A Light to My Path

by Lynn Austin

  It was after midnight by the time Grady and the others started down the path behind a small advance guard. The sense of wariness and danger he’d felt on board ship was heightened tenfold as he crept through the silent forest. His rifle was loaded and ready, his bayonet fixed. They would catch these white boys by surprise and kill them while they slept.

  The pine woods were damp and fragrant, the bed of needles soft beneath his feet. The only sounds were the quiet tramp of feet, the glug of frogs in a nearby marsh, the distant yelp of a dog on some small farm hidden deep in the woods. The moon barely penetrated the thick forest, and Grady squinted into the darkness as his eyes tried to adjust to the scant light. They marched for more than two miles, hearing nothing, seeing nothing.

  Suddenly the advance guard halted. They motioned for Grady and the others not to make a sound as they came to a halt behind them. Grady strained to see into the blackness, every nerve stretched tightly. Then he heard it—the distant sound of galloping horses. He remembered hearing those thudding hooves on the darkened road the night the white paddyrollers had caught him. He’d been defenseless against them back then. They’d captured him and tied him up and flogged all the flesh off his back, simply because they could. But tonight Grady had a gun. Tonight he would have his revenge.

  Before he and the others could react, a rider on a white horse appeared out of the gloom on the shadowy path, leading a pack of cavalry. The two forces saw each other at the same moment, and the surprised Rebel in the lead reined his horse to a halt. He drew his pistol and fired just as the advance guard raised their rifles and fired. A volley of shots echoed through the silent woods like thunder as Grady and the others quickly took cover in the bushes. His heart pounded wildly, but he knew exactly what to do. Kneeling behind a bush, Grady calmly lifted his rifle and aimed at a target he couldn’t see. He heard the whiz of bullets overhead, the deafening roar of hundreds of rifles all around him, but he waited until he spotted a burst of fire in the darkness from a Rebel rifle. Then he carefully took aim where he’d seen the flash—and fired. His ears rang from the discharge.

  Grady ducked his head and quickly reloaded, cursing his fumbling fingers, wishing he could reload and fire faster. Voices cried out as bullets struck their mark on both sides, but Grady aimed, fired, reloaded—over and over again, his hearing deadened by the noise.

  How long had they been fighting? He lost all track of time. In a way it seemed as if he’d been marching through the silent woods only a moment ago, yet it also seemed as if he’d been firing into the night for an eternity. Gradually, the enemy fire slackened, then stopped. He heard Colonel Higginson call, “Cease fire!”

  Grady lowered his rifle and glanced around. Every man was in an offensive position, bravely standing up to the enemy. Not a single one of them cowered in the bushes. But the Confederates were gone. They were the ones who’d turned tail and run. Grady’s company had experienced their first fight and they’d been victorious. He wanted to cheer.

  “Let’s keep going and finish this,” Corporal Sutton said. Grady and the others agreed. But Colonel Higginson shook his head.

  “All hope of surprise is lost. We won this round. The Rebels are the ones who fled in defeat. Let’s fix some stretchers and attend to the wounded.”

  One of Grady’s fellow soldiers had been killed. Seven others lay wounded and bleeding—some of them dying. The first sight of these casualties left Grady shaken. He had come to kill white men, not to be wounded or killed by them. Grady had taken an oath to help free his fellow slaves or die trying, but until this moment he hadn’t truly faced what that meant. He didn’t want to die. Death wasn’t in his plans. But as he looked at his dead and wounded comrades, he realized that it hadn’t been in their plans, either.

  “It’s okay, Colonel,” he heard one of the wounded men say, when Higginson knelt to console him. “Freedom is sweeter than life.”

  Grady felt a moment of stomach-churning fear as he glanced around for Joseph and couldn’t find him. Then his gangly tentmate stood from where he’d been kneeling in prayer beside the dead man. Grady exhaled in relief. As skinny as Joseph was, those Rebels probably couldn’t hit him on a clear day with the sun shining.

