Freedom Stone

by Jeffrey Kluger

  “Whazzat?” she heard a man’s distant voice say from somewhere in the direction of the torches. She was surprised and alarmed at how far the voice carried on the cool night air.

  “What’s what?” another man responded.

  “That noise.”

  “Didn’t hear no noise. Maybe some night critter.”

  Lillie held her breath. The men said nothing and she dared peek up slightly. The torchlights were still in the distance and had moved no closer—but neither had they moved farther away.

  “That ain’t the sound a night critter makes,” the first voice said at length.

  “It don’t do to chase everything you think you hear.”

  “It don’t do not to.”

  To Lillie’s horror, she now heard the sound of the men’s footsteps crunching through underbrush, and she peeked back up to see that the torches were once again bobbing. She also, for the first time, heard panting. The men had a dog—a slave hound surely, a small, ugly breed of beast that was not good for much at all except for smelling fear. Lillie had no doubt that just such a smell was coming off her powerfully now. She reckoned the hound was not yet close enough to pick up her scent, but when it was, she’d be done for. The animal was known both for its fleet speed and its powerful bite, and once it had hold of a slave, it never let go. A tiny whimper escaped Lillie, and she immediately silenced herself—but too late.

  “Over there!” one of the men said. Immediately, the speed of their footsteps picked up and an excited yip came from the dog. A wave of helplessness overcame Lillie. Her wits may have dreamed up the plan that brought her here tonight and her courage may have carried her this far, but her fear—the fear of a child—had finally betrayed her.

  But Lillie wasn’t just a child. Lying by the road, feeling her heart pound, knowing that that heart was sending out a drumbeat of scent to the slave hound’s nose, she thought of her papa. Papa was Ibo; Papa’s papa had been Ibo too. And that meant Lillie was Ibo. She was part of a tribe whose girls hunted alongside the boys, whose women went to war alongside the men. Lillie might be nothing but a slave child in South Carolina, but she was an Ibo warrior too—and no laws or slave-catchers or cruel, fool dogs could ever change what was in her blood. And with that thought, she felt her heart slow. And with her heart slowing, she felt her breath grow even. And with that, she sprang to her feet.

  “Again!” one of the men’s voices cried. “I heard it again!”

  Lillie lit out down the road again and heard the slave catcher’s footsteps pursuing her as fast as they could and the crashing sound of the dog racing along with them. But as surely as she knew anything, she knew that the dog was running blind. If she’d left a fear scent before, it was now gone. The animal would be fighting through the blackness of the night just like the men were. And the men—carrying their torches and still stumbling through the woods—would not be moving fast until they reached the clear running of the road. This was a fair race, Lillie reckoned—and one she could win if she kept her wits.

  She held that thought in her head, thinking only of the safety of the slave dance that lay far ahead and not the danger that approached from behind. As she did, she felt calmer still, stronger still, charmed now not by the workings of an old woman’s magic but by her own renewed courage. If she didn’t shake off the slave catchers, she knew, she might at least beat them back to Bingham Woods, where she could rejoin the party and get lost among the other slaves. The whip men there wouldn’t care for men from another plantation stumbling in and causing a disturbance as they chased after a shadow they and their dog hadn’t even seen.

  Finally, far ahead, Lillie saw another light—the warm sky-brightening orange of lanterns and a large cook fire. Faintly, she could hear music, and more faintly still, voices. She had the length of about three plow rows ahead of her before she could break through the woods and be back at Bingham Woods. Soon it was two lengths, then just one, and then she plunged into the thick stand of trees that bordered the plantation and at last was on the grounds. In front of her was a dancing, laughing swirl of slaves and everywhere around her was the sweet smell of roasting meat. She ran even faster toward the crowd—head down, feet pounding—when suddenly, off to her left, someone who was running just as fast in the same direction collided with her hard.

