With a grunt, the wayward slave bolted from us. Within a dozen steps, he was snared in a bramble patch. The thorny claws clung to him like a posse securing its bounty. The harder he struggled to free himself, the tighter it harnessed him, nipping his skin from his elbows to his shoeless feet, which were cracked and bleeding of their own accord. Dry blood caked from one ear and beneath both of his nostrils. He shrank as far away from us as the clutching thorns allowed. He convulsed with anticipation, of what I’m not sure, but our hesitation calmed his struggle. The fact we were not armed or calling for help seemed to nudge his terror toward desperate hope. He whispered hoarsely through parched, flaking lips.
“I jes’ want to get back home to ol’ Kentuck. ’Taint gonna die here wit’ nobody knowin’ what become of ol’ Hobey. Massa George been good to me and mine. My woman is prob’ly heartbroke, thinkin’ I left her and the chilluns behind. I jes’ wanna go home.”
Livie stood limp and detached, as though she hadn’t heard a word he said. I considered him carefully as he shivered for mercy in the brambles. He was in a bad way and a stranger to me, but I saw Winston in him, and the image of how pained Esther Mae and Elijah had been after Winston had been whipped in town by Twitch. I thought of stoic James, hollowed by the loss of his family, and poor Livie still mourning the separation from her brother. Like them, the figure pleading from the bushes was no longer a slave to me, but simply a man who wanted to reunite with his family. I hurried over and yanked at the branches until the sharp spurs released. The man burst from his prickly cage and never turned back. I started to call out, but realized silence was his greatest asset. And as the first blades of sunshine lanced the gray mist around us, the mysterious man disappeared into the trees. Livie’s hope of seeing Marcus ebbed in the wake of the runaway. I went to her and gathered her in my arms. Livie sobbed in my embrace, and as my tears joined with hers, a painful ache stirred within me. The depth of my sorrow was not only for my heartbroken friend, but also for me. As much as I loved Livie and she loved me, I understood for the first time that she was not mine to keep.
Chapter 14
W
hen I tucked Livie into bed, she did not utter a word. She curled among her quilts with her eyes open but focused on nothing. The chill of the cabin seeped through me as I sat on a chair next to her bed. Silence hung heavy in the room until Livie was lulled to sleep by the distant crack of an ax. The lonely caw of a crow echoed through the trees, beckoning the new day. Two voices, then another rose with the sun as Mud Run began to stir with the morning birds. Exhaustion weighted my eyes until I could no longer will them wide and awake. My head bobbed its last resistance before drooping into sleep.
I floated deeper into unconsciousness, casting my fears and worries into the abyss when suddenly my eyes were pulled open by the creak of the cabin door.
“ ’Scuse me, Miz Hannah,” James mumbled in a low, throaty voice. “Jes’ checkin’ on Livetta. She run off in a tizzy last night.”
“Come in, James,” I said, standing to meet half his height. His size alone made him commanding, but it was offset by the gentleness in his voice and the concern in his eyes. “Livie has suffered a great disappointment,” I continued. “She has finally given in to sleep; however, I am very worried about her.”
James nodded, then stepped closer to take in the sight of Livie limp beneath her covers. Uncle Mooney often said James was built for work, with his fry-pan hands powerful and skilled for the farrier duties required between the two plantations. However, shed of his hammer and anvil, James looked as shaken and vulnerable as Livie. He shifted with uncertainty on callused feet that bulged through the seams of his boots. Rawhide strips were wound strategically around his peeling soles to hold them together and mark an unsightly measure of a year’s worth of sweat and toil.
“Shouldn’t have stripped her of hopeful notions, the way I did last night. It’s the one rightly thing we got fo’ ourselves,” James said more to himself than to me. He pulled his eyes from Livie and added, “No disrespect, Miz Hannah.”
I nodded to assure him he could speak freely without fear of repercussions. And truth be told, I was drawn by the curiosity of not ever having heard James utter an entire sentence before. I saw him as stoic and driven, not much different from a plow horse with blinders in place, plodding from task to task. He usually appeared removed and uninterested in all else but the next chore at hand. Now I was fascinated by James and the ease with which he displayed his sincere attachment and tender concern.
“I knowed it couldn’t be the brother she is always goin’ on about. Chances of him gettin’ north ain’t likely, but thinkin’ he could make it back down here, even if he had a mind to, is jes’ plain fool-hearted. But holdin’ out hope fo’ him sure do light her up bright as a beacon.”
I was surprised when James wasn’t more guarded in his thoughts. Obviously, he had some awareness of the relationship Livie and I shared. It was a relief, because it released me from the cautious veil I had worn for nearly a year.
“Since the day he left her, Livie has been steadfast in her wish for his return,” I confided aloud for the first time.
