The Wedding Gift (33 page)

THE SUN WAS HOT ON MY FACE. HAD I FORGOTTEN to close the shutters? Why did my mother not wake me to go to the kitchen? I went back to sleep, but I was awakened with a start when I sensed that someone was staring at me. I opened my eyes to find a family of deer, a mother and her two young ones, looking at me with mournful eyes.

“You’re so pretty. Oh, don’t run….”

The deer disappeared into the bushes. I said my morning, no, noon prayers, because the sun was almost in the middle of the sky. I had never slept so late, and I could not believe that I did not have to rise from my bed to do anything for anyone. I took out my food and ate it with relish even though it was stale. I folded my blanket and put it in my bag. The rest of the food and Clarissa’s dress that I had worn I buried away from my sleeping site.

I surveyed my home for the next three days: blackjack oaks, shortleaf and loblolly pines, shagbark hickories, and winged elms. Not losing sight of my bed, I took my knapsack and walked until I reached a stream and used my tin cup to drink. After I washed myself, my stomach called for food and I wandered looking for edible fruit. I ate lingonberries off the bush and picked some to take with me when I realized that I had lost the direction of the road. Dear God, how was I to find my way south? There were no familiar signs. My boots had left few marks, and following what I could make of my trail did not take me far. I explored until I found a clearing in the trees, and from there saw the peak of a mountain. I recalled that, from the area where I had slept, I could see the mountaintop as I faced in the direction of the road.

Holding my knapsack, I sat down and memorized as much as I could about my new surroundings to avoid getting lost again. Then I fell asleep under a tree by the new clearing, even though my body hurt from lying on the ground. The nocturnal creatures were active when I awoke, and I was lonely and afraid in the dark. I ate fruit and listened to life in the wildwoods, then prayed and recited my favorite verses. When it was about eleven o’clock, I went to the road and walked until just before dawn, and then I returned to the thicket alongside the road.

The next two days I spent in the forest. Nothing occurred on the first day, but the second almost made me want to surrender.

I was sitting in the shade, resting, when I heard two voices arguing, and they sounded like the overseers at Allen Estates. I took my belongings and crouched behind a bush, from where I could see two men, one of them obese, carrying rifles. Their backs were to me.

“We ain’t never going to find nobody in here.”

“Let’s walk around some more. They said they saw three niggers coming in this direction. If we catch all of them, we can get a good two hundred dollars in rewards.”

“I’m tired and hungry and it’s hot. I say we wait for them in town.”

“Come on. Let’s walk around a little more and then we’ll leave.”

“All right, but I got to make water first.”

The obese one turned to relieve himself and I thought he saw me. I stayed still because I did not want him to notice any sudden motion. He narrowed his eyes.

“Hey, you see something over there?”

“Where?”

“Straight ahead.”

“Nah. I don’t see nothing.”

“Well, let’s go over and look.”

They walked toward me and I knew that I had to risk moving or they would catch me. I crawled backward until I found a different bush to hide behind. I heard them speak as they inspected the area where I had been. They must have assumed a deer had lain under the tree where I had slept, and having found no one, they left.

The third night, about seven o’clock, I went toward the road. When I was near it, I hid until about eleven o’clock, and then I resumed traveling. Using moonlight to see and the North Star as my guide, I walked south until the sun was about to rise before I returned to the woodlands. I rested by a brook where I could not be seen from the road.

When the sun was out, I took off my dress and washed. Then I used one of the cloths that I had brought to wrap around my chest. I tied a tight knot in front and tucked it underneath.

I put on the men’s undergarments and one of my men’s suits of clothing and the hat, which I smoothed and tried to shape, as it was crushed from being in the bag. I transferred some of my currency and my traveling pass from the pockets of the dress to the inside pockets of the jacket. My headscarf and dress, with the rest of the money and my freedom paper, I folded and put at the bottom of the sack. I went back to the road and walked, and after about thirty minutes, I reached La Fayette. There were people about, but not many, on horseback and in wagons and small carriages. They looked at me but not in a hostile manner. The town had a general store, a blacksmith, a lawyer’s office, a cobbler, and three or four other merchants’ buildings. I went to the grocery store and spoke to the man behind the counter.

“Good morning, sir. I needs some food. I got money to pay for it.”

“Sure, but you need cooked food, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Corrine. Corrine, get out here.”

A servant came out.

“Fix this boy a plate of food.”

He told me to pay him in advance, and I did. Corrine took me to the kitchen, which was in the rear of the store. She thrust a piece of pork and a biscuit in my hand.

“Run. Go. He’s getting the sheriff. He know you a runaway.”

“But I have a pass.”

“He don’t care. They’ll put you in jail until they find out if it’s real. Stop talking, boy, and run.”

“But how did he know?”

“You ain’t got no place to stay or cook food. See that path yonder? Go on it. It going to take you to the road to Tallapoosa.”

My feet seemed stuck to the ground, but she pushed me and I ran and did not stop until there was sufficient bush to conceal me. The Negro dogs barked in the distance, but they appeared to be going in a different direction. I rested and then continued on the path for about two hours. I saw an abandoned shack near a stream and took shelter there until eleven that night, and then I resumed walking. Tallapoosa was not where I wanted to go, but to Macon County, where Clarissa’s aunt and her freed servants, who had been hospitable to us whenever Isaac and I went there with Clarissa, lived.