  Lillie was shoved to the ground, her head striking the soil and her vision filling with flashes and stars. The wind was knocked entirely out of her, preventing her from crying out. She felt a weight on top of her and realized that she was pinned to the ground. The road men had caught her! They had doubled back, circled the plantation and hit her from the other side! Any moment she would be feeling the terrible pain of the slave hound’s bite. But then she heard a voice, and it was not the voice of a slave catcher at all.

  “Lillie!” it said. “Lillie! What is this about?”

  Lillie tried to make her eyes line up properly, but they were loose and swoony from the fall. She sat up and closed one eye to focus better on the face in front of her. It was, to her astonishment, Miss Sarabeth, looking back at her crossly.

  “Lillie!” she repeated. “What’s the meaning of this?”

  “Miss Sarabeth,” Lillie said. “Why . . . why did you hit me?”

  “I didn’t hit you!” Sarabeth answered. “You hit me!”

  The two girls got clumsily to their feet and began to straighten their clothes and collect themselves. “Look at this, Lillie,” Sarabeth moaned, holding out a handful of her skirt that was stained green with grass and brown with dirt. “There’ll be no explaining this to my mother when she catches sight of it.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Sarabeth. I am,” Lillie said. “I can help you try to clean it.”

  “There’s nothing we can do for it here,” Sarabeth answered, giving up on the dress and turning back to Lillie. “What were you doing running like that anyway? There isn’t anything over there but the woods.”

  Lillie looked at Sarabeth, broke the gaze, then looked nervously back at the woods—half expecting the slave catchers and the hound to burst through at any second. “Weren’t doin’ nothin’,” she said. “I just needed the privy.”

  “Isn’t there a slave privy near the cabins?”

  “It was busy,” Lillie answered. “I had to use the woods.”

  “Then why were you running back?”

  Lillie kept her eyes fixed on the ground and took a moment to respond—a moment that said that whatever her answer was, it wasn’t going to be a truthful one. “I was afraid.” She shrugged. “Woods are dark; no tellin’ what animals are about.”

  Sarabeth scowled disbelievingly and scanned Lillie up and down. Her clothes were rumpled; her hair was undone; even now, she didn’t seem fully to have caught her breath. Sarabeth took all that in, and her mouth dropped open as she realized what it must mean. She craned her neck around Lillie toward the woods.

  “Lillie, you wicked girl!” she said. “Is there a boy out there?”

  Lillie looked up, this time meeting Sarabeth’s eyes square.

  “No! No, there’s not! My mama would flog me herself if I did such a thing.”

  “You don’t get your clothes all tangled and leaves in your hair from using the privy,” Sarabeth said.

  Lillie reached up and felt her hair. There was a scrap of leaf clinging to it, and she plucked it away. “Miss Sarabeth, you has to believe me. I’m not a girl what would behave like that.”

  “Then what were you doing?”

  Lillie said nothing and Sarabeth studied her closely once more. This time, her gaze settled on the slave girl’s shoes. They were covered with fresh dust, road dust, and so, for that matter, were Lillie’s legs. Sarabeth snapped her gaze back up.

  “You ran off!” she said. “You went somewhere.”

  “No!” Lillie stammered. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t!”

  “Don’t lie to me!”

  “I ain’t lyin’!”

  “Do you know what happens to runaway slaves?”

  “I
ain’t no runaway!”

  “They get sold off is what happens. They never see their families again.”

  “But I’m here now, Miss Sarabeth! How could I be a runaway?”

  “Maybe you got lost. Maybe you got scared of the roads. But you were doing something you’re not supposed to do.”

  “Miss Sarabeth,” Lillie implored, “whatever I done I had to do, and I come straightly back. Please don’t tell nobody!”

  “If I stay quiet, Lillie, then I’m doing something I’m not supposed to do. There’s strict rules about reporting runaways.”

  Lillie’s face now showed true fear and she frantically shook her head no. “Miss Sarabeth, we ain’t never done nothin’ to hurt each other before,” Lillie said. “You’re my friend.”

  “I was your friend,” Sarabeth answered. “You don’t want that anymore.”

