Free Freeman by Leonard Pitts Jr.

die, that an entire nation could be left abruptly leaderless, rudderless, like an uncaptained ship drifting on mountainous seas. He paused a moment to find himself and realized that without meaning to, he had returned to the field where the unfinished monument to Washington jabbed a stubby finger toward the sun. The White House was just visible through the trees to the north. Sam could only imagine the scene inside.
    He wandered south, looking for a bridge to cross the river. “Is it true?” Another woman approached him.
    “Yes,” he said. He barely slowed.
    What would happen now, he wondered. It was Lincoln who had prosecuted the war in the face of epic resistance and hardship. With him dead, would the war flare up again? Would the Negro be enslaved again? And if so, was Sam unknowingly walking headlong back into the old life he had found so intolerable, the life where your goings and comings, your very personhood and dreams, were circumscribed by another? He should turn back. Common sense and self-preservation demanded it. He could be back in Philadelphia in a few days, back at work in his beloved library by Thursday, surrounded by books, by knowledge, by the accumulated wisdom of a thousand great men.
    He continued south. Tilda pulled at him.
    At length, he came to a bridge spanning the Potomac River. The river was broad and placid here, lapping peacefully at the pilings below. TwoUnion soldiers watched him approach. “What is your business?” one challenged when he stood before them.
    “Nothing,” said Sam, surprised. “I am just walking.”
    “What’s your name?”
    Sam stiffened. His head came up. “My name is Sam,” he said.
    “That’s all? Sam?”
    The soldier—a boy, really, shaggy blonde hair, chin whiskers still wispy—was spoiling for a fight. Sam considered his responses carefully. He thought of saying he was Sam Wilson, after the man who had owned him last, but something in him fumed against the thought. He had a self and it was one he wholly possessed, one that was not tied to a white man who had once considered him his property. Otherwise, what was the purpose of his escape to freedom? What was the purpose of these last four years of slaughter and privation? What was the purpose of the president’s murder? He was an individual, not a nameless, interchangeable part of some infernal white man’s machine.
    So he looked the white boy quite deliberately in the eye. “Free man,” he said. He pronounced the syllables separately, distinctly, stopping between them, making them a statement in themselves. “My name is Sam Freeman.”
    The boy’s eyes widened, then hardened. The next thing Sam knew, he was lying on the wooden planks of the bridge, his hand to his bloodied mouth, his eyes flashing light that was not there. Instinctively, Sam reached behind to push himself back up. He stopped when he saw the pistol leveled at him, the boy’s hand so tight on the trigger that in some part of his mind, Sam marveled that he was not already dead.
    “You sassin’ me, nigger?” From somewhere beyond the pistol that filled his vision, the white boy’s voice came to him, high and shaky, as if the boy could not suck in enough breath.
    All at once, Sam’s bladder felt urgent and full. He fought down an urge to let it go. He would not give them the satisfaction of urinating on himself like a baby. What had he said that was sass? What had he said that was anything but true? This was a new day. He was a free man. Did they expect him still to cower? To duck his head and grin like a child? No. He had done enough of that. He had done years of that.
    “You asked who I was, sir,” he said, and was pleased to hear that his voice was quiet and reasonable and did not shake. “You asked my cognomen. You asked my appellation.” Big words the boy soldier would not know.
    “I asked your name !” the boy thundered, and Sam was distantly gratified by this unwitting confirmation of ignorance.
    “And I gave it to