Diamonds in the Rough

by Emmy Waterford

  There was only once choice, and virtually no time to make it.

  “Joseph,” Alice cried. “I gotta have my boy, I ain’t goin’ without my boy!”

  Mo said, “Where?”

  “Ginny was watchin’ him!” So Belle and her parents ran toward the shed of the crippled old slave woman whose only real function was to watch the slave toddlers while the other, more capable slaves worked to benefit the plantation.

  Belle’s heart was beating faster as they ran toward the sheds near the front of the property. They didn’t seem to be getting any closer, in fact in almost felt to Belle that the sheds were getting farther and farther away, the harder they ran toward it.

  Gun shots rang out, horses cried and so did men, the air getting thicker with smoke and ash. Belle and her family finally made it to the slaves’ sheds, fat Ginny sitting with her head low, arms around Joseph, sitting in terrified silence.

  Alice bent down to take Joseph from her grip. “We’s runnin’,” Alice said to Ginny, “come with us!”

  “Can’t run, you know’d d’at. But you jus’ take care, stay low, run like the wind and don’t you stop!”

  Alice took Joseph in her arms and returned to Mo and Belle, all of them turning to see their fat friend wave them off, her eyes watering, lips quivering, knowing where her sad destiny lay.

  Belle and her reunited family ran out of the shed and toward the edge of the property, the Blueridge Mountains behind them and vast rolling foothills and flatlands ahead.

  “You!” Belle and her family stopped to see slave master Taggart on his horse riding up behind them, a pistol in his hands. “I’ll kill you all!”

  There was little Belle and her family could do but stand there as Taggart’s horse bore down on them. They wouldn’t scatter and couldn’t fight, but at least they would die together.

  But a man threw himself at Taggart from the side, jumping out as if in hiding. Belle saw at once that it was Samuel, fresh whipping scars and welts on his arms and torso, muscles rippling under that battered skin. Samuel and Taggart grappled as Taggart’s horse turned and bucked. Taggart’s pistol fired, Belle and the others ducking as they watched, entranced by the battle in front of them, unable or unwilling to run and leave Samuel to die in effort of their rescue.

  The two men fell off the horse, the saddle sliding to the side before the horse finally shook and rode off. Taggart landed with Samuel on top of him, one of the pistols locked in their mutual grip between them.

  Mo ran to the two men, Alice screaming his name behind him. He reached for the gun and the three men fought for it. Mo fell back, landing in the wet grass as the pistol discharged again. Samuel was struck, Belle could almost feel the gunshot in her own belly, the blackened hole charred and bloody in his gut.

  But Samuel wasn’t dead yet, and he was close enough to grab a dagger from Taggart’s belt and plunge it into the slave driver’s chest. Taggart grunted, blood jumping out of his mouth as his thick body arched beneath the attacking Samuel, himself falling into the waiting arms of death.

  Belle stood with her family, stunned at the turn of events, the bodies of slave and slave master alike sleep together in terrible repose. But the gunfire kept crackling in the distance as the smoke got thicker, flames rising out of the plantation house in the distance.

  Alice turned as Mo grabbed Belle’s hand and the four slaves, a humble little family burdened with their master’s name, ran from the Robinson plantation and into the fields, the very flames of hell licking at their heels.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Belle and her family just kept running. Even so, the chaos behind them was impossible to ignore. The Robinson plantation house was completely engulfed in flames, pouring up a tower of black smoke that would be seen for miles. The sounds of scramble and battle were fading in the distance, no horses loud behind them, no reason to suspect that death was still clinging to their tails.

  But she still didn’t dare turn around, her hand locked in Mo’s. One low, flat plain blended into another, a lot of them still unworked, some worked but fallow. Belle knew the quiet of the midday outside the Robinson plantation would be relatively calm and bright, and that would be dangerous enough for a family of escaped slaves, never mind dozens of slaves scurrying off in every direction. But the fire was going to bring white men, a lot of them, and it wouldn’t take long for them to know the true end of things, even if the beginnings would still be hazy.

