Corporal Salvador saluted the small group of travelers and told them gently, “Buena suerte—good luck, my children. Vaya con Dios—may you go with God.” With that, he disappeared back off the road and in the direction of his camp.
“It be real!” Amari said with excitement in her voice. “We must hurry.”
“No streets of gold, however,” Polly warned. “Not that I believed Cato, anyway.”
“Streets of free,” Amari whispered. “Much more better.” She was grinning.
PART ELEVEN
AMARI
39. CROSSING THE RIVER
THE NEXT MORNING BROUGHT THE SUN, brightly illuminating not only the road, but also Amari’s spirits. She could barely contain her nervous anticipation, with images of neatly cobbled streets surrounded by safe stone walls dancing in her head.
“We must be very close to the river,” Polly surmised. “I can’t wait! Do you think we dare to travel during the day?”
“Yes, we find it now,” Amari said as she stretched her arms up to the sun. They hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning, and she felt drained and shaky. And in spite of her determination and excitement at being so close to their destination, she couldn’t erase the reality that for now the three of them were hungry and thoroughly exhausted. She stumbled as she tried to walk a few paces, then she sat back down on the side of the road.
“Are you are all right, Amari?” Polly asked with concern. “Get back up on the wagon.”
“Just tired,” Amari replied, but she climbed up without protest, holding on to Polly’s hand for support.
“We gotta find something to eat!” Tidbit reminded them.
Amari rummaged in the wagon to see if any food remained. She found one small pouch full of berries. She gave them all to Tidbit. So, when they came across a grove of wild apple trees, Amari could hardly keep herself from shouting with joy. All of them—even Hushpuppy—filled up on the sweet fruit as they crouched as far from the road as they could.
That evening they finally reached the banks of the St. Marys River. It lay dark and smooth ahead of them. The moon shone brightly, illuminating the scene. Cypress trees decorated the edges, their branches and roots leaning over as though welcoming them. Amari thrilled at the sight; it hardly seemed possible that they could be so close to freedom.
Tidbit looked at the river fearfully. “I scared of gators, Amari,” he said, pulling away. “This water be real deep.”
“You got good reason,” Amari replied, remembering that awful day. “But I take care of you.”
“I don’t see any alligators,” Polly said, “but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. Lots of snapping turtles, though. Look!” She pointed to the gray-black rocklike creatures that moved lazily in the sandy mud on the bank of the river.
“Too far to swim,” Amari admitted.
“It’s very wide,” Polly agreed. “How will we cross it?”
Amari replied, “We come too far to stop now.” She could see flickering lights in the distance, indicating settlements or garrisons of soldiers or, maybe, Fort Mose. Her heartbeat quickened.
“We need a boat,” Polly replied.
The horse, which had been eating the soft greens that grew by the riverside, whinnied softly. He shook his thick mane and ventured into the shallows to drink.
“Can horse swim?” Amari asked with sudden inspiration.
Polly looked dubious. “Sure, but the river looks awfully wide.”
“Maybe we just wish we be across,” Amari countered. “We gotta try.” She unharnessed the horse from the wagon.
“We gonna ride across the river on back of Brownie?” Tidbit asked, jumping up and down.
“Suppose we fall off?” Polly wanted to know.
“S’pose gator get me?” Tidbit added.
Amari took a deep breath. “We not gonna give up now,” she said. She patted Brownie on his neck, grabbed his mane, and pulled herself slowly to his back. The horse didn’t seem to mind.
So Amari then pulled Polly up, who reached down for Tidbit. Polly placed Tidbit snugly between them, hugging him tightly. Even though Amari had never ridden a horse before, she found she was not afraid. Slowly, she nudged the horse to the water’s edge, all the while watching for alligators or other predators.
The horse clearly loved being in the water. He pulled with all of his might to get free of the shallows, then he seemed to relax as the water became deep enough for him to swim. Hushpuppy swam deftly beside them.
