The Triumph of Grace (25 page)

Between twilight and candlelight, Grace, Cabeto, and Sunba prepared to leave the Quaker safe house. Each carried a leather sack of provisions. Everyone gathered together, white and black, to join hands and ask God's blessing and provision on the travelers.

Jed picked up a stick and drew a map in the dirt. "This is South Carolina," he said as he pointed to the first block."Thou shouldst go north here, through Virginia and up here all the way to Pennsylvania, and on through that state, too.From there thou canst go by boat to Upper Canada."

"How long will it take us to get there?" Grace asked.

"Most of three months," Jed said. "Maybe more if thou encountereth troubles."

"Watch thyself hard until thou crosseth over into Pennsylvania," Amos warned.

"And even then, keep a watch out," said Jed. "It used to be, thou wouldst be safe there. But a new law was passed a couple of months back that sayeth slave owners have the right to go into free states and grab back slaves for themselves. Thou wouldst do well to move on through with all haste."

Cabeto shook his head. "I don't know de way," he said. "How can we keep our path straight all dose weeks and months?"

Amos pointed to the fading stars in the sky. "Over there.Doest thou see the shape of the water dipper? Some call it 'the drinking gourd.' "

"Yes!" Grace said. "I see it. Its handle points upward."

"The two stars in the dipper's bowl, the ones farthest from the handle," Amos said. "They point directly to the North Star. Every night, thou canst see it in the same place in the sky. Follow that star, and it shalt lead thee all the way to Canada."

"The brightest star of all," Cabeto said.

"A gift from God, to show us the way," Grace said. "Like the star of Bethlehem that led the kings who searched for baby Jesus."

Amos smiled. "Go with God," he said. "We shalt meet again in heaven."

W
hat's dat?" Sunba whispered.

"Nothing but an old hoot owl in the trees," Cabeto said with a laugh. But it was a nervous laugh, because he had been thinking the same thing as Sunba, which was the same thing Grace had been thinking:
Maybe it's the slave catcher's hounds, crawling through the brush.

"I saw dem dogs get a man one time," Cabeto said. "Dey bit him all over his arms and legs, den dey chewed off his ears."

"Did dey kill him?" Sunba asked.

"He wished dey did," Cabeto said.

The three pushed on in silence. Soon, Sunba said, "We could head to de swamp. Dem dogs can't follow us dere. And de slave catchers won't."

Worse than the slave catchers, worse even than the slave catchers' hounds, was the dark unknown between Charleston and Canada. All the three travelers had to help them along their journey was the rough map sketched in the dirt, a star in the sky, and the promise of prayers from strangers. At least in the swamp, they knew the dangers that lurked.

"No," Cabeto said. "We got to go north. We got to go to freedom."

They had passed through fields heavy with the goodness of early summer and were gratefully in the protection of heavy overgrowth when Sunba pointed to a settlement of log houses in the distance.

"I know dat place over dere," he said. "Dem darkies be French."

"How does you know?" Cabeto asked.

"I be livin' out here a long time," Sunba said. "Dem people come from de French island where de big slave rebellion be."

"Is dey slaves?" Cabeto asked.

"No, dey's all free," Sunba said. "Dey helped me once."

"Be careful," Grace warned. "We cannot trust anyone."

They wouldn't stay, Sunba told Josephine, the first refugee from the island of Saint Domingue to see him coming across the field. They only needed a place to sleep through the day.Just until dark, and they would be on their way.

"The dogs, they be chasing after you?" Josephine asked.

"Yes," said Sunba, "but dey be far back."

"Dogs come fast," Josephine said. "Hide your
odeur
so they cannot track you."

"You mean the way we smell? How can do we do that?" Grace asked.

"Ah, but it is an easy thing to do," said Luc, who came around from the back of the small house. "Come out to the edge of the woods."

A large plot of ground had been cleared of all brush, and that's where the freed French slaves took Grace, Cabeto, and Sunba. Luc and two other men dug dirt out of the barren patch and threw handfuls of it at the three.

