American Dreams Trilogy

by Michael Phillips

  As he cleaned out the horse and cattle stalls before making his way to the pigpens, the black man paused briefly, listening carefully and glancing about, then looked toward the big house where his master and his son and men were now eating their breakfast.

  Satisfied that no one was about, he set aside the fork, took the shovel that was leaning against a nearby wall, and hurried into the adjoining stable which he had finished cleaning only moments before.

  Working quickly now, he bent down and began clearing away the dirt and straw and dried manure from one corner of the floor at the point where two walls of the corral came together. He shoved it into a pile to one side until the shovel in his hand scraped wood. A few seconds later he uncovered two pieces of board a foot wide and approximately three feet in length that had been buried about three inches below the surface. He grabbed them, lifted them, and tossed them aside.

  Beneath where the boards lay was now revealed a hole in the earth, dug straight down in a perfect rectangle four inches shorter in dimensions in both directions than the boards that had covered it. The man stepped down into the hole—careful not to disturb its edges which must continue to support the boards when he replaced them, even with a horse standing on top—to a depth of some two feet. Working with the shovel, he whacked and loosened the compacted dirt at the bottom of the hole, then dug out a scoop of the earth in the shovel.

  Gingerly he stepped out, again careful of the all-important edges. It was gradually becoming more and more difficult to step in and out as the hole deepened. He would eventually have to devise some other means to get the dirt out, possibly with a makeshift ladder of some kind. But that time was not yet.

  With careful step so as not to spill any of the telltale dirt in his shovel, he hurried outside, glancing about again, and sprinkled the dirt over the top of the pile of manure in the cart.

  Working rapidly now, he hurried back into the stable and gently set the two boards back in place over the hole, making sure as always that they were tight and with no hint of wobble. He covered them back over with the dirt he had earlier removed, adding a fine sprinkling of fresh straw, and stepped about over it to make sure no movement or soft depression in the dirt nor dull echo of sound gave away the hole beneath. Satisfied, he quickly hurried back outside, wiped the shovel clean and set it back in place, careful at every stage to leave no trace of his activity, and set about to continue cleaning the rest of the stalls. He was just in time to see the master’s overseer walking toward him.

  Hastily he scooped up a fork of manure, splattered it onto the cart, and mixed it about briefly with the prongs of the fork to hide the dirt he had just added to the mix.

  The whole thing took less than five minutes a day, on the days he could manage it—which was not nearly every day. At first he had been too anxious and excited over his plan and had tried to remove too much dirt at a time. He had tossed his first few shovelsful about the yard, but then quickly realized that if he continued to do so it would be noticed. The vegetable garden was too far from the stables to use to conceal the dirt, ideal though it would have been.

  He had to go slow, and be very, very careful. Finally he settled upon what became his routine whenever he was left alone in the stables—to remove but one scoop of dirt a day, sprinkling it in with the manure from the stalls—the last place anyone would want to inspect. Once the cart was dumped, as long as he left no traces inside the stall, no evidence remained that anyone would ever find. He just had to remind himself that, even one little bit at a time, the dirt added up. A shovel a day… even a scoop every three days… and he would be able to dig a huge hole in a year. He must be patient!

  Everything within him cried out to work faster. But his great enemy was haste. Impatience would only lead to detection. Every day in this bondage was an evil trial to his spirit, even more grievous when he had to watch his family suffer. But the Israelites were four hundred years in their bondage before the arrival of the hour of their deliverance. He could be patient if in the end the dream he sought was realized.

  One shovel a day, day after day, would move a mountain. He did not need to move a mountain, only excavate a tiny cave to freedom.

  “Aren’t you through with that mess yet?” said the overseer as he approached.

  “I’m nearly done, Mr. Roper, sir.”

  “Well get on with it and saddle my mare and Mr. Locke’s roan.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Roper.”

  “We’ll be back in five minutes. Have the horses ready.”

