The Freedom Maze (21 page)

Mr. Akins hustled Sophie off the platform and back toward the front of the sugarhouse, where a wooden trough funneled the raw cane juice down from the grinders into a waist-high iron vat. He yanked a long-handled rake from a woman’s startled hands and thrust it at Sophie.

“That there,” he said, pointing to a mat of fiber and chewed cane leaves, “is debris. Debris clogs the strainer there.” He pointed to a screen of wire mesh tacked across the mouth of a second trough. “Your job is to rake the debris out of the vat and dump it in this basket here. You got that?”

As sugarhouse jobs went, it wasn’t as hard as most. But the rake was heavy, the vat too high, and the debris awkward to shift. After a while, Sophie’s head was reeling with heat and noise. But when she sat down, a woman with a big stick and a gang-driver’s hat appeared and whacked her shins. “Get up, girl! That juice spill over, I take it out your yeller hide.”

Painfully, Sophie stood and raked a wad of debris from the strainer.

If it hadn’t been for Canny, she’d never have made it through the shift. Canny brought her water and a box to stand on and emptied the basket of debris and entertained her with tidbits of gossip and news.

“George say Flanders sweet on Betsy McCormick. Momi sure going to be happy to hear
that.
Doucette maybe get them vaporators, too, if Oak River harvest be good.”

By the time the bell rang at four for the end of the shift, they were both exhausted. Sophie could hardly lift the rake, and her legs were so stiff, Poland had to steady her until she could walk. He swung Canny, protesting halfheartedly, up on his shoulders, and the three of them joined the other slaves heading back to the quarters.

It was a long walk. Everybody was mostly too tired to talk, but when somebody up front began to sing, Poland, who had a nice voice and liked to exercise it, joined in.

All around, voices took up the melody, high and low, rich and cracked, a little bubble of music moving through the cane brakes.

The singing kept everybody going until they reached the Quarters, then faded out as they scattered to their cabins. Sophie stumbled up the porch steps behind Poland and Canny, so weary she didn’t even think about whether she was welcome.

To her joy, Africa was there, ladling something hot and fragrant into wooden bowls.

“You the talk of the Quarters, Sophie,” Africa said. “I can’t even call to mind all the stories I hear about you today. When Uncle Italy tell me you with Canny, though, I pretty sure you show up here sooner or later.” She filled a bowl, shoved it toward Sophie. “Eat up. Then get out of that there fancy calico and wash yourself. Until all this foolishness blow over, you can sleep with Canny. I got a dress you can wear, too.”

Before Sophie could thank her, she’d put on her shawl and left to cook Old Missy’s supper.

Sitting between Poland and Canny, Sophie fell on the steaming gumbo as if she hadn’t eaten in a week, then rinsed her face and hands in a bucket on the porch and stumbled off to bed.

When the plantation bell rang at dawn for the morning shift, Sophie ached in every inch of her body, and she’d started to bleed again. She thought she’d die. But she didn’t.

She didn’t die the next day, either. Or the day after that.

Since Old Missy prided herself on being enlightened and humane, children under fifteen only had to work one eight-hour shift instead of two. Sophie was on the day shift, eight in the morning until four in the afternoon, after which she helped Canny tend the garden and the cabin and get supper for the menfolks when Africa couldn’t get away.

After a couple of weeks raking debris, Mr. Akins put Sophie with the women who skimmed the scum off the clarifying vat. It was hard work, and the smell of the quicklime used to bring the impurities to the surface of the cane juice stung her eyes. But Phronsie and Betty were friendly, and sang as they worked, which made the time go faster.

Sometimes Sophie thought of begging Old Missy to whip her if she wanted to, as long as she’d let Sophie back into the Big House world of nice clothes and sleeping warm and dry. But that’s not the way things worked. Sophie had been sent to the fields, and in the fields she’d stay until somebody remembered to bring her back out again.

