“Give me one instance.”
Sally remembers the story Joe told her this morning. “I heard there was a slave who saved close to a dozen women last night.”
“You’re talking about Gilbert Hunt?”
Sally nods.
Elliott shakes his head dismissively. “He was in the right place at the right time. And there was never any real risk—not to him, anyway.”
Joe had made it seem more complicated than that, but she doesn’t argue.
“No,” says Elliott. “What I’m talking about is a man willingly laying down his life for his master.”
She thinks about her family’s most devoted slaves—Critty and Beck,Jessee and Pedro. She would have called any of them family when she was growing up. But as she grew older, she realized they had their own families, their own troubles, their own lives. Even Andy, who saw her through Robert’s death and the letting go of the Marysville house, barely gave her a backward glance when she announced that he and Lettie and Judith would be going back to Red Hill to work until she could find a more permanent arrangement. She can’t think of a single slave—at Red Hill or in Marysville—who would have willingly given their life for hers. And why should they?
“You’re right,” she says. “Of course you’re right.”
Elliott seems thrilled to have won her over, and smiles at her conspiratorially. “So, you see why I’m convinced she’s alive.”
“Alive and hiding from you?”
“Exactly.”
“You think she intends to run?”
“If she hasn’t already.”
JACK
As soon as Jack andAnderson are down the capitol steps, Jack begins to stammer his annoyance.
“What were you doing back there?” he says, but Anderson either can’t or won’t hear him.
Anderson is a head taller than Jack, with a long gait, and he seems determined to put as much distance between himself and the capitol as possible.
“No one is chasing us,” says Jack, who has to run to keep up with him. “So, can you just wait?”
Anderson crosses Tenth Street, where a throng of people stand in line outside an apothecary. He pushes through the crowd, and Jack follows suit.
“You could slow down,” says Jack a little louder.
Still, Anderson ignores him.
Jack is so tired of Anderson and Placide and all of these men who think they know what’s best. He may be a mere stagehand, but he’d never—not in a thousand years—have done what Anderson just did, back in the Hall of Delegates. “We can’t just walk into a room full of grieving families and feed them lies,” Jack shouts. “Our lies have consequences.”
Anderson stops in his tracks. “Consequences?” he says as he spins around to face Jack. “You want to talk to me about consequences?”
Jack knows what he’s alluding to, but at this point, he can’t be made to feel any worse about his role in the fire than he already does. “Those men in the Hall of Delegates, they were seeing red,” says Jack.
Anderson rolls his eyes, and starts moving again, but Jack isn’t going to be ignored. He bolts ahead of him, blocking his path. “What do you think is going to happen when that crowd comes pouring out of the capitol?”
“Get out of my way,” says Anderson through clenched teeth.
Jack won’t stop, not now. “Those people are going to go after every Negro in this town—free or enslaved.”
“And?”
“And none of them will be safe!” Jack is screaming now. “Is that what you want? For a bunch of innocent people to pay for our mistake?”
