by Lisa Belmont
It’s a hard thing to know you were once the apple of someone’s eye. And yet, I realized now that Pa wouldn’t have minded if I was one of them apples rotting on the ground.
I was caught and I knew it. Pa saw the outline of the book in the sack and asked me to show him what I was reading.
“It’s nothing, Pa.”
“Don’t you sass me. What book you got there?”
“Just something Miss Lilly wants me to read.”
“Miss Lilly, huh?”
“It’s about Jefferson Davis,” I said, hoping that would convince him.
“Let’s see.”
“Yeah, let’s see, Chloe,” Joss said, holding his lantern high in the air. He had a look on his face of sheer pleasure. What I imagined them people in Salem had at those witch trials.
Pa came toward me and I felt completely upended. When he got so close that I could see his frosty breath, I ran for the swamp. As fast as I could go through them dark twisted trees that led to Big Jim.
If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If there’s shouting after you, keep going. Don’t ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.
Attributed to Harriet Tubman
Chapter Forty-Nine
I’d never run so fast in my life. Rufus was barking up my scent, but every time he’d get close, I’d throw him a stick to go fetch.
All the trees looked the same in the dark. I went from one to the other, panting so hard I thought I was going to die. Finally, I found the hollow tree and reached inside the knothole. The box was covered in cobwebs and fallen leaves, but I was grateful nobody had taken it.
A hundred things were running through my mind. I didn’t know if Pa was so mad that he’d shoot me, just like Miss Priscilla’s pa shot her. I didn’t want to take any chances though and got to moving to the burned-out swamp chestnut.
I wanted to cry and holler like Puddingtate, but I just held onto the metal box, letting it jangle under my arm. A colony of bats flew overhead and I could hear Granny saying it was an omen. “That many bats flying against the moon means someone’s gonna die.”
Lord, if I didn’t try to get rid of that thought. I came upon the swamp chestnut. It looked eerie and misshapen, and I wished it hadn’t paid such an awful price for me and Big Jim.
I didn’t have a lantern, but I could see Big Jim’s kerosene lamp gleaming as he came down the path.
“Big Jim, turn the light out,” I hollered.
He doused it and met me under the tree.
“They’re coming for you, Big Jim. They think you hurt Widow Jones.”
“Lord, Miss Chloe. Momma done told me.”
“And they won’t be giving you no trial, neither,” I said, grabbing his hand. “We gotta get outta here.”
He’d brought a satchel and flung it over his back. We got to running as fast as we could, but with Big Jim’s ankle, it wasn’t all that fast. In the distance, I could hear Pa and Joss. Every now and then they’d shoot off their guns. Once in a while I’d hear a shot way off in the distance and take it to mean that Caleb and Joss’s boys were hunting us from another direction. There was nothing like feeling your own kin had turned against you.
We kept going, through the dense, murky woods. Beneath trees with so much Spanish moss, I got to worrying about chiggers. Glowing eyes would appear in knotholes, and I felt like we were in one of them spooky tales that Caleb would tell me when I was a little girl. I’d curl up by the fire and watch him make the gruesome gestures of the ghost of Foxhole Swamp. He’d tell me I oughta say my prayers and hope I never got lost in the swamp.
“You don’t want to become the hapless victim of a Boo Hag or a haint,” he’d say. It was Lowcountry folklore, some of which had been passed down by the Gullahs. Course, since they were the descendants of slaves, they kept all that African heritage going real good.
Course, I never did want to get the living breath taken out of me by a Boo Hag, so I’d take Momma’s birch-handle broom and put it by my bed. Caleb said that was the cure. The Boo Hag would get so distracted by counting the straws that she’d forget to take your breath away.
I wished I had a broomstick now. I got so tired from running that Big Jim and I stopped under a cypress.
“You all right, Miss Chloe?”
“I’m fine,” I said, wishing I’d had time to bring water. Wasn’t no use drinking from the swamp. That’d make you sicker than a dog.
