“What they gonna do to her?” I asked Bessie.
The overseer, Thompson, had joined the master. They tied her hands to a pole, and they made her kneel. They ripped the dress off her back. I remember her brown breasts bobbing as she cried out.
“Git inside,” Bessie said.
“I won’t,” I said, and I didn’t.
It was a cowhide whip, long and tapered, and as it snapped, it cut through her flesh like a knife on a peach. The red juice ran out of her, and it ran profusely. I stood, feet nailed to the ground, mouth open. As they whipped, the men grunted. Huh. Huh.
Huh. Huh. I burned with shame for not stopping them. The adults who watched without lifting a hand disgusted me. Hilda gave out a wail not unlike the sound of cats in the night.
Jenkins grew tired of whipping, so he passed the whip to Thompson, who hit her on and on and on. Her wail grew weaker, until it was almost inaudible. But something still came out of her mouth each time she was struck.
“That’s fifty, Marster,” Wild Bill cried out from among us. He was a grizzled old man who was still alive only because he didn’t have the good sense to give up and die.
“Shut up, or you’ll be next,” Thompson shouted after him. Wild Bill walked away. Disappeared behind the cabins. The whipping resumed.
On the master and overseer went, dripping sweat and passing the whip. I wanted them to finish with her.
“Don’t let nobody ever do that to you,” Bessie told me. “Go crazy, act mad. Fight every step of the way. They may kill you right off. But if they don’t, they’ll leave you alone soon enough and find someone easier to whip.”
Wild Bill let out a shout. He hobbled down from the master’s porch with a shotgun. Every grown Negro in the yard ran back. Way back. Wild Bill was so old he was half out of his mind. He was liable to shoot one of us by mistake. He took five steps toward the overseer, whose turn it was at the whip. He took another five steps. The overseer stopped.
“Put it down, you old coon,” Jenkins said.
The overseer said, “He don’t know how to use that thing. Just shoot him down. Take out your pistol and shoot him down.”
“Arms up,” Wild Bill said. His hair was white. His legs were wobbly. He looked insane, dressed only in his underwear. Skin hung off his knees.
“I said, shoot him down,” Thompson told Jenkins.
Wild Bill said, “Put down that whip. You messed up that girl bad enough. You oughta be ashamed. Hang your head in the face of God. All this, because that girl wouldn’t warm your bed. Ain’t you men got wives? What’s wrong with — “
Jenkins reached for his pistol. Wild Bill blasted the gun at Thompson.
“He shot me. Damn it, he shot me in the arm.” The overseer staggered forward. He fell down. “Somebody call the doctor. I been shot, I tell you, shot.”
“Jesus H. Christ, you shot him,” Jenkins said. Wild Bill swung his gun at the master. But Jenkins shot first, and shot him dead.
Thompson, the overseer, was led into the house.
We carried Hilda back into a shack. She didn’t come out for three weeks. I couldn’t look her in the eye again.
The overseer survived. He stopped me, one time, as I brought in his hot cocoa. “What you looking at, boy?”
“Nuthin’, sah.”
“Good. Then beat it. Ain’t no rats in this house tonight.”
I beat it. But I did avenge Hilda. It took a few months, but I avenged her. A man came by the house one time, when I happened to be scouting for rats, or pretending to. He sold the mistress some poison — strychnine, he called it — which he said was good for rat killing. The mistress gave it to the cook, who put it in the kitchen, where I found it when I needed it. It took me a lot of experimenting to get it right. I made sure nobody knew what I was up to. In the barn, I mixed some strychnine with rat bait. The rats wouldn’t touch it. I mixed in some sugar. That worked. A rat ate the bait, tried to run off, but tipped over before it got out of sight. I set my sights on the biggest pig in the barn, and, one day, I ran to the master and announced that his prize sow had up and died.
