Freedom Stone

by Jeffrey Kluger

  “The ... the horses won’t go?” the Master spluttered.

  “They seemed sluggish; hounds too,” the slave catcher said, “like they couldn’t get their speed up. After a time, they just got spooked and turned. Charged outta the woods and won’t go back. Some of us was even throwed along the way.”

  The Master’s neck turned crimson now, and he raised a hand as if he truly would attack the man. The Missus restrained him, and he settled for simply ordering the catcher to find fresh horses and dogs and not to come back from the woods until he had Benjy and Cupit trussed and chained and ready for the whipping post. Then he slammed the door with a bang that made the window panes rattle in their frames. After that, he retreated to his library, where he uncorked a bottle of brandy and began to drink. Spirits usually turned the Master’s mood black, and this evening was no exception. Deep into the night, Sarabeth could hear him pacing back and forth behind the closed library door, cursing the war and the North and the disloyalty of his slaves—and the way all of them were working together to ruin his livelihood. The noise went on for what seemed to be hours until at last her father grew still. Sarabeth was relieved at the quiet. She hoped it was because he’d spent all his anger—but she feared it was simply because he’d drunk all his brandy.

  The next morning never did bring the happy news Sarabeth and her family had been hoping for. The slave catcher visited once around breakfast and once more around lunch—both times promising that his men and his animals were still at work, but by now he didn’t sound as if even he believed they’d ever find the runaway boys. Between his visits, the baker woman, Bett, came to the back door about some fool accident she’d had with her flour. No one dared disturb the Master with such a matter this morning, so the Missus had to go down to the old woman’s cabin herself to see what the problem was, then write out a traveling pass so that Bett and Samuel could go to Bluffton to buy more supplies that very day. The Master—as he often did after a night of heavy drink—kept to himself, working in his library and keeping the drapes drawn against the bright light of the day.

  Sarabeth, even without any drink in her, felt nearly as poorly as her father did. She’d lain awake most of the night, fretting for him and feeling terrible about herself as well. Of all the people at Greenfog, she might have been the only one who had a clue of what the runaway boys were planning—and of who might have helped them. It was Sarabeth alone, after all, who’d spotted Lillie at the slave dance—Lillie, with her windblown look and her lying eyes, lurking near the very woods through which the boys had likely slipped to freedom. The minute Sarabeth saw that, it had been up to her to tell her father what she’d seen. Instead, she had thought only of herself—of how cross and jealous and childish she was feeling. And look what had happened. Well, the boys might be gone forever, but the disloyal slave who helped them was still here, and it was Sarabeth’s responsibility to do the right thing now.

  “Poppy?” she said softly, tapping on the library door late in the afternoon. There was no answer. “Poppy?” she repeated, tapping again.

  She opened the door and saw her father sitting at his desk, his glasses low on his nose as he read through plantation correspondence. He looked tired and fretful with the cares he had to bear. He glanced up at her and managed a weak smile.

  “What is it, child?” he asked.

  “Poppy,” she said, “I think I did something wrong.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I think I know something about the runaways.”

  Her father looked at her thoughtfully and removed his reading glasses. “Come in,” he said, “and close the door.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  PLATO USUALLY DID his best to avoid Mr. Willis, but that wasn’t possible a few days after Benjy and Cupit were given up for lost. Early in the morning, the overseer was giving out the daily work assignments as he always did and announced that while the mamas would be doing their usual work in the tobacco or cotton fields, the bird-chasing boys and girls would be needed in a smaller patch of cropland where the Master had lately been trying to grow beets.

  “Crows is eatin’ up the seed as fast as we can plant it,” he grumbled. “Master ain’t gonna be pleased if we got no crop to show him next year.”

  The beets weren’t something the slaves usually had to spend too much time tending, since the Master wasn’t yet sure he could raise a good crop of them anyway. But the times being the times, the mamas reckoned he needed to make any money he could any way he could. That, at least, was what they told themselves when they watched their children being led away and called after them to mind the overseer and do what they were told.