“We ain’t got much further, Big Jim,” I said, listening for them hounds. I wasn’t worried about Rufus, but Joss’s bloodhound was likely to tree us good. “We gotta get to the Ashley.”
“Yessum.”
It wasn’t far to the Ashley River, but with dogs barking and gunshots going off around us, it felt like it’d take all night. At least Pa didn’t know where we were going. The last thing he’d suspect was that we were going to cross the river.
Big Jim hobbled behind me, his ankle hurting something fierce. I didn’t have time to take Caleb’s canoe – that was the original plan – but I figured we could just swim the short distance across the river. It couldn’t be more than a hundred feet.
“Come on, Big Jim,” I hollered, as we got to the bank of the river. “Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?” Big Jim said. He was sweating up a storm even though it was awful cold.
“We’re gonna swim to the other side.”
“Lord, Miss Chloe. I ain’t never learned to swim.”
“What? You can’t swim?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Lord have mercy. Even ol’ Rufus can doggy paddle.”
“Yessum.”
I got to thinking about Big Jim saving me down at the swamp. “Didn’t you swim then?”
“No, ma’am. Water only came up to my thighs.”
That liked to get me started. If Big Jim wasn’t a spectacle, I didn’t know what was. There he was, saving a girl who could swim even though he didn’t know how himself.
That got me to wondering how on earth we were gonna get across the river. The black water was shimmering in the moonlight, darker than the swamp, and I thought there was no way we could make it.
Big Jim looked at me and said, “I saw a man float down the river once.”
“You saw that?”
“Yeah, he was holding a big oak branch and jes’ floated down the river.”
“You think you could do that?”
“I ‘spect so.”
“Okay, then let’s get a branch, Big Jim. The biggest one you can find.”
That was one thing I never had to worry about with Big Jim. He was stronger than an ox. He found one of them real thick oaks and got to moving a branch up and down until it broke like a matchstick.
“Lay it in the water and get in alongside it.”
Big Jim and I waded into the water and he said, “It’s cold, Miss Chloe.”
“I know it is. Jes’ get your mind on something else.”
Big Jim held onto the branch, and I pulled him into the water. He struggled at first, gripping the branch so tight I thought he was gonna drown us both.
“You can’t do it like that,” I scolded him. “You gotta relax. Imagine I’m putting that honey all over your back.”
“Yessum, Miss Chloe. I like the honey.”
“Think about how cool it is. How downright soothing it feels.”
“Yessum.”
He got to relaxing real good, just floating along as I pulled the branch through the water. I wasn’t the best swimmer, but I swear the cold water and those hounds made me feel like I could outswim a catfish.
Downriver, the lantern lights darkened as they passed behind trees, shining and popping each time they emerged into a clearing. I knew the hounds were sniffing for us, tracking us to the spot where we’d gone in the water.
They got to barking and I heard Pa yell out, “They’re up here.”
I hoped they’d turn back when the dogs stopped at the river’s e
dge, but all those lanterns came together, huddling like a swarm of lightning bugs.
I couldn’t help but have a sense of hopelessness. If they’d brought Caleb’s canoe, or even if they went back for it, I knew it wouldn’t be long before they’d figure out where we were heading.
All Pa would have to do was accuse Big Jim of harming Widow Jones and he wouldn’t be allowed on the train.
I hated how you could work so hard for something, darn near sweat yourself into a frenzy, and feel like you were just moments away from having it all slip through your fingers. I would’ve given anything to just know we were gonna make it. To know we could do this, yet it seemed so impossible all of a sudden.
“Who are we kidding, Big Jim?” I said, my head bobbing up and down like a water moccasin as I tried to get the branch from moving downstream.
“We can make it, Miss Chloe. I know we can.”
My arms were getting tired and the cold was getting to me. My teeth started chattering as I heard a gunshot ripple across the water.
“We’re gonna get killed out here, Big Jim.”
“Don’t you remember what that little engine kept saying?” he said. “I think I can. I think I can.”
