Chasing Freedom (3 page)

Suddenly,
Molly
was pulling away. Below deck, Sarah envisioned the flapping sails as great white wings stretched across the sea. It was a slow, choppy ride at first. Soon, the voyage turned into a bad dream. Overhead, high winds howled as they lashed the sails and salt spray blasted through slits in the boards. Things rattled and rolled and hit the floor above. As
Molly
tossed about like an empty canister atop fifteen-foot waves, Sarah's heart rose and fell with it. The screams of white Loyalists sent chills along her spine as she ricocheted back and forth, struggling to stay alive and keep from being sick.

On the fourth day the weather calmed. Sarah strained her eyes and neck in search of familiar faces. She found Aunt Beulah and Uncle Prince standing at the far side of the hold, clinging tightly to each other. By the fifth day, the crowded space in the ship's belly had bloated with heat and unbearable odours. Sarah's empty stomach heaved continually and she nibbled on bread and salt beef, only sipping the stale water. As Sarah fastened her arms around Grandmother's shoulders, she imagined the flow of memories the old woman must have of another Atlantic voyage. There were no chains this time and neither were the men and women separated, but true feelings of horror revealed themselves on the old woman's face.

Despite the hardship, all around, those who were not sick engaged in chatter about getting land and provisions and making a new life in the land of plenty. There, in the disgusting hole, tears of joy crept through. But this new and faraway place held little charm for Sarah when it was not of her choosing, when all it brought was much uncertainty for a former slave. Would freedom bring a return to humankind, a chance to make her own decisions, to live and breathe without fear and to one day have a family?

Four

O
N THE NINTH DAY, THE NOVA SCOTIA COAST CAME
into view.
Molly
sliced through the rising fog to a shoreline of wharves, scattered buildings and huts. The ship headed in to moor in Port Roseway harbour amid the disquieting awe of the passengers.

Sarah was anxious to leave the ship, breathe fresh air and get a glimpse of her new homeland. When at last the time came for the Negroes to disembark, they raised loud, boisterous cheers. Sarah blinked hard and fast when she emerged from the ship's belly. Her confidence abandoned her. The contrast with her former home was extreme. A vast breastwork of slate and rock and sand stretched along the ocean and inland to meet thick greenery. All of it merged into a palette of every muddled shade of green, grey, brown and blue. This was it? The place Big Moss, the preacher, spoke of as “The Sweet Freedom Land.”

Sarah hesitated and stepped back, terrified of leaving the ship, afraid of perishing in the wilderness, for the only signs of existence were several clusters of buildings and rows of houses in lines that cut across each other. The land was rough, covered in boulders, trees and underbrush. Tents and pole huts were pitched everywhere. “Uncivilized,” she heard someone say. Her fear amplified as she envisioned some great creature lurking within the steamy woods, ready to snatch her up.

Sarah stood on the wharf, drowning in the persistent cheers and chatter. How the white Loyalists' tongues wagged about starting life over and becoming prosperous. They spoke of their determination to create a great city to rival New York. Sarah listened and watched in dismay at all the commotion. The sight of the town paralyzed her — her expectations had been of greater things.

A Roseway Associate, a plump man in a red coat, approached them with a long sheet of paper. She listened carefully as he welcomed them. He gave his name as Joseph Pyncheon, a founding father. He said that the people he called by name from his list were to go with him. He read only the names of the highest-ranking white officers, lieutenants, captains, colonels and sergeants. Sarah's eyes followed as this group left with their families, slaves and indentured Negroes. They scattered about the new settlement and disappeared into the meagre dwellings of Port Roseway. Shortly after their departure, servants came and quickly unloaded the furniture and other household goods belonging to the first lot of settlers.

Mr. Pyncheon returned and met separately with the remaining white Loyalists — disbanded soldiers, southern estate owners whose lands the Patriots had confiscated, tradesmen and adventurers. He informed these men that Port Roseway could not accommodate them until more lots were surveyed. He offered them lodging aboard the ships and sloops in the harbour and gave them permission to pitch tents on the Public Ground. The grumbling and cursing that followed became so out of hand that a band of Red Coats was called in. After assurances their wait would be short, that surveyors were hard at work and building materials were arriving daily, the settlers left to make arrangements.

Mr. Pyncheon finally dealt with the remaining settlers—the free Negroes—ordering them to wait on the wharf and be patient. Sarah and the others sat in the welcome warmth of the blazing sun for most of the day, hungry and bewildered. The nearby streets sloping upward from the wharf were full of Negroes going about their business—women walking with white children, going in and out of shops and homes; men working on new structures, carrying lumber on their backs or piling supplies onto ox carts. The activity reminded her of the plantation.

