by Londyn Skye
Corrina walked over and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said, taking Rose from his arms.
James stood up and turned away. He could not even bring himself to watch. Tearfully, Corrina wrapped his daughter a little more securely in the little yellow blanket her mother had knitted, and then placed her tiny two-pound body inside of the box. James flinched when he heard the lid close. Corrina then slid the entire box inside of James’s satchel, walked around to where he stood with his head hanging low, and handed it to him. “Again … I thank you,” James expressed after regaining control over his emotions. At that moment, they both heard all the slaves trickling quietly back into the slave quarters. He and Corrina then stepped back out into the common area to meet with them.
“We made it out to the road with no problem. Far as we know Masa’ Jesse ain’t see us. We hooked up ya’ horses too. Dey’s ready to go,” one of the slaves informed James while trying to catch his breath. “Henry’s still waitin’ on ya’ out at the wagon near the bridge ova’ the creek. He didn’t wanna leave Lily by ’erself.”
James simply nodded in response. “To all of you,” he began, turning in a circle to look at every slave that surrounded him. “I have an immense amount ‘a gratitude. I promise I’ll be back to set you all free one day. Each and every one of ya’, God willin’ … you will all be free. I swear to it.”
With that, James placed his satchel on his back and checked to make sure the six-shooters in his holsters were fully loaded. He then quietly made his way to the bridge above the creek to reunite with Lily. He laid Rose in the back of the wagon when he arrived and then quickly checked Lily’s vitals. Her status was still the same. She had not gotten any better, but James was most thankful for the fact that she had not gotten worse either. He then climbed into his seat, thanked Henry, promised his freedom as well, and then snapped his horse’s reins hard, prompting them to move as quickly as possible.
While James was making his getaway, his father and brothers all sat in the house, griping about politics, laughing, and imbibing heavily on cheap spirits, much like they would prior to every Ghost Rider rally. Their lack of remorse was astonishing considering that a baby had just passed away at their hands and her mother was on the verge of death, just a few hundred yards away. It was as if the fact that Jesse had just beaten a woman into oblivion was nothing more than a bad dream. After finishing the last of his whiskey, J.R. was feeling so good that he suddenly began snickering to himself.
Jacob stopped talking to his father and turned to look at his older brother oddly. “The fuck you laughin’ at?” he asked, suddenly feeling self-conscious.
“I want this nigga’ lova’ to watch his whore rot to death as slow as humanly possible…” J.R. replied, sounding like a woman while mocking his father’s words from earlier. He then broke out in another fit of hearty laughter, even louder this time. In his severe state of inebriation, he was feeling zero inhibitions about poking fun at his father. His mocking and maniacal laughter was motivated by his anger over the fact that his father was, once again, giving James preferential treatment, even after dishonoring the family in such a sinful way.
Jesse slammed his gin down on the table and stared at J.R. “You got a problem with my decision, ya’ little shit?!” Jesse barked at him.
J.R. ignored his father and continued his deep-chested, mucus-filled laughter. Jesse stumbled over, grabbed his eldest son by the shirt collar, and pulled him up from his chair. “I said, you got a problem with that, ya’ fat fucker?” he snarled, now within an inch of his son’s face.
