He put up the wagon and unhitched Poke and led her into the barn to water and feed her and brush her down, still without having seen me. I was oddly hesitant about following him and speaking with him; yet we had much to say to one another. I felt shy as a girl with him, anxious and worried, even worried about my appearance’.
Suddenly angry with myself, I strode across the yard to the barn determined to erase my self-consciousness and went in and greeted Lyman with false heartiness. “Hello, friend!” I loudly exclaimed. “Are you working late, or starting the day early?”
He smiled wanly and shook my hand. “Good to see you, Owen. When did you arrive?”
I told him of my return the previous day and jabbered on about my journey from Springfield. While I yacked and he listened, I helped him settle the horse and hang the harness, until finally I realized that he was standing at the barn door, politely waiting for me to finish so he could go into the house.
“I’m sorry!” I said. “Here I’m keeping you from your wife. And you must be hungry and want to wash, while I’m going on about nothing.”
“No, no, that’s all right. I just needs to sleep some,” he said, and yawned. “Pulled me a long ride last night, all the way back from Massena on them corduroy roads, you know. My backbone’s sore.”
“How many’d you take up?”
“A pair of ‘em. Two men. From near Norfolk originally, off a Chesapeake Bay plantation. One a preacher. Preached my ear off the whole way up.”
“You get them over all right? No trouble?”
“No trouble. No help, neither, but no trouble.”
“Well, you’ll have some help now,”I said, adding that as soon as we had the farm readied for winter, I’d be working the Railroad with him. “That ought to shame a few other white folks back into action,” I declared.
“I don’t know, folks is pretty scared now!’ he said. “But good. I could use some help moving those as comes along from time to time. There ain’t as many as before, you know. Not since the Fugitive Law.”
“The Fugitive Law!” I said, and spat, like an actor in a melodramatic show.
“But I expect with winter coming,” he went on, “we’ll see a last batch making a run for it. So’s they don’t get stuck hiding out in people’s attics down here till spring.”
“Right, right, of course. But first we’ve got to—”
“In fact,” he said, interrupting me, “Tom Grey over to Timbuctoo, you recall him? He told me of a family of five, maybe six, be coming through from Utica tonight or tomorrow. If they ain’t already arrived. You didn’t hear nothing ’bout that, did you? Tom said he’d send word over here soon’s they arrived.”
“No. No one told me anything. But first we’ve got to get this place in shape, Lyman.”
“Yes. Yes, I know,” he said, and turned to leave.
I reached out and grabbed him by the arm, more forcefully than I intended, causing him to stop and remove my hand as if insulted by it.
“I’m sorry;’ I said. “It’s just I need to talk to you about the work, Lyman. Fact is, you and the boys have let things slide a little far, I think.”
He turned to me, with his face cast to the side. I began nonetheless to list the various jobs and projects that lay before us and to put them in the order that we would follow, when I shortly realized that he wasn’t hearing me, was merely waiting for me to finish so he could go inside the house. I grew impatient with him. In a sense, this was his farm, too, nearly as much as it was mine, and he had certain responsibilities towards it, which he clearly was not interested in accepting. “Lyman, you’re not listening, are you?”
“Owen” he said, still without looking at me, “what I am is tired. My back feels broke from three days and nights up on that wagon out there. Maybe we can talk about these matters later, when I’ve got me some rest.”
I don’t know what came over me then, but my ears began to buzz, and a gauzy, blood-red screen dropped before my eyes. With no conscious intention or desire to do it, I grabbed Lyman by the shoulder with my right hand, clamped my left onto his belt, and lifted and flung him bodily across the room, banging him hard against the stall, causing the horses to roll their eyes in fear and stamp their feet. He slid to the floor, shaken and astonished, and looked up at me with fear in his eyes for the first time ever, which I took in happily almost, accepting his gaze with a strange relief. As if I had long wanted him to fear me.
He said in a steady, low voice, “There’s something gone wrong in you.”
My breathing came hard, although I had not exerted myself — I was very strong, and Lyman, not a large man, had not resisted me. “Maybe… maybe there is. No, nothing is wrong in me. But my priorities… I have to hold to my priorities. This farm, it’s all so shaky. The winter’s coming. You wouldn’t listen.”
Slowly, he got to his feet and brushed bits of hay off his coat and trousers and put his cap back on, restoring his dignity. “I’m listening now,” was all he said.
“Well, we’ve got these priorities. The farm and all. And responsibilities, to the family. To your family, too. You and I, we’ve got to take care of them in the proper way. Then we can attend to the others, to the Railroad and all that. But it’s not like we have Father here for that. Don’t you understand?”
“I understand. Priorities. Responsibilities. I understand those things just fine.”
He moved warily towards the open barn door, facing me all the while, as if he expected me to attack him again. And I was gladdened by his wariness. I knew that in an hour, perhaps in a moment or two, I would surely collapse inside myself with shame and would beg Lyman’s forgiveness; but right then I was determined to keep myself open to these feelings of unexpected joy and to let them flow through me like a cold wind. By attacking Lyman physically, I had released in myself something dark and wonderfully satisfying. It was as if an ice-dam had let go, and huge chunks of ice, a flotilla of logs and fallen trees and frozen debris, were cascading over boulders and cliffs, making a great roar, and I was at this instant thrilled by the sheer power and noise of the flow.
I had done the forbidden thing. I had struck a black man.
I took a step towards him, and he jumped back, nearly out the door of the barn into the yard.
I reached for him, and he jumped again. “Why didn’t you fight me, Lyman?”
He squinted up at me as if he had not heard right.
“I want to know. Why didn’t you fight me, just now?”
“You think I’m a fool?”
“Is it because I’m white?”
He laughed coldly. “No, Owen, it ain’t because you’re white. I ain’t afraid of your skin. I might be afraid of what you got inside your head, though. And I treat any man twice my size with a certain caution. That’s all.”
“Well, it’s over,” I said. I couldn’t apologize, not yet, but I said, “I swear, 111 never do that again.”
He hesitated a moment and stared at me, and I saw that the fear had dissipated somewhat, replaced by something harder, darker. “Maybe so. Maybe not. Time will tell that.” He looked more sad than anything else. He said, “You tell me something, though.”
“What?”
“When you grab onto me like that and toss me down, you doing it because you can. Is that because I’m a whole lot smaller than you? Or is it because I’m colored?”
I was silent for a few seconds but did not look away. “You know the answer to that.”
“Say it, then.”
“It’s not because you’re smaller than me.”
“Right. It’s my skin. You’re afraid of my skin. But I ain’t afraid of yours. Which is why I didn’t fight you back. That’s what we got here. Ain’t it?”
“I can’t lie to you.”
“‘Appreciate that,” he said. “I’m going in now. We can discuss all those priorities and responsibilities of yours later on, if you want. But I got some of my own need tending first.” He turned, straightened, and walked towards the house and went quickly inside.
I saw smoke curling from the chimney; Mary had set the fire, and I could see her through the window at the stove, smiling broadly at Lyman as he entered, and Susan crossing the room towards him with her arms out. The others were probably already up and about, too, and were greeting him, welcoming him home, relieved that he had gotten back from the border safe and unharmed. And I saw that I, who was going to lead them, would now have to follow.