The Underground Railroad

Cora saved her last meal for the Hob women. It was rare for them to spend their free hours together but she rounded them up from their preoccupations. What would become of them? They were exiles, but Hob provided a type of protection once they settled in. By playing up their strangeness, the way a slave simpered and acted childlike to escape a beating, they evaded the entanglements of the quarter. The walls of Hob made a fortress some nights, rescuing them from the feuds and conspiracies. White men eat you up, but sometimes colored folk eat you up, too.

She left a pile of her things by the door: a comb, a square of polished silver that Ajarry had scrounged years ago, the pile of blue stones that Nag called her “Indian rocks.” Her farewell.

She took her hatchet. She took flint and tinder. And like her mother she dug up her yams. The next night someone will have claimed the plot, she thought, turned the dirt over. Put a fence around it for chickens. A doghouse. Or maybe she will keep it a garden. An anchor in the vicious waters of the plantation to prevent her from being carried away. Until she chose to be carried away.

They met by the cotton after the village quieted down. Caesar made a quizzical expression at her bulging sack of yams but didn’t speak. They moved through the tall plants, so knotted up inside that they forgot to run until they were halfway through. Their speed made them giddy. The impossibility of it. Their fear called after them even if no one else did. They had six hours until their disappearance was discovered and another one or two before the posses reached where they were now. But fear was already in pursuit, as it had been every day on the plantation, and it matched their pace.

They crossed the meadow whose soil was too thin for planting and entered the swamp. It had been years since Cora had played in the black water with the other pickaninnies, scaring each other with tales of bears and hidden gators and fast-swimming water moccasins. Men hunted otter and beaver in the swamp and the moss sellers scavenged from the trees, tracking far but never too far, yanked back to the plantation by invisible chains. Caesar had accompanied some of the trappers on their fishing and hunting expeditions for months now, learning how to step in the peat and silt, where to stick close to the reeds, and how to find the islands of sure ground. He probed the murk before them with his walking stick. The plan was to shoot west until they hit a string of islands a trapper had shown him, and then bow northeast until the swamp dried up. The precious firm footing made it the fastest route north, despite the diversion.

They had made it only a small ways in when they heard the voice and stopped. Cora looked at Caesar for a cue. He held his hands out and listened. It was not an angry voice. Or a man’s voice.

Caesar shook his head when he realized the identity of the culprit. “Lovey-shush!”

Lovey had enough sense to be quiet once she got a bead on them. “I knew you were up to something,” she whispered when she caught up. “Sneaking around with him but not talking about it. And then you dig up them yams not even ripe yet!” She had cinched some old fabric to make a bag that she slung over her shoulder.

“You get on back before you ruin us,” Caesar said.

“I’m going where you going,” Lovey said.

Cora frowned. If they sent Lovey back, the girl might be caught sneaking into her cabin. Lovey was not one to keep her tongue still. No more head start. She didn’t want to be responsible for the girl, but couldn’t figure it.

“He’s not going to take three of us,” Caesar said.

“He know I’m coming?” Cora asked.

He shook his head.

“Then two surprises as good as one,” she said. She lifted her sack. “We got enough food, anyway.”

He had all night to get used to the idea. It would be a long time before they slept. Eventually Lovey stopped crying out at every sudden noise from the night creatures, or when she stepped too deep and the water surged to her waist. Cora was acquainted with this squeamish quality of Lovey’s, but she did not recognize the other side of her friend, whatever had overtaken the girl and made her run. But every slave thinks about it. In the morning and in the afternoon and in the night. Dreaming of it. Every dream a dream of escape even when it didn’t look like it. When it was a dream of new shoes. The opportunity stepped up and Lovey availed herself, heedless of the whip.

The three of them wended west, tromping through the black water. Cora couldn’t have led them. She didn’t know how Caesar did it. But he was ever surprising her. Of course he had a map in his head and could read stars as well as letters.