“How’s that?”
“Uncle Jacob was feelin better. He come outside two nights ago to make his water, and seen Pipkin drag me by de hair.” Kizzy ran a hand nervously down her braid. “I’d run back to Mama’s.”
“But why did Jacob hit Pipkin?”
“Uncle Jacob’s head got take away. He asked Mistah Pipkin not to haul on me like dat, but Pipkin, he yanked my hair harder, and I tripped. Tol’ me stop being clumsy. Kicked me. Dat when Jacob took a swing. It was me dat brought on de trouble.” The girl again smoothed her braid, as it trying to put herself back to rights.
“No. It was Pipkin, not you.”
Kizzy’s head sagged. She didn’t speak.
Harriet had a sick feeling and put a hand to the girl’s face. Tears wetted Harriet’s fingertips, and she brushed them away. “Listen. Nothing that man has ever done can make you bad,” she said. “You the same good girl you always was. A slaver can take every last thing ’cept the most important thing you own.”
A twig snapped in a nearby tree, and Harriet thought she heard the squeak of a possum. Kizzy still didn’t say anything, but she raised her chin.
“Your spirit,” Harriet continued sternly. “Who you are. That he can never have.”
Kizzy finally nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“So why you out here tonight?” Harriet asked.
The girl reached into the pocket of her dress and drew out a tin mug. “Pipkin, he sleep like a log mostly. I snuck out to get Uncle Jacob a drink.”
“I’ll go with you,” Harriet said. “After that, I need you to do something.”
Kizzy cocked her head. “What dat, ma’am?”
“Day after tomorrow, I’m coming back with the Yankees.” Harriet felt the girl startle. She gripped Kizzy’s knee. “They gone get y’all out a here. Take you to freedom.”
The girl drew a deep breath, yet when she spoke her voice was tight. “Everybody get dey freedom? My mama and brudduhs, too?”
“Uh-huh. But we need help. We need someone that can tell folks when the moment’s right that we coming for em—and to step lively. Think you can do that? Make em believe you?”
Kizzy pushed her braids back and squared her shoulders. “Yes, ma’am. I can, for true.”
“Then you got to lead em. But nobody can get wind ahead a time. Not your mama, not your brothers, nobody. Anyone you tell might tell somebody else. That’s how secrets fall apart.”
“Don’t you worry, ma’am,” Kizzy said. “I won’t tell a soul til de time come. But how I gone know?”
“I’ll be on the Yankee gunship,” Harriet said. “A big old boat with flags and colored soldiers. Can’t miss us. We’ll give a toot on our steam whistle. Then you got to holler to the treetops that the Yankees is coming to save y’all. Everybody got to hightail that very minute.”
“Morning or night?”
“Sunup,” Harriet said.
“Dayclean?” Kizzy said.
Harriet nodded, and the girl sprang to her feet with the impatience of youth.
Harriet stood. “But not for another day or two.”
“Yes, ma’am. I heard you. I got to get Uncle Jacob his watuh now.” Kizzy took Harriet’s hand this time and led her silently past the last cabin. A windowless building squatted only a few yards beyond the smokehouse. The girl lifted the iron bar that locked the jail from the outside. Its hinges groaned. When Kizzy closed the door behind them, everything went black.
The stink of shit and sweat assaulted Harriet’s nostrils. The air was thick and close. She recognized the splash of water being dipped from a barrel. Kizzy must be filling her mug. A rustle in a distant corner sounded like the scratch of a rat, though Harriet couldn’t see anything. The dark had extinguished her vision. She could tell her eyes were open only because of the dry air on them—and she blinked to be sure.
Kizzy took Harriet’s hand again. The girl must know the layout.
“Dis way, Moses. Listen for breathin’,” Kizzy said as they walked forward.
Harriet strained her ears. A moment later, she heard a low sigh as they made their way cautiously across the chamber. Then the child dropped Harriet’s hand and crouched down.
“Uncle Jacob,” she said. “It me, Kizzy.”
