On one rainy day, Beau and Morris rode out to the eastern edge of Morris’s land and they sat their horses and looked down across the hill to the line where the white man’s land ended. On a back road not on his property, they saw a young white woman trying to get a white mule to stand up from the muddy road. The mule had been pulling a wagon in the rain, and it wasn’t clear to Beau or Morris whether the animal had sat down because it was tired of working or because it just liked sitting down in the rain.
The white woman was named Hope Martin, but only Beau knew that. Though white, she was not in Morris’s class.
“You want me to go down and help her?” Beau asked Morris.
“No,” Morris said, “give her a little time.”
The woman at first seemed to be talking to the mule, trying to convince it that it should get up so they could continue. The mule didn’t move. Finally, Hope went to the back of the wagon and took out several apples from a covered basket. She sat down in the road in front of the mule and ate an apple as she fed first one and then another to the mule. She got more apples several times from the wagon. The rain did not let up and the black man and the white man on the horses did not move.
After some thirty minutes of eating apples, the mule stood up but Hope still sat in the mud, taking her time as she ate her fourth apple. Seeing Hope sitting there, the animal became restless, its tail swishing and its head going up and down, first one front hoof stamping the mud, then the other. After fifteen or more minutes of this, Hope stood and stretched, the rain still coming on. She said something to the mule and pointed up the road to where they had to go. The mule started moving even before she got back on board.
“What’s her name?” Morris asked Beau as they watched the woman and the mule and the wagon go up the hill without any trouble.
Beau told him who she was, that she had come down from north Georgia to take care of her aunt and her ailing uncle. Both aunt and uncle were very old people, not long for the world. “She’d make some man a good wife,” Beau said, putting an end to the woman’s history.
He would not have said this if he didn’t think his master was already thinking it.
“You done had anough?” Beau said.
“I think I have,” Morris said.
Morris was father to a young man-the only white child he would ever have-with a wonderfully complicated mind. On the day they saw Hope and the mule in the rain, that child, Wilson, had been a year and some months in Washington, D.C., at the medical school of George Washington University. Wilson had learned a great deal at that university and his mind would have contained even more but well into his second year the cadavers began to talk to Wilson, and what they said made far more sense than what his professors were saying. The professors, being gods, did not like to share their heaven with anyone, dead or alive, and they sent the young man home in the middle of his second year.
Even before the professors had sent Wilson back home, his father had been thinking that he wanted Hope as his son’s wife. Though she came from a different place in life, Morris felt that she could be cleaned off, made wholesome, the way an apple fallen into mud could be cleaned up and eaten. Morris had an emissary go to her and her relatives and tell them he wanted to see her, but the woman never came to him, and in the end Hope married another young man, Hillard Uster, poor except for the nice parcel of land he had inherited from his parents. Hillard was not as handsome as she was beautiful but Hope thought she could live with that, and indeed she did.
Their marriage angered Morris, and he was still angry when his son came home from Washington, D.C., for good and tried to tell Morris and his mother what the cadavers had been saying to him. The father and his son talked late into the nights, and there were many times when what the cadavers said began to make sense to the father. In the morning, though, Morris would have more clarity and he would blame many people-but especially Hope and Hillard-for all the things the dead people were putting in his son’s head. Morris told people in that part of Georgia that Hope and Hillard were to suffer alone and everyone was forbidden to help them. And that was how it was for a long time.
The Usters’ children were small and weak of bone and lung and the inherited land was left mostly to Hope and Hillard alone to try to make a living. Then, in 1855, Hillard managed to save about $53 and met a black man named Stennis and his white master, Darcy, who feared taking one last piece of property into Florida, where he had never known good luck. Hillard used the money to buy that human property from Darcy.
That day in September, Darcy and Stennis said good-bye to Augustus Townsend, who said nothing, and he watched them ride away in the wagon that had held up all the way from Virginia. They had sold Augustus’s mule back in North Carolina. Augustus stood on the edge of Hillard’s field, free of his chains for the first time since Manchester County. Hillard held a rifle. On either side of the white man was a boy. On the porch of the tiny house Hope was holding a baby. On either side of her was a little girl.
“I don’t want no trouble outa you,” Hillard said to Augustus. Darcy had said that Augustus, still new to Georgia, might be testy for a few days. “I don’t want no trouble.”
“I won’t be nothin but trouble,” Augustus said, looking around, getting his bearings.
“We got a nigger just like evbody else, Pa?” the boy on Hillard’s right said.
“Hush.”
“I just wanna go home and then I’ll be outa your way.”
Hillard raised his rifle, pointed it at Augustus. “Then you and me will have trouble.”
“We gon have trouble, Pa,” the boy on the left said.
“Hush,” Hillard said. He raised the rifle higher, up to Augustus’s face. “I just want you to work, like you suppose to.”
“I done done all the work I suppose to do.”
“I wanna feed my family and I’ll do anything to make that happen. I just wanna feed my family. Thas all there is to it.”
“I know family. I know all about family. But, mister, you can’t raise your family on my back,” and Augustus, noting where the sun was, turned and headed north.
“Our nigger goin, Pa?” the first boy said.
“Hush.”
Augustus was a few yards away when Hillard said, “You come back here. You better come here. I’m tellin you to come back here.” Augustus continued on.
“Stop, you,” the second boy hollered. “You stop.”
“Hilly?” Hope called from the porch. “Hilly, what is goin on?”
Her husband raised the rifle and fired a shot into Augustus’s left shoulder. Augustus stopped, looked at the ground, and lifted his head again. The blood took its time spreading all over the top of the shirt, then spread down and all about, down some more to the top of his pants. Augustus lowered his head and fell to the ground. Hope screamed.
Hillard and the boys ran to Augustus. The girls on the porch ran as well, and so did Hope, but with the baby in her arms she was not as fast as the girls were.
“I told you to stop. All I wanted was for you to stop.”
Augustus was on his back and he looked up at the man and at the boys. He didn’t look at the girls and the woman with the baby because by the time they got there his eyes were closed, which helped with the pain.
“I told you to stop, dammit! Nigger, all I wanted was for you to stop.”
Augustus heard him and he wanted to say that that was the biggest lie he had ever heard in his life, but he was dying and words were precious.
Hope and her family-except for the baby, who was put for the moment on the ground where Augustus fell-managed to get him to the barn, which is where Hillard had intended for Augustus to live when he wasn’t working. Hope stayed with him most of the day and the evening and a good part of the night. Hillard did not come out to him, and the woman said to Augustus at one point, “I hope you won’t hold his not comin out against him.” There was a brave man in the neighborhood, a healer of sorts, a man not afraid of Morris Calhenny, and that man came out and tried to get the bullet out of Augustus, but the bullet was stubborn, having found a home.