Free Rafe by Kerry Newcomb

see.”
    â€œAh’m gittin’ co’d eben if it is springtime. How long you gonna look, Mistah Decatuh?”
    â€œAs long as it takes, dammit. Long as it takes.…”

5
    Crissa and Steve’s trip to Freedom Plantation was considerably easier than Ezra and Rafe’s almost five years earlier. They travelled openly, to begin with, and with funds enough for staterooms on the Red River Diamond, a stern-wheeler which, although not large, was comfortable enough even with a three day layover in Alexandria for repairs to the boiler. Crissa exulted over the trip. The broad Mississippi, which she hadn’t seen for years, was full of memories. The muddy water swept by them to the roar of the engines and the constant clacking and creaking of paddle wheel and gear. The levees, over their heads most of the time, concealed the land of her youth, offering only tantalizing and occasional glances of chimneys and roofs.
    The two travellers spent hours in quiet conversation, remembering the youthful days. And if the images their talk elicited were warm, the changes in Steve were ominously unsettling. Brought up on the edge of the swamp, he was the son of a self-designated preacher man who poled the swamps as readily as other men walked the high road. Bible wrapped in oil-soaked canvas, his pirogue cut through the murky brown water effortlessly, preceded always by the deep-voiced, off-key booming of gospel hymns. The word of God as proclaimed by MacKinney Bennett echoed around the boles of a million cypress trees and woke the swamp’s primordial inhabitants. The old man had but one dream—that his son should become a real preacher. To this end, from the age of ten on, he sent Steven to spend eight of every twelve months at Fitzman’s Freedom, there to learn to read and write.
    Crissa remembered a quiet, almost sad boy, one who rarely laughed. A boy who’d never known his mother. A gentle boy. But the boy had changed. Two years older than she, he had grown hard around the edges. Tougher, sterner somehow. More taciturn. Perhaps the army had helped. Knowing the swamp as he did, he made captain easily. He knew the turns and bends of a thousand creeks, knew the men who made a living in the swamp, killing for hide, fur and plumage. This knowledge made him invaluable to the army. When the occasional Creek or far-roaming Atakapan hunting parties raided into the white man’s land to steal food and drive off stock, it fell to Captain Steven Bennett, he who had eschewed God and carried gun and machete in place of his father’s Bible, to pursue them back into the swamp. Sometimes he found them. They had yet to find him first.
    Crissa had looked forward to seeing him again. But now she wasn’t sure. He wasn’t the same person. She found herself more than a little awed by his new personality and a tiny bit fearful. So she bided her time, making up her mind to suspend final judgement until she’d been back a while longer.
    And finally Natchitoches! Saturday afternoon and the Red River Diamond, whistle hooting brashly, eased into the Upper Landing on the shore of Cane River Lake opposite Texas Street. They disembarked to the noise of trade, for Natchitoches was the converging point of important water and land trade routes. A hired chaise, or as Crissa would have it, a shay, with a Negro boy, strangely enough, riding postilion, drove them down Washington Street toward Nicholas Lauve’s house where she was to spend the night.
    This was the scene Crissa had missed for four long years. Freedom was but forty miles to the west and her father and mother had brought her to Natchitoches often. The noise and bustle, the swirling clouds of dust and humidity were symbols of life and gaiety and extra-special times and treats. She didn’t even mind the heat, unused to it though she was after four years in the north. It felt good because it felt like home. She made Steve order the boy to a halt before