Running Out of Night (24 page)

The wind combed through the leaves. A twig snapped.
Clank
. The sound of metal hittin stone.
Click
. The sound of a rifle hammer cockin.

W
hatever you do to a robin will be done back to you—break an egg and something of yours will be broken. Always tell the robin “good day” when you see it or hear its song, and your luck will be good for the day
.

S
cufflin sounds, then Armour’s voice, deep and clear.

“Stop.”

Then two, maybe three voices wound all together.

Zenobia woke; Auntie mumbled and turned over.

“What?” Zenobia whispered.

“Somebody here, in camp. I heard Armour yell. Heard people talkin. We best hide.”

I moved the blanket aside, and Zenobia and me both set up. She leant over me, squeezed Auntie’s shoulder, and whispered, “Wake up, Auntie. Someone here.”

One by one we slid off the back of the wagon and crouched low. Anyone acrost the clearin wouldn’t see us.

We hunched over and made our way toward cover. I were slowin them down, but they wouldn’t let me stop—Auntie holdin on to my good arm and me holdin on to Zenobia. We needed to get out of the clearin and into the woods.

Who had tracked us or found us here? Now what would happen?

Orion disappeared. Long wisps of clouds, the mottled gray of Moses cat, lightened, their bellies turnin pink and rosy.

We stepped from the dirt of the clearin where the wagon rested and into the soft, leaf-strewn gloom of the woods. Ahead of us, a cluster of boulders stood beside a deer trail. Auntie, Zenobia, and me climbed the back of the biggest rock, stepped over the top, and worked our way down to the cool, mossy shelter on the other side.

More sounds. Cracklin of someone walkin, steppin on twigs. The crunch of leaves and snappin, then what sounded like a pebble skitterin. More sounds, like there were more than one man stalkin—maybe two or three.

Long as there were only one I felt like we had some chance of hidin or runnin, but three changed things for us. Three men the likes of Shag and his kind, and the three of us—me barely able to walk, Auntie just gettin better, and Zenobia with her broke arm tryin to help the both of us.

From somewhere behind us, I heard more footsteps. Hushed talkin in deep voices.

The three of us held hands and hunkered back against the big rock.

Zenobia’s eyes was squeezed shut. Auntie faced to me, shakin her head a slow no, no, no.

I wanted us to get up and hightail it, but when I tried to, Zenobia pulled at me, tuggin me back to the ground.

How long afore the slave hunters found us? Tracked our six footprints acrost the clearin, into the woods, and here.

I thought of all the times me and Zenobia hid together. In the cellar, in the cave, in the trees, and in the attic of Auntie’s house. Here we was, hidin again. Always hidin, always afeared, always runnin from someone. When could we ever stop runnin?

No more voices. No more sounds of walkin. Was someone out there just waitin for us to move? Waitin like a barn cat after a mouse? Did Armour tell them he were alone? Where was Enoch and Better now? Already caught? Or scairt and hidin like us?

One of the old bay horses neighed. I heard the sound of quiet talkin and the clink of metal. I smelt a quickenin fire and heard the wake-up call of the robin.

I thought, Good day, robin. Help us change our luck.

More clinkin metal. Were someone hitchin up the horses? Takin Armour and Enoch, Better and the wagon away?

After a few quiet minutes, Zenobia opened her eyes and whispered, “I think we safe.”

I started to breathe again. Started to think on how we
would keep walkin north, maybe not in plain sight like we’d planned, but headin north somehow.

More noise. The horses movin slow. Voices. Voices louder, closer.

Then a scramblin sound of someone crawlin up the side of the big rock shelterin us. The little hairs on the back of my neck bristled like they do when Pa is watchin me.

Zenobia reached for my hand and squeezed. I reached for Auntie’s hand and held on.

Then a
scratch, scratch, scratch
on my head and shoulder, and a leafy twig of an oak tree, its little acorns just startin to plump, dropped beside us.

A
void gray horses with four white stockings. They are bad omens
.

I
tilted back my head, and there, starin at me all upside down and grinnin, were a face I never thought to see again. I gasped. “Sweet living Lazarus.” I dropped Auntie’s and Zenobia’s hands and jumped up, coverin over my mouth so’s not to yell.

“Why you hidin from me?” he asked.

Zenobia, Auntie, and me leant into Brightwell’s big outstretched arms, all huggin and cryin at once.

When I stepped back and looked at Brightwell, my stomach turned and twisted. His scarred face had even more sores, and his arms showed fresh whip marks crusted with blood.

“What happen to you?” he asked me, lookin at my arm.

“Looks like the same happen to me as you,” I said, “but worst on you than me. I thought you was dead. I thought they hauled you out in the field and let them buzzards eat you down to the bone.”

Brightwell helped me, Auntie, and Zenobia over the boulder, then we all walked back toward our camp. I couldn’t help but notice how he limped and favored his left leg, and how he held on to his arm.

“Shag whipped me good and left me lyin by his wagon. Them men took one look at me, say I a dead man, and hauled me out to the field.”

“But I saw them buzzards come for you. I watched them buzzards round you.”

“You saw them lookin for a meal, but I weren’t their meal that day. I just had to stay there till them slave traders leaves. I hear you call my name, hear you cryin, but I didn’t dare to move or call out.”

I remembered how them buzzards circled, looped, then dropped down into the meadow. Their big bodies made a black wall of death around the hump–the hump that were Brightwell.