Amari noticed the horse was moving his legs as if he were galloping, heading confidently to the other side of the river. The three riders were wet up to their waists, but the horse was strong and steady, and they did not slip into the water.
“This be fun!” Tidbit cried exultantly as they moved silently on the dark water. He still peered to each side, however, checking for alligators.
Amari held her breath, the excitement almost more than she could bear. Freedom lay on the distant sandy bank of this river. No one spoke. The moon shone brightly, making everything seem to glow.
Hushpuppy reached the shore first and immediately began shaking water off his fur. When the horse pulled the children up onto the sandy beach, Tidbit jumped off right away and cheerfully ran on the wet sand.
Amari jumped off next, hugging Tidbit with joy. “We be free, little one. Free!” She danced around the beach area, swinging Tidbit in the air.
Polly joined in, and Tidbit giggled with glee. Hushpuppy, however, began whimpering. Then he gave a nervous growl.
Amari paused and looked with concern at the dog. Though she couldn’t see what was upsetting Hushpuppy, she instinctively grabbed Tidbit’s hand and led him away from the shore. Amari turned to warn Polly when she saw it. “Look out, Polly!” Amari yelled hoarsely. Polly turned her head. “Gator!”
The alligator, close to ten feet long, moved with unbelievable speed, but Polly was even faster. She shrieked and scrambled away up the riverbank. The sound of the alligator’s jaws snapping together on nothing but air encouraged all three of them to run wildly into the edge of the woods.
Breathing heavily, Polly asked, “Is it gone?”
“It be gone,” Amari said as she looked back to where they had run from and scanned the water’s edge. “Gators not go far from water.”
“I be so scared, I almost pee!” Tidbit admitted.
Safe and feeling truly free, the three travelers sat down on the ground and laughed and laughed and laughed.
40. TIME TO MEET THE FUTURE
THEY SLEPT THE REST OF THAT NIGHT UNDER a tangle of branches that might have been left by a storm. They woke to warblers singing, making melody with a red and black woodpecker that tapped a beat on the trunk of a tree.
Amari stretched, then announced, “Today we go to find Fort Mose. It is time.”
“We gonna find food there?” Tidbit asked, rubbing his tummy.
Polly grinned happily. “I expect so! Time to meet the future,” she said.
“How long this gonna take?” Tidbit asked.
“Not sure,” Amari replied. She knew they were close, but she had no idea whether it would take two days or two weeks to arrive at Fort Mose. Overcome with the enormous thought of finally reaching their destination, Amari felt herself filling up with emotion. She wanted to shout, scream, jump—they had finally arrived!
The three of them climbed back up on the old horse, then headed due south. Amari felt comfortable as the horse ambled slowly through the thick stands of palm trees that shadowed them, for they reminded her of the palm trees in her homeland so far away.
She slid off the horse with Tidbit and walked for a few miles.
“What this place be like, Amari?” Tidbit asked. He alternated between running off to chase the dog and returning to hold her hand.
“Don’t know for sure. People be kind, I hope,” she replied.
“What if they don’t like us?” Tidbit continued as he tossed a stick to Hushpuppy.
“Who not like you?” Amari said to h
im with a laugh. “You be such a clever little boy.”
“Will my mama be there?” Tidbit asked seriously. He had never removed the pouch his mother had placed around his neck.
Amari stopped short. She knelt down on the ground so she was eye to eye with Tidbit. It seemed to Amari that he had grown taller and gained maturity while on this journey. He had seen so much in his few years. “Teenie love you very much, you know that?”
Tidbit nodded, biting his lip.
“She can’t be here with you, but she knows you be safe, and that make her happy.”
“Is she all right?” Tidbit asked.
“Your mama is glad because she know you be full of joy. That make her smile so big, that smile find you here in this far place.” Amari paused, remembering Teenie’s lessons and her sacrifice. “Why you think she give you that piece of kente cloth you wear round your neck?” Amari asked him gently.
“So she always be with me,” the boy replied. He had begun to tremble.
“What did your mama keep a-tellin’ you while you be with her?”
