A Dream of Daring Page 18

  “How did it go today, chef?”

  “I sells all sixty squares.”

  “Really? At five cents apiece, you made three dollars.”

  “I sells two pans mo’.”

  “You what?”

  “Miller Tavern order a pan fer sellin’ in the saloon at ten cent apiece, and Mrs. Weatherby order pan fer a party she havin’. So I got two pans to make fer them folks tonight.”

  Tom stared incredulously at Jerome.

  “You mean, you made nine dollars—in one day?”

  “I buys some supplies with it and got this left.” Jerome took seven dollars out of his pocket.

  “Why, that’s more than the overseers make!” An overseer might average twenty dollars a week.

  Jerome fidgeted for a moment as if something were on his mind, then blurted out: “Since you own Jerome, then you mus’ own Jerome’s squares.” He held the money out to his master. “This mus’ be yers.”

  Tom’s eyes dropped sadly. He hated to feel the way he did at that moment and wondered how anyone could stand it. Then he looked up and spoke quietly.

  “But I didn’t make the squares. And I didn’t make you either.”

  Jerome stood with his hand out, the money in it untouched by Tom. “Beside, Jerome owe you from a ways back.”

  Tom knew what he meant. It was the first time the slave had ever mentioned the money Tom had given him to reach the Cincinnati safe house. Back then Jerome had changed his mind and returned home sheepishly, squandering the money and his chance at freedom. Now Tom felt as if he were looking at a different person.

  He pushed the money back to the slave. “How about if you buy your own ingredients and supplies? Then you can keep whatever profit you make from your business.”

  “My . . . bizness?” Jerome’s voice was barely a whisper.

  “That’s what it’s called when you make a product and sell it.” Tom smiled. “Just keep the kitchen running for me, and you can go to town and tend to your own business whenever you want.”

  “Yes sir.” The words were a gasp.

  “Nine dollars in one day! Come here. I have to show you something.”

  The slaves were beginning to file into the library for class when Tom brought Jerome to the blackboard.

  “How many days will you make the ride into town? Say, two days a week?”

  “Least three. I kin do three,” said Jerome.

  “Okay, three days a week times nine dollars a day means you could make twenty-seven dollars a week. And that’s just for starters. That’s taking your sales on the first day, which surely will grow.” Tom scribbled the numbers on the board. “Times, let’s say, fifty weeks a year. . . . Good God, Jerome, you could make $1,350 a year.” He wrote the total and circled it on the board.

  Jerome’s eyes darted incredulously from the board to Tom. The amount was like an ocean to a man who had only seen puddles.

  “You’ll have to subtract your costs, but there’s still a big profit to be made here.”

  Jerome studied the numbers, speechless.

  “You’re on to something big, Jerome!” said Tom.

  Solo entered carrying her primer. She and Tom acknowledged each other in what had become their standard greeting: a quiet exchange of stares. Her simple dress and ribboned hair reflected in Tom’s eyes for one lingering moment. She paused to gaze back, then continued to the desk as he left the room.

  Jerome stood where Tom had left him, entranced by the number circled on the blackboard.

  * * * * *

  By the beginning of May, Jerome had a steady stream of customers. Several steamships, a tavern at Bayou Redbird, and the general store in Greenbriar bought pans of chocolate squares to resell at a profit in their locations. A dress shop bought the squares to serve as complimentary treats to customers to gain an edge on its competition. Then there were the bank customers who bought a square on the way in and another on the way out. Children especially loved the squares. And plantation mistresses bought pans of them to serve at parties.

  Every shop in Bayou Redbird and up the road in Greenbriar knew about Jerome’s chocolate squares. He gave away some as free samples, he traded some for the supplies he needed, and he sold the vast majority. He put his talent for talking to people to good use and became an effective salesman for his product. He kept his recipe to himself and enjoyed a brisk business.

