American Dreams Trilogy

by Michael Phillips

  A young lanky but stately Indian girl of fifteen or sixteen came to him one morning with his bowl of corn mush.

  “Merci,” said Sydney absently in French.

  “Bien sur. Pas de quoi,” she replied pleasantly. Sydney glanced up in surprise.

  “You speak French very well,” he said, smiling. “Are you Seminole?” he asked, now in English.

  “No, I am Cherokee,” she answered in English. “I am a captive like you.

  “How do you come to speak French and English?”

  “I was from a Cherokee family of some means. We were well educated. Many Cherokee attend white schools. The French I learned from a trapper. I know only a few phrases.”

  “I am from Jamaica—I know nothing about your ways.”

  “Jamaica—where is that?” asked the girl.

  “Across the sea, in the Caribbean.”

  “Is it near the place where the great king lives that my ancestors visited, far, far across the water?”

  “I think you mean England,” said Sydney. “No, Jamaica is nowhere near England, though now I am not certain exactly which direction it lies, or even where we are now. Do you know?”

  “Not exactly. I think in Florida.”

  “Ah yes, I have heard of Florida also. Many Spanish are said to live there. But how do Cherokees come to attend white schools?”

  “Cherokees are different than many other Indian tribes, though the white man has no eyes to see it and treats us with equal cruelty.”

  “Different… how?” asked Sydney.

  “We have a great heritage of chiefs and laws. We are educated and many of our people own land and slaves and wealth—at least we once did. Many of our great men have been educated in the white man’s schools and colleges and are very intelligent.”

  “How do you come to be here?”

  “I was captured, like you.”

  The memory seemed unpleasant and the girl glanced away.

  “You appear troubled,” said Sydney. “You are afraid?”

  Tears filled the girl’s eyes as she nodded. “I have been with them many years since I was a girl. At first they mostly ignored me and made me do things that were not severe. But now they are looking for a man for me, or will sell me. They do not know that I understand when they talk about me. I am frightened. What if they sell me to an evil white man who does horrible things to me?”

  “Have no fear, I will protect you.”

  “How can you? You are a slave, and a black man.”

  “I cannot say, but I will try. I will stand beside you and will not let them hurt you.”

  In the following days and weeks, the quiet Cherokee captive, reassured by his gentle kindness, spent more and more time, whenever she could, near the black Jamaican slave. Gradually their Seminole captors took notice of the poise and dignity of the two as they stood side by side. They made a striking couple together, as how could they not. Sydney was unable to disguise the carriage that revealed his aristocratic blood. The girl called Chigua would never be able to hide that she was descended from the greatest chiefs of Cherokee legend. The blood of dignity from both their races ran in their veins, and their regal carriage seemed heightened when they were together.

  The Seminoles soon came to realize that they could make a small fortune by selling them as a couple.

  A year later, at twenty-one and seventeen, they were on their way, under Seminole guard, to the slave auction at the ancient city of St. Augustine.

  The night before the sale, as they slept on the ground beside one another, Sydney was awakened by a soft voice.

  “Sydney… Sydney,” Chigua whispered. “I have something to give you… to keep safe for me.”

  He turned to face her, doing his best not to draw the notice of the dozing Seminole guard.

  She held her hand out to him in the darkness. In it she clutched a gold ring, whose reflection he could see clearly in the moonlight.

  A brief gasp of astonishment escaped his lips.

  “Where did you—”

  “It is mine,” she said, “from my grandmother and her mother before her. I have managed to hide it all this time from the Seminoles. But tomorrow… the white men do terrible things… they will look at me and—”

  She stopped. The thought of it obviously terrified her.

  “—they will want to see… everything… where I will not—”

  “I understand,” whispered Sydney.

  “Please… you take it,” she said. “I give it in pledge of my love for you. If you will protect me, I will never leave you.”

  Sydney took it in his grasp. “I will do what I can to keep it for you. There are certain places where no white man will look on the body of a black man, even to protect his investment.”

  She crept close to him. Sydney stretched his arm around her and pulled her close in reassurance that, whatever the morrow held, he would be her protector.

  “Je t’aime,” he said softly.

  “Wadan,” she answered in the ancient tongue of her people.

  The two were sold for a handsome price to a Georgia cotton plantation owner, as man and wife. Though the passage of the ring between them that night would not have been recognized by the state of Florida, it was enough to seal between them a love that had grown slowly and that continued to grow stronger with every passing year.

  Chigua bore four children. Sydney never forgot his vow to be free. He knew for the present that the safest way to protect his family and not be sold away from them was to cause no trouble. He continued to watch and listen and wait.

  When he began to hear of the Underground Railroad, he began to think that perhaps their time was nearly at hand.

  PART TWO

  THE HARVEST BRINGS LIFE

  SUMMER, 1859

  Eight

  A man of tan skin lay awake in the darkness. That his skin was lighter than most of his fellow slaves whose heavy breathing sounded about him in the open field where they slept made him no less an owned man. They were human oxen… beasts of labor and burden. Their only purpose in life was to serve their master in humble, ingratiating, dumb, unquestioning subservience. That he was only half black, that he possessed more refinement and education than his master, indeed, that the blood of ancient aristocracy flowed in his veins, mattered nothing. He had been a slave for sixteen years. And he would always be a slave.

