I’d known Fanny on about as long as I’d known anyone, excepting Ma’am. She was a part of our pack—of Fields Midgett and Bill Charles, Dorman Pugh and the rest, and Paddy, too, when he’d make himself a part of us. Depending on the season and our masters’ moods, we might not find one another save for Sundays, but then for sure. Fanny was often the only girl, but none made a distinction. She was just Fanny. And, at most-all we undertook, she was tops. She swam better than Fields and knew whisper-tales on Island folk that we others did not and was generally first picked when we chose sides for chuck-farthing. Whatever the endeavor, she gave as good as she got. The only difference was that she wore a sack dress and covered her head in a bonnet where I and the others had on short pants and plaited straw hats.
She and I first recognized ourselves to be more than just playmates one night out on Shallowbag Bay. I’d been left behind to unload John B.’s haul of terrapin from the Margery & Sarah, and Fanny was shelling a basketful of shrimp out on the dock. Night had fallen and she was late getting them to Ma’am Beulah for serving at suppertime. I left my chores and squatted aside her and helped her at it. Our knees touched as our hands worked in unison. We got the shelling done before trouble befell her for tarrying, and feeling as much joyful as relieved, I leaned over and kissed her, unprovoked. Just as easeful as that, a natural thing to do.
I would swear to this, at least, though my memory may have tailored the particulars. It may have been her who initiated the kiss. For that was Fanny.
It’s said that, on account of unrelenting proximity, Island folk can sometimes fool themselves into believing an earnestness of feeling that isn’t in fact true. With Fanny, it wasn’t fooling. That first kiss confirmed it.
“How is it you did not know it until now?” she asked a few nights later, sitting alongside me at our secret spot over by Uppowoc Creek. “The top coons of the top buckras must surely breed the bestest pickaninnies, no? Why would I choose some other?”
She was joshing, of course. But not, too. We were children yet, but not children for long. Such was the life of a slave.
Even at that green age, I recognized that she was the one I would venture down the road with. I felt a great need to protect her, and though my ma’am was proof of the folly of the notion, I deemed myself capable of it. The more I knew Fanny, the more I allowed that she could take care of herself. What greater testament than that here she was, a lone slave woman conveying a party of old men on their journey to freedom.
Their baggage was minimal—all told, a few burlap sacks, not completely full, and one colorful carpetbag that I initially mistook as belonging to Fanny. (She had only what she wore on her back, it turned out.) Along with Pompeii and Ebo Joe were Ebo Joe’s brother Kid (who had not been one in my lifetime, or even my ma’am’s), August Dough (not of my ma’am’s Doughs but an uncle of Bill Charles’s), and his brother Wynne (I promise, that was his name—his erstwhile owner had a sense of humor); there were also two others from farther down the Banks whose names I could not recall. I drew Pompeii’s arm over my shoulder, to replace Ebo Joe as a second crutch, then accompanied the group into the city, recognizing that my immediate mission now was to ensure that they were properly lodged.
I’d overheard General Wild instruct his brother that all contrabands to be ferried up to Virginia should be assembled in the Cottage Point quarter, which was nearby the docks and largely abandoned. We headed that way.
“You young bucks is heroes to us-all back in the Banks,” said Pompeii, smiling generously despite the obvious discomfort of his bandaged leg. “They making tall tales of youall’s exploits.”
He was Fanny’s uncle, and I’d known him my whole life, too. “It’s kind of you to say, Mr. Pompeii,” said I.
The lot of them rifled questions at me about the Brigade and about our doings, each of the old men much overjoyed and nan one of them the least worried, as though they did not realize where we were—surrounded on every side by unseen guerrilla Rebels. Fanny, a few steps behind, was silent, her face down.
I led the group street by street through Cottage Point until we came upon a house standing dark and still, one of very few that looked to remain unpeopled by contraband families or shut-in whites. It was large enough that each person could single up in his own room (though not all in bedrooms). None of them had known such luxury in his long life. Pompeii claimed the master’s chambers, as Fanny would need to share it with him, to tend to his wounds during the night (and, I supposed, to forestall any temptation of wee-hour visitations by me). Though Fanny would have but a pallet in the corner, the family that had abandoned the house had done so in such haste that she could avail herself of the many other indulgences that were left behind: a closet full of dresses and such, including a proper coat; a body-length mirror for apprising their fit on her fine form; and most importantly, a separate and adjoining water closet in place of a night jar, so that she wouldn’t have to wander the grounds in search of privacy.
Despite this, Fanny seemed sour. She had since we’d quit the docks. When the others were properly settled in, I found a way to pull her to the side, out in the hallway.
“Girl, tell me! What is wrong?”
She shushed me with a look, then signaled that I follow and led me down the stairs, into the kitchen. There were unwashed dishes on the counters and a pot with rotting porridge hanging over the cold hearth. Fanny faced me and what I saw, to my surprise, was outright anger.
“I fear you are not glad to see me, Richard. Have I somehow vexed you?”
“Aw, naw,” said I, and I pulled her into my arms, close, as much to avoid her sharp gaze as to offer a reassuring embrace. “I ain’t vexed. I’m worried, is all. This is war, and we are in enemy country.”
“I know that.” She pulled back, forcing me to meet her eyes. “You don’t think I know that?”
When I’d returned her look full-on to her satisfaction, she continued: “I had to get Uncle Pompeii out of there. There is just too much crookedness on the Island, that ‘kindly’ Northern preacher included, and I feared that, without being able to keep paying, Pompeii wouldn’t get the help he needs.” Her eyes glazed. “And I also wanted to be nearer to you.”
