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By Root 1590 0

that man, Arthur Brindle, returned from the college to Manchester and began practicing, he found that the law was making him a poor man. So he went into dry goods and he made a good living. He suffered from sleepless nights most of his life, this merchant/lawyer did. He and his wife discovered that if he talked to her about his day before he tried going to sleep, he could manage to pull at least two hours of sleep from the night, which was better than the half hour he usually got when they did not talk. And so the night of the day he and the eleven other men convicted Jean Broussard, he lay beside his wife and told her about it. On the stand, Broussard, the merchant said, kept repeating that he was a proud and upstanding American citizen and that he would never hurt another proud and upstanding American citizen if he could help it. It was not this so much, this repetition of who he was, that hurt his case, the merchant said, yawning and listening to the quiet hum that was his ten children sleeping all about the house. It was not that the defense attorney from Culpeper kept telling the jurors Broussard’s Scandinavian partner was not an actual American citizen, though that did not help his case either. It was the accent. The accent gave him “the stench of a dissembler.” Everything Broussard said came out warped because of the accent, even when he spoke his own name. The jurors, the merchant told his wife, would have been able to accept why the partner was killed if Broussard had sat on the stand and told his whole story without an accent.

6

A Frozen Cow and a Frozen Dog. A Cabin in the Sky. The Taste of Freedom.

On Sunday, the second day Henry Townsend had been in the ground, Maude Newman, his mother-in-law, came into her daughter’s bedroom at the house Henry and Moses had built and sat on the side of Caldonia’s bed, took her daughter’s hand in one of hers, sighing all the while. “My poor widow child,” Maude sighed. Only moments before, Loretta, Caldonia’s maid, had asked her mistress if she wanted her to bring up something for Caldonia to eat or drink. Caldonia told Loretta that her mind was not on food or drink; it was all she could do, she said to the woman who had been with her most of her married life, to open her eyes and to breathe. Loretta said, “Yes, ma’am,” knowing how true that must have been, and stepped back to watch Caldonia take her time to raise herself up in bed. Loretta had known of one woman’s slave who was required to do virtually everything for her mistress, even to wipe the mistress’s hind parts after every bowel movement. Caldonia had always been strong, choosing to do so much on her own, and Loretta had, over time, become more of a companion. “For all thas in her, she coulda been a slave,” Loretta had funned once to Celeste, Elias’s wife, knowing Celeste could keep secrets.

Once Caldonia was up in the bed and leaning back on the pillows, she stared at Loretta as if to ask what next did the world expect of her. Caldonia looked over at the open chiffarobe, whose door was broken and so would never close properly, looked at the black dress hanging there. It seemed to have its own life, so much life that it could have come down and walked over and placed itself over her body. Fastened itself. Her mother had worn the dress for only a month after Caldonia’s father had died. “I cannot do any more time with this dress,” Maude had said when she put it away. “Wearing black makes my skin itch. Mr. Newman was a man after God’s own heart but why should I suffer now that he is sitting with our Lord?” And Maude’s mourning had come to an end.

“My poor widow child,” Maude said again.

“Mama, please. Please don’t give me this today. Tomorrow. The day after tomorrow, but not today.”

“The legacy is your future, Caldonia, and that can’t wait. I wish it could, but no. All else can, but not the legacy.” For Maude, the legacy meant slaves and land, the foundation of wealth. Her fear was that Caldonia, in her grief, would consider selling the slaves, along with the land, as if to accomplish some wish Henry, tied to