“Well, is there some kind of line, between the white part and the colored part? So
I could be on the white side of it and you on the colored?”
“Dunno. Man just told me to come back here.”
“Well, we’ve got to stay together so we can take turns watching our things.
But there’s no need to call attention to ourselves. I’ll go walk around the white
part until it gets dark and then put my hood up before I come back here. You keep a space for me.”
He nodded.
“But first, let’s go over there by the rail and have something to eat. They didn’t say you can’t walk there, did they? I’m near on starving to death. Here’s
what I bought.” She handed the bags of food over for his inspection.
“All that for one day?” He made a show of collapsing under the weight of the
bags. “Good thing you dint buy for a week. Sink this ship down to the bottom of
the lake.”
They stood on either side of a tall wooden crate that stood by the rail and used
it for a table. Olivia tore chunks of bread from a loaf, slapped slices of cheese onto them, and they ate hungrily. Then she looked up and saw two white women
approaching them; one of them nudged her friend and nodded at Mourning.
Olivia kept her chin high, stared straight at her, and gave her a sweet smile; she
was surprised at how quickly the woman looked away.
Now there’s a lesson for my new life, she thought. Being bold may not alwayshelp, but it never seems to hurt.
Soon there was a lot of noise and hustle. Steam was up, the engine chugged,
sailors hauled in ropes, and the boat pulled away from the pier with a series of
great whooshes. They leaned over the railing and broke into wide smiles.
“Here we go, partner.” She held her hand out to him.
He hesitated for a long moment before clasping it in his and repeating,
“Partner.”
Chapter Ten
Olivia’s stare lingered on their clasped hands for a moment; Mourning’s was
so dark, hers so pale. She must have touched him before, but she couldn’t
remember when. His skin felt so much warmer than hers and she couldn’t stop
staring at the physical difference that separated them.
She’d grown up around Quakers and abolitionists and occasionally slipped
into the Quakers’ Meeting House on Sunday mornings. It was a stark, empty
room with wooden benches arranged in a square, facing one another. Whoever
wished to speak stood up and did so. Most of what they said made sense to her,
especially when they talked about the “colored situation.” Even – or perhaps
especially – as a child she had understood how appalling it was for one human
being to be able to buy and sell another. For her it was pure instinct and not based on a religious belief that all human beings were God’s children. Olivia had
yet to make up her mind on that score – whether there was such a thing as God.
Her father had said all religions were a tub of eyewash. All that Christian mumbo-jumbo was nothing but a trick, so people wouldn’t mind dying.
With Mourning for a friend, she knew how ridiculous it was to believe that
skin color had anything to do with intelligence or integrity. She thought more highly of Mourning Free than she did of anyone else in town, with the possible