  True to his word, Jerome also kept the Indigo Springs kitchen running. He had an assistant and other kitchen workers who helped him keep Tom fed well and helped perform his other duties. And he prepared a pan of chocolate squares once a week for Solo’s class.

  Tom had given the class permission to look at the library books, and Jerome availed himself of that. One day Tom found him at the shelves, staring at a page in one of the books. It was the drawing Solo had passed around during her first class, showing the bake shop in Paris.

  Jerome smiled awkwardly, as if caught in a moment that was personal. Tom put a sympathetic arm on the slave’s shoulder.

  “I reckon it be nice a-bakin’ an’ a-sellin’ all them things in that winder . . .”—he pointed to the shop window full of cakes and other sweets—“. . . sellin’ them in a . . . shop . . . like that.”

  Tom thought of the obstacles thrown in the way of Jerome’s dream. There were the laws prohibiting manumission. There were the laws requiring the return of fugitive slaves. There were the kidnappers in the North who seized blacks, whether they were free or slave, and brought them South to sell into slavery. There was the treacherous journey to reach Canada to escape the threat of being returned. As Tom’s affection for the slave grew, so did his concern for his safety, should he ever decide to take that second chance offered him. But Tom tried to hide his trepidations so that Jerome’s dream could live. What would his own life be like, he wondered, without his dream?

  “Yes, Jerome, it would be nice to make all those pastries and sell them in a shop . . . one day.”

  Before, Jerome had no yearning. Now he did. That put him above certain free people Tom knew. He thought of the lifeless face of Nash Nottingham, the man he’d once compared to his slave. But Jerome, with his energy, his business, and his dream, could never be compared to Nash again.

  Later that night, there were two lights burning at Indigo Springs. One was in the kitchen, where Jerome was baking chocolate squares to fulfill customer orders. The other was in the library, where Solo was preparing the next day’s lesson. No longer feeling like an interloper, she now openly used the place that was her classroom and her treasure trove. On the hill, Tom’s workshop was dark. Where was the light that had burned there through so many heady nights of experiments—of making parts, of seeing them fail, of disassembling them and trying again, and of finally solving problems, with each one that was solved spurring new ones to challenge him? Would he recover the device that had been born in that place? Would the only man who knew its whereabouts ever reveal his secret?

  CHAPTER 13

  “We searched clear down to the other side of Myrtle Road, then up past Morton’s Landing, then through Clearwater woods . . .” Grant Sayers, a tan, athletic-looking man, pointed to places on a topographic map.

  Standing with the speaker and two other men, Tom looked down at the map on his desk at the bank. His three visitors all had a few days’ stubble and wore clothes suited for camping out in the woods.

  “We waded on foot through Robin’s Creek, thinking maybe the thing had slipped into the water, but nothing was there,” said the second man, pointing to another area of the map.

  Tom nodded. “I see.”

  “We asked permission and looked through the brush on the Johnson, Straithmore, and Billing plantations,” said the third man. “Of course, we also checked the wooded areas at the Crossroads.”

  “Me and my men covered all the areas you laid out,” said Sayers. “I’m sorry, Mr. Edmunton.” The leader of the team that Tom had hired to find his invention looked earnest and regretful. “There was no hint of a mechanical d
evice or a motor of any sort.”

  Tom looked at him and the others. “Thank you for trying.”

  He opened the door of his office and escorted his visitors to a clerk at a desk. “Please pay Mr. Sayers and his men from my personal account,” he instructed the clerk.

  Tom shook hands with the men, then exited the bank. His face grim, he mounted his horse and headed up the bluff to Greenbriar. He was too distraught to notice the spectacular puffs of pink and blue hydrangea blooming along the road that first week in May. His only awareness of time was that it was running out.

  The high court had upheld the guilty verdict against Ted Cooper. The sole person who knew the whereabouts of his invention was to be executed the next day.