I kept serving that overseer hot cocoa. The man started to like me. Called me the smartest nigger on the plantation. Said not to get too smart, or someone would bring me down a peg. He took over the plantation when the master and his mistress had to leave for a week. He took his cocoa as usual, in a huge mug, steaming hot, which he let cool and then drank fast. I served him regular, four nights in a row. On the fifth evening, I hit him with twice the sow’s dose. He downed that cocoa and stood up and fell like a tree. I cleaned up his mug and put away the cocoa and told the world that I found him like that when I came into the house. Everyone thought his heart had given out on him. I’m sure it did. Bessie was the only one who knew what I done. I didn’t tell her, and didn’t admit a thing, but she knew. “You fixed ‘im, didn’t you?” she whispered one night, while I lay next to her on the pallet on the floor.
I was sold a few years later. A man from Maryland came through, looking, he said, for a boy young enough not to give him trouble, but smart enough to learn about horses. I was presented as one who knew horses, and all barn animals, and was an expert rat catcher. I was stripped, prodded, judged acceptable, and purchased.
Adam Smart ran a livery business in Petersville, in western Maryland. He had scarcely brought me onto his property before announcing that he’d sell me as far south as south could go, if he caught me learning to read or cavorting with free niggers, of which, he said, there were a damn sight too many in northern Maryland. He also said he’d whip my back and butt till the blood ran out of them if he caught me stealing, or fornicating, or drinking whiskey. I thanked him, in my mind, for tipping me off about the good things in life, and made a vow to taste them all.
The man had an Adam’s apple that snaked up and down his throat. His blond, dry hair flapped on his head in the wind. He was as thin as a rake, although his hands were ham-sized and powerful. I once saw him grab a stray dog in his garden, hold its leg in a vice grip with one hand, and punch the animal in the muzzle. He also punched horses, and table tops, and me, a few times, until I remembered Bessie’s words never to let anyone whip me, and I held him off with a garden hoe. He left me alone after that. But he worked me hard, and all he gave me was a peck of cornmeal and a pound of bacon each week. Since I was the only Negro he had, it was hard to steal from him and get away with it.
I killed rats for him. Sometimes, he rented me out to local farmers, and I killed their rats, too. I became adept at baiting, trapping, and poisoning. I even got myself a ferret. I preferred the jill — the female — because it handled more easily, was smaller and could therefore chase rats from smaller places, and was no less vicious than the male. In Maryland, and in Oakville after I escaped, and in later years roaming around the United States after the Harpers Ferry business, I mostly killed the brown rat. I don’t know why it is called brown. It’s actually gray. It has a blunt nose, small, furry ears, and a short, thick tail, and leaves droppings with pointed ends.
In Maryland, I also became handy with horses. I learned all the routes around town. I learned which way was north. Passing through Petersville and talking quick to Negroes — free and captive — I learned that to the north, in a land called Canaan, all men were free.
Adam Smart had no wife and no children. I was his only captive. When I was about sixteen, Ruth, a free Negro and a cook, came to live with us. Her husband was a slave who had been sold to Arundel County. She rarely got to see him. The last time she traveled down there to be near him, someone had almost dragged her into slavery. Ruth escaped, and got work not long after that cooking and cleaning and gardening and organizing for Adam Smart.
Ruth and I shared a shack on Adam Smart’s property. She managed to steal a handful of candles, on a visit into town. That woman’s hands were quicker than greased lightning. She removed a Bible from the master’s home, knowing it to be a second copy, and knowing he wouldn’t miss it. And at night, on an old mattress th
at Adam Smart didn’t want any more, with a candle lit in the dark, Ruth began to help me read better. Ruth had a long scar down her right cheek, which, she said, had happened in town years ago when a white man with a broken bottle cut her for no reason. In the near dark, I learned to love Ruth’s voice, which was firm and gentle and melodious among people she trusted. In the near dark, I learned to read. I read the Bible, cover to cover. I read it all, and I must say, I didn’t believe a word of it. That didn’t matter. I was reading. Ruth began stealing books, whatever books she could get her hands on, from the master’s house. She’d steal them and I’d read them and she’d put them back before he noticed. Ruth said she had taught a few Negroes to read over the years, but never before had she found one who ate up words the way I did. She also taught me to write. And she taught me that until the day I was free and gone — and if I were a man at all, she expected me to get free and get gone within five or ten years — I was not to admit to any white man, woman, or child that I knew how to read.
