Amos Fortune, Free Man Quotes

At-mun, the young prince, was tall and powerfully built, though he had seen no more than fifteen summers. He carried his head high and his eyes flashed. Ath-mun, the twelve year old princess, smiled shyly at her tribespeople, then turned to whisper in her father’s ear. She leaned against him, hoping to hide the deformed leg that—but for her father’s love—would have caused her to have been drowned as an infant. Only the sacrifice of the imperfect to the God of Life could assure protection for the perfect. But the chief had gone against his tribal code and sacrificed his favorite dog to keep his infant daughter and thus far the God of Life had wreaked no vengeance on him. The At-mun-shi were as pagan as all the tribes in Africa, but they were peaceable and they were, as well, intense in their love of freedom.

The sun, though it had dropped far down the sky, still had the heat of day and the forest blazed and quivered with its beams. Blossoms of brilliant hue were twice as beautiful as they found their reflections in the water. All along the way the land cried out the new year’s growth. Reds, yellows, greens were still pals with spring, but under the sun’s powerful rays they would soon intensify to the fullness of summer’s coloring. More and more as the afternoon wore on, they passed places where the land had been subdued. Furrows had been made in it by tribesmen preparing it for tillage, and stone encampments instead of rude huts could be seen on the hilltops.

But they did not wait alone. From time to time, as more raids were made into the interior, more captives were brought back and thrown into the pits. Some were from tribes the At-mun-shi had known as friendly neighbors. Others were ones against whom they had often defended themselves. Still others were unknown. But differences or similarities mattered little in the pits and even language made small bond. Frightened and angry, the captives milled around in their confinement. They fought for food thrown down to them and had neither hate nor friendship in common, only an animal instinct to survive, though for what no one knew.

One thing he knew, that he looked upon his land for the last time. He called to his people in the At-mun-shi tongue. There were twenty or more in the space near him, yet not one of them answered him. They had been made to forget—not just that they were At-mun-shi but that they were men. They made sounds to each other in the darkness of the hold, but they were only sounds, they had no meaning. All through the night, after the ship had unfurled her sails and caught the wind that would bear her on her course, At-mun stayed awake. He compelled himself to remember as far back as he could in the past that he might have something more than his body to carry into the future.

At-mun was hailed by the auctioneer and his chains were removed. For the first time in more than four months he could walk freely, yet not freely. He had been given a pair of trousers to wear before coming off the ship and he found them even more restrictive than chains. The people on the wharf shouted with laughter at the curious way the black youth walked. At-mun mounted the block. Above him, gulls were dipping and soaring, coming to rest in the tall masts of the White Falcon, filling the air with their raucous cries. At-mun kept his eyes on them.

“Mr. Copeland!” Celia exclaimed, her horror making her suddenly formal. “Thee knows we are against slavery.”

Caleb sighed. “Yes, and yet when I saw him standing there and I knew we needed someone to help in the house, and I knew he would have a Christian home with kindly treatment and an opportunity to cultivate his mind, I could not help buying him. But I bought him outright, wife. I did not bid on him.”

Celia smiled. “He looks a fine strong boy and you will give him his freedom.”

“Yes, in time,” Caleb agreed, a trifle reluctantly. “Though in his untamed state it would not be well to give it him too soon.”

“You think he would not know how to use it?”

“He is part animal now. What would he do but run wild?”

Amos knew many a slave who had been freed, given his article of manumission by a grateful master in return for years of faithful service, and given the tools of a trade so he might set himself up and be on the way to a self-respecting life. But Amos had deep within him the inheritance of the At-mun-shi, of looking up to someone older and wiser as a protector. The white man, in the person of Caleb Copeland, had become such a protector to Amos. Amos looked to him with reverence and loyalty. He did not want his life to be apart from Caleb’s in any way. As the working member of the Copeland family, Amos had his own dignity. Apart, he would endure the separateness he knew many of his African friends endured because of their lack of status in the white man’s world.

Celia had not wanted it to be so. She and Roxanna had wept at the thought of parting with their possessions and their faithful friend. But there were debts to be paid and Amos had comforted them with his assurance of a right outcome for them all. He had not dwelt for half his lifetime in a Christian household without absorbing trust and confidence.

He took the candle from Mrs. Richardson’s outstretched hand and the plate of food she had ready for him, then he went across the grass to the hut that was Mr. Richardson’s workshop and would be Amos’ home all the years of his servitude. From the house, Ichabod Richardson and his wife heard the slave singing to himself long after he had blown out his candle to save the precious tallow.

Mrs. Richardson tilted her head to listen. “If you had a slave for no other reason than their singing, I often think it would be worth it,” she said. “And yet, so long as they’re not free their songs are like those of birds in a cage.”

“He’ll have his freedom in time, but not until he’s paid me well for the price I paid for him.”

