Underground to Canada

by Barbara Smucker

  “This one will do,” the big man called toward the young man who had just dumped Willie in the cart. “She’s strong and healthy and still growin’. Get over there, girl, and get into that cart.” He strode off down the line.

  Julilly didn’t move. She looked at Mammy, and for the first time in her life saw fear in Mammy Sally’s eyes.

  “Do like he say, child.” Mammy’s voice hurt and choked. “You got to mind that man in order to save your life. Don’t forget that place I told you about.”

  The fat man looked back and screeched, “Get in that wagon, girl, or I’ll use this whip and teach you how to jump.”

  There was moaning now and crying up and down the line of slaves. The big slave trader didn’t care or hear. He lashed his whip in the air, pulling children from their mothers and fathers and sending them to the cart.

  Julilly moved toward the long, wooden cart. Her feet pulled her there somehow and she climbed inside. She looked for Mammy Sally, but Mammy was already being pushed with the older slaves far down beyond the tool shed.

  Julilly strained to find Mammy’s black head-rag. It was gone. Mammy Sally had disappeared!

  A red sun boiled up into the sky, making patches of heat wherever it struck the uncovered earth. Julilly sat still and numb in the unshaded wagon. Little Willie Brown whimpered beside her. She wanted to comfort him, but she couldn’t lift her hand. She found it hard to swallow and wondered if she could make a sound if she tried to speak.

  Other children began climbing into the wagon. They were smaller than Julilly. They moved near her—their little bodies twitched like a wild bird she had caught once and held for a moment before it broke into flight.

  Three men were ordered into a line behind the cart. They stood like broken trees, their hands dangling like willow branches in the wind. Julilly knew each one.

  There was Ben, solid and strong and as black as midnight. He could chop a woodpile higher than his head when the others still had little mounds up to their knees.

  There was kind, gentle Adam whose singing was low as the sightless hollow in a tree. And then there was Lester, the mulatto with speckly skin and angry eyes. Each one had a wife and one or two babies. They didn’t move when the fat man with his puffed, oily fingers clamped a chain around their legs.

  Julilly watched. The chain became a silver snake. It coiled over the ground, around the men, and up onto the back of their cart. It bit into a lock that held it fast.

  Another strange white man led a workhorse in front of them. Julilly was afraid to look at him. She felt the tug and jerk of the wagon and the bounce of the man as he jumped onto the front seat.

  “Gid-eee-up,” he cried, snapping the reins.

  The snake-chain jingled in protest while the men, who were not used to it, tried to swing their bound legs in some sort of order. The fat man, with the toothpick still in his mouth, rode behind them on a smooth brown horse.

  They moved down the dusty road, past the empty slave cabins and around by Master Hensen’s house. It was empty. There were no curtains in the tall windows or chairs on the wide, shaded porch. Massa and Missy Hensen were gone.

  Old John came through the wide front door, hobbled and bent. He shaded his eyes to watch the chain gang and the wagon load of children. When he saw Julilly, his back straightened. Pulling a large, white handkerchief from his pocket, he waved it up and down—up and down—up and down—until it became a tiny speck and disappeared.

  Tears ran down Julilly’s cheeks. She couldn’t stop them, but she made no sound. The fat man didn’t notice her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE WAGON OF SLAVE CHILDREN jogged slowly down the road. The clang of the chained men behind it took up a rhythm. To Julilly, it was a slow, sad rhythm—sad as the bells tolling a death from the village church near Massa Hensen’s.

  Julilly could think only of Mammy Sally. Each time the cart turned onto a new road, she expected to see the tall, strong woman with the black head-rag come to take her from the wagon and direct the slaves to turn around and go back to Massa Hensen’s. But each new road was empty.

  The little children around her wore skimpy clothes. They pressed against Julilly with their hot, dry skin and whimpered like tiny, forgotten sheep. Julilly held two, small hands, both sticky with sweat and dust.

  The sun flamed gold and blistering above them, and the sky became hard and bright blue. There wasn’t a wisp of cloud to soften it. Julilly saw the white man who drove their wagon wipe his forehead with a large blue cloth. The brim of his hat hid his face, but his neck was red with sunburn. He cracked his whip over the plodding horse. The fat, oily man behind them snapped his whip over the backs of Ben and Adam and Lester who shuffled along with their chains.

