Underground to Canada (2 page)

“Who, Mammy?” Julilly was cold again and shivered.

“There's no way of knowin'.” Mammy shook her head. “Massa Hensen's sick and gone away and Missy Hensen says there's no way to keep us all together.”

“Most of us have known no other home.” Mammy rubbed her hand across the comfort of the floor. “This is where you were born, June Lilly.”

Julilly knew all this—how Massa Hensen was better to his slaves than most—how her Daddy died the day that she'd been born from being bitten by a snake—all those things from long ago—safe things that tied together with planting time and harvest time.

Then Mammy stood. She lifted her head high and the white head-rag that covered her greying hair showed soft and a little golden in the firelight. She straightened her shoulders, almost reaching to the top of the cabin door. Her lips drew firm and her eyes pierced deep into Julilly's. In them was the sting that a bull whip makes and the hurt of a wounded possum.

“We've got to pray hard, June Lilly, and if the good Lord can't help us now, we've got to believe He's goin' to help us soon.”

“Yes Mammy.” Julilly felt pride in this tall, handsome woman.

“There's three things I want to say to you, child.” Mammy drew Julilly close again. “Pray to the good Lord. Remember to be proud that you had a strong, fine Daddy and a Mammy that loves you.”

Mammy Sally paused. She pressed her mouth against Julilly's ear. “This is secret talk I'm tellin' you now. Hold it quiet in your head and never let it out your mouth.

There's a place the slaves been whisperin' around called Canada.
The law don't allow no slavery there
. They say you travel north and follow the North Star, and when you step onto this land you are free.”

Rustling footsteps outside the cabin caused Mammy's arms to stiffen. She pushed Julilly gently away and, lifting her voice, spoke crossly.

“Now, June Lilly, you crawl down on that blanket in the corner and go to sleep. Before you know it, four o'clock will be around and the morning bell will be ringin' for another day's work.”

Talking for those who might be listening from the outside was always different from talking inside to those around you. Julilly knew this and smiled. She lay down on the hard floor beside the fireplace and wrapped a thin blanket around her. “Canada.” She thought the name again and again inside her head.

The slave trader meant some kind of trouble. But there had never been trouble on the Hensen plantation. She and Mammy Sally wouldn't be sold.

Julilly yawned and hummed a quiet tune and the unsung words made her smile and forget the trouble-filled day.

Massa sleep in the feather bed, Nigger sleep on the floor; When we get to heaven There'll be no slave no more.

CHAPTER TWO

MORNING CAME to the slave quarters of Master Hensen's plantation before there was light in the heavy, black sky. It was four o'clock and Master Hensen's old ram horn bellowed and tooted until nobody slept. Frying sowbelly smells from the cabin cooking fires helped wake the children. Julilly reached for a hoecake and a tin cup of
buttermilk
that Mammy Sally poured. From the barnyard the roosters crowed sharp and clear.

As on every other morning, Julilly smoothed down her crinkly hair and twisted it tight in a knot at the back of her head. But Mammy Sally, who always wore a clean, white head-rag neatly tied, this morning put on a black one in its place. There was no laughter in her full, strong voice as she called to one slave and then another who passed by their door. A worried frown stitched lines across her forehead.

“Child,” she said to Julilly in a yearning, mournful way, “there's trouble ahead for us nigger folk today.”

Her lips pinched firm and her eyes flamed with angry courage, but her voice stayed quiet. She gathered Julilly's hands into the strength of her long, black, calloused fingers.

“Lord help us,” she said. “The field hands are gonna be sold today. You are one of them, June Lilly. You and I could be pulled apart.”

Julilly couldn't understand. Mammy Sally couldn't let this happen.

Mammy shook Julilly into listening. “If we are sold apart, June Lilly, and the Lord forbid, don't forget that freedom land I told you about. You and I are strong. We'll get there with the guidance of that star, and the good Lord's help.”

A
jay-bird voice
screeched suddenly outside their door.

“You field-hand niggers. Line yourselves up along this path and don't you loiter.” The sound of a zinging
whip
cut the air. “Some of you ain't gonna chop no cotton today.”