“When you got no hope nor wishes left, yo’ heart goes to stone,” James whispered. “Livetta says I is strong as a grizzly bear ’cuz o’ the mighty boulder I carry inside me since my family was sold off by the marse who owned me befo’ Massa Reynolds. Truth is, last night with Livetta, I felt my heart a-beatin’ fo’ the first time in a long spell. Made me remember what wishful thinkin’ can do fo’ a lonely soul. Don’t want nothin’ or nobody takin’ that from her. A heart o’ stone is a heavy burden to carry.”
Tears burned like hot puddles in my eyes. The beauty of raw, uninhibited affection was nonexistent in my world, and watching it flow so easily and naturally from James to Livie opened a door in me. He was a man whose heart ached for the woman he loved. We were bonded by the ache we shared, and I felt sameness rather than difference.
“Would you like to sit with her awhile, James?”
He settled onto the chair I offered. “I’m much obliged.”
“I must attend to some things but did not want to leave Livie alone.”
James nodded up at me from his chair, allowing a quick acknowledgment of mutual trust and respect. When I stepped from the cabin into the bright sunshine of a clear new day, a nagging question swirled in my fatigued mind.
Who was the downtrodden slave that ran through the night, not to escape, but rather to return to his master? Who was he running from?
And though my body begged for sleep, I lifted my skirt and trudged to the upper field with hope that the receding chill of morning did not take with it the answer I sought. Alone in my quest, I wished Colt was home and not so long away.
The morning mist lifted while most of Mud Run slept away the fatigue of their nightlong revelry. The lonely coo of a mourning dove halted when the echo of someone chopping wood began again. It was the same axman I heard earlier, and could now pinpoint somewhere within the fog-shrouded hillside of West Gate. But as I walked the field, the crunch of the crisp snow beneath my feet was the only sound of interest to me. The secret held by the snowy ground cover would not linger in the presence of the rising sun, so I retraced the footprints Livie and I left behind earlier, slicing the center of the upper field with a crescent frown.
I slowed my walk at the tree line, where our stampede of footprints trampled the frosty coating. The bloody outline of bare feet stood out from the others. A cool breeze trickled down the mountainside and twirled a strip of torn trouser snagged within the brambles. I plucked the cloth from the thorns and held it as gently as I would a silk ribbon. Its coarse surface was stained with salty, dry sweat and spilled blood. The diverging white and dark residue melded together in the runaway’s struggle.
I dismissed the thought of following the path up the mountainside. The sunrise in the east would orient the errant slave and redirect him back toward the plantation he sought in Kentucky.
I looked over my shoulder from where the footsteps appeared. The line staggered its way to the far edge of the field, where it dipped out of sight toward West Gate. I scampered along the bloodstained path, hoping to find its origin before the whole of the plantation awakened. The ground had already begun drinking in the rusty prints, leaving them barely recognizable by the time I reached the small, rocky ravine that tumbled into the backside of West Gate. I froze at the sight of Twitch’s plot of land a short climb below me. The pen of fiendish hounds reeked of musk and manure. Although only ten in number, the dogs slept with the edginess of a restless mob. Ankle- deep holes pocked the ground along the base of the chicken wire as proof of their urgency to run wild. I was certain if I did not calm my surging emotion, the perceptive hounds would spring to life at any moment.
The dawning day stopped and held its breath with me. With Twitch away, the back lot was eerily silent. Even the pop of the axman halted, leaving dead air pressing from all sides. My eyes were drawn to the two outbuildings that stood between the carriage house and the pen. The smaller of the two structures had a cracked shovel and two broken tobacco machetes propped against its open door. From what I could see, it was not as much a toolshed as it was an arsenal for punishment. Several sets of leg irons hung from a peg on the backside of the door. More chains and a neck collar were strewn across the floor. Several whips, including a cat-o’-nine-tails, lay draped over a table. All were devices I had seen hundreds of times, but with the warmth and laughter of the previous night still pulsating through me, the sight of these tools sent a chill through me.
The second building was grossly deteriorated, with its frame buckled to one side. If not for a row of bowed planks wedged strategically against its lopsided weight, it would have collapsed into a pile of splinters and dust. Its thick tar roof was cracked and peeling; the result of extreme seasons of hot and cold. The crooked building was peculiar because it had no windows. Similar to the top of a corncrib, it had two narrow slots along the roof line at each end for drafting. The door, however, stood strong, with an extra plank nailed securely to its base to close the gap created by the lopsided skeleton. The lone impressive feature of the building was the large padlock clamped to its hinge, displayed like a badge of honor on the lapel of a war-proven commandeer.