  Grady helped load the wounded onto stretchers and carry them back through the woods to the landing. They marched with their weapons loaded, their eyes and ears alert, fully expecting a counter-attack at any moment. When it didn’t happen, Colonel Higginson assured them that it meant complete victory. “We must have hit them pretty hard,” he said. “No decent cavalry would let a small infantry force like ours march through their territory without a fight.”

  Grady volunteered to stay onshore with the colonel and a small squadron to guard the settlement until morning. He remained alert all night, waiting for another fight, eager for it, but the attack never came. Filled with unspent fury, he watched his fellow soldiers load a piano from the plantation house onto the ship the next morning to deliver to the Negro children’s school in Fernandina. Then at the colonel’s signal, Grady helped set the house on fire to prevent the Rebels from using it again.

  On the return journey down river, Grady’s ship docked at another small town to retrieve a much-needed load of lumber. Three white-haired Southern ladies waited to greet them, waving white handkerchiefs.

  “They gonna tell you they’s on our side,” Corporal Sutton warned the colonel, “but they’s really Rebel spies. You wait and see—as soon as we’re on our way again, their menfolk will be waiting round the first bend to ambush us.”

  Colonel Higginson greeted the women politely—too politely, Grady thought. He knew the women were lying when they insisted that they weren’t Rebel sympathizers or spies. He gritted his teeth when he saw how they addressed only the colonel and the other white officers, casting cold, disdainful glances at any Negroes who ventured near them. Grady easily recognized their racism for what it was, having experienced it all his life. He worried that the colonel had fallen for their flattery until he overheard him say, “If our ships are ambushed as we’re leaving, I can promise you ladies that we will return and torch your town.”

  Higginson ordered some of the soldiers to spread out and guard the town from a surprise attack while the rest of the men quickly loaded the lumber onboard. Grady and two others climbed up the cupola of one of the houses to stand watch. It was still early morning, and the feathery mist rising from the river and the distant fields looked like fairy smoke. He thought of Anna and wished he could share the view with her. Then, as he scanned the woods for signs of Rebels, he wondered how long it would take to forget her.

  When the colonel finally signaled to reboard the ship, Grady felt bitterly disappointed that there hadn’t been a fight. He was ready for one after his first taste of combat last night. But shortly after the vessels got underway, a sudden volley of explosions rocked the ship. Everyone dove for cover, dodging a rain of shrapnel and splintering wood and bullets. The gunners ran to their weapons to return fire, but the attack ended as quickly as it began.

  Grady’s heart thudded with excitement and readiness as the colonel made good on his threat and returned to shore to set the town on fire. Something deep inside him found immense satisfaction as he listened to those white ladies begging for mercy … and he watched their pleas go unheeded.

  The ships returned safely to Fernandina with no further Rebel attacks. But rather than soothing Grady’s need for action, the night’s work left him feeling very unsatisfied. He’d savored only one tantalizing taste of combat, and he hungered for more. Enemy troops still roamed the woods along that river, and he longed to hunt them down and kill them all. Even after staying up all night, he felt much too edgy to sleep. So when the colonel announced a second nightlong mission, Grady quickly volunteered again. They would venture further upriver this time, to the town of Woodstock, deep in Rebel-held territory, to acquire a supply of new bricks to repair Fort Clinch.

  The expedition sailed up the St. Mary’s River after dark, just as they had the
night before, with Corporal Sutton piloting the ship by moonlight. The river was calm as Grady stood watching from the bow, the tide flowing with them. Conversation onboard was subdued as everyone prepared for action, wondering if they’d be attacked from the shore batteries again. They sailed past the old ladies’ town that they had burned the previous night, then past Township Landing, where they’d fought the Rebel cavalry. But there was no sign of the enemy.

  The riverbanks loomed steeply on either side of them as they steamed farther upstream, and the current grew swifter and more treacherous. Branches and snags littered their path, and the ship grounded eight times as the captain tried to navigate the river’s sharp bends. When they lay stranded on one sandbar for half an hour, the colonel put everyone on alert, fearing a Rebel attack. Grady knew that one well-placed cannonball would sink the ship and doom them all. But the enemy seemed not to be expecting a second foray into their territory so soon after the first, and Grady’s ship finally reached the sleeping town of Woodstock just before daybreak.