  The cart jogged past green cotton fields and spreading tobacco plants. Slaves chopped along the rows with their hoes, just as at Master Hensen’s. Julilly wondered if they would stop in one of these fields. Why did they go on and on? Where was this “deep South” she heard the slave traders mumbling about?

  The sun steamed when it reached the top of the sky and poured down rays of heat over the earth. The children stopped whimpering. Their mouths were too hot and dry for sound.

  Julilly watched for patches of shade along the road. But the silent pine and wides-preading oak trees grew away from the wagon’s path. The children asked for water. Julilly wanted water, too. She began to see shimmering pools of water ahead of their cart, but each one disappeared when the wagon drew near it.

  The man in the driver’s seat sipped from a dirty bottle and water dripped over his chin. The children watched greedily.

  The cart began to climb a small hill. At the end of it another, higher hill started. The hills came along like stair-steps. Trees grew thicker and they sucked away some of the heat. A swift moving stream flashed above them, spilling water through the air. The children clung to Julilly and their eyes spoke fear. They had never seen sheets of falling water.

  The fat man ordered the driver to stop. His jug needed refilling. There would be a rest.

  Julilly was too frightened to move. The chained men dropped onto the ground. With the motion ended, she felt the closeness of the driver and the oily man on horseback. But the fat man ambled away with his horse toward the rushing stream, while the driver climbed from his seat and stretched his body under a tree.

  Julilly and the children watched the splashing water. Standing near it was a tall white man chopping wood with a flashing axe. A young black boy worked beside him, stacking the cut logs into a long, neat pile.

  With her own need for a drink and her parched, dry mouth, Julilly had forgotten that the children were thirsty too.

  “Julilly, get us water.”

  “Please, Julilly, get us water,” they pleaded.

  Always before when needs came, Mammy Sally had been there to help. A great ache filled Julilly’s throat and the still fear of strangeness crept over her. The fat white man was strange and cruel. The falling water was strange and frightening. Ben, Lester, and Adam were like strangers and they were helpless. Only Lester, the mulatto, raised his head with the same angry eyes. Julilly saw blood on his legs where the chains rubbed back and forth.

  The tall man near the waterfall looked up and saw the slave children in the cart. He dropped his axe and began walking toward them, motioning for the boy to follow.

  There was no whip in his hand. His face was bony, but gentle. A grey hat circled his head with a large brim, and his long, grey coat had no collar. He walked toward Lester.

  “Why are you in chains?” he asked quietly.

  Lester pointed toward the sleeping wagon driver under the tree and then to the fat man on his horse far down the stream.

  “They took us away from our wives and children. They chained us so we can’t escape and go back to them. We’ve been sold.”

  The tall man shook his head.

  “You need water,” he said simply. He turned to the small black boy. “James, fill the large pail with water and bring
the drinking gourds.”

  Within minutes the pail appeared on the road. Gourds were dipped into it, and one by one the men drank. The young boy came toward Julilly and handed her a dripping gourd. He held it for her while she swallowed twice, greedily. Then she stopped, took the gourd from his hands and carefully held it to the lips of each small child.

  Julilly wanted to thank him, but she didn’t know how.

  “Are you the slave of that tall man?” she asked instead.

  “No,” the boy said quickly, “I’m free. Mr. Fox pays me for stackin’ his wood.”

  Before Julilly could say any more, the fat man came bouncing up the road on the back of his horse. He slapped his whip against the naked backs of the chained men and shouted in anger, “Don’t you listen to that Quaker Abolitionist and that free nigger boy. They got evil in their words and destruction in their ways.”

  The wagon driver shook himself awake and jumped onto his seat. The wagon began to jog and bump. The chains clanked and scraped.

  Julilly looked again at the free black boy. He stood by the tall man and clasped his hands tight in front of him. Tears fell down his cheeks.

