Glory over Everything: Beyond The Kitchen House(105)

“Peg! Come!” Willie waved her over. The old woman hesitated until she saw Pan. Then she set aside the basket she was weaving and came forward.

“Please! She needs milk,” I said, holding Kitty out. My heart sank when the baby’s little arms flopped down.

“Do you have some milk?” Pan pleaded. The woman leaned forward for a better look, then abruptly went for a bucket that hung from the side of the hut. In a few minutes, Kitty was slurping warm goat’s milk through a small piece of swamp reed.

“Can’t she have more?” I asked when the feeding stopped.

“Fir’s we got to see if she can hold it down,” Willie said to me.

“Like he know what he talkin’ bout,” Peg mumbled to herself. “Give me that chil’.” She snatched Kitty from my arms. “Give the boy somethin’ to eat,” she directed Willie, her deep, gravelly voice all the more surprising because of her tiny frame.

“Can Mr. Burton have something to eat, too?” Pan asked, and the woman gave me a dark look before she walked away.

I was concerned for Kitty, but Willie waved me forward. “She take care a that baby. She jus’ don’ like to see no white man here. Come.” He led us over to a fire pit. From a large black pot, he ladled out simmering stew into bowl-sized turtle shells, then handed us each a rough wooden spoon. Pan looked as though he might weep at the sight of the nourishing stew, and we both ate with relish while Willie disappeared into the hut. When Pan went into the woods to relieve himself, I sat back against a tree and closed my eyes in momentary contentment.

Suddenly, I was thrown to the ground. Though it was futile, I fought a ferocious-looking Negro, one who was twice my size. When he flipped me around to face him, his long tangled hair fell forward into his unshaven face but didn’t conceal the hatred in his dark eyes. Willie and Peg, with Kitty in her arms, rushed from the house. “Pete!” Willie called. “Let him go!”

“What this white man doin’ here, Willie?” the large man shouted.

“He lost, but he got two little niggas with him,” Willie said.

“Oh, he gon’ be lost, all right,” Pete replied with a harsh laugh.

I groaned when his knee dug into my stomach. A knife pricked my neck, and I closed my eyes. Let it happen fast, I prayed.

“Let him go!” Pan flew out from the trees to strike at the large man’s back. Pete caught Pan with his elbow and sent the boy flying while he twisted what was left of my shirt and pulled me to my feet.

“What you doin’ out here?” he asked, pinning me against a tree.

I spat dirt from my mouth. “I’m trying to get up north! We came from a place south of here. There are patrollers after us.”

“South a here? You talkin’ ’bout Southwood?” Pete asked, and I nodded. “You hear that, Willie? He say he comin’ up from Southwood!” I had long since lost my eye patch, and Pete studied my useless clouded eye. “So you that one-eyed man they sayin’ is black! There men all over the canal lookin’ for you. They give big money for you. Where’s the gal you was runnin’ with? Name a Sukey?”

“She died,” I said.

Pan pointed to Kitty in Peg’s arms. “That’s her baby.”

“And who’s you?” Pete asked.

“I got took for a slave,” Pan said, “and Mr. Burton is taking me home.”

Pete turned back to me. “You say Sukey, the one who run that sickhouse, she die, and that’s her baby?”

“Yes,” I said, unexpectedly hopeful. “There’s a man who lived somewhere close to this swamp who went by the name of Doc McDougal.”

“Ol’ Doc. Yeah, we know a him, don’t we, Willie?”

Willie nodded.

“He has a friend, Mr. Spencer,” I added. “If you can get word to Mr. Spencer of our whereabouts, I’m sure he could help us out.”

“How you think anybody gonna get you outta here? They huntin’ you like a dog,” Pete said.

“Look,” I said, pleading now, “I came down here to find the boy. He was stolen from Philadelphia.”

Pete grunted, then he and Willie exchanged a furtive glance.

“Please,” I begged, “I need your help.”

“We’ll see” was Pete’s answer.





CHAPTER FORTY-TWO


1830


James


DURING THAT FIRST week, as Kitty adjusted to the goat’s milk, Pan and I grew stronger from the hearty stews cooked by Peg. The woman liked no one and especially disliked me, but Pan trailed her as a boy might a mother. Soon she was favoring him and even taught him to milk her beloved pet goat, the only living creature she seemed to care about.

Willie usually left early in the morning to hunt or forage for food. Though Pete left each day as well, he was more secretive about his doings.

One evening, after we had all eaten our fill of a roasted wild pig, Peg divided the remainder of the meat into two wooden buckets before Pete and Willie carried them out into the night. “There’s others needin’ food” was Peg’s explanation to Pan, and later that night Pan told me more: “She say there’s others who live out here. They was all slaves, just like Peg and Willie, and they all been here for a long time. She say this is their home now.”