October passed slowly. Sometimes it rained, sometimes it didn’t. In
the Quarters, the folks too old to work in the fields watched the caterpillars and the birds for hints of winter, even though not even the oldest could remember a killing frost before mid-November. Sophie washed the yellow calico and hung it on a peg in the back room under Canny’s blue gingham. It was hard to believe she’d ever worn that dress, with its skimpy skirt and short sleeves. Whatever could Mama have been thinking of, sending her off to Oak River dressed like a little girl?

Poland and Flanders stopped complaining about her gumbo, which might have meant that her cooking was getting better, or just that they were getting used to it. She learned the words to “Wrestle on, Jacob” from Betty, who’d grown up in Virginia, and some lively French songs from Phronsie. Her life in the Big House was starting to feel almost as much of a dream as New Orleans.

One morning, she was leaning on her paddle waiting for the scum to rise, singing softly to herself, when she heard a pop like a giant cork coming out of a bottle, followed by a deafening metallic clanging and screams like hogs being slaughtered.

“Jesus have mercy!” cried Phronsie. “The boiler’s bust!” Dropping her paddle, she ran out of the sugarhouse at the same time that Betty, screaming “George!,” was running for the platform. A grim-faced Young Guam flew past Sophie like the devil was after him and out into the yard, where she heard him yelling for a mule.

Something terrible had happened.

A man limped past, leaning on the shoulder of the women’s gang-driver. “Please Lord he find Dr. Charles right quick.”

“What for?” The gang-driver shifted her corncob pipe from one side of her mouth to the other. “Burns like that, you lives or you dies according to the Lord’s will.”

Sophie’s knees felt rubbery and her stomach hollow and cold. The screaming made her want to run away like Phronsie, but she followed Betty instead, because one of those screams might be Ned or Poland or Flanders. If it was, she didn’t know what she could do. But she had to know.

It was the near boiler that had blown. As she reached the platform, Sophie could see shiny brown sludge bubbling slowly out of a big hole in the side. She pushed and wriggled into the shouting, shifting crowd of workers, broke through into a little clear space. Six bodies lay in a row, more or less covered with hot cane juice. The air was sickly with the stench of scorched sugar.

One of them was clearly dead. Feeling sick, Sophie looked away from his raw, ruined body as soon as she made sure he wasn’t anybody she knew.

And then she saw that the sixth victim of the explosion was Canny.

Sophie knelt down beside her. The blouse over her shoulder and chest glistened with syrup; her throat and neck were blistered and raw.

Sophie touched her hand gently. “Canny? Can you hear me?”

“Hurts,” Canny sobbed without opening her eyes. “Momi! I wants Momi. Hurts
so
bad!”

Sophie swallowed hard. “Hold on, Canny. Dr. Charles is coming.”

Behind her, one of the men was moaning “Lord Jesus have mercy on my soul, have mercy on my soul” in a soft, hoarse whisper. Canny clutched Sophie’s hand as folk came and went around them, covering the dead with sacking, bringing cold water for the living, cleaning up, getting on with it.

Someone leaned over Sophie’s shoulder. Looking up from Canny, she saw Ned, his face grim under a coating of soot and dirt.

He gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Poland and me, we the lucky ones today. You stay by my Canny, hear?”

Sophie nodded, and he was gone.

Time passed. Canny drowsed, waking to moan for water. Sophie wetted her lips with a cloth and tried to distract her with a rather incoherent story about a girl and her grandmother and a wolf. Finally, she heard Dr. Charles’s voice asking how many had been hurt and what was being done and where was the overseer?

Ned answered. “We gots everything shut down, sir. I don’t know where Mist’ Akins be. Two men is dead and three hurt bad. And my little girl. Canada.”

Dr. Charles knelt by the last man, touched his throat, frowned. “Get a board.” He glanced down the row of wounded. “Four boards. We have to get them to the hospital quick as we can. There’s an empty cane wagon out there. Hitch up the mules and load these men, and the child.” He noticed Sophie. “What are you doing here, Sophie?”

“Looking out for Canny, sir.”

