CHAPTER 5

TUESDAY, JUNE 25

When Isaiah Ben Mosheh saw the name “Samuel” on the computer screen, he felt a familiar pain in his chest.

“Samuel, property of James Thatcher, fugitive, escaped May 9, 1835.”

His heart began beating rapidly and his breath came in gasps. He put a tablet under his tongue and tried to breathe normally until the pain subsided and his heartbeat slowed. Then he thanked God for the NitroQuick and tried not to think about the time when medication wouldn’t be enough.

He looked again. His eyes weren’t what they used to be, even though his glasses had thick lenses. Was this the Samuel he was looking for? Was he nearing the end of the search he had begun nineteen years ago? He was afraid to hope, but over the years he had come to realize that hope was indifferent to logic. If he had known how difficult this would be, how discouraged he would get, he might never have begun this search at all. At first it had been easy. He found a lot of information about family members in his own generation. Then he ran into the brick wall called segregation when, thanks to Jim Crow, separate records were kept for blacks, and in some instances, such as voting, there were no records because blacks couldn’t participate. Now he had reached another brick wall, slavery, a time when blacks were property, not people, not citizens, and nameless. He printed the page on the computer screen. Samuel, slave of Thatcher. Was this Samuel the right one?

As always, when he thought he had taken another step into his family’s past, Isaiah remembered his grandmother, Ruby Thatcher Gardner. Family had been everything to Grandma. She had told him and his brother all the stories about members of their family that she could remember. Not long before she died, she said to him, not for the first time, “Sometimes I wonder who you really look like.” She spoke just above a whisper. “You have your father’s eyes, but everything else about you is your great-grandmother Reba’s, and she always said she looked just like her daddy. Folks called him T. G. because his given name was Theodore Gardner.” She smiled. “I think you look like our ancestors.”

“Which is why you used to call me ‘old one’ when I was a child.”

Grandma sighed and closed her eyes. “I go home to the old ones soon. Home, boy. Home to meet those who came here in chains and those who were in the land where our family began.” She sighed again. “I think they sent you to me so that I would know who it was that I came from. So I would…” Her voice trailed off and she slept.

Isaiah sat in the overstuffed chair by her bed. He whispered, “I’m right here,” and put his hand on hers so she would know, even asleep, that she was not alone. He looked at the pictures on the wall—one of Jesus in profile, another, the Last Supper, painted on black velvet—then at the bureau where Grandma kept a small basket her aunt had woven and a braid made from Great-Grandma Reba’s hair. The basket was filled with roots. Grandma had hand-dipped the candle that burned there. He did not know whom to pray to, the blue-eyed Jesus who stared into the distance, or the old ones who were Grandma’s familiars. He looked at the flame that flickered before the makeshift altar and spoke to his ancestors.

Even as he prayed he wondered if anyone heard him. Grandma would not be here much longer. She was so much a part of who he was that he did not know who he would be without her. He was not her child anymore. She had lived to raise him to manhood. But there were places in his heart where he would always be her child, and those places were rubbed raw by her dying.

Grandma’s bedroom was his office now, the place where he searched for their ancestors. The dark green wallpaper with white roses the size of his hand had been covered with mint-green paint. Her bed and chair were in the attic. The massive bureau and dresser had been replaced with a desk, file cabinets, and bookcases. The basket filled with roots, Reba’s braid, and Grandma’s candle all were on a shelf.

Isaiah palmed his hands on the table, pushed himself up and reached for his cane. Longevity was not part of his family’s history. He had inherited the infirmities of his parents. His joints ached and swelled. He took insulin. The cardiologist could do nothing more for his heart. None of his doctors were optimistic about how much time he had to complete this search. He looked at the computer screen again. Had he finally worked his way back to the time of the beginning, as Grandma called it? Was he at or near the beginning of his family’s time in this country? Reba Thatcher Gardner, daughter of Edward Thatcher. Was this Samuel, slave of Thatcher, the father of that Edward Thatcher? Soon, perhaps, he would know.

It was after seven o’clock when Floyd came in. Isaiah turned on the kettle and spooned instant coffee into two mugs. Floyd was three years younger than Isaiah’s sixty-two, but the arthritis had reached Floyd’s spine. Surgery had eased the pain, but, like him, Floyd walked with a cane.

“Got me some real supper,” Floyd said. “I bet you been eatin’ that beet soup. I don’t even like looking at it sittin’ in the refrigerator.”

As brothers, they could not have looked less alike. Floyd was taller, and light-skinned with curly, reddish-brown hair. Isaiah was dark with kinky hair that he wore in short dreadlocks. They were both widowers, and with the last of their children out and on their own, their lives had come full circle when Floyd returned to Grandma’s house, the place where they had been born.

“Beat that Bill Davis seven times,” Floyd said.

“Checkers or chess?”

Floyd chuckled. “Both. Couldn’t make a bad move today.” He took the foil off a plate of collard greens and ham hocks and put the plate into the microwave. “Stopped by my baby girl’s to see the new grandkid. Boy cried the whole time I was there. Didn’t keep her from cooking, though. Girl cooks almost as good as her mother.” He paused and Isaiah knew that he was thinking about his wife, and then he shrugged. “Real food, bro. Real meat, too. Pork.”

Isaiah had found it impossible to keep a kosher kitchen with Floyd here. It didn’t matter that much. He wasn’t orthodox. Still, he had liked keeping kosher. It gave him more to do when he wasn’t on his computer.

“So, you been ancestor-hunting today?” Floyd asked. “Be nice if we had an ancestor somewhere who struck it rich in the gold rush of ’49 and left us a claim to his stake.”

“We’ve got what we need.”

“Got us a pension and disability, Irwin. Enough to survive.”

“Isaiah,” he reminded him.

“Sorry. Called you by your given name for close to fifty years.”

“Changed my name fifteen years ago.”

“Oh, yeah, right. Back when you became a Jew.” He brought the plate of food to the table and unwrapped some hot-water corn bread. “Something wrong with being Baptist?”

Isaiah poured hot water into their mugs.

“Is this decaf?”

“Yeah.”

“Damn.”

Isaiah thought about Samuel, considered keeping it to himself until he knew more about him, decided this might not be the right time to say anything. He had stopped trying to involve Floyd in his research a long time ago. Sometimes, when he was in the right mood, Floyd did seem interested. Most of the time, he was scornful. Once, Floyd had said, “You get to a lynching yet?” And Isaiah had understood. Floyd was a proud man. Even though Isaiah explained that there had been free Black men before emancipation, Floyd would rather not know where he came from than know for certain that he was the descendent of a slave.

After Floyd went upstairs to watch television, Isaiah fixed another cup of coffee and opened his journal. He kept records in a file on the computer, but this book, written in his hand, was for his children. Tomorrow he would go to the bank vault where he kept all of Grandma’s papers, everything she had told him about their family history, and copies of everything he had been able to document over the years. He kept another journal there. Everything he wrote here tonight would be copied into that journal tomorrow.

When he had written down everything, he closed the notebook. Then he thought about getting ready for bed. He was tiring so easily now. Sometimes, like tonight, he felt too weary to move. But he would finish this. He would record that final page. This was his gift to his children and their children and their children’s children. It was the only lasting gift he could give them.