Mammy Sally held Julilly close as they walked outside and joined the field-hand line. The man with the jay-bird voice strode back and forth in front of them. He was a big man with a short, thick neck. His cheeks puffed and jiggled as he walked. Julilly noticed that his fingers puffed, too, over the whip that he flicked in his hand. He had a toothpick in his mouth that stuck between two yellow teeth. Julilly didn't like his oily skin. His faded brown hair was tangled and dirty, his baggy pants were streaked with drippings and his little eyes were green and sly.

He strode toward Lily Brown, a shy young mother barely sixteen. She clutched her two-year-old Willie in her arms.

The fat man paused briefly beside her. His tiny eyes narrowed and he rubbed his oily hand down Willie's bare back.

“This is a fat, strong nigger baby,” he called to a younger white man behind him. “Put him in the wagon.”

Willie was ripped from his mother's arms without a comment.

Lily screamed and fell to the ground.

Julilly started to run toward her, but the firm hand of Mammy Sally grasped her shoulder.

The fat man was stopping in front of them, clamping the toothpick hard between his lips.

He stuck a fat finger into her mouth and squinted at her teeth. Satisfied, he pushed back her eyelids.

“Looking at me like Old John does his horse,” Julilly thought and flamed with anger.

“This one will do,” the big man called toward the young man who had just dumped Willie in the cart. “She's strong and healthy and still growin'. Get over there, girl, and get into that cart.” He strode off down the line.

Julilly didn't move. She looked at Mammy, and for the first time in her life saw fear in Mammy Sally's eyes.

“Do like he say, child.” Mammy's voice hurt and choked. “You got to mind that man in order to save your life. Don't forget that place I told you about.”

The fat man looked back and screeched, “Get in that wagon, girl, or I'll use this whip and teach you how to jump.”

There was moaning now and crying up and down the line of slaves. The big slave trader didn't care or hear. He lashed his whip in the air, pulling children from their mothers and fathers and sending them to the cart.

Julilly moved toward the long, wooden cart. Her feet pulled her there somehow and she climbed inside. She looked for Mammy Sally, but Mammy was already being pushed with the older slaves far down beyond the tool shed.

Julilly strained to find Mammy's black head-rag. It was gone. Mammy Sally had disappeared!

A red sun boiled up into the sky, making patches of heat wherever it struck the uncovered earth. Julilly sat still and numb in the unshaded wagon. Little Willie Brown whimpered beside her. She wanted to comfort him, but she couldn't lift her hand. She found it hard to swallow and wondered if she could make a sound if she tried to speak.

Other children began climbing into the wagon. They were smaller than Julilly. They moved near her—their little bodies twitched like a wild bird she had caught once and held for a moment before it broke into flight.

Three men were ordered into a line behind the cart. They stood like broken trees, their hands dangling like willow branches in the wind. Julilly knew each one.

There was Ben, solid and strong and as black as midnight. He could chop a woodpile higher than his head when the others still had little mounds up to their knees.

There was kind, gentle Adam whose singing was low as the sightless hollow in a tree. And then there was Lester, the
mulatto
with speckly skin and angry eyes. Each one had a wife and one or two babies. They didn't move when the fat man with his puffed, oily fingers clamped a chain around their legs.

Julilly watched. The chain became a silver snake. It coiled over the ground, around the men, and up onto the back of their cart. It bit into a lock that held it fast.

Another strange white man led a workhorse in front of them. Julilly was afraid to look at him. She felt the tug and jerk of the wagon and the bounce of the man as he jumped onto the front seat.

“Gid-eee-up,” he cried, snapping the reins.

The snake-chain jingled in protest while the men, who were not used to it, tried to swing their bound legs in some sort of order. The fat man, with the toothpick still in his mouth, rode behind them on a smooth brown horse.

They moved down the dusty road, past the empty slave cabins and around by Master Hensen's house. It was empty. There were no curtains in the tall windows or chairs on the wide, shaded porch. Massa and Missy Hensen were gone.

