Free Freeman by Leonard Pitts Jr. Page B

“Well, as I said, thank you.”
    “Old Abe a blood sacrifice, way I figure. Like Marse Jesus.” Sam looked at him, not comprehending. “Jesus, he died for the sins of the world,” explained Ben. “This man died for the sins of this country. Ain’t fit to waste such a sacrifice on no foolishness.”
    It was not foolishness , Sam wanted to say. He let it go. “Why did you give him that name, Shine? Why not give him your real name?”
    “That one real enough.” He chuckled softly. “Ain’t you never had to put white folks on? White folks likes a name like Shine, free man . Puts ’em at ease.”
    “It seems to me that a man’s name should do more than just put white folks at ease.”
    This earned him a sly glance. “How you talk, free man . You ain’t careful, your name gon’ get you killed.”
    They were silent together for a moment. Then Ben glanced up. “So, free man , I ask you again: you want to walk along here together for awhile? Like I told you, seem to me, we maybe might need each other.”
    Sam nodded. “Yes,” he said, “maybe you have a point.”
    And maybe they both were fools. This whispered up from some dark and frightened place in his heart before he could think to tamp it down. It was a ghost of a thought, gone almost before it was there. But it was there. Had been, off and on, ever since he left Philadelphia. More than once, he had thought of Cervantes’s Don Quixote de la Mancha, and the mad adventure he’d set off on that existed mostly in his own mind. More than once, Sam had decided to turn back.
    But he pushed on. He had no choice, felt himself drawn toward her in some fundamental, mysterious way impossible to understand or resist. He had to see her. He had to know. It was as if he could not go on until he had heard her verdict on his life.
    Sam had no idea what that verdict would be. Probably, he thought, she would hate him. And how could he blame her? He was responsible for the death of their son. If he had not been so determined, if he had not been so mule-headed, if he had simply listened to her, the boy would be alive to this day—indeed, the boy would be a man, maybe with children of his own—and they might all have been together right up til the emancipation, owned by a mistress who was good enough as mistresses went, who didn’t allow beatings and didn’t believe in separating families.
    And it would have been all right. He could have lived on that. It hadn’t seemed so at the time, but now he knew: he could have lived on it.
    Instead, he had filled the boy’s head with freedom. The boy had listened. And the boy had died.
    And now, Sam was going back for the first time since it happened. To say what? That he was sorry, though Lord knew he was? To ask forgiveness? To say he never meant it to happen? To tell her that he never once, not for one moment in all those years, stopped loving her? The Lord knew that all this, too, was true, but what did it matter? What could he say, what words existed, for when he laid eyes on her for the first time after so many years?
    None. None at all.
    And what words existed for a world that had changed so profoundly as to be unrecognizable in the space of just days? They were free now. Free . And yet, if freedom didn’t mean you could choose your own name or walk where you wanted without challenge, then what did it mean? If it still required you to smile smiles you did not feel, to duck your head like a bashful boy and to put white folks on, maybe it had no meaning at all.
    Just then, Sam and Ben had to jump into the mud by the side of the road to allow a calash to rush by, a well-dressed white man at the reins, chattering amiably with a woman at his side. Shine smiled that smile that made it seem as if a lamp had been lit inside his skull, then touched his forehead in greeting. Sam stared at his new companion in wonder and distaste.
    If the white couple noticed either of them, they gave no sign.

Prudence sat at the window of the rail