by Wendy Lawton
Harriet Tubman overcame terrible fears by forging ahead with her belief in God and not allowing anything or anyone to keep her from her mission of faith, hope and love. What an inspiration for the young—and the old—of our time! Her life is a beautiful example of one who followed her strong moral sense of right and wrong.
Kathy Lennon Daris
Author and founding member of The Lennon Sisters
An authentic re-creation of life as a slave child and the comfort and courage only God could supply.
Pamela Walls
Author, Abby & The South Seas Adventures series
Courage to Run
A STORY BASED ON THE
LIFE OF HARRIET TUBMAN
Wendy Lawton
MOODY PUBLISHERS
CHICAGO
© 2009 by
WENDY LAWTON
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
All Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version.
Published in association with the Books & Such Literary Agency, 52 Mission Circle, Suite 122, PMB 170, Santa Rosa, CA 95409-5370, www.booksandsuch.biz.
Editor: Cessandra Dillon
Interior Design: Ragont Design
Cover Design: Barb Fisher, LeVan Fisher Design
Cover Photos: Bettmann/Corbis
We hope you enjoy this book from Moody Publishers. Our goal is to provide high-quality, thought-provoking books and products that connect truth to your real needs and challenges. For more in formation on other books and products written and produced from a biblical perspective, go to www.moodypublishers.com or write to:
Moody Publishers
820 N. LaSalle Boulevard
Chicago, IL 60610
7 9 10 8 6
Printed in the United States of America
For Rae Lynn,
a daughter of rare courage
who lost everything except her faith
before coming home to her new family.
Contents
1. How Long, O Lord?
2. Go Down, Moses
3. A Long Way from Home
4. God’s Goin’ Trouble the Water
5. Wade in the Water
6. I Hear the Train A-Comin’
7. ’Buked and Scorned
8. Oh, Freedom!
9. Steal Away
10. Keep A-Inchin’ Along
11. It’s Me, O Lord
12. Let My People Go
Epilogue
Glossary
How Long,
O Lord?
Araminta Ross!”
Minty heard Annie’s call, but the young girl’s toes just wiggled deeper into the warm dirt as she sat partially hidden by the drying bush. A slender snake slowly zigged its way toward the fields, enticed out of winter hibernation by the balmy morning. The buzz of insects announced that the cold spell was over. Minty hugged her brown knees as she lifted her face to the warmth and opened her mouth as if to invite the sunshine deep inside.
“Minty, you ain’t foolin’ Annie. Git yourself in here and tend to these little’uns.” The timeworn woman punctuated her words with the sound of a willow switch whipping against the door frame of the cabin.
It didn’t take much for Minty to imagine the feel of that switch against the back of her legs. The old slave woman rarely used it, but it was long remembered by the children.
“Comin’.” Minty jumped up and tried to brush the dirt off her rough linen shift. She gave up. It was so soiled already, a little more dirt hardly mattered. “I’m comin’ fast as I can, Annie.”
“You help git these babies fed, or Annie’ll teach you some sense.”
Annie talked tough, but Minty already knew that most of it was bluster. Annie loved her babies, including the grown ones like Minty.
A trough half full of cornmeal mush was placed on the hard-packed dirt floor and children toddled toward it from all sides of the cramped cabin. Minty handed pieces of mussel shells to those children who were old enough to use them as utensils. The littlest ones used their fingers and managed to find their mouths most of the time. Children weren’t issued clothing until they were almost ready to work, so cleanup was always easy.
Minty was born a slave on a plantation near Bucktown in Tidewater, Maryland. Her basket name, given to her on the day of her birth six or seven years ago, was Araminta, but everyone called her Minty. When full grown, she would be called by her mother’s given name—Harriet. Her mother never used the name Harriet. She went by Old Rit, even to her children most of the time. Minty didn’t see why she couldn’t have Harriet now since Old Rit never used it. Her mother just laughed when she asked, and told her, “Be patient, honey-girl. By’n’ by. Jes’ be patient.”