"What's this for?" Grace asked.

"It be grave dirt," said Luc. "Rub it all over you. Especially your feet bottoms. Before you leave tonight, rub it all over your feet again. The dogs can't catch your scent no more."

The three rubbed the dirt on their hands, on their feet, on their arms, on their legs, and for good measure, on their faces.That day they slept soundly.

At dusk, Grace and the two brothers left—their bodies rested, their stomachs filled with warm soup and fresh baked bread, and their feet rubbed with grave dirt. The freed French slaves pointed them to a safe trail through the woods.

"Colored folks live all through dese woods," said Sunba."We could make us a drum and send dem messages like in Africa."

"What if some colored folk turn us in to the slave catchers so they can collect the reward?" Grace asked.

"Colored folks don't turn other colored folks in to white folks," said Sunba.

"Sometimes dey do," said Cabeto. "Sometimes dem dollars just sound too good to dem."

For a long time they walked in silence.

"How do you know so much about French slaves?" Grace asked Sunba.

"Dat's where I been livin'," Sunba said. "I know all about de rebellion in dat Saint Domingue Island. Everyone murdered everyone over dere. Dey got dere heads cut off and stuck up on sticks to warn everyone else to stay in dey place and not try to start a slave rebellion of dey own."

"Like Zulina," Grace said.

"Yes," said Sunba. "De white man is losin' de battle and de slaves is winnin'. Dat's why de white folks around here be so scared of us. Dey done seen what we can do."

Most days Grace, Cabeto, and Sunba took to the woods or the deep underbrush to sleep through the daylight hours.Sometimes, when the land was especially barren, they risked walking in the daylight. It was always a dangerous proposition, though.

One evening, Cabeto fashioned a makeshift net from a sleeve of his shirt and took it to the river. He had no luck catching fish, however. So at daybreak, after Grace and Sunba had settled themselves to sleep, he slipped down to a pond situated closer to the road than was safe. He had just snared a good-sized fish when a hand clamped down hard on his shoulder.

"What you doing down here?"

Cabeto swung around to see a craggy-faced white man in muddy clothes and with no shoes on his feet.

"Fishin' is all," Cabeto said.

"Where your master be?" the man demanded.

Cabeto broke into a cold sweat.

"I don't have a master," he said as calmly as he could manage."I be a free man. Gots my papers to show it."

"Show me them papers," the man said.

Cabeto dug in his pocket and pulled out his freedom paper from John Hull.

"See?" he said. "I be a free man."

The white man squinted at the paper.

"Hmm," he said. "Well, then."

He looked at the fish in Cabeto's hand.

"You wants dis fish?" Cabeto said.

The man nodded. He took the fish and walked away. He did pause for an instant—even turned to glance back—but in the end he just gripped the fish more tightly and walked on.

"Wake up!" Cabeto said. He nudged Sunba with his foot."Come on, Grace! We've got to go away from here."

An occasional friendly house . . . sometimes a boat in the water that could carry them down the stream . . . at times, a helpful slave willing to point out a secret route through the woods. Now and again a partially filled wagon going north and a driver who would look away while three dirty colored folks jumped on.

More often, an uneasy sleep . . . frightening encounters . . . suspicious warnings. And endless weeks of walking, walking, walking.

"What are you colored folks doing out here?"

Grace gasped out loud and dropped the berries she had collected in her bandana. A young woman, her bucket half filled with the wild berries, stepped out from behind the tall wall of vines.

"Are you runaways?" she demanded.

"No," Grace said. "We're free."

"You all got papers to prove it?"

Grace paused just the tiniest bit before she said, "Yes . . .all of us."

"You can sleep in our barn tonight," the young woman said."My father will allow it if you're free."

"We like to walk at night," Grace said. "The weather is cooler."

"In that case, you can sleep in our barn today."

Grace lay on a bed of hay, safe in the crook of Cabeto's arm.Sunba stretched out on his back beside them. Suddenly Sunba sat bolt upright.

