The Underground Railroad(16)

They had made it only a small ways in when they heard the voice and stopped. Cora looked at Caesar for a cue. He held his hands out and listened. It was not an angry voice. Or a man’s voice.

Caesar shook his head when he realized the identity of the culprit. “Lovey—shush!”

Lovey had enough sense to be quiet once she got a bead on them. “I knew you were up to something,” she whispered when she caught up. “Sneaking around with him but not talking about it. And then you dig up them yams not even ripe yet!” She had cinched some old fabric to make a bag that she slung over her shoulder.

“You get on back before you ruin us,” Caesar said.

“I’m going where you going,” Lovey said.

Cora frowned. If they sent Lovey back, the girl might be caught sneaking into her cabin. Lovey was not one to keep her tongue still. No more head start. She didn’t want to be responsible for the girl, but couldn’t figure it.

“He’s not going to take three of us,” Caesar said.

“He know I’m coming?” Cora asked.

He shook his head.

“Then two surprises as good as one,” she said. She lifted her sack. “We got enough food, anyway.”

He had all night to get used to the idea. It would be a long time before they slept. Eventually Lovey stopped crying out at every sudden noise from the night creatures, or when she stepped too deep and the water surged to her waist. Cora was acquainted with this squeamish quality of Lovey’s, but she did not recognize the other side of her friend, whatever had overtaken the girl and made her run. But every slave thinks about it. In the morning and in the afternoon and in the night. Dreaming of it. Every dream a dream of escape even when it didn’t look like it. When it was a dream of new shoes. The opportunity stepped up and Lovey availed herself, heedless of the whip.

The three of them wended west, tromping through the black water. Cora couldn’t have led them. She didn’t know how Caesar did it. But he was ever surprising her. Of course he had a map in his head and could read stars as well as letters.

Lovey’s sighs and curses when she needed a rest saved Cora from asking. When they demanded to look in her tow sack, it contained nothing practical, only odd tokens she had collected, like a small wooden duck and a blue glass bottle. As for his own practicality, Caesar was a capable navigator when it came to finding islands. Whether or not he kept to his route, Cora couldn’t tell. They started tracking northeast and by the time it got light they were out of the swamp. “They know,” Lovey said when the orange sun broke in the west. The trio took another rest and cut a yam into slices. The mosquitoes and blackflies persecuted them. In the daylight they were a mess, splashed up to their necks in mud, covered in burrs and tendrils. It did not bother Cora. This was the farthest she had ever been from home. Even if she were dragged away at this moment and put in chains, she would still have these miles.

Caesar tossed his walking stick to the ground and they took off again. The next time they stopped, he told them that he had to go find the county road. He promised to return soon, but he needed to take measure of their progress. Lovey had the sense not to ask what happened if he didn’t return. To reassure them, he left his sack and waterskin next to a cypress. Or to help them if he did not.

“I knew it,” Lovey said, still wanting to pick at it despite her exhaustion. The girls sat against the trees, grateful for solid, dry dirt.

Cora filled her in on what there was left to tell, going back to Jockey’s birthday.

“I knew it,” Lovey repeated.

“He thinks I’m good luck, because my mother was the only one.”

“You want luck, cut off a rabbit foot,” Lovey said.

“What your mother gonna do?” Cora asked.

Lovey and her mother arrived on Randall when she was five years old. Her previous master didn’t believe in clothing pickaninnies so it was the first time she had something on her back. Her mother, Jeer, had been born in Africa and loved to tell her daughter and her friends stories of her childhood in a small village by a river and all the animals who lived nearby. Picking broke her body. Her joints were swollen and stiff, making her crooked, and it anguished her to walk. When Jeer could no longer work she looked after babies when their mothers were in the fields. Despite her torments, she was always tender to her girl, even if her big toothless smile fell like an ax the moment Lovey turned away.

“Be proud of me,” Lovey answered. She lay down and turned her back.

Caesar appeared sooner than they expected. They were too close to the road, he said, but had made good time. Now their party had to press on, get as far as they could before the riders set out. The horsemen would wipe out their lead in short order.

“When we going to sleep?” Cora asked.

“Let’s get away from the road and then we see,” Caesar said. From his comportment, he was spent, too.

They set their bags down not long after. When Caesar woke Cora, the sun was getting down. She had not stirred once, even with her body draped awkwardly over the roots of an old oak. Lovey was already awake. They reached the clearing when it was almost dark, a cornfield behind a private farm. The owners were home and busied themselves in their chores, chasing each other in and out of the small cottage. The fugitives withdrew and waited until the family put out their lamps. From here until Fletcher’s farm the most direct route was through people’s land, but it was too dangerous. They stayed in the forest, looping around.