Read Online Freeman by Leonard Pitts Jr. - Free Book Online

Negro, maybe a few years older than himself. Sam stood six feet; the other man was a few inches shorter. His face was carved deep with lines, and his scalp was smooth, a landscape unbroken by so much as a single hair.
    “I said, you a soldier?”
    “Yes,” said Sam. “At least, I was.”
    The man nodded toward the faded Union Army jacket Sam wore. “I thought so,” he said. “And you got that soldier’s walk,” he added. “Straight up, chest out. Need to watch that. That walk get you killed, you ain’t careful.”
    At Sam’s questioning look, he gave a tight smile. “I served, too,” he said. “Company E, 4th U.S. Colored Infantry. We defended this here city.” The tight smile became a grimace, as if he were sucking on something profoundly distasteful, and he added, “Leastways, I thought we did. If what they sayin’ about the president is true…” He allowed the thought toevaporate. After a few moments they turned onto Tenth Street. And the tiny hope Sam had allowed to live inside him died, gasping.
    The street was madness. By the light of a gas lamp in front of the theater he saw hundreds of people standing about, choking the muddy, rutted road. Their faces were uniformly stunned. When they moved, they seemed to stagger, as if walking was somehow new to them. But they did not move much, other than to clear a path when some soldier or official came barreling through, crying “Give way! Give way!” Otherwise, they stood, their attention fixed on a narrow house across from the theater.
    A Negro woman waited in back of the crowd, her hands pinned beneath her arms, tears gleaming on her cheeks. Because he did not know what else to do, Sam approached her. She did not seem to notice, but when he drew close enough, she spoke without turning. “I seen him,” she said. “He look more dead than alive. They carried him right out the theater.” She pointed. “Right up into that there house.”
    “It’s true, then?”
    The question came from the Negro soldier who had walked alongside him. Sam was surprised the man was still at his elbow. And what a foolish question. But then, he thought, the man probably just needed to say it out loud, for himself if for no one else. Saying it helped to make it real. The woman nodded.
    “Is there any hope?” asked Sam.
    Now she turned toward him for the very first time. She was young and she was pretty in a heartbreaking way, her eyes round, and red from crying. “I seen ’em stop twice,” she answered, and her voice was loose and fluttery, “there and there.” She pointed toward the middle of the street. “They reached into his brain and they pulled out the clots of blood.”
    Sam swallowed.
    The other man said, “I need a drink.”
    A smirk from the woman. “They done closed all the taverns by order of the government.”
    “Good thing I carry my own,” said the man. A flask was in his hand. He unscrewed it and took a long pull, then extended it to Sam. Sam hesitated only a second—he was a man for whom exhibiting correct behavior was very important, especially in public. And drinking from a stranger’s flask in the middle of a muddy street, well, it was hard to think of any behavior thatwas less correct, less reflective of the sort of man Sam considered himself to be, wanted others to see in him.
    But the president…
    He accepted the flask and threw back a healthy swig. He felt it burn a path to his stomach, where it glowed like embers.
    Now he hesitated again, unsure what the etiquette was, whether it was proper to pass the flask on to a lady. She solved his dilemma for him, reaching boldly to take the flask and tip it. She passed it back to him, he passed it back to the other man.
    They waited.
    Sam had not liked Abraham Lincoln much at first. Lincoln had always struck him as a coarse Westerner, too timid and accommodating on the evil subject of slavery. His famous Emancipation Proclamation had only infuriated Sam. After all, Lincoln had ordered the slaves