A Place Called Freedom (1995)

She pulled away from him in horror. She was a married woman, and six months pregnant, and she had let a servant kiss her! “What am I thinking about?” she said unbelievingly.

“You’re not thinking,” he said.

“I am now,” she said. “Go away!”

Looking sad, he turned and left the room.

29

ON THE DAY AFTER LIZZIE’S FAILED PARTY, MACK heard news of Cora.

It was Sunday, and he went into Fredericksburg wearing his new clothes. He needed to free his mind of thoughts of Lizzie Jamisson, her springy black hair and her soft cheeks and her salt tears. Pepper Jones, who had stayed in the slave quarters overnight, went with him, carrying his banjo.

Pepper was a thin, energetic man about fifty years old. His fluent English indicated he had been in America for many years. Mack asked him: “How did you come to be free?”

“Born free,” he replied. “My ma was white, although it don’t show. My daddy was a runaway, recaptured before I was born—I never saw him.”

Whenever he got the chance Mack asked questions about running away. “Is it right what Kobe says, that all runaways get caught?”

Pepper laughed. “Hell, no. Most get caught, but most are stupid—that’s how come they were captured in the first place.”

“So, if you’re not stupid …?”

He shrugged. “It ain’t easy. As soon as you run away, the master puts an advertisement in the newspaper, giving your description and the clothes you were wearing.”

Clothes were so costly that it would be difficult for runaways to change. “But you could keep out of sight.”

“Got to eat, though. That means you need a job, if you stay inside the colonies, and any man that’s going to employ you has probably read about you in the newspaper.”

“These planters really have things worked out.”

“It’s not surprising. All the plantations are worked by slaves, convicts and indentured servants. If they didn’t have a system for catching runaways, the planters would have starved a long time ago.”

Mack was thoughtful. “But you said ‘if you stay inside the colonies.’ What do you mean by that?”

“West of here is the mountains, and on the other side of the mountains, the wilderness. No newspapers there. No plantations either. No sheriffs, no judges, no hangmen.”

“How big is the territory?”

“I don’t know. Some say it stretches for hundreds of miles before you come to the sea again, but I never met anyone who’s been there.”

Mack had talked about the wilderness with many people, but Pepper was the first he felt inclined to rely on. Others retailed what were obviously fantastic stories in place of hard facts: Pepper at least admitted that he did not know everything. As always, Mack found it exciting to talk about. “Surely a man could disappear over the mountains and never be found!”

“That’s the truth. Also, he could be scalped by Indians and killed by mountain lions. More likely he could starve to death.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve met pioneers who came back. They break their backs for a few years, turning a perfectly good piece of land into a useless patch of mud, then they quit.”

“But some succeed?”

“Must do, I guess, otherwise there wouldn’t be no such place as America.”

“West of here, you said,” Mack mused. “How far are the mountains?”

“About a hundred miles, they say.”

“So close!”

“It’s farther than you think.”

They were offered a ride by one of Colonel Thumson’s slaves who was driving a cart into town. Slaves and convicts always gave one another rides on the roads of Virginia.

The town was busy: Sunday was the day the field hands from the plantations round about came in to go to church or get drunk or both. Some of the convicts looked down on the slaves, but Mack considered he had no reason to feel superior. Consequently he had many friends and acquaintances, and people hailed him at every corner.

They went to Whitey Jones’s ordinary. Whitey was so called because of his coloring, a mixture of black and white; and he sold liquor to blacks even though it was against the law. He could converse equally well in the pidgin spoken by the majority of slaves or the Virginian dialect of the American born. His tavern was a low-ceilinged room smelling of wood smoke, full of blacks and poor whites playing cards and drinking. Mack had no money, but Pepper Jones had been paid by Lizzie and he bought Mack a quart of ale.

Mack enjoyed the beer, a rare treat nowadays. While they were drinking Pepper said: “Hey, Whitey, have you ever run into anyone who crossed the mountains?”

“Sure have,” Whitey said. “There was a trapper in here one time, said it was the best hunting he ever saw, over there. Seems a whole gang of them goes over there every year, and comes back loaded down with pelts.”

Mack said: “Did he tell you what route he took?”

“Seems to me he said there was a pass called the Cumberland Gap.”

“Cumberland Gap,” Mack repeated.

Whitey said: “Say, Mack, weren’t you asking after a white girl called Cora?”

Mack’s heart leaped. “Yes—have you heard tell of her?”

“Seen her—so I know why you’re crazy for her.” He rolled his eyes.

“Is she a pretty girl, Mack?” Pepper teased.