At last Mr. Pyncheon returned. He came with soldiers and barrels of water, boiled salt pork and bread. Sarah was grateful that she could finally stomach food. Pyncheon looked over the sorry lot with sharp blue eyes and a furrowed brow saying, “I regret that Governor Parr has not issued orders for your settlement. You'll receive some relief until separate land is set aside. Until orders come, you can stay at the black quarters here in Port Roseway. Be mindful that any caught roaming, begging or stealing will be whipped … What is your company and who is your leader?” he asked a man standing nearby.

Before that man could answer, a man in brown military dress stepped forward and said loudly, “Colonel Septimus Black at your service, Sir. A disbanded member of the South Carolina black Loyalist unit, the Black Pioneers, and the appointed leader of this company of Negroes.”

Pyncheon frowned and asked, “Can you read and write?”

“Yes Sir.”

“Well, well.” Pyncheon faced the crowd. “Any complaints or needs will be handled by your leader, Colonel Septimus Black.” He raised his hand to his forehead and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Your rations will be distributed through him,” he puffed.

Sarah's family settled into the black quarters while hundreds of others arrived daily on ships. Two weeks later, they gathered in a group to hear Benjamin Marston, the chief surveyor. His news was good. The provincial secretary had issued an order to the magistrates to situate the Negroes on the northwest arm of Shelburne Harbour. He joked and laughed and Sarah warmed to his friendly tone. The next morning, Marston filled his sloop with free Negroes. This time Sarah stood on deck. A place to call home at last, she thought.

Such cheering as Marston's boat approached the arm! Sarah's spirited shouts of joy mingled with the rest. But when the anchor was lowered, Sarah's jaw fell. To her dismay, there was neither a building nor a hut in sight, just rocks and woods so thick not a bit of light came through. She waded ashore with the others where they were met by Pyncheon. He informed them that this was to be their new home. Then he ordered the Negroes to take to the woods and do what they could to survive.

THE CHATTER, THE PRAYERS AND THE SERMONS … IT HAD ALL
been about “gettin' some of that ‘sweet freedom land' and riches.” Well, Sarah was fast realizing that this new Birchtown was a far cry from that.

Colonel Black, being of high rank, built a comfortable house with a garden on a large lot. The remaining Negroes would have to wait for surveyors to lay out their land.

When winter came, unfamiliar cold took many lives, for they had nothing to fend it off with. Sarah and Grandmother gathered materials, sought rations and tramped back and forth to Roseway to work. They scavenged for usable materials, goods and clothing in Port Roseway. They made baskets, and Uncle Prince built make-shift carts and sleds to transport things. They pooled their money and got themselves chickens and a pig. With no buildings for shelter, they lived in a pit house—a hole in the ground supported by rocks and a roof of long poles and spruce branches.

With the first spring came hope, more rations and shacks. Prince and a few Birchtown men helped Grandmother build a small dwelling. Sarah helped too. They used rough logs and poles stuffed with mud and moss, and put up a pitched roof. The only door opened into a tiny rectangular room with one small window fitted with a thick sheet of canvas, a fire pit made of rocks in the floor, a table and chairs shaped with an axe, two shelves holding dishes and pots and a table for water buckets. Along the opposite wall was a small wooden bunk. The air was always thick with smoke and the aroma of food cooking. A canvas curtain partitioned off a space at the back for sleeping. There was barely room for two small bunks, a washstand and hooks for hanging clothes. Behind the hut was a dug well and a small dump.

They enjoyed fish, sometimes a little wild meat, venison, rabbit or porcupine, and gathered wild apples and good-tasting berries in season. They often received vegetables, dairy goods or bread in exchange for work.

Grandmother kept to herself, though Sarah preferred company. She tried hard not to complain, at least not aloud, but she could see how the worry and strain creased Grandmother's face in ever-deepening lines as she tried to keep their spirits up, pleading with God to spare the last of her “brood.” Sarah worried too. There was no telling if her father would ever return.

Under the bleak clouds of poverty, Sarah watched with interest as the settlement began to take shape, what with its endless paths, hustle and bustle, and strange goings-on. Hundreds of unsightly shacks sprang up as more freed slaves, runaways and rough characters came to Birchtown, many with all manner of disabilities attributed to the war or misfortune. Fifteen hundred free Negroes. It was not a safe place, but as time pressed on, a little of the fear and some of the daily aching lifted from Sarah's spirit. In all that squalor and misery, she was grateful and managed a smile from time to time.

Five

T
HE MORNING AIR WAS WARMING AND THE DARK SKY
brightening as the frost lifted from the Birchtown trail. At first a mere footpath cut through the trees, the trail was now worn and widened from the daily travels of hundreds to and from Roseway—a bustling town with homes, businesses and warehouses.

It was only a mile more to Prince and Beulah's place. Sarah stepped aside to let a man hauling a cart filled with wood go by. She turned to Grandmother and out of the blue said, “I never dreamed of such a dreadful place. There are days I yearn for home.”