I ‘bout liked to drown just thinking about it.
“Big Jim, this ain’t no little kid stuff. Pa and Joss are madder n’ all get-out. They’re likely to shoot one of us just to make a point.”
“We can make it,” he said. “You Miss Chloe Jane Mason. The great-granddaughter of Briscoe Ambrose Mason who fought valiantly at the Battle of Manassas, remember?”
How could I forget?
“And if that ain’t enough,” he said, “you ‘bout the stubbornest darn person a soul ever met. Ain’t no way we drowning in this river.”
“Well, I ain’t at least,” I said.
That got Big Jim to laughing. I pulled with one arm and paddled with the other. Caleb dropped his oars in his canoe. He and Pa pushed it off the shore and jumped in. Rufus went to barking like crazy as Joss hollered that he was going after Henry’s canoe.
I had no idea what time it was, but at the pace we were going, I hoped Big Jim could still catch the train. That is if we made it out alive.
“Ain’t much further,” I said, seeing the tall grass that grew along the shoreline. “We’re almost there.”
I was grateful I had on my denim britches and couldn’t feel anything slithering against my legs. Lord only knew what was under the surface.
I tried to keep my mind off Widow Jones and what happened to her, even though the image of Puddingtate standing in the road kept popping up. I could hear him going on about how she’d gone down with Moses. And Momma telling me there were marks on her. Strangle marks, I realized.
No, I couldn’t think about her right now. And I couldn’t think about Uncle Hickory and how I’d thrown the bag at him and told him he was a mean, old sourpuss. I couldn’t think about nothing right now but saving Big Jim. Somehow, it seemed, if I could just do that, then it would make up for everything else.
“Miss Chloe,” Big Jim said, looking over the water. “Your pa’s in that canoe.”
I turned around and saw the outline of Pa’s figure. He was holding two lanterns that cast a murky yellow light across the river. Caleb was behind him, paddling them oars like he was after a prize-winning coon. They’d left Rufus on the shore and he kept howling at the moon. It was a sight.
If I really got to thinking about it, it was mighty sad, too. Here we were. All kinfolk. We should’ve been sitting on the back porch, passing the potato salad and frying up some chicken, and yet, here we were. How had it come to this, I wondered? How was it that we were having our own Civil War?
“They’re coming awful fast and they look powerful mad,” Big Jim said.
He was right. I could hear Caleb’s grunts across the water. He was probably near as tuckered as we were, but I knew he wouldn’t quit until he found us.
I couldn’t think about that right now, though. My feet touched the sandy bottom, and Big Jim and I waded out of the river. The tall grass was waving as we stumbled onto shore, a shock of cold air hitting us.
Pa’s lantern cut across the water, and I told Big Jim to run. We went through the tall grass like a pair of gators were on our tails. We ran straight through a grove of oak trees, the big, tall kind that’ve been around a hundred years. Caleb’s canoe scraped the bottom, and I told Big Jim to hide.
“Miss Chloe,” he said. “Mind if we stop a minute?”
I knew it was his ankle. Darn thing acted up when he got to moving too much.
“We can’t stop now. They’re right behind us.”
Everything in me was screaming to keep moving, but he was plum tuckered out. Wasn’t no use trying to get blood out of a turnip.
“Can you get up in those trees?” I said, catching my breath.
He looked up at them like he knew we didn’t have any other choice. It was either this or lay down and surrender to Pa’s shotgun.
Big Jim got a look of determination on his face and grabbed a hold of that gnarled oak trunk. He started climbing real good. It wasn’t a far reach between them mammoth limbs, so I went up the same tree from the other side. We met about halfway up and looked down. We were about twelve feet in the air.
“We gotta go higher,” I said.
Spanish moss stirred in ghostly strands from the branches. Big Jim and I climbed higher until we were surrounded by a great leafy canopy. I ain’t never felt more like a coon up a tree.
Big Jim sat against the trunk of the tree and I sat next to him, holding on with both hands. Down the shore, Pa and Caleb scoured for footprints. A low mist had settled down by the river and it made it hard to see.
