Nobody Knows You're Here

I could hear the hounds' infernal yapping somewhere in the night behind us. Making decent time in these woods under these wet conditions had been harder than I’d planned. Most of the day before had been spent trudging through mud that came up to a pig’s eye. An unforeseen hitch delivered to us by that morning’s rain. Still the day’s head start was god-sent. 

Hattie was less positive than I. At sunset, when the hounds first sounded their cries, she cursed my name. Cursed it, and called for God to strike me down, 'Like He did Uzzah in Nakon', she'd seethed. I was dispirited (despite the terror that impelled my body forward in the cold and black night). But like Uzzah, I was only offering a helping hand to another when I’d asked her to come. 

I still remember our first conversation about our journey. When I had approached her with the idea of leaving the farm, she could hardly conceal her excitement. Her eyes shone like newly polished gemstones, warm and bright against her bronze skin. I told her it was best to tamp down on her enthusiasm, lest she give away our secret to the entire farm. She eventually did collect herself, although that glimmer in her eye remained. To boot, from that day forward, she wore a smirk on her face. A smirk that said she had a secret, one that glowed deep down inside. One that buoyed her spirits, despite living in the depths of degradation on the Johnson estate. It could be seen as unnatural. You see, the farm was a treacherous place. Judases, who sought to raise their own standing in Mr. Johnson's eyes, lurked everywhere and they'd turn us in without a thought. It was more than once that I had to remind her to be mindful of her comportment, of how she held herself, how she looked. There were eyes. Everywhere. And not just those of the family Johnson’s or their overseers’.

And a multitude of things had to go right for us to make it to William Taylor’s house, I’d told her. Many, many things.

Now her inner light had dulled, and a night as dark as the one enfolding us, had taken its place. It was an eclipse of the soul brought on by the yelping of the dogs.

We moved eastward steadily, despite the incessant, gnawing fear and paranoia that trailed us. We followed Mr. Taylor’s directions. He’d said to follow Wilson's Grove east, until it unraveled into the brackish waters of Black Stone Swamp. There, we’d finally turn north towards Greer and his estate. It was at least a half a day out of our way, but the meandering route, he thought, might be enough to throw off any search parties, as they would surely come looking.

The group trailing us sounded at least a quarter mile away, maybe more. That was good news. Now, I don’t want you getting the wrong idea: I’m neither brazenly naive nor foolishly pollyanna. Two summers ago, a stout slave by the name of Jacob was captured after four days of freedom. The young man was caught in Chapin, where he'd gotten turned around by the stars. For sport, the Johnson family invited the nearby Willis’s and Browns to an outdoor dinner party where they shared stories, drank merlot, and watched the overseers deliver Jacob his punishment. A punishment he didn’t survive. So, I knew what was at stake. But according to Mr. Taylor, no one would expect runaways to head towards a swamp, and certainly not one as long and meandering as the Black Stone. It was nearly suicide. The waters would slow you up immeasurably, if the gators and cottonmouths didn’t finish you off first. But when no one will even look for you, then your pace no longer matters. So, as long as the party wasn’t right on top of us, it was good news. There was hope.

“Do you even know where you’re going?” Hattie snapped. Her face wrinkled into a snarl in the ghostly moonlight. 

I was determined to keep our pace. Answering the same question over and over seemed like an anchor slowing us down. But she wasn’t asking to receive an answer. She was simply determined to let loose all her venom on me, if the stockade, the Johnson’s and their merlot were to be her fate.

“We go until we hit Black Stone Swamp," I said, "then we turn north.” I swatted laurel sprigs from my path as we moved.

“And how will you know when we get there??” 

Now, I figured responding with, “when we hit a watery swamp,” was not the best idea. But, like me, Hattie had grown up under something akin to indentured servitude up North. Like me, she and her family were promised their freedom when the lady of the house died. Unfortunately, also like me, other family members stepped in to settle the family finances after the death of Mrs. Eleanor Williams in Hattie’s case, and the Widow Patricia Evans in mine. And upon careful, but brutally inhumane accounting, our families were all sold to separate farms down South – hers in the summer of ‘47 and mine in the winter of ‘51. We both ended up in Mrs. Josephine’s kitchen, where we’d serve the Johnson family meals, day and night – country ham and biscuits for the Johnson boys, for twelve years. 

All of this is to say that we were both taught to read and write by our matrons before reaching the farm, gifts granted to us in preparation for our once-impending freedom. These skills made Hattie and me useful in the Johnson house. We could speak proper when the Johnson’s feigned the decency to speak to us. But, in this particular instance, out in wilderness, her education gave Hattie enough sense to know what the answer to her question was, which was: “When we hit a watery swamp.” But… well you know the rest. 

