A Light to My Path

by Lynn Austin

  He needed to pray. Jesus would help him. Eli said Massa Jesus was always listening, always standing by ready to answer his prayers. “Please help me, Massa Jesus,” he murmured. “Please, please help me!” He glanced around frantically, searching for help, waiting for Jesus to come. But one of the white men dragged him through the gate and slammed it shut.

  Inside the fortress, his captors separated the men from the women and children, pushing them into two different jail cells. The big slave who had spoken to Grady in the wagon pulled him into the men’s cage with him. The air seemed alive with defiance and anger while the white men were present, but as soon as the door slammed shut and they left, Grady felt his fellow captives’ despair. The atmosphere was so thick with it that his insides writhed. He trembled uncontrollably. Why was this happening to him?

  The cell was barren and unlit, the floor strewn with straw. The stench of filth filled every breath Grady took. Eli kept Massa’s stables back home cleaner than this. Grady didn’t want the filth to touch him, but there was no place to sit except the floor. As hours passed and he grew too weak with fear to stand any longer, he finally sank down, huddling with his knees drawn up to his chin, trembling. Each man seemed alone in the crowded room, unaware of the others, as if they not only were locked in this room but locked away inside themselves, as well.

  Grady closed his eyes and tried to picture his mother’s face. She was usually so happy, always humming or singing as she went about her work. But all he could remember was the terror he’d seen in her eyes that morning, the anguish he’d heard in her voice. He tried to recall the touch of her graceful hands as they soothed him, caressed him—but he couldn’t. He felt an ache in the center of his chest.

  Grady sat hunched on the floor for a very long time, wondering why he was here. Someone had made a terrible mistake. They’d realize it soon, and Eli or Gilbert or maybe even Massa Fletcher himself would drive the carriage downtown and make the jailers unlock the door. They would bring him back home to his mother. He bowed his head and prayed the way Eli had told him to. “Help me, Massa Jesus! Please, please get me out of this terrible place.” He repeated the words over and over in his head, but the entire day passed, the rain continued to fall outside, and no help came.

  As evening fell and the gloomy cell turned cold and shadowy, Grady smelled food and heard the white jailers’ voices outside the door. As soon as his fellow prisoners heard the voices, a spark of hatred seemed to crackle through the air like lightning. Slumped shoulders stiffened with anger, and eyes that had been moist with sorrow a moment ago now froze with hatred. The hatred seemed to soak inside Grady until his blood turned to ice.

  The big slave pulled Grady to his feet. He gripped Grady’s face in one huge hand and raised it toward the ceiling. “You listen to Amos, boy. Hold your chin up, now. Don’t you let them see you crying.” The hard knot of grief in the center of Grady’s chest swelled and grew, nurtured by the hatred all around him.

  The jailers brought food to the other cell first. Grady heard the women clamoring and fighting for it, the children crying. Amos’ hushed voice penetrated the men’s cell, rallying them. “Don’t be acting like animals,” he ordered. “That’s what they think we are. Show them we’re men.”

  When their food came, the men divided it among themselves with no shoving or pushing. But they were forced to eat with their hands and to lap water from a trough like dogs. Amos offered Grady some food but he couldn’t eat any of it, his stomach a cold, heavy lump of fear.

  The cell grew dark, and the men lay down to sleep on the floor wherever they could find space. Grady sat with his arms wrapped around his knees and thought of his bed in the loft above the kitchen. He could cry all he wanted to now that it was dark and no one would see him. But he didn’t think he had any tears left to shed. He had prayed all day, begging Massa Jesus for help. Why hadn’t He answered?

  Amos lay beside him, his hands cushioning his head. “Stop thinking about home, boy,” he said. “You ain’t going back.”

  Grady swallowed hard and spoke for the first time since morning. “W-why are we in jail?”

  “You never heard of the slave auction?”

  Grady shook his head, then realized that Amos couldn’t see him in the dark. “No, sir.”

  “You’re gonna be sold to a new owner. That’s what they do with slaves—buy and sell us like cattle.”