  Exactly how much time had passed since he had started his daring excavation, or how many days he had worked and how many shovels of earth he had removed, he could not have said. Time was a different commodity for a slave than for free men and women. When your time belongs to another, when your whole being belongs to another, time loses its value. Days fade into weeks, weeks into months, months into years of endless drudgery and meaninglessness.

  Seasons came. It grew hot. The sixteen-hour days of labor in the harvest fields slowly passed and gave way to the short cold days of winter. All was a blur of tedium and labor and inhumanity of man unto man.

  The only measurement of time that mattered was the passage of years he observed on the faces of his four precious young ones. From children they had grown into youths in the bondage of their affliction. He knew his son no longer even remembered the days of his freedom, and it smote the father’s heart to realize that the boy thought of himself as a slave. And his little girl Suzane was a slave. She had been born into this evil.

  His oldest daughters remembered. For that he was grateful, though the memory of freedom only made the indignity of their suffering all the more painful.

  He listened. He paid attention. He knew when the war had begun. Indeed, he knew far more about the world beyond the plantation than his master gave him credit for. Quickly he had learned to curb his tongue, to speak softly and walk slowly. To be taken for a simpleton was refuge from the dangerous charge of being uppity, and from the whip which always followed the accusation.

  It was not the passage of years on the face of his son that caused him the most anxiety, or that had prompted his daring, foolhardy, reckless plan. Rather it was the changes in his two older daughters that were obvious to anyone with two eyes.

  At seventeen and eighteen, they were rapidly turning into young women. And that fact, as natural as it might have been, frightened him. It was only a matter of time before their master would have “plans” for them. Marriage to a good young man who cared for one of his girls, even a slave boy… he would be happy enough for that. But to see one of his daughters raped by a white man, especially the master or his son, merely to produce a slave baby… he would give his life to prevent that. They were lucky it hadn’t happened already.

  For just such a purpose had he begun his once-a-day secret ritual beneath the stall of his master’s favorite and fastest horse.

  And still the days passed, and invisible sprinkles of dirt continued to add to the manure of cows and horses and pigs spread about the fields.

  Nor did he ever forget the words of a runaway slave by the name of Ezra whose path had once crossed his: You gots ter be watchin’. Always watchin’… watchin’ ter learn what da master does an’ when he does it an’ where he goes. Dat’s how yo’ opportunity comes… from watchin’ an’ thinkin’ an’ waitin’. You gots ter wait till da right time… you only gits one chance… it’s gotter be jes’ right.

  So he continued to wait, to watch, to think… and he continued to dig.

  Three

  The lone rider scaling the high plateau of north-central Virginia had ridden this familiar path at least a hundred times in her memory in the months since the outbreak of the war. But Cherity Waters had not come here since the day she and Seth had ridden up together for the last time the day before his departure. It hadn’t seemed right to come alone—not after that day, not after the things they had said to one another.

  But it was now early spring. The leaves were again
budding out on the trees after the long lonely winter. A new warmth was in the air. Yet Cherity’s heart was heavy today. Moments still came when her father’s death a year ago overwhelmed her anew and she needed to cry. Today she wanted to share her tears with Seth. The only place she could do that was on Harper’s Peak.

  Carolyn Davidson was strolling through the beloved Greenwood gardens. Her thoughts, too, were quiet and melancholy. Like Cherity, she was thinking of those who were no longer here.

  The gardens were not the same these days with both her sons gone. It seemed such a short time ago when Seth and Thomas had romped through these paths yelling and chasing each other as playful little boys. But they were boys no longer. She now had both a Confederate and a Union soldier to worry about, as well as a Union photographer. She had Cynthia here with her, of course, and that helped. It did not lessen the anxiety, but it gave her one more person to share it with.