Harriet knelt beside the girl and put out her hands. Flesh. She felt flesh. A man’s bare limb took shape under her hand, though Harriet couldn’t tell if it was an arm or leg. The body was neither up nor down but instead angled sideways. She explored his form tentatively, unable to make out his position until she came to a shoulder suspended strangely. He seemed trussed in a harness of leather and iron, unable to stand or sit. The strain on his joints and muscles must be agonizing.
“Jacob,” Harriet whispered. “I’m here, too. Moses.”
“Help—” the man murmured, breathless. “Ah!” he exclaimed in pain when she tried to shift a strap that seemed to be cutting him.
“Water. Jest water,” he said.
Samuel’s face reared in Harriet’s mind. Seeing this would torture him. She whispered to Kizzy in the dark, “What they got him in?”
“Pipkin call it de Teacher.”
The girl made some kind of forward motion in the dark. Her youthful voice was fresh and encouraging. “Pipkin gone let you out tomorrow, Uncle Jacob. First ting. But I got you watuh for now.”
Harriet wondered if the girl actually knew Pipkin’s mind or was just keeping up Jacob’s spirits. Her thoughts raced as she heard an animal-like slurp. Getting Jacob out during the raid might prove impossible. The quarters weren’t close to the landing. Troops wouldn’t have time to come looking. But at least she knew where he was. That might help.
An awful creak filled the dark room as the prison door suddenly swung open. Harriet snatched the bag from her shoulder, yanked out the Colt revolver, and whirled around to meet the intruder.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I had a brother, Jim, who was sold to dress the young Missus for her wedding. The tree is still standing what I sat under to watch them sell Jim. I sat there and cried and cried, especially when they put the chains on him and carried him off. And I never felt so lonesome in my whole life.
Ben Johnson, Slave
KIZZY SEIZED HARRIET’S FREE HAND AS they faced the door together. Harriet hid the gun behind her skirt. A shaft of moonlight betrayed their location, lighting a path straight to them.
“Girl? You there, girl?”
Kizzy broke away. She ran toward the opening. Her toe caught on something, and she tripped.
A bent outline grabbed the child by the arm. “What you doing here?” It was a woman’s voice, low and fearful. “You want to git us all kilt?”
“No, Mama. I leaving now,” Kizzy said.
Worse than being spotted by a stranger was being trapped behind a bolted door. Harriet shoved her pistol back into the satchel and walked into the light. The landscape outside looked like noontime compared with the pitch-dark of the chamber.
The woman backed up. “Who dat?”
“I’m running from the Heyward place,” Harriet said. “Thought Jacob could help me. Guess not.”
“Keep running,” the crippled woman said.
“Let’s go home, Mama,” Kizzy said as she took her mother’s arm.
Harriet followed. When they reached the family shack, Kizzy allowed her mother to go ahead. Harriet reached for the girl’s hand. “You done good to give Jacob water,” she whispered. “But listen to your mama. Don’t take no more risks. You can help most by staying alive.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Kizzy said.
“Pipkin really say he letting Jacob out tomorrow?” Harriet asked.
“Yes’m. Dey short a hands on de rice trunks. Fore he conked out, Pipkin say he calc’lated Jacob learnt his lesson.”
Harriet’s stomach revolted at the thought of Kizzy lying beside the overseer, and she fought the urge to take the girl back to Port Royal. Both Kizzy and Jacob must await the gunships. On impulse, Harriet reached under her collar and drew out Se
ptima’s shell necklace. She pressed it into Kizzy’s hand. “This is to remind you a me.”
Kizzy clutched the necklace tightly. “But you be back, right?”
“You can count on me like the sun coming up,” Harriet said, and she slipped away as Kizzy followed her mother up the stairs. It was hard to tell how much time had passed. It must be short of an hour. Walter would be headed downriver.
She retraced her steps as quickly as she dared in the dim. The moon had sunk to just above the treetops. Once past the mansion, Harriet sprinted the final quarter-mile. Her breath came in gulps by the time she reached the rice trunk that held back the water of the tributary.
Harriet grabbed a handful of grass and climbed onto the high rice trunk. The tributary seemed soupy. Harriet threw the grass onto the water. The strands barely moved in the moonlight. The lazy inlet had gone slack. It couldn’t be much past one in the morning. Walter would return soon. Samuel must have already rowed past to pick up Charles downriver. They would be proceeding toward the Sound, as ordered. They had but four hours before the sky lightened, after which the pickets at Field’s Point and Tar Bluff would spot anyone on the river.