J.R.’s laughter finally ceased. “Of course I got a fuckin’ problem with it!” he barked back, going from one emotional extreme to the other in the blink of an eye. “Now, get the fuck off me!” he demanded, pushing his father backward. “When the fuck’ve you eva’ failed to finish the job of killin’ a nigga’, huh?!” He stared at his father, waiting a moment for a reply. He continued his verbal attack when all he got was a dirty look. “You ain’t neva’ left a nigga’ clingin’ to life before! But ya’ turn into a little cunt on the count ‘a y’ur nigga’ lovin’ son! The Jesse Adams I know would be salivatin’ while draggin’ a disrespectful bitch like that out to the rally!” J.R. stopped, wiped his mouth, and took a step toward his father. “From day one, that low-life, floor scrubbin’ bitch was disrespectin’ this house!” J.R. yelled while pointing to his mother’s piano. “She was playin’ that pianah and runnin’ off neglectin’ housework to play with James in the woods from the moment she got here!” he speculated, after recalling how he had once saw them playing there. “Hell, she was probably even fuckin’ y’ur son right here unda’ y’ur very roof, and then had the audacity to strut around here with y’ur nigga’ grandchild in ’er womb, flauntin’ the goddamn thing right in y’ur fuckin’ face!” He stopped and pointed out the window. “But yet, there she lay, with only a few bruises and nary a knife mark in ’er! This damn sho’ ain’t like the Jesse Adams I know! I’ve seen the real wrath of Jesse Adams in years past! Usually, afta’ you just hear about a slave who’s done half the shit as Lily, you would’ve tortured ’em with far more than just a few bruises and stripes! You neva’ would’ve let no nigga’ die a slow, easy, peaceful death! You’d’ve made a show outta her death! You’d’ve been itchin’ to cut that goddamn baby clean outta her womb if it’d been anybody else’s kid! But because that was James’s little nigga’ growin’ inside ‘a her, you spare him the pain ‘a watchin’ you gut that whore like the fuckin’ meaningless animal she is!” J.R. took another step toward his father and lowered his eyelids. “I swear, you done went from bein’ the fearless leada’ of the Ghost Riders to bein’ their all-time biggest pussy!”
Jesse grabbed J.R. by the neck, slammed him against the wall, and squeezed his throat with all the force he could muster with his uninjured left hand. J.R. then began repeatedly punching his father in the face until he turned him loose. Jesse stumbled backward a second, lowered his shoulder, and then charged at J.R., slamming him into the wall again. Both men ended up submerged in broken drywall, tussling with each other until Jacob was finally able to pull the pair apart. When J.R. was hunched over trying to catch his breath, Jesse kicked him in the gut. He then grabbed J.R. by the hair and forced him to look at him. “Get y’ur fuckin’ sorry ass outta my house and don’t you eva’ come back!” Jesse snarled, shoving his namesake toward the door.
While J.R. was angrily stumbling down the steps of his father’s home, James was tiptoeing up the steps of Gideon’s. He had parked his wagon near Gideon’s shed in the darkness and cautiously ran across the fields, hoping to cash in on a favor that Gideon had promised to him over a year ago: If eva’ you need anything, anything at all, you come and see me, ya’ hear? I feel like I owe you the world for what ya’ done for my boy, were Gideon’s heartfelt words to James the day he had saved his son’s life. James knew that Gideon was a very compassionate man, but he was uncertain if he would be willing to help with “anything at all” once he found out who the person was that he was about to request help for. His uncertainty with whether he could trust Gideon had James’s heart pounding just as hard as he pounded on the front door.
Gideon opened the door with a shotgun in his hand, prepared to fire on whoever had the audacity to bang on his door at such a late hour in such a rude way. He lowered the gun when he saw who it was. “James? Everything all right? What’re you doin’ here?”
“Who’s there Giddy?” Carolyn curiously asked from the top of the stairs.
“It’s all right, sweetheart. It’s only James. You can go on back to bed,” he told his wife. Gideon then turned his attention back to James, stepped out onto the porch, shut the door, and waited for an explanation for his presence.
“You said if I eva’ needed anything, I could come to you, right?”
“Of course,” Gideon replied.
“Well, I need your help. I don’t know who else I can trust. Please,” James begged.
The p
ain in his voice was so evident that Gideon immediately laid his shotgun down and his entire demeanor changed. His eyes had finally adjusted to the moonlight, and he was now able to see how bloodshot and swollen James’s eyes were, as well as the bruises and cuts that his brothers had scattered about his face. His hair was disheveled, and he was still covered in a light layer of dried blood and dirt. While treating Jesse and J.R. earlier, Gideon had heard their version of the events that had unfolded at their plantation, but he now questioned it all because of the way James stood there looking like he had just returned home from a war. “What the hell happened to you?” Gideon asked, staring at James with true concern in his eyes.
“Look, I don’t have a lotta time to explain,” James replied. “I need medical supplies. Any and everything you can give me.”
“That’s no problem at all. You can take anything you need from the shed or from my office. That’s it?” Gideon asked, wondering why he seemed so fearful to ask something so simple.
“No. There’s more.”
