa and I bandied suggestions back and forth, but none seemed right. After a time, I asked, “How did you meet Isaac?”

“Oh, I’ve known him forever, it seems. Once upon a time, there was Isaac and Luisa…. His parents purchased me when I was fifteen, as a laundress and seamstress.”

“But didn’t they have the same opinions as Isaac? I mean, weren’t they — ”

“Their change of mind about slavery came later. The odd thing is, just like you and Midnight, Isaac taught me how to read. Isn’t that astonishing?”

“Aye, it’s a strange coincidence at the very least.”

I believed my reply then. But now I can see the obvious — that the act of teaching a friend to read is intimately tied to love. As a matter of fact, I can think of nothing more natural.

“Please excuse a stupid question, but are you a freed woman?” I asked.

She gave me a hard look. “John, that is surely not a stupid question. It’s the only question, as far as I’m concerned. I was given to Isaac by his father as a birthday present when he turned twenty-one. That same day, he set me free.” She cupped her hands around her mouth and whispered, “Though he hates for me to say that. He says I make it sound as if he did something for me, when he was only rectifying an abomination.”

“Yet at the synagogue, I was told that Isaac was a slave-owner.”

She frowned. “Some of those folks — even his aunt and uncle — they don’t want to see what we are to each other. They prefer believing that I’m still his slave than knowing I’m the mother of his children and that we are common-law man and wife.” Whispering again, she added, “Not only am I not white, but I’m not Jewish!”

*

Luisa fed me a bowl of her pumpkin custard and told me a curious thing about River Bend: Its previous two owners — Big and Little Master Henry — had each been found dead with a knife buried in his neck. Locals believed they had been murdered by a ghost, perhaps the grandfather of Big Master Henry’s wife, Mistress Holly. Apparently, he had vehemently opposed her choice of husband.

“The moral of the story,” Luisa said with an amused pucker to her lips, “is you best get Grandpapa’s blessing before you marry around the Low Country of South Carolina.”

Looking at her shining eyes, I imagined stars peering through dark clouds. I could see she spent a good deal of her time protecting her family. I suspected she could be fierce. I tell you this: I would not have wished her angry at me.