by Joyce Hansen
They rode the rest of the way in silence. The closer they got to George Phillips’s three hundred acres of land, the more determined Obi became to find a way to leave.
When they rode through the gates of the plantation, they saw a group of men standing on the lawn. George Phillips was talking with them.
“They soldiers?” Easter asked.
Obi strained to see. “I think so.” He thought he recognized the grey Confederate caps. Normally, their wagons would have been met at the gate by one of Phillips’s people. Tonight, however, small groups of slaves watched the men talking, keeping a careful distance from them. Phillips’s face was as somber as his black suit.
“What the devil’s going on?” Wilson mumbled.
When they climbed off their mules, Jessie, the overseer who’d brought the news about Tyler, spotted them. He walked across the lawn.
“Hello, sir,” he said to Wilson. Then he motioned with his hand toward the soldiers. “The family see so much trouble—now this.”
Wilson placed his hand on the mule’s neck. “What happened?”
Jessie shook his head. “Jeremiah try and run off to them Yankees instead a watchin’ out for young Tyler like he supposed to.” He spread his thin mouth in a grin. “But them Yankees trick him. Send him right back here. Tell our soldiers that they ain’t fightin’ this war to steal nobody’s property.”
Obi’s heart raced as he stared at the cluster of men on the lawn. Now he recognized a tall figure, his hands tie behind his back. Jeremiah! he said to himself. He and Easter glanced at each other. She too realized what this meant Running to Yankee soldiers wasn’t the way to freedom.
Obi wished he could talk to Jeremiah—find out what his plan had been and why it hadn’t worked. Wilson and Jessie started toward the tobacco barn. Obi and Easter followed leading the mules. As they passed the soldiers, Obi tried to catch Jeremiah’s eyes, but Jeremiah’s head was thrown back. He looked defiant, standing straight and tall and seeming to stare at the dark, starless sky.
“That boy goin’ to suffer now,” Jessie said. “Master Phillips don’t allow no beatin’ ’less someone real bad, and that’s a bad one.”
Wilson spat on the ground. “Wish I was back on the sea. Sick to death of war—sick to death of slaves and dirt.”
They passed the smokehouse, where meat was cured and stored. Obi tried to block out the men’s conversation so that he could think. He had to figure out a way to meet Buka—tonight!
They walked by the spinning house, and Obi heard the women inside laughing and talking softly as they spun the cotton thread that would be woven into cloth. It was familiar sound, and comforting at a time when things were changing rapidly. He would have liked to stay there and listen a while longer.
When they reached the tobacco barn, a young woman came out to help unload the leaves from the wagons. As soon as one of the wagons was empty, Wilson turned to Jessie. “I’ll be back tomorrow for that other wagon and mule,” he said.
Obi wished he could take the mule himself and ride away with Easter.
“You stay in the long cabin tonight,” Jessie said to Obi.
Obi looked surprised. “I ain’t stayin’ with Thomas, suh?”
“You workin’ in the field, not with the carpenter.”
“Suh, I thought I could stay with Thomas in the cabin.” Obi kept after the overseer because he didn’t want to be in the long cabin with a lot of other men.
“You stay where you told to stay,” Wilson told him. He turned to Jessie. “He give you any trouble, you put him on that whippin’ post. Watch him good.”
The overseer winked. “He’ll be safe here.”
Obi felt trapped as he took another bundle of tobacco to the barn. It would be almost impossible to get away without the help of one of the Phillips people. Though he knew many of the slaves, he didn’t know if he could trust any. Who would help him without turning him in before he even got to Buka?
“The gal can stay in the nursery,” Jessie told Wilson. The nursery was a cabin for children who had no mothers. During the day it was used for the babies belonging to the women who worked in the fields. They were cared for while their mothers worked. Two old women who could no longer labor as field hands took care of the children.
Easter stared at the ground. Usually she stayed with the cook’s helper in a small shed behind the kitchen of the family house.
Wilson got on the mule and rode off without looking back. The women who had been working in the barn were leaving. “Y’all go on to the cabins,” Jessie said to Obi and Easter. “Curfew startin’ now, and the horn will be blowin’ at five in the mornin’.”
