Prentice Alvin

When they got back to the roadhouse, Mama was just as angry as Peggy ever saw her. “It's a crime you should have a whipping for, taking your sixteen-year-old daughter out to commit a crime in the darkness.”

But Papa didn't answer. He didn't have to, once he carried that girl inside and laid her on the floor before the fire.

“She can't have ate a thing for days. For weeks!” cried Mama. “And her brow is like to burn my hand off just to touch her. Fetch me a pan of water, Horace, to mop her brow, while I her up the broth for her to sip–”

“No, Mama,” said Peggy. “Best you find some milk for the baby.”

“The baby won't die, and this girl's likely to, don't you tell me my business, I know physicking for this, anyway–”

“No, Mama,” said Peggy. “She did a witchery with a wax poppet. It's a Black sort of witchery, but she had the know-how and she had the power, being the daughter of a king in Africa. She knew the price and now she can't help but pay.”

“Are you saying this girl's bound to die?” asked Mama.

“She made a poppet of herself, Mama, and put it on the fire. It gave her the wings to fly one whole night. But the cost of it rest of her life.”

Papa looked sick at heart. “Peggy, that's plain crazy. What good would it do her to escape from slavery if she was just going to die? Why not kill herself there and save the trouble?”

Peggy didn't have to answer. The baby she was a-holding started to cry right then, and that was all the answer there was.

“I'll get milk,” said Papa. “Christian Larsson's bound to have a gill or so to spare even this time of the night.”

Marna stopped him, though. “Think again, Horace,” she said. “It's near midnight now. What'll you tell him you need the milkfor?”

Horace sighed, laughed at his own foolishness. “For a runaway slavegirl's little pickani

“I reckon she just figures it's better to die free than live slave,” said Peggy. “I reckon she just knew that whatever life that baby found here had to be better than what it was there.”

The girl lay there before the fire, breathing soft, her eyes closed.

“She's asleep, isn't she?” asked Mama.

“Not dead yet,” said Peggy, “but not hearing us.”

“Then I'll tell you plain, this is a bad piece of trouble,” said Mama. “We can't have people knowing you bring runaway slaves through here. Word of that would spread so fast we'd have two dozen finders camped here every week of the year, and one of them'd be bound to take a shot at you sometime from ambush.”

“Nobody has to know,” said Papa.

“What are you going to do, tell folks you happened to trip over her dead body in the woods?”

Peggy wanted to shout at them, She ain't dead yet, so mind how you talk! But the truth was they had to get some things pla

“How soon will she die?” Papa asked. “By morning?”

“She'll be dead before sunrise, Papa.”

Papa nodded. “Then I better get busy. The girl I can take care of. You women can think of something to do with that pickani

“Oh, we can, can we?” said Mama.

“Well I know I can't so you'd better.”

“Well then maybe I'll just tell folks it's my own babe.”

Papa didn't get mad. Just gri

He went outside and got Po Doggly to help him dig a grave.

"Passing this baby off as born around here ain't such a bad idea, said Mama. "That Black family that lives down in that boggy land– you remember two years back when some slaveowner tried to prove he used to own them? What's their name, Peggy?"

Peggy knew them far better than any other White folks in Hatrack River did; she watched over them the same as everyone else, knew all their children, knew all their names. “They call their name Berry,” she said. “Like a noble house, they just keep that family name no matter what job each one of them does.”

“Why couldn't we pass this baby off as theirs?”

“They're poor, Mama,” said Peggy. “They can't feed another mouth.”

“We could help with that,” said Mama. “We have extra.”

“Just think a minute, Mama, how that'd look. Suddenly the Berrys get them a light-colored baby like this, you know he's half-White just to look at him. And then Horace Guester starts bringing gifts down to the Berry house.”

Mama's face went red. “What do you know about such things?” she demanded.

“Oh, for heaven's sake, Mama, I'm a torch. And you know people would start to talk, you know they would.”

Mama looked at the Black girl lying there. “You got us into a whole lot of trouble, little girl.”

The baby started fussing.

Mama stood up and walked to the window, as if she could see out into the night and find some answer writ on the sky. Then, abruptly, she headed for the door, opened it.

“Mama,” said Peggy.

“There's more than one way to pluck a goose,” said Mama.

Peggy saw what Mama had thought of. If they couldn't take the baby down to the Berry place, they could maybe keep the baby here at the roadhouse and say they were taking care of it for the Berrys cause they were so poor. As long as the Berry family went along with the tale, it would account for a half-Black baby showing up one day. And nobody'd think the baby was Horace's bastard– not if his wife brought it right into the house.

“You realize what you're asking them, don't you?” said Peggy; “Everybody's going to think somebody else has been plowing with Mr. Berry's heifer.”

Mama looked so surprised Peggy almost laughed out loud.

“I didn't think Blacks cared about such things,” she said.

Peggy shook her head. “Mama, the Berrys are just about the best Christians in Hatrack River. They have to be, to keep forgiving the way White folks treat them and their children.”

Mama closed the door again and stood inside, leaning on it. “How do folks treat their children?”

It was a pertinent question, Peggy knew, and Mama had thought of it only just in time. It was one thing to look at that scrawny fussing little Black baby and say, I'm going to take care of this child and save his life. It was something else again to think of him being five and seven and ten and seventeen years old, a young buck living right there in the house.

“I don't think you have to fret about that,” said Little Peggy, “not half so much as how you plan to treat this boy. Do you plan to raise him up to be your servant, a lowborn child in your big fine house? If that's so, then this girl died for nothing, she might as well have let them sell him south.”

“I never hankered for no slave,” said Mama. “Don't you go saying that I did.”

“Well, what then? Are you going to rear him as your own son, and stand with him against all comers, the way you would if you'd ever borne a son of your own?”

Peggy watched as Mama thought of that, and suddenly she saw all kinds of new paths open up in Mama's heartfire. A son– that's what this half-White boy could be. And if folks around here looked cross-eyed at him on account of him not being all White, they'd have to reckon with Margaret Guester, they would, and it'd be a fearsome day for them, they'd have no terror at the thought of hell, not after what she'd put them through.

Mama hadn't felt such a powerful grim determination in all the years Peggy'd been looking into her heart. It was one of those times when somebody's whole future changed right before her eyes. All the old paths had been pretty much the same; Mama had no choices that would change her life. But now, this dying girl had brought a transformation. Now there were hundreds of new paths open, and all of them had a little boy-child in them, needing her the way her daughter'd never needed her. Set upon by strangers, cruelly treated by the boys of the town, he'd come to her again and again for protection, for teaching, for toughening, the kind of thing that Peggy'd never done.