Dr. Charles grimaced. “You’d better stay with her, then. Last thing I need’s a child crying for her mammy.”

Loading the wounded into the cane wagon was a nightmare. The men screamed as they were lifted onto the boards. Canny, thankfully, fainted, or Sophie didn’t think she could have borne it. And it had started to rain, a chill, penetrating rain that dripped off the brim of Dr. Charles’s black hat and soaked through Sophie’s skirts. As the wagon lurched through the mud, Sophie did what she could to keep the rain off Canny’s face and herself from panicking. Canny needed her, and that was what was important. Dr. Charles said she was a brave, sensible girl and he’d tell Mrs. Fairchild so. Sophie hardly heard him. Only Canny’s hand was real, and her burned chest faintly rising and falling.

By the time they reached the Quarters, the praying man had died. Sophie wondered distantly why she wasn’t having hysterics, decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. The wagon reached the Quarters, and Dr. Charles shouted out for someone to come help, bringing off-shift hands out of their cabins, dragging on their clothes. When the wagon stopped at the hospital, they lifted the wounded with anxious tenderness and carried them inside.

Sophie rubbed her hand, which had gone all pins and needles, and followed them.

Inside, Dr. Charles threw off his coat and rolled up his sleeves, barking orders. In next to no time, the burned men were on the beds and everyone had cleared out except for Dr. Charles’s assistant Aunt Cissie, two field hands called Greece and Tom — and Sophie.

Canny moaned. Her eyelids fluttered, then went still again.

“Dr. Charles.” Sophie could hardly hear herself, her voice was so pinched. She swallowed and tried again. “Dr. Charles?”

Dr. Charles, examining one of the burned men, grunted absently.

“Dr. Charles, I think Canny’s dying.”

Dr. Charles took Canny’s wrist between his fingers, then lifted her eyelids with his thumb and tilted her chin a little to look at the burns on her throat. The movement burst some of the blisters; a thin, clear fluid ran down and stained the sheet.

“Pulse tumultuous but strong,” he said. “Burns not particularly extensive. Nothing to worry about. She’ll do until I’ve seen to the men.”

“But, Dr. Charles. . .”

“If you won’t hush, you’ll have to leave.”

Sophie watched impatiently while the two men were laid in long tin baths full of cold water and the burned clothes cut from their bodies. After a while, Greece and Tom lifted them out onto wet cotton sheets, which they folded around them while Aunt Cissie spread ointment on long strips of linen.

Sophie said, “What about Canny, sir?”

Dr. Charles had clearly forgotten she was there. “What? Oh, yes. The little girl. I’ll get to her.”

Anger rose hot in Sophie’s chest, but she kept silent while Dr. Charles and his assistants cocooned the men in linen strips. Little girls just weren’t worth as much as grown field hands. And it was true that Canny wasn’t as badly burned as the others. But it was hard to bear.

“Momi,” Canny muttered. “I wants Momi.”

Sophie gave her hand a squeeze and got up. “Dr. Charles, sir, I’m going to go get Africa now. She needs to know Canny’s hurt.”

Without waiting for permission, Sophie left the hospital and ran for the yard, stumbling over chickens and stones she couldn’t see for the rain on her glasses. The kitchen seemed farther away than she remembered, or maybe that was just her wet skirts tangling around her legs and the mud all slippery underfoot and the panic that Canny might die before Africa could get to her.

When she reached the kitchen, she threw open the door. “Africa!” she panted. “Come quick! Canny’s hurt!”

Africa didn’t waste any time on questions, just handed her spoon to China, snatched her shawl from its hook, and marched Sophie straight back across the yard without even taking off her apron.

As they walked, Sophie explained about the explosion as best she could. “Canny’s neck and chest are burned, and I think her stomach, too. Little places on her face and legs.” Despite her best efforts, Sophie’s voice broke. “She hurts real bad.”

“Huh,” said Africa and walked faster. “Anybody else hurt?”

“Two men died. But Ned’s fine.”

“And Poland?”

“I didn’t see him.”