Grandmother looked at Sarah, her face drawn tight. “Why on earth would you do that, Girlie?”

“I miss having chores and good food—sweet potatoes, melons, peanuts and greens, and I miss the music and dancing. Such fun. And the sermons and singing at the camp meetings, too. Do you miss it?”

“I do think on it sometimes.” Grandmother stopped for a minute. “Oh, that revolution. War shakes things up and brings about something different. Maybe the Lord was telling everyone that it was time for a change.”

“Nothing left but the memories,” Sarah droned.

“Yes, yes, the pain of memories. You be careful, Girlie. Things we thought we left behind will haunt us. We must think on mending our lives like patching an old pair of breeches. We must find our way here.” She rubbed the wooden ring on her finger and said, “We must keep the bad juju away.” Grandmother slowed down and her voice softened. “Some of mine never got to see this old world. Others be snatched from me. Oh Lord, I pray that one day I will get to see all my children … before I go to Glory.” Her words trailed off and there was no mistaking the pain behind the grief.

Sarah was confused. Grandmother had two sons: Sarah's papa, Fortune, who had gone off and joined the revolution, and his younger brother, Prince, who was married to Beulah. Were there others? She looked off in the distance and brushed aside her eagerness to learn more about the past and this woman who seemed just as much a stranger as any of the other Birchtowners.

Sarah shifted her baskets. Slavery had denied them their right to have a real family. They had been the master's property and he had the right to sell children, mothers and fathers, scattering them to the wind. She wondered if there was any chance of the old woman's longing coming true. Would it be possible for her to find her other children? Was it possible that they might be here in Nova Scotia?

“There's not much family left,” Sarah said.

“We have each other and your Uncle Prince and Aunt Beulah for now.”

“There are four of us and one more on the way. That's five.” Sarah grinned. It was her mother who had taught her numbers and words. How different her mother had been from the woman marching ahead with her feet coming down hard on the ground. Grandmother's words were always sharp, to the point, while Dahlia's light-hearted nature had caught people up.

Sarah pictured her mother in the driving heat of the midday sun. Saw her walking the mile-long rows with her dress drenched in sweat as she filled her bags with cotton. Saw her scooping out food and placing it in hollowed gourds from the barrels Mr. MacLeod brought to the fields. By day, she lit up the fields with her spirituals. By night, while Sarah kept watch for Cecil, slaves gathered round to hear Dahlia spin magical tales of Africa, of casting out spells, of romance and of people gone missing in the middle of the night. “A sweet woman,” Papa had said. “She be the scented sap running through a honeysuckle vine.”

Dahlia had loved to read. She learned how by sneaking off with Mingo, an escaped slave who returned to the plantations late at night. He taught them by drawing numbers and letters on the ground. One day Dahlia and another slave were standing by a wagon loaded with barrels of rice. The words on the barrel rolled off her tongue: “Carolina Rice, Finest Quality,
25
Pounds.” When she turned and saw Cecil, she knew there was trouble. He grabbed her hard by the arm. She tried to tell him that she was just repeating words she had heard. Cecil sneered, tied her to his horse and dragged her to the wheelhouse. “Chop one thumb off,” he told one of the slaves. Sarah had gathered wild herbs and made a potion to bathe the thumb.

Sarah shook her head to toss off the memory, slowed her pace, for her heart suddenly grew almost too heavy to carry.

Grandmother took a long drag on her pipe as Sarah plodded along. Pointing upward, she said, “The sun's far from overhead. We're making good time. I trust Prince is holding on.”

The wooden ring on her finger, polished with pig grease, caught the light and shone like a diamond. The ring unsettled Sarah. Where had she seen another like it?

“What are you thinking about now, Girlie?” Grandmother asked, for she had never known anyone as busy in the head as Sarah, always with a clever thought or something new to say.

Not wanting to mention the ring, and trying to lighten the air, Sarah said, “Oh, I'm just thinking about the get-togethers for the big feeds after harvest. When the music from the spoons, washboards and calabashes got our feet to stirring. Do you remember ol' Plenty Fat, what a good dancer he was? That slave sure could make the dry earth crack with his stepping.” She envisioned the man's high jumps and twirls and how he could kick up his heels like a crazy mule, and she chuckled.

“The Lord will remember all that carrying on. He sure will. He cannot step his sorry self into heaven. There's none of that allowed up there.” Grandmother let out a turkey chuckle. “Yes Lord, none of that goin' to be allowed up there.”

With that, Sarah stopped her chatter. Surely freedom was not so narrow—some stuffy old woman smothered in snarls and fear. Sarah wondered if Grandmother had ever felt the belly-shaking joy of laughter in her pitiful and cruel life, always with child and nothing but work.

