The Tubman Command

by Elizabeth Cobbs

  “Help me,” the woman said and put out her hands. “My baby—”

  Harriet pulled the woman to her feet and hooked an arm under her left elbow. She was Harriet’s height but at least thirty pounds heavier. “Baby gone be fine,” Harriet said.

  Cradling Jacob’s shoulders, Samuel shook his brother. The slats of the bed creaked under his brother’s uncaring weight. “Come on,” Samuel said. “Don’t leave, brother.”

  Mayline looked down at her husband. “He gone already. I seen him go,” she said and sagged against Harriet.

  “Samuel, we have to get back to the ship,” Harriet said. “We can’t miss it.”

  Samuel rubbed Jacob’s cheeks and shook him harder. “Not now,” he said as if explaining facts to a stubborn younger sibling. “We almost free.”

  “Samuel,” Harriet said. She tamped down her growing panic. “We got to go.”

  Samuel lowered Jacob’s body onto the pallet and stared at the dead man’s face. Then he reached over the bottom of the bed where the blanket had slipped to the floor and drew the shroud over Jacob’s head. He bent and touched his forehead to his brother’s.

  Samuel straightened a moment later. He took the pregnant woman’s other arm without a word. Soon they were out the door and maneuvering down the steps.

  Harriet stopped at the bottom. “Hold up.”

  She glanced at Samuel to make sure he had a firm grip on Mayline, and then Harriet took the steps of the neighboring shack. The door hung open. A gourd spilled water across a crude table, but no one was inside. Kizzy and her family had made it to the dock.

  Harriet ran out. Samuel was already down the path between the cabins, guiding Jacob’s wife. Harriet caught up. Ash filled the air of the besieged plantation. They began to run. The cry of a horse followed a burst of gunfire. The trio passed the overseer’s smoking foundations. A briar snagged Harriet’s dress, and her shoe caught the hem of her long skirt. The old fabric ripped along the bottom. Harriet kicked the sagging fringe out of her way.

  They were almost at the causeway when shots rang out. Ahead, black faces scattered, some running downriver, some for the trees. Harriet spotted the overturned wagon. Behind it, a colored soldier with a Springfield rifle took aim. Another ducked out of sight to reload. Just out of range, a man in a dented bowler on the far side of the clearing held a smoking pistol skyward. He gripped a woman around the neck with his other hand. Pipkin’s fleshy face was red with rage. The woman looked paralyzed with fear. He marched her by the throat toward a group that clutched odd household belongings next to a mounted Confederate.

  Closer to the overturned wagon, but sheltered behind the torso of a dead horse sprawled on the ground, a Rebel soldier exchanged fire with the colored sharpshooters near the water. Tethered to the dock, the last tender was nearly full. The other had disappeared. The shiny current pulled strongly toward the sea.

  The Rebel soldier on the ground rolled over to yank ammunition from his cartridge box as Harriet, Samuel, and Mayline entered the clearing. The fallen horse lay directly in their path. The Rebel looked up at them, startled, his blue eyes strangely bright in his dirty face.

  Harriet jumped over the outstretched leg of the dead animal as they ran past, holding tight to Mayline’s arm. Then they were beyond the overturned wagon, down the causeway, and onto the landing. A white officer waved them onto the boat. Samuel and Harriet helped the pregnant woman down and climbed in behind her.

  The officer spoke to the two oarsmen. “Ready?” Harriet looked around for Kizzy but couldn’t see her. Faces and bodies were crammed together. An infant wailed in an old man’s palsied arms. Sweaty troops holding sledgehammers crowded close.

  Harriet’s throat tightened. Gunfire sounded again across the causeway. She looked up. Running down the path from the collapsed rice mill, a handful of slaves appeared out of nowhere. A colored soldier stepped from the broken wagon, exposing himself to fire to draw attention away from the fleeing men and women, and he opened on the Rebel sheltered behind the dead horse. The Secesh ducked, and a puff of dust flew up from the animal’s hide. The small band kept coming.

  “Retreat! Double-quick!” the captain on the dock yelled to the men behind the cart. The soldier who had discharged his rifle ran for the boat. The last two followed.

  The small band of runaways neared the Confederate on the ground. A girl ran in front. She pulled the hand of an old man.