  A little of the fear and a little of the ache lifted from Julilly. She began repeating the strange words which the fat man had used—“Quaker Abolitionist, free nigger boy … Quaker Abolitionist, free nigger boy …”—and found herself wondering if the words might have something to do with Canada.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ONE DAY was swallowed by the next and then the next. The swaying, jogging wagon became a home for Julilly and the little children. Its scraping, clattering noise was a wall closing out the fat man’s shouts and the clanging of the torturing chains. Sometimes it was cold when the night came and the wagon stopped on a tall hill with black trees and silver stars and a biting wind that never stopped. The children clung to Julilly and she warmed them as best she could in her thin, strong arms.

  When the day came with white-hot sun that baked the road into stifling dust, Julilly cooled the children’s mouths with water from the drinking gourd that the free black boy had given her.

  She always filled it now when the wagon stopped beside a stream and the fat man threw each of them a cold hoecake with a sop of grease on top. She used the gourd, too, for pouring water over the swollen, bleeding ankles of Lester, Adam, and Ben when the white men left them to fish along a river bank.

  Julilly seldom spoke. There was nothing to say. But she shared the others’ silent fear and anger. Sometimes when the red-necked driver slept, and the fat man strolled off to fish, Julilly thought of jumping from the wagon and running into the woods. But if she did, who would care for the babies in the wagon? Who would pour water over the torn ankles of Lester, Adam, and Ben? She was the only one strong and free enough to help them. She was held, too, by Lester’s sullen, glinting hatred and lifted head. His pride brought swish after swish of the fat man’s whip across his back. The children cried and the whip poised high above their heads with a threat.

  “You shut your little black mouths or this whip comes down on you,” the fat man cried.

  In response Julilly would sing, slow and soft and deep, and the children listened and remembered their mammies and their cabins at Massa Hensen’s.

  Julilly yearned for Mammy Sally and she sang the songs that she had heard Mammy sing:

  I am bound for the promised land.

  I am bound for the promised land.

  Oh, who will come and go with me?

  I am bound for the promised land.

  Julilly didn’t know why, but somehow she drew strength from Lester’s high-held head and angry eyes. When she woke up cold and frightened during the night on the rough floor of the wagon, she felt better knowing that Lester was close by. He helped her to remember the free black boy and the tall, gentle man who paid him for his work. Most of all, he helped her remember Canada.

  One day the wagon slushed through a cypress swamp. The muddy water lay as quiet as a flat, smooth mirror. The trees rose out of it straight and tall and their soft green needles strained the sun like spreading sieves. Flicks and specks of sunlight sparkled on the water. A heavenly sight, Julilly thought, and held her breath with wonder.

  But the wet swamp mud sucked down the heavy chains and pulled at the legs of Sam and Adam. They fell splashing and gasping into the water.

  Lester tugged at their arms, biting his lips against the pain in his own bruised legs. He pulled them out with the bulge of his great muscles. The fat man’s whip slapped through the water and onto the wet, muddy backs of the slaves.

  A sudden shower of rain splashed through the needled trees. The driver of the wagon hunched his shoulders up to the rim of his wide hat until it made an umbrella over him. The fat man urged his horse ahead of the wagon and huddled under a low branched tree. There was no protection for Julilly and the children or for the struggling men trying to pull themselves from the sucking swamp mud.

  With the same suddenness as the onset of the rain, Julilly lost her fear. She had to help the men in the water. Maybe it was like Mammy Sally use to say, “The Lord has made you strong and tall for a good reason.” She slid to the end of the wagon and began climbing over the side when she saw Lester standing still and staring at her. His head shook slightly—a warning for her not to come. But his face shifted from anger to a quick smile and his eyes held hers with a look of pride and approval. Lester was proud of her!

  Julilly waded into the swamp and pulled up the mud-covered chain. Without its heavy weight the men could lift their legs. The horse tugged at the wagon until it rolled out onto firm, dry ground, and Julilly returned to the little children.

  The rain stopped and a gold sun poured a warm circle of light over all of them. Julilly began to sing:

  Jenny crack corn and I don’t care, Jenny crack corn and I don’t care, Jenny crack corn and I don’t care, My massa’s gone away!