My scheme had been to take a stagecoach from La Fayette to Macon County and seek assistance from the servants. I wanted to stay in Macon County for a few weeks, until the slave catchers hopefully stopped looking for me. From there, I planned to avoid the city of Montgomery by going around the southern border of Montgomery County, and then head west to the Alabama River. Now I would have to go through Tallapoosa County, which was just below Talladega County and north of Montgomery County. Slave catchers from throughout the state were always in Montgomery, waiting for runaways seeking to board the steamboats.

With no other recourse, I walked on the path at night, hiding in the woods during the day, until the path merged with the main road. Whenever I came upon a body of water in the forest, I soaked my feet in it, as I had developed blisters that bled. I was so hungry that, more than once, I thought of eating worms. If I had had a gun and known how to hunt and build a fire, I would have had plenty to eat, because the forest was full of wild ducks, turkeys, and cottontail rabbits.

One night, as I was dreaming about my mother’s cooking, I smelled roasting venison. I woke when the aroma wafted around me and I walked a few yards following the smell. I saw smoke in the distance. I continued forward, moving from bush to bush to ensure I would not be seen, until I heard men speaking. They did not sound like slave catchers, but I wanted to be sure. Cautiously, I made my way closer until I saw two Negroes sitting on rocks by a fire. I considered approaching them, but thinking of what had happened to Belle, I was afraid of being alone in the presence of unknown men. My hunger pangs returned, and then I remembered that, thus far, those who had seen me assumed me to be a man. I tightened the binding around my chest, folded my blanket, and put it in my sack. I went near them and cleared my throat. They saw me but did not appear surprised.

“Who you?”

“Sir, I is William, William Campbell.”

“Well, don’t just stand there, come over here, yella fella.”

I greeted them and they said that they were brothers, Henry and Oliver.

“You like the smell of our deer, don’t you, William?”

“Yes, sir.”

They laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“Ain’t nobody ever called us ‘sir’ before,” Oliver said.

“My mother taught me to call men older than me ‘sir.'”

“You work in the house, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So what you doing around here?”

“Stop asking the boy questions, Oliver. All he want to know is if we going to let him have some of our food.”

“Of course we is. I just want to know what a nice house nigger doing here in the middle of the woods so far away from his mama.”

“Ain’t none of your business, Oliver. You don’t like it when nobody ask us why we not at home.”

“Ain’t that the truth. So what you doing here, William?”

“Sir, my master can’t afford to keep me, so he told me to go find work on boats that go on the Tombigbee. I know you don’t like nobody asking you why you not at home, but why is that?”

“We can tell you, William. We run away, but just for a time,” Henry said.

“What do you mean, ‘for a time’?”

“We going back.”

“Why?”

“Cause we already try running for good, three times…”

Both men laughed.

“Why is that funny?”

“It ain’t really funny. It’s sad, but if you don’t laugh, you cry,” Henry said.

“So what happened to you?”

“First time, right after master died, was the worst. They caught us and put us in jail until the old lady got us out,” Oliver said.

“What old lady?”

“Mrs. Farrow. Master Farrow died about six years ago. So you going to let me tell you what happened, or what? So she paid the sheriff to whip us, fifty lashes each, and to take us back to her.”

“But that ain’t even the worst part,” Henry said. “When we get home, our wives yell at us for leaving them and the children, and our mother is crying, saying that she thought she was never going to see us again.”

“And the other two times?”

“By the next year, we remember how it felt so good to run and try it again, but they catch us again. That time we ain’t get too far. But the sheriff didn’t put us in jail or whip us. He just took us back to the old lady. Then the other time was the next year and we got far, but they catch us again and take us back,” Henry said.

“We seen that every time we did it, the old lady was less and less mad. She was just glad that we went back and that we never went during harvest. And we figured out to earn some money when we run by hiring ourselves out. So we give the old lady some of it and our families the rest, and everybody be happy,” Oliver said.

“Look like the food is ready,” Henry said.

They had a small sack of salt. We ate the meat and potatoes they had roasted with our hands. It was one of the tastiest meals I had ever had. I asked them how they killed the deer.

“With a rifle. What you think?”

“Well, where did you get a rifle and how did you learn to shoot one?”

“Did anybody ever tell you you ask a lot of questions, William? It’s one of master’s. He the one teach us how to shoot. He said we had to help him with the hunting. We know where the old lady keep the guns, and when we want to go hunting, we just take one. She don’t mind, so long as we give her half of what we kill. Why? You don’t know how to shoot?”

“We’re not allowed to use guns on our plantation, only master and the overseers.”

“What about a knife?”

“No, only small ones for cooking. We can’t have any weapons, and if they find any on us or in our cabins, we get punished.”

“But you have a knife with you now, don’t you?”

“Well, no.”

“You in the woods with no knife? How you going to defend yourself?”

“I didn’t really think I was going to need to.”

“You thought you was going into the woods and you wasn’t going to run into some crazy person? Oliver and me’ll give you one of our knives. If somebody try to start something with you, all you got to do most times is show them the knife and they’ll leave you alone.”

“What if they don’t?”

“You’re big, fight them. Kick them where it hurt them most. You ain’t got a big brother to teach you these things?”

“No, I don’t. I have one more question for you,” I said.

“What now?”

“Well, when you first saw me, you didn’t look surprised.”

“Just by saying that, I can tell you never worked no fields.”

“Why?”

“When field hands is tired, they go into the woods right by the plantations where they’re at and stay there for days, sometimes weeks, and then go back. You never heard of that, huh?”

“No, it just seems to me that once you run, you should keep going.”