“Use this only to save your life—not for hunting. You do not want to draw attention to yourself.”
“How it work?” Amari asked.
Polly spoke up quietly. “I know how to use it—my father taught me. You half cock the hammer, pour in the gunpowder, wrap the lead ball, then stuff it into the barrel and fire.” Amari was impressed.
The doctor nodded with approval. “Are you a good shot?” he asked.
Polly looked away. “No, sir, not very. My father tried to teach me, but I could not shoot straight.”
The doctor shook his head. He gave Polly a small pouch that held the ammunition, as well as the sack. “You have enough gunpowder for only one shot. Make it count.”
“Yes, sir, I will. Thank you, sir.” She carefully replaced the gun into the bag and hoisted the sack over her shoulder.
“Hurry,” the doctor said, glancing around worriedly. “Get out of the wagon and as deeply as you can into the woods.”
Amari looked up at him and smiled as she and Polly climbed out of the wagon. They both helped Tidbit jump down. “Thank you, sir,” Amari said. She never thought she’d be thanking a white man!
“May God have mercy on all of you,” the doctor replied. The wagon disappeared into the distance. The three children stood wordlessly for a moment, watching it, then, realizing their danger, darted into the darkness of the woods.
32. THE JOURNEY BEGINS
AMARI, POLLY, AND TIDBIT MOVED SLOWLY BUT steadily through the woods, as if they knew where they were going. Although the road had been brightly lit with the sunshine of the morning, the woods were shadowy and dim under the thick canopy of trees. Amari, somehow feeling very much at home among this greenery, led them deeper and deeper until they reached a point where no path was apparent, and the trees and bushes grew so closely together that not even Tidbit could squeeze between the thick green growth.
“Myna, let’s stop for a bit and get our bearings,” Polly suggested.
Amari nodded in agreement, and they all sat down on the ground and caught their breath. Finches and swallows chirped high above them, but otherwise the forest was surprisingly silent. Polly closed her eyes and leaned against an oak tree.
Tidbit whispered, “Myna, I got to pee!”
Amari looked at the boy fondly. “Go quick—behind that tree.” The boy ran and returned shortly to the security of Amari’s arms. Amari gave him a reassuring hug, then she looked at Polly, who sat next to her, scratching the mosquito bites on her arm. “My name be Amari,” she informed the two of them.
Polly opened her eyes and looked at Amari with a slight frown. “What’s wrong with the name they gave you?” she asked. “We’re used to it now.”
Amari took a deep breath of the woodsy air. “Not Myna no more. Amari.” She spoke with clarity and certainty.
“If you say so,” Polly said with a shrug. “I suppose it is a good name for a free woman.”
“Free!” Amari exclaimed in quiet exultation. She had no intention of ever using that slave name again.
“I want my mama,” Tidbit whimpered. He fingered the pouch that hung around his neck.
“You be free too, small one,” Amari whispered to him. “You make your mama proud, you hear?” The boy just buried his head in Amari’s arms.
“Which way do we go now, Amari?” Polly asked. “It’s so easy to get turned around. I think the river is that way,” she said, pointing to her left.
“No, river that way,” Amari replied, pointing to her right. “I be smellin’ muddy water.”
Polly sighed. “How will we ever get to the North if we can’t even find the river?”
“We not go north—we go south,” Amari said defiantly.
“But Dr. Hoskins said to follow the river to the North. That’s where we have a better chance at freedom,” Polly insisted. “He’s a doctor—he’s got to know what’s best for us.”
“Cato say go south,” Amari insisted.
“And he also said the streets were paved with gold. I think Cato’s story is just an old slave’s tale about a place that doesn’t even exist!”
“I believe Cato!” Amari said emphatically. Her heart pounded—she had no intention of giving in to this white girl. “He be right about Massa Clay. He be right about doctor.” She crossed her arms across her chest.
“But he knew them,” Polly insisted. “This place he called Fort Mose is just a pretend place he’s heard of—like the Promised Land—a place you go when you die. And I don’t want to die—not yet!” Her face reddened in anger.