  “My mama—” Grady began, but Amos cut off his words with an angry cry.

  “Enough! You never gonna see your mama again, long as you live.”

  Grady pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes to hold back his tears.

  “May as well know the truth, boy, so you won’t keep hoping. You ain’t never going home again, never seeing your mama. New massa gonna buy you and move you someplace else.”

  Grady managed to choke out a single word, “Why?”

  Amos exhaled. “Maybe your old massa’s needing the money, maybe you done something wrong, maybe he’s just tired of looking at you. He ain’t needing a reason. You getting a new massa now. Find out soon enough if he be good or bad.”

  Grady lay down in the straw and covered his face to muffle his sobs. It couldn’t be true. His mama would come looking for him and rescue him. She wouldn’t leave him in this terrible place or let him be sold to a new master. Massa Jesus would show her where to come.

  “Go to sleep,” Amos said. His voice no longer sounded angry. “Only peace you ever gonna have in this life is when you’re sleeping.”

  The words of a psalm Eli had taught him floated through Grady’s mind: I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, Lord, makes me dwell in safety. Eli had told him to recite those words whenever a thunderstorm or the wind scared him at night and he couldn’t sleep. Eli had promised him that Massa Jesus would always be near, taking good care of him. “Are you hiding them words in your heart?” Eli would ask, and Grady would tap his own chest and say, “They in there, Eli. They all hiding right down in there.” But Grady’s heart felt very different in this godforsaken place, as if it were much too heavy to carry around in his chest. He lay awake for a long time listening to men snoring and women weeping. And for the first time in his life, Grady was afraid of tomorrow.

  When he first awoke the next morning Grady didn’t know where he was. Judging by the smell, he might have fallen asleep in the stable. He sat up and looked around. Pale bands of sunlight slanted through a high, barred window—and he remembered. Grady lay down again, buried his face in his folded arms, and wept.

  After a breakfast of corn bread and pork rinds, the guards shoved Grady and the other men outside into an enclosed yard with high stone walls and a barred gate. A knot of men crowded around the gate, blocking the view of the street, but Grady could hear carriages and horses driving past. The incessant noise of scraping, rattling chains resounded in his ears, jingling like muted sleigh bells.

  The rain had stopped. In the open patch of sky above Grady’s head, gulls circled and screamed. The sun shone, but it seemed colder and dimmer than the sun he used to play beneath back home with his friend Caroline. He thought of her when a frail brown sparrow landed on top of the wall above him, pecking at the stones. “That gal don’t eat enough to keep a sparrow alive,” Esther always used to say. Caroline was older than Grady but smaller, as fine-boned and delicate as a bird. For as far back as Grady could recall, they had played together in the backyard and pestered Eli with their endless questions.

  Caroline had white skin like her father, Massa Fletcher. White skin like Grady’s jailers. The color of a person’s skin had never seemed important to Grady before, but he’d awakened yesterday to the realization that he was a Negro, a slave, like all the other dark-skinned people imprisoned with him. The men on the outside of the bars, the ones holding the keys, were white.

  “God’s eye is on the sparrow,” Eli had told him. “He knows if one of them be falling down.” Eli had always seemed so certain. But why hadn’t God been watching over Grady yesterday w
hen those men had grabbed him and locked him up in this place? Why hadn’t He answered all Grady’s pleas for help? Massa Jesus might still live back home with Eli and Caroline and Mama, but it didn’t seem like He would ever come near a place like this. There were no words of Jesus hidden in Grady’s heart here. The sparrow hopped along the top of the wall, then flew away. Grady’s eyes filled with tears.

  The big slave’s voice came from behind Grady: “That’s freedom, boy.” Grady didn’t turn around, unwilling to let Amos see his tears. “Freedom means flying away anytime you want, going wherever you want—just like that bird. Being free is all I think about, all the time. I’m just biding my time, and when the chance comes, I’ll be flying away, too. In the meantime, you gotta plan for it, boy. Know where you gonna go and how you’re getting there. Otherwise they catch you right away and whip you till you wish you was dead.”