  The children smiled and asked her to sing it again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ONE DAY the land became flat again and on either side of the wagon, green fields dotted with cotton plants appeared. Up and down the rows, lines of slaves chopped the rich, black soil with their long-handled hoes.

  “Looks like we’ve made it to ol’ Mississippi,” the fat man called out to the driver who jolted about on the wagon seat.

  “Won’t be long now.” This was one of the few sentences the driver had spoken on the long trip.

  Julilly felt both relief and uneasiness. This must be the dreaded “deep South” that Massa Hensen’s slaves had all talked about. But it did mean that the wagon would finally stop. Might it even be that Mammy Sally was here?

  At a jog in the road, the wagon turned into a lane that seemed to lead straight into a field. The driver and the fat man appeared tense and nervous. They smoothed their hair and tidied their rumpled shirts and stained trousers as best they could.

  Then the wagon stopped bumping, as the road became smooth and hard. Instead of brambles and shaggy bushes on either side, there were rows and rows of tall, wrinkle-barked oak trees. Julilly’s eyes widened, for hanging from the branches and floating back and forth in the summer breeze, were silent cloud-like drapes of swaying grey moss. It was cool and soft and beautiful and Julilly wanted to catch it in her arms. But the row of trees ended in a stretch of thick green grass. Shading it from every ray of sun were three wide-spreading magnolia trees. Fresh, white blossoms sprang from the heavy waxed leaves. To Julilly they looked like the white linen napkins from Missy Hensen’s Big House hanging up to dry. A gentle fragrance filled the air.

  Then, Julilly saw the Big House. She stared. It was not at all like Massa Hensen’s. Clean, white pillars rose in front of the largest house she had ever seen. They looked as though they sprouted from the earth. And between them, in glistening white, were rows of steps fanned out like a peacock’s plume. Two white folks sat on the green lawn in wide frame chairs. The man was tall and thin. Julilly especially noticed that his hair was copper red and that hi
s sharp, trimmed beard matched it exactly. His knees were crossed and his high riding boots shone like pools of muddy water. He flicked a riding whip and laughed at a row of white geese parading over the lawn. The woman was frail and sank back in her chair into the fluffy billows of a pink dress. Neither of them looked in the direction of Julilly’s wagon. They barely noticed the fat man who walked toward them until he said, “Mornin’ sir.” The fat man bowed slightly and waited.

  “I see, Sims,” drawled the man in the chair, “you’ve bought us a sorry lookin’ parcel of slaves.” He glanced briefly at the chained Adam, Ben, and Lester.

  “Get them back to the nigger quarters and see that they’re ready for work in the mornin’.”

  “Yes sir.” Sims bowed again. “Good day to ya’all, Miss Riley—Master Riley.”

  The fat man backed away toward the slave wagon.

  “So,” Julilly thought to herself, “this is the Riley plantation and he’s the Massa same as Massa Hensen.” Then with a shock she realized that the fat man, Sims, was the overseer. He was boss of all the slaves.

  The wagon pulled back to a thin road behind the Big House. Weeds and tangled brambles took over between the trees. There was a wide space at the end of the road, but no grass grew on it. The stomping bare feet of hundreds of black folks had packed the earth into a hard, bare floor.

  It must be Sunday, Julilly decided, for all the slaves were at home. She wondered if Sunday here would be the same as at Massa Hensen’s, a banjo would be scrounged up and washing, cooking, and visiting were done. And maybe, as at Massa Hensen’s, a banjo would be scrounged up and dancing and singing would start.

  The little children in the cart leaned eagerly over the sides, perhaps expecting to find home and their mammies.

  But Julilly drew back into a corner. This wasn’t like Massa Hensen’s slave quarters. There was no laughter and almost no talk. The old folks leaned idle against the doors of two long rows of tattered huts. The children, with legs scrawny as chicken legs, sat scratching in the dust with sticks and feathers. They had caved-in cheeks that sucked the smiles off their tiny faces. At Massa Hensen’s there had been gardens around the huts and a hen scratching here and there. But here the huts were low and ugly. The doors sagged on broken hinges and the walls of logs spread wide where the mud chinking had fallen out.