Hattie yelped. This time, it was at a spotted salamander. The skittering, gray shape slinked past her feet in the mossy murk. She had begun hollering at the sight of every salamander and turtle that slithered across God’s green earth. And she saw fit to curse my name every time too. To her credit, however, Hattie kept up with me on our trek. It was only a few times that I had to encourage her to cross the terrain with haste, compelling her through mud and overgrown thickets.

All night, I tracked the stars to keep us from getting lost like Jacob – or the dozens of other souls who'd been dragged back to the farm in terror after a brief taste of freedom. 

“Why you keep looking up? There ain’t nothing up there but the signs of Cain anyway,” she said. When not having to speak proper English for the Johnsons, Hattie preferred the Southern dialect to the parlance she’d learned from Mrs. Williams up North. Her adopted dialect rubbed off on her from Mrs. Josephine and the rest of the kitchen staff.

I registered her tone. “If I keep those stars up there to my right,” I said, determined to keep the peace, even if she wasn’t, “we will surely hit the swamp.”  

Hattie sucked her teeth and stopped abruptly. I looked at her, eyes wide. I thought she had lost her mind, thought that she had given up, maybe turn herself in and beg for mercy at the wretched Mr. Johnson's feet.

“Hattie –.”

She threw the sack she’d been carrying on the ground. She opened it and began rummaging through it. The linen bag was once white but was now a mottled hue of grays and browns, its patchy colors visible even in the meager light.

“I need to eat,” she said. “I’m so hungry I could perish to death out here.”  

I exhaled through my nose, agitated. “Make it quick.”

Hattie looked at me. Her glare could kill a bear.

I turned and paced. She pulled a beet from her sack, one that she’d grown in her tiny patch of garden on Johnson’s farm. I had long since given up my small two foot by two foot square of earth. Traded it to another slave, Josiah, for two bottles of York’s finest hooch. The man was a wizard with a basket of corn and a handful of yeast. 

Hattie placed the purple root between her teeth, wound the sack at its end and whipped the bag back over her shoulder, then she crunched on the sweet vegetable. She sprung to her feet, then started up again without missing a beat, walking right past me and in between a pair of towering Magnolias.

“Where are you going?” I said, shuffling behind her.

“Just gotta keep those stars up there to my right, you said, right?” I arched my eyebrows. “Well, that’s what I’m gonna do.”

I walked in her wake for miles. Even with my nerves alive, raw and driving my body forward, I could feel my stomach rumble. I hadn’t eaten since the afternoon and Hattie continued to crunch on her root snack as we moved. The beet sounded good, if that’s even possible. However, if there’s one thing you learn living on a plantation, and there are many — some useful, many cheerless – it’s how to read people. And I could see that, despite the sound of the bounty that jostled in her sack, Hattie wasn’t in the sharing mood.  

The hounds continued on our tails for hours. When we finally reached the swamp, I could just about count my lucky stars. The party’s din had waned and was replaced by the sweet chorus of crickets and Carpenter frogs. 

Hattie stopped and stared at me wide-eyed, her nose flaring as she took slow measured breaths. “Where’d they go?” she asked.

“I think they headed north, just like Mr. Taylor said they would.” My chest heaved along with hers. 

I could see her listening, making sure.  

“What if they waitin’ for us at the other end of this swamp?” 

“Hattie, this bog is long. The wilds out here are endless. With any luck, they will pick one of the infinite paths to nowhere all around.” I was doing my level-best to believe my own words. “Besides, we don’t have a choice now, do we?”

A cool wind picked up as my words settled on her like a shawl. She agreed with a nod, and after a few moments, picked up her pace again. Then we were off and on the move deeper into the Black Stone.

The rising sun filled the bog with warm oranges, and blazing reds, as we were treated to our third sunrise as free people. I knew it was the very same sun in the sky, but those daybreaks in the wild were more beautiful than any I could remember.  

And the Black Stone all around us was a wooded swamp. Small islands of dryish grass and bald cypresses broke up the bog and dotted the area for miles. With luck, we could make it from one small oasis to the next, while avoiding a random gator’s serrated jaws or the swift, hooked fangs of a cottonmouth.

I put a hand out to help Hattie out of a watery spot and onto firmer ground.  

“How you come to know this man, Sam?” she said.

“Met him at the market,” I said while negotiating a slick patch of sedges. I motioned to Hattie behind me to mind her step. “He commented on my… speaking voice, first time we spoke. Told me someone with my mind was wasted in chains.” Hattie made a sound - something between a grunt and a guffaw. “Yea, I know. I damn near spit up my tobacco. He said my retched state was a great stain on the soul of humanity. I avoided him at first, talking crazy like that. Figured he’d get us both lynched. But after a few months, he could see I was more comfortable around him and his candidness. One day, he mentioned the fact that he was a conductor on The Railroad. The world spun in my eyes right there on the spot. I didn’t know what to say.”