  * * * * *

  Tom climbed the steps two at a time on the stairway to Cooper’s cell. There he found, sitting on a straw bed, a thin, drawn, bitter, and hateful Ted Cooper.

  “Now’s the time, Cooper. Now’s the time to honor Wiley Barnwell and the friendship you once had. As a last act of contrition toward him, as an act of justice, as an act of honor toward his memory, now’s the time to tell me where you hid the invention that he died for.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Wiley Barnwell wanted that device to get its hearing. He gave his life for it. In the name of anything he once meant to you, now’s the time to atone for his death by enabling my tractor to live.”

  Cooper rose and walked to the bars of his cell, his eyes darting like daggers at his visitor, his mouth curling in contempt.

  “You know as much as I do about how and why Barnwell died that night. If that humbug you spew about Wiley defending your contraption is true, that brings dishonor to his memory.”

  “In the name of a new discovery that you’ll never be able to claim, in the name of letting its rightful owner bring it into the world, in the name of its immense importance, which you recognized by taking it, you must tell me its whereabouts.”

  “I had no intention of bringing that confounded device into the world. If I had my way, it’d be buried on the bottom of the bayou. That’s my honor.” He smirked. “You dare speak to me of honor? I’m the one who’ll die with it tomorrow!”

  With all the strength remaining in his emaciated body, the once-vibrant planter thrust his clenched fist between the bars. Tom backed away, missing the punch. The convict clutched the bars, casting a long shadow that crept over Tom. With a shaky voice, Cooper gave his farewell:

  “May you burn in hell for the mistake you’re making!”

  * * * * *

  The grandfather clock in the dining room chimed six. Tom sat alone, his untouched plate of food pushed away, his elbows on the table, his hands over his face. His despair contrasted sharply with the cheerful vase of spring roses on the table. Cooper’s execution the next day would dash his hopes of finding his own budding centerpiece, the invention that was to bring a fresh season to mankind.

  When he raised his head, he realized that Solo had been standing at the open door, observing his silent agony from the hallway. The layout of the house—the main hall slicing through the center of the first floor—with the parlor, dining room, library, and other rooms opening onto it—made for frequent encounters between them.

  She seemed concerned about him, with questions on her face that didn’t reach her voice. She knew nothing of his invention, the murder, the trial, or the impending execution. He brought home no newspapers and said nothing of his personal affairs. Since the night of the crime, he had received no visitors. His life apart from their interactions, he realized, was as mysterious to her as her past life was to him.

  “If you’re not feeling well, I could cancel the class tonight—”

  “Why, no. I’d like to see the class go on.” A softness seeped into his voice, breaking through his despair.

  She nodded and went on her way.

  His manner toward her bore no resemblance to that of a master addressing a slave or even of an employer speaking to an employee. The fact that he never ordered her to do anything but rather let her do whatever she pleased as an equal living in his home tempered her hostility. Without a target, she had to put down her arrows.

  In the six weeks since her class had begun, it had more than doubled in size. Tom had made more trips to nearby towns to buy additional primers and other supplies. Some servants were permitted to bring their well-behaved children to class with them. In all, twenty-five people now crowded into the library for Solo’s lessons. Finishing their daily tasks properly was their ticket of admission, so the quality of their work had improved as well. By the eager way the teacher prepared and delivered her lessons, Tom knew she would welcome a chance to add more classes. He was determine to find a way to expand what was a growing school, as well as to keep it hidden from the outside world.

  He enjoyed seeing the students engaged in their lessons, writing words on their slate boards—cat, dog, chair, table—and reading simple sentences that appeared with matching illustrations in their primers—See Mary skating. See Anne sewing. John and William are hard at work. John has a hammer. William has an ax. The teacher would intersperse a poem about a beautiful scene, an essay about a major city, a few pages of history, a scientific experiment—whatever suited her. The group listened, their faces aglow, like eager travelers being taken to new attractions. The teacher described sights and events she had never seen, sounding as knowledgeable as a seasoned traveler and with the spirit of an adventurer. This was how Tom discovered that beneath the charred lives of his bondsmen, their souls still flickered. And this was how he got to know the unusual new presence that in some way had stoked him and them alike: Solo.

