Freedom Hall a novel by Fletcher Rhoden
excerpt from Chapter 16 Rochester, New York: October, 1835:
“But we can’t leave everything. We’ll fight them off!”
“There’s too many,” Elijah spat out, his voice swelling with urgency.
Vangie looked around the room in a panic. “But the press, our new leaflet! They’ll burn the house down!”
“Exactly, and we’re in the attic, now come on!” Elijah limped to the stairs, Vangie unable to pull herself away. “Vangie, we don’t have tome for sentiment. You can always build another house, now hurry up before you get us both killed!” Snorting horses and pounding hooves got louder in the distance, and Vangie turned with a tiny gasp and followed him down the stairs. Gunfire blasted in front of the house, window panes shattering.
Elijah grabbed his .67-caliber smoothbore flintlock pistol from the drawer of an end table at the bottom of the stairs as he limped past. Iron balls whipped unseen through the windows, punching tiny holes into the walls. Vangie ran ducking to the wall of the sitting room, where the Kentucky Plains hung on two gun screws. The crackle of gunfire and the shattering of glass gave her no time to check the rifle, but there was also no need; it was always loaded. Vangie and Elijah were across the kitchen in seconds. Smoke was already thick in the air, rising to announce the flames. As they reached the back door, Vangie could make out the crackle and spit of the fire as it devoured her home.
Elijah grabbed the Kentuck from Vangie and gave her the pistol. “You take this, handles better short range. Don’t waste the shot.” Elijah lifted the bar lock, pushed open the vertical plank door and peered around to see if they’d been encircled. “Lucky break,” he muttered to Vangie. “Let’s go.”
They ran with their heads low across the back of their lot. Beyond their property line stretched miles of moonlit grassland and swamp. They would have plenty of places to hide of they could get through the open stretch of meadow, but it was three hundred yards with absolutely no cover. Vangie knew it would be a matter of time and luck to determine whether they were spotted and if they would be caught before ducking into the marshland where the raiders’ horses and thus the raiders were unlikely to follow.
When Elijah rasped, “Run, Vangie!” she did exactly that, with all her might. Her legs pumped under her and her heart throbbed behind her ribs. The ground was firm beneath her feet, it seemed to push her on in her escape. She clutched the pistol to her breast, fingers craned around the oily wood and iron.
When she heard an unfamiliar voice call, “H’yah!” she turned to see how close the raider was. What surprised her was how far away Elijah was. She’d run too fast, she realized, and left him limping behind. He was a cripple because of her and now sheer terror had given her flight to abandon him. He was only fifty yards behind, but the raider was closer to him than that and riding his standardbred at full gallop.
Elijah turned, pulled the Kentuck to his face to aim at the raider, and shot. His tray flashed, muzzle spitting out smoke and lead, but the raider did not go down. His response was to draw his own pistol from his overcoat and slowly take aim. Elijah dropped the Kentuck and ran, his crippled leg propelling him in a staggering gate. He cried out, “Vangie, shoot!”
Vangie looked down at the pistol she just remembered she was holding. She wrapped her fingers around the handle and over the trigger. She raised the gun, but it suddenly felt as if it weighed a thousand pounds. It trembled in her grip, her lungs and heart freezing in the moment to await the outcome.
A gunshot rang out and Elijah fell, his body disappeaing in the grass. Vangie screamed and pulled the trigger, the flintlock kicking into her palm with the force of the shot. The raider snapped back but stayed in this saddle, locked in by the stirrups, leaning and bouncing idly as his horse kept galloping forward.
Vangie couldn’t move. Her fingers were locked around the handle of the pistol, her legs stiff and arms numb. She’d killed a man, Elijah was dead, and the other raiders galloped toward her. Her feet sank into the wet ground, the Earth threatening to hold her for capture by her enemies.
Vangie turned and ran for the swamps. Her legs flexed, pushing her with increasing swiftness away from the men who’d just killed her best friend, cousin and mentor and would surely kill her or worse. She ran without thought, without reason, without the life she’d grown to love. Vangie’s memory clanged with the insistent echo of her family’s curse. Elijah hadn’t become corrupted.
