The Underground Railroad

Lovey’s sighs and curses when she needed a rest saved Cora from asking. When they demanded to look in her tow sack, it contained nothing practical, only odd tokens she had collected, like a small wooden duck and a blue glass bottle. As for his own practicality, Caesar was a capable navigator when it came to finding islands. Whether or not he kept to his route, Cora couldn’t tell. They started tracking northeast and by the time it got light they were out of the swamp. “They know,” Lovey said when the orange sun broke in the west. The trio took another rest and cut a yam into slices. The mosquitoes and blackflies persecuted them. In the daylight they were a mess, splashed up to their necks in mud, covered in burrs and tendrils. It did not bother Cora. This was the farthest she had ever been from home. Even if she were dragged away at this moment and put in chains, she would still have these miles.

Caesar tossed his walking stick to the ground and they took off again. The next time they stopped, he told them that he had to go find the county road. He promised to return soon, but he needed to take measure of their progress. Lovey had the sense not to ask what happened if he didn’t return. To reassure them, he left his sack and waterskin next to a cypress. Or to help them if he did not.

“I knew it,” Lovey said, still wanting to pick at it despite her exhaustion. The girls sat against the trees, grateful for solid, dry dirt.

Cora filled her in on what there was left to tell, going back to Jockey’s birthday.

“I knew it,” Lovey repeated.

“He thinks I’m good luck, because my mother was the only one.”

“You want luck, cut off a rabbit foot,” Lovey said.

“What your mother gonna do?” Cora asked.

Lovey and her mother arrived on Randall when she was five years old. Her previous master didn’t believe in clothing pickaninnies so it was the first time she had something on her back. Her mother, Jeer, had been born in Africa and loved to tell her daughter and her friends stories of her childhood in a small village by a river and all the animals who lived nearby. Picking broke her body. Her joints were swollen and stiff, making her crooked, and it anguished her to walk. When Jeer could no longer work she looked after babies when their mothers were in the fields. Despite her torments, she was always tender to her girl, even if her big toothless smile fell like an ax the moment Lovey turned away.

“Be proud of me,” Lovey answered. She lay down and turned her back.

Caesar appeared sooner than they expected. They were too close to the road, he said, but had made good time. Now their party had to press on, get as far as they could before the riders set out. The horsemen would wipe out their lead in short order.

“When we going to sleep?” Cora asked.

“Let’s get away from the road and then we see,” Caesar said. From his comportment, he was spent, too.

They set their bags down not long after. When Caesar woke Cora, the sun was getting down. She had not stirred once, even with her body draped awkwardly over the roots of an old oak. Lovey was already awake. They reached the clearing when it was almost dark, a cornfield behind a private farm. The owners were home and busied themselves in their chores, chasing each other in and out of the small cottage. The fugitives withdrew and waited until the family put out their lamps. From here until Fletcher’s farm the most direct route was through people’s land, but it was too dangerous. They stayed in the forest, looping around.

Ultimately the pigs did them in. They were following the rut of a hog trail when the white men rushed from the trees. There were four of them. Bait laid on the trail, the hog hunters waited for their quarry, which turned nocturnal in the hot weather. The runaways were a different sort of beast but more remunerative.

There was no mistaking the identity of the trio, given the specificity of the bulletins. Two of the hog hunters tackled the smallest of the party, pinning her to the ground. After being so quiet for so long-the slaves to escape the detection of hunters, and the hunters to escape the detection of their prey-all of them cried out and shrieked with their exertions. Caesar grappled with a heavyset man with a long dark beard. The fugitive was younger and stronger, but the man held his ground and seized Caesar by the waist. Caesar fought like he had struck many a white man, an impossible occurrence or else he would have been in the grave long ago. It was the grave the runaways fought against, for that was their destination if these men prevailed and returned them to their master.