  Whoever started the uprising, it didn’t matter, the slaves were gone, whites were dead, and the whites were going to go crazy with anger and fear and an unquenchable thirst for what they no doubt would call good Christian justice.

  And all the slaves would have known that, another reason for them to scatter. Greater numbers brought greater risk, especially in those tumultuous hours. But clusters of slaves were still in Belle’s sight as they all ran, some getting farther and farther away, a few stragglers keeping up with the Robinsons, trailing on the outside of their frightened little pack. They didn’t get too close, but they didn’t stray too far, forming a broad but thinly clustered pack of slaves on the run.

  Belle didn’t even think they’d survive the day without being captured. But the hours crept on. Stretches of ranch land replacing the farms, their outskirts quiet and unmanned. Belle began to wonder if they didn’t actually have a chance. She looked up, no stars in that cloud-speckled blue sky, no drinking gourde to guide them. Are we even going north? Belle had to wonder. We could be going farther in the wrong direction, straight into the arms of the devil himself!

  But it didn’t matter, and Belle knew that, too. They had to keep running from that point forward, low and fast. Wherever they were going, it had to be better than what they were leaving behind them.

  As the hours went on, the number of slaves around them became fewer and fewer. With less of their fellow slaves nearby, there was more room for the stragglers to stretch out, find their own way, find greater shelter in their fewer number. A single slave had a better chance than two, and a pair had twice the chance as a foursome like the Robinsons.

  Moss on the trees told them that they were slightly off course, but a minor shift to the west seemed to put them on a straight track heading up to the free states, and perhaps even Canada beyond them.

  Crack! The metal clap of the trap burst from out of nowhere, and the human scream followed, loud and long and high-pitched. Belle and her family stopped, Mo and Alice looking around as the screaming went on with less surprise and more protracted agony. Belle looked around too, knowing what she’d see; a slave pinned to the ground by a metal coyote trap closed around his lower leg, bone no doubt shattered, metal teeth dug into his flesh, rust and other germs already pulsing through his infected bloodstream.

  But Belle couldn’t see anything at all. Scanning in each direction, the other few stray slaves doing the same, nobody could seem to locate the source of the fading screams. There was no finding him, no helping him, nothing Belle and her family could do but move on and as quickly as possible. She knew, and her parents knew too, that the slave hunters had put that trap out and they’d be coming to collect their prize. That would bring others of their kind, and they were probably not far off as it was. There was no time to search for the man, nothing to do but run and take extra care of where they were stepping. Death was everywhere, even directly underfoot.

  They found a gully by a stream they could follow, and Belle recalled another verse from that old, treasured tune: “The riverbank makes a very good road, the dead trees will show you the way. Left foot, peg foot, traveling on, follow the drinking gourd.”

  They didn’t sleep that first night, crawling along the stream until first light. The stream got a bit deeper and the banks higher, until the exposed roots of a cypress tree gave them enough to hide behind, and under, to hunker down and sleep through the day, to resume their journey by night. The water would help keep the slave hunter’s dogs off their scent, or at least they hoped it would.

  Belle sat hudd
led with her family, cold and wet and aching after almost twenty-four hours of non-stop running. Her stomach grumbled, louder than ever before. She was almost afraid that alone would expose them to the slave hunters. But it didn’t stop her from falling into a deep sleep, body completely robbed of strength or reserves.

  A distant gunshot jolted her awake, and Belle looked around in a panic, expecting to see a white man above them, rifle in hand, dogs barking, jaws clapping. But Alice stroked her head to soothe her back to sleep, Joseph ever silent in their darkened midst.

  The days and nights rolled on until Belle and the Robinsons met another couple of escaped slaves, a young man and woman who’d been sleeping in a hollow log the Robinsons had hoped to use for shelter.