In the near dark, I learned every inflection in Ruth’s voice. In the near dark, I learned to read to her. In the complete dark, my hands slipped over Ruth’s scar, and all the places where a woman likes touching. She taught me every loving position she knew, and then we invented some others.
We lived like that until I was twenty-two, when Adam Smart was thrown from a horse and struck his head on a shovel and went into a coma and died. I can’t say I regretted the man’s death. But his brother came onto his estate, and started talking about selling me off. He didn’t need Ruth, and he got rid of her. She came to see me at night. She didn’t come for the loving. She came to tell me my time had come. We had talked about this many times. We wrote out a carefully worded pass.
Please allow this nigger, Langston Cane, who is my property, to pass unhindered. He takes care of my livery business, and is off to purchase new equipment on my behalf.
John Smart
Petersville, Maryland
I waited until the next day, when I knew that John Smart had an appointment with a lawyer about his brother’s estate. Ruth then wrote a fake letter to John Smart.
Dear Mr. Smart,
I hope you will excuse me for borrowing your nigger, Langston. Your brother let me take him from time to time, and I will be happy to pay you for his work, as I always paid your brother. I have some things that need delivering, and so the nigger has also come away with your horse. Will pay, too, for the use of the horse. I should have the horse and the nigger back by dark. If not, please come see me.
Sincerely,
Richard Symons
I have always thought this was a stroke of genius on Ruth’s part. Richard Symons farmed pigs sixteen miles south of Petersville. If John Smart wanted to check out the story, he would have to travel opposite to the way I was heading.
I took the best halter and the best horse, and fed her and watered her well. I took half of the money hidden in Adam Smart’s home, and gave the other half to Ruth. I was banking on the notion that John Smart didn’t know that his brother kept a collection of coins and bills in a leather pouch high on a ledge in the cold cellar. I ate four eggs and half a loaf of bread. I drank two cups of milk. I crammed apples, walnuts, bread, and dried strips of beef into a saddle bag. I also packed a carrying bag and, on a whim, two rat traps. Indeed, since my flight from slavery, I’ve hardly been anywhere without a rat trap in a pocket or fold of my raiment. In leaving, I took a few of Adam Smart’s clothes. I wore some of them as I climbed onto Smart’s prize mare. She knew me well, that mare. And I knew her well. I knew how hard I could run her, and I knew how long I could run her, and I knew how much rest she would need before she could get up and go again.
I hugged Ruth, then stood back to look at her face. A single tear welled up and streaked down to her jaw. She kissed me and put her finger on my lips, then turned around and walked into the barn. I swung up on Nell and began riding north.
I rode in broad daylight and at a casual speed, all day long. At the end of the afternoon, I paid to have Nell fed and watered in a small town. I stood by her in the shade, and chewed on a few slices of the dried beef. Bless Ruth’s soul. I would never have known you could dry out beef and keep it like that, had it not been for her. I had a cup of water. Only one man in town asked me what I was doing with such a fine horse, and who I belonged to. I hung my head, mumbled that massa had written out a pass for me, showed the paper, and was left alone.
I gave Nell two hours of rest. When the sun sank low in the sky, we rode out of town. We rode slowly at first, and cantered when it grew dark. We proceeded as quickly as I could judge safe, given the roads and the darkness. We had a full moon. I thought of my mother, stealing through the night to see me. I thought of Ruth, straddling me with her head thrown back and breasts heaving. I thought of Hilda, whipped senseless, and of Wild Bill, shot dead after saving her.
