Freedom Hall a novel by Fletcher Rhoden
excerpt from Chapter 5 Boston, Mass: April, 1838:
Vangie Cleared her throat, pulled back her shoulders and called, “Hello? I’m here to make an offer. You can see that I’m alone and unarmed.” She was answered with the snap of another twig and the nervous giggle of small children. Vangie’s eyes were pulled to the rustling branches of the low-lying chokecherries, shivering in the children’s retreat.
Vangie breathed a sigh of relief that was twofold. Not only was she in no immediate danger, she was closer to Milton than she expected. She followed the children by the shuffling of the shrubbery, managing to catch sight of one dodging between a pair of false acacia.
Milton opened up in front of Vangie to dominate a low valley encircled by slopping, forested foothills. The gable roof plank houses were sprawled out, no more than ten yards between any two. Several were attached by lines of rope draped with ratty, torn wool homespun. The little houses leaned heavily on their bracing poles, tilting with rot and gravity. Holes in the roofing were visible even at that distance. The unmistakable scent of hoe cakes cut through the din and the chickens’ clucks.
The women glared up at Vangie as her bay gelding walked her deeper into the little town and further from the relative safety and shelter of the woods. The women wore cotton scarves wrapped around their heads, their blouses tied at the waist.
The men approached her. As Vangie’s quarter horse stepped into a flat, undeveloped area in the center of a ring of plank houses, Vangie realized they stood on all sides to surround her. Most crowded in front of the quarter horse, glaring up at Vangie with yellow eyes that cradled silent aggression. Others smiled, but none abstained from giving her and her mount a healthy appraisal.
“I need labor,” Vangie said in a voice strong enough for all to hear. “I offer wages, as much as any white man could earn for the same work. Is there anybody who speaks for you all?”
Pike stepped through the crowd to face Vangie. She recognized him from their brief meeting in the hallway of the Cartwells’ boarding house. He seemed to be wearing the same threadbare wool pants, cuffs so frayed they crept up almost to his knees. His shirt looked sewn from a potato sack. “Don’t nobody talks fer nobody ‘round here.”
Vangie looked over their faces; sixty or more were men of hirable age. “I understand if you don’t feel comfortable talking to me, but I do want you to speak your minds. In Freedom Hall, you’ll be able to speak publicly; for reform, to end slavery.”
“We ain’t slaves, ‘at’s what’s my mind!” The woman, who’d been the first to catch Vangie’s eye upon entering Milton only a few minutes before, strode up next to Pike and slid her little arm across his broad back. “Hard enough just bein’ free niggers, can’t help none d'em Africans down south.”
“Maybelle.” Pike’s low, molasses voice replaces hers without reprimand. He looked up at Vangie, his calm expression betraying none of Maybelle’s prejudice. “Talkin’ gwine make some change, miss?”
“It’s already moved public opinion enough to help the sick, the insane, the criminal. Why not the black man or woman, or the white woman or the Indian?”
Maybelle spat a contemptuous huff over her jutted chin. “You done run outta slaves is all. You says you wants t’help us, but you jus’ needs yo’ work done f’ya.”
“You’re right that I need help, but I’m willing to pay well. If you can trust me, and I grant that you’ve no reason to, I think you’ll realize that what I’m offering you is freedom; not some signature on a piece of parchment a hundred miles away, but freedom you can touch and feel.”
Amid the confused mumbling that hovered over the men and women of Milton, Maybelle said, “We’s starvin’ an’ po’, o’ can’t you smell? We’s free ‘nough, too free sometime. We don’t needs you.”
“If you’re poor it’s because there’s no adequate work,” Vangie said. “You want to work for equal pay, have money and some of the luxuries that come with it, don’t you? Is it stubbornness that makes you refuse it?”
Their nodding confusion turned quickly to exception and they took a massive, communal step closer to Vangie’s quarter horse. Only Pike’s voice stopped them. “Ain’t nobody refusin’ nuffin’ yet.”
Vangie said, “You’re free not to accept. But unless you stand up and take what you want from society, that may be all you’re free to do. The site is at Fairfield and Newbury. The workday begins promptly at seven-thirty. If you’re there, I’ll know you accept. If not, I’m sorry to have wasted your time and I wish you luck.”
Vangie pulled the reins, spinning the bay gelding quarter horse sharply to the left. He took two steps toward the road into the woods, but the ring of men stood fast and blocked the animal. The horse whined his nervous warning, front legs kicking as if to shake off his own back socks. Vangie squeezed her heels into the horse’s flank and the animal tried to move forward, but the men had him intimidated and confused.
Her nervous stomach told Vangie that the horse was not alone in his fear. She kicked the horse with greater rancor before pushing through the line of men, who separated to allow her escape. Vangie trotted the quarter horse back past the leaning plank houses and tin washing bins, but she couldn't fail to hear their laughter, bursting with ridicule. It probably lasted only until she left the township and disappeared back into the woods, but in her mind’s ear it would ring long into the night.
Vangie knew their laughter would give way to reason, however, and she felt she had a good chance of seeing them at the site the next morning.
Another twig snapped, again from somewhere other than under her own horse. Vangie looked around the quiet woods, thickening with dusk’s hood. It wouldn’t be the children from Milton, Vangie knew; not so close to night and heading away from the township instead of towards it.
After another ominous snap, Vangie’s curiosity turned to rancid fear. Disguising the crackling hope in her voice, Vangie called out, “Talbot, is that you? Land sakes!”
Calvin lead his Morgan sheepishly to her from behind several thick cucumber trees in full bloom.
“I told them I was alone,” Vangie said, her voice low and cool enough to show her anger and not betray her relief or gratitude. “You made me out a liar. And what about tomorrow’s delivery?”
“Rode back and saw to it first, was only a few minutes away from the Baines place. And you were alone, I only just rode up from the other direction.” Vangie’s quarter horse started down the road, Calvin jerking his reins to follow. “’Course, we may need to wait on our Roxbury errand.”
“We’ll see what the morning brings,” Vangie said. The woods opened to another grassy stretch, the gaslights of Boston speckling the purple of the encroaching night.
“You sure got a way with people. Gotta tip my hat to you.”
“I wasn’t raised in the woods to fear the owl, Mr. Talbot.”