  “But I do, I do! Just don’t tell nobody I’m a runaway,’cause I ain’t!”

  Lillie looked at the other girl beseechingly. Sarabeth’s expression began to soften, though she kept her eyes narrow and her arms folded. As the girls stood there, fixed on one another’s faces, a voice called out.

  “Lillie!” it said.

  Both girls turned. From the crowd of dancing and feasting slaves, they could see an arm waving. It belonged to Lillie’s mama, who was standing on tiptoes to see over the crowd. The part of the evening had now arrived when the grown slaves and the child slaves would mix for family dances, and all the mamas and papas would be looking for their boys and girls.

  “Lillie,” Mama called again, “come here ’fore I have to fetch you.”

  Lillie waved back and nodded a big yes that her mama would be sure to see, then turned back toward Sarabeth.

  “Go,” Sarabeth said flatly. “Before you get yourself in even more trouble.”

  Lillie struggled for something to say, but before she could, the Master’s daughter turned on her heel and walked away. From deep in the woods, Lillie faintly heard the barking of an angry hound, but it was too far away to do her any harm.

  Chapter Nineteen

  IT WASN’T UNTIL Sunday morning that anyone at Greenfog realized Benjy and Cupit were missing. Benjy had no parents, so no one paid much mind when he didn’t turn up after the slave dance. Cupit did have a mama, but she was sickly and didn’t go to the dance and was asleep when Cupit was supposed to have come home.

  Cal did come home when he was supposed to, but he stayed mostly out of Nelly and George’s sight during the family dances and later as he boarded the wagon back to Greenfog. Once he got to the cabin, he slipped into bed right away. That was good, since otherwise he would surely have given away the fact that he was injured—that his right ankle had swelled to half again its usual size and his foot looked almost twice as big as that, puffed up so much it barely looked like a foot at all. Cal might have kept the problem a secret all night long had the foot not hurt him so much he began moaning with pain while he slept. Eventually, Nelly and George pulled back the blanket and saw what had happened to the boy.

  Lillie, like the rest of the slaves, had no reason to think there was anything amiss with Cal or Benjy or Cupit until the morning. On the ride back to Greenfog, she had too much on her mind to notice which children were and weren’t seated around her. She did look for Minervy—who was relieved to see that Lillie had made it safely back but was smart enough merely to nod to her and let it go at that. Some of the other slave children who had seen Lillie roll off the back of the slave wagon tried to ask her where she’d been and what she’d done, but Minervy, seeing that Lillie was lost in thought, hushed them in the same way she had before—and the children obeyed the same way. Lillie was grateful for that. Her accidental meeting with Sarabeth troubled her terribly. With the Master still of a mind to sell off some of his slaves, a single word that she’d been misbehaving in any way might be enough to have her packed up and sent off to who knew where. Even if Miss Sarabeth never mentioned anything to her father, she could still see to it that word of what Lillie had done got back to Mama—and then she would be in a whole different kind of trouble.

  But that wasn’t all that was on Lillie’s mind. Now that she’d kept her part of the bargain she and Henry had struck, it was time for him to keep his part and mail Lillie’s letter to the farmer named Appleton in Warren County, Mississippi. It would not be an easy letter to compose. She’d have to write it as if she were Henry, using the words of a soldier and freedman, not the words of a slave and a girl. She would have to work on it in secret, since any kind of writing could get her whipped, and even Mama, while proud that her children could read and write, took close notice anytime they put ink to paper, lest they be up to the very kinds of mischief Lillie was up to now. Most important, Lillie would have to write the letter fast. The sooner she got it to Bluffton for Henry to mail, the sooner it would get to Mississippi, and the sooner an answer would come back clearing her papa’s name and freeing the family. Every day she waited was one day closer to the time the slave appraiser would come and take Plato away forever.