  Pipkin charged forward, heedless of the Yankees. “Stop, niggers. Stop, or I’ll shoot!”

  The Rebel behind the dead horse pivoted to face the renegades, and then he fired. The old man spun sideways. His hands flew up, and he fell to earth. Blood gushed from his chest. Others halted in shock. The girl in front sprinted forward without her companions. Braids that had come loose swung free. Her bare feet pounded the hard ground. A shell necklace bounced on her chest. It was Kizzy.

  Harriet stood in the boat. “Run!”

  Just then, numerous armed horsemen galloped over the rise behind the mansion. They dove their mounts down the path. Reinforcements had arrived.

  “Stop, you goddamn nigger!” Pipkin shouted. He picked up speed, though age and bulk disadvantaged him against the girl. His derby tumbled behind him on the ground.

  Kizzy soared over the fallen horse like a hare. She was on the causeway.

  With the last troops aboard, the blue-uniformed captain jumped into the tender. A slip of water opened between the boat and the landing. “Wait!” Harriet cried to the oarsmen.

  Kizzy’s feet hit the landing. She was almost there. Pipkin stopped a dozen yards behind. He threw down his pistol and grabbed the shotgun off his back.

  Harriet heard nothing. The world went silent as she reached out her hands to will the girl to safety. Kizzy pelted down the dock toward the tender, devouring distance.

  A boom filled the air, and instead of flying forward, the girl collapsed, hands flat out. Her fingers fumbled on the rough surface of the landing, as if picking shelled peas.

  The tender pulled swiftly into the river.

  The overseer hauled Kizzy up by the collar. She wasn’t dead, but a red stain spread across her right shoulder. He spun her around, and the wounded girl hobbled back toward the plantation.

  Rebel horsemen jumped from their mounts, charged past Pipkin onto the landing, took aim, and shot. The guns blared loudly, but their bullets disappeared into the black water with barely a ripple as Harriet sank onto the bench and covered her face as the powerful current sucked the tender downriver.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Remembering the treatment that these poor people would suffer for their attempt to escape to the Yankees, it was hard to leave them. But it was impossible to take another one, and sadly we swung away from the landing.

  Captain William Lee Apthorp, 2nd South Carolina

  MINUTES LATER A DECKHAND REACHED DOWN to pull Harriet aboard the John Adams. Two other men held the tender to prevent the river from carrying away the lighter craft. The wind had picked up. Dark clouds gathered in the direction of the Sound. Just before, Samuel had guided Jacob’s wife into the hands of a sailor, and the pair disappeared into the ship.

  Harriet placed a foot on the main deck and allowed the sailor to help her up by the elbow. Her hands trembled with shock, yet she couldn’t allow herself to think about what had just happened. They must still retrieve the advance troops at Tar Bluff and Fields Point.

  “Where you sending the sick?” she asked the deckhand.

  He reached down for the next passenger coming aboard. “Hurricane deck.”

  Drops of water from the hull of a tender overhead fell on Harriet’s scarred neck as she ducked under the craft. Slaves they had picked up along the river sat and stood everywhere, all talking excitedly. Mesmerized young men studied the rifles of the colored soldiers who lined the railings. The racehorse was tethered near the stern. Harriet heard its whinny as a woman asked where her young daughter might relieve herself. “Thataway, ma’am,” Harriet said, pointing toward t
he head, and she then made her way up the ladder to the hurricane deck. Someone had propped a bag of rice against the door of the saloon.

  Pregnant women, old people, and children with eyes red from smoke sat on sacks of dry rice. A man with his leg in a splint was propped against a wall, eyes seamed against pain. The confusion was such that it took a few minutes for Harriet to spot Samuel. He balanced on one knee in the far corner, talking with Jacob’s wife, who sat against the wall. A tall woman with a water jug looked down at the pair.

  Harriet stepped over the legs of the wounded man to reach Mayline.

  “She doing okay?” Harriet asked the woman with the jug, though as the words left her mouth, she realized it was the refugee who had stood on the chair at the Heyward Plantation. An arresting woman with deeply arched eyebrows, she wore the same indigo headscarf. Samuel’s wife was a pretty woman.

  “She look healt’y t’ you?” Lucy said with a pronounced Gullah accent, not taking her eyes from Jacob’s widow. She wiped away a tear as she spoke.

