Running Out of Night (23 page)

“
Now
what we goin to do?” Enoch asked.

What we goin to do? When Zenobia and Enoch said them words, I felt as weighed down with rocks as the bag my pa used to drown our spring kittens.

“Let’s think on this,” I said. “We done fine with Shag havin the smallpox. Instead of actin like we runnin, we should act like we have sick folk with us. People are scairt unto death by the pox.”

“Thee is right, Lark. Nobody expects runaways to travel by day. We’ll go north in the day instead of traveling by night.”

“Hidden in plain sight—ain’t that right, Auntie?”

She nodded. “Hidden in plain sight is our best hope.”

I looked down. Me and Zenobia set next to each other, our arms wrapped around our legs. Her arms was the color of dark clover honey, mine pale, white, and freckled like a wood thrush’s chest. I had forgot that we was different colors.

I heard a sound behind us. Someone stumbled, swore. I looked back over my shoulder.

Whoosh. Crack!

Shag Honeybone, lookin worst than death and barely able to stand, come runnin at us with his whip.

W
hen a sperrit tickles your spine, no good will come of it. Say “Go away, sperrit,” and ask a friend to brush it off your back
.

I
remember the sound of the crackin whip and how Zenobia grabbed my arm and tried to pull me along with her and the others, but I couldn’t move. Everythin went quiet and slow. Then I saw Auntie run toward me, and Zenobia pulled at me and screamed for us to run.

When I looked down at my skirt, there were a long, wide tear acrost it. I felt blood oozin from my legs. It spilt warm and slow-like and made its way down my skinny shanks, soakin into my stockins and my fancy shoes.

Whoosh. Crack!
The sound come again, but this time I felt the whip bite into my arm and coil round it like a black rat snake.

I pushed myself up and stumbled. The whip stayed wrapped around my arm. I run toward Shag Honeybone, who were near to fallin down, grabbed the handle of the cart whip from him, and shoved him hard. When the whip loosed on my arm, I raised it to strike him. I wanted him to feel the bite of the snake.

“Lark,” Auntie said, “thee must hand me the whip.”

“I am no Quaker, Auntie. This time he should taste of his own punishment.”

Auntie faced me and put her small hands on my shoulders. “I’ll tend thy wounds, but thee must cast away the whip. I think that thee already doled him punishment enough.”

Shag squirmed on the ground, writhin like a worm cut by half. Next I knew his eyes closed and drool run from the corner of his blistered red mouth. He were right sick.

Auntie took the whip from my hands. Armour, Enoch, and Better come from the woods toward us.

Zenobia and Auntie was tuggin at Shag’s legs, tryin to pull him to his camp but gettin nowhere. Armour reached down, picked up Shag’s whip, and threw it near to a tree. Then he and Enoch each grabbed an arm and a leg, and hauled Shag back to his blankets.

Zenobia put her arm around my waist and helped me walk. We stopped by Shag’s bedroll and looked down at him. All I felt were a hate and mad that made me want to hurt him worst than he’d ever hurt anyone. The mad and
hate burnt in me—burnt and turned dark. I could taste it, a taste like the bitter water that come up from my stomach when I were sick.

“Mama, Grandpa, will I go straight to hell if I hurt Shag? And if I went to hell, then Grandpa, how would I ever see you again? How would I ever get to meet you, Mama?”

I looked down onto a body pocked red and oozin from every sore. His corn whiskey flask set on its side, half empty. I picked it up, opened his puffy red hand, and tucked the whiskey bottle inside.

Then the pain come bad and I blacked out.

Zenobia and Auntie took off my shoes, walked me into the slow-movin crick, and washed at the deep, burnin red stripes acrost my legs and arm. One lash and both legs was cut near to the shinbone. I must’ve held my arm in front of me when I heard the sound of the whip. The bloody red welt curled up and round and round.

Zenobia stood with me, her legs crissed and crossed—marked by scars tellin the same story of cruel. My legs and arm hurt beyond the ken, but still, they weren’t nothin when I put them side by side with the scars that Zenobia and the others wore.

I tried to walk but hobbled like a three-legged hound.
I don’t like feelin useless, but I couldn’t help myself. Armour lifted me into his arms and carried me to the back of the wagon. I stretched out, laid my head on my travel sack, and held on to my Hannah doll’s arm.

Auntie disappeared into the woods and returned with some freshly gathered witch hazel. She emptied Shag’s pot of willow bark and valerian root into a tin cup and brung it to me.

“Here, sweet girl, drink this, and I’ll make thee a poultice.”

Havin Auntie in my life must be like havin a mama.

She drew some crick water for the pot, tossed in the witch hazel, and set it to boil on a flame started with embers from Shag’s campfire. Zenobia climbed up and set next by me, coaxin me to drink the tea. Auntie dipped two pieces of cloth into the pot of witch hazel, used a twig to lift them steamin-hot rags out, cooled them for a minute, then laid the poultices on my legs and arm. They stung fierce bad, but I clamped my teeth closed and never made a complaint.