Minty hated those words. They were her mother’s answer to everything. How could she be patient when she longed to jump and run and grow up all at the same time?
Minty’s father, Ben, and Old Rit were slaves on the same plantation, owned by Edward Brodas. Most of the slaves on the Brodas Plantation lived in the Quarter—a collection of ramshackle cabins located in a dirt clearing between the barn and the fields.
Minty loved the closeness of the cabins and the way it made all the slaves in the Quarter sort of feel like family. Minty’s cabin was like all the others—rough-hewn timber walls chinked with mud, covered by a sagging roof. Inside was a single room with a packed dirt floor. A wattle and daub fireplace stood against one end. There were no partitions or windows. The dark, smoky room was home to Minty’s entire family. Piles of worn quilts and scratchy blankets lined the walls and served as the only furnishings, but most of the living was done outdoors anyway. In one corner, a deep hole had been dug out of the floor. An old board covered the opening. Rit’s hoard of sweet potatoes stayed cool long after harvest in this potato hole.
A broken piece of mirror was fastened to the wall near the door by two bent nails. It was too high for Minty, but every now and then Ben would lift her up so she could see. Wasn’t much to see. She was small for her age, but sturdy. “Built like a bantam rooster,” Ben used to say. Minty liked that. Those bantys were tough little birds. She laughed at the thought of herself hopping around the yard, scrapping for corn.
Old Rit worked in the Brodas house all day, helping the Missus. Ben worked in the woods cutting timber.
“Didn’t used to cut so much timber,” Ben said one day after work, “but times been settling hard on the Brodas Plantation lately.”
Many nights Minty pretended to be asleep and listened to her parents’ whispered conversations.
“Started on a new stand today, Rit,” her father whispered, talking about a new grove of trees he was to cut down.
“What’ll he do when the timber runs out?” Rit asked.
Minty could always tell when her mother was worried because she’d rub her thumb and finger together real fast-like. Her rough hands made a sound like someone was sanding wood. That sandpapery rhythm often lasted long into the night.
“Tobaccy’s bad these days. Not much call for cotton, or wheat neither,” Ben whispered. “Just’smornin’ I heard the field hands marking time with a singin’ of ‘Poor Massa.’”
“Master Brodas best not catch wind of it,” Rit said. The rubbing sound got faster. Minty knew the words of the song:
Poor Massa, so they say;
Down in the heel, so they say;
Not one shilling, so they say;
God Almighty bless you, so they say.
Rit slowly sucked air between her teeth—a sound that meant trouble was brewing. “Been noticing things lookin’ pretty shabby’round the Big House. Don’t look like Master�
�s growing enough of anything to keep the place goin’.”
“Seems Master’s mostly raisin’ colored folk these days for hirin’ out or worse,” Ben said.
Minty knew what her father meant by “worse.” Each time the slave trader came to nearby Cambridge, Master rode into town. Since the invention of the cotton gin, plantations down South couldn’t seem to get enough slaves. Congress halted the slave trade in 1808, so no more slave ships could land, bringing newly captured slaves from Africa. The only way to get more slaves was to buy them from other plantations.
Each time Master returned, Minty’s stomach ached and she couldn’t get a bite of food to go down. She waited for the sorrowing to begin. It didn’t take long. Screams and cries erupted throughout the Quarter as families were told that one of their own had been “sold South.” Late into the night, groups of slaves huddled together to sing in mournful tones:
This time tomorrow night,
Where will I be?
I’ll be gone, gone, gone,
Down to Tennessee.
Sometimes they recited Scripture in unison: “The Lord is my Shepherd…” When the reciting finished, a lone voice broke the silence:
Swing low, sweet chariot,
Comin’ for to carry me home.
Other voices joined in to swell the song:
Swing low, sweet chariot,
Comin’ for to carry me home.
