Wild, Beautiful, and Free(45)

I nodded. “It was the same on our plantation,” I said.

“Then you’ll know that such wealth was only possible with slave labor.”

“Yes.”

“My father was particular about my education. I was sent away to the best schools, and I had tutors in Europe. You may wonder at that—I probably don’t strike you as refined. I wasn’t a great student because I wasn’t particularly interested in reading. But I did like to debate and think about how society works, about the way we live our lives. One of my professors was a Quaker, and when I studied philosophy, he and I would talk a great deal about slavery. He knew I was from the South and was interested in how we ran things. He asked a lot of questions about the slaves. He wanted to know how my father acquired them, about whether they could marry and who owned their children.

“That last part hit me—when he asked about the children, I was going to say right away that they were our property. I realized how wrong that was. The words stuck like a lump in my throat. Then he took me through a kind of meditation. What would I do, he asked, if I were walking back to my room and were suddenly accosted by strangers who attacked me and put me in chains?

“I would fight them with all I had, I told him. ‘But ah,’ he went on, ‘you can’t get away. They put you on a great ship, let’s say in Boston Harbor, and chain you to hundreds of other men like yourself and send you off to parts unknown. You arrive on the shores of a foreign country where you can’t speak the language, nor are you allowed to learn it. You are forced to work, subjected to painful punishments, and live in the most inhumane of conditions.’

“I laughed at him, Miss Bébinn. I said it was ridiculous to think such a thing could happen to me, and there would be many to step in to recover me should such an event ever occur. He looked at me and said, ‘How can you say that, Colchester, when you have been a witness to it your whole life?’ He asked me where I thought the people on our plantation had come from, and I was ashamed that I couldn’t answer him. I tried to say that we didn’t treat our slaves badly, but of course that was such a shallow argument. We were holding human beings in bondage. He said to me, ‘When you die, Christian, will that be your argument to God? That you enslaved his creation but treated them well?’

“I wanted to be angry. I wanted to rail at him for upsetting my peace of mind. For four nights I didn’t sleep because our conversation ate at me so badly. Something came to me. It was like seeing a bit of candlelight in the darkness. I realized my professor had brought me awareness to sin so large that I thought it might consume me. But in that awareness was a chance for me to save my soul.

“My father, you might imagine, wasn’t pleased to have his educated son come home and tell him how to run his plantation, with the insane notion of freeing his entire labor force. He said I was unfaithful to the family, that the Yankees had turned me against him. That I was ungrateful for the life that the plantation had afforded us. He kept asking how the plantation would run without the slaves. I told him I didn’t see why we couldn’t pay people. Did we really need to make the level of profit that kept us in luxury?

“It tore a rift between us, so much so that my father changed his will to act against me if I did not handle my inheritance in the way he saw fit. I didn’t know he’d done this. When he died, I thought I would be free to do as I liked. Unfortunately, his will bound me in ways that I find disheartening. I have done what I could. As you know, I founded Lower Knoll by selling my father’s plantation and freeing the slaves with the offer to come here and have their own community. I knew how hard life was for freed slaves, how they could be kidnapped and sold again into bondage. That’s why I thought of creating Lower Knoll.

“But I refuse to be solely tied to it. I don’t want to create another form of plantation where it only appears that the people are free. And I also want to be able to find my own life, to figure out where I’m supposed to be in the world.”

“I can understand that,” I said.

“Can you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Of course. You’ve had to seek out your place, too, haven’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Colchester stopped the carriage at Fortitude’s front door. He got out, and when he turned to help me down, I found myself with a vantage point of looking down on him. He offered me his hand, but I didn’t take it right away.

“Sir, if I may say so . . .” I paused.

“Yes, what is it?” He looked up at me and took off his hat. My eyes went to his brow, tracing the length of his forehead. His expression was so open.

“You have more places where you can be. You have money. You have land. And forgive me for saying so, but you’re a white man. This country is made for you because men like you made it. Someone like me? I’m not even supposed to be here, let alone have the freedom to live like I want. It’s not the same; that’s all I’m trying to say. We’re not the same.”

I was going to take his hand and step out of the carriage then, but he wasn’t offering it. He stood there staring up at me, and I figured I might have offended him. I looked away. Stephen held the horses and waited for me. After a few more moments Mr. Colchester gave me his hand.

“I’m glad you have found a place here,” he said. “Thank you for listening to my rambling.”