Free A Free State by Tom Piazza Page B

in this connection, but I did restrain myself, and the matter of Juan García was allowed to rest, for the moment, without further discussion.
    And I waited for the day to arrive, full of anticipation. So much depended upon the success of our scheme. I knewnothing about Henry, really, nor did he appear to care who I was or where I had come from. The point of our intersection, the plan we had improvised, the music we made, was what mattered. How lucky we were, I thought, to have the theater. What would any of us do if we did not have these roles to play? If you could truly see into the face in the mirror . . . well, who among us would willingly do that? And if we knew who stood next to us at the market, or who passed us on the street, who sat beside us in the theater, if every grave could speak, as in the old ballads, we might not be able to bear living. We never do truly know what others think. And may it please God they never learn what is in our own black hearts.

5
    I n the still of the day the horse carried him slowly along the graded path under the elms, past the quarters toward the mansion house. Dragonflies hovered and zagged in the shimmering heat. The few slaves he passed averted their gaze. The rifle in the hide sheath; the turned, whitish eye. Nobody could have mistaken him for good luck.
    He had been summoned and had come in his own good time. Stephens he knew by reputation, as he knew most of the planters in the area. A drunk with pretensions, a notorious libertine with a big library of books, so he’d heard. And a succession of slave mistresses whom he kept like wives until he tired of them and turned them out, either for sale or to the fields. Nothing very unusual about that, except for the artifice of keeping them dressed well and living in the house. Tull had heard that Stephens had taught two of them to read. Or had someone teach them. The real wife, the white one, had died some years back.
    The man’s house boy had been gone five months. Stephens placed newspaper advertisements, had handbills printed and posted both locally in Virginia and in Northern cities, increased his reward offer, all to no avail. And had finally sent a message to him, enlisting his aid. It was, he would have been the first to admit, a last resort. Not only because of the expense—a daily allowance in addition to travel funds and incidentals, along with the reward money itself—but because of who and what he was. No respectable person would have much to do with Tull Burton. Especially not a lace-curtain bitch like this James Stephens.
    Stories about Burton were his calling cards. Three years earlier, a strong and unbroken slave named Silas had run off from Fontainebleau Plantation, twenty miles to the south, and was rumored to be hiding in a swampy tract of woods another ten miles out. The plantation overseer would not go after him, and the master, a fop in green velvet, had sent for Burton. With two accomplices and two dogs, Tull had tracked the runaway into the deep woods and found him in a tree, from which he refused to descend.
    Tull had been through it before, and he always felt anger at the runaways’ refusal to acknowledge the nature of the situation, at the waste of time and energy, the forestalling of the inevitable. It was an overcast day, chilly and disagreeable to begin with.
    â€œCome on down, Silas,” Tull said. “You’re going home one way or another.”
    â€œI don’t have to talk to you,” the runaway said.
    â€œYou’re going to suffer more than you need to,” Tull said. “Get down now.”
    â€œShit on your mother, drunk.”
    Tull nodded. To one of his men he said, “Start a fire over there,” indicating a spot ten yards away. The man handed his dog’s leash to the other assistant and went to gather some sticks.
    â€œI don’t drink, Silas,” Tull said, pulling his rifle out of the sheath that hung alongside his saddle.
    â€œI