It puzzled Amos that the white people put so much stress on Sunday. Yet it seemed somehow similar to the stress they put on the color of a man’s skin. To Amos, once he understood the Lord, every day was lived with Him. It was not in the Meeting House alone but in the tan yard that he took delight in being a Christian. It was not with his own people that he felt at his best but with all men. He was to go to the end of his days without fully understanding the white man’s attitude to the color of a man’s skin. But it did not trouble or vex him the way it did some of the other slaves with whom he met and talked. It puzzled him. But then, there were many things to puzzle a man.

“Perhaps he thought he was white until he looked in the mirror.”

Mrs. Richardson shook her head. “Perhaps, but it’s more than that. There’s a yearning in him that has its roots in the land from which he came. Oh, it’ s a terrible thing we’ve done, Mr. Richardson, to bring these black people to our land and treat them as we do.”

“Their lot’s not too hard,” he remonstrated.

“Ah, but until they’re given their freedom they count no more than cattle.”

Ichabod Richardson sighed deeply. “They’re not the only ones to be thinking about freedom. Before many more years have passed we’ll be thinking about it too, and not as people but as a nation.”

“What do you mean, Mr. Richardson?”

“I mean that we’ve made others slaves readily enough but we’ll be slaves ourselves if we don’t keep watch.”

He watched swallows swooping in their flight, feeling as if he were one of them; his eyes dwelt on a tree that was a mass of white blossom.

It had been spring, too, when he had been free before […]. Yet that had been a lifetime ago; another life, perhaps, for now his life was beginning again. He was almost sixty years old and he was ready to live. He flexed his muscles; they were strong. He raised his head from the blossoming tree to the blue sky above and the thought of Moses came into his mind, of Moses who stood upon Mount Nebo seeing with his eyes the land that his feet might not tread upon.

“‘And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died.’” Amos spoke the words as reverently as if he were reading them from the open book […]. “So there’s time for Amos, too.”

Amos had no other thought than to pay the full price. He would not bargain over human flesh nor was it for him to question Mr. Bowers’ decision. When the day came that he could call for Lydia in the cart, he presented himself first to Mr. Bowers. In the presence of witnesses,—one who was a friend of Josiah Bowers, and one of the household servants who was Amos Fortune’s friend, the money was carefully counted out. Mr. Bowers set it aside, then he handed to Amos the necessary confirmation of the transaction. It was another bit of paper that Amos would treasure all the days of his life.

“What he wants all those fine clothes is hard to see,” he said aloud to himself. “They caught his fancy like a child’s. But that’s what they are, those black people, nothing but children. It’s a good think for them the whites took them over.”

In retracing his way, Amos […] faced the mountain he was leaving behind and he talked to it as a man might to a friend.

“I’ll be back,” he said. “Just you wait there, you old mountain, and we’ll soon be talking together every day.” Then he lifted his gaze a little higher and looked skyward. “Thank You kindly, Lord, for the sign You gave me back there in Keene, and thank You for all my fine clothes. Violet’s going to be mighty proud when she sees me in them, but I’ll keep them for our wedding day—her freedom day, so help me Lord.”

Celyndia came running back to them as the bird flew off across the meadow, dipping to the grass, then soaring to a bush’s height, balancing itself against the wind as it pursued some pattern of its own.

“Why’nt you go on fluttering after the flutterling, child?” Violet asked.

“’Cause he flew over that field and we can’t go there.”

“The world is yours, Celyndia,” Amos said quietly. “Don’t you remember what I told you last night? You’re as free as birds in the air.”

A smile started to part Celyndia’s full lips, but before it had its way the lips began to quiver and the large dark eyes filled with tears […]

“Let her alone, Violet,” Amos said as he patted Celyndia’s heaving shoulders, “some things are too wonderful even for a child, and freedom’s one of them.”

Violet would not trust in the back of the cart her treasured plants—the root of lilac, the japonica seedling, the lily-of-the-valley pips, her yellow tea rose. She had heard stories of people going off to live wilderness lives in the great country that had one edge on the Atlantic and reached no one knew how far. And she had been fearful until Amos read to hear from the Bible that the wilderness would blossom like the rose; then she had felt less fearful. But Violet had her own feeling about the Bible words. Though she could not read them for herself she knew that there must be a willingness in the heart of man to work with them. So she saw to it that she had with her a bit of loveliness that she might help in the blossoming of their wilderness.

However, by the second year when people came to their call for their leather and paid Amos Fortune in cash or kind, his stock of supplies increased and he added another room to the cabin and more comfort to their living. The iron kettle that stood half-hidden in the ashes of the hearth and held the Fortune savings began to be musical with the coins that were collecting in it. Amos did not know how long it would be before the contents of the kettle would be sufficient for him to buy his own piece of land. His soul might long for heaven but his heart longed for cleared fields and a wider brook […]. And a plot of earth near the house where Violet’s flowers might grow freely. He said little about his dream but he nourished it in his heart as the best place for a dream to grow.

