Like a shadow show upon a wall, July watched Byron’s black shape run to hold Nimrod’s horse as he, bright as a star in this play, dismounted, patting Byron’s head and shooing away Lady the dog as she jumped up upon him. Godfrey’s lanky outline then drifted in—his hand outstretched. Nimrod patted Godfrey upon the back and leaned in to whisper in his ear, but then straightened when Molly arrived skipping around as frisky as the dog.
‘No, it be no white massa. It be a nigger,’ July taunted her missus. But Caroline Mortimer did not squeal with fright as was July’s intention, instead she ran to July and clung her arms about her waist. It was such a tight embrace that July was as choked for a good lung of air as her fearful missus.
‘Let me go,’ July said. The sodden silk of her missus’s dress, her pungent spicy scent, the hot moist flesh of her ample arms did all enfold July in a sweet, sticky softness. July made move to wriggle herself from under this squelching grasp, but her missus clung on tighter. And July did regret having made her fret so. For Molly was seeking to charm Nimrod while July was captured like a moth upon jam.
‘Missus, let me go so me can see who this nigger be,’ she said. But her missus just squeezed her tighter. ‘No fret, missus, for me will turn the lock in the door.’ Caroline let forth a slight whimper, to assent or protest, July could not tell.
‘Just till the nigger be gone, missus,’ she said softly. ‘Then me soon come back and set you free.’
Even within murky moonlight, July knew that Nimrod would be hungry to gaze upon her. It did not matter that she wore only her ragged grey workaday clothes that were renk with the cow she had milked for her missus’s warm cinnamon milk punch. Or that her hair, itching stiff with dirt, poked out of the ugly green kerchief upon her head through several holes within the shabby fabric. As she walked, swinging on her hips, towards Nimrod, she knew he would tilt his head to feign an ordinary greeting—like he might give Molly or Patience—but that his breath would rise to hold the message within his throat until he had to cough it out, ‘Ah, Miss July,’ cough, cough, ‘greetings,’ for he admired her so.
Now, Nimrod was not tall—no taller than July—for his legs were bowed as if waiting for the horse he had just dismounted to return and slip back under him. Yet still he walked proud, for Nimrod was a free man. Although once the groom at Amity, he had purchased his freedom many seasons ago, laying down two hundred pounds in coins and notes while the massa’s mouth gaped.
July thought Nimrod’s skin black as coke and his nose too flat and broad. But he was not a slave. He now commanded white people to look upon him within the eye. Although one of his eyes was apt to wander, which made knowing which eye to fix upon as he spoke a little confusing. But still, as a freeman he did hold that respect.
The hair upon his head was lush at the front but at the back there was a sovereign-sized hole in the covering that did glisten in sunlight. And the scar upon his lip that Tam Dewar had left him with after a punishment, looked like a disfigurement to July when he was still white man’s chattel. But now Nimrod was a man with his own name—not given, but chosen—that jagged mark made him look brave. Nimrod Freeman or Mr Freeman was the name that all white people had to address him by, or he would give them nothing of what they required. For, like the wind, the sun, or the flowing river, like a soaring man-of-war or a beetle under a stone, like a spider at a web or a crab scuttling sideways across a shore, Nimrod was free. And, ‘Miss July,’ cough, cough, ‘greetings,’ Nimrod did indeed say as July approached.
‘ ’Devening, Mr Freeman.’
‘Miss July, you know to call me Mr Nimrod,’ he said, standing from his seat, yet stooping his head toward July, as if there were some need for him to bend himself shorter to deliver those words. He did not wink on her, for all at Amity were there to see, but he did raise his eyebrows to July two times