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

freed in Southern lands where he had no jurisdiction, but left them untouched in lands where his word was still law. But though he had not liked the president, Sam had come to respect him if only because in the end, he had allowed Sam—and thousands of other former slaves—to go fight for their freedom.
    Had someone asked how he felt about the president even a few hours ago, that’s all Sam would have said, that he respected the man. But standing here in the muddy ruts of Tenth Street, watching a nondescript brick house, waiting for what, he did not know, was more than respect. The thought that Abraham Lincoln might be dying, might already be dead, made something flap loose in the very bottom of his stomach. It had never occurred to him that you could shoot a president like you could any other man. But apparently, you could. Black was white and up was down and right was left and the president of the United States lay in a nondescript house on a nondescript street, dying of a gunshot wound to his brain. Sam felt again what he had felt standing on the library steps: as if his very life, the whole country’s life, had become confetti, floating down, and all he could do was wait to see where it would land, what the new order of things would be. Or if, indeed, there would ever be order again.
    He waited.
    It seemed to him incomprehensible that he had walked and ridden so far, crossed rivers and meadows and woods, only to reach this city on this awful night.
    He waited.
    “My name is Lucy,” said the woman at some point.
    “Sam.”
    “Ben.”
    She ignored Ben. “You from around here, Sam?”
    He shook his head. “I am from Philadelphia.”
    “Ain’t never been there. ’Course, I ain’t never been nowhere.”
    A moment passed. She said, “You just get into town?”
    “Yes,” he said.
    “You got business here?”
    He shook his head. “I am just passing through on my way south to Mississippi. “
    “I see,” she said. It was clear from her tone that she did not.
    “I was a slave,” explained Sam, “years ago. There was a woman I knew who is still down there.”
    “You going to find her?”
    “Yes.”
    “Same thing I’m doing,” said Ben. “Goin’ back to my wife. Her name Hannah. We got us a daughter, too, little baby gal. Ain’t seed her in seven years, though, ever since I escaped Tennessee. I guess she ain’t a baby no more.”
    Sam looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. “Long way to go,” Lucy said.
    “Yes it is,” said Ben.
    “You got a horse?” the woman asked Sam.
    “I am on foot,” said Sam.
    “Me too,” said Ben.
    She shook her head. “Long way to go,” she said again.
    There was a silence. Then she said, “This ain’t such a bad place to live, you know. Washington? It ain’t so bad.”
    Sam looked at her. Earnest eyes above tear-stained cheeks. He knew what he was being offered. And he could only guess at the loneliness and fear that motivated it. Especially tonight. “No,” he said, “I am sure it is not a bad town at all. But it is not the town I am looking for. That town is in Mississippi.”
    She met his gaze. She turned away. “Then Mississippi where you need to go,” she said.
    They waited.
    Hundreds of them, they waited. Mostly colored, they waited. The sun rose. The sky was filled with clouds. The day was the color of nickel. It began to rain. They waited.
    Sometime around six, the door opened, and an odd-looking white man with a fringe of white beard and goggle eyes stepped onto the porch. He seemed surprised to see the crowd. Sam knew him at once. Father Neptune, the president had called him: Gideon Welles, the secretary of the Navy. He walked through the crowd. They pressed him. “How is the president?” yelled Sam, above the tumult. “Is there any hope?”
    He told them there was no hope.
    They waited.
    Was it an hour later? Two hours later? People began filing out of the house, men and women with glittering eyes and drawn faces. One of the last