“We die if we go north,” Amari said quietly.
“You will forever be a slave if we go south,” Polly insisted.
“You want go north? Go alone,” Amari said with a fierceness she hoped she had the courage to back up.
Polly inhaled sharply. After a long pause she replied, “We would all die if we split up.”
“Choice up to you. Me and Tidbit goin’ south. You come if you want.” Amari bent down and picked up the small bundle of food. She hoped that Polly wouldn’t go off on her own, but she just knew she had to go south.
“Slavery’s not so bad up north,” Polly said slowly. “I hear tell that lots of black folk are free up there.”
“I free here. I free now,” Amari replied, digging her toe into the dirt. Then, without looking at Polly, she added, “You white gal. You not need us.” She knew that Polly could make it alone and would certainly find refuge quicker without the presence of two runaway slaves.
“I think we need each other,” Polly said with quiet resolution.
Amari started to reply, but a noise from behind them made her pause. A twig broke. Then another. Amari held Tidbit tightly and held her breath. None of them moved. Someone was approaching. She motioned for them to be absolutely silent.
Suddenly, emerging triumphantly from the trees, lunged a dirty and burr-covered Hushpuppy. The dog rushed to Tidbit, licking his face and yelping with obvious joy. “Hushpuppy!” the boy exclaimed with happiness as he hugged his dog. “You found me!” The dog flopped down at the boy’s feet and began to lick them, too.
Perhaps this was a sign of good fortune for their journey, Amari thought. And Polly must have thought the same thing, because she looked at Amari and smiled.
“Do you truly believe there is a place called Fort Mose?” Polly asked her.
Amari nodded. “I feel it—here,” she said, pointing to her heart. “It be place where, if you get there, you be free inside and outside.”
“I hope Cato is right,” Polly said slowly. “But going south makes no sense to me.”
“Patrols be lookin’ north,” Amari reminded her.
“How will we ever find our way to a place we are not even sure exists?” Polly asked.
“Spirits will lead us.”
“I don’t believe in all that spirit talk,” Polly said quietly. “And it is such a long way.”
“Long walk anyhow,” Amari replied. Then she asked, “You not trust Amari?”
Polly looked at her for several moments, as if she were weighing her decision. “Well,” she said finally, “we should get started.”
Amari nodded in approval. “No talk,” she reminded Tidbit. “We must move quiet like snakes.”
“Silent snakes,” the boy whispered back.
The three of them picked their way through the forest for the rest of the afternoon, stopping only to drink from the streams they crossed. Amari led them slowly and carefully through a maze of oak and elm and maple trees. Rabbits darted across their path, and deer looked at them with large, surprised eyes. But no voices followed them and no people approached. The dog, as if he knew silence was important, did not bark once.
For the first time since her capture in Africa, Amari relaxed. Even though her feet were bare and the ground was covered with sticks and pine needles, she felt no pain, for this walk was leading her, perhaps, to that destiny that Afi kept speaking of.
As dusk approached, Amari signaled for them to stop. “Rive
r be very close,” she whispered. “We follow water in dark time.”
“Tidbit tired,” the boy whined quietly. “I wanna go back to my mama!” He rubbed his eyes and sat down with a thud. “I don’t wanna walk no more!”
Amari knew she had to let him rest. “We stop here,” she said. “Sleep some, for we walk much soon.” She gave him a small piece of meat from Lena’s bundle, and he promptly fell off to sleep, his head resting on Hushpuppy.
The girls could see the river in the distance and smell its earthy, wet shoreline as they hid in the darkness of the trees. Amari could hear laughter of men on boats and slow, sad chants of slaves working in the rice fields nearby, finishing up their labors for the day.
“We got to leave river,” Amari whispered to Polly.
“Why?” Polly asked. “I thought the plan was to follow the river.”
“All rivers run to sea,” Amari explained, remembering what Cato had said. “We gotta go by land.”
“How will we know which way is which?” Polly asked, looking perplexed.
