I was really inspired by a short writing exercise in one of my history courses at UVA. We were asked to write a fictionalized account of a real person/event from our research. The person I wrote about comes from an excerpt of an oral interview in the 1930s with Henry Wright, an African American man who had been enslaved before the Civil War. In it, Wright reflects on a story about the bold action and tragic end of a young man in search of freedom. Here is the excerpt:
““Horse stealing or house burning was another serious crime. On the House plantation [w]as a mulatto slave who was to have been given his freedom when he reached the age of 21. When this time came, Mr. House refused to free him and so an attempt was made to burn the House mansion. Mr. Wright remembers seeing the sheriff come from town and take this slave. Later they heard on the plantation that the slave had been hanged.””
Based on this excerpt and drawing on a broader scope of knowledge about life in bondage for Black people in Antebellum America, I wrote the following short scene.
Every day for the last twenty years, three hundred and sixty-four days, Andrew had existed in a state of limbo. The central conundrum of his life was both simple and inexplicably complex. All of the forces around him told him that he was an unfree man. But, Andrew? He knew himself to be free. He felt it in his bones. But freedom wasn’t bone deep in Georgia in 1862. In fact, if his bondage could be attributed to any part of Andrew’s anatomy, it would be the surface of his skin — just a few shades darker than that of the white man partly responsible for his existence yet just dark enough to betray his Afro-descendant mother and seal his fate. Andrew didn’t sleep a single minute on that last night so that when the sun rose on the day of his 21st birthday, he was ready to claim what he had always known was his birthright.
Andrew glanced around the sparsely furnished place he called home. A hay mattress lay haphazardly over a crude bed made of discarded wood. A simple three footed stool sat close to the hearth where the last few embers of last night’s fire were smoldering. Stepping through the creaky door of the log cabin, Andrew looked up the hill several hundred yards to the imposing new mansion Master House had completed just a few months prior. He reflexively clenched and unclenched his hands feeling the muscles knot and bunch as they remembered the feeling of moving saw against wood, of guiding chisel against stone, of engaging in the exhausting yet beautiful work that raised that entire house from the dirt. “Soon”, he thought, “soon, the work of my hands will be for myself and myself alone.” He stepped out onto the well worn path awash in memories of walking this trail day in and day out for two decades. “Soon”, he thought, “soon, I will go where I want, when I want.” A young black boy crossed Andrew’s path, shoulders hunched from carrying two buckets filled to the brim with water. The boy jutted his chin upward in salutation and Andrew returned the wordless greeting saying to himself, “soon, soon this war will be over and we will all be free.”
Andrew stopped at the outdoor kitchen to greet his mother who had already been hard at work long before the sun came up lighting the fires in preparation for a full day of cooking. “Soon”, Andrew thought as he hugged his mother close, “soon I will earn enough to purchase my mother’s freedom.” Finally arriving at the bottom of the porch steps, Andrew hesitated for the first time. But then the front door swung open and he was beckoned inside by an older black woman in a pristine black and white uniform that put Andrew’s own shabby raiment to shame. The older woman wrinkled her nose at the site of Andrew’s dirt-caked shoes and insisted he remove them before coming inside. “You can just stay and wait right there” the woman told him "and I'll let Master House know you’re here.” “It’s all right, Mandy” a disembodied voice floated down the stairs. “Send him on up.” Andrew nodded to the housekeeper, then stepped purposefully up the stairs; his feet felt rough and hardened against the smooth polish of the mahogany staircase. Finally he reached the entrance to Master House’s office and took two steps inside, stopping just short of the richly colored Persian rug that extended the full length of the room. Andrew squared his shoulders and looked into the face of the man standing behind an ornately carved walnut desk.
“I know why you’re here, Andrew.” Richard House had never been a man to mince words. Andrew was glad of it for his mouth had suddenly gone very dry and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to produce any coherent sound. “Yes, I know why you’re here”, House continued, “but I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint you, Andy”. Andrew bristled at the diminutive use of his name but quickly shuffled off this annoyance as he focused on the dream killing words coming out of the mouth of the man in front of him. “It’s simple economics, Andy. I can’t afford to give you these free papers. What with the cost of the new house, the new carriage, and losing Willy last week. Damned railroad. Well, like I say, I know what I promised you, that I’d sign these on your 21st birthday but it’s…well, it’s just not possible. Give it another few years, just another few years and we can talk about it again. In the meantime, I’ll let you keep 5% of any wages you make on your carpentry. How does that sound?
The odd thing was that Master House genuinely seemed sad that he was reneging on his promise. Andrew registered the slope of House’s shoulders, the grim meeting of his brows in a deep v at the center of his forehead, the profound sigh, and the attempt at a compromising gesture. A sudden calm stole over Andrew as he felt his head nodding up and down in tacit agreement to a false proposal. After all, he had no alternatives. There was no ram in the bush. There was no voice coming out of the fire telling him what to do, where to go, how to rescue himself from this land of Egypt. And in that moment, he saw the rest of his life unfolding; a life of endless toil and broken promises; a life of stolen kisses and secret love ending in stolen children and public auctions; a life of pain; a life punctuated all too often by death. All the way back down the stairs and onto the porch, Andrew contemplated this life. All the way past the kitchens and onto the path he contemplated this life. All the way back to his cabin he contemplated this life. Sitting on the three-legged stool for the rest of the day and deep into the night, contemplating this life, Andrew reached one unshakable conclusion. He could not live that life for one single more day. He would have everything that he was promised; everything his bones told him he was owed, or he would have nothing. That was the last thought that flickered through Andrew’s mind as he made the trek back to the big house in the dead of night and flung a torch through the parlor window. “Everything or nothing” he thought as he watched the flames dance across the Persian carpets. “Everything or nothing” he thought as the fire leapt up the Parisian brocade curtains. “Everything or nothing” he thought as the inferno made a mockery of the mahogany staircase. He couldn’t take his eyes off the fire, even as he felt rough hands seizing him from behind. The flames were so alive, so full of energy, so free.