  “Go on an’ git!” the slave said, crawling out of the log, his body covered with grime and writhing little bugs.

  “Awright, awright,” Mo said, “don’t be riled.” The woman stuck her head out of the other side of the log and glared at them. Mo asked, “Y’all’s gotta baby in thar' too?”

  The man took a step toward Mo, chest out, fists clenched. “Won’t neither of us have nothin’ ‘less’n you don’t git out ‘chere now!”

  Alice asked the woman in the log, “Y’all hear tell of any white folks can help us on up north?”

  But the woman shook her head, bugs crawling in her tangled hair. “You got rocks in yer head, girl? Think we’d tell you? Now git, ‘for you bring them whites ‘round!”

  Her husband pushed Mo back. “Go on, take yer family and git now!”

  Belle watched her parents glance at one another, and she could almost read their minds. Belle knew there was no point in fighting with the couple, and even less point trying to be friends or join forces. They had to push on and fast. Morning had broken and they needed shelter and hiding and rest. Every minute exposed in that glare was a moment closer to the grave for all of them, and getting there would be a truly terrible journey. There’d be no merciful shot to the head, Belle was well aware. Before that there would be the lash, and before that, the dogs, and before them, the men.

  So Mo and Belle ducked down and led Belle on, deeper into the woods, thick with hickory, maple, and cherry trees.

  The morning got humid in the woods, heat collecting in the trees, the forest floor thick with rotting leaves, rocks and twigs. The Robinsons marched on, snaking through the trees which grew closer and closer together.

  In the distance, a hound dog howled, others barking. Belle and her family stopped and looked behind them, no slave hunters visible behind them, no dogs hot on their heels. The barking was too distant, at least they weren’t close enough to be an immediate threat.

  Not yet.

  But a man’s screams split the air, and from roughly the same distance and direction. A woman’s scream followed. Mo and Alice looked at one another, eyes wide with terror and sadness, the slave couple’s screams disappearing among the dog’s howling and barking.

  Mo and Alice turned and led Belle deeper into the forest, faster, not bothering to stoop as much as the flora became more tangled at their feet. Instead of staying hidden, it was crucial to put some distance between them and the doomed pair behind them.

  The woman screamed again, louder though no closer, but a rifle shot silenced her, echoing in the expansive Midwestern sky above the forest. A second rifle shot ended the sad tale of the frightened slave couple in the hollow log. But it gave the Robinsons a chance to move farther away, to put enough distance between them and their pursuers so that they would survive another day, though even that was not promised, nor did it even seem likely.

  But daylight revealed to Belle what their journeys by night had hidden. She could see the terror and sadness in her parents’ faces, particularly in Mo’s as they trudged on.

  Running.

  She could see it written in the crags of his face as he relived the previous few days in his mind. He’d been helpless to join Samuel in fighting Taggart, and Belle knew her pappy couldn’t help but wonder if he couldn’t have saved Samuel’s life. For certain, Mo could do little to protect his own family, nothing to help the slave caught in the coyote trap, nor to help the couple in the hollow log. He felt helpless, unmanned, a frightened little mouse scurrying with his little mouse family through a world of men, just waiting for the snap of the trap to swing down and end their pitiful flight once and for all.

  And Belle knew also that it was more than just their flight from the Robinson plantation that was weighing on her father’s mind, on his heart, and on his soul. He had a lifetime of slavery to look back on and little else. True, he’d found a woman he loved and thanked God for bringing them together and for blessing them with two healthy, strong children. But Mo knew what every slave knew; he had no hand to guide his own life, no say in his destiny or that of his family. He was less than a man in their eyes, and more and more Belle could see that Mo Robinson was less a man in his own eyes as well.

