Glory Over Everything (40 page)

Without warning, her body stiffened. Dear God! I thought. She is having the child! I rubbed my face with my hands. What to do! I must leave before they hear her and find us! Yes—yes! I would take Pan and leave!

As though she read my thoughts, Sukey grabbed at my hand, and her torn fingernails scratched into my palm, “Take baby.” I stared at her hand as she wrote it again. “Take baby.”

What did she mean? Take Pan? But no, she had said “baby.” Did she actually expect me, a man who knew nothing about childbirth, to somehow deliver a child and then flee with it? The idea was insane. I wouldn't sacrifice my life like this! I scuttled to the opening and glanced back at her beseeching eyes.

When Sukey stiffened again and gave a muffled cry, I leaped from the cave.

T
HE CHILD'S BEEN
coming since early today, and sure enough, just like I was afraid, Jamie goes running off without me. From the start, I see he don't want nothing to do with me, 'cause I see him as colored and he knows, being with me, he's pegged for a nigra.

When Jamie goes, it's easy to decide. Without him, I got no hope. Before the animals get us, I gon' let the baby die. I won't look at it. I won't help it breathe. The reason for me to run was to get this one free. But I can't make it out of this place by myself.

My stomach turns hard again and the pains burn. Push, push . . . I try hard not to make a sound. Don't want no animals showing up. I feel around me for the stick. I put it in my mouth and bite down. I'll get this child out, and then we both can die in peace. I seen worse ways to die.

All a sudden the boy shows up. “I'm here, Sukey. I can help.” He grabs hold a my hand and gives me his palm. “Tell me what to do,” Pan says.

“Get outta here,” I write, then slap at him to get him movin'. I hear him cryin' when he goes out, but now I can get my business done.

I bite down. Push, push. Don't make no noise! Pain, push, pain, push. Huuuh! I feel it come. It plops out. Lil arms, feet, pushing out. I feel it moving!

My head throws itself back and forth. I'm fighting with myself, not letting my hands reach for it. But then it cries.

I grab down, bring it up, and push it against me to stop it from breathing. The little mouth is working for air. I push in harder. I grunt and bite down hard on the stick, but this time the stick snaps, and that's when the mama in me takes over. She spits out the wood pieces, grabs at the bloody cord, bites through it, frees the child, then gives it my breast. When the child latches on, I look down and see it's a girl, and all that's left of me howls for mercy.

“Don't cry, Sukey! Don't cry!” The boy is back. “I'm gonna help you out!” he says, and I reach to kiss his sweet hand.

P
ANIC LIT A
fire in me. When I passed Pan, I grasped his arm and shouted for him to run. When he fought me, I struggled to keep hold of him.

“We've got to go!” I called out, holding tight. “We've got to get out of here!”

“What about Sukey?” he cried, pulling away. “She's by herself, having a baby.”

“We can't stay!” I looked around wildly, sure I heard our pursuers. “Come! We've got to go!” It did not occur to me that the heavy panting I heard was my own breath. Believing that we were to be killed, I began to shout in terror. “Come! Come!” I pulled roughly at his arm, but he freed himself and backed away.

“Mr. Burton!” Pan called out. “You not thinking right!”

I left him then and ran. Pan's call long faded and still I ran, the sound of my own rasping breath fueling me. My terror had broken free, and escape was all I knew. Perspiration dripped into my good eye, and near blind, I was in the water, stumbling over cypress roots, then back on dry land, tearing through thickets of juniper and green briar.

It was the appearance of the bear that brought me back to my senses. The black bear that had been wounded earlier in the day emerged from the green and roared his protest as I struggled onto his small dry island.

On first sight, I addressed him as though he were human, but as my reason returned, I stopped my muttering and slowly backed into the water. Something long slithered around my leg, and I stood frozen, waiting for the snake to kill me first.