  Samuel gazed up, his expression stoic. He must have decided that mourning would have to wait, though grief showed in the heavy lines that bracketed his mouth. He glanced from Harriet to the woman with the jug, then again at Jacob’s wife.

  Samuel tugged at a sack of grain to make space between it and the wall. “Luce,” he said to the woman next to Harriet, “wedge that jug here, where Mayline can get at it. It ain’t too too full, is it?” The directness of Samuel’s inquiry suggested familiarity, and Harriet caught the echo of other questions across the years: When would supper be ready? Did they need more firewood? Where would they get shoes for the boys? Had Master Heyward said anything about being short of cash?

  Lucy squatted to place the jug on the floor between the wall and the sack of rice. “I gots to get back to de chillun, Mayline,” she said and arranged an army blanket that had slipped from her sister-in-law’s shoulders. “You res’ easy now. We gone take care y’all.”

  The pregnant refugee choked up. Tears glistened on her cheeks. “Can’t b’lieve I made it. Can’t b’lieve he didn’t.”

  Lucy wiped Mayline’s cheeks with her hand. “Me neither. But you and his baby here now.”

  Samuel rose. He looked at Harriet, then at his wife. “This is Moses,” he said to Lucy. “She commands the scouts.”

  He had introduced Lucy to Harriet, not the other way around, Harriet noticed as she detected a shimmy under her feet.

  Lucy stood. “You in charge? A de men?”

  Harriet cleared her throat. “Yes’m. Jest when we scouting.”

  Lucy laid a hand on Samuel’s arm. “Bless you for watching obuh dem.”

  “Moses planned the raid,” Samuel said. “She found Jacob—” His fists closed, and he didn’t finish the sentence.

  Lucy’s hand tightened on his sleeve, and she cocked her head sideways as if observing an odd phenomenon. “Ki. Leel gal like you?” she said to Harriet. “You must got a man’s head.”

  Harriet recalled Lucy rallying the other slaves. She thought Lucy’s head probably worked like hers. “Somebody got to give orders,” Harriet said.

  “Praise Gawd, you can git back to you own fambly now,” Lucy replied. She looked at her husband and smiled. “Our fambly with my sistahs.” Lucy shook his arm. “Coming, Pa?”

  “Not now,” he said.

  “But de boys,” Lucy said. “Dey can’t take dey eyes off a you.”

  Samuel straightened as if the thought of his sons made him feel bigger. The lines in his face softened. “Hardly recognized Sammy, he growed so much.”

  “Tall like his daddy,” Lucy said. She jiggled his arm. “Come see em.”

  Samuel shook his head. “Colonel Montgomery needs me.”

  Lucy dropped his arm and put her hands on her hips. She stood a little taller. “Dem boys need you.”

  Samuel frowned. “Didn’t you say they with your sisters?”

  Harriet now heard the echo of old arguments. She backed up a step. “Thank the Lord you made it aboard,” she told Lucy. “I jest wanted to see Mayline got settled.” Harriet turned away and closed her ears to the couple as she left the saloon. Only the mission counted, she told herself, and concentrated on the vibration that came up through her soles. The boilers were stoked, paddle wheels turning. The deckhands must have secured the last tender. The John Adams was sailing downriver. Into a trap, if the Confederates had finally mobilized.

  Outside, the sky was darker than before. A rising wind had mostly cleared the ash from the air, but storm clouds gathered to the east. Harriet climbed the ladder to the pilothouse. The ensign waved from the doorway as she took the last steps. The chair he had put out for her earlier was gone.

  “Captain Vaught doesn’t need help scouting the torpedoes, ma’am. We charted them on the way upriver,” he called.

  “Colonel Montgomery with you?” Harriet asked.

  “No, ma’am, he’s on one of the lower decks.”

  Harriet backed down. She didn’t see the colonel on the hurricane deck, so she continued below. She found him at the bow of the boiler deck, speaking with Samuel.

  “—for now,” the rawboned Jayhawker was saying.

  “Yes, Colonel Montgomery,” Samuel said.

  Montgomery looked to Harriet as she approached. “Moses. You can help by keeping the contraband calm. We’re stopping at Tar Bluff for Captain Carver and his men. The Weed will pick up Captain Thompson at Fields Point. Be ready for anything.”