Near the corner of the structure, there was a ditch dug like those in the dog pen, the soil dark and loose as though newborn. I considered the hole more carefully, struck by the odd sense of something amiss. The thought catapulted from my mind when the sound of boots made me duck for cover. Rounding the far corner of the carriage house, Willy Jack appeared with a pile of split logs loaded in his arms. I dove into the brittle grass with only a knee-high line of rocks to conceal me. Willy Jack came only as far as the back corner of Uncle Mooney’s carriage house. He struggled down onto one knee, then let the logs tumble from his arms. After taking a moment to restack the logs into a neat pile, the fierce slave driver stood and turned back in my direction, brushing his hands together to clear the dust. I pressed my body tighter against the cold ground and rested my cheek on a smooth rock. I held my breath as I watched him through a sliver between two adjoining rocks. He turned away; then as if he smelled fear in the air, Willy Jack stepped back in my direction. His boots crunched the stony earth in a deliberate march toward the slope dropping from the field where I lay. He closed the distance between us by half before stopping to puzzle over the horizon behind me.
My heart screamed with terror. Each thrust in my chest seemed to lift me from the ground in an effort to betray my presence. Willy Jack was close enough for me to see the dark layer of whiskers that spiraled tight against his mahogany jawline, except where two long scars carved upward from his cheek and across the length of his ear, a savage gift delivered by one of the frenzied hounds he shepherded for Twitch. Willy Jack cocked his gnarled ear into the breeze. As he scanned what was left of the morning mist, he reached inside his ragged woolen jacket and pulled out a plug of tobacco. He pushed it deep inside his cheek and chomped with the snarl of a hungry wolf. Then, as if losing interest in the distraction, he shot a stream of spittle against the rocks below me. Willy Jack hoisted his ax back onto his shoulder and turned back in the direction he came.
I waited breathlessly, afraid to move until Willy Jack disappeared beyond the far side of the carriage house. I hedged to my knees and listened, my senses razor sharp. When I heard the knock of Willy Jack’s ax resume amid the distant trees, I let go a tremulous breath. However, before my terror completely released, it caught in my throat and wound tight as a knot. Still on my knees, I leaned closer to the rock where I had just pressed my face for cover. There, imprinted on its smooth surface, was the clear, unmistakable outline of a bloodied foot. The path of blood trailed straight down the slope and disappeared into the small ditch clawed in the dirt at the corner of the crooked building.
How could it be? A runaway from West Gate? No slave ever slipped away from the plantation.
The torn strip of cloth I had plucked from the brambles fluttered in my fingertips. When the escape was discovered, the hounds would be unleashed on the scent of the bloodied footprints. In my hand was the perfect bait for confusion. I ran to an azalea and broke loose its longest branch. Tying the cloth to the stick, I touched the tip on the footprint staining the rock, then ran back across the field, dragging the runaway’s scent against the ground to where the footprints met the brambles. I traced circles in the ground to ensure some scent was deposited, but instead of following where the now-melted footprints had turned up the hill, I made a new trail straight across the upper field and then down into the wooded acreage dropping to the river. I stumbled through the trees as if running for my own life, slowing only when I reached the swampy marsh that edged the river, north of the Horse’s Bend. I scraped what was left of the shredded cloth back and forth in the moist ground to clear the imprint of my shoes so they would not betray my efforts. Then I flung the branch into the current and watched as it was swept into the bend.
Gathering my dress around my waist, I waded knee-deep into the chilly water and sloshed downstream, where I exited the river through a patch of cattail and marsh grass. The sights and sounds of the morning were lost amid my desperate breaths as I stumbled back through the trees toward Hillcrest. When I thought I could run no farther, the profile of the main house loomed on the crest above me. I ascended the cliff that bordered the back of the house, where I dropped to my knees, exhausted by the weight of my drenched clothing.
With one final burst, I pushed through the rear entrance of the kitchen. Once inside, I sank to the floor. After a late night of celebration and the reprieve of Aunt Augusta’s absence, Granny Morgan had yet to warm the hearth. I stripped bare and scrubbed my clothes at the kitchen pump, then draped them over the table to dry. My naked body shivered as I made my way through the house and up the stairs. The scent of verbena welcomed me into the seclusion of my bedchamber. I pulled back the drapery on my front window and watched Winston lumber up the hill from Mud Run to the stable. It seemed I had lived and expired ten times since the last time I watched Mud Run come alive with the rise of morning, when in truth it had been only one day. My day spent in the slave quarters was certainly a day lived, steeped in good and bad, and far too full of activity and interaction for loneliness to take root.
I knelt next to my bed and whispered a prayer of thanks, and asked that safe passage be granted to the mysterious slave somewhere in the hills. I reached beneath the bed and pulled out Livie’s small box of treasures. Along with her mother’s Bible, she had several stones that held meaning for her, remembrances of her earlier life. A hair ribbon given to her by her sister, and small figure Marcus had carved from darkened cherrywood. There was no detail of features, but Livie swore it was the image of Marcus. I could feel him there in the wood, warm and strong against my hand. I lay back across my bed and traced my finger along its curve.