  The soldiers scrambled ashore with orders to surround the town and make certain that no one crept away to alert the Rebels of their arrival. Once all the roads were secured, Grady and the others went house-to-house, rounding up all the white men to hold as temporary prisoners and urging all the slaves to board the ships to freedom. He took great pleasure in rousing these white folks from their homes and beds, savoring their fear at being held at gunpoint by former slaves. Dogs barked and babies cried and roosters crowed in the pandemonium of rushing feet and shouted orders. But the loudest protests came from the white women who were outraged at being held captive by armed Negroes as they watched all their slaves go free.

  The regiment’s orders had been to show restraint, using force only when absolutely necessary, and not a shot was fired throughout the entire operation. But Grady saw the loathing and disgust for his race in every white person’s eyes, and he longed for an excuse to shoot one of them. When his work was finished, he went to Colonel Higginson with a request.

  “The slaves we’re setting free ain’t got a thing in the world, Colonel,” he said. “Can’t we rummage through town and maybe take some bedding and stuff that they might be needing? Ain’t it all their hard work that earned everything their massas have?”

  Colonel Higginson shook his head. “I’m sorry, Private. We have permission to forage only for things we need ourselves.”

  “What about that piano we took last night?” Grady asked.

  Higginson looked embarrassed. “Well … that was against regulations. I’m afraid I got a little carried away. We’re not allowed to loot from civilians or burn a town unless there’s proof of collaboration with the Rebels.”

  He must have seen Grady’s anger and frustration, because a moment later he added, “Come with me, son. Corporal Sutton and I are about to pay a visit on one of the town’s leading citizens—the proprietress of the sawmills and lumber wharves. Corporal Sutton was once her slave.”

  Grady followed Sutton and Colonel Higginson to the town’s largest home, upset to realize that his natural inclination was to circle around to the servants’ entrance. Instead, he followed the colonel up the steps to the front door. Higginson introduced himself to the lady of the house adding, “And I’m sure you remember Corporal Robert Sutton, ma’am?”

  She gave her former slave a look of utter contempt and said, “We called him Bob.”

  Grady imagined himself facing his former mistress, Missus Fuller, and spitting in her face. His admiration for the corporal grew when he saw how the man maintained his poise and dignity.

  When the colonel finished informing her that the Union was confiscating her lumber, Sutton turned to Higginson and said, “I’ll show you her slave jail now, sir.”

  They walked around back to a small building that was no larger than a corncrib. Grady saw the bolt and chain in the middle of the floor, and his fury mounted as he recalled being shackled to the floor of the slave hut for three days at Missus Fuller’s orders. This slave jail also contained three pairs of stocks, including one that was small enough to confine women and children.

  “Do they … do they use this on children?” Higginson asked in a hushed voice.

  Corporal Sutton nodded. Grady knew that when he’d been a boy, Coop would have shackled him along with all the other slaves if the bonds had fit his wrists.

  “What is this?” Higginson asked as he examined an odd metal contraption with chains and spikes.

  “Massa use that to torture us slaves,” Sutton said quietly. “Once he’s putting us in that thing, we can’t sit, stand or lay down without suffering. We just have to balance ourselves as best we can till it’s over, sir.”

  Grady saw the colonel’s horror. For several long moments Higginson was unable to speak as powerful emotions rocked through him. He took the set of keys that hung on a nail on the wall and handed them to Sutton. “You keep these, Corporal,” he said quietly. “You’ve earned them.”

  When the lumber, bricks, and newly freed slaves were all loaded onboard, Higginson ordered his soldiers to take all of the town’s white men along as hostages. They would be transported to the mouth of the river before being released, he told them, in order to discourage the usual Rebel attacks on the voyage downstream.