When all the folk were sung out, the night hushed. Even the crickets, whippoorwills, and hoot owls quieted. Slaves made their way back to their cabins, and long into the night you could hear the keening, weeping sounds of those who knew they’d never set eyes on their loved ones again.
Minty’s own family still sorrowed. She had ten brothers and sisters, but just before harvest last year, two of Minty’s sisters were sold South. Never would the young girl forget the picture of her sisters, chained by neck and leg shackles to a coffle—a chain gang of slaves—gathered from other plantations. The slave driver kept snapping his rawhide whip toward the coffle so that none of the slaves dared linger. Tears silently streaked her sisters’ dusty faces.
Minty sat atop a fence post and watched them until she could no longer even see the dust from their trail. She continued her vigil for hours longer, squinting into the sun. Her stomach ached for days afterward. At night she listened to her mother rock back and forth on the floor, crying and praying, “How long, O Lord? How long?”
Annie was too old to be sold. She was too old to work the fields, either, so Master set her to tending the children in the Quarter. Minty helped Annie by tending and feeding the little ones. After the children finished scooping up the last of the mush, Minty carried the tray back to the cookhouse. She loved the happy jumble of toddlers and babies in Annie’s cabin, but oh, how she hated being cooped up indoors. Whenever she was in the cabin she felt jumpy—kind of like she couldn’t breathe.
Today, she took the long way ’round, circling by the fields. She lingered as she watched the field slaves move to a throbbing rhythm hummed in time with the motion of their work. Sometimes the song was a call and a response—someone would sing one line and everybody else would answer. No matter what, it sounded beautiful to Minty’s ears. Sometimes she almost imagined she could feel the deep hum through the soles of her feet.
“Hey, you. You, gal.”
Minty’s heart began to thump in her chest. It was the overseer. He was in charge of the plantation and answered directly to Master Brodas. This swaggering man with a sweaty, beet-red face carried a long, braided leather whip. Many times Minty had seen him slash it across the backs of slaves to speed up a task. Sometimes, for no reason, he got a funny look in his eyes and the corner of his mouth twitched. The slaves knew it meant he was itching to whip someone—anyone.
“Yes, suh?” Minty looked at the ground. You didn’t dare look white folk directly in the eye, else they might think you too bold.
“How old are you, gal?”
“ ’Bout six or seven.” Minty was never quite sure, since slaves didn’t mark birthdays. Someone said she ’d been born in 1820 or 1821.
“Whose child are you?”
“Old Rit and Ben.”
“Hmmm.” He shaded his eyes from the sun with his hand as he lowered his head and looked at her for a long minute. “Well, you git, now. You hear?”
He didn’t have to tell Minty twice. She turned and ran back to the dark safety of Annie’s cabin. Old Rit’ll be mighty unhappy to hear ’bout the overseer takin’ notice of me. Can’t do no good to come under his calculatin’ eye, that’s for sure.
Go Down,
Moses
Minty always waited until all the mothers picked up their children before she left. Today, one of the mothers didn’t come. The setting sun was already beginning to color the sky and baby Nicey was still at Annie’s.
“Somethin’s wrong, Minty. That’s for sure.” Annie rocked faster. “Um, um, um.”
“Where’s Nicey’s mother?” Minty asked.
“Um, um, um.” Annie shook her head as she made the dire sound deep in her throat.
It was nearly dark when one of the young women came to get Nicey. “Don’t do a body no good to get that ol’ overseer riled,” she said.
“Where’s Ruby?” Annie asked. Ruby was Nicey’s mother.
“We was hoeing ’round the corn shoots today and she chopped one of the plants off by mistake. Jes’ chopped it off. Overseer started hollerin’ and yellin’.”
“Lawd, have mercy.” Annie continued to rock almost as if it could keep trouble away if she rocked hard enough.
“Made her so nervous-like, she chopped off another one.”