  The memories of days gone by brought the nostalgically sad smile of a mother’s heart to Carolyn’s lips. She could almost hear their shouts and laughter. What happy times those had been! As they had grown up alongside the black slave children, their games and adventures, with Nancy and Malachi Shaw’s two boys and Phoebe, had widened to encompass the entire countryside around Greenwood. Horse rides… forts in the loft made of bales of straw… swimming in the river… the wonderful laughter of childhood innocence… they were all now but haunting, silent memories.

  How quickly the years flew by. Now Malachi was dead and both her sons and her daughter’s husband were involved in a terrible war.

  She could not help it. Carolyn’s mother heart was afraid.

  Meanwhile, Richmond Davidson was just returning from Greenwood’s former slave village where another three blacks had arrived that morning in their journey north toward what they hoped would be freedom.

  Much had changed at Greenwood. His sons were gone. Malachi was gone. The nation was at war. Gradually his workforce was diminishing. One by one his hired Negro laborers were deciding to seek their fortunes elsewhere, mostly in the North, either to fight for the Union army or seek employment or join family and friends. How they would be able to plant and harvest next year’s crops, Richmond did not know.

  One thing that hadn’t changed was the steady influx of passengers on the enigmatically styled Underground Railroad, that complex invisible network of conductors and stations by which runaway slaves made their way undetected out of the South to freedom in the North. Richmond and his wife had been drawn into the network some years before more by accident than design. But once the desperate travelers had begun to come, and word had spread that Greenwood was a “station” where runaways could find refuge, there was no stopping it. The original ones and twos became a flood. Eventually he and Seth and Thomas had built a weathervane in the shape of a horse’s head to serve as a secret sentinel to travelers on the clandestine railroad that here was a safe haven where they could pause in their travels for an hour, for a day, for a week. The sign of the weathervane had not been so much to attract fugitives as to protect them from the dangers of the nearby Beaumont estate, where runaways were anything but welcome. Though Denton Beaumont and his treacherous sons were no longer in Dove’s Landing, Oakbriar remained a threat.

  New arrivals now sometimes arrived nightly, creating such a strain on space and time and available food that it was all they could do to keep pace with it. Moving the travelers along toward the border a hundred miles north also presented an ever-increasing challenge with so many troops from both armies moving about in northern Virginia. Though the outbreak of war had reduced the number of bounty hunters in search of runaway slaves, their danger from rebel soldiers, who hated blacks along with Abraham Lincoln for, as they saw it, starting the war, was greater than ever. Greenwood’s resources were diminishing, yet the demands upon those resources were greater than ever.

  As Richmond approached the house, a black man came toward him from around one side.

  “Ah, Sydney!” he said warmly.

  Richmond Davidson would have been overwhelmed by the flood of black refugees moving through Greenwood, especially without Malachi, had it not been for the untiring help of Sydney LeFleure and his Cherokee wife Chigua. They had themselves passed through Greenwood, with their four children, in their own escape to the North. Sydney had later returned to help in the cause. His appearance was timely, for with a shrinking workforce of hired black labor, as well as the multiplying demands placed upon them by the steady influx of fugitives, Richmond was finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with the necessary work of the plantation. Fences and roofs were falling into disrepair. They were unable to cultivate as much acreage as before. Gradually the most outlying of fields that Grantham Davidson, and Albert Davidson before him, had claimed from the wilds and had cultivated with wheat, tobacco, sweet corn, and potatoes were falling fallow and filling with weeds and wild grasses.

  Nearly every able Negro of working age who passed through Greenwood found himself closeted with their benefactor being offered paying work, in addition to room and board, to stay on at Greenwood as a hired hand. But having come so far, and now being so near the North and their dream of freedom, most could not be talked into ending their flight only a hundred miles from the Pennsylvania border. Sydney’s appearance proved a boon to Greenwood’s declining fortunes. His knowledge of farming and planting and harvesting was invaluable. Desperate to find a replacement for Malachi Shaw, Richmond offered Sydney the position as Greenwood’s foreman, which the former Jamaican happily accepted. He would have taken the job even without pay. Yet Richmond’s lucrative offer made it possible for him to begin setting aside the means one day to establish a home and small farm of his own, and he was humbly grateful for Richmond’s generosity. At great danger to themselves, Chigua and Sydney’s family returned to Virginia to join him. Sydney and Richmond had upgraded and added a room to the largest of the former slave houses as a home for Sydney and Chigua and their four children. For the present Greenwood was their home, and Richmond and Sydney had become great friends.

