Lizzie read slowly, and when she noticed Reenie picking at the hem of her dress, she decided to skip ahead a bit.
The charges to which I refer are these: That in dealing with slaveholders and their apologists, we indulge in fierce denunciations, instead of appealing to their reason and common sense by plain statements and fair argument;-that we might have won the sympathies and support of the nation, if we would have submitted to argue this question with a manly patience; but instead of this, we have outraged the feelings of the community by attacks, unjust and unnecessarily severe, on its most valued institutions, and gratified our spleen by indiscriminate abuse of leading men, who were often honest in their intentions, however mistaken in their views;-that we have utterly neglected the ample means that lay around us to convert the nation, submitted to no discipline, formed no plan, been guided by no foresight, but hurried on in a childish, reckless, blind and hot-headed zeal-bigots in the narrowness of our views, and fanatics in our blind fury of invective and malignant judgment of other men’s motives.
Mawu whistled. “Ooh, I didn’t know you could read so nice, Miss Lizzie. I can’t hardly understand for listening to the sound of them words. What that man saying there?”
“He’s saying that the abolitionists have been accused of being too…too vicious, too mean, and he doesn’t believe this to be true. He believes these folks that accuse them of this don’t know what they’re talking about. He believes that the cause of freedom is just and right and they must do all they can to get rid of slavery.”
Reenie’s eyes were wide. “Oh my sweet Jesus. Go on,” she urged. “Go on.”
Two days after Sweet was laid to rest, the white men discovered Philip sneaking off the resort to meet his woman. No one knew how they found out. But the word got back to the slaves that Philip had been meeting her halfway between the colored resort and the white one. Lizzie thought of how often slaves did this back in Tennessee, meeting halfway between plantations and making their love felt on the forest floor. In contrast, she thought of how direct Drayle was back on their place, exercising his rights wherever and whenever the mood hit him.
They all waited around wondering what would happen next. No one had seen Philip, and Lizzie searched frantically for Drayle, but he, too, was nowhere to be seen. From her porch, Lizzie could make out Reenie hanging laundry behind her cottage and Mawu walking on the other side of the lake carrying something on her head.
Lizzie swept the dust out the front door of her cottage. Back at the plantation, Drayle might have gotten away with giving Philip a light scolding and perhaps having the slave trader visit the place to scare the slaves into thinking that Philip might be sold off. But here, in this northern climate, where he was under the scrutiny of the other Southern slaveholders, Drayle would probably decide to take a sterner approach.
Lizzie had to get to Drayle first, remind him that Philip was still his favorite slave. It was no longer a rumor but a well-known fact that this would be their last summer at the resort. Most likely, Drayle figured that if he could get Philip back to Tennessee without this woman, he would be able to get his slave’s mind off her.
Once, Drayle had bought a beautiful woman for one of his slaves after the man’s wife died in childbirth. The young woman had been intended to salve the older man’s grief. They had taken up residence together in one of the slave cabins, and it was not long before the young girl had genuinely fallen for the kind old man. It had been an unexpected but welcome outcome to the forced coupling. Lizzie thought this was probably what Drayle was hoping for now, that he could purchase a woman for Philip that would solve everything.
Lizzie tried to block out any image in her mind of Drayle having Philip beat. Besides, who would beat him? There was no overseer here to perform Drayle’s dirty work, and Drayle had never been one to perform such an unpleasant task himself. There was that one hotel porter who would do anything the white men told him for a price, the one with the watch who had accompanied them to Dayton. George would do it if so ordered, but she doubted that he would complete the task with any zest. And the slaveholders knew this.
As the different scenarios passed through her mind, she saw a figure that looked to be about Philip’s size approaching from the distance. He was flanked by two men holding him by the arms. Lizzie shaded her eyes with her hand. From where she stood, it looked as if Philip’s legs were chained. As the three men got closer, she heard the telltale clink of metal against metal. She clutched the arm of her broom.
The men led Philip to a tree just off the edge of the pond. It was a scrawny young pawpaw tree that even in the height of summer had never bore any fruit. Nor was it full enough to offer very much shade. They chained him to the tree and walked away. Philip scooted along the ground until he was beside the tree and rested his back against its narrow trunk.
Lizzie leaned the broom against the wall of the cottage. She wiped her palms across the front of her dress. Even though she could not make out Philip’s face, she knew he had already been beaten. He did not have the walk of a beaten man, but she knew how such things worked. He had been beaten and left out in the hot sun.
She heard someone moving inside the cottage, and it startled her. She pulled open the door and saw Drayle moving about the room, packing a bag. “Drayle? What did you do to Philip?”
He ignored her and continued to move around the room. She watched as he put the tin cup and plate he used for camping into the bag.
“Where are those socks you mended for me?”
She went into the bedroom and took a thin pair of socks out of the drawer with a patch across the toe. She returned and gave them to him.
“Talk to me, Drayle. What’s happening?”
“Hand me my fishing rod.”
She took the rod out of the closet. Considering the time of day, she knew he would probably camp overnight. But surely he didn’t plan to just leave Philip there.
He hoisted the pack of supplies over his shoulder and finally turned to her. “Don’t you even think about going near him, Lizzie.”
“What?” She tried to shame him with a certain look she used now and again. “You’re going to just leave him there?”
“You hear me? This is between me and him. Don’t you even think about going near him. You or nobody else, but especially you.”
Surely he didn’t plan on leaving Philip out there all day and night. There wasn’t much shade out there, and the Ohio sun was as hot as the one in Tennessee.
She remembered when she was a child and still lived on the plantation in Weakley county where she was born there had been a dog that hung around the slave cabins. It hadn’t belonged to anyone in particular and no one had ever given it a name. They just called it “Dog.” The dog lived on scraps thrown to it here and there when the slaves had finished eating. As it got old, its back legs started to give out. So it took to sitting around more and more until finally it stopped walking altogether. No one had the heart to kill it. One morning, as the slaves went off to the fields, someone placed the dog in a shady spot near a tree.
When the children gathered around the tree that evening to hunt for the sticks they used for toys, they discovered the dog lying in the same spot where it had been left. One of the children called his father who came and picked up the dog’s lifeless body. He told the children to run along, and he went off somewhere to bury it. Lizzie could remember the dog’s skin: it had been raw and peeling beneath the dog’s thin brown and white pelt. She had dreamed that night of what it must have felt like to be that dog, becoming so hot until her vision blurred and she could barely suck in enough air to cool herself. She had heard of adults complaining of such symptoms while working the field all day, but even they wore hats to cool themselves. The dog had been unable to do anything to lessen the punishment of the sun once it moved its position in the sky.