“She tell me stories about Africa and about her own mother, and she tell me, ‘Long as you remember, ain’t nothin’ really gone.’”
Amari, blinking away tears, hugged him. “You gonna always remember?”
“I ain’t never gonna forget nothin’ she done tell me,” the boy said with great seriousness. He squeezed the leather pouch.
Amari raised Tidbit’s face so he would look around. “She be in every breeze and cloud, every leaf and flower. She smilin’ at you right now.”
Tidbit thought about that. Then he asked her solemnly, “Will you be my mama now, Amari?”
She hugged him tightly. “Oh, yes. Forever I will. You be my little boy. Always.”
“Polly be there always too?”
“Always,” Amari promised again, even though she knew that keeping promises was sometimes impossible in life.
He hugged her back, then asked quietly, “Is I still a slave, Amari?”
Amari looked at the boy with love. “No, Tidbit, you no slave. You free man, just like your mama dream. You never be slave again.”
The boy grinned at that. “You be free too, Amari?”
Amari looked up at the vast, clear sky and exhaled. “Yes, I be free too. Never no slave no more.”
Amari thought back, however, to what Polly had said at the start of this journey: “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.” Amari wondered if this long and arduous journey would bring her the happiness she dreamed of. Maybe this place would turn out to be a terrible disappointment.
That afternoon they finally saw it—the place they had dreamed of for so long. For a moment they could only stop and stare. Fort Mose. Fort Mose. The fort itself was a tiny structure, actually—only about twenty yards square. Surrounded by a wall made of logs covered with earth, it carried no markings to indicate what it was, but Amari knew in an instant that this was the place. Surrounding the walls was a ditch filled with those prickly palmetto palms that had sliced them when they ran from Nathan’s house. Soldiers, both black and white, patrolled outside the wall, and she assumed more stood watch inside in the watchtower, which stood higher than the walls.
Outside the walls of the fort, small houses with roofs of thatch dotted the landscape, huddled close together as if for protection. Small gardens grew near each house.
“It be much smaller place than I thought,” Amari whispered.
“Nathan was right about the streets of mud,” Polly said with a small laugh.
“Freedom not big. Freedom not pretty,” Amari declared. “But freedom sure do feel good.”
41. FORT MOSE
“WHAT WE DO NOW?” TIDBIT ASKED AS THEY peeked at the fort in the distance.
Amari could barely contain her eagerness. “We go in!” she said joyfully.
Tidbit jumped from one foot to the other, and Polly kept covering her mouth to hold back a case of nervous giggles. Then, as if they did this every day, they boldly headed down the road toward the tiny fort. The horse ambled behind them.
Amari grabbed Tidbit by the hand, then reached out to Polly with her other hand. Polly gripped it firmly. The two girls looked at each other and understood all that was not said.
And they began to walk. First slowly. Then faster. Finally, almost trotting in anticipation, they walked down the hill, past the first few houses clustered near the road, and directly to the gate of the fort, about a half mile ahead. One house in particular, a small rounded hut made of rough logs and covered with thatch, stood very close to the road.
“Where y’all goin’?” a woman’s voice called out.
Amari tensed, then stopped. The woman, dressed in a simple green calico dress and a bonnet to match, was standing in front of the house and waving to them. Her skin was dusty brown—the color of earth, Amari thought.
A fire burned in front of her house, and the smell of cooked rabbit filled the air.
“Uh, we be heading to the fort,” Amari replied cautiously. She held Tidbit’s hand tightly, but she released Polly’s. Polly stepped back a little.
“Y’all be hungry?” the woman asked.
“Oh, yes’m,” Amari replied.
Tidbit crept closer to the woman’s woodsy fire. “We be real hungry, ma’am!” They all laughed at that, and the woman motioned for them to sit down. Polly tied the horse to a tree.
“How far y’all come?” the woman asked. She spooned three bowls of steaming food for them—corn pudding and roasted rabbit—acting as if greeting strangers was what she did every morning. Perhaps it was, Amari thought. The woman even tossed a bone to Hushpuppy.
