The Underground Railroad

RAN AWAY from the subscriber on the 6th of February last, his Negro Girl PEGGY. She is about 16 years of age, and is a bright mulatto, about the ordinary height, with straight hair and tolerable good features-she has a ragged scar on her neck occasioned by a burn. She will no doubt attempt to pass for a free girl, and it is likely she has obtained a free pass. She has a down look when spoken to, and not remarkably intelligent. She speaks quick, with a shrill voice.

JOHN DARK.

CHATHAM COUNTY, MAY 17.

“JESUS, carry me home, home to that land…”

Jasper wouldn’t stop singing. Ridgeway shouted from the head of their little caravan for him to shut his mouth, and sometimes they halted so Boseman could climb into the wagon and clout the runaway on the head. Jasper sucked the scars on his fingers for a short interval, then resumed his crooning. Quietly at first so that only Cora could hear. But soon he’d be singing again, to his lost family, to his god, to everyone they passed on the trail. He’d have to be disciplined again.

Cora recognized some of the hymns. She suspected he made up many of them; the rhymes were crooked. She wouldn’t have minded it so much if Jasper had a better voice, but Jesus had not blessed him in that department. Or with looks-he had a lopsided frog face and oddly thin arms for a field hand-or with luck. Luck least of all.

He and Cora had that in common.

They picked up Jasper three days out of North Carolina. Jasper was a delivery. He absconded from the Florida cane fields and made it to Tennessee before a tinker caught him stealing food from his pantry. After a few weeks the deputy located his owner, but the tinker had no means of transport. Ridgeway and Boseman were drinking in a tavern around the corner from the jail while little Homer waited with Cora and the wagon. The town clerk approached the famous slave catcher, brokered an arrangement, and Ridgeway now had the nigger chained in the wagon. He hadn’t reckoned the man for a songbird.

The rain tapped on the canopy. Cora enjoyed the breeze and then felt ashamed for enjoying something. They stopped to eat when the rain let up. Boseman slapped Jasper, chuckled, and unchained the two fugitives from the wagon floor. He offered his customary vulgar promise as he knelt before Cora, sniffing. Jasper’s and Cora’s wrists and ankles remained manacled. It was the longest she had ever been in chains.

Crows glided over. The world was scorched and harrowed as far as they could see, a sea of ash and char from the flat planes of the fields up to the hills and mountains. Black trees tilted, stunted black arms pointing as if to a distant place untouched by flame. They rode past the blackened bones of houses and barns without number, chimneys sticking up like grave markers, the husked stone walls of ravaged mills and granaries. Scorched fences marked where cattle had grazed; it was not possible the animals survived.

After two days of riding through it, they were covered in black grime. Ridgeway said it made him feel at home, the blacksmith’s son.

This is what Cora saw: Nowhere to hide. No refuge between those black stalks, even if she weren’t fettered. Even if she had an opportunity.

An old white man in a gray coat trotted by on a dun horse. Like the other travelers they passed on the black road, he slowed in curiosity. Two adult slaves were common enough. But the colored boy in the black suit driving the wagon and his queer smile discomfited strangers. The younger white man with the red derby wore a necklace adorned with pieces of shriveled leather. When they figured out these were human ears, he bared a line of intermittent teeth browned by tobacco. The older white man in command discouraged all conversation with his glowering. The traveler moved on, around the bend where the road limped between the denuded hills.

Homer unfolded a moth-eaten quilt for them to sit on and distributed their portions on tin plates. The slave catcher allowed his prisoners an equal share of the food, a custom dating to his earliest days in the job. It reduced complaints and he billed the client. At the edge of the blackened field they ate the salt pork and the beans Boseman had prepared, the dry flies screeching in waves.

Rain agitated the smell of the fire, making the air bitter. Smoke flavored every bite of food, each sip of water. Jasper sang, “Jump up, the redeemer said! Jump up, jump up if you want to see His face!”