Chapter 4

10:00 a.m.

The room is a lot brighter than it should be. Sunlight streams through the lone window. The gray walls and chamber pots practically sparkle. Tempe’s glowing like a campfire. Lighting up the whole room. Six beds. I light-foot past the patients. They don’t pay me no never mind. Most of them staring after Tempe. She’s standing at the head of Edward’s bed, fidgeting. She don’t seem to know what to do with her hands, trailing wisps of smoke as she touches his head, caresses his cheeks. “Keep away from my boy.” I don’t yell it but five heads turn to face me.

Tempe stares at me like I lost my mind. I squeeze past her to Edward’s side. I barely feel his warmth. What isn’t covered in strips of white gauze and plaster is swollen with purple bruises or hidden beneath a starched white sheet and thin, scratchy blanket. His eyes are swollen shut. His skull, ears, nose, and chin are distorted beneath layers of cotton. His neck is rigged to a contraption connecting his back and legs. I don’t know where to put my hands.

He wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you!

“Just let me get him home to fix him. You come back some other time, Tempe.”

I ain’t leaving without my boy.

“What you come for? To watch him die? To watch me watch him die? Save him!”

I can’t. She sucks the air from the room. I can’t hardly breathe. Beds rattle, charts flip, drawers open and close.

“Ain’t got no time for none of your tantrums, Tempe. If you ain’t here to help, go!”

I’m taking him home.

“It ain’t time. Take me instead.”

You? She spits the word like I’m not even good enough to be dead with her. Always second.

“Then let me save him.”

Like you saved me? The room bursts into flames. Fire leaps from the walls, the floor, the ceiling. It’s hotter than coal in a smokehouse. My heart would be racing if it hadn’t stopped. Brick walls slip into dripping wood beams, concrete floors melt into hardwood. Grand windows burst through, leaving Autumn in smoldering rubble. We’re back inside Walker’s place. Back to the day Tempe died.

She’ll kill him and me both. “No, I ain’t gonna do it,” I say. “I’m staying right here with my boy.”

Everything but the smell of burning wood disappears.

He can’t hardly hear you over everybody else calling his name.

“I don’t hear nobody.”

Of course you don’t. When it’s your time, you won’t hear them either. You done forgot all about home.

“You ain’t talking sense.”

When’s the last time you talked about Mama?

“I think about her all the time.”

When’s the last time you talked about her? Edward know about her?

“No.”

Then he can’t hear her. That’s your doing.

“Then why can’t he hear me? He know me.”

You think Mama the only one trying to call him?

“Who else, then?”

Tempe stares at me for so long I’m not sure she’s going to answer.

All I can do is lead him home. And I can’t do that if he don’t know who I am.

The room spins round and round. I grab for Edward’s hand. “He’ll hate me.”

Selfish.

“Who want to die hating their mama?”

You ain’t no mama if you rather him go to hell thinking you his mama than go home with me.

I put my head where Edward’s heart should be. I listen. Nothing.

“I’m going to have to ask you not to touch the patient,” someone says.

I put my hand on Edward’s chest. “Hold on, baby, I’ll be right here. I’m going to talk to the man a moment.” The doctor must be about six foot.

“He can’t hear you.” His crisp coat matches the words clanging to the floor. “He’s comatose. Do you know what that means?”

“How long till I can take him home?”

“Ma’am, I’m Dr. Ross. Mr. Freeman is dying. Is he taking any medicines,” he lowers his voice, “from a doctor or otherwise?”

“My son ain’t need no doctor since he left the army.”

“Did he get any pills then?”

“If he did, it isn’t likely he’s still got ’em. That was years ago.”

“Has he ever suffered any trauma to his head”—the doctor pauses to study the chart—“before?”

“I’m not sure what that has to do with him ending up here.”

“If we know what caused him to go into shock …”

“It wasn’t being thrown from the trolley?”

“Ma’am,” the doctor lowers his voice again and places a warm hand on my shoulder, “we want to make him as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. If we can help him make it through the night, he just might make it to morning.”

And then what?

“I’m going to look in on my other patients. I’ll be back to check in.”

“He’s gone,” I say when he is.

If he live, they gonna kill him. You know that, don’t you?

“Maybe they’ll leave him be. They’ll find out whoever did it and leave Edward in peace.”

Even in death Tempe’s laugh rattles my teeth.

“Maybe it was that boy, Jacob, got Edward all mixed up in some union mess. Edward didn’t want no parts of it and Jacob made him, forced him. That’s what happened, isn’t it, Edward?” I put my ear to Edward’s mouth and listen for moans, gasps, bursts of air, anything that sounds like a yes. Every so often a prick of breath tickles my earlobe. “Probably got wind of what they was trying to do, jumped board that trolley, wrestled it from that no-gooder, lost control and in trying to steer clear of folk, crashed. He’s a hero. They can’t kill a hero.”

Can’t they?

If they’d known, they wouldn’t have done him like this. “It’s cuz they didn’t know he was trying to save them.”

Why didn’t they ask him?

I close my eyes. Edward barrels down the street in a runaway trolley, arms waving wildly. He’s screaming for help. He can hardly reach the brake, the controls ain’t responding. He’s ten, a little boy in a big, flaming trolley wanting nothing more than to go home.

We wait. Around us, patients settle into heavy breathing, some slip in and out of fretful dreams and wake to their own screaming. Nurses jab, bandage, and shift bodies. They note charts, check vitals. Metal wheels squeak as dying patients are replaced with other dying ones. It can’t be long past midday but the clouds have hidden the sun. Rain beats down on the roof. Thunder rolls across the sky. Lightning flashes every so often. A thin stream of water leaks onto the floor. A nurse comes in with a bucket. Rain plops and keeps time, tick, tick, tick. Edward does not stir.

What if he didn’t do nothing? Will they leave him alone or just put something else on him? If he don’t die tonight, will they just kill him tomorrow? Even if he did it, if innocent people died because he was wrapped up in some union dispute over money, he wouldn’t deserve to die this way. With no name, no kin, nowhere to go. Whether he’s a hero or no, my boy is dying. “I can’t save him, can I?”

You can help me lead him home.

I settle down on Edward’s bed, lift his head onto my lap.

The weight feels good. I breathe the scent of bleach, soap, ammonia water, the faint smell of death. The book is heavy in my hands. Its soft cover is flesh beneath my fingers. The pages flip rapidly. I turn back to the beginning. They flip again, stopping on articles about the war, the emancipation, the fire. “Tempe, if I’m going to tell this story, I’m going to tell it my way,” I say.

You ain’t got much time.

“Either I’ll tell it my way or it won’t get told.”

Five stories below, the streets call Edward’s name. Tempe huffs but she leaves the book alone.

“Most of what I’m about to tell you ain’t in no history book, no newspaper article, no encyclopedia. There’s a whole heap of stories don’t ever get told. What I know comes straight from my sister’s lips to my heart and to this book. Some of it I seen with my own two eyes. Some with hers. You come from free people. From right here in Philadelphia. You wasn’t born here. It was me that brought you home.”

I open the book and begin.