If you’re new to this story, or missed a chapter, here’s a link to the online tab that has all the chapters so far. (Ebook or paperback also available.)
The apartment air suddenly felt very close and stuffy. Franck opened the window. A damp breeze rippled the light curtain. He returned to the table and picked up the ancient key.
When the key fit into the keyhole of the wooden box, Franck held his breath. It wouldn’t turn, at first, but with some jiggling, it gave, and the latch yielded reluctantly to his touch.
Reverently he lifted the lid of the box on its old grinding hinges. Practically filling the box was a book. He recognized it as the same one that lay on a table in the library of the old house: Walker’s Appeal … to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America.
Why place another copy of the book in a locked box? Franck thought. He opened the cover page without removing the book from the box. It read:
We Coloured People of these United States, are, the most wretched, degraded and abject set of beings that ever lived since the world began, down to the present day, and that, the white Christians of America, who hold us in slavery, (or, more properly speaking, pretenders to Christianity,) treat us more cruel and barbarous than any Heathen nation did any people whom it had subjected, or reduced to the same condition…It is expected that all coloured men, women and children, of every nation, language and tongue under heaven, will try to procure a copy of this Appeal and read it, or get some one to read it to them.
At the bottom of the page, he saw a handwritten dedication. It read:
To Josiah McIver,
A gift from one North Carolinian to another, with thanks to you for doing your part out of love. Love is a two-way street, both giving and receiving, and you have done both. With hope that your special giving shall also find special receiving.
David Walker, free man
August 1856
Franck carried the box to the coffee table by the easy chair. Slowly, he lifted the book out of the box. It was a small book, or perhaps a thick pamphlet. Eighty-some pages. Published in Boston, 1830.
So the dedication must have been precious to the owner of the box, thought Franck. Underneath the book were more precious items. Papers.
Franck carefully took out the first paper, and opened it. It was a one-page letter that read:
Oct 1, 1867
Dear Aunt Lutetia,
I have the duty to inform you that your brother Moses died yesterday. He was cared for to the end. Every time I saw him he told me how happy he was that he wrote you and happy that you found the man you were looking for. I hope God will give me a chance to visit and tell you more about him. He has done much for me. He was a very remarkable man.
Yours always,
Samuel McIver
Another McIver, thought Franck. Who were these people? He left the letter on the coffee table, and sat down in the easy chair. He lifted another letter out of the box and leaned back to read.
11 Whittinside Street
Albany, New York
Sept 8, 1867
My dearest sister Lutetia,
I am failing now but am very happy to hear word of you from your minister’s cousin James. He has given me your address and I am so happy to hear that you found the minister and that you and your boy are safe and healthy.
I have survived swamp, battle, and hospital, all horrible things, but nothing was worse in my life than having to tear myself away from your arms on the ship.
It was all I could do to get you on board. I told them you were with child and they finally let me bring you as long as I stayed back, for they did not have room even for you. I prayed your ship would make the long trip to Boston and that you would find the minister from there.
I did not know if you did find him. My time in the swamp was filled with finding food, escaping slave hunters, and helping others do the same. I found passage on another ship and it was a rough journey, for we were packed in tightly. But we got to Boston and I failed to find word of you or the minister. Some said the minister had left the country, and I concluded sadly that I would never see you again.
The war began and howled in my ears for a few years before I was allowed to do anything. Some of us from North Carolina started a colored regiment and marched down to South Carolina. That is all I wish to say of it.
I bid you farewell. They won’t take me in the hospital but I am resting in the care of an old lady who is good to me here. I will ask her to write our address up at the top of the page so that you can write back to me. I am so happy that you and the little boy are well. I hope to hear of his name before my time is up.
Yours with love,
Your brother,
Moses
Franck lay the letter in his lap, and leaned forward to reach into the box for the next paper. It was several pages folded together. Yet another letter, in sepia ink.
September 29, 1867
Dear brother Moses,
I read with the heaviest heart your letter, because I fear we shall not see each other again, but praise the Lord that you survived all. Praise the Lord that you set me free, for I am in a happy place. You will soon be in a happier place. Pray for our sister Hariet who felt the brunt of master’s wrath.
I thank God every day that I found Josiah. You could not find him because he went away not long after the baby was born. I am happy I can tell you, Moses, that I have named my son Moses after you. It is because of you he is free.
I found Josiah by luck. We had terrible storms at sea and some of us almost washed overboard. When we came to Boston, we were looked after. It was not comfortable but we were watched over. We hid again in wagons by night and we sheltered in cellars and barns. After several nights we were made to walk through a tunnel into the musty cellar of a large house, this house, which is now my own house, belonging to Moses and me.
A lady helped us find blankets and corners to lay on and gave us porridge and meat cooked on the hearth in the cellar. She let us use the kettles there for making soup and some of us were allowed upstairs to gather things for the soup. She apologized for the narrow, dirty tunnel they put us through, but told me that if the wrong person saw us enter the doors of the parsonage house, not even the good Lord could be sure to help us.
I was one of the women who went up for water and vegetables. On one trip upstairs, he appeared. It was Josiah. He was the pastor there. He stopped in to see how we were, and we saw each other and knew who we were at that moment. All my fears left me.