  Unless…

  Unless perhaps the words he had heard that day were true.

  Could it be… that escape was truly possible! The day just past had been long and grueling—fourteen hours of brutal toil. The next would be equally long and hard. He needed to sleep. His body would require all its strength to endure it. To slacken from fatigue, even for a moment, would invite the overseer’s whip.

  But he was too keyed up to sleep. He drew in a deep breath and tried to relax.

  The stench of two dozen men’s bodies in the still, heavy air was nearly as persuasive a preventative to sleep as the snoring of two or three of the larger men. They had spent the past two days digging and dredging out the stinking, fetid mud from a canal grown sluggish from years of inattention. Several plantation owners from the southwestern corner of Georgia’s Mitchell County, whose plantations depended on the water to irrigate their crops, had joined to clear it with the combined efforts of their stronger man slaves.

  The water was mosquito infested, the mud foul, and stank with evidence that sewage flowed into it as well as excess from the Flint River that fed it. None of the blacks had bathed in a week and the dried mud and smell of honest labor was enough to make a grown man swoon. To say they became accustomed to it would be untrue, but they learned to endure it, as slaves throughout the South did a thousand other unpleasantnesses, along with outright cruelties.

  The waking man’s thoughts, however, were not occupied with his own plight nor with that of his fellow slaves. He was thinking instead of the runaway that the dogs and overseers from two of the plantations had hauled out of the canal off a makeshift raft.
The incident had occurred within sight and earshot from where the rest had been working. He had heard every word of the man’s ranting, wild cries.

  “I’s git back… I’s git to dat house er freedom… I’s fin’ hit!”

  The words lodged in the would-be sleeper’s brain. “Dat house er freedom… I’s fin’ hit… I’s git to dat house er freedom.”

  He had heard rumors of such houses… places where runaways might find refuge. But this was the first he had heard of someone who might actually know where one was located.

  When and how to attempt his own escape to freedom was a quandary he had wrestled with since the day his first daughter was born twelve years before. To make the attempt and fail could mean separation, even death. He had always known the danger. He would likely have but one chance. He knew he had to be ready when it came.

  But he had not expected it on this day.

  As he lay, tingling with growing excitement mingled with terror, he sensed an increasing certainty that his moment had come to seize freedom and the dream of new life.

  Another hour he lay. His anticipation mounted. He had run the daring plan through his brain a dozen times, searching for every possible unforeseen danger.

  He thought it could work. It had to work! Once he left the canal there would be no turning back. He would be a runaway. The lives of his family would be at stake.

  He had to succeed… or die in the attempt.

  When and how the final decision was made, he could not say for certain. But before another hour had passed, he had crossed the threshold in his mind that would mark out the steps of his future.

  He would do it!

  Tonight was the night! Before dawn came, he would flee this place never to return.

  When the night was at its blackest, slowly the waking slave turned over on the ground where he lay, drew in a lungful of air for courage, then began to rise to his feet.

  Suddenly a hand gripped his forearm and held it in the grip of a vise.

  “I knows wha’chu’s doin’,” whispered a barely audible voice in the night beside him. “I been watchin’ an’ listenin’… I knows you’s leavin’. Take me wiff you.”

  Still reeling that his plot had been discovered before it had even begun, he bent low to keep from waking anyone else.

  “I can’t,” he said softly to the teenage boy whose voice had so startled him. “I gots my family ter git out.”

  The night was silent a moment. They were words that would haunt him for more than a year. Slowly he felt the hand on his arm relax.

  “Den da good Lor’ go wiff you, man,” said the boy. “I’s pray dat you’ll make it ter a better life.”

  He climbed the rest of the way to his feet, then stole stealthily away from the other sleepers in the humid night.

  There was no moon.

  He only hoped the myriad smells from the disturbed waters of the foul canal and piles of dredged mud beside it would keep the dogs’ noses from detecting anything amiss. If he chanced to step on a twig or otherwise disturb their sleep, he could claim the need of nature’s beckoning. But once he reached the runaway, his danger would increase a hundredfold.

  Not knowing immediately where he had come from, they had tied the runaway to the posts and boards of a nearby fence, and whipped him till he passed out. He was now sound asleep on the hard ground. The plantation owners had all returned to their houses for the night. Only two overseers remained to guard the herd of slaves. But they had been drinking heavily hours ago and now were dead to the world, shotguns laying over their laps where they slept.

  Across the ground he crept with care. As his eyes accustomed themselves to the blackness, he spotted the runaway on the ground ahead. He reached him and knelt down noiselessly, then clamped his hand hard on his mouth.

  “Don’t move, boy,” he whispered in his most polished speech. “Don’t utter a peep and you won’t be hurt.”

  The young man, who appeared to be in his early twenties, squirmed and tried to free himself, terrified at being awakened so suddenly and finding himself restrained. But his efforts availed nothing.

  “Lie quiet, I tell you. I’m a friend.”