"I heard a dog," he said.

"You dreamed it," Cabeto mumbled.

But a howl echoed through on the still, hot air, and all three bolted up.

"She betrayed us!" Grace cried. "That white woman called for the slave catchers!"

They leapt up and were out of the barn.

"We must hide our scent," Sunba warned.

Sunba headed for the pasture where oxen grazed and stomped his feet through a pile of manure. Grace and Cabeto tramped after him. Then they were off through the field, and on across the next one.

Just when Grace felt she couldn't run another step, she spied a lone tobacco barn in a barren pasture.

"Look!" she cried. "We can hide inside there, at least for a short time."

Panting, Grace stumbled through the door. Immediately she was greeted by screams and moans and pleas for help.

"What is this?" Grace cried in alarm.

Inside the barn was another, smaller building—a log hut.But this one was fitted with barred windows and iron rings bolted to the walls. And the shackles had manacled slaves chained to it.

"It be a slave jail!" Sunba said. "De slave catchers ain't comin' for us. Dey be comin' for dese folks!"

Grace pulled at the chains, but they were locked.

"Grace!" Cabeto called. "We can't help dem. Run! Run! Run to de river!"

Y
ou be in Culpeper," a scrawny Negro woman who called herself Cisley informed Grace. Cisley plucked pieces of hot fried corn bread from the skillet and shuffled them over to the fugitives.

"We made it to Virginia, then?" Grace asked.

"This be Virginia, all right," said Cisley. "You best watch yourselfs here, too. Slave runners be about. But if you keep on going north, up to the Rapidan River and Black Hills, people there be more free than they be here."

"De Bull Run Mountain," Cabeto said with a nod. "Dat's what we is lookin' for."

"Keep on going," Cisley told him. "The east side of the mountain is what you wants."

"You be from Carolina lowcountry," Cisley's husband, Big Jim, said to Cabeto.

"How'd you know dat?" Cabeto asked.

"Your talk," Big Jim said. "They's the ones with gullah talk."

Grace smiled and dipped her corn bread into a tin cup of hot bark tea. She looked around at the community of colored folks.

"What about all of you?" Grace asked Cisley. "Are you free?"

"Yes'm," said Cisley. "That we be. Law here says so. Nobody don't bother us on this mountain, neither."

"How 'bout you stay here with us?" Big Jim said. "We could cut some logs and build you a place here."

Cabeto didn't answer him immediately. But when he did, it was with a couple of questions of his own: "Are you free to go anywheres you wants? Can you roam far from your home?"

Big Jim shook his head.

"Best not do that," he said. "But we has no need to go nowheres else, neither. We lives here off this mountain just fine."

"Thank you kindly," said Cabeto, "but I think we will keep followin' de star to de north."

"Suit yourself," Big Jim said. "Negro Mountain ain't far from here. Many free colored folks live over there. After that, you just needs go on another day's journey and you gets to the Potomac River."

"Watch out for other groups of colored people, though," Cisley warned. "Some ain't really free like they says. They's just runaways hidin' out. You don' want to be with them when slave catchers come pokin' around."

Cabeto nodded. "De Potomac River just beyond Negro Mountain—dat be Leesburg, den?"

Big Jim nodded.

"Leesburg be a city?" asked Cabeto.

"It do," said Big Jim. "But it's no good for night travel.Colored folks has to be in under cover by the time the city bells chime ten o'clock or else they gets throwed into the lock-up house."

"Even free colored folks?" asked Grace.

"Slave or free, makes no difference," said Big Jim. "And come morning, if you has no money to pay the fine, it's off to the workhouse with you. Best go wide around Leesburg and on to Edward's Ferry."

Virginia summer days were hot and sticky. And although the hours of daylight had begun to grow steadily shorter, the span of darkness was still not long enough to suit the travelers.The sunny open didn't matter quite so much while they trekked along secluded mountain paths. But whenever they neared a town, they sought the cover of thick brush—or, even better, of darkness.