  Mr. Willis let the children chase the birds for a little while and then strode into the beet field, looking left and right. At first he showed no interest in Plato, calling out instead to a seven-year-old boy named Jordan, a small and often sickly child who mostly kept to himself and always seemed to have trouble catching his breath. Jordan trotted to the overseer when he was summoned, and the two of them disappeared up the hill near the beet field and vanished over the crest. Later they returned and Mr. Willis demanded to see Gadsby, a boy about Plato’s age. Gadsby was a strong and good-natured child, but the slave drivers and even his own mama often grew short with him on account of the hard time he seemed to have understanding instructions when they were given to him, often needing to have them repeated again and again. Plato once tried to teach Gadsby to write the alphabet—a foolish thing to do since he could get flogged himself for knowing his letters—but Gadsby never got much past D, nor seemed much interested in trying to go further. Mr. Willis took Gadsby away and returned with him too a short while later. Finally, he called out to Plato.

  “Boy!” he said. “Your turn. Come with me, and don’t make me wait for you.”

  Plato hurried after the overseer, trying as best he could to match his short strides to Mr. Willis’s longer ones. He reckoned he ought to be afraid, but Gadsby and Jordan seemed fine when they came back—though Mr. Willis did send them to work a different part of the field, making it impossible for Plato to ask them what the overseer had wanted. He followed Mr. Willis all the way up the beet field hill, past the cotton field and at last around to the stables. They went inside and when they did, Plato saw Bull waiting for him. Now he was well and truly afraid.

  “Mr. Willis, I ain’t done nothin’ wrong, did I? ” he asked.

  “You tell me, boy,” the overseer answered, prodding Plato in the back with his whip handle and shoving him toward Bull. “Did you?”

  “No, sir,” Plato exclaimed. “I promise.”

  “Then you ain’t got cause to be worried. Just do what I say and hop up there.”

  Mr. Willis pointed to where Bull was standing and Plato noticed a scale next to him, hanging from a ceiling beam. The scale was usually used for weighing foals after mama horses gave birth or weighing cotton bales before they were sent to market. Plato looked at the overseer quizzically.

  “You hear Mr. Willis, boy?” Bull snapped. “Do like he said.”

  Plato approached the scale warily and tried to take its measure. The business end was a large pan suspended by chains from a weighing dial that looked like a clock face. That, in turn, was hung from another chain attached to the beam. The pan was at the level of Plato’s chin. He took hold of it and tried to swing his legs up, but the pan slipped away and he lost his grip, falling in the hay that covered the floor. Bull laughed.

  “I seen new colts what could hop up there better’n that,” he said.

  Mr. Willis glowered. “Try it again, boy,” he said.

  Plato tried again and fell again and tried once more and fell once more. Finally, Bull scooped him up with one meaty arm and dropped him in the pan. Plato knocked his head on the metal rim and cried out in pain.

  “Quiet, boy,” Bull said. “Try to pretend you’re a cotton bale.”

  Bull steadied the pan while Mr. Willis approached it and read the dial.

  “Forty-eight pounds,”
he said disdainfully.

  “That ain’t enough?” Bull asked.

  “Shy by five pounds, maybe more. Ain’t no ship wants a deckhand that puny.”

  “Want me to fetch another one?” Bull said.

  “Can’t,” Mr. Willis answered. “These is the only three the Master asked about, and he wants this one to go first.” He lifted Plato out of the pan and set him roughly on his feet. Then he picked up a measuring stick leaning against a post and lined it up next to the boy. “Stand up straight!” he snapped. Plato complied while the overseer squinted at the stick and seemed pleased. “Least he’s proper height,” he said.

  “So sell ’im by the inch instead o’ the pound,” Bull said. “Either way, he gets sold.”

  Plato wheeled to the slave driver. “Sold?” he said. “But I don’t wanna get sold! My mama said I don’t have to!”

  “Your mama did, eh?” Bull sneered. “I reckon we got to do what she says, then.” Plato looked at him with a flash of hope on his face, and the slave driver barked out a laugh.