I did not know what to do but he touched my arm and brought me into the living rooms out of the kitchen. I sat by myself there until he returned with new clothes for me. We spoke then about his brother and about you and about our journey.
I finally told him that I was with his child. He held me tightly and ushered me then upstairs to a bed and made me lie down and get my rest. He was very kind and I will never forget.
He married me in secret. We loved each other. After the baby was born I learned what trouble I was to him. The church was divided about him. Some were angry at him. They forced him to leave.
I do not know how this came to be, and I pray to understand. He has gone away and told me he may not see me, but will write to me. But I have heard nothing.
Before he went away he gave me this house. Yes, dear brother, I own this house for me and for your nephew Moses. I have the paper with me in a safe place.
Josiah’s uncle was one of the good men who helped him give me the house but made him go away. I do not understand. His uncle came to visit me often after Josiah was gone. He was kind at first, but he became more friendly than I wished, and he drank too much.
One night, my dear brother, Josiah’s uncle Robert came to me with his whisky bottle already half empty. He stayed with me late, and finished the bottle. He tried to take advantage of me, Moses. I had to protect myself. I hit him over the head with the bottle, and he fled out of the house, cursing me, and calling our house a den of sinners. We have never heard from him again.
I have told no one of these things. I am glad that you are the one I can tell. But we are happy, and we have our house. We have a few friends, and we have been left with some money. Also I am able to earn some money.
My hand is tired. I am not used to this much writing, my dearest brother. I will rest my hand and finish soon and send this off to you. I want to tell you about your nephew who is ten years old, a bright and strong boy, and I wish to write to your good health.
There was no signature. Franck held onto this letter as he leaned over once more to delve into the box. Yet another paper lay at the bottom. He picked it up gently and saw that this was the last item, and it was clearly a deed to the house. Rather than open it up and read it, he decided to show it to Bob, who might have the patience and knowledge to go through it. Franck laid the deed back into the box, and leaned back on the easy chair. The letter from Moses lay on his lap.
Franck dropped his head back onto the headrest of Bob’s easy chair. He reflected that Lutetia’s letter was probably never sent. No signature. Still in her possession at the house. She must have received news of her brother’s death before she could send it off. Had anyone else read these letters, thought Franck. Did anyone else know these stories?
Reclining in the easy chair, he let Lutetia’s letter rest on his chest. Franck examined the simple square light fixture above him. It was late. Bob was sound asleep. Franck could hear occasional snores drifting through the near silence. The refrigerator was buzzing and whirring. A truck whooshed by on the road outside. He felt like he needed to catch his breath. He took a deep breath. And another.
The night was dark, the faces were dark, the cloud cover blocked out the moon except for a faint gray glow glimmering off the tumultuous waters. Drops of rain announced themselves with a welcome coolness in the smelly heat of close sweaty bodies and the Virginia summer night. Bare feet squelched in mud. She wasn’t too big yet, so she could get around, but he held her round the shoulders and helped her up to the dirt road and then up into the wagon. He tossed straw over her. She sneezed. He climbed in beside her and pulled the horse blanket over himself. Sounds of others doing the same all around them and in the other wagons seemed to last for an hour before he heard the indrawn breath clicking at the horse and the big wheels began to roll on the bumpy road. The long ride gave time for dreams of freedom and vengeance, of fevers and chills, of drenching rains and bloody whippings, of bloody battles with old muskets and cannon. The wagon stopped and there was an unbearable silence. A hand yanked the blanket off. It was almost as dark outside as it had been under the blanket. It felt like they were in the same damn place. He helped his sister out from the straw. She had fallen asleep. “I’m hungry, thirsty, oh Lord, here we go,” she said, and she threw up back into the straw. The ship loomed up barely visible against the gray sparkles of the heaving seas. There was near silence as the slaves filed quickly up the makeshift gangplank and made their way to places on the deck where they could hold on to something. Moses left her there and began to scramble back down the gangplank. “You’re not coming??” she pleaded, and he said, “I meant it. I’m joining the colored regiment. I want to fight. I’ll get through it and you’ll get through it. Find him and he will take care of you, you know it. You find him. He never was nobody’s master. I don’t know if he loves you but he’ll look after you both when the baby comes.” He tore away from her outstretched hands and weeping face and dodged against the human tide to go back down the gangplank, and after a while her sobs subsided and she could hear the quiet orders to secretly heave away and the sea lifted the ship up and let it fall down in a trough, and lifted it higher, and let it fall down lower, and she was already feeling sick to her stomach when the ship lifted even higher into the air and then there was no more heaving and the ship sailed through the air and landed in the trough of a wave outside Boston harbor with a terrible crash and everyone went careening down the deck, slid straight toward the railings, about to smash into them face first when Franck woke up to a wet rainy breeze blowing in the window.
He shook his head to get his bearings. Lights were on, the room was quiet but cool. He started to get up to close the window but remembered the letter lying on his lap, and then heard another letter fall to the floor off his chest. He picked them both up, carefully refolded them and placed them back in the box with the book. He relocked the box, and carried it into his room for the night.