Which Way Freedom
Page 12
The girl, the one who reminded Obi of Easter, lay face down in the dirt, her homespun dress streaked with blood. Obi led Thomas behind a fallen log. “I feel as if I just died and went to hell,” Thomas whispered.
“We wait here till dark, then we go to the river,” Obi told him. They waited, listening to the screams and gunfire, until night fell. Then Obi helped Thomas to his feet and practically carried him down the hill.
The hillside had turned into a steep graveyard. Obi couldn’t tell whether a dark form was a body or a log. When they reached the riverbank, Obi eased himself and Thomas among the reeds. He prayed that the gunboat would be there in the morning and find them before the Confederate soldiers did.
Forgetting to play dead, Obi jumped when someone touched his arm. It was daylight and, in spite of the horror, birds sang. Looking up, he saw two Union sailors.
“You okay, soldier? Can you walk?” one of them asked.
Obi nodded and stood up. His legs felt weak and wobbly.
“Thomas still alive?” Obi whispered, afraid of the answer.
“Your friend here?” he asked, leaning over Thomas’s still body. He turned to the other sailor. “If he’s alive, we’ll put both of them on the gunboat. Otherwise, leave this one for the burial detail.”
Obi’s head swam and he started to sink back down on the ground.
“Come on now, feller,” the sailor said, grabbing Obi by his waist. “We’re going to take you to the hospital at Mound City.”
Obi sat on the edge of a small cot in the Mound City Hospital. He wore an old army shirt that the hospital had given him. Thomas lay on the cot, his wide eyes open and without their feverish glare. “A nurse tells me only about one hundred of us escaped,” Thomas said. “The Rebels tried to kill every living thing.” He grimaced as he tried to sit up. Obi helped him.
“The surgeon said I was lucky. The ball hit a joint and didn’t shatter my bone. Otherwise he might have had to cut off my leg. You saved my life, Obi.”
“Shoot,” Obi smiled, “you ain’t finish teachin’ me to read an’ write. Where I get a next teacher from if somethin’ happen to you?”
Thomas grinned. “Why don’t you come north with me when our time is up?” he asked.
“Can’t do that,” Obi said.
“Want to search for your mother?”
“No. I know I had a ma, an’ I know she love me. Most of us just know they was borned is all.” Obi stared for a moment at a man in the bed next to Thomas. He’d lost an arm and was moaning in his sleep. “I see all the death an’ fightin’. Life get took away fast as you blink the eye. Lorena the past.”
“Come with me, then. My mother will treat you like her own son.”
“Have to find Easter an’ Jason. Bring them with me if I do come.”
He checked for his pouch. “Keep forgettin’ I lose my money an’ them papers with the name that ain’t mine.”
“You can get new papers,” Thomas said. He stared at the ceiling. “Got an idea, Obi. This time, tell them the name you want.”
“Been thinkin’ ’bout that. I tell them to change whatever paper they have to the name Buka. Buka say his name mean ‘firstborn.’ “
“Buka,” Thomas repeated. “Guess you spell that B-o-o-k-e-r. I’ll get a pen and paper from the nurse and write it for you,” he said. “Then you tell them when you get your new papers that you’re changing your name from Jennings to Booker. Obidiah Booker.”
Obi smiled handsomely. “That suit me fine, Thomas. Obidiah Booker.”
Author’s Note
All of the characters in Which Way Freedom? are fictional. However, the massacre at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, was an actual event. Detailed interviews of Union soldiers who survived the slaughter at the fort can be read in the Fort Pillow Massacre Report #65, Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, April 20, 1864.
The First South Carolina Volunteers was one of the original black regiments to be mustered into the Union Army. Colonel T. W. Higginson, commander of the regiment, said: “The fate of the Confederacy was decided by Sherman’s march to the sea.… Next to the merit of those who made the march was that of those who held open the door. That service will always remain among the laurels of the black regiments.”
Black soldiers were involved in the intense fighting in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Virginia. The Twenty-fifth Corps was the first army corps composed entirely of black regiments, of which there were thirty-two. Some 200,000 blacks fought in the Civil War.
I hope this book gives the reader a deeper understanding of African American participation in that period of American history.
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OUT FROM THIS PLACE
JOYCE HANSEN teaches special education and enjoys photography when she isn’t writing for young people. Winner of the Spirit of Detroit Award, the author’s other titles include The Gift Given, Home Boy, and Out From This Place. Ms. Hansen lives with her husband in New York City.
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First published in the United States of America in February 2013
by Walker Publishing Company, Inc., a division of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.
E-book edition published in February 2013
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ISBN 978-0-8027-3551-5 (e-book)