When Auntie finished tendin me, she brewed a tea strong enough to set Shag to sleepin for a day and a weaker draught to help me sleep through some of my pain. Enoch and Armour picked up Shag, blankets and all, and moved him deeper into the broody woods, where nobody passin by on the road would see him. Enoch set to tyin Shag to one of the trees, wrappin him like a moth caught in a spiderweb, but Auntie stopped him.

“Thee mustn’t hurt him or tie him, or thee is no better than the slave catchers. We’ll leave him be and head north toward home. We’ll travel in the light of day,” Auntie said.

Enoch climbed up and onto the seat beside Armour. Better, Zenobia, and Auntie climbed into the wagon bed and set around me, layin out a portion of Emma’s food for our supper.

Armour, in his fancy new white hat, took the reins and
cluck-cluck
ed the horses into movin. They slowly circled the campsite, then headed north on the rough, dusty road.

The healin tea, the witch hazel poultice, and the sounds of my friends’ voices set me off to sleep. I woke surprised that it were dark and wonderin why my legs and arm was hurtin me so bad. Then I heard voices and saw Zenobia and Auntie and the others settin round a fire. I laid on my back lookin up at a coal sky sprinkled with stars. I counted seven for good luck afore I turned onto my side and listened to their tellin of the happenins of the past weeks.

“I gots our freedom papers sewed into my pant leg,” Enoch said.

“… don’t matter none that we’re free. That slave hunter say I run from North Carolina to New York with my wife. Fugitives …”

I could hear someone cryin.

“Slave catchers come into our house middle of the night, put us in chains …”

“In chains,” Better said. “Our family don’t know what happen to us.”

“… holdin on to our papers. We’ll go back home. Free. Again …”

Free. Again. Free
.

I laid there listenin to Enoch’s voice risin up and down like a hymn. His words settin pictures in my mind. When I closed my eyes, I saw silver minnows swimmin against the rushin water, leapin, dartin into the shadows, slippin into the sunshine, silver minnows all of a body, flashin in the light, searchin for the safe.

Better settled down next to Enoch and said, “Oncet we shows them the papers, they jus take them … and we cain’t prove we free.”

Armour said, “I don’t have no papers. I run from Mississippi.”

“I lives in swamps, hides in pigpens and haylofts, sleeps in muddy ditches, bit by every crawlin thing, travelin at night … always at night.”

“Made it all the way to Pennsylvania when that man Shag dug me out of a haystack and whipped me some good. You know the rest.”

You know the rest
.

Life with Pa and my brothers were bad. No love for the findin. But all the time the bad happened I hoped that
someday I could be free. Zenobia, Brightwell, and Armour, they never felt that hope. They was slaves. Bought, sold, and owned like they was no better than a hogshead of molasses. They didn’t have no hope for nothin more. I didn’t know if I could go on livin without the hope for more.

Auntie walked over and patted at me. I struggled up and rubbed my eyes, then slid off the tail of the wagon to the ground. Everythin spun around me, but I hugged onto Auntie and made my way over to the fire.

Our wagon—Shag’s wagon—were pulled up under trees, out of sight of the road. I didn’t know how long I’d slept, but the day were done and I were starvin.

Zenobia moved over, and I set down with her. Auntie brought me corn bread, ham, and some wild berries she must’ve picked while I slept. I chewed slow, still listenin, puttin pieces in place.

We talked on till the last log were tossed onto the fire. When everyone seemed played to the end of the spool, Auntie said, “Now thee will sleep safe. Tomorrow morn we’ll start north before sunrise and travel in plain sight.”

What if Shag wakes up and finds help? What if Pa and my brothers sees us? What if the slave hunters come back? I knowed what would happen to me if we was caught, but in the worst, darkest parts of my mind, I couldn’t even think of what would happen to the others. I felt a shudder run up my spine like a sperrit were ticklin it.

“Zenobia,” I said as I leant forward. “Will you brush off my back? I feel somethin crawlin.” She brushed at me till I felt the sperrits leave.

We said our good-nights, each of us carryin a heavy load of worries and fears. Enoch and Better held hands and walked over to a clutch of trees. Armour leant against an oak with Shag’s whip in one hand and his rifle standin up against the trunk next by him. The last of the fire flickered acrost his face, and the fancy white hat perched on his head. I felt some safe havin him there, watchin over us.

My legs, burnin and achin like they did when Pa whipped me with his rawhide, barely held me up. Zenobia and Auntie helped me to walk and to climb back into the wagon bed. It made me mad to feel so helpless. We curled beside each other and pulled the ragged blanket over us. Skeeters sang their whinin songs in my ears, and around us, the thick hot night rasped and trilled with the sounds of the dog days’ bugs.

I don’t know what woke me—a noise? A dream? I set up, my legs and arm throbbin. It took me a minute to remember where I were and what happened to make me hurt so bad. I looked around the campsite and could still see the dyin orange coals of the fire and the white of Armour’s hat against the darkness of the oak tree. I settled back down on the hard wagon bed and laid betwixt Auntie and Zenobia.

Low in the gray mornin sky, the hunter Orion rose with the bright star Sirius follerin below. A horse nickered. I set
up again and looked over at the oak tree. I rubbed at my blurry eyes, squeezed them together, and looked again. Where were Armour? Had someone caught him and carried him away? Or worse?