  Grady had no idea what Amos was talking about. He’d barely known fear or uncertainty during all the years he’d lived above the kitchen with Mama and Eli and the others. He’d known that he wasn’t allowed inside the Big House where Caroline lived, but until those white men had dragged him away against his will, until they’d locked him behind barred doors, Grady had never felt a lack of freedom.

  The slaves’ time in the exercise yard ended much too soon. The guards herded them back into the cell and left them there for another long night. Early the following morning, the jailers arrived and ordered them to strip to their underdrawers in preparation for the auction block. “Show them you aren’t hiding any defects,” a guard explained. Without a word, the other men began to undress. Grady hesitated.

  “Do it, boy,” Amos ordered.

  Heat rushed to Grady’s face as he fumbled with his buttons. He had never undressed in front of strangers before. He began to shiver, not from the cold but from shame at his nakedness. The big man poked his bare shoulder.

  “You stand up tall and proud, you hear? This is the way God made you. You ain’t needing to be ashamed. The white folks is the ones who ought to be ashamed.”

  Guards herded them out of the cell and marched them across the yard to the other building. Once inside, they ordered Grady and the others to stand on a raised platform above a huge crowd of spectators. Grady forced himself not to hunch his shoulders, not to cry, even though he saw white women and children staring up at him. One by one the white men shoved the other slaves to the front of the platform and auctioned them off to the highest bidder.

  “Now, here’s a healthy young buck,” the auctioneer said when it was Grady’s turn to go forward. He felt rage building inside him as he gazed into the distance above the heads of the spectators and bidders, refusing to look at their faces as they stared up at him.

  “He looks well-fed, sturdy bones, good breeding,” the auctioneer said. “About nine or ten years old, I’d say. Turn around, boy, and show us your back.” Grady obeyed. “See there? Not a mark on him,” the auctioneer said. “He knows how to mind. Turn around again and raise your arms, boy.”

  Grady had seen the other slaves lift their arms with their palms spread. He refused to make the gesture of surrender. He curled his hands into tight fists before raising them. Laughter rippled through the crowd.

  “Well, now,” the auctioneer chuckled, “you can see by the size of those fists that he’s going to be a big, strong buck someday. Good breeding stock. Who’ll start the bidding at forty dollars?”

  Grady couldn’t understand the auctioneer’s babble as the spectators bid on him. He gazed straight ahead, unblinking, until the auctioneer shouted “Sold!” and Grady was pulled off the platform. Someone thrust his shirt and trousers into his hands, then marched him forward to meet his new master.

  Mr. Edward Coop was a stern, shrewd-eyed man in his fifties, impeccably dressed in a dark, vested suit and starched white shirt. His graying brown hair was receding, making his long, narrow face appear even longer. A drooping mustache hid Coop’s unsmiling mouth, and his gray eyes seemed cold and piercing as he examined Grady up close. Coop’s Negro servant reached for a pair of manacles and tried to shackle Grady to the chain along with all the other slaves Coop had purchased, but Grady’s wrists and ankles were slender enough to pull free.

  “You won’t run off, will you boy?” Coop demanded. “Know what happens if you do?”

  Grady didn’t reply. He had no idea what to say. Coop held a short riding crop in his hand, and before Grady could react, his new master raised his arm and whipped the leather across his bare shoulders with two quick slashes. The blows burned as if a hot poker had seared Grady’s skin. The sudden violence and pain shocked him, but he forced himself not to cry, shuddering with the effort.

  “Now you know,” Coop said. “If you try to run off you’ll get forty more when I catch you. And you better know I’ll catch you.”

  The tears Grady swallowed seemed to travel to his chest where the knot of hatred swelled and burned. Added to what he felt for Massa Fletcher was a newly formed hatred for Edward Coop, a hatred that was quickly growing to include all white men. Because there was no doubt at all in Grady’s mind that they were responsible for his pain and fear and grief. White men had done this to him. And he hated them all.