Gideon looked at James curiously. “Why do I get the feelin’ this has somethin’ to do with the reason your fatha’ and brotha’s were here earlia’?”
“Your feelin’ is right. Can you come with me a minute? I’ll try to quickly explain.”
“Sure.” Gideon stepped inside his house, put on his boots and a jacket, and then followed behind James.
James was quiet until they reached the shed. “Gideon, I may need you to help me get outta town,” James explained nervously as Gideon was opening the padlock on his storage shed.
“For what?”
“I think the betta’ question is for who?”
Gideon suddenly looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“Follow me,” James instructed. He then walked over to his wagon with his heart pounding while praying silently that he could trust Gideon with what he was about to reveal. Once Gideon was standing next to him near the tail end of his wagon, James held up his lantern for him to get a better look inside.
“Good God!” Gideon gasped after seeing the extent of the damage to Lily’s face. “Is this the slave that stabbed J.R.?”
“Yes. It’s Lily.”
“That’s Lily?!” Gideon replied, floored by the fact that she was unrecognizable. He stood there with his mouth agape, the sight of her mangled face suddenly making him feel sick to his stomach.
“Yes, that’s her,” James confirmed. “And I need to get ’er outta town as quickly as possible. It won’t be long before my fatha’ and brotha’s will be lookin’ for her.”
“You runnin’ off with ’er?”
James nodded. “And I’s hopin’ for you to drive while I treat ’er. I need to keep a constant eye on ’er. I’ve gotta get ’er fever down, keep watch ova’ her vitals, and finish stitchin’ ’er wounds, but I can’t do it by myself. I gotta keep this wagon rollin’ if I’m gonna keep my fatha’ from catchin’ us.”
“James, you’re askin’ me to commit a crime,” Gideon replied, looking at him like he was crazy. “And hell, for a slave who committed a major crime herself.”
“A crime?”
“Yeah, J.R. said she stabbed ’em for no good reason.”
“HE WAS RAPIN’ HER!” James yelled, immediately enraged by the lie his brother had told.
Gideon flinched and then stood there in stone-cold silence.
“She was defendin’ herself!” James continued. “My own fuckin’ brotha’ is a goddamn rapist! She should’ve killed that fuckin’ worthless piece ‘a shit!” He suddenly stopped and took a moment to collect himself after realizing that Gideon did not deserve his angry outburst. He blew out a breath before he continued. “Gideon, the only crime that was committed was against Lily. The way I see it, I’m not askin’ you to help me commit a crime … I’m askin’ you to help me save her. But if you aren’t willin’ to help, or if this truly goes against your conscience, at the very least, I just ask that you don’t whispa’ a word about this to anyone.”
“She must mean a great deal to ya’,” Gideon surmised after hearing the desperation in James’s tone.
James suddenly looked Gideon in the eyes. “Yes, she does,” he replied without hesitation. “She’s my wife.” He turned to Lily and caressed her battered face. “Maybe that fact don’t mean anything to you, but it means everything to me … she means everything to me.”
“Your wife?” Gideon replied with obvious shock.
“Yes,” James answered, again without hesitation. “I love her,” he boldly admitted, the truth evident in the way he choked up as he spoke the words. “W-we just lost our baby because ‘a the barbaric way that my fatha’ beat Lily. She gave birth three months early. My baby’s lyin’ lifeless in that bag,” he said, motioning his head toward his satchel. He lowered his head as his lip began to quiver. “I-I can’t lose Lily too,” he said, his tears returning. He wiped his eyes before looking at Gideon again. “So, I’m beggin’ you to help me get ’er outta here.”
The pain in James’s voice nearly broke Gideon down too. After losing his first wife, he understood all too well about the devastation that that sort of loss could cause. “Where you headed with ’er?”
“North.”
Gideon put a comforting hand on James’s shoulder. “I won’t eva’ forget how you saved my boy’s life, and for that I promise I’ll do all I can to help you save your wife,” he said. The compassion in James’s voice had suddenly forced him to remember what it felt like to be shunned by an entire town for loving a person that others deemed inappropriate. The way people had treated him after helplessly falling for a much younger woman had put a permanent end to Gideon’s small-town, judgmental ways, and made it easy for him to empathize with James.
