Page 62 of Good Dirt

Potential

A t first, the black jacks had threatened to throw Willis overboard. They couldn’t afford to get into trouble, they said. But in the end, they put him to work washing down the deck and helping the cook. They pretended to the others that Willis had always been one of theirs. An apprentice, of sorts. He seemed capable enough, and he was strong.

They did this, they said, because they had known others like Willis.

Because they could have been someone like Willis.

Because they knew they still could end up like Willis.

And the others pretended not to have realized the truth.

Soon, Willis showed his potential on deck. He was capable at knotting rope and repairing things. He was learning to work with the sails. The first time they ordered him to climb the ship’s shroud, he clambered all the way up, without hesitation. The smell of the salt water, the sound of the canvas billowing in the wind, the sight of the world, seen from up there, convinced him that he had been right to board the ship after all. Climbing back down that first time, however, was a different story. It put the fear of God in him, to see the deck so far below.

Whatever happened next, though, Willis was ready to risk it. He might fall to his death from the rigging. He might drown. But he kept in his mind the thought of the jar and what was written on its bottom panel. Those words had given him courage, even though he knew that a man like him could not reveal or repeat them. Not a colored man who was trying to stay alive. Not for now, anyhow.

In Boston, Willis was given clean clothing and offered paying work on board. In time, he grew to understand the ways of the wind and the currents. Other crew members started calling him by his new name, which they had advised him to choose immediately. In the world of the free, he would need two names. And so Willis from the South Carolina backcountry became Edward Freeman in Massachusetts. Because words had the potential to remake a man.

Still, Edward Freeman would continue to think of himself as Willis, because words also had the power to hold memory. Although the name had been chosen by a slaveholder, it was the only moniker he had ever known, and it held the memory of his sister’s voice. It held memories of Moses and Old Joe. It was a reminder that despite all he had run from, Willis had been cared for by others. He could not be sure that, if he survived, he would ever find that again.