  “Good morning, Richmond!” replied Sydney with his characteristic French accent, walking forward with a broad smile. “What would you like me to do today?”

  “We have the Jackson family and the three Hobarts ready to take across to our good neighbor Brannon,” replied Richmond. “One or the other of us should probably handle that ourselves. What kind of progress did you make with the ploughing yesterday?”

  Sydney sighed. “Not as much as I had hoped,” he said. “I started the day with twelve men, but by the afternoon was down to six. They don’t want to work, Richmond. They are so infected with the idea of gaining their freedom that even wages mean little to them. They think the North is a land flowing with milk and honey, as if money and jobs and wealth will be heaped upon them the moment they cross the border.”

  Sydney paused, shaking his head in frustration. “I try to tell them otherwise,” he went on. “I tell them that I have been there myself, that my family and I made it to that great promised land and found it very difficult. I tell them that jobs are scarce, that even in the North there is no red carpet rolled out for refugee blacks, that the best jobs go to whites. I tell them why I returned to Greenwood. I tell them that they will not readily find the like of your generosity even in the North. But they are not to be dissuaded. With their stomachs full of a single warm meal, yet without a penny to their names, they are full of optimism that all the opportunities of the North lie open to them.”

  “I don’t suppose it does much good to dash that optimism,” said Richmond. “Most of them have journeyed this far with only hope to sustain them.”

  “Hope will not feed their families.”

  “True enough, Sydney. But they will have to learn to face the realities of life after slavery, each in his own way.”

  Again Sydney sighed. “I don’t know, Richmond,” he said. “I feel like I am swimming upstream. I had hoped to finish that field so that we could plant the wheat ne
xt week, and then get to that stretch of fence the cattle tromped through as well. But I just didn’t have the men.”

  “We will get by, even if we must plant less acreage this spring,” said Richmond. “Perhaps you and I can go get that fence put back together ourselves this afternoon. We will take the two Shaw boys with us.”

  As Cherity approached Harper’s Peak, her thoughts continued to dwell on the two most important men in her life, Seth Davidson, whom, she now realized, she loved with the full love of a woman’s heart, and her own father, the man she had always known by his Americanized name, James Waters. She had lost them both almost at the same time—Seth, though she knew she would see him again, to the war, and her father, whom she would not see until the next life, to the God and Creator whom she now knew as her Father and his.

  Cherity was still new enough to Greenwood that she was unaware of many of the dangers of their work with the Underground Railroad. She had heard many stories, but had not herself witnessed much about which she had heard. Nor had they told her the worst of it—about the killings and beatings and hangings that had taken place in their own community, and of the constant threat that existed not merely to blacks themselves, but also to Richmond and Carolyn and their family.

  In her natural optimism, therefore, Cherity did not worry about her safety in the environs of Dove’s Landing, nor take any unusual precautions when she was out alone. And on this particular day as she rode, she had no inkling that she was being watched. Even if she had, she would not have been concerned about it. Despite her diminutive size, she had always been a girl capable of taking care of herself. She was plucky enough to think herself equal to any situation.

  The huge black man who had seen her from some distance, and who had now been following her movements for ten or fifteen minutes, did not have an eye for young white women any more than the young blacks of his own race. His lust was color-blind. He had come close to getting himself killed over Veronica Beaumont, but there was no danger of that now. If this girl whom he had seen once or twice in town came from the Davidson place, he had to fear no more repercussions than had resulted from his involvement with Phoebe Shaw.