Time passed. Harriet’s eyelids fluttered. She stood up on the wooden gate and pinched her arms to stay focused, drawing deep, calming breaths. She mustn’t have a fit. Had it been ten minutes since she’d arrived at the tributary? Twenty? They risked being caught in daylight if they didn’t leave immediately.
Harriet glanced over her shoulder toward the Lowndes Plantation. It remained quiet. When she gazed again at the water, she no longer saw the strands of grass on the smooth surface. She climbed off the trunk, caught up a stick, and pitched it as far as she could, past the eddy at the tributary’s edge. The stick drifted downstream. The tide was turning.
Where was Walter? Harriet again looked over her shoulder. Where could she hide if he failed to appear? Low-lying rice fields offered no cover. She considered running back to the plantation or taking her chances in the forest behind. She peered anxiously at the river.
A whippoorwill announced the start of the day, though the sun still slept in the sea. The bird sang again. Harriet puckered her lips and trilled back. A boat came into view. Charles Simmons stood and threw Harriet a line. She caught the rope and tugged the balky dugout closer.
“Where’s Walter?” she whispered. “What you two doing here?”
“Samuel and I was waiting for you and him to pass,” Charles said in a low voice. “When you didn’t show, Samuel decided we best come back for you.”
“You was supposed to head for the Sound,” she said.
Samuel’s voice was low but distinct. “Change a plan,” he said.
“You find the last torpedo?” she asked.
“Yes’m,” Samuel said. “But this ain’t no time for a meeting bout it.”
Charles reached up. The tide was high enough that Harriet took his hand easily and jumped down into the dugout. The next instant, Samuel dug his oars into the water and swept them away. Harriet drew her shawl closer with shaking hands—thankful to hear about the torpedo but upset to learn about Walter. She sat in the deepest part of the craft, hugged her knees, and pushed the horrifying possibilities from her mind. The patrollers. The dogs. The Rebel pickets. She must believe he would be all right. They’d had narrow escapes before. Lord a mercy, watch over him, she prayed.
Samuel rowed with powerful, silent sweeps. Only his breath sounded above the rustle of the wind. The craft shot eastward toward the Sound as the tide picked up speed. His arms bunched and stretched like rods on a locomotive. Harriet heard a dog bark as they raced past the Nichols Plantation, and a rooster sounded on the other side of the river five or six miles later. Samuel shook his head without wasting a breath when she offered him a canteen, so she put the water to his lips, and he drank without breaking rhythm. When Charles leaned forward to switch places, Samuel again refused to stop.
The sky gradually turned a deep gray, and the bright stars dimmed. A gong sounded on some faraway plantation. It grew light enough for Harriet to glimpse slaves moving down a causeway toward the river, which meant the dugout was visible, too. She couldn’t imagine how they would escape without being spotted.
The sun peeped above the horizon as they neared Tar Bluff. Harriet spotted the dirt breastworks from half a mile away. A bright ray tipped the blade of a bayonet poking above the wall, and she waited for the Secesh holding the musket to look over the side as they approached. A lump rose in her throat, but Samuel rowed ever more quietly, and the bayonet didn’t move. Soon the river carried them past the picket station and into an oxbow turn where they couldn’t be seen. Harriet let out the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.
The river continued to ebb, though more slowly. Samuel was tiring as well. Sweat poured down his haggard face. As the river widened toward the sea, Fields Point, at last, appeared on a high bluff a hundred yards or more to their left. Harriet saw no bayonets, and the big cannons were still missing. The Secesh hadn’t yet refortified the river. Luck hadn’t abandoned them. They were almost to the Sound. Praise God.
A gray Confederate kepi hat suddenly appeared above the earthen fortification. Then another, and a tall guard peered over the wall. Harriet saw a white face looking down. The unmistakable cock of a shotgun traveled over the water. “Halt! Who goes there?” someone yelled.
