Freedom Stone by Jeffrey Kluger Read Free Book Online Page A

“and I won’t listen to no one call him one. He lived an honest man, and he died one too! And if you don’t believe me, we ain’t got nothin’ to talk about!” She pushed her chair back noisily, nearly knocking it over, and began to stalk toward the door.
    â€œGirl!” Bett called after her sharply. Lillie slowed, then turned back. “Sit back down!”
    Lillie hesitated and Bett’s stern tone and face softened to weary amusement. “Sit,” she said, with a tired wave of her hand. Lillie returned to the table and Bett looked at her thoughtfully.
    â€œNo, child,” the old woman said at length. “I don’t reckon your papa was a thief. A thievin’ man’s always lookin’ about, as if he’s waitin’ to be caught at somethin’. An honest man got a steady way about him—and your papa was steady like a tree. You got his way about you, and you got his looks too—which I reckon pleases you less than if you had your mama’s looks. But you’re Ibo and your papa was Ibo, and your mama ain’t.”
    This was not the first time Bett had mentioned that Lillie was Ibo, and Lillie could never tell if she meant it as a good thing or not. “A lot of Ibo in you, child,” Bett liked to say if she caught Lillie wrestling with another child or otherwise making trouble. “Maybe too much.”
    Papa had had a lot more to say than Bett on the matter of the Ibo, and he had talked of it often. The Ibo were the African tribe that Bett’s people and his people—and so Lillie’s own people—had come from. It was something she ought to be proud of, he said. The Ibo were known as fine music-makers and storytellers and were said to be especially good with numbers, coming up with their own form of ciphering that was even better than the one the white men used. Best of all, at least to Lillie, the Ibo people didn’t see much difference between an Ibo boy and an Ibo girl, an Ibo man and an Ibo woman, reckoning any Ibo could hunt or plant or fight or tend as well as any other one. Full-grown Ibo women even went into battle alongside the men, facing the same enemies and carrying the same weapons. Bett used to say that she could spot an Ibo in any group of Southern slaves, and it was that readiness to tangle when they had to that set them apart. Sitting across the table from Lillie, she now looked in the girl’s face, seeming to study it closely.
    â€œI expect you aim to do this thing,” she said.
    Lillie nodded.
    â€œAnd I expect you won’t let me be if I don’t give you some help,” Bett added.
    Lillie shook her head no.
    Bett sighed and then stood, pressing her palms down on the table to help herself rise, grunting with the effort. “I’m too old to be of much use to you myself,” she said, “but maybe I got somethin’ that can serve.”
    She made her way over to her baking shelves and took down a small, reddish jar, holding it carefully in both hands. The jar looked like ordinary Carolina clay, but it was shaped like it had been made with another land in mind. Bett carried it back to the table, set it down and took the lid off. She withdrew a small cloth bag and opened the drawstring that kept it shut. Then she tipped the bag into her hand, and a shiny chip of black stone fell into her palm.
    â€œThat,” she said, “is a piece of Africa.”
    Bett slowly tilted the chip this way and that. It had a surface that looked as if it had been polished, and it reflected light like a bright coin. “Your papa never knew what part of the Ibos’ land his people come from,” Bett said, “but I knew where mine was from. A place not far from the ocean, where the ground was cut through by rivers and streams. The water always ran fast and bright there, and my papa said his papa told him it tasted fine too—what a cloud would taste like if you could squeeze it down