“Thank you, Gideon,” James replied, feeling a great deal of gratitude in the simple fact that he had referred to Lily as his wife. That one word made James confident that he could trust Gideon.
While James began loading food, water, and medical supplies in the wagon, Gideon went to quickly change his clothes. He vaguely informed his wife that he would be gone for a while to help James, omitting the details about Lily. In case anybody questioned his sudden absence, he told Carolyn to just explain that he had gone on another one of his typical medical mission trips. He then quickly returned to the wagon, took the reins, and headed north on the planned escape route while James continued working diligently to care for Lily.
Not yet knowing that James was gone, Jesse had sat back down alone on the couch in the parlor after his altercation with J.R. He glanced over at the piano that Lily had secretly played for years. He then quickly guzzled his entire glass of Gin. He would never have admitted it aloud, but he knew J.R. was right. There was always an uncontrollable twinge of something in him that made him want to go easy on James. Jesse was beginning to loathe himself for not being able to override the voice in his head that held him back when it came to punishing his youngest son. Had it been J.R. who tried to shoot him, Jesse knew he would not have hesitated to blow his brains out right in the middle of the field, like he was no more than a filthy dog infected with rabies.
After swallowing his gin, Jesse continued staring blankly at his wife’s cherished piano, thinking back to the moment he had walked into Lily’s room earlier and saw James sitting there with a lifeless baby in his arms. Jesse had initially paused when he saw him sitting there, not because of anger, but because of the powerful jolt of guilt and sadness that suddenly ricocheted through his entire body. Those feelings were brought on by the sorrowful sight of his broken-hearted son. It now began to perturb Jesse to know that that jolt of guilt and sadness ran through him even though the baby James held was a quadroon. Empathy and love were foreign, uncomfortable, and unwanted feelings for Jesse. The overwhelming majority of his heart was black and ice-cold; that’s the way he preferred it. After J.R. shed light on his faults, Jesse was now ready to kill the part of his heart that held onto an ounce of warmth for his youngest son. He suddenly sprang from the couch, st
ormed into the slave quarters, and went straight into Lily’s room. When he found it empty, he walked over and snatched Corrina up by the arm, waking her out of a dead sleep. “Where the hell is James?!” he erupted.
“I-I don’t know,” Corrina stuttered in her sleepy haze.
Enraged by her answer, Jesse slapped her. “Don’t lie to me, goddamn it!”
“I-I swear to you, I-I don’t know. H-he just took Lily and the baby and left. He didn’t say where he was goin’, I swear,” Corrina tearfully explained, holding her throbbing cheek.
Without another word, Jesse stormed out of the slave quarters and headed straight to the barn to get his horse.
Jesse had no way of knowing that James, Gideon, and Lily were well on their way to meet Samuel, who was ready and waiting loyally at his post for their arrival. Samuel had four horses, food, and supplies as outlined by Griff’s plan. He sat patiently near his campfire eating a can of beans, prepared to get some shut-eye when he was done, but he quickly stood up and drew his pistol when he heard a noise in the woods. Just as quickly, he lowered his gun in relief when he saw who it was. “You’re s’pposed to be at the second post,” he said to Elijah after he appeared out of the darkness. “The hell you doin’ here?”
Elijah walked up within three feet of him. “Bringin’ you a gift,” he replied as he raised his gun and callously shot Samuel straight between the eyes. Elijah then stepped over his dead body and sat down. He picked up his can of beans and began calmly eating it, as if Samuel were doing nothing more than taking a nap beside him.
Elijah’s current cold-blooded murder was secretly one of Isabel’s greatest fears come true. She had ridden alongside William on the train after James and Lily’s wedding, feeling extraordinarily uneasy about the fact that her brother was now one of the relay people for Lily’s planned escape. After literally getting away with murder at Winter Garden, Elijah had casually gone back to chasing his dreams, as if the fact that he had blown Tucker’s brains out was just a necessary step to further his entrepreneurial cause. Since then, he had been roaming from city to city, pursuing his business ventures as usual, but this time, funding his trips with Lily’s hard-earned money. Just weeks before James and Lily’s wedding ceremony, he had come home from one of those business trips, and just so happened to walk into Isabel’s apartment while she was working on a very special gift …