Which was why Negro Mountain was such a blessed relief.There, Grace and Cabeto and Sunba did not need to hide themselves, not even in full daylight. They could talk out loud, and cook real food over a real fire. Grace begged to stay for an extra day of rest.

A small woman by the name of Lavinia brought Grace a dress she could borrow so Grace could bathe herself and wash her hair. She washed her dress, too, and spread it out in the sun to dry. Cabeto and Sunba cleaned themselves up, as well.

A huge, woolly-haired bear of a man by the name of Tom handed the newcomers tin cups of a cool sweetgrass tea.

"You got papers?" Tom asked in a surprisingly gentle voice."You needs papers to cross over the river on the ferryboat."

"Grace and I do," Cabeto said, "though my old massa objects to my freedom. He sent the slave catchers after me, anyway. But, Sunba here—he ain't got no papers at all."

"That's bad," Tom said. "That's very bad."

Tom sat down between Cabeto and Sunba and took a long draught of sweetgrass tea.

"I got a empty paper," Tom said. "Took it from a white man.But none of us here knows how to write on it."

Grace's eyes opened wide. "May I see it?" she asked.

Tom went into his cabin and came back out with a folded paper.

"Have it if you wants it," he said. "All of us here be free already. It won't do you no good, though. It be empty of names."

Eagerly Grace unfolded the paper and spread it out on her lap. It was just like the ones she and Cabeto carried, except that it had no slave name written in the blank space and no signature at the bottom.

"She can write," Cabeto said. "Except she got no quill and ink."

"I can make a quill," said Grace. "All I need is a good, long feather and a sharp knife."

"A big dead crow be layin' out in the corn," a young boy said. "I can bring you its feathers."

"I'll whet my knife to shavin' sharp," a man offered.

Grace took the largest of the crow feathers the boy brought her, and with the newly sharpened knife, she sliced off the lower part. She made a small slit in the middle of the back of the trimmed feather. With the knife's point, she carefully cut above the slit and into the feather—first on the left side, then on the right.

"The hole on that side be bigger," Tom said, pointing to the left of the feather.

"So it is," said Grace. She cut more from the right side.

Grace took the cleaned-out feather over to the remains of the cook fire and plunged the nib into the cooling coals. She quickly pulled it out and tested it with her fingernail. She shook her head and thrust it back in, and left it a bit longer.When she was finally satisfied that it had baked to the proper hardness, she scraped the barrel of the quill with the back of the knife blade. Slowly and carefully, she shaved the hardened nib to a sharp point.

"A right fine writin' quill that be!" Tom said in admiration.

Lavinia handed Grace half a gourd filled with a blue-black liquid. "We made berry ink for you," she said.

Grace took out her own freedom paper and scrutinized it.She turned it back side up, dipped the nib of the crow quill into the berry ink, and drew a line.

"Just to make certain my pen works," Grace said.

The line was far from perfect, but it was clearly a line.

Grace turned her paper back over and laid the empty form beside it on the table. She dipped the crow quill into the berry ink once again and slowly scratched the name "Sunba Hull" on the blank line. At the bottom, she very carefully did her best to scratch out a signature that resembled John Hull's barely legible name.

Grace, Cabeto, and Sunba left Negro Mountain as three free colored folks. True, one had a forged paper and another was being hunted as a runaway. But they all had freedom papers in their possession.

They left the mountain in the morning, walked clear through the day and through the moonlit night, and arrived at Edward's Ferry in the middle of the next morning. It was the church-going hour on the Sabbath day, so many people were out on the streets, both colored and white. No one seemed to notice three more Negroes.

Grace was the first to spy the river landing.

At the ferry, the three cautiously followed others who were boarding the boat. They didn't get on, though. They had their papers, all right, but unfortunately, Tom hadn't told them they also needed money.

"Maybe we can do some work to earn money," Grace said.

"No," said Sunba. "We has no place to stay. And we don't know how to act around dese folks. Dey will be suspicious of us."

