Providence and Faith Theme Analysis

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.

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.

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.

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.”

“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.”

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.

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.