  Early on, he had observed her giving a lesson on a topic that he hadn’t requested but was grateful she addressed. “This lesson is on the meaning of something important, called honor,” she had explained to the class. “When you give a person your word on something, and you keep your word, that means you have honor. And if you have honor, it means that no one is higher than you. Someone who has a million dollars or twelve thousand acres of land isn’t any higher a person than you are, because you have honor. You know, honor isn’t something you have to show to a slave catcher, or to anyone who’s trying to hurt you. Honor is something you show to someone who’s trying to help you, and whom you don’t want to harm.

  “Now, I want you to show honor toward me and toward the person who makes these classes possible. I want to ask for your word of honor about our school, that you’ll keep it a secret among us here, a secret that doesn’t leave Indigo Springs. Will you keep that secret, on your honor?” She looked all of them, one by one, and they each nodded to her, pledging their honor. By the solemnity on their faces, they understood what she was trying to convey.

  As he sat in the dining room, unable to eat, he thought painfully of someone else’s honor. Senator Barnwell had promised to protect his invention when he transported it to the Crossroads. He had been honorable and kept his word . . . protecting the invention far more than merely on his trip. He had protected it with his—

  “Excuse me, Mr. Tom . . . Mr. Tom?” The butler appeared at the door.

  “Yes?”

  “You have a visitor. Mr. Kenneth Gale is here for you.” Tom noticed the improved quality of speech of Solo’s student.

  “Oh, yes. Show him to the parlor.”

  As Tom rose from his seat, Solo reappeared at the door, concerned. “I saw a man come in. The library’s set up for the class,” she whispered.

  “Don’t worry; I know him.” He straightened his tie and coat. “He’s just coming to bring me something. He won’t be going anywhere near the library.”

  Down the hallway, the butler was placing a hat on the table in the foyer and escorting a man who carried a large painting into the parlor.

  * * * * *

  Tom was so eager to see the painting that he neglected to close the parlor door behind him or to greet his guest properly.

  “Why, it’s beautiful!” he exclaimed, taking the p
ainting from the artist and holding it up before him.

  “I’m delighted you’re pleased, Mr. Edmunton.”

  Tom moved an antique clock from the fireplace mantel and put in its place the picture. Then he stepped back to observe the effect. “That’s the perfect spot for it!” he said, observing the portrait of Wiley Barnwell that he’d commissioned.

  “It was good of Mrs. Barnwell to make her painting available to me, so I could produce this copy for you. She told me how much it means to you.”

  “Yes.” Tom’s eyes lingered on the work. “You did a fine job, Mr. Gale.” The host reached for a decanter of brandy that sat on a tray with glasses. He poured two drinks and handed one to the artist.

  Tom extended his glass toward the figure of Barnwell, whose vivid eyes were eerily staring out at them, making his presence palpable in the room. The artist also raised his glass to the painting.

  “To a most admirable man, a man who was my father’s friend and who became like a father to me,” Tom said solemnly. “Long may his image grace this home!”

  Tom began to lower his glass, as if he were finished. The artist lowered his and was about to drink when Tom raised his glass again as if a sudden impulse drove him to say more. The visitor followed suit, looking curiously at Tom, whose calm was vanishing, with anger lines now crossing his brow and fury filling his eyes.

  “To the man whose life was suddenly . . . tragically . . . ripped from us!” Tom moved closer to the portrait and looked deeper into the painted eyes. “Tomorrow, your death with be avenged when your murderer hangs by the neck for his merciless crime!”

  The men downed their drinks.

  In that moment, three months of inner torment found an outlet. In one violent stroke, Tom flung his glass into the fireplace, shattering it.