I rode Nell through most of the night, stopping to water her when I found streams and to feed her when I spotted hay. I wrote myself a new pass in the moonlight. This one was from a fictional master, who was sending me ahead to run an errand for him. I tied up Nell and slept for an hour in the night, while she rested. On the third day, I stopped in another town. Three men asked me to produce papers. I massa’d them this and massa’d them that, and managed to have papers from a town ten or so miles back. But as I was arranging a feeding for Nell, I saw more people looking at me. And I caught a notice of my name and a description of the horse on a piece of paper on a signpost. We headed slowly out of town and galloped when out of sight. I ran the poor mare hard until I came to a Negro working outside a barn.
“I’d like to sell you this horse. She’s tired, but she’s fine.”
“Don’t want no horse.” “I’ll give you a good price.”
“Is that horse stolen? If I buy a stolen horse, it’s still stolen. And when it’s found, I’ll be the one they start whipping.”
“If you give me a meal and a place to hide, you can have the horse.”
“I don’t want it, sold or given. I don’t want you either. You and your horse both look like trouble. Get on out of here.”
I rode Nell a mile up the road. I watered her at a stream. I led her deep into the woods and tied her up to a tree. Then I removed a shoulder bag that carried paper and pencils, what little food I had left, my money, a change of clothes and shoes, and my rat traps. I thanked the stars for small miracles. Adam Smart and I had the same size feet, and the man had two good pairs of shoes.
I hated to kill the horse. But I couldn’t have her wandering out onto the road without a rider. She’d give me away for sure. I found a branch that was heavy enough to kill, but light enough to swing hard. I smashed her between her eyes with all the muscle I had. Nell crumpled and rolled over. It hurt me to do it. But she died a good deal more quickly than some Negroes I have known.
It was the right season to steal back my freedom. Corn grew in the fields. At night, I would steal a few cobs, and light a fire in the woods, and throw the cobs right into it, and run off to hide as far away as I could, while still keeping an eye on the fire. If nobody came before the fire burned out, I would return to eat the cobs. They’d be cooked enough by then.
One night, I stole a young pig, led it into the woods, killed it right off and sliced off its ears and cooked and ate them and kept on moving.
A Quaker in Pennsylvania hid me for two days, and warned me that people had been looking for a runaway with a horse. He fed me, gave me a good bed, and drew me a map. He told me that forty miles north, a Quaker man in a white farmhouse with a big red barn would give me shelter.
I got there, and I stayed three days. I was coughing and sick from sleeping in wet grass. I got half my strength back, and made it all the way to the hills of northern New York State when I ran into trouble just south of Canandaigua.
A church minister was passing in a horse and wagon, and he looked kindly, so I asked him for directions. He said he’d take me close to the town of Naples, and then show m
e the way. But he didn’t stop out of town. He took me right into the middle of it. I asked where he was going, and he said, Stay right there. I jumped out and ran. He shouted out at me.
I ran as I’ve never run before. Up one street, down another, across a yard, over a fence, and inside someone’s door. A tall man with blue eyes and a great beard stood there staring at me.
“Good God, my man, what are you doing? If anyone has seen you, you will have destroyed our work.”
“You are a … you are a ….”
“I am a Quaker. And you are a fool. Get down in that crawl space. Hurry.”
I hid on the Quaker’s property for a week. Much of that time, I was sequestered outside the house, near the barn, in a hidden crawl space the size of a coffin. People thought they had seen me run to that house. It was inspected three times by a local sheriff. The Quaker had no choice but to hide me underground. I coughed terribly. I had dust and dirt in my mouth, my eyes, my ears, my rectum. I was filthy everywhere. After a week, when suspicions had faded, the Quaker took me back into his home. He took care of me for two weeks. He wrote out maps, and directions, and told me that I was not far from the northern border. When I got to the town of Rochester, I was to go to 20 Lake Street after nightfall. This man’s brother lived there. He would put me in touch with a ship captain who could take me across Lake Ontario to Canada.
He took hold of my elbow and led me into his schooner. He had red hair, and a strange, feminine, sing-song accent. His first words, which were mumbled at great haste, I couldn’t understand. But his step was quick and sure, his back sturdy, his eyes blue as the lake water, and his hands strong. I could see that this man ate well.