The kitchen door hinges squealed from below. A few moments later, Natalie entered his view, walking toward the chicken coop with a basket swinging from her hand. Samuel ran after her. When he caught up with his mother, he held something out, to which Natalie gave a little shriek. She shooed it away. Levi saw a toad leap from the boy’s hands and hop across the dirt, Samuel chasing after it. Natalie said something to her son, although Levi couldn’t hear the words, and the boy left the toad and followed her around the corner of the coop, out of Levi’s view.
He took up his hammer once again and banged a shingle into place, his thoughts not on the roof but on the widow who owned it. Natalie Langford Ellis. The woman was confounding. One minute she was helpless and needy, the next she was standing in defense of her shrewish cousin. One day she was a pampered slave owner, the next she was feeding chickens and hogs. He didn’t know what to make of it. Of her. He admired the tenacity it must have taken for her to keep the plantation operating during the war. Despite his deep hatred for the institution of slavery, he had to admit only a strong-willed woman could have accomplished such a feat without a husband or male relative to oversee things.
He glanced at Moses. Natalie had freely admitted the slave— former slave—was the reason the plantation hadn’t fallen into ruin. That he’d seen to the planting, harvesting, and upkeep of things for four years, despite there being no person of authority to keep him on the property, baffled Levi. That the man continued to serve Natalie, now as a paid employee, further confused him.
“I ’spect I’s gonna need a few mo’ shingles cut, Colonel,” Moses said, wiping his face with a handkerchief. He removed his hat and ran the cloth over his short-cropped graying hair. “After that, this section o’ roof be just like new.”
“You’ve done well, considering you’ve never patched a roof before.”
Moses’ smile revealed his pride. “I ’ppreciate that, suh. It’s good to learn to do somethin’ new, even when you’s as old as the hills.”
They climbed down the ladder and headed to the barn. Using a fallen tree practically outside the door, they’d taken a two-man crosscut saw and created several drums of timber that morning. While Moses had worked on removing the bark, Levi’d located the tools they’d need to slice the hunks into shingles.
He watched the other man take the froe and mallet to the wood, as Levi had taught him earlier, and his curiosity got the best of him.
“How long have you been at Rose Hill, Moses?”
Without glancing up from his task, Moses said, “Been at Rose Hill six years, but I’s at the Langford place ’fore that.”
Levi hadn’t anticipated that revelation. Had Natalie or her husband purchased the slave from her family? There wasn’t a tactful way to ask.
Moses finished the shingle and looked up. “Miz Natalie’s papa give me to her when she married Massa George.” He handed the shingle to Levi for inspection. “She done asked him to.”
“And were you pleased about that?” Levi knew it was none of his business, but the fact that the former slave continued to serve his mistress intrigued him.
Moses seemed to contemplate the question. “I wasn’t pleased to leave my family over to the Langford’s, but it weren’t so far away that I couldn’t see them from time to time. ’Specially when Miz Natalie went to see her mama. My Harriet come to be the cook here at Rose Hill a few months later, but our young’uns has to stay at Langford’s.”
“How many children do you have?” Levi asked, recalling he’d only seen the one little boy.
A pained expression filled the big man’s face. “The Lawd blessed us with six chillens. He done took three home, from the same yellow fever that took Miz Natalie’s folks. Massa George sold my two oldest boys after that. I wanted them here, o’ course, but he feared the fever might spread over to Rose Hill. Ain’t seen them since.”
A swift stab of remorse struck Levi. “I’m sorry, Moses. I shouldn’t have pried.”
“It ain’t prying to ask a man ’bout his family. The Lawd giveth, and the Lawd taketh away. That just life. We’s blessed with Isaac after all that sadness.” He smiled. “That boy bring us as much sunshine as the sun itself.”
Levi watched Moses return to cutting out shingles. Now more than ever he wanted to ask how the former slave could stay with Natalie, especially after the tale he’d just told. Her husband had sold away his sons, for pity’s sake. It was unthinkable that Moses remained on Rose Hill land despite having the freedom to leave, yet there he stood, cutting shingles for her roof. Levi had heard some slaves were so attached to their white owners they couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, but he didn’t think that applied to Moses. He had a suspicion the man’s reasoning went deeper than that.
The sun sat low on the western horizon by the time they finished patching the damaged roof. There were still two barns and several quarter houses that would require repairs in the coming days.
After climbing down from the ladder, Levi stretched his back muscles, cramped from hours of bending over.
“I wondered if you two were going to work into the night.”
He turned to find Natalie standing on the kitchen porch. The aroma of roasted turkey