The bear moved forward, his hackles up. Slowly, he swayed toward me. Foam frothed and flew from his clacking teeth and when he charged, trapped in a tangle of cypress roots, I waited for death. Then, unbelievably, not twenty feet from me, he splashed down. My legs gave way and I slid into the brown water as death tremors shook the bear's body. When my strength returned, I crawled back up onto the island to sit, stunned. I was alive! Somehow I had survived.

I looked about, disbelieving. What had I done? I had abandoned Pan, but worse, I had left Sukey while she was birthing a child. What kind of man was I? When I thought of them alone, and of the animals that might approach the cave, I got to my feet. I must go back.

Still dazed, I set off, but night was falling and I soon found myself lost. My only hope was to wait until morning, so I found a dry spot where I waited out the night.

I awoke with the morning's light. My head felt clear, and after I had drunk my fill of the tannic water, I set out once again. I remained lost, circling for hours, until I remembered a technique that Henry had taught me to find my way back to his shelter. I set up triangles of long sticks on the edges of dry land, and by late morning, I had found my way back to the small island.

Pan sat alone outside the cave under a pine, and a more forlorn-looking child I had never seen. When he noticed me, his eyes lit up, first in relief and then in fury.

“Did she have the baby?” I asked.

He looked away, refusing to give an answer.

I went to the cave and held my breath as I pulled back the entrance covering. “Sukey,” I whispered, and a small mewling noise answered me. Sukey raised her head, then with a sigh, let it fall back again. An overpowering stench filled the cave, but I was drawn in, first by remorse and then by astonishment when I saw something suckling at Sukey's breast. “Forgive me—” I began, but Sukey's hot hand grasped my palm. “Water,” she scratched, and when she scratched it again, I realized the urgency. I couldn't think of what to use for a receptacle until I remembered my leather slippers. Though wet and worn, they were largely intact.

Pan looked up as I exited the cave. “She needs water,” I said.

“I've been trying, but it don't stay in my fingers. All night I was looking for something to put the water in.” He leaned his head on his knees and began to cry.

“I'm going to try to use my shoe,” I said. He didn't follow me down to the water, but watched from his sitting position as I rinsed out my slipper as well as I could and then hurried back while cradling water in the awkward container.

When I lifted her head, Sukey's skin felt hot and dry. Though a good deal of the water spilled down her neck, she drank thirstily, and I went back for more. When she was sated, I attempted to take the baby from her, but she shook her head and clung to it tightly.

I left her then, needing to escape the oppressive odor. Pan was still seated under the pine, but when I sat next to him, he turned his back to me. “Pan?”

“I don't like you no more,” he said. “When I get outta this mess, I'm going to live with my daddy. He don't have much, and he's gonna whoop me for goin' to the docks, but he don't never leave me like that the way you done.”

“I'm sorry, Pan,” I said. “I don't know what happened. I guess fear just got the better of me.” I shook my head in disbelief, remembering the overriding panic.

“You don't know what happened? What happened is you run away, leaving Sukey and me here to die.”

“But I came back,” I said.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I care about you.”

“Phhh! I got a daddy who care about me! All I got to do is get back to find him.”

The truth came out. “Pan,” I said, “your daddy came with me to find you.”

He turned enough to give me a skeptical look. “He come with you? Then where is he?”

“He got sick up in Norfolk. I called in a doctor, twice, but he couldn't help.”

He swung toward me in fury. “You saying he's laying sick someplace? You run off and leave him, too?”

“No,” I said, realizing that I should have waited to tell him.

“Then where is he?” he demanded.

“I'm afraid that he died.”

Pan got to his feet and took a few steps away before he turned back. His dark eyes narrowed. “Why you saying that?” he asked.

“I'm sorry, Pan,” I said. “Maybe I shouldn't have told you this now.”

“You saying my daddy come down here to slave country and he die? You telling me the truth?”

“Yes, Pan,” I said. “I'm afraid I am.”

His chin trembled as he fought for control. “You sure the slave catcher don't get him?”

“No, Pan. He had a cough, and then he got very ill. I was with him when he passed away.”

“You was with him?”

“I was, and I was there when he was buried. When we get out of here, I can take you to see his grave.”