“We come from Charles Town, South Carolina Colony,” Amari admitted quietly.
The woman whistled through her teeth. “That be a far piece,” she said. “You walk all this way, or you come by boat?”
“No boat,” Amari replied, thinking how much quicker and easier their journey might have been if they had had a boat. “We walk.”
“Hard journey?” the woman asked, glancing at their battered feet.
“Yes’m, very hard,” Polly replied.
“Always is,” the woman said with resignation.
“This be Fort Mose?” Amari asked, wanting to be absolutely sure they were in the right place.
“Sure is, chile. Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose.”
“I done dream of this place,” Amari said softly, “for very long time.”
“Dreams disappear when you wake up—ever notice that, chile?” the woman asked as she gave Tidbit more food.
Amari looked up in alarm. “Why you say that?”
“Relax, chile. You safe.” The woman spooned a plate of food for herself. “My name is Inez. I was a slave in Georgia. Me and my man, Jasper, run away last year and come to this place. We figure we done made it to heaven, then the Spanish soldiers took him away.”
“Why?” Amari asked with concern.
“It be like this,” Inez said. “The English soldiers control the colonies. The Spanish ain’t no saints who think everybody ought to be free. They free the slaves because it makes the English soldiers angry and because England be losin’ lotsa money when they lose slaves.”
“I don’t understand,” Polly said, looking confused.
Inez continued. “See, the Spanish own this Florida territory, and it be needin’ protection from the English, who they is always fighting with. So they sometimes make the runaways serve in their army before they be truly free. That’s where my Jasper is—down in Cuba someplace, serving in the Spanish army.”
“But that’s not fair!” Polly exclaimed.
“Everything that done happened to you been fair?” Inez asked her.
“No, ma’am,” Polly answered quietly.
Amari thought about this, then asked, “You free, Inez?”
Inez smiled. “Yes, chile, I got my papers that says I be free. I be free to work hard, f
ree to be hungry, and free to miss my man. But yes, chile, I be free. Now, tell me who you are and who this little one be,” she asked, nodding her head toward Tidbit.
“My name be Amari, and this be Tidbit—he my son now,” Amari said out loud for the first time.
“My real name Timothy,” Tidbit said quietly.
Amari looked at him in surprise.
“Mama name me Timothy,” the boy said, “but I was real little when I was borned, so everybody call me Tidbit. But Mama always told me when I get to be a man, my name be Timothy.”
Amari smiled with pride at the child who would one day be the man named Timothy.
“Well, Mr. Timothy, let me be the first to call you by your free name,” Inez said, lightly pinching the boy on his chin. To Polly she said, “So what be your story, chile?”
Polly shifted her weight and finished what she was chewing. “I’m Polly. I was an indentured girl. I ran off with Amari and Tidbit because . . .” She paused. “It was very bad when we left.” She bowed her head, as if the memory was too much to recite.
“Troubles never be over, chile,” Inez said gently. “But it be good to share them with friends.”
Polly looked up. “We could not have made it without each other,” she acknowledged, smiling at Amari.
Amari returned the smile as she finished eating.
“Food be good thing too!” Tidbit said, interrupting. “More, please?”
As Inez was refilling Tidbit’s bowl, Amari asked, “Who live here in this place?”
“Only about a hundred folk. Mostly runaway slaves who now be free. Some Indians. Some whites—mostly Spanish soldiers. Two priests. Everybody gets along because nobody got much. Everybody know everybody else. Sometimes blacks marry up with Indians, sometimes with whites. It sure ain’t like nothing else, I reckon.”
“Cato be right—little bit,” Amari murmured to Polly.
“A few months back,” Inez told them, “we had ’bout twenty escaped slaves come here from Georgia Colony. Their massa traced ’em here.”
Amari looked up in alarm and thought of Clay. “They had to go back?” she asked. She wondered if Clay could ever, would ever trace them here.