  Willis shot a silencing glare at Bull. A crying child would be a nuisance right now, and the overseer had enough nuisances today already. “You ain’t got nothin’ to worry’bout, boy,” he said to Plato. He reached impatiently into his leather whip bag and groped about inside it. “Here,” he said, pulling out a large square of cornbread wrapped in cloth. “Eat this up.”

  “I ain’t hungry,” Plato said.

  “I didn’t ask you if you was. I told you to eat it.”

  The overseer pushed the cornbread into Plato’s hands, and the boy began reluctantly nibbling at it.

  “Faster, boy!” Willis said. “I got another here when you’re done with that one. Master wants you fatter, and fatter’s what you’ll be.”

  Lillie was at work in the nursery cabin when the overseer came to fetch Plato. She had no idea the boy was in danger, and she was thus free to busy her mind with the one thing that had been occupying it for the last week: whether her letter to Mississippi had arrived at its destination yet and whether the farmer named Appleton had sent Henry a response. No such thing was possible, of course, and Lillie knew that. Even in peacetime, it was hard to know how long it would take for a letter to travel from Charleston County all the way down to the deepest Southern states and an answer to come back.

  Still, Lillie had lingered around the stables as the sun was setting on the day Bett went back to Bluffton to fetch new supplies, waiting for her and Samuel to return. When they did, she raced to Bett and asked about the letter, and Bett assured her she’d placed it safely in Henry’s hand. He had promised that if he did receive an answer he would do his best to borrow a wagon to take him to Greenfog and bring the letter straight to Lillie. As a free man he had leave to travel wherever he wanted, and since Greenfog was not where his family lived, the Master might allow him on the grounds on a Sunday to visit with friends he knew from his own slaving days. But even if the Master did permit Henry such a social call, Bett reminded Lillie it wasn’t coming any time soon.

  “I told you ’bout patience, child,” she would say each time Lillie would drop by her cabin in the following days to ask if there’d been any word from Henry. “You’ll wait as long as you gots to wait.”

  Now, that wait seemed like it would only grow longer. For much of the week, whispers had been going around the plantations that Yankee gunboats had been spotted approaching Charleston harbor. At first the talk was dismissed as nothing but rumors, but late yesterday, the Northern Navy had begun shelling the small harbor islands where the cannons that protected the city were mounted.

  So far, Charleston itself was untouched, but the people who lived in the surrounding counties were having a hard go of it. Farmers, merchants and even unarmed ladies dared not venture out on any of the public roads for fear that their horses and wagons would be seized, either by rogue Yankees or by loyal Confederates who needed the goods and transport for the war. Those roads that weren’t overrun had been shelled so badly that that wagons could no longer travel them. There was no telling when the fighting would end, but Lillie clung to the belief that even if commerce couldn’t proceed as it usually did, the mail wagons could. Bett was less hopeful.

  “Wagons is wagons, child,” she said. “If they move, the soldiers want ’em.”

  “Then there ain’t no hope,” Lillie said mournfully.

  “There’s always hope, girl.”

  Lillie brightened slightly. “There’s that other thing,” she said.

  “What other thing?” Bett asked.

  “That other thing you said the oven stones could do. The one you said is too dangerous.”

  “I didn’t say it turned less dangerous, did I?”

  “But if the mail don’t go, we got to try somethin’!” Lillie said. “There won’t be no other way.”

  Bett nodded sadly, then reached out and laid her hands over Lillie’s. “Little girl, I been a slave a lot longer than most folks’ whole lives, and I reckon I know a thing or two about when there ain’t no other way to do somethin’. You ain’t there yet.” She laughed a tiny laugh. “You’s close, I give you that. But you got a scrap of a chance left. You got to trust me about that, you hear?”

  Lillie nodded, but deep inside, she was thinking no.

  It was that promise from Bett—the possibility that not all hope was gone—that Lillie was turning ’round and’round in her head while she was working at the nursery cabin and Mr. Willis was weighing and measuring Plato. It was still on her mind that night when the family was back in the cabin. Plato had yet to make any mention of his visit to the barn and in fact had given little thought to it himself. As soon as he got back to the beet field, he and the other boys got caught up wrestling by the creek bank, getting their clothes and hair so covered with mud that at the end of the workday their mamas had to scrub them down. So much excitement knocked other matters completely out of his head. It wasn’t until Mama noticed he was just picking at his supper and asked him why that his thoughts returned.