  Gradually the boy stilled. His eyes glistened wide with terror.

  “I am going to take my hand off your mouth, do you understand? If you make a sound, I’ll whack your ear. But if you keep quiet, I’ll tell you how you just might escape from here and not be sent back where you came from.”

  Slowly he released his hand.

  “What’s your name, boy?” he whispered. “And be quiet or those dogs’ll be on us.”

  “Silas, suh?” answered the runaway.

  “Shush—whisper, boy! What’s your last name?”

  “Don’ know, suh. Don’ got one, I reckon. Dey jes’ call me boy, er Silas… er nigger.”

  “Where you come from?”

  “Don’t know, suh… yonder sumplace.”

  “Listen to me, Silas, I ain’t no sir, I’m a slave just like you.”

  “You don’t soun’ like no confound nigger I eber heard! Why you talkin’ like a w’ite man effen you’s a nigger?”

  “To show you that you’d better do what I say if you want to get out of here. And also so that if you do anything stupid and I have to leave you to the dogs, you won’t recognize my voice later and they won’t believe a word you say about me.”

  “Ah bleve you, suh… ah bleve anythin’ you tells me effen you’s git me outta here. I can’t let dem sen’ me back. Massa’ll string me up effen he gits his hands on me.”

  “I won’t let them send you back. All I want to know is if what you said earlier today is true, that you know a house where runaways are safe?”

  “Dat I do, suh! I heard ’bout hit an’ I wuz jes’ nearly dere w’en dey got me wiff dem vicshus dogs. Hit’s on dat railroad, suh, dat nigger railroad.”

  “Could you find it?”

  “Sho nuff, suh! I reckon I cud do dat, sho nuff! Dey gib me direckshuns. I learned ’em jes’ like dey tol’ me. I wuz on my way down da riber w’en I got inter dis fool canal.”

  “It’s down the river then?”

  “Deed, dat’s da truf. But who is you, suh?”

  “I’m a slave, just like you, Silas—a slave who’s ready to make a run for freedom.”

  “What I call you, suh?”

  “You can call me—”

  He paused, then added, “—call me Paul. And if you’ll help me find that house, then Paul and Silas are going to break out of this prison.”

  An hour and a half later, Paul, so-called, and the runaway Silas had made good the first short leg of their escape and were well out of reach of the canal laborers and their sleeping guards. They were approaching the slave quarters of the plantation now, with most of the men at the canal, only about half occupied. The leader stopped and turned to his companion.

  “I have to leave you here for a while, Silas,” he said. “You will be safe. You are half a mile from any house or dog. But you must stay here until I return, do you understand?”

  “Yes, suh. Where’s you goin’.”

  “To get my family. Then we will all make for the river.”

  “What effen you gits caught, Paul, suh?”

  “I won’t. Don’t worry. They won’t expect me, and no one will miss me from the canal until morning. With so many slaves from three plantations, those two guards may not miss me at all.”

  “Dey’ll know dat I ain’t dere, dat’s fo sho!”

  “They won’t trace you here. Don’t worry, Silas, by morning we will be miles away. But listen to me, there are swamps all around. You must wait for me or you will never escape. I will be back, and we will get to the river together. You must wait for me right here.”

  “Yes, suh.”

  Moments later Silas was alone in the night. He crouched down, terrified and still bewildered by the strange tongue and confident manner of his savior, but not too bewildered to keep from falling fast asleep.

  Twenty minutes later, a slave m
other of fair skin found herself likewise awakened with a hand over her mouth and whispered words in her ear.

  “What are you doing here!” she exclaimed in a low voice as her husband released his hand. “I thought—”

  “We’re leaving,” he interrupted in an urgent whisper, speaking now in his normal voice. “We’re leaving tonight.”

  “Leaving!” she repeated, suddenly wide-awake.

  “We’ve got to get the children up and out without a sound.”

  “But how—”

  “I’ll explain later. Just listen,” he whispered. “Get enough clothes to keep them warm if the weather turns. But we mustn’t take more than we can carry. Get up, we must hurry. We have to be miles away before morning.”

  As his brave wife roused the older children and headed toward the woods, her husband fumbled in the darkness for a loose floorboard. Beneath it he had stashed a small bag full of items he had managed to steal over the years, including two knives, flints and a broken piece of glass for making fire, several candles, a compass, a well-worn map of Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia, and two books.

  Ten minutes later, carrying his sleepy seven-year-old daughter, the daring slave father rejoined his wife near the edge of the wood where she waited, trembling though the night was warm, with the three older children.

  He set the girl on the ground, then gathered them all close about him and gazed earnestly into their eyes. Nothing was visible but the whites of six sets of eyes suddenly bound together by a more immediate bond even that they were of one family. They were now fleeing for their lives.

  “Listen to me, all of you,” he said. “We are going to run away. We are going to escape to the North where slavery does not exist. There is a runaway waiting for us in the woods who has directions to a safe house. But we are in great danger. We mustn’t make a sound and we have to move fast. If we are caught, we will all be whipped and then separated.”

  “But, Papa—,” began one of the girls.