A Place Called Freedom (1995)

A fat-bellied man in a straw hat came on board accompanied by a tall, gray-haired Negro. The two of them looked over the convicts, picking out some and rejecting others. Mack soon figured that they were selecting the youngest and strongest men, and inevitably he was among the fourteen or fifteen chosen. No women or children were picked.

When the selection was finished the captain said: “Right, you lot, go with these men.”

“Where are we going?” Mack asked. They ignored him.

Peg began to cry.

Mack embraced her. He had known this was going to happen, and it broke his heart. Every adult Peg trusted had been taken from her: her mother killed by sickness, her father hanged, and now Mack sold away from her. He hugged her hard and she clung to him. “Take me with you!” she wailed.

He detached himself from her. “Try and stay with Cora, if you can,” he said.

Cora kissed him on the lips with desperate passion. It was hard to believe that he might never see her again, never again lie in bed with her and touch her body and make her gasp with pleasure. Hot tears ran down her face and into his mouth as they kissed. “Try and find us, Mack, for God’s sake,” she pleaded.

“I’ll do my best—”

“Promise me!” she insisted.

“I promise, I’ll find you.”

The fat-bellied man said: “Come on, lover boy,” and jerked Mack away from her.

He looked back over his shoulder as he was pushed down the gangway onto the wharf. Cora and Peg stood watching with their arms around one another, crying. Mack thought of his parting from Esther. I won’t fail Cora and Peg the way I failed Esther, he vowed. Then they were lost from sight.

It felt strange to put his feet on solid ground after eight weeks of having the never-ceasing movement of the sea beneath him. As he hobbled down the unpaved main street in his chains he stared about him, looking at America. The town center had a church, a market house, a pillory and a gallows. Brick and wood houses stood widely spaced along either side of the street. Sheep and chickens foraged in the muddy road. Some buildings seemed old-established but there was a raw, new look to many.

The town was thronged with people, horses, carts, and carriages, most of which must have come from the countryside all around. The women had new bonnets and ribbons, and the men wore polished boots and clean gloves. Many people’s clothes had a homemade look, even though the fabrics were costly. He overheard several people talking of races and betting odds. Virginians seemed keen on gambling.

The townspeople looked at the convicts with mild curiosity, the way they might have watched a horse canter along the street, a sight they had seen before but which continued to interest them.

The town petered out after half a mile. They waded across the river at a ford, then set off along a rough track through wooded countryside. Mack put himself next to the middle-aged Negro. “My name is Malachi McAsh,” he said. “They call me Mack.”

The man kept his eyes straight ahead but spoke in a friendly enough way. “I’m Kobe,” he said, pronouncing it to rhyme with Toby. “Kobe Tambala.”

“The fat man in the straw hat—does he own us now?”

“No. Bill Sowerby’s just the overseer. Him and me was told to go aboard the Rosebud and pick out the best field hands.”

“Who has bought us?”

“You ain’t exactly been bought.”

“What, then?”

“Mr. Jay Jamisson decided to keep you for hisself, to work on his own place, Mockjack Hall.”

“Jamisson!”

“That’s right.”

Mack was once again owned by the Jamisson family. The thought made him angry. Damn them to hell, I’ll run away again, he vowed. I will be my own man.

Kobe said: “What work did you do, before?”

“I used to be a coal miner.”

“Coal? I’ve heard tell of it. A rock that burns like wood, but hotter?”

“Aye. Trouble is, you have to go deep underground to find it. What about yourself?”

“My people were farmers in Africa. My father had a big piece of land, more than Mr. Jamisson.”

Mack was surprised: he had never thought of slaves as coming from rich families. “What kind of farm?”

“Mixed—wheat, some cattle—but no tobacco. We have a root called the yam grows out there. Never seen it here, though.”

“You speak English well.”

“I’ve been here nearly forty years.” A look of bitterness came over his face. “I was just a boy when they stole me.”

Peg and Cora were on Mack’s mind. “There were two people on the ship with me, a woman and a girl,” he said. “Will I be able to find out who bought them?”

Kobe gave a humorless laugh. “Everybody’s trying to find someone they were sold apart from. People ask around all the time. When slaves meet up, on the road or in the woods, that’s all they talk about.”

“The child’s name is Peg,” Mack persisted. “She’s only thirteen. She doesn’t have a mother or father.”

“When you’ve been bought, nobody has a mother or father.”

Kobe had given up, Mack realized. He had grown accustomed to his slavery and learned to live with it. He was bitter, but he had abandoned all hope of freedom. I swear I’ll never do that, Mack thought.