Minty picked up the baby and gave her a piece of rawhide to chew on since Nicey was cutting teeth. Minty knew what was coming next. She should have recognized that satisfied glint in the overseer’s eye when she ran into him.
“Overseer picked up his whip and slashed the clothes right off her back.”
“Um, um, um.”
“When Ruby wouldn’t get up, he hauled her over to that hickory tree and tied her hands ’round with a strip of rawhide and whupped her and whupped her and—”
“Um, um um.” The chair creaked under Annie’s furious rocking.
“She been cut down now and Old Rit is layin’ pork grease on her back.”
Minty had to get outside. The room felt too close. With Nicey on one hip, she walked ’round and ’round the yard. How she hated slavery. All her life she had heard stories like Ruby’s.
“When I grow up, Nicey, I’m gonna be free.” Minty didn’t know how, but even if she had to fly like a bird, she ’d be free. “Maybe I’ll take you with me. You’d like to be free, wouldn’t you, Baby?”
“That kind of talk gonna get you whupped, girl, just like Nicey’s mama.” The young woman, done telling about Ruby, came up behind Minty and took the baby from her arms. “You be careful, now, Minty-girl. Y’hear? You don’t need to go talkin’ crazy.”
After saying good-bye to Annie, Minty headed over toward her cabin. The Quarter was quiet tonight, so she took the long way—weaving in and around the other cabins before going home to supper. Once she got home, she ’d be indoors again. As she meandered, bits of hushed conversations punctuated the quiet. The smell of night-blooming jasmine was a welcome relief from the stench of the outhouses.
Minty caught the smell of supper cooking all around the Quarter. The house slaves usually ate the leftovers from Master’s table, but most of the families cooked their own evening meal.
Slaves never got paid for their work, but they did get a ration of food and clothing. Master Brodas would see that each slave received a portion of the cornmeal ground from the year’s crop. They got pickled herring and pork occasionally, usually just enough to flavor the food. Sometimes a little wheat flour was added to the ration. Each family was allowed a small plot of land they could use to grow vegetables. Old Rit grew sweet potatoes and collard greens, black-eyed peas, cabbage, turnips, and beets. The men trapp
ed rabbit and possum regularly. Sometimes on Saturday afternoon they fished in Buckwater River, snagged oysters out of one of the oyster beds, or trapped crabs. Depending on the season, sometimes they had plenty to eat. In the winter, stores got low and Minty went to sleep with an almost-empty stomach many nights.
The clothing was made by the slaves from cloth woven and dyed on the plantation. Every field hand was given two changes of clothing each year and one pair of shoes. Older children got a shift, almost like a long shirt. Little children and babies could run naked, so they received no clothing.
When the family’s clothing wore out, Old Rit was careful to save every scrap. The threadbare scraps were pieced into quilts and stuffed with cotton when she could get it, corn shucks when she couldn’t. Torn pieces of clothing were made over for the children.
As Minty drew near their home, she knew it was time to go in. She heard the sandpapery fidgeting of her mother’s fingers even before she stepped into the cabin. A piece of pork fat was sizzling in the iron kettle hanging from a hook in the fireplace. It smelled good and reminded Minty it had been a long time since the noon meal.
Two of her brothers and a sister were sitting on the quilts along the edge of the room, but most were out and about. Everyone managed to converge on the cabin right about suppertime. It was always dark in the smoky cabin, but tonight even the open door yielded no light since the sun had set and supper was late. Old Rit must have stayed with Ruby until her husband came home.
“Minty, I hear you walked ’round by the fields this afternoon and came under the overseer’s eye.”
Minty could tell that her mama was none too pleased.
“Last thing I wanted was for that man to see how you growin’.” The rubbing sound stopped as Old Rit poured water from the bucket into the kettle. A cloud of steam rose from the first splashes of water on the hot iron. The water would have to come to a boil before the cornmeal could be thrown in.
Rit sat and pulled Minty down next to her. “I had hoped to have you working with me up at the Big House before that man got any ideas.”