Always [Violet] thought of him as climbing some mountain in his mind, like that great one to the west on which his eyes would dwell so often and from which he seemed to derive something that was even more than strength.

“Monadnock says it will be good weather today,” Amos would announce on a morning when the mountain stood clear against the sky.

“Monadnock says we’d best not leave any leather out for there’ll be a storm before night,” he would say when a veil of cloud like the thinnest gauze capped the mountain’s crest.

He knew its moods and he talked to it as a friend, and the mountain never failed him.

“That’s a long name […],” Celyndia said one day. “What does it mean, Papa Amos […]?”

“[…] they say in the Indian language it means ‘the Mountain that stands alone.’”

“I’m not wanting Lois Burdoo to live in hardship but I’m thinking you’ve got a right to live in dignity.”

“But Violet—” he began.

While the words were strong within her she knew she must speak them. “With all the help the town gave her she never made herself any better,” Violet insisted. “The children are getting older. They’re the ones to help and help themselves too. You’ll do more for them all by giving work to the boys than by giving money to Lois.”

“But Violet—”

She would not listen to him until she had had her say. “There’s a fire that burns fast the more fuel goes on it and that’s shiftlessness,” Violet said stoutly. “Lois is a shiftless woman and money is just so much fuel to her fire.”

Jaffrey had a Social Library and Amos became a member of it. He read its books during the winter when tanning operations were somewhat in abeyance and discussed them with the citizens of the town. He was always well informed for he subscribed to a newspaper. His store of information, matched with his ready wit, gave him opinions that were often sought after. He was their fellow citizen, Amos Fortune, and more often than not the prefix “Mr.” dignified his name. He had won his way to equality by work well done and a life well lived. But his own life was no guarantee for the lives of those who were dear to him. Celyndia, now sixteen, had many friends among the white children. But there were times when she was made to feel uneasy at school because of her color and her different ways.

The town had again been helping Lois Burdoo with firewood and foodstuffs. But no matter what help she received she never seemed to be able to rise above her wretched lot. The children went to school in tatters, and even when given new clothes they would appear the next day with them dirty and torn. They could not seem to keep from falling down or tearing themselves on briar bushes.

After years of ineffective help, the town felt that it could not bolster Lois Burdoo any longer. She was given warning that the two oldest children would be put up to Public Vendue on the thirty first day of December. Vendues were auctions at which townspeople could bid for the privilege of affording care to the indigent.

One night in early November Polly asked Amos to help her sit up. He put his arms around her and held her up. She was so light that he felt if he held a flower on its stalk it could be no heavier. She held out her hands, resting her right hand in Violet’s that were worn and coarse with the care she had given others, and her left hand in Celyndia’s that were supple and strong. Her eyes she kept on Amos. Peace dwelt in her face, a smile hovered over her lips, and for the first time she seemed to be seeing clearly those who were close to her. Her gaze that had always been so far away had come near at last. A small shudder passed over her body. She sat up very straight for a moment, even without the aid of Amos’ arms; then she fell back into his arms.

From the day Amos had begun to live in freedom, his life had been a series of curious accomplishments known in their richness and wonder only to him. Lily, Lydia, Violet, Celyndia—they stood like milestones along his way and behind them all was Ath-mun. Amos held her always in the tender loveliness of her twelve years, and because of her need to be cared for and his longing for her to be cherished, he had dedicated himself to helpless folk. It was Ath-mun who had been the fount of freedom to those others, Amos thought, as he reached back into memory for the beloved sister; he had acted for her and so he would account to her even when they met together at the Jordan.

But Amos would not go home while hate burned within him, so he sat on a boulder by the roadside and faced his mountain.

That was the day the men of Marlborough and Dublin had set fire raging on Monadnock to drive out the wolves and bears that had been doing damage among the herds pastured on the slopes. Amos watched the fire climb slowly at first, starting from a dozen different places; then like a wall of destruction it moved up the steep sides until the flames met and linked in a vast pyramid of fire at the summit, consuming everything that could be consumed and leaving the mountain smoldering.

Hate could do that to a man, Amos thought, consume him and leave him smoldering. But he was a free man, and free at great cost, and he would not put himself in bondage again.

Amos unwrapped a handkerchief in which he had put the rest of the money in the stone crock—two hundred and forty-three dollars in all […]. Deacon Spofford noted the among and wrote after it “for the school.” Then, quill poised in hand, he looked across the table at Amos. “And will you say what should be done with it?” he asked.

Amos answered, “The town shall use the money in any way it sees fit to educate its sons and daughters.”

“I have heard that those in your care have not always fared well at the school,” Deacon Spofford said as if he were asking for forgiveness of Amos Fortune.

“That is why I give the money to the school,” Amos replied as he rose to leave.