“I don't want to see no grave!” he said. Slowly, he walked to the water's edge, where he slumped to his knees. There he leaned in to himself and began a desperate call for his father.

I followed. “Pan, I'm sorry.”

“Go away,” he shouted, and struck out at me, and I knew then to let him be.

At a loss, I decided to see to Sukey and forced myself into the sickening smell of the cave to face the task of cleaning her up. Her torn petticoat lay beside her and she closed her glazed eyes after I tore loose a large piece and told her of my intentions.

I had not expected to see such a fresh amount of blood, and while my stomach heaved, I cleaned her as thoroughly as I was able. Off to the side, I found the umbilical cord attached to a small piece of what I guessed to be afterbirth. Though uncertain, I suspected there ought to be more.

I don't know how many trips I made out to the water to rinse the rag, but only later, as I gathered moss to pack between Sukey's legs in an attempt to stanch the blood flow, did I see Pan take notice.

During my ministrations, the baby gave an occasional soft mewl, but I didn't touch it. It was impossibly tiny, and I was sure it could not survive for long. Finally satisfied that I had done all I could, I returned outdoors and went to sit beside Pan, who remained at the water's edge.

“If she is to get well, I'll need your help, Pan,” I said.

Pan sounded drained when he spoke. “That lil one so small, it can't even cry. Those the kind that die. I saw it when I was helping Sukey in her sickhouse.”

“I agree that it looks weak, but we must do our best for Sukey. Can I count on you to help me out?”

“Wasn't me who go running off,” he said bluntly.

“I won't do that again, Pan,” I said.

“We'll see,” he mumbled.

“Pan, I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm sorry about your father, but always remember that he was a good man.”

He kept his eyes away from me. “He was so good, then why did he always go running off and leave me and my mama?”

“He was scared, Pan. He was scared of getting caught.”

“I don't hold with him leaving my mama to die like that,” he said.

“I know it doesn't seem right, but I guess his fear of getting caught was bigger than anything else. I suppose I did the same thing last night. My fear just took over.”

He sniffed loudly before he turned to me. “And what was you so afraid of?” he asked.

I picked up a nearby twig and used it to poke at the mossy ground. “Pan, the truth is, I've been scared and running for most of my life.”

“What was you running from?” His voice was hard.

I took a deep breath. “To start with, when I was a young boy, I thought I was white. When I was just around your age, I found out that my mother was a Negro. Since then I've been trying to pass as a white man. It's a secret that I've been hiding all of my life.”

“You saying your mama was colored like me?” he asked, his curiosity sparked in spite of himself.

“That is what I am saying,” I said, digging deep into the moss while he stared at me. “And we can't return to Philadelphia because of it,” I added.

Pan's thin shoulders sagged. “It don't matter, Mr. Burton. We all gonna die out here anyway.”

His hopelessness startled me. I forced a confidence that I did not feel. “Pan! We're not going to die! We will come through this, and someday you will be the man your father always knew you would be. We'll get through this. I promise!”

“We'll see,” he said, unconvinced, then clutched at his stomach as it growled audibly.

“This morning I ate some huckleberries,” I said, pointing to the abundant blue fruit. “They went right through me, so we can't eat many.”

“I ate them, too,” he admitted. “But they make my stomach hurt.”

“If we're going to be here until Sukey recovers, we're going to have to eat something more substantial,” I said. “But I don't dare try to get a fire going.”

“When my daddy got nothing else to eat, he eat grubs. Say they give you some get-up-and-go.”

“Let's go find some,” I said, and though the idea was less than appealing, I knew their nutritional value.

The earth on this island teemed with oversize black beetles, and where there were bugs, there were grubs. We didn't have to look far for decaying logs, and when I turned the first one over, there squirmed the large white larvae. Pan watched as I picked one up.

“You gonna try it?” he said, grimacing as I held it up.

I did not allow myself to think before I tossed one in my mouth and began to chew. Biting down into the soft body, I began to retch but quickly ate some huckleberries and forced myself to swallow. “Ahh,” I said. “Not bad!”