  Lillie did not have to wait long to find the private time to write. Plato had stuffed himself full at the kitchen dinner on Saturday night and fell into a deep slumber from which he seemed unlikely to stir till well past dawn. Mama too had eaten well and had danced long at the slave party, and slept the kind of deep sleep she hadn’t enjoyed since before Papa died—the kind that had her snoring low and steady. Papa used to say that when Mama snored like that she’d sleep “for a weekend plus a Monday” if he let her. Lillie lay awake listening to the steady breathing that came from them both, then crept out of her bed, lit a dim lantern at the eating table and pulled out her paper, ink pot and sharpened goose quill.

  Sitting down at the table, she stared at the paper, which stared back at her blankly. She’d never written anything for anyone else’s eyes before, and the fact that this letter would not just be read, but read closely—by an educated man who’d likely be able to spot a fraud—set her hand shaking so much she wasn’t certain she’d be able to form any letters at all. What’s more, unlike the Missus of Greenfog, she didn’t have sheet after sheet of creamy white paper she could simply throw away if she didn’t like the way her writing was turning out. She’d have to do her work well on the very first try, since that would be the only try she’d have.

  After a long, long while spent thinking hard and chewing the nib of the quill, she at last set ink to paper:

  To the onnerable Master of the appleton farm—

  I am a Free man name henry and use to be a slave. i was a Solder in the army but don’t have both legs anymore. it got lost in fighting at viks Burg. My friend died there and he had money. the money was Gold and they sed he stole it from you but i dont think so. now they give it all to his Master cause they cood not find you. Pleese tell me if my frend stole the money so i can know if he was a Theef but I dont think so.

  from henry

  I am at the Firnitur stor in bluffton. thats in charlston Countee and in south Carolina

  When Lillie was done, she sat back reading and rereading the letter. She’d been proud of other things she’d done in her life, but nothing had ever puffed her up like this. She wasn’t completely certain of all the words she’d chosen. Papa had used the word honorable in a story once, and while he never told her precisely what it meant, she was sure it was suited to the way she’d used it. She wasn’t sure of all her spellings either, but she read the words carefully and sounded them out the way Papa had taught her and she was certain that even if the way she had spelled them wasn’t the right way, it was so good that it ought to be. She folded the letter carefully, wrapped it in another piece of paper and carefully printed out “Appleton farm” and “Warren Countee, Missisippy.” She spelled Mississippi with a jumble of s’s and p’s and a y at the end, and that one she reckoned was surely wrong—but reckoned too that even white folks found it hard it get right.

  Henry had promised her he would seal the letter with a drop of wax and pay for
the one-penny stamp from his earnings at the furniture store and mail it the moment she gave it to him. There was still the matter of the letter making its way through the fires of the war and the thieves swarming the roads leading south, but that, Lillie reckoned, was out of her control. She rubbed her tired eyes, tucked the letter under her mattress and climbed wearily back in bed. She tumbled immediately into a deep and satisfied sleep.

  It was not a sleep that lasted long.

  “Out of the cabins! Out of the cabins! Everybody out of the cabins!” came a booming man’s voice from the other side of the door.

  The cry rang out loudly up and down the cabin line, but so heavily was Lillie sleeping that at first it simply got rolled up into a dream—one in which an angry man or many angry men were screaming and pounding on drums or walls. The voice got louder and so did the pounding, and Lillie now began to stir.

  “Out of the cabins! Out of the cabins!” the voice repeated, and all at once Mama was atop Lillie, shaking her hard.

  “Lillie! Lillie! Get up! Get up ’fore you’re whipped!” she shouted.

  Lillie’s eyes flew open. Early morning sun was coming through the window, and in it she could see Mama in her nightclothes leaning over her and Plato standing nearby wearing Papa’s old shirt. Lillie could hear more men’s voices outside and could now clearly make out that they belonged to Bull and Louis and Mr. Willis. She could hear the same pounding that had disturbed her sleep, only now it was farther away, rattling one slave cabin after another. It was a harder, sharper banging than a man’s hand could make, and Lillie knew from experience that it was produced by a wooden whip handle being knocked against walls and doors.

  “Mama, Mama!” Plato cried.