“And I am glad for it,” said I, and I kissed her mouth, properly, like a man should.
And she kissed me back, her emotion calming.
I asked, “Crookedness?”
“Up to the Freedman’s Colony, yes.”
“Joseph Etheridge told me things were doing well there.”
This wasn’t exactly what he had said.
“The Colony has grown,” said Fanny, “but all ain’t right. They is lots of new arrivals, but maybe too many. Numberless suffer as a result, living in lean-tos and under trees. We all try to do the best by them as we can, but the Zouave soldiers oblige us to continue working for our Masses if they have pledged loyal. It’s real tough, Richard.”
I knew a sawmill had been raised, along with a freedman’s school and other betterments. But an unease was setting in as Fanny spoke about who was running things and how they were being run.
She pulled me by the hand to a set of seats by the hearth. “I haven’t told the worst of it. The buckra in charge of the Colony store, a Copperhead sutler by the name of Streeter, has some side-door deal set up with the soldiers. He buys what they bring him, then sells it back to us, even if it was ours to begin with!”
None of this surprised, not hardly. Similar arrangements were common up at Fortress Freedom. Fanny’s outrage about it, though—now that surprised. She was not naïve about the ruthless practices one man will enact against another. What slave could be?
“Them Northern soldiers, Richard! They break into our houses and do as they please. They steal our chickens and rob our gardens, and if anybody defends themselves against them, they are hauled off to the guard house for it.”
She paused before going on, calming and seeming to gather herself. “Some of what Streeter takes in is ferried over here, I am told, to support the Rebel bushwhackers.”
And just then, I remembered what Joseph Etheridge had informed me of earlier.
“Is it Patrick?” I asked. “Does he have some hand in this?”
“Yes, Richard,” said Fanny, her face riling, with a furrowed brow and a sharp-set mouth. “The double-dealings with the Rebels, Patrick is in it. This is the general belief.”
I found my rage mounting. “Does John B. do nothing? He’s pledged loyal to Union, to what I am now engaged in . . .”
My mind had latched onto the wishful side of my memory of him, as though there was reason to believe that my father felt pride at the mettle and buck of his son. But it was foolish thinking. Just plain foolish.
“He tries to hide Patrick’s involvement,” Fanny said. “But I don’t see him trying to stop it.”
Just as he hadn’t tried to stop mine. You will do as you wish from here on, Dick, he’d told me the night I announced my enlistment. And so, too, with Patrick, I supposed. John B. would reckon him free to choose the path he would set out upon, regardless of John B.’s own feelings on the matter.
And so, just as he was now doing with Patrick, John B. must have likewise attempted to conceal my involvement in the war, though for a different motive—for a different sort of shame. A son’s buck, claiming his place, was not a trait that inspired pride when the child who displayed it was also your slave, emancipating himself. Strict obedience, I reckoned, was surely the only way that a slave-master father felt properly honored.
Fanny said, “You always put more stock in them Etheridges than anybody else ever has. Especially in that snake Patrick, when he has never done right by you that I know of.”
She wasn’t wrong, and so I didn’t know what to say in reply. I said nothing.
“It’s bad back home,” continued Fanny, “real bad. All the loyalty-oathing has not changed a single person, maybe only made them worse.”
“We got news that Llewelyn Midgett quit Roanoke with Riley and Lawrence,” said I.
“With those two, yes, and all his others, too.”
“Do you know where to? To Nixonton, maybe?”
“I cannot say. Only that he intended to remove himself to Midgett property in Confederate country.”
It must be to Nixonton, then, thought I. I knew of no other place where Midgetts resided. But with us now overrunning the region and freeing every colored along our path, how long would he stay?
Fanny asked, “How is Fields holding up? It must be pure torture, he was always such a tender-hearted boy.”
“Fields! Tender-hearted?”
“Much like you,” said she, which I was loath to accept as a compliment, even though it had clearly been intended as one. “Family matters to him, as it does to you, even in a world where all manner of travail can come from this for a colored man.”
Her hand had been on my leg, and she squeezed my thigh now, hard.
“It is why I chose you, Richard.”
And then her smile! The one that shamed the angels.
I lowered my face and asked the question whose answer I feared myself incapable of bearing. “Have others aside Midgett taken to using the lash? I mean, if Sand Bankers are now flogging feisty folk just for sassing—”
Fanny shushed me, scooching her chair closer and pulling me into her bosom. “Ma’am Rachel can take care of herself, you know that.” She patted my head like she might a child’s. “I sought her out when Uncle Pompeii and I got dispensation to quit the Island, asked her to join along, but she said no. She and her sisters doing cooking and such for the missionary society and tending to freedfolk. She says her work for freedom is there.”
This was a relief, and I found myself settling into Fanny’s caress and her warmth.
I left Fanny soon after, to return to headquarters lest my overlong absence be mistaken for dereliction of duty or worse. Yet I was deeply troubled the entire journey back. I longed for Fanny every waking minute of every blessed day, but her unexpected arrival in our ranks was an impediment.
Instead of fighting for the idea of her, here she now was, close enough to touch. With each step across the city, I wanted to turn back, to go to her, to be by her side—to protect her, yes, but also so that I might hold her in my arms. This, when the things that needed done to enduringly assure us such rights required that I be away, attending to my soldierly duties.
Quandaries like this one could prove dangerous—nay, deadly—especially if our success thus far was mere fool’s gold, an overhasty belief that we were conquering our old home when the truth might yet bear out otherwise.