  “It was the cornbread,” Plato answered.

  “What cornbread?” Mama asked. “You didn’t eat no cornbread.”

  “Yes, I did; I ate two pieces. He made me.”

  “Who made you?”

  “Mr. Willis.”

  “What are you talkin’ about, boy?” Mama asked.

  “Mr. Willis took me from the beet field and put me on the scale. I’m forty-eight pounds,” Plato said proudly. “But he said no ship wants to buy no deckhand as puny as me, so he gave me the cornbread.”

  “What do you mean, buy?” Lillie asked in alarm. “Who said anything ’bout buyin’?”

  “Sshh!” Mama hushed her, and then turned back to Plato. “Who said anything ’bout buyin’? Who said anything’bout deckhands?”

  “The Master wants to sell me to a ship, ’cept I’m not for sale ’cause you don’t want me to go. That’s what Bull said, so I reckon I ain’t goin’. Still, they said I got to eat the cornbread every day so’s I get big.”

  At that, Mama bolted up from her chair so fast and hard she knocked Plato’s milk cup onto the floor. Plato and Lillie jumped, and Mama turned and tore out the door. The children looked at each other and then lit out after her.

  “Mr. Willis!” Mama cried, running off into the descending dark. “Mr. Willis!” She looked behind her, saw Plato and Lillie following, and screamed at them. “Go back! Go back now!”

  Paying no mind to where she was running, Mama caught her toe in a rut and stumbled to the ground. Plato and Lillie screamed and sped up to reach her, but Mama simply rolled with the fall and was up on her feet again, continuing to race toward the overseer’s cabin. “Mr. Willis! Mr. Willis!” she cried.

  Slaves in the stables poked their heads out of the door and others coming home late from the fields stopped and stared. But none followed the wild-looking mama and the two children trailing her, lest whatever trouble she was courting came to them too.

  “Mr. Willis!” Mama screamed once m
ore as she drew near the cabin. The overseer now emerged, wearing nothing but his trousers and his suspenders. His whip was in his hand, and he swayed on his feet. He’d been drinking—a lot, judging by the heavy-lidded look of his eyes and the drunk-man’s snarl playing around his mouth. He spun his whip furiously over his head till it cut the air with a whistle that would have sent a hound howling, then cracked it on the ground.

  “Stay where you is, Franny!” he roared. “You and them babies o’ yours!” He snapped the whip again, and Mama came to a stop, stumbling to her knees. Plato and Lillie raced up next to her, dropped down and took hold of her. “What’s your business here—all o’ you!—disturbin’ my supper this way?” the overseer demanded.

  “Mr. Willis, Mr. Willis,” Mama said. “What do you want with my boy? Why you troublin’ him when he’s workin’ hard for the Master like he always done?”

  “Boy talked, eh?” Willis said. “Too much cornbread, eh? Don’t worry, Franny. I don’t want nothin’ with your boy. Don’t reckon he’s worth much at all.”

  Mama started to slump in relief, but the overseer went on.

  “Can’t say the same for them ship captains, though. They likes to get ’em young. Train ’em up right.”

  “He ain’t but a child, Mr. Willis, a child,” Mama pleaded. “He ain’t no sailor!”

  Willis swayed dizzily, then waved her off absently. “Course he ain’t. Not yet anyways. But when he’s fattened up, maybe. When he’s taught right, maybe.”

  “No!” Mama wailed. “He can’t go! He can’t go!”

  “Maybe the girl oughta thought o’ that before she took to helpin’ runaways!” Willis roared, turning Lillie’s way. “The Master knows ’bout that now! He knows it good!”

  Mama looked at Lillie, not understanding what the overseer had said. Lillie looked back, not able to make full sense of it either. Plato clung to both of them, too terrified now to move or weep or even breathe.