Free

         The burning smell hasn’t yet made it up the stairs when Miss Massa walks in on her husband and the slave Mary. Catching a glimpse of Mary’s hand in her husband’s, she stifles a gasp and steps back out of the room. In the hallway shrouded by midday shadows, she listens. Between heavy, sickish coughs, she can just overhear her husband’s words.
         
         “I may not be here much longer,” he says to Mary. The words, though whispered, are the heaviest Miss Massa has perhaps ever heard. “So I—,” Another violent series of coughs interrupt his words, “I want you to know ….” Mary can see the disconnection from reality in his eyes, but she cannot speak, cannot interrupt her Master even though she fears with all of her heart the thought of his thoughtless words being overheard, even though her heart is drumming faster and faster with each passing second. “I have always … I have always … you are so … so beau …,” his eyes roll back in his head. Of course, from the hallway Miss Massa sees none of this. Only the whispered words of treachery reach her. Another violent wave of coughs erupt into the silence and last so long that Miss Massa, despite her outrage, almost can’t resist the urge to go into the room and check on him. Just when it seems that his coughing is becoming more than frightening, just as she begins again to consider death, his coughing stops and the burning smell reaches her. In her baffled state of speechlessness perhaps in response to the only thing over which she can control she screams.
         “Mary!”
         Glancing in horror toward the door and immediately smelling the burning that has now made it into the bedroom, Mary races out of the bedroom and straight into Miss Massa’s presence.
         “You stupid nigger!” Miss Massa hisses, almost as if to remain beyond the detection of her husband as he she glares at Mary.
         “Mary,” they both hear Massa’s whispered call. Mary throws a glance in his direction, toward the door.
         “Are you trying to burn down the whole plantation?” Miss Massa yells, and it seems as if she is yelling now more to announce to her husband the potential consequences of his thoughtlessness than at Mary who has now rushed down the stairs into a kitchen just beginning to fill with smoke.
         “Catherine?” Massa calls out into the hall at his wife’s voice. At first, she does not respond. Instead, she stands where she is trying to swallow her growing outrage. “Mary …?” He calls out softer, and the longing Miss Massa can hear in his voice causes rage to boil over within her. “Mary?” Massa calls out again. By now the rising and falling of Miss Massa’s voice is growing violent. She looks toward the bedroom door then down the stairs. Another wave of the burning smell below fills her nostrils accompanied by the first sign of smoke just as Massa calls out almost  in desperation, “Oh, Mary …,”—and in actuality, his words are little more than a whisper. The average listener might indeed have missed them altogether—but Miss Massa hears them as clearly as she would, had she been standing at his side. The resulting rage in conjunction with the smoke from below nearly catapults her down the stairs where she is met by a smoky kitchen and a frantic Mary, and Alice, who had been rushing to remove the clothes from the clothesline before the storm, when she had overheard Miss Massa scream.
         They had both successfully extinguished the fire on the stove, and were discarding the burnt bread when Miss Massa reached the kitchen. The rage in her eyes was a red one, and immediately Mary and Alice knew it would be bad as if Miss Massa raced into the room in a blind, thoughtless rage straight toward Mary. Though she had been taught to be obedient, to stand and face the rage of her Massa, whatever it might be, when Miss Massa grabbed a knife from the stove, Mary frantically ran for the door. However, by the time she realized the danger she was in, Miss Massa was too close and before she knew it, there was Alice’s scream, a massive stab of pain at the back of her neck and soon as she lay face down in her own blood, amid the screams of both Alice and Miss Massa, there was nothing.

#

         

About two miles out from the plantation, another wall of rain clouds take the sky from the west. These clouds black out the sky and a steady rain falls the entire last mile of their ride home.
         When they pull up to the barn, as Ghost is preparing to hitch the horses to their post, Sam takes the rope from his hand and begins doing it himself. For a moment, they both actually inhale and enjoy the cool rain in the now warmer air. The entire plantation seems to be asleep. Nothing but the soft trickle of rain fills the air. This moment lasts less than a minute.

         Ghost stops at the door. At first she doesn’t see him. By now, Sam is standing directly behind him, witnessing the gruesome sight over Ghost’s shoulder.
         “Aahh!” Miss Massa gasps looking in their direction, and immediately throws the sack back over the body that Ghost immediately recognizes as his mother. The only thing that is keeping him from rushing into the room at this point is shock, but as Miss Massa stands and seems to be retreating back to the house, he finally rushes involuntarily into the room. However, Miss Massa is not running back into the house. She suddenly turns once she reaches the barn back door, and has a rifle pointed straight at Ghost’s head. It is all happening so fast that Sam has not been able to process anything until he sees the rifle.
         “Mother!” he screams, “Are you fucking crazy?” He screams. Silence lingers between them all for a while, interrupted by nothing but the soft trickle of rain, heavy breaths and in the distance, the closing of a door.
         “No, but I’ll kill this nigger if he tries anything! I swear I’ll kill him.”          
         “Put that damn gun down now, mama!” Sam screams through heavy breaths. Seeing the empty irrationality in his mother’s eyes, he tries to calm himself and repeats himself with a softer tone. “Put the gun down please,” He begs. By now, Ghost stands statuesque, eyes moving back and forth from the barrel of the rifle to the body of his mother, a trail of tears lining the sides of his face; heart pounding empty in his chest.  They stand this way for a while against the sound of a relentless rain and tense breaths that threaten to go on forever. Sam is moving closer to his mother, is at arm’s length distance from Ghost and  just about to say, Mama Please, just about to grab the gun when Alice burst into the barn door screaming, “He dead!” Before even the word dead reaches their ears it seems, there is a loud explosion, a flash of fire, the gun drops and both Ghost Baby and Sam both falls to the ground, Sam on top of Ghost, a hole through them both, in a growing  pool  of each other’s blood.
         “Ghost … Ghost,” Sam whispers over his shoulder to Ghost, over screaming of both his mother and Alice. Through the blinding, red, burning in his chest, he is listening for and feeling for Ghost’s heart beat, for the rise and fall of his chest, “Ghost …,” again he whispers. By now, his mother is over him. He blocks out her screaming.
“I’m so sorry … I didn’t mean to …What have I done?” In the moment, it does not matter that Ghost cannot talk because he must say this now. At this point, they are the only two in the room, the only two in the whole world. “If I don’t say this now …,” pain causes him to pause to catch his breath, “I guess I never will …,” A tear runs from his eyes into his ears. “So much for being free …,” he whispers. For a while he can say nothing. “I …,” deep breath, cough, deep breath, blood gurgles up in mouth. “I …,” cough, cough, “lo …,” and he is trying with everything within him to say the word, but it just won’t come, and just before he closes his eyes for the very last time….
         “Sam … Sam,” whispers a voice over his shoulder that he has not heard since he was a child just before all the chaos of the world around them fades away.