  “Yes, sir,” Harriet said.

  At that moment, an officer from the 3rd Rhode Island Artillery elbowed his way through the refugees who crowded the railing. “Colonel,” the white officer said with a hurried salute, “we’ve got to clear the hurricane deck. My men need room to maneuver.”

  Montgomery nodded. “Moses,” he said, “you and Samuel get busy. Spread out.”

  Over the next half hour, Harriet waved refugees coming down from the hurricane deck onto the jammed lower levels of the ship. She ran into Walter, whom she told about Jacob and Kizzy. His right eyebrow twitched, and he rubbed it with a knuckle. “Hanging’s t-t-too good for P-P-Pipkin,” Walter said.

  At that moment, an old man behind them said to a companion, “Dis remind me when I come from de Congo. So many ooman die, dey only mens left by time we reach Cuba. Buckra jest pitch dem bodies overboard.”

  Walter shot Harriet a look. “Let’s get folks to put their backs to the railing,” he said quietly. “If they keep their eyes on each other instead a the riverbank, they won’t be worrying about t-t-trouble ahead.”

  Harriet hardly noticed the river as she circulated among the refugees. “Face the smokestack,” she instructed. “Hold tight to your chil’ren til the river goes so wide you can’t see the other side,” she said, realizing that few had ever spied the ocean. “It gone be a couple hours yet.” When two young men balked at turning their backs to the view, Harriet explained that the colored troops needed help. The youths jumped at the opportunity to assist the uniformed men, and within short order, they had gotten those on the boiler deck seated and mostly quiet, except for the babies. Tension crept over the ship as everyone realized they weren’t yet safe. An hour passed.

  Harriet positioned herself between two soldiers at the portside railing, facing the north bank, and took tweezers from her satchel to worry the splinter out of her palm. When finished, she plucked at her collar to let air into her shirt. The humidity had thickened.

  The Secesh must have finally learned what had happened. Their field artillery would be on the road to Tar Bluff or Fields Point. It was baffling that the gunships had encountered so little opposition thus far. Could the Secesh commander be even more incompetent than they’d thought, or was he grouping his forces to smash them at the end? Harriet guessed that the Adams had only a mile or so before the first Rebel fort. The river still moved toward the sea, yet the black water had turned sluggish. It must be close to two in the afternoon. Earlier in the day, Captain Vaught had said the ebb tide would s
peed their escape until then. After two o’clock, the incoming tide would fight them—though it would also raise the water level to float them over the bar.

  Harriet scanned downriver for the Harriet Weed, hoping Septima’s sister Juno was aboard. She closed her eyes briefly. Dear Lord, please let Juno be on the Weed, she prayed. As if in answer, Harriet heard a faraway ship’s whistle. The Weed. It must be near Field’s Point. A moment later, another distant trill echoed across the marshes in the far distance. Then another. Three altogether. The signal for distress. The Weed had encountered Rebels.

  The vibration under Harriet’s feet increased. Two blasts sounded from the ship’s whistle as the Adams gunned her engine. The river took another bend. On their left, the fort at Tar Bluff appeared. A Union officer on the dock urgently waved his hat. Troops clustered behind him.

  “Hallelujah!” said a soldier standing to Harriet’s left. He spoke over her head to a man on her right. “See dat? Didn’t lose a single sojer!”

  The Adams backed water at the last moment. They came alongside the dock so quickly that Harriet feared they were going to ram it. But the ship slowed in time, and a gangplank went out. As the advance guard ran aboard and vanished below, Harriet heard Montgomery. “Double-quick!” the colonel yelled. “Cast off!”

  The Adams pulled away and picked up speed. Black soot from the smokestack filled the air. The ship’s paddle wheels dug trenches in the slack tide. They sailed another couple miles. Clouds overhead grew ominous. They were closing on Fields Point: the end of the Combahee and last obstacle to freedom. When the John Adams rounded the last bend, Harriet spied the Weed treading water at the river’s mouth. Puffs of gray smoke issued from her guns. The ship was firing at the road beyond the fort. On the landing, a white officer and a handful of colored soldiers stood with their backs to the river, guns trained at the promontory above. Just then, an enemy shell careened over their heads. It hit the slope next to the dock. Dirt flew onto the landing. The colored troops ducked, but they kept their muskets trained above.