Old places, new eyes - Novel explores freedom as seen by freed slave
By MICHAEL MOORE of the Missoulian
      
For more than a year, David Cates thought the main character of his new novel was the man he’d based on Montana’s first territorial governor, Thomas Meagher.

Meagher, re-envisioned as Cornelius O’Keefe for Cates’ “Freeman Walker,” was an idealistic man with “huge, heroic aspirations,” a man come West mostly as a result of failures elsewhere. Cates, whose previous novels are the well-received “Hunger in America” and “X Out of Wonderland,” had opted to tell O’Keefe’s story through a sort of buddy-narrator, a former slave named Freeman Walker.

Over time, however, as Cates lived with the voice of Freeman Walker, he found himself with a new protagonist.

“I realized that his story was the one I wanted to tell, that he was the more resonant character,” said Cates, who works as executive director of the relief organization Missoula Medical Aid when he’s not writing. “They’re both very American characters, but Freeman lets you trace the arc of American history.”

That resolved one of Cates’ two major problems. The other - what the book was actually about - came in another conversation.

“I had a story that I was telling, and it felt right, but I couldn’t have honed it down and said, 'Look, this is what it’s about,’ ” he said.

Then he had a conversation with the University of Montana’s Jim Scott, an expert in the Roman classics.

“I asked him which book he always found himself going back to and he said Virgil’s 'The Aeneid,’ ” Cates recalled. “And then he asked me the same question and I said, 'Huck Finn.’ Those books are essentially creation myths for their cultures. And that’s when I realized I was really writing 'Huck Finn.’ What I wanted to talk about was how our national identity was forged.”

It’s an identity born in blood, fired by ambition, spurred by wealth.

“The 19th century is really the psychic birthplace of our country,” Cates said. “It revealed the fullness of our ambitions and the fullness of our failures.”

In “Freeman Walker,” the century’s story plays out through the eyes of a boy first introduced as Jimmy Gates, the mulatto son of a kind slave owner and the slave he truly loved.

At age 7, Jimmy is sent to London by his white father, grows into manhood in the “brutishness of urban England,” then returns home to America to seek his fortune and his mother.

He’s deposited into the middle of the Civil War, where he meets O’Keefe, is captured as a slave and finally regains his freedom. Adopting the name Freeman Walker, he strikes out for the gold camps out West, looking, like everyone else, to make his mark.

“What I wanted to do was take these landscapes we all know - London, the South, the Civil War, the gold camps - and look at them again through the eyes of a new character,” Cates said.

What Freeman Walker sees is the untidy, complicated soul of an America that wants to believe in its innocence despite evidence to the contrary.

“We have this notion of our innocence, but we are a nation that lives on the soil of our own genocide,” Cates said. “The Civil War, the killing of the Native Americans, those are convenient things to look past, but you can’t do it with a clear conscience.”

Although it moves like a historical thriller, “Freeman Walker” is really a meditation on freedom.

“In this country, we use freedom like an almost religious word, but too often it’s not clear what we mean,” Cates said. “Too often, it means the freedom to consume and the freedom to be free to consume. And too often we act as if we are free of the responsibilities that come with our past.”

The 19th century, Cates said, is really a metaphor for that part of the American spirit that sees the rest of the world as a frontier to conquer and use.

“The American West has always been about the limitless trove of resources and wealth,” he said. “It’s always about being able to take more, and when we can’t take more there, we look elsewhere. That’s a good thing to understand about yourself, and it seems to me we haven’t been particularly good at learning it.”

Although Cates knew American history, the literary journey required to write the book left him astonished by the violence that had taken place on American soil.

“I wasn’t sure I had enough blood in me to write this book,” he said. “In the midst of this very violent past, I wanted to say something about what it means to be human, what it means to suffer with dignity. It was hard going.”

“Freeman Walker” will be Cates’ third novel, but he’s written five others that haven’t been published. And while his other books have been critical hits, they haven’t exactly been commercial hits.

Still, Cates finds himself drawn back to the computer.

“When I think about success, sure, you’d love to make some money,” he said. “But the only real success with this sort of thing is knowing that you gave it your all. This is all I have, and this is what I want to do. If I’ve done it, that’s enough, even if nobody wants it.”

In a way, Cates’ books are a way to search for what is most true about himself.

He is death-obsessed - “Hunger in America.” He is an optimistic, good-natured man who hasn’t enjoyed any major financial success - “X out of Wonderland.” And he is the son of a man who couldn’t resist holding forth on the meaning of freedom.

Thus, “Freeman Walker.”

“As I was working on these books, this isn’t something I realize or am really conscious of - but later, well, it’s pretty easy to see,” he said. “Hey, it’s me. All three books are about America, I guess, and all three are, to some extent, about me.”

Reporter Michael Moore can be reached at 523-5252 or by e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .