Silas sat at his roll-top desk, his eyes fixed on Booker, who was pacing back and forth in the log cabin room. In the distance, down toward the cabins, they could hear the sounds of music and laughter—a celebration of the Day of Jubilee. As of two days ago, the slaves had finally been set free.
“They can sing and dance all they want, but it don’t mean nothin’ Massah Doctor. It don’t matter that the big house is burned down, Massah Robert be dead, and Missus done gone to live with Miss Sophie. Mister Lincoln can proclaim all he likes, but it don’t make a dime’s worth of difference south of the line.”
Silas sighed. His heart objected to the slave’s reasoning, but his mind told him that Booker was right. The Emancipation Proclamation had given all slaves their freedom, but the law hadn’t changed the reality of life below the Mason-Dixon line. The war still raged. Men from both sides were still dying. And the local patrollers, whom the slaves called pattyrollers, would shoot Negroes on sight, or capture and lynch them, leaving their bodies to rot in the trees as a warning to others.
Noble House, as people had begun to call it, was still standing—but only because Silas’s reputation for doctoring both Union and Confederate soldiers had become widely known. Every few days, someone else would come limping in—once an entire company arrived, brought to their knees by dysentery. There wasn’t enough room in the house for them, even stacking them side by side on corn-shuck mattresses on the floors. In the end, they had to be housed in the RiVermont barns, which had escaped the fire.
“We’s safe here, at least for now,” Booker went on. “Long as the Rebs and the pattyrollers think of us as your slaves, they’ll leave us be. But we step one foot off this land, and you know what’s gonna happen.”
Silas knew. Two nights ago, four slaves had taken their women and children and made a run for it, hiding out in the woods. They figured that if they could get to Memphis, they could catch a boat up to Cairo, Illinois, and into free territory. But they never even got close. The pattyrollers tracked them down with dogs, shot the men, raped the women, and made the children watch. When the bodies were found, there wasn’t much left of them—the dogs had finished them off. The details were widely publicized, and the intimidation worked. No one wanted to risk that kind of end, even for the sake of freedom.
“I know, Booker. But consider the alternatives. You can’t stay here. The missus’ daughter Sophie and her family, as well as the other children, intend to take over their daddy’s land. For the past few months you’ve had the place to yourselves, and managed to feed everybody by working the gardens and slaughtering what’s left of the pigs and chickens. That’s not going to last forever.”
Booker frowned. “Massah Robert was a hard man,” he mused. “He worked us nigh to death. But least we was fed and clothed and had a warm house to sleep in. We didn’t get whupped too often. Maybe slavery ain’t so bad after all.”
Silas went over and put a hand on the big man’s shoulder. “You won’t convince me of that, Booker. I saw it in your eyes from the moment I met you that first day at Rivermont Plantation. You longed to be free. You still do. You’re just afraid.”
Booker pushed his chest out. “You saying I’m skeert, Massah Doctor?”
“I’m saying you have a right to be scared. But some things are worth risking your life for. You just have to decide whether freedom is one of them.”
An expression passed over Booker’s face—a look of determination. “It is, Massah Doctor. I knows that.”
“Besides, Booker, you can read. You can teach the others, help them to make a better life for themselves. But first you have to get out of here.”
Even as Silas said the words, the truth twisted around his chest, nearly suffocating him. Booker was the best friend he had ever had—a man he could depend upon. Silas loved him, and the other slaves as well. They had become his family, and life without them would be miserable.
Still, he couldn’t be selfish. He cared too much about Booker and the others to encourage them to stay. If they were ever going to make a life for themselves, on their own terms, they had to leave. And despite the pain in his heart, he had to encourage them to go.
If only, he mused, sending the thought forth as a desperate prayer, if only they had someone to help them.
“What’s wrong, Daddy?”
Booker looked up to see his son, Enoch, gazing into his face with an expression just short of despair. He scooped the boy up and set him on his lap. “Nothin’s wrong, son. I’s just thinking about what we’s gonna do.”
“’Bout what, Daddy?”
Booker smiled down into Enoch’s wide brown eyes. The child was the light of his life, a miracle sent from God. Since the day the boy came into the world, Booker only had to look at him to renew his faith and trust in the Almighty. If the Lord could send him a gift like this, Booker reckoned God could do most anything—even give him direction and courage when he needed it most.
“I’s thinkin’ about what it means to be free,” Booker answered candidly. “And where we’s supposed to go from here.” He looked over the child’s head and saw Celie at the fire, stirring a pot of soup. The expression in her eyes held deep love, and absolute faith that he would decide what was best for them all. Two gifts, he thought. The two best gifts a man could ever have.
He motioned for Celie to come and sit beside him, then let out a deep sigh. “I been talking to Massah Doctor,” he began. “I could tell he didn’t want to say it, but he thinks we ought to try to leave RiVermont and make a life for ourselves up north, where our freedom would mean something.”
“He wants us to leave?” Enoch asked. “Don’t he love us no more?”
“Of course he loves us, honey,” Celie soothed. “That’s why he wants us to go to a better place, where we’ll be treated equal with the white folks.”
“Equal? I don’t understand.” The boy frowned.
Booker hugged him close. “We’s free now, son. We ain’t slaves no more.”
“What’s it mean to be free, Daddy? Nothin’s changed.”
The question stung, and Booker couldn’t answer for a minute. “Out of the mouths of babes,” he murmured at last. And his son was right. Nothing had changed, and nothing was likely to change unless they—himself, Celie, all of them—took the risk to make it happen. They could go on as if Mister Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had never been enacted, living on Rivermont land, working Rivermont’s fields and gardens. They could live in fear of the pattyrollers, dreading the day when Massah Robert’s children would either evict them or set them to share-cropping. Or they could summon up all their courage and take a stand for themselves and their dignity.
A tug at his sleeve caught Booker’s attention. “I think I figured out what it means, Daddy,” Enoch was saying. “What it means to be free. It’s in the story.”
“What story?”
The boy reached across the table and laid a small brown hand on Booker’s well-worn Bible. “The story from the Good Book, about Moses settin’ the people free.”
Celie smiled and nodded. With trembling hands Booker picked up the cracked leather volume and flipped its pages until he came to the passage he had read to them just the night before. His eyes scanned the verses, and then, for Enoch’s sake, he decided to tell the story in words the boy could understand:
“That’s right, son. God’s people was held in slavery, in Egypt, under the rule of the Pharaoh.”
“That’s like the Massah,” Enoch put in.
“That’s right. And the Massah Pharaoh, he was hard on the people. Made ’em work day and night, with never enough to eat. Then God called Moses and said to him, ’Go down, Moses, and tell ol’ Pharaoh to let my people go.’ But the Pharaoh, he said no. So the Lord called down plagues on the folks in Egypt—”
“Hail and fire and frogs and grasshoppers!” the boy squealed, bouncing on his father’s lap.
“That’s right, son. But who’s tellin’ this story?”
Enoch giggled and settl
ed down.
“Then finally,” Booker went on, “Massah Pharaoh give in—them plagues were just too much for him. He agreed to let them go. So Moses took his staff in his hand and led the people out into the desert, headin’ for the land the Lord had promised them, a land flowin’ with milk and honey.”
“Milk and honey?” the boy echoed.
“It’s like all the ham and grits you’d ever want,” Celie supplied. “Biscuits and cornbread and real blackstrap molasses.”
“And fried chicken?”
“Yes, fried chicken, too.” Celie suppressed a smile.
“But it wasn’t all easy,” Booker continued. “Soon as they was gone, ol’ Massah Pharaoh had hisself a change of heart. Sent his armies after them, to bring them back—”
“The pattyrollers!” Enoch yelled.
“Yep. Just like the pattyrollers. They caught up with Moses and the people just when they was gettin’ to the sea. Had the sea in front of them and the pattyrollers behind them and no place to go. Until—” He winked at his son. “What happened then?”
The boy’s eyes shifted back and forth, and he scratched his head. Then his little face cleared, and he grinned. “God opened up the water, and they walked across on dry ground!”
“’Deed they did, child. ’Deed they did!”
“And the Lord led ’em to the land of fried chicken and biscuits.”
Booker nodded. “Eventually.”
“Daddy,” Enoch said, a plaintive tone filling his voice, “I want to go to the Promised Land, too.”
Celie was gazing at him with an odd expression. “I can’t read,” she said softly. “But I can hear. Seems to me the Lord’s sayin’ maybe Doctor Silas is right. Maybe we oughta think about it long and hard.”
Booker started to protest, to say that you couldn’t pick a story out of the Good Book and take it as the Lord’s direction. But something inside—a warning, maybe—stopped him. Celie was right. Just because she couldn’t read the words for herself didn’t mean she couldn’t hear the voice of the Almighty. And it might be that she was hearing better than he was right now.
“It’ll be a hard road,” he murmured. “A dangerous road.”
“The Lord done drowned the pattyrollers for Moses,” Enoch put in. “Ain’t he gonna do the same for us?”
Booker sat there in silence, thinking about it, considering what the Good Book had to say about the faith of a little child.
Maybe God was speaking, even without a burning bush. But where was Moses?
The barn was dark, lit by a single lantern hanging from one of the stalls. Booker went about his nightly chores, forking up fresh hay for bedding, brushing down the last of the mares, putting feed in the mangers. Massah Robert was passed on, and Otis Tilson had hightailed it out at the first sign of trouble, but that was no reason to let the animals suffer. The cows had been milked, and the milk taken down to the slave cabins. The new calf was asleep in the stall next to her mother. Even the massah’s big stallion had grown quiet.
A stirring behind him prickled the hairs on the back of Booker’s neck. pattyrollers? They had been known to steal stock—especially prime horses. And they wouldn’t think twice about shooting a nigra where he stood.
Slowly his hand gripped around the hay fork. He waited, his breathing coming harder and faster. Then he whirled, pulling the fork up in front of him. “Who’s there?”
A shrouded figure stepped from the doorway into the lamplight, and Booker felt a huge breath of relief whoosh out of him. It was a woman. A small colored woman.
“You can put the fork down, sonny,” she said, her voice low. “I ain’t come to kill you. I come to help.”
Booker watched as she took another two steps forward. Her skin was dark, her face misshapen as if she had, at one time, suffered some terrible beating. One leg dragged a little.
His hands still gripped the hay fork, his muscles tensed. “Who are you?”
“Name’s Harriet,” the woman answered.
Booker peered at her face. He didn’t recognize her from any of the surrounding plantations; he was certain, in fact, that he had never seen her before. “What you doin’ here?”
She gave a crooked smile. “Like I said, I come to help.”
“Help how?”
“You ever hear of the Underground Railroad?”
The question stunned Booker. Everybody had heard the rumors about such a thing—not a real railroad, but a system of safe houses run by abolitionists and sympathizers who provided food and shelter and protection to slaves escaping to the North. But he had never met anyone who had dealings with the railroad firsthand, and he sometimes suspected it might just be wishful thinking.
“I heard of it,” he said finally.
“Folks tell me you’re the one to talk to, the one who has most influence over the slaves here.”
“Don’t rightly know about that. I been here a long time, though, and I reckon most folks respects me pretty good.”
“If your people want to leave, I can get them out.”
Booker shook his head. This little bitty woman, all beat and battered up, thought she could help slaves escape past the pattyrollers? She had to be crazy. “Who’d you say you was?”
“Harriet,” she repeated. “Harriet Tubman.”
“Lord, have mercy,” Booker breathed. This woman—if she was Harriet Tubman, as she claimed—was practically a legend among the slaves. The woman who had singlehandedly aided in the escape of more than three hundred Negroes in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Even in Mississippi, people knew her reputation. Everybody called her—
His heart skipped a beat, and his mouth went dry.
Moses.
Silas gaped at the women who stood before him. “It is a pleasure to meet you,” he managed at last, reaching out to shake her hand. “We’ve all heard about you, of course, but—”
“But you thought I was some kind of spirit?” Harriet Tubman laughed. “Some phantom somebody worked up out of their imagination?” She took a seat in a chair and accepted the cup of coffee Pearl offered her. “Naw sir, I be real enough. Just not what anybody ever ’spects.”
“What are you doing here?” Silas asked.
“I been in Alabama for some time,” she answered. “It’s tougher to get folks out of the deep South, but we’s doing all right. Ain’t lost nobody yet.”
“And you say you can help Booker and his people escape? You know about the pattyrollers? They’re always on guard, and nearly impossible to get around.”
Harriet gave a little snort. “Pattyrollers—humph! Just a bunch a crazy redneck boys who got bullets but no brains.” She took a sip of her coffee and nodded at Pearl. “If you can’t fight ’em, you gotta outsmart ’em.”
Silas looked over at Booker, whose eyes had widened in an expression of admiration. “And you can do that?” he asked.
“Not without help,” she countered. “And not without commitment. Your people gotta be ready for a long journey, and they gotta have faith. But like I said, I ain’t lost a single one yet—” She reached into her waistband, pulled out a pistol, and waved it in Booker’s direction. “And I ain’t had nobody turn back, neither.”
Booker took a step backward. “I hear tell somebody want to quit, you shoot ’im.”
Harriet’s eyes danced. “Haven’t had to yet. But I would.” Her expression sobered. “The cause is too important to be ruined by one or two cowards. We got a big job to do, and we gonna do it. Now, you in or not?”
Silas went and put an arm around Pearl, who was trembling. “It sounds dangerous.”
“It is dangerous,” Harriet agreed. “Most everything worth doing involves some danger. But not doing it is a bigger risk.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“It’ll take some months to get everybody out, and we can’t start till spring, when the leaves are on the trees. Can’t take more than ten or twelve at a time, and the trip north is a long one. You’ll need to decide who goes first; maybe the doctor here can h
elp you make a list. And we’ll need to find a place where people can hide until the coast is clear. We can’t just go marching out in broad daylight.”
“I got that part covered,” Booker declared. “Follow me.”
He got up and led them into the downstairs bedroom, where two closets filled the space on either side of the fireplace. Silas slanted a glance at Pearl that asked, What is he doing? But she just shrugged. When everyone was gathered around, Booker pushed the clothes to one side and slid a panel open to reveal a ladder going down into a narrow passageway.
“It leads to the root cellar,” he explained. “There’s a tunnel that goes out into the woods. Don’t go but a little ways, but unless you’re right up on it, nobody can see anyone going in or out.”
“Booker!” Silas interrupted. “When did you do this?”
Booker grinned crookedly and scratched his head. “When I’s building the house, Massah Doctor. Jus’ thought it might come in handy someday.”
“Perfect,” Harriet declared. “You can gather your folks in the house, and if the pattyrollers get wind of it and come looking, they can hide down there.”
They returned to the log cabin room, and Booker plopped into a chair. Celie stood beside him, and little Enoch clambered onto his lap. The boy gazed at Harriet Tubman with open curiosity and wonder. “She don’t look like Moses, but she’ll do,” he declared at last. “Now we can go to the land of chicken and biscuits.”
Booker smiled. “The land of milk and honey,” he translated.
“That’s where we’re going, son,” Harriet affirmed. “To the Promised Land. You ready?”
Enoch nodded firmly. “Yes’m. I’m ready. Ready to see the pattyrollers get drownded in the sea.”
Booker looked at Celie and shrugged. “I reckon we’re all ready.”
The woman called Moses stood, picked up her small bag of belongings, and nodded. “I’ll be on my way then. Be ready with the first group by early April. Dress warm and travel light. I’ll send someone for you as soon as the time is right.”
With that, she opened the door, limped out, and disappeared into the darkness.
The Amethyst Heart Page 13