Tonight, though, he drank the flask dry, and tossed and turned for hours al the same.
Spring gave way to summer. The big sim Joe stepped on a thorn, and died three weeks later of lockjaw. The loss cast a pal of gloom over Charles Gillen, for Joe was worth a hundred denaires.
Gillen's spirits lifted only when his son and daughter returned to the farm from the boarding schools they attended in Portsmouth, the commonwealth capital. Jeremiah was also glad to see them. Caleb was fourteen and Sally eleven; the slave sometimes felt he was almost as much a father to them as Charles Gillen himself.
But Caleb, at least, came home changed this year. Before, he had always talked of what he would do when the Gil en farm was his.
Jeremiah had spoken of buying his own freedom once, a couple of years before; Caleb had looked so hurt at the idea of his leaving that he never brought it up again, for fear of turning the boy against it for good. He thought Caleb had long since forgotten.
One day, though, Caleb came up to him when the two of them were alone in the house. He spoke with the painful seriousness adolescence brings: "I owe you an apology, Jeremiah."
"How's that, young master?" the slave asked in surprise "You haven't done nothing to me." And even if you had, he added silently, you would not be required to apologize for it.
"Oh, but I have," Caleb said, "though I've taken too long to see it. Do you remember when you told me once you would like to be free and go away?"
"Yes, young sir, I do remember that," Jeremiah said cautiously.
Any time the issue of liberation came up, a slave walked the most perilous ground there was.
"I was too little to understand then," the boy said. "Now I think I may, because I want to go away too."
"You do? Why could that be?" Jeremiah was not pretending. This declaration of Caleb's was almost as startling as his recalling their conversation at all. To someone that young, two years was like an age.
"Because I want to read the law and set up my own shingle one day.
The law is the most important thing in the whole world, Jeremiah." His voice burned with conviction; at fourteen, one is passionately certain about everything.
"I don't know about that, young master. Nobody can eat law."
Caleb looked at him in exasperation. "Nobody could eat food either, or even grow it, if his neighbor could take it whenever he had a mind to.
What keeps him from it, even if he has guns and men and sims enough to do it by force? Only the law."
"Something to that," Jeremiah admitted. He agreed only partly from policy; Caleb's idea had not occurred to him. He thought of the law only as something to keep from descending on him. That it might be a positive good was a new notion, one easier to arrive at for a free man, he thought without much bitoerness.
Enthusiasm carried Caleb along. "Of course there's something to it!
People who make the law and apply the law rule the country. I don't mean just the censors or the Senate or the Popular Assembly, though one day I'll serve, I think, but judges and lawyers too."
"That may be so, young master, but what will become of the farm when you've gone to Portsmouth to do your lawyering, or up to Philadelphia for the Assembly?" Jeremiah knew vaguely where Portsmouth was (somewhere southeast, a journey of a week or two); he knew Philadelphia was some long ways north, but had no idea how far. Half as far as the moon, maybe.
"One day Sally will get married," Caleb shrugged. "It will stay in the family. And lawyers get rich, don't forget. Who knows? maybe one day I'll buy the Pickens place next door to retire on."
Jeremiah's opinion was that old man Pickens would have to be dragged kicking and screaming into his grave before he turned loose of his farm.
He knew, however, when to keep his mouth shut. He also noticed that any talk about his freedom had vanished from the conversation.
Nevertheless, Caleb had not forgotten. One day he took Jeremiah aside and asked him, "Would you like me to teach you to read and cypher?"
The slave thought about it. He answered cautiously "Your father, I don't know if he'd like that." Most masters discouraged literacy among their blacks (sims did not count; no sim had ever learned to read). In some commonwealths, though not Virginia, teaching a black his letters was against the law.
"I've already talked with him about it," Caleb said. "I asked him if he didn't think it would be useful to have you able to keep accounts and such. He hates that kind of business himself."
The lad already had a good deal of politician in him Jeremiah thought.
Caleb went on, "Once you learn, maybe you can hire yourself out to other farmers, and keep some of what you earn. That would help you buy yourself free sooner, and knowing how to read and figure can only help you afterwards."
"You're right about that, young sir. I'd be pleased to start, so long as your father won't give me no grief on account of it."
The hope of money first impelled Jeremiah to the lessons, but he quickly grew fascinated with them for their own sake. He found setting down his name in shaky letters awe-inspiring: there it was, recorded for al time. It gave him a feeling of immortality, almost as if he had had a child. And struggling through first Caleb's little reader and then, haltingly, the Bible was more of the same. He wished he could spend al his time over the books.
He could not, of course. Chores around the house kept him busy al through the day. Most of his reading time was snatched from sleep. He yawned and did not complain.
His stock of money slowly grew, five sesters here, ten there.
Once he made a whole denaire for himself, when Mr. Pickens's cook fell sick just before a family gathering and Charles Gillen loaned Jeremiah to the neighbor for the day.
From anyone else, he would have expected two or even three denaires; from Pickens he counted himself lucky to get one.
He did not save every sester he earned: a man needs more than the distant hope of freedom to stay happy. One night he made his way to a dilapidated cabin that housed a widow inclined to be complaisant toward silver, no matter who brought it.
Jeremiah was heading home, feeling pleased with the entire world (except for the mosquitoes), when the moon light showed a figure coming down the path toward him. It was Harry Stowe. Jeremiah's pleasure evaporated.
He was afraid of the overseer, and tried to stay out of his way. Too late to step aside into the bushes, Stowe had seen him.
"Evening, sir," Jeremiah said amiably as the overseer approached.
Stowe set hands on hips, looked Jeremiah up and down.
"Evening, sir," he echoed, voice mockingly high. There was whiskey on his breath. "I'm tired of your uppity airs-always sucking up to young Caleb. What do you need to read for? You're a stinking slave, and.
don't you ever forget it."
"I could never do that, sir, no indeed. But al the same, a man wants to make himself better if he can."
He never saw the punch that knocked him down. Drunk or sober, Stowe was fast and dangerous. Jeremiah lay in the dirt. He did not try to fight back. Caleb's law descended swiftly and savagely on any slave who dared strike a white man. But fear of punishment was not what held him back now. He knew Stowe would have no trouble taking him, even in a fair fight.
Man? I don't see any man there," the overseer said. "All I see's a nigger. " He laughed harshly, swung back his foot.
Instead of delivering the kick, though, he turned away and went on toward the widow's.
Jeremiah rubbed the bruise on the side of his jaw, felt around with his tongue to see if Stowe had loosened any of his teeth. No, he decided, but only by luck. He stayed down until the overseer disappeared round a bend in the path. Then he slowly rose, brushing the dust from his trousers.