He walked away from them, heading in the direction of the far pasture. Obi guessed that he was going to find out what was happening to Jeremiah, who was by now probably in the plantation jail, on the outskirts of the property.
As soon as the overseer was out of earshot, the women began to talk. One of them put her hands on Easter’s shoulders.
“Why you here in July?” She didn’t wait for an answer but continued talking. “You see they bring Jeremiah back?” They started walking toward the cabins.
“Jeremiah a fool,” a short woman walking next to Obi said, “believin’ them stories he hear about soldiers coming to free us.”
The large, white, two-story plantation house loomed over them as they passed it on their way to the slave quarters. The lawn was clear of people now. Behind the house, footpath bordered with cypress and magnolia trees led away from the house. Easter was on the verge of tears as they approached the quarters. There were two rows of one-room log cabins that faced each other—seventeen on each side of a narrow path.
People sat talking in front of and in the narrow alleys between the cabins. Some of them sat around small fires. Ordinarily, by now most of them would be inside after the grueling field work. They’d eat, do their chores, and sleep early. Though barely a sound could be heard, Obi guessed they were talking about Jeremiah.
The women who had walked with Easter and Obi joined different groups of people. Obi put his arm around Easter’s shoulders.
“We find a way,” he said. “Buka ain’t gonna leave without us. He leavin’ to show us the way. Otherwise he stay right here.”
Easter gazed at the small fires and the people huddled around them. “I don’t like stayin’ in these cabin. I could be with Rose in the shed or at the farm with Jason and Mistress.”
Obi sighed. “Wherever you be, you still a slave. I don’t like it either. My mind made up. We figure a way to leave.”
“And get Jason too!”
“Go on to the cabin now,” Obi said, ignoring her comment.
Obi watched her disappear into the shadows as she walked to the nursery at the end of the rows of cabins. He didn’t know how they could get Jason. He didn’t dislike the boy, but he wasn’t going to jeopardize his own chances of running in order to save a child.
Jason hardly know he in slavery, he told himself. Someday Jason be a man an free he own self As he walked to the long cabin, he realized that everyone was outside—even the children, who weren’t playing but sitting quietly with the adults.
A group of men sat around a fire. They stopped talking when Obi approached. All the men knew Obi, but only one, a man called Julius, greeted him. Though Julius made room for him in the circle, Obi sensed that he was unwelcome.
“What you doin’ here in July?” Julius asked.
“I here for the cotton.”
“You ain’t workin’ with the carpenter?” Julius said, surprised.
Obi shook his head. “Easter here too. She in the nursery.”
“Guess your master finish he own croppin’?” Julius said.
Obi wanted to say, “Ain’t got no master,” but Buka had taught him to keep silent. Trust no one with your secrets unless they takin’ the same chances you is, Buka had said.
Obi nodded in response to Julius’s question and wondered whether there was anyone in the quiet, secretive circle of
men who’d help him get to Buka.
Sensing someone staring at him, Obi turned away from Julius and looked straight in the eyes of Rayford, George Phillips’s personal servant. The proud, arrogant man was one of the Phillips’ most favored slaves and was called “Massa Rayford” behind his back. Obi had never known him to associate with any of the other slaves. He even had his own small room in the family house.
But on this night, instead of the clean, white trousers and shirt he usually wore, Rayford had on a rough, homespun shirt and overalls like the field hands. His dark eyes jumped and flickered in the firelight. He was staring angrily at Obi. Then he stood quickly. The others rose with him. Obi looked from one man to the other, wondering what he’d done wrong.
“You can go to the cabin,” Julius said to Obi. “There be a pallet under the shutter. You can sleep there.”
Obi had the feeling that the men were going somewhere. Why would Rayford be there, dressed like a hand?
“You goin’ inside too?” Obi asked.
“Yes,” Julius said, but he hesitated. Obi knew he was lying—the other men had already slipped away—so he stayed where he was.