Harriet slipped down in the dugout to make her body as small as possible. She pressed against the floor. The faraway promontory suddenly seemed right on top of them.
Another man called out. “Runaways!”
“Niggers! Halt, or I’ll shoot,” a voice cried.
The speed of the dugout increased. Harriet turned her head away in the trus-me-Gawd. She closed her eyes. Didn’t want to see. It was hard to believe that He wanted her home so soon. Please, Lord. Not now, Lord.
A shotgun boomed.
Charles lunged atop her, covering her body. The rabbit foot around his neck struck her cheek. A crash in the side of the dugout let her know they had been hit. The boat veered sideways, and the oars splashed sloppily. What had happened? Harriet pushed against Charles’s chest, all muscle and bone, but he pinned her. The water underneath didn’t hum as fast as before. Other shots rang out, though more distantly, and the riverbank went quiet. A seagull cried overhead.
Charles released her. He and Harriet sat up together. The dugout had entered the wide estuary into which the Combahee and other rivers emptied on their way to the Atlantic. Samuel still rowed, but his hat was gone. Shiny liquid coursed down his face. He rowed with his eyes shut tight against the blood. Fragments of wood clung to his coat. Buckshot had hit the gunwale right past the oarlock and sent splinters flying.
Harriet dug her nails into her shoulder seam without thinking and tore the sleeve off her dress. The gingham ripped raggedly, exposing her shoulder to the stiff breeze. Charles shifted without a word to allow Harriet to get around him in the boat.
“Samuel,” she said. “We cleared the Point. They behind us now. Stop.”
The waterman slumped forward with his eyes closed. He rested his powerful forearms on his knees, oars dripping water into the sea. His hands trembled.
“I gone look at your forehead,” she told him. Harriet blotted blood from his brow. A gash near the crown bled profusely, though she saw it was a surface wound, thank Jesus. A buckshot pellet had grazed his scalp. She tied the cotton around the laceration. The faded fabric blossomed bright red.
“You need to lie down,” she told him. She took Samuel’s hands and guided him into the middle of the boat as she scooted back. He stayed low so as not to upset the balance of the narrow craft. Charles climbed carefully around them and took up the oars.
Samuel lay on his back, knees bent. Harriet held his head in her lap, thankful that he was alive. She picked chips of wood from his coat and face.
Harriet recalled her mother doing something similar years before, the day Harriet was injured. She had been harvesting flax that morning
, and dirt, broken seeds, and bits of fiber had turned her hair into a bush. Like any young girl, Harriet had been embarrassed about her appearance, so before entering the village store, she’d hid her filthy mane under a thick scarf tied low on her brow. That vanity saved her life. When the overseer told Harriet to seize the runaway boy, she saw him grab the iron weight the second before he threw it. The bulky scarf mitigated the blow to her head, but its strands had been driven into her skull. Harriet regained consciousness hours later to see Mama leaning over her in the cabin’s dim light, teasing thread from flesh and bone.
Harriet now removed splinters from Samuel’s hair and collar. The weight of his head, and the rise and fall of his chest, were all she asked of God. Tired as she was, she didn’t dare close her eyes for fear of blacking out. Instead, she chanted under her breath, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only son, our Lord. The tang of iron was in her mouth. It seemed she would taste it to the end of her days.
The tide guided them toward Morgan’s Island on the far side of the Sound, where they stopped to rest. All three of them slept for several hours on the warm sand of the deserted shore. When the afternoon was nearly spent, Charles rowed them up to the Beaufort wharf. He threw a line to a contraband cleaning fish on the dock. The man cleated their boat and gave his hand to Samuel, who clambered out of the dugout with Charles pushing from behind. Samuel staggered onto the floating dock as if his ankle troubled him anew.
“Montgomery,” he muttered. “Got to see—”
“We got to clean you up first,” Harriet said. “You don’t need stitches, but you do need soap.”
She took one arm while Charles supported the other. Harriet thought about the flies at the contraband hospital and the stench of Pipkin’s jail. The latter information she must keep from Samuel for now. He’d had enough of a shock, and needed somewhere clean to lie down.
“We going to my place,” she told him. “Or you ain’t gone make it to Montgomery.”
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