The pair tramped along cautiously, crossing Ackers Brook. Now walking with baskets swinging, Sarah joyfully turned her thoughts to the Charles Town slave, as she called him. It had been several weeks after their arrival in Nova Scotia before she'd had a sighting of him. The first had come after finishing a day's work for Mrs. Atkins. She had been making her way up a dusty road past the Anglican Church when she spotted him several yards away. She'd hurried to catch up, but making her way along a street packed with folks rushing back to Birchtown proved difficult. When the crowd thinned, he had vanished. It upset her that folks had to rush, but she did not want to be found in Roseway after the six o'clock curfew. Just two months earlier, the white residents of Roseway, accusing the Negroes of lowering wages, formed a huge mob and rioted. With clubs and arms they wandered the streets for days, pulling down or burning Negro houses and chasing them out of town. Finally, the magistrate imposed a curfew from dusk to dawn to keep order. Thinking about it made Sarah cringe. It was so unfair to use a curfew to punish the Negroes instead of those who caused the trouble.

Another time she had seen him at the Roseway Wharf, where she had gone after work to look for fresh fish for Grandmother. He gave her a quick nod with a tip of his cap That was the day she learned his name—Reece Johnson. On this September morning, his name played a thousand times in her head. Perhaps today she would run into him again.

She and Grandmother had walked a good distance when Sarah stopped to watch a blue heron gracefully swoop down and skim across the bog. She looked kindly at Grandmother. Why it was so difficult for her to enjoy life or to talk about the past? Papa had been right. All her living was balled up inside.

Unbeknownst to Sarah, Grandmother had been keeping a close eye to her. Grandmother's mouth squeezed to the side of her face. “You best let go of the past and think on getting ready for this life in Scotia,” she exclaimed. “It won't be soft candy.” Surprisingly she added, “Good times do come around once in awhile, but don't be thinking the way some folks do. Look over there, Girlie, lying in the grass. My, my. Such a pitiful sight.”

“It's just Cato.”

“Yes, and drunk no doubt from the poison and goings-on last night. How is acting like that going to raise us up? Good times, all right. Being strong is better than being weak. You remember that, Girlie.”

The noise of an approaching cart forced them to the side of the road. Four Black Pioneers sent out a loud greeting as they moved slowly past.

“The Pioneer uniforms remind me of Papa,” Sarah said.

“Fortune joining the Red Coats was a sad day. No need to be talking about him now, Girlie. I swear your mind is like a bee going from flower to flower.”

“Maybe Papa made it. Maybe he is somewhere in the colony. No one is saying he was killed.”

“Maybe so, but Colonel Black has already made it clear that he has no knowledge of the missing soldiers. They got scattered, the healthy and the wounded, and put on different ships at war's end. So slow your hopes down, Girlie. Don't you get carried away with the tide.”

After rounding a huge boulder, the pair came across some men raising the rafters on a small hut. Sarah's heart raced when she saw that one of the men was Reece Johnson. She stole quick glances in his direction, knowing that if the old woman had any inkling of the thoughts in her head, she would drag her down to the river for a confession and a quick baptism. Reece was busy passing poles to one of the men. Sarah was thinking she must look a sight with a big blue bonnet pulled low on her face and a long grey coat in need of cleaning.

“Look,” she suddenly said after spying the fish man. “Over there. Is that Enos? I hear folks saying the mackerel are running. Maybe he will come by, if you ask.”

“I believe so,” Grandmother said, wasting no time in leaving the path to hail Enos.

“Where are you going today, Miss Sarah?” Reece asked as Sarah approached the men.

“I'm going down to Roseway. I see you've found work.”

“Work, yes. Pay, no. I was hoping I'd be able to use my trade.”

“Trade?”

“I forged nails for the blacksmith, Steppin' John, back home.”

“I saw you with him in Charles Town, but I never saw you on the plantation.”

“That's because pretty girls weren't allowed around the blacksmith shop.”

Sarah warmed to his compliment. “There aren't many jobs now. What will you do?”

“I'll head up north, go whaling … there's good money in that.”

Sarah sighed. “I see. Do you plan on leaving soon?”

Reece chuckled. “I'm waiting for a spot to open up.” Reece twisted his stout shoulders and wide frame uncomfortably, like a little boy. “I can't talk now. Rod's giving me the eye. But I'll be at the camp meeting on Sunday.”

A smile as long as the Mississippi stretched across Sarah's face. “I'll look for you.” Sarah tingled in the bizarre feelings taking charge of her. Well, well, the Birchtown girls would wag their tongues on that since they all had their eyes on Reece.

Grandmother took several drags from her pipe as she made her way back to Sarah. She stared long and hard at Reece and cast a sour sneer in his direction. Then she turned her head and looked at her granddaughter, her face hardening with sternness. “Be careful about getting friendly with strangers, Girlie. Do not get lost in foolish feelings.”

Sarah frowned and said nothing. Little did Grandmother know that she was already hopelessly lost.