Rayford snuffed out the fire. Then he grabbed Obi by the shoulders. “What you want?” he asked gruffly. “What they send you here for?” he added.
Obi tried to pull himself out of the larger man’s grip. “The overseer tell me to sleep in the long cabin.” He knew for certain now that the men were planning something. Maybe this was an opportunity for him to get help. He tried to remain calm. “Master hire me out early—but I supposed to meet Buka tonight.”
Rayford’s grip loosened, and Obi noticed that Julius seemed interested when he said Buka’s name. He took a chance.
“Can you show me how to get to Buka?” he asked.
“It dangerous, Obi,” Julius said nervously. “Patterollers come right here, an’ the dogs is let out too. One side the patterollers, an’ the other side the dogs. Just go in the cabin Obi, like you supposed to,” he said softly.
“Tell me where the dogs be—I take my chance with them,” Obi pleaded.
“What business you have with Buka?” Rayford whispered hoarsely.
Obi decided to gamble once more. “Buka takin’ me an’ Easter to a funeral at Brantley’s farm.”
Rayford grabbed Obi’s arm and pushed him in the cabin. Obi twisted and tried to speak, “Rayford, suh, I—”
“Quiet,” he ordered.
Obi’s head pounded so hard he thought he’d faint. He should never have mentioned the funeral. Julius followed them into the cabin, empty of men. “Light a candle,” Rayford told Julius.
When the candle was lit, Rayford knelt on the floor near one of the pallets. He quickly loosened an area of dirt with a hoe and pulled out a tin box. He looked at Obi. “What you say the girl’s name is?”
“Easter,” Obi mumbled. His hands were clammy as he tried to figure out what was happening.
“She in the nursery,” Julius informed Rayford.
“Get her,” Rayford ordered him.
Julius left the cabin and Obi tried to explain. “Rayford, suh, I—”
Rayford held up his hand. “No time for a lot of talk.” He opened the tin box and took out a pen, ink, and parchment. To Obi’s amazement, he began to write in a beautiful hand:
Permission is granted to Obi and Easter to attend the funeral at the farm of D. Brantley on the evening of July 27, 1861, and return to the Phillips plantation by ten p.m.
Signed: George Phillips
Rayford folded the note and handed it to Obi. “In case we’re stopped,” he said. This where Buka get he pass, Obi realized. Rayford placed the box back in the hole and carefully covered it over with dirt. “I thought you was sent to spy. You usually with that carpenter, and he love the ground ol’ Master step on.”
It seemed strange to Obi to hear loyal Rayford speak so disrespectfully about George Phillips. He smiled. “Thank you for the pass. How you learn to read an’ write? I ask Mistress once to teach me—she say it against the law.”
Rayford’s stern face softened as he continued to pack the dirt over the box. “She probably can’t read or write herself. Tyler taught me. When I take him back an’ forth to school I tell him, ‘Show me what you learn today.’”
Rayford stood up. “But I never let on that I learn. I always say, ‘You a smart boy, Tyler. Dumb Rayford can’t catch that at all.’ The boy taught me everything he knew, God bless his soul.” Rayford laughed.
When they left the cabin, Easter was waiting with Julius outside. She rushed over to Obi. “What happened?”
“We meetin’ Buka,” he said happily, expecting her to share his excitement.
“But what about Jason?”
“You look for Jason by you own self,” he said angrily. “I goin’ to meet Buka!”
Seven
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the
Union and is not either to save or destroy slavery.
President Abraham Lincoln
August 22, 1862
Rayford led them behind the large oak trees and weeping willows toward the open cotton fields. When they heard growling, Easter grabbed Obi’s hand and he spun around. Rayford reached out to a dog that charged from behind one of the trees.
“Hey, boy,” he said quietly. “Good boy!” The dog whined contentedly and chewed the small piece of meat Rayford threw to it. Rayford went hunting with George Phillips and knew all of the dogs that were used for plantation patrol.
They made such a winding route through the woods that Obi lost track of the direction in which they travelled. It didn’t seem as if they were going toward the Jennings farm and the creek. He wondered who had died and why the funeral was such a big secret. Rayford and the rest of Phillips’s people could have obtained real passes to go to a funeral.