“Well, it looks like you said, ‘I’ll take a ticket’.”

I chuckled. It was the first time I’d laughed since we stole away from Johnson’s farm.

I could feel her smiling behind me too, then she fell silent. The same silence descended on me too as we both contemplated the ramifications our decision. After months of deliberating and planning, we had finally stepped off the farm, taking our fates into our own hands. No more whips or shackles. No more watching men bound and sobbing in the stockade, or mothers howling in anguish as their children were ripped from their arms. The moment we stepped beyond the boundaries of the farm, our lives were our own. We finally knew freedom. But for how long?  

The sun crossed the sky and began falling into its rosier hues before we spoke again. We had both been lost in the goal of emerging from the swamp in one piece.

“Sam?... Why me?” she said.

“Why you?... I don’t know… Because of the way you look at me, I suppose.” The words just came out.

“What do you mean? How do I look at you?”

“The way you’re looking at me now.” I turned to her. Yes, I was right. I turned my eyes forward again, continuing to lead her through the marsh.  

Hattie was silent again. Taking in my words, I suppose. I didn’t even know why I’d asked her to come. We’d spent our first few years in that hot kitchen bickering like old cats. Then, we settled into a pattern of not speak, for years – outside of the odd word or two to smooth the meeting of our duties. But, over time, she began stealing looks. I could see her. And it moved something in me.  

“I’m not sure what you mean,” she said.  

I huffed. “I guess I couldn’t bear the thought of you staying in that place any more than I could I bear the thought myself staying. We’d seen so much.” I wasn’t sure what I was saying anymore. The words simply wiggled their way through my teeth. “Maybe I didn’t want to be alone out here in these woods. Or maybe, not alone for my whole life. The emptiness that shadowed me on that farm, even while I never had a moment’s peace to myself – I never...”

“Hush, thats enough now.”

She squeezed my hand. I wiped wetness from eyes. 

We wound through the marsh all night, doing our best to avoid reptiles of all sizes and severity, led by constellations above and the blind hope in our hearts. With our fourth sunrise in God’s wilds ascending on the horizon, Hattie and I found ourselves standing on dry ground at the rear of the Taylor Estate. We stood there, one step from the start of a new life, a true Promised Land.

She peered into my eyes. “Sam, can you make it?” Her voice trembled.

I looked down at the gator bite. The deep puncture wounds ached in my chest and stained my shirt crimson red. Hattie struggled to hold me up. I looked into her comely brown face, still charming while twisted with dismay and wet with tears.  

“Let’s go for a stroll,” I said.

I glanced up at the long stretch of greenery between us and the main house on the slope. The sun's rays spilling slowly over the surrounding foothills left us little cover.  

Hattie checked over both shoulders, then ushered me forward. “One step at a time,” she said, her trembling eyes deep wells of concern. She walked with me step for step, escorting me at my own pace across the vast yard.

A crow yowled amongst the tall pines startling its murder, and both me and Hattie. The swarm of black feathers took flight and blossomed overhead, then weaved westward over the foothills. My eyes darted along the landscape, looking for signs that we’d been betrayed. But the manor still seemed unruffled and serene in the early morning hush.

After several long minutes, we reached the back door of Mr. William Taylor’s home. I knocked in the rhythmic pattern we agreed upon. The silence that followed was the longest wait of my life. Finally, the door creaked open, revealing a portly, bespectacled man with graying, ginger hair and a neckful of stubble.

“My God, Sam, are you okay?!”

“Yessir.”

"Come." He lifted me up, and helped Hattie haul me inside.  

“We were turned around in the swamp,” Hattie explained. “Sam slipped and…"

I moaned as they sat me in a chair in the kitchen. My wounds throbbed and still seeped blood. 

Mr. Taylor brushed stray, wiry locks from his face and lifted my shirt. His eyes widened as he drew in a sharp breath. “I’m going into town." He stood up quickly, searching for his hat. "I’m going to fetch Dr. Calhoun.”

Hattie and I looked at each other. Mr. Taylor must have marked our apprehension.

“He’s a good man,” he said. “Another conductor.”

Hattie breathed a sigh of relief.  

I peered around the room, a faint dizziness descending upon me. I had never been in a white man’s kitchen before, not without being made to work. My eyes drifted out through the windows onto the rolling estate outside.  

“Your family…?” I mumbled.

“They’re down in Roebuck, visiting with my in-laws.” I nodded groggily. “I sent them away for the week, as we'd planned. We’re alone. Nobody knows you’re here.”

Knock, knock, knock.

“Mr. Taylor??” a voice from beyond the front door called.  “Mr. Taylor??”

Knock, knock, knock.

A large dog yapped in the entranceway. The three of us froze, breathless. 

“Can I have a word, sir?? Mr. Taylor?? It’s important.”