“I kept liftin my head, tellin them wrinkled old buzzards that I weren’t ready for them yet. Every time I talk at them they look at me with their big, starin brown eyes.”

I looked up. Above us, nine death-bird buzzards, their long black wings spread wide, circlin in the blue August
sky. I made a wish and watched for one to flap its wings to make it come true.

Flap, flap, flap
. Three flaps. Three chances for our luck to change.

“Them buzzards sounds like devils moanin, gruntin, and hissin at me. Sounds like I never hear. They smell rotted. They peck at me with their big hooked beaks.”

Auntie patted at Brightwell’s shoulder. “It is good to see thee again. I hadn’t even a hope of seeing thy face again after the beating that man gave thee.”

“I were right lucky, Auntie. Conductor found me where I’d crawled into the woods. He give me water and food, and tell me the signs to foller to a stop on the railroad. Good folk there hid me, took care of me.”

Zenobia had listened quietly. “I’m glad you think you lucky, Brightwell, but I’d say you was not lucky to be beat near to death by that man. Hard to remember them ‘good folk’ when so many bad are after us,” she said.

“But there are the good people who don’t believe that a person can own another, Zenobia,” Auntie said.

Zenobia slowly shook her head back and forth. “Ummm, ummm, I hoped that freedom time were comin, Auntie, but that slave law and them bad people took away my hopes.”

“Hope all we got, Zenobia,” Brightwell said.

“Brightwell, how’d you know you might could trust them people?” I asked.

“Hope. When I get there, I watch, pray, and hope I’m not steppin into a trap.”

I reached for Zenobia’s hand and squeezed it tight.

“The night I were leavin the safe house, a wagon with three other runaways come in for help. A young woman, Miss Emma, brung them from her farm down the road.”

Emma. Emma were one of them good folks.

“Lark, Miss Emma say you stop for food and water and then head south with a wagonload of people. Then she say next day or so she saw your wagon goin by headin north, but she didn’t see you nowhere. Worried you was hurt, or, or …”

Zenobia and Auntie looped their arms through mine to help me walk.

“When I leave the safe house, I went north after your wagon. I wants to find you all, wants to catch up to him and reckon an eye for an eye. By the time I finds him, finds where he were sleepin, he were so sick, all pocked up and out of his head, I just left him be. Left him to suffer like he left me.”

“You won’t be catchin what he had,” I said. “I give him a dose of poison ivy. Poison ivy and corn liquor is what made him out of his head.”

Bright well laughed and said, “I follered the wagon tracks all night till I found your sleepin spot. I knowed Shag were left behind, but I needed to make sure you was alone.”

“Thee has found us now, Brightwell, and we will all travel north together. Peacefully,” Auntie said.

Peacefully? I were right sure that Brightwell weren’t feelin much peace for Shag and for the likes of him.

We reached the campsite and found Armour, Better, and Enoch all cleaned up and waitin by the wagon, the horses hitched and ready to go. Better handed us each a wedge of corn bread topped with the last of the ham. One bite and it were gone—my stomach wouldn’t be stoppin its complainin.

Brightwell knelt by the crick and splashed his face and arms. Then he picked through Shag’s pack and pulled out an old tan shirt. When he lifted it over his head and tugged it down, well, he looked like any free workin man.

Armour slid the rifle behind the wagon seat. Brightwell and Enoch climbed up beside him while Auntie, Zenobia, Better, and me crawled into the back and set our minds to the day.

Enoch lifted the reins, clucked soft to the horses, and turned them round.

“We needs to be movin on now,” Brightwell said. “Better and Enoch are a free man and woman goin north to Auntie’s farm. They gots their manumission papers and can show them off to anyone who asks. Me, Armour, and Zenobia, we don’t have no papers, so we say we belongs to you, Auntie.”

He said all that to us like he were preachin a sermon. It calmed me some to hear how sure his voice sounded.

The wheels jolted as we moved onto the rutted road and headed north. The sun rose higher in the sky, and the day, like most dog days of August, were hot enough to bake corn bread on a rock.

We passed the tin of water round when the heat got us near droppin, and Auntie pulled bits and pieces of food together, then handed them to us. We was near out of food, and I could hear Zenobia’s stomach growlin, but food were the last thing we could be worryin about now; we was gettin closer to a town, and we was bound to see some other folks soon.

The sun blazed, and the smell of pines, a smell I always loved, near made me sick.

“Someone up ahead,” Brightwell said as he looked back over his shoulder at us. We leant out over the side of the wagon and saw the dust risin along the road. Who would we be meetin? Did we look like runaways or could we pass ourselfs off as just folks headin north?

“Hidden in plain sight,” Auntie said to us. “Remember, thy journey is home to Waterford.”

Brightwell nodded. Nobody made a sound.

My foot set to twitchin, wigglin back and forth like it always done when I get to frettin.

Meetin a wagon weren’t scarin me. That were what I kept tellin myself. I tied the ribbons of the fancy bonnet tight under my chin, tucked in my red hair, and set up straight. Auntie, Zenobia, and Better brushed themselfs off and leant back against the rails, their faces set.

My heart took to flutterin. I looked round, but not one of the others seemed a mite scairt. I sure weren’t goin to let on how I felt.

“Mama,” I said, “I could use me some good luck. Couldn’t you and Grandpa help us?”

The wagon rolled closer and closer. Soon I could see one man drivin and one man sittin beside him with a rifle acrost his lap. Close behind follered a man on a big gray horse with four white stockins. Bad luck come ridin right at us.