There was a constant barking of dogs, and the sound was beginning to unnerve him. Somehow the barks were familiar. Then he realized that they were at the creek near the Jennings farm.
Suddenly a small, hunched figure appeared out of the bushes.
“Buka!” Obi almost yelled. The barking dogs were the Jennings’s hounds. Easter pulled Obi’s arm. “Let’s get Jason.”
“We have to move on,” Buka said. “Them dogs know our smell. Wake the family an’ find us like bear tracking honey.”
“Hurry!” Julius whispered to them.
“Obi, please!” Easter grabbed his arm. “We sneak in the house an’ get Jason easy.”
“I not goin’ back there. You go!” he said harshly.
She followed him silently.
After walking for nearly an hour, Obi was startled by the unexpected light of pine torches. A group of mourners walked slowly into a small slave cemetery on the outskirts of a farm. Rayford and Julius fell in step with the mourners, and Obi, Easter, and Buka followed. There were about twenty men and women. Six of the men carried a plain pine box.
Several of the women began to sing a dirge as they approached an open grave. Obi had heard those songs before—so different from their work and play songs.
The other mourners took up the song, and the coffin was placed on the ground next to the grave. When the men pulled up the lid, Obi couldn’t believe his eyes. As the light of the torches fell on the contents of the coffin, he saw that it was filled with shotguns, rifles, daggers, and anything else that could be used as a weapon.
While they sang, the mourners reached into their sacks and deposited more weapons. Buka led Obi and Easter behind a tree, away from the light of the torches.
“We runnin’ tonight like we planned,” Buka rasped. “I got britches for you an’ the boy,” he said to Easter.
“I can’t leave without Jason!” she cried.
“There’s no help for it,” Obi said sharply.
Buka patted her hand. “No time to go back, daughter. It take a while to get to the farm. We have to be long gone from here by sunup.”
“We can’t go without him,” she repeated. �
�No one makin’ me go.” She stood before them with her arms crossed.
“We go east to the swamp,” Buka patiently explained. “We return to the farm, then we get caught for sure. Dogs track us to the edge of the land.”
“Jason waitin’ for us!” she replied with a determined face.
Obi clenched his fists. “Then go back for Jason! Me an’ Buka leavin’. I tell you at Master Phillips, we can’t get Jason.”
“I goin’ back.” Tears streamed down her face. “He waitin’ for us an’ we never come. I go with Rayford an’ them.”
“They won’t take you back to the plantation,” Buka said. “When Obi discovered missin’, you the first one your master come to. They beat the truth out of you.”
“I won’t tell nothin’, an’ I ain’t afraid of beatin’,” Easter said, her firm voice beginning to tremble.
“Can’t take that chance, daughter,” Buka insisted. He took the overalls and a shirt out of his bulging sack. “Maybe we find Jason when the war done.”
“I not goin’ without Jason.”
Obi was about to grab Easter and shake some sense into her.
“Rayford shoot you before he let you go back. You can’t return because you know about all this funeral business now,” Buka whispered.
Easter stared at the old man in disbelief, but she accepted the overalls he handed her. Obi and Buka turned their backs while she changed. After she put on the man’s shirt and overalls worn by the plantation slaves, Buka gave her a large straw hat. He took her dress and apron and, borrowing a torch from one of the mourners, burned her clothing.
The singing stopped. Obi watched the mourners turn around and walk slowly from the grave containing its coffin of guns. Rayford and Julius walked over to Buka and Obi, and they all embraced. When Rayford rested his hand on Obi’s shoulder, Easter watched resentfully.
“God be with all of you,” Rayford said as he handed Buka a shotgun. He then joined Julius in the line of mourners. Buka hid the gun in the sack as the torchlight disappeared with the mourners.
“We walk till light, then we hide in the wood,” he said.
Obi took the sack from Buka and slipped the pass Rayford had given him inside. As they picked their way through thickets and brambles, Easter walked silently between Obi and Buka.