“I’m getting awful thirsty, Miss Chloe.”
“They’ll have something to drink on the train,” I whispered. “Now be quiet.”
I prayed we’d still make it in time. I clutched the satchel with the metal box and Big Jim’s money, hoping the pages of the Booker T. Washington book weren’t ruined. The Spanish moss rustled in the wind, real creepy like, and I ‘bout dropped everything. I think my arms were getting so tired they hardly had any strength left.
“Give me the sack,” Big Jim said.
“You’ve already got your own bag.”
“I got it, Miss Chloe,” he said, scooting the sack along the branch and taking it from me.
It was a relief, even though I didn’t let on. I didn’t want Big Jim to know how dog-tired I was. Not just from running, but from everything. I guess I’d underestimated how exhausting it’d be to fight my own kin. As much as I tried to forget it at times, Pa was still my flesh and blood.
“What do you think you’ll do, Big Jim?” I said, breaking the silence.
Pa and Caleb were down the shore, their lanterns like two lightning bugs capering in the night. I was glad they were looking in the wrong direction. I hoped they’d just turn around and go home.
“What do you mean, Miss Chloe?”
“Once you get to Vermont. How are you gonna find your aunt and uncle? You know where they live?”
“Sure do. I got it wrote down in my pocket. They live on Winterhaven Lane.”
“You think you’ll be able to find it okay? I mean Vermont’s probably real woodsy and all. Probably ain’t easy to find their place.”
“I figure I’ll ask someone. You don’t need to worry, Miss Chloe.”
“I do worry though, Big Jim. I worry plenty,” I said, realizing it wasn’t just Big Jim I was thinking about.
I had the deep sense that my life was about to dramatically change. I wouldn’t be seeing Big Jim at the fort anymore. Or bringing him peaches from Widow Jones’ tree. I wouldn’t be reading to him about Noah, or Moses, or the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. I wouldn’t get to watch him stick his hand in a beehive or find me under a full moon. I wouldn’t get to be with the one person who’d made everything about living worthwhile.
I felt a tear fall from my cheek as I dangled my legs over the branch.
I didn’t want to think about it, but it was the first time since the tree fort that I’d been up so high. In some ways, it put things in perspective and made everything clear.
“Miss Chloe,” Big Jim said. “What about you? What are you gonna do when you get back to your pa’s?”
And there it was – like a shooting star falling from the sky. It came directly through the atmosphere and aimed right for my heart. I’d never said out loud what I was feeling. All them emotions seemed to get tangled up in me worse than Caleb’s line when he’d go fishing. That’s why I didn’t look at Big Jim. I didn’t know how he’d take what I had to say, even though it came from a place deep within me.
“I ain’t going back,” I whispered.
“You ain’t going back, Miss Chloe?” he said, leaning over so far it was a wonder he didn’t fall.
“No,” I said, looking out to the river.
The moon was rippling across the water, a glow of watery hope, and I said, “I’m going with you to Vermont.”
It was so matter-of-fact, so unequivocal, that Big Jim dared not disagree. He just hugged the tree. I figured it was a shock to him, but what could I do? My heart was telling me to leave.
All I could think about was Uncle Burr’s farm where he made maple syrup. I pictured the snow glistening off them maple trees like it’d dropped right outta heaven. And that little lake where Big Jim said you could ice skate. It seemed like it was out of a dream. A pure, innocent dream.
I wanted to go to the sugar shack and make maple syrup with Big Jim. I wanted to go riding in a horse-drawn sleigh and drizzle maple syrup in the snow to make taffy. I’d lay down with Big Jim under a bright moon and make snow angels ‘til my arms couldn’t move. It was the only way, it seemed, to keep our little raft afloat.
“I reckon you can shor’nuf come along, but won’t your pa be mighty worried? I mean, you taking off up North with me? He’s likely to chase us all the way to Vermont with them hound dogs.”