  The ship’s gun crews stood ready near their weapons as they left the wharf. Grady chafed when he and the other soldiers were ordered to remain belowdecks where it was safe. The hot, crowded hold brought back memories of all the years he’d spent traveling with load after load of slaves, bound for the auction block, and his stomach clenched like a fist. He had to remind himself that he was free now; that these slaves were heading toward freedom, too; and that the white men huddling in the corner were his prisoners.

  Suddenly a volley of explosions shook the boat. Grady ducked instinctively. A soldier near one of the portholes shouted, “The Rebels are attacking from the bluffs!”

  The cannons on the deck above them roared as the ship returned fire. The boom of rifles seemed deafening in the hold as the soldiers who crowded near the portholes fired their weapons. Grady felt trapped, imprisoned in the bowels of the ship with no way to fight back.

  “Let me out!” he begged the soldier guarding the hatch. “Let me fight!” But the man shook his head, and the ship steamed downriver until the noise finally died away.

  Grady exhaled in frustration. He rechecked his weapon to make sure it was still ready, then inspected his ammunition pouch. He had just convinced himself that it was safe to sit down and relax when he heard a cannon explode on the top on a nearby bluff. The ominous scream of a falling artillery shell followed, growing louder, coming closer, until it crashed into the river alongside the ship with a roar. He knew by the way the vessel rocked, and by the burst of water that sprayed the deck above him, that the shell had fallen very close to them. It would only take one to sink them. And if the ship grounded again or got entangled in a snag, it would make an easy target.

  A hail of bullets hammered the deck above him, and he heard the sounds of splintering wood and shattering glass. Belowdecks, chaos reigned as the women and children wept and screamed, and his fellow soldiers begged for a chance to fight. Grady ran to the hatch again with his rifle. “Let us up on deck!” he shouted. “Give us a chance to fight back!” He could barely hear the reply above the din.

  “The colonel says to stay below! Your rifles ain’t any good at this distance!” Bitterly disappointed, Grady could only hunker down with the others until the ship steamed out of range.

  An hour passed, and the Rebels made no more attacks. Exhausted, Grady finally managed to doze for a few minutes. The hushed murmur of excited voices awakened him. He scrambled to his feet. “What is it? What’s going on?” he asked Joseph.

  “The colonel’s just sending us the news,” he said somberly.“Mr. Clifton, the ship’s captain, was hit by a Rebel bullet in the first attack.”

  “Is he okay?”

  Joseph shook his head. “They killed him
, Grady. He died standing right there at the helm.” He paused, then added, “He’s a white man, you know. And he gave his life to help free a boatload of slaves.”

  Grady returned to where he’d been dozing and sank down. Joseph had tried to tell him that not all white men hated him, that the officers in his regiment were risking their lives for the slaves’ sakes. He remembered Colonel Higginson’s emotional reaction when he saw the slave jail, but Grady still couldn’t comprehend it. He’d never experienced anything but hatred between the two races, yet on this mission, white and black had fought together against a common enemy, facing death for the same cause. Before the war he would have called any man a liar if he had tried to tell him such an alliance was possible.

  Later that afternoon, when all danger was past and the men were allowed up on deck again, Grady saw Joseph and a small group of soldiers kneeling in prayer by their dead captain. The man’s body was shrouded, the color of his skin hidden from view—and Grady was able to look past it for first time in his life and see the man beneath. Captain Clifton had earned Grady’s deep respect and admiration. This white man had taken upon himself the wrath of all those who hated the Negro race—and had died for their sakes.

  Grady recalled what else Joseph had told him on their voyage upriver. It was the same thing Eli had taught him long ago in Richmond, and what Delia had tried to tell him back at Massa Fuller’s plantation: God’s Son took the scorn and sin of the human race upon himself and had died for their sakes.

  But the old question quickly rose to taunt Grady: Why had Jesus deserted him, then? Why had He allowed him to suffer all these years? Delia had compared Grady’s life of slavery to that of Joseph’s in the Bible; she said Joseph’s suffering had made him strong so that God could use him to save his family. “Ever think that maybe the Lord’s preparing you to save your black brothers and sisters?” she had asked.