  Chapter Three

  Great Oak Plantation

  South Carolina 1853

  It seemed to Anna that she was always hungry, all the time. She lived down on Slave Row like a wild barn cat, eating any crumbs that got tossed her way, staying in whichever dingy cabin she could sneak into at night, sleeping in any bed full of young ones that had room to spare. It was easier to find someone to curl up alongside in the wintertime than it was in the summer—as long as she was willing to be on the edge of the bed where the cold air came in and not snuggled down in the middle where it was nice and warm. And Anna was willing. She took whatever scraps of warmth she could find, dodging blows when she got in someone’s way, scrabbling for enough food to quiet her empty stomach.

  Every morning before the sun rose, the horn blew to wake everybody up. Folks would rise from their beds, weary in body and spirit, as if they hadn’t slept at all. Nobody talked much as they made their way to the rice fields, their lean bodies moving like they always ached. Most of the time they’d go off singing, their voices slowly fading into the distance. But Anna knew by the sound of those songs that working in the rice fields was a hard, hard life. Folks called them songs, but they seemed more like groans to Anna, the way people moan in their sleep when they’re having a bad dream.

  It would be nearly dark before those grown-ups made their way home again. And they returned home bone tired, too—day after day, year after year. Theirs wasn’t any kind of life, just a dreary existence, laboring and sleeping and laboring some more. And that was bound to be Anna’s future, too, in another year or so. But for now she was still too young to go off to the rice fields, still young enough to be cared for by Old Nellie, even though Anna never needed much tending.

  The spring morning had been warm the day Anna wandered into the carriage house and discovered the kittens. One of the cats had hidden a litter of them in the back corner behind an empty barrel. They were wild things, nearly as skittish as Anna was, but she petted those kittens every day until they got used to her. They brought pleasure and pain in one tiny bundle, their soft fur tickling her like feathers, their prickly claws raking like briars. They quickly became Anna’s best friends, even if the sting of their claws did make her eyes water. Most of all, she loved the warmth of them, the life she felt in their purring, rumbling bellies.

  One day when the kittens were old enough to leave their nest in the barn, Anna carried two of them down the long driveway and across the grassy yard to her favorite spot beneath the Great Oak Tree. She was sure to get a licking for wandering this far away, but Anna didn’t care. She wanted to share her special place with her new friends. Together they played on the shady grass and climbed one of the tree’s low hanging branches. Anna teased the kittens with a feathery strip of gray moss, watching them
chase it in circles. Then, when both she and the kittens had played themselves out, Anna curled up beneath the huge tree with them and nodded off to sleep. A shrill voice startled her awake.

  “You have kittens! Give me one!”

  Anna opened her eyes to see a white girl hurrying toward her. The girl’s eyes were as pale as water, and her pinkish-white skin made Anna think of a newly plucked chicken. She’d watched the kitchen girls scald a bunch of chickens in hot water and pluck out all the feathers until they didn’t look anything at all like the chickens that ran around the backyard. That’s how this strange girl looked to her, barely resembling the real live, dark-skinned persons Anna lived with. She’d only seen the white folks who lived in the Big House from a distance, never this close. In fact, Anna had always run off whenever one of them came near, afraid that whatever had happened to make the rich, brown color fade from their skin would happen to her, too.

  “I want a kitten,” the pale girl insisted. “Give me one.” Her voice was very loud, and as she walked toward Anna, something beneath her skirt made a rustling noise like a dog going after a rabbit in the bushes. Her hair was as ugly as the rest of her—straight as straw and as thin and colorless as smoke. She scared Anna half to death, and of course her kittens were just as scared as she was. They ran off and hid in the boxwood bushes at the edge of the garden. But Anna couldn’t scramble to her feet fast enough to get away.

  “Hey! Where did they go?” the girl asked, planting her hands on her hips. She was taller than Anna and a few years older. Anna could tell because the white girl had her two front teeth already, while Anna’s were still growing in.

  The girl stomped her foot. “Answer me! Where did the kittens go?”

  “Y-you scared them away,” Anna said.

  “Well, go catch them and bring them back. I want to hold one.”