Old John came through the wide front door, hobbled and bent. He shaded his eyes to watch the chain gang and the wagon load of children. When he saw Julilly, his back straightened. Pulling a large, white handkerchief from his pocket, he waved it up and down—up and down—up and down—until it became a tiny speck and disappeared.

Tears ran down Julilly's cheeks. She couldn't stop them, but she made no sound. The fat man didn't notice her.

CHAPTER THREE

THE WAGON OF SLAVE CHILDREN jogged slowly down the road. The clang of the chained men behind it took up a rhythm. To Julilly, it was a slow, sad rhythm—sad as the bells tolling a death from the village church near Massa Hensen's.

Julilly could think only of Mammy Sally. Each time the cart turned onto a new road, she expected to see the tall, strong woman with the black head-rag come to take her from the wagon and direct the slaves to turn around and go back to Massa Hensen's. But each new road was empty.

The little children around her wore skimpy clothes. They pressed against Julilly with their hot, dry skin and whimpered like tiny, forgotten sheep. Julilly held two, small hands, both sticky with sweat and dust.

The sun flamed gold and blistering above them, and the sky became hard and bright blue. There wasn't a wisp of cloud to soften it. Julilly saw the white man who drove their wagon wipe his forehead with a large blue cloth. The brim of his hat hid his face, but his neck was red with sunburn. He cracked his whip over the plodding horse. The fat, oily man behind them snapped his whip over the backs of Ben and Adam and Lester who shuffled along with their chains.

The cart jogged past
green cotton fields
and
spreading tobacco plants
. Slaves chopped along the rows with their hoes, just as at Master Hensen's. Julilly wondered if they would stop in one of these fields. Why did they go on and on? Where was this “
deep South
” she heard the slave traders mumbling about?

The sun steamed when it reached the top of the sky and poured down rays of heat over the earth. The children stopped whimpering. Their mouths were too hot and dry for sound.

Julilly watched for patches of shade along the road. But the silent pine and wides-preading oak trees grew away from the wagon's path. The children asked for water. Julilly wanted water, too. She began to see shimmering pools of water ahead of their cart, but each one disappeared when the wagon drew near it.

The man in the driver's seat sipped from a dirty bottle and water dripped over his chin. The children watched greedily.

The cart began to climb a small hill. At the end of it another, higher hill started. The hills came along like stair-steps. Trees grew thicker and they sucked away some of the heat. A swift moving stream flashed above them, spilling water through the air. The children clung to Julilly and their eyes spoke fear. They had never seen sheets of falling water.

The fat man ordered the driver to stop. His jug needed refilling. There would be a rest.

Julilly was too frightened to move. The chained men dropped onto the ground. With the motion ended, she felt the closeness of the driver and the oily man on horseback. But the fat man ambled away with his horse toward the rushing stream, while the driver climbed from his seat and stretched his body under a tree.

Julilly and the children watched the splashing water. Standing near it was a tall white man chopping wood with a flashing axe. A young black boy worked beside him, stacking the cut logs into a long, neat pile.

With her own need for a drink and her parched, dry mouth, Julilly had forgotten that the children were thirsty too.

“Julilly, get us water.”

“Please, Julilly, get us water,” they pleaded.

Always before when needs came, Mammy Sally had been there to help. A great ache filled Julilly's throat and the still fear of strangeness crept over her. The fat white man was strange and cruel. The falling water was strange and frightening. Ben, Lester, and Adam were like strangers and they were helpless. Only Lester, the mulatto, raised his head with the same angry eyes. Julilly saw blood on his legs where the chains rubbed back and forth.

The tall man near the waterfall looked up and saw the slave children in the cart. He dropped his axe and began walking toward them, motioning for the boy to follow.

There was no whip in his hand. His face was bony, but gentle. A grey hat circled his head with a large brim, and his long, grey coat had no collar. He walked toward Lester.

“Why are you in chains?” he asked quietly.

Lester pointed toward the sleeping wagon driver under the tree and then to the fat man on his horse far down the stream.

“They took us away from our wives and children. They chained us so we can't escape and go back to them. We've been sold.”