Elijah died young.
Vangie’s feet slid and dug into the deepening mud, fast becoming heavier as dirt caked them inches deep and up past her ankles. She lost her left shoe, her run now slightly staggered and much colder.
She ran into marshier terrain with its high grass, soft ground and hidden pools of dark, cold water as the raiders dismounted and searched for her on foot. Her feet were chilled icy cold with the heavy water, seeping into her dress as she squatted down to keep out of sight. The wetness spread across the thirsty cotton until it wrapped her in a thick, wet membrane almost as restrictive as the raiders’ proximity and her own terror. At one point Vangie was within fifty feet of one raider, whose line of sight almost fell upon her but for his unfortunate slip on a rock that sent him toppling on his backside. He stood up furious and soiled, waving off the marsh as he led the others back toward their horses.
Once they mounted and started trotting away, Vangie exhaled. An hour later, Vangie stood. Her legs were numb; to straighten them took all her effort and inspired considerable pain. But it was nothing compared to the aching of her heart and the hemorrhaging wound in her soul. Vangie wandered back onto the grassland and watched the house she built be consumed in a torrent of orange flame, black smoke and creaking wood.
Vangie stumbled across the grass to Elijah’s body, knelt to him and laid his head onto her lap. She rocked him gently and rubbed his cold, bloodied cheeks and chin. Her breath became a churning wind of sadness and loss.
She’d never see him again, she realized. they’d never spend another night bantering and laughing and crafting words each hoped would reach out and change their world. She’d never see that vaguely confusing look on his face that would come and go so quickly; her heart would never flutter upon its discovery. They would never bump heads on the method or manner of their prose; he would never prover her wrong, nor she him. He’d brought her life and she brought him death. The last of his blood was warm but cooling fast, soaking into her dress and dripping down her thighs.
Elijah was dead, Vangie's new isolation flooding her swollen heart. She squeezed him tighter, fingers digging into his chest; he didn’t flinch. She cried until her throat was as fleshy and red as his scalp.
The pounding emptiness of her vacant soul told her beyond denial that she did love Elijah, more than she’d allowed herself to admit. Now the truth of Carroll’s insight was beyond doubt. She did love him and she was in love with him, a passion never to be consummated. Every shred of hope, itself a burden, fled to leave her in even greater anguish. It bent her frown, lips peeling up and over her teeth to give way to her gushing sorrow. Her brows cramped, her forehead creasing to comprehend his loss.
She loved him. She loved him so much.
And now he was dead.
Her heart strained to keep beating, tackled by a seething, prickling torture. Vangie thought about her mother and Sarah. She thought about her father, probably alive down in South Carolina; that he didn’t deserve to live on the Earth that the good and noble Elijah was denied. It was her father’s act of pushing Elijah out the window that gave him the limp. But Vangie’s mind immediately took the next step, as it always did when she tried to blame her father or anyone but herself for her misfortune. She lied, purposefully inciting him, and the results of her gamble would send Elijah falling to break his leg on the gravel roundabout.
She was at fault. If she’d left the attic when Elijah told her to, or shot the raider a few seconds sooner; if she hadn’t been so consumed with fear and actually had some of that courage and determination to which she laid claim, Elijah would be alive.
Please don’t be dead, Vangie’s heart cried without air to support its miserable plea. I’ll undo whatever I did, I won’t be whatever I was if you’ll only come back and end this nightmare.
Please come back, my love.
Vangie lowered her face over Elijah’s, knowing the only comfort she could bring would be to herself in hiding from the judgment of God. She couldn’t show Him her face, or the society or perhaps anyone, should she be so lucky to have that chance. And it would be luck, for Vangie was certain she wasn’t deserving of it.
Elijah was dead. And it was her fault.
She’d sacrificed the privilege of service; in her trembling hands she held the proof of its futility, the guarantee of her failure. Vangie vowed that she’d never put anyone in the dangerous proximity of her incompetence again. The world would have to fight for itself, the cause would have a better chance without her blundering.
The life she would lead now stretched out in a vacuous tunnel of echoing sorrow and loneliness. In her mind, she was already walking.