Glory over Everything: Beyond The Kitchen House(107)

A lone owl hooted and wolves howled as though in answer. I grew increasingly anxious as I watched Pete pace the bank. Suddenly, he rushed back to where we waited in the underbrush. “Somethin’ comin’!” he whispered, and through the shadows, as though moving through molasses, a small barge pulled into view. As it moved closer, I could make out a Negro man and a smaller boy moving toward us on the towpath. Each had hold of a long pole secured to the craft and with these they pushed the boat forward.

“Come on, come on!” Pete waved us forward as the barge hit the bank. “Quick, climb up,” he urged as he reached for Kitty.

I hesitated. What if, once I was on the barge, he meant to keep her?

“Jus’ do what I say!” he said, grabbing for Kitty’s basket.

“No!” I argued, until a woman on the barge reached down.

“Gib me the chil’,” she whispered.

I handed Kitty up, and in short order, Pan and I found ourselves on board and standing next to piles of cut wood, melons, and sacks of grain.

“Come, quick, get in here,” the barge man said, standing at the back and tossing away a stack of wood to expose a small trapdoor. He opened it and pointed. “Quick, get in,” he said. Pan leaned on his haunches for a look inside. “Both of us is supposed to fit in there?” Pan asked in a whisper, and the man nodded. The small barge, not more than a large raft, was built so low and loaded so heavily that it was impossible to believe any space could exist underfoot. Yet there it was.

I hesitated, dreading the idea of that small space. I turned and saw Kitty in the woman’s arms, then saw Pete sling up the objecting goat.

“Go on.” The woman waved at me. “Go on. Get in. I got the chil’.”

To my later regret, I did not thank Pete, thinking only how I didn’t want to wedge myself into that narrow dark enclosure. But there was little time as the barge man urged me in. I forced myself to my knees and slid in, then encouraged Pan to wedge himself in beside me. We lay flat on our stomachs in the narrow damp space. “You got to stay quiet!” the barge man warned as he closed the door behind us. Wood clunked as it was tossed to cover over our hideout. Within minutes the raft bumped away from the canal banks and we slid off silently, but for the sound of the canal water rippling under us.





CHAPTER FORTY-THREE


1830


Pan


WHEN WE GO from Willie and Miss Peg’s house, I’m not scared no more because I know my mama’s watching out again.

Miss Peg give us her goat because she’s a good woman, but she don’t like Mr. Burton for being a white man, even after I tell her that his mama was colored. “You sure she colored?” Miss Peg asked.

“I’m not sure of nothing no more,” I say.

“Why not?”

“?’Cause after my mama die, she say she was gonna look out for me. Then I got took for a slave. Where was she then?”

“How’d you get took?” Miss Peg asked.

“I snuck down to the docks, where I wasn’t supposed to go.”

“Huh! How you expec’ your mama to look out for you when you act the fool?” she asked.

I never look at it that way before, so that night, when Mr. Burton’s sleeping, I talk with my mama. “You take care of Kitty and me and Mr. Burton, and I don’t ever act the fool again.” Then I go to sleep, ’cause now I know she’s looking out for me.


MR. BURTON AND me is squished tight in the bottom of this boat. I see Mr. Burton’s scared and that he don’t like this no better than me, but I’m glad I’m not on my own like I was under that wagon seat. I’m just hopin’ Mr. Burton keeps hisself settled. I never seen nothing like it when Kitty was comin’ and he took off runnin’. I always thought Mr. Burton was something like God—that big a man. But then he goes off, leavin’ Sukey and me. I’d of expected something like that from my daddy, but I was wrong about that, too. Turns out, afraid as my daddy was for getting took again, he come down into slave country looking for me. I’d never guessed he’d a done that. He musta cared for me that much. Makes my throat hurt to think about it.

My daddy was right. There’s nothing worse than being a slave. I can’t stop wonderin’ what’s going to happen to other boys like me now that Sukey is gone. Who’s gonna help them get outta there?

Feels like this boat is movin’ through the water at a fast clip. All I can think is that I don’t know how to swim if it gets a leak. I can’t talk to Mr. Burton ’cause we was told to stay quiet, so I close my eyes and try to think of something else. I don’t want to remember Southwood and what it’s like to be a slave there, so I think about Miss Peg and how I told her that I would draw her some pictures. She told me that she and Willie help out other runners all the time, but always Negroes. She don’t take to Mr. Burton. “He act too white for me,” she said.

But I say to her, “If I was white like him, I’d be actin’ white, too.”

“Why?” she said.

“For one thing, they don’t take no white boys and sell them for slaves,” I said. She give me one of her looks but don’t say nothing.

“For another, white people don’t have to be scared, like my daddy always was, always looking over his shoulder.”