“Moss grow on north side of trees,” Amari explained, trying to remember exactly what Teenie had once told her. “So we follow other side of tree!”
“We can’t see moss at night,” Polly said reasonably.
“Stars lead us,” Amari replied with confidence.
Polly shook her head, but she stopped arguing. The two girls rested their heads gratefully on twin tree trunks, but only for a short time. Amari knew they needed to travel in the safety of darkness. Tidbit fussed when she awakened him, but he soon rubbed his little eyes bravely and marched with them into the darkness without much complaint.
Fireflies blinked in the thick saw grass near the edge of the river. Bullfrogs erupted with tuneless burps. Mosquitoes swarmed in full force, and the three travelers swatted them constantly, their arms and bodies becoming covered with itching bites. A nightingale called far in the distance.
Amari lifted her head to the night sky. Bright stars decorated the darkness above, and she wondered if they were the same stars that had winked at her so far away in her homeland.
33. DEEP IN THE FOREST
MORNING DAWNED SLOWLY, BRIGHTENING THE forest. Amari, unusually weary but not willing to admit it, was glad when Polly suggested they find a thicket of trees to rest in. The girls had taken turns carrying Tidbit during the last hours of the night, and he was much heavier than he looked. Even Hushpuppy seemed tired.
Amari led them to the darkest part of the forest—a place where three huge trees had fallen together, and the hollow beneath them was just big enough for the three tired travelers.
“I hope the foxes or deer that usually rest in this spot won’t be offended,” Polly said gratefully, and she snuggled into the narrow indentation.
“Might come back,” Amari suggested nervously as she nestled in next to Polly.
“Tidbit too tired to care,” he said as he and Hushpuppy squeezed in next to the girls.
As the day grew brighter and warmer, the hidden children tried to sleep, but ants and mosquitoes feasted on their bodies while the growing heat of the day made them damp with sweat. Near nightfall, they shared the last of the corn bread and ventured to the river to gather some water.
“One day free,” Amari announced as she scratched the numerous bites on her body.
“How far freedom be, Amari?” Tidbit asked fretfully.
“Many, many days, little one,” she told him gently.
He squirmed. “What this freedom we runnin’ to, Polly?” he then asked. It was clear to Amari that he didn’t understand such a grown-up concept.
Polly pulled a leaf from an oak tree. “Freedom is a delicate idea, like a pretty leaf in the air: It’s hard to catch and may not be what you thought when you get it,” she observed quietly.
Amari replied with a nod, not exactly understanding what Polly had said but comprehending the idea. It seemed to go over the boy’s head.
Tidbit put his small fists to his eyes. “I just be wantin’ to see my mama,” he said, pulling his dog closer. “I know she be missin’ me right ’bout now.”
“Your mother is very proud of you, Tidbit,” Polly told him. “You don’t want to disappoint her, do you?”
“I don’t care. I wanna go back to my mama’s kitchen!” Tidbit cried loudly. “I be hungry and hot, and I don’t like it here!” He plopped down on the ground.
“Shhh,” Amari said, trying to soothe him. “Gotta stay quiet, little one. You want bad mens to catch us?”
Tidbit, looking miserable, shook his head.
“You gotta protect Hushpuppy,” Polly told him. “Can you do that?”
The boy looked glum, but he stood up, stroked the dog, and scratched his legs.
Polly and Amari looked at Tidbit with concern, but they had no choice but to move on. They covered their tracks with leaves and headed into the darkness once more.
By the fifth day of their journey they were all tired and hungry, and their feet, scratched and swollen, cried out for relief. Occasionally, Amari suffered mild bouts of dizziness, and she had to ask the others to stop so she could clear her head and catch her breath.
“Hunger make me little bit weak,” she said with embarrassment one morning.
“You’re not completely recovered from that beating,” Polly reminded her. “Take your time.”
“No time to go slow,” Amari replied. “Must get far, far away.”
“You be all right, Amari?” Tidbit asked.
“I can still beat you running!” Amari told him with a laugh as she got up to chase him. He giggled and darted off.
