SEVEN

June 1872

Dear Father,

I hope this letter finds you well. I fear you will not be after you read it, but I am much troubled in mind, and must unburden myself on paper at least.

Disturbing rumors reach us here, of freedmen snatched along the roads and byways and never heard from again. It’s said they are put to labor, most often cutting sugarcane, without pay and harshly treated.

Sweetbay Sugar Company is named more than once, though its owners disclaim all knowledge, and they are powerful men hereabouts. The freedpeople speak in whispers of sugar plantations along the river, near the bayous, where captives languish in bondage anew…

“Tell me your name,” Michael said gently to the woman in the patched calico dress who sat across the makeshift table from him in the Freedmen’s Bureau field office.

“Bessamy,” she whispered, holding the tin mug of strong tea he’d given her as if it anchored her in place. She’d barely sipped but had spent so long staring into the liquid Michael wondered if she was reading auguries there. “Bessamy Moses. ’Twas Harris, before the Jubilee.” The ghost of a smile passed over her face. “Henry chose our name. Moses, for the Promised Land…” She sucked in a breath, gripping the mug tighter. Looked up, her brown eyes glistening. “I didn’t know where else to go…who could help. Don’t know if the bureau can. But if there’s any chance…”

In fits and starts, he drew the story from her. How her husband, Henry Moses of Beulah Town, had gone by train to visit his ailing aunt some miles away and never came back. “Not that Sunday like he said, nor any day after. No word, neither. He’d have sent, if he meant to stay longer. His cousin Samson could write, would’ve if Henry asked. And then, one day when I went to the depot to see if…” She bit her lip. “Henry wasn’t there. But Fanny was. Fanny Williams. Healer woman in Beulah, goes around where she’s needed, curing the toothache and ague and such. She saw me, told me come with her. Someone I needed to see, she said.”

Again, Bessamy faltered. Michael waited, then murmured, “Not your husband, I take it.”

“No.” She gulped tea and set the mug on the table. “A stranger. Dragged himself to Fanny Williams’s door, bad hurt like a beaten dog. They beat him so hard, not an inch of him wasn’t bruised. Arm broke, ribs broke. Dried blood on him, Lord knows from what.”

“Who beat this man? Where, when?”

“The pattyrollers.” She shuddered. “That’s what he told Fanny. They chased him into the bayou, after he ran off from the sugar plantation where they’d made him a slave again. And he…” She shook her head, her hands curling into fists.

Michael leaned toward her. “He what, Mrs. Moses?”

“He saw Henry there. Being whipped.” Tears welled up, spilled over. “I told him, no. That can’t be. But he said it was. Henry Moses from Beulah Town. They’d tell their names, talk if they could, cutting cane or in the boiling house. Pattyrollers caught ’em, there’d be trouble, but…” Her shoulders sagged. “He died, this man. Three days after I spoke to him.”

Michael sat back, a sickness in his gut. He’d heard rumors of slave labor—they all had, one time or another—but this story had more to it than others. Enough to find the place, maybe. Rescue poor Henry Moses and the rest, if luck and the few federal troops still hereabouts allowed. “Do you know where the plantation is, Mrs. Moses, or what it’s called? Did the man tell you anything before he passed?”

She raised one hand and wiped her damp cheeks. “Sweetbay Sugar, downriver from New Orleans, a mile past the lightning tree on the way to Poydras. You got paper? I never learned my letters, but I know the river and the bayou, and I can draw a map.”

§

Seated at a rickety desk in his cramped office, Captain Julius Lowell let out a long-suffering sigh. “I’m sorry, O’Shea. I can’t authorize such an expedition. The men I still have are stretched thin enough, responding to outrages all across this military district. Need I remind you that Louisiana alone covers over fifty thousand square miles?”

Michael’s fists clenched at his sides. “But we know freedmen are enslaved at this plantation, sir. And—”

The captain held up a hand. “Save your breath, son. We both know what I want to do. I’m telling you, I can’t. Not without more than a couple of women’s word for a claim by a dead man. God knows I feel for poor Mrs. Moses, but—”

“If I can get more details, confirmation, will you send men? Will you at least consider it?”

Lowell laid down Bessamy’s map and pinched the bridge of his nose, as if staving off a headache. “If and when you learn more, come back to me. We’ll see then.”

§

“You’re crazy, you know.” In the tavern next door on Baronne Street, Lieutenant Jack Wilkie tossed back his whiskey and signaled the barman for another. “Going downriver to the sugar plantation, to ask if they’re using slave labor? They’ll just tell you lies or run you off. If you’re lucky. Sweetbay Sugar’s company toughs will gladly break your Yankee head for you, or worse. And, even if they don’t, there’s no guarantee Captain Lowell will send troops to storm the place. What can he spare you for your goose chase, one soldier at most? It’s not worth the risk.” He picked up the new full glass the barman set next to him. “Henry Moses is a lost cause, Michael. After damned near two years here, you must know that. Give the poor woman some money for a train ticket, somewhere she can start her life over, and get on with building schools and seeing to it the teachers get supplies and pay for as long as we’ve still got. Don’t go looking for trouble. We can’t do anything about the damned slave plantations, anyway.”

Michael looked up sharply from his beer. “What do you mean, ‘as long as we’ve still got,’ and there’s nothing we can do?”

“You haven’t heard? The story is, Congress wants to close us down at the end of this month. Our assistant superintendent’s spent the past two weeks with a face grim as yellow fever every time I’ve seen him. Something’s in the wind. And it isn’t good.”

“If I paid attention to every rumor, I’d never do a damned thing. You really think they’re shutting us down? Truly?”

Wilkie sipped his liquor. “I wish I could tell you no. And even if that weren’t so, Sweetbay Sugar’s big hereabouts. They make a lot of money and grease a lot of palms. The bureau couldn’t compete with that before, and we sure as hell can’t now.” He met Michael’s gaze, his expression haggard. “Mark my words, we won’t be here much longer. Best accomplish what we can that’ll be of use after we’re gone, not go hunting game you can’t bag. You’ll get beaten like that luckless fellow who died, maybe even get killed outright. If not on this little expedition of yours, then later in a dark street or alley somewhere. And for what?”

Michael couldn’t muster a reply. Wilkie finished his whiskey and bade Michael goodnight, with a look on his face as if he regretted saying too much. Only as the lieutenant’s lean figure vanished through the doorway into the gathering night did an answer finally come—spoken softly to himself, but a promise, nonetheless. To Bessamy and Henry Moses, and countless others he’d never know. “Because as long as we’re still here, someone has to try.”