  But there was more to worry about and deal with than Mo’s sense of himself or Alice’s, and that was to keep running and hiding, keep moving forward to freedom or death, perhaps even both.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The days turned to weeks. Belle and her family survived on fruits poached from local farmers, water from rivers and streams, raw craw-daddies, tree roots, whatever they could get. The Robinsons stumbled across a clay pot buried near a pine, just the rim of the lid exposed. Mo dug it up and opened it to reveal that it was filled with hardened corn mash. It was hard to keep down, already getting moldy, but there was nutrition enough to push them on. And there was food for the soul in that little pot, because it had been filled and hidden for their use, and done so by somebody with some means and some conscience, and probably a white person too.

  That meant that Mo’s tales of an underground railroad were true, that there were actually compassionate whites out there, able and even willing to risk their own safety to help the tides of escaping slaves coming in from the south.

  The words of that old song rang in Belle’s imagination, and as they made it farther north, she thought about the true meaning of the words: “The river ends between two hills, follow the drinking gourd.”

  The river, that was the Big Muddy, right? But we took a different way, can’t all rivers be the same river. That’s gotta be our journey, the river, and it ends between two hills. But … which hills? What hills?

  “There's another river on the other side, follow the drinking gourd.”

  What’s that mean? Got’sta mean the River Jordan, from the bible? Gotta know so we see God’s way when we get t’it. Got’sta know!

  But there was no immediate answer, no ready solution to the puzzle. There were only more questions, the answers of which became more urgent as the Robinsons got closer and closer to their destination, whatever that would be.

  “When the great big river meets the little river, follow the drinking gourd. For the old man is a–waiting to carry you to freedom if you follow the drinking gourd.”

  And run they did, following the drinking gourd by night both figuratively and literally. Because sure enough, the vast and dark night always did reveal that starry pattern in front and above them. A line of three stars, bent by a fourth, led to a big square formed by four stars, wider apart. It did look to Belle for all the world like a big drinking dipper, the kind the whites often used in the fields when they were supervising the slaves, when their tin pot of water was carried out by the houseboy or one of the little sambos. It wasn’t much like the hollowed-out gourds the slaves drank from when their buckets of dirty water were passed around, but it was there and it was bright and it was always leading them onward, just like the song said. And it was far enough away to remain out of the grip of the white man. Whatever he could or couldn’t do to the Negro, the white man could never enslave the stars.

  But the Robinson family was still well within the grip of the white man and his dogs, his horses, his guns, his chains. And the sudden howl of a nearby hound reminded Belle that with t
errible clarity, shooting straight into her gut.

  Belle and her family kept running. They’d been going all night, and Belle’s legs were long-since numb. In getting stronger, they were crumbling beneath her to hear those hideous wails, the beasts getting closer behind them in that dark distance. They were just an hour or so before dawn, barely that by Belle’s reasoning, close to finding a place to hide and hunker down for the next day.

  So close, Belle thought, we come so far! But we ain’t g’wine no farther still, that’s f’sho.

  The three men rode in fast, their horses’ hoof beats pounding the ground, louder and more forceful, near enough to put Belle off her feet entirely. Her bare soles slipped on the wet grass, but Alice’s firm grip on her fist kept them together, kept them going for as long as God would allow and surely no farther still.

  They rode ahead and around to cut the Robinsons off, the hounds closing in and barking, fangs flashing just as in Belle’s worst dreams. She could almost feel them digging into her, pulling her apart piece-by-piece, lapping up her blood with those hellish tongues, jowls flapping with hellish glee.

  They didn’t strike, trained as they were to track and pin, one beast of burden corralling the other. But they came close enough to strike, and corralling the huddled Robinson family was a quick and easy feat.

  The slave hunters circled them on their horses, rifles in their hands, pistols and whips and ropes on their belts, their saddles, hatred in their faces as the dawn broke over their triumph.

  “Whaddaya think?” one asked the other. Instead of answering, the slave hunter turned to Mo. He was very fat, his horse seeming to waver under his girth. “Where you from, boy?” Mo just looked up at the man and said nothing, fear and doubt locking his tongue in his mouth. “I axed you a question, boy. Where’s you from?”