Now and then they found nuts and berries in the forest, but hunger lived with them every day. Amari’s mother had taught her a few things about gathering food, and Amari wished she had listened better. But she had listened to Teenie, and one evening she left Polly and Tidbit for an hour and brought back a pouch full of nuts and berries that she had gathered—walnuts, pecans, and boysenberries—as well as roots and herbs she had dug. “Good to eat. Give us strength,” she told the others.
“How do you know which roots to pick, which herbs are safe?” Polly asked as she nibbled on the fruit of a mayapple, which looked a little like a lime. “I remember seeing these bloom in the spring back in Beaufort. But I don’t recall ever eating one.”
“My mother teach me,” Amari replied simply, “and Teenie, too. But I not sure about plants grow here. Some I never see before.” Amari picked those plants she recognized and others that just looked tasty, but she was very aware that some berries, like the ones Teenie kept hidden in her garden, could be lovely to look at but very dangerous to eat.
“This one taste funny,” Tidbit commented, but he ate the mayapple hungrily. When he was done, he asked, “Why you not bring more?”
“Never take all,” Amari explained. “You dig one plant, leave two plant; dig one, leave two. So plant come back next season. And ask plant permission.”
“Ask permission?” Polly asked. “Why?”
Amari wondered how she could explain the need to work in harmony with the natural world. She tried to find the words. “Plant die. People live. Hunter ask animal before kill it. Then give thanks. Animal die so village live.”
“So it is like showing respect for nature?” Polly asked, a look of approval and understanding on her face.
Amari nodded.
“I still hungry!” Tidbit exclaimed softly, pulling on Polly’s arm.
“We’ll find some good food soon,” Polly told him. “Maybe beyond those next trees on that hill,” she said, vaguely pointing to some trees in the distance.
He looked in that direction, but he clearly did not believe her. He whimpered and dragged the rest of the night, often having to be carried. Amari’s arms ached from carrying him.
A couple of hours later Tidbit said, “I don’t feel so good.” He bent over and held his stomach, then ran off behind a tree.
Amari, who also had been feeling quite nauseous, looked at Polly. “You f
eel sick too?”
At that moment Polly doubled over and ran to find another tree.
Amari threw up. Even though she felt hot, when she touched her face it felt clammy and damp. She made her way to a pile of soft branches and lay there, her stomach cramping terribly. Tidbit came back and lay down near her. “I sick, Amari.” She rubbed his little stomach; it felt tight and hard against her hand.
Polly took in deep breaths and asked heatedly, “What did we eat that made us sick? I thought you Africans knew all about plants and herbs!”
Amari tried to think, but her head was spinning. She felt terrible that she had made them all sick, but Polly’s accusations made her angry. She certainly had not made any efforts to find food. Amari opened her mouth to retort but grabbed her stomach in pain instead. “I so sorry. I not sure—I bring back many kinds.” She was going to apologize again, but she had to run to another tree to throw up once more.
The three of them spent a day and a night in that area, trying to regain their strength after numerous bouts of diarrhea and vomiting. Tidbit didn’t seem to blame Amari, but Polly remained furious. “It’s bad enough I’m lost in the forest with a couple of runaway slaves!” she told Amari. “But now you go and nearly kill us!”
In spite of her weakness, Amari tensed with anger. “I knows you ain’t no slave. You free, Polly,” Amari told her coolly. “Free to leave us when you wants to. Free to go back to Massa Derby. He say he sell you to be whore,” she added sharply. She turned away from Polly.
Polly hung her head. “We’re in this together, Amari,” she answered softly.
Amari knew it was hunger, illness, and fatigue that made Polly so upset, but she also knew that Polly spoke what was truly on her mind. All of them needed proper food, and soon.
“We gotta eat,” Amari announced later that night. She looked around the forest floor until she found what she needed—a sturdy stick that was pointed at the end and a sharp stone. She slowly sharpened the stick until the point gleamed in the moonlight. “I go to river to find food maybe. You be here when I get back?”