"We need to get back to de mountains," said Cabeto.

"But how will we get to Pennsylvania?" Grace pleaded."We don't know any way except across the river."

"We has to find another way," said Cabeto.

They wasted a good bit of the day arguing the point, but finally Grace gave in. Reluctantly they turned up the road and headed back toward the mountains. Evening was fast coming on, yet the sky was still light. They had not walked far when a wagon rumbled up the road behind them. The white driver slowed his horse to a trot.

"Good evening," the white man called out.

Caleb and Sunba exchanged glances.

"Evening, sir," Grace answered.

"Care for a ride in the back of the wagon?" the man offered.

"Thank you kindly, but we ain't goin' far," said Cabeto.

"Jump off whenever you desire," the man said. "Has you a place to lay your heads this night?"

"Dat we do not," Sunba said.

"That being the case, may I offer you accommodations?"

"We has no money to pay for your generosity," Cabeto

"Please, do consider yourselves my guests," said the man.

After some hesitation, they climbed onto the wagon. The white man drove the horses up the road a fair ways, but after a while he turned off the road. The horses wound around through a wide open meadow, heading in the general direction of the setting sun.

"We best jump off," Sunba said nervously.

Grace and Cabeto squinted around them into the gathering darkness.

"No place here to hide if he wants to chase us down," Grace said.

"I don't even know where we be anymore," said Cabeto.

Finally the wagon headed up a narrow driveway, and the man pulled the horses to a stop.

"The river's close behind my house," the white man called out to the travelers. "If it wasn't already dark, you could see it.I have a secret ferry back there. I'll haul you across first thing in the morning."

The man's house had several rooms. He told the three that they were welcome to sleep in the one in back.

"I don't like dis," Sunba told Grace and Cabeto. "Why is dis man bein' so helpful to us?"

So they slipped out the window and slept in the thick brush on the hillside.

Still, the white man was as good as his word. With first light, he called out to them that he had the ferry ready. It was actually just a flat wooden platform rigged with wooden beams, ropes, and a pulley. The man had two boys with him, and the three of them tugged the platform across the river until Grace and the men were able to splash out onto the other side.

"Where are we?" Grace asked.

"We'll know when we sees de drinkin' gourd," Cabeto said.

"But it's still early morning. We can't waste an entire day!"

"Better than spend de whole day walkin' de wrong way," said Cabeto.

So they compromised. Cabeto guessed the direction, and they walked—but at a leisurely pace, in case they were wrong.The summer sun was hot, and the river water fresh and cool.Berries grew heavy on the vines and vegetables thick in nearby gardens. Ears of corn, tiny and tender, stood thigh-high in fields alongside the country lane.

After the sun had passed its zenith, something on the far side of a small skirt of brush caught Grace's attention. Two unpainted houses stood side by side, each with a few chickens pecking at the ground around them.

"Colored families," Grace said. "See the little black children out back?"

"Maybe dey just be slaves," Sunba said.

"Or maybe we are in Pennsylvania," said Grace. "Maybe we are in a state where colored people live free."

That thought brought them all such joy that they agreed they would make a camp up the river and relax for the rest of the day.

As twilight gathered, Grace settled herself in a comfortable brush nest, determined to eat her fill of ripe berries. Cabeto lay his head in her lap and nodded off to sleep. Sunba, always the restless one, moved farther on up the river.

"I'll find a fat rabbit," Sunba said. "Maybe we can make us a fire and cook it."

Sunba wasn't gone long before he crashed back through the brush.

"Run!" he hissed. "Men be comin' with guns. Get to de coloreds' house! Quick!"

Cabeto grabbed hold of Grace and pulled her toward the skirt of brush where they first saw the houses.

"Where is Sunba?" Grace cried.

"He's with us," Cabeto said. "Go quickly! Hide yourself!"

A horse snorted from somewhere down river.

Not far behind them, a deep voice shouted out, "Stop!"