The Orphan Mother by Robert Hicks Read Free Book Online

so many people in Mariah’s life anymore.
    Mariah had been given free will by her Maker, that’s what the Methodist preachers said, yet she had never before then been able to act freely. The world of possibility had not been hers. Every slave had been separated from the entirety of God’s creation. Every other slave was alone even when they worked and ate together. That was loneliness.
    Mariah took a step away from the house and shook her head. “Not today, Miss Carrie. I come back another day, and maybe we talk then again, but I ain’t staying now. Got business.”
    “Business?”
    “Theopolis is speaking this afternoon in town.” She tried to say it casually, but could feel the cool thrill on her lips: the thrill of pride—and of fear, too.
    “He’s one of the speakers?” And then, simply: “Oh, Mariah.” Sharing the pride as well as the trepidation. “You shouldn’t be out here with me—when’s the speech?”
    “Not till this afternoon.”
    “Let me get Lester to run you back to town, so you have plenty of time.”
    “That would be very kind.”
    Carrie had already taken a couple of steps toward the house, having assumed that Mariah would follow. She stopped and turned. “But don’t think I won’t stop trying.” She smiled, but down came the veil. Carrie turned back toward the house, floated across the grass again on the way to her fortress.

Chapter 6
Tole
    July 6, 1867
    On returning to town, Tole got to work on Dixon’s errand. He went by his little shack of a house and took his rifle, which he wrapped in a quilt and stuck in a kindling carrier, the kind one would not be surprised to see a Negro carrying through the town on bended back. He went scouting for a perch, but none of the first buildings were right, so Tole went farther, into the white section of town, stepping out of the way of the brand-new carriages that rolled and clattered over the streets. He wove between the proprietors out on the sidewalk offering free samples: molasses, cheese, swatches of cloth, printed cards. They didn’t offer any to him.
    Unimpressed by the possibilities, he continued into the residential streets, always keeping the courthouse in a direct line behind him. Here there were more interesting places, fewer flat roofs and more cupolas and pitched slopes and dormers and attics. An attic window in Dr. Cliffe’s house had a direct line of sight to the courthouse and the stage. That’s the spot , he thought.
    He put the kindling carrier down, under a pecan tree and concealed by a privet hedge, and pushed his way through the Cliffes’ picket gate and into their backyard. But he heard voices from the house. He withdrew to the shadows across the street, waiting.
    Up the hill, the white boys at the military institute marched across the drill yard keeping time, shouting at each other as if what they were doing was deadly serious and not some insignificant playacting, a pastime for fools and cowards. The Negroes hammered up the stage over in the square.
    Dr. Cliffe stepped out with his wife, down the steps, her arm in his, her skin a soft Scotch-Irish pale. As they headed west, away from the soaring sun, into the shadows cast by blooming trees, Tole noticed the way her strawberry hair fell down her back, and how it matched the freckles that dotted the backs of her arms.
    He waited a long ten minutes, worried that some routine slip of mind, something forgotten, would cause them to turn back. He waited, and when he felt they were good and gone, he crossed the street.
    The weight of his government rifle pulled against his shoulder. On the stock he’d once carved GT , so that he could keep the other men in the company from claiming it—they who didn’t spend near as much time polishing and cleaning theirs. They called his rifle ol’ GT, and teased him about it, but they didn’t ever pick it up as their own. Because of this he had known one thing at least, at all times: that his rifle would always fire. That had been