Reverend Dixby soon brought the discussion to an end. He affirmed their
collective responsibility for the boy and sent them home smiling. Allowing
Mourning Free to stay in Five Rocks and earn pennies doing the menial jobs
they didn’t want to do for themselves was the Christian thing to do.
That night Olivia lay awake, staring at the ceiling and thinking how awful it
was for a child to have no parents to stick up for him.
After that meeting Olivia went looking for Mourning every afternoon and
pulled him aside for his lesson. If they had time and it was sunny, they went down by the river. Otherwise school was held in the storeroom of Killion’s
General, using the pickle barrel for a desk. One day Mrs. Monroe peeked
through the open door while Mourning was studying what Olivia had written on
her slate. Then they heard her lodge a loud complaint with Olivia’s father.
“I heard that girl of yours was teaching him to read.”
“What of it?” Seborn growled.
“Well it’s nothing to me, but folks are saying it ain’t seemly. She ought not to
keep so much company with a nigger.”
“They are children,” Seborn said. “He’s only a boy. A boy with enough
troubles of his own, I might add, without all you good women piling more on.”
Olivia listened with her head cocked. It was the kindest thing she had ever heard her father say.
Mrs. Monroe ignored the insult and persisted. “Well, I fail to see what need a
colored boy has of book learning.”
“Way I see it, make life easier all around,” Seborn replied. “If he could read,
whoever he’s working for could leave him a note, tell him what he’s wanted to
do.”
“Well, all I know is that back East women who open schools for darky
children go to jail. It said so right in the newspaper,” Mrs. Monroe said, before
the tinkle of the bells on the door announced her departure.
“That Mrs. Monroe don’t know nothin’,” Mourning said. “Colored man need
to know how to read more than any white man.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” Olivia frowned at him.
“It surely do. What if I tell you ’bout some slaves what escaped off a
plantation all the way down in Virginia. For weeks they’s goin’ north.”
Olivia never pointed out his grammatical errors. When Billy Adams or any of
the other boys at school said things like “don’t know nothin’’ or “ain’t got”
Olivia rolled her eyes and repeated the correct phrase in a show of great
superiority. But Mourning’s voice flowed into his pattern of speech with such warm resonance, it sounded as if the words were meant to be put together just that way. Olivia was more tempted to imitate him than correct him, but knew how ridiculous she would sound.
“They ain’t got nothin’ but their feet,” Mourning continued. “And they be
walkin’ all night and hidin’ in the woods when the sun be shinin’. Don’t got nothin’ to eat but bark and berries. Just about starve straight to death. Can’t hardly stand up. Can’t hardly see where they goin’. But they keep on, walkin’ all
night. Walkin’ and walkin’. And walkin’ some more.” He stopped to dip a cup of
water from the barrel and drink it.
“So what happened to them?”
