Glory over Everything: Beyond The Kitchen House(3)

When Henry turned away, I reached down to feel the padded interior of my jacket where the jewelry had been sewn in. I sighed when I felt all the bumps and bulges, then I fingered the pockets, and when I felt my sketchpad and my small silver knife, I closed my eyes in relief.

“Here, it bes’ you drink this down,” he said, returning to me with a mug.

He was on his knees beside me, and when he handed me the drink, both he and the water smelled of the earth. I drank deeply.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Why are you helping me?”

“Somebody help me out when I was runnin’, like you,” he said, while looking me over. “You got a bad eye, or do it come from the beatin’ you took?”

I touched my useless left eye instinctively. “I was born with it.”

Henry gave a nod.

“How long have I been here?” I asked.

“You bin here four nights,” he said.

When he went for more water, I looked out on the dark night through the open door, then listened to the night sounds. They were not what I had imagined I would hear in a city. “Where are we?” I asked.

“We outside Phil’delphia,” he said. “Far ’nough away that nobody comes out, but close ’nough that I get to my work.”

What did this man intend for me? Had he already turned me in?

“What are you doing out here?” I asked. “Why don’t you live in the city?”

“How ’bout you tell Henry more ’bout you?” he said, but I closed my eyes at the thought, and before long, I fell asleep.


THE NEXT EVENING I awoke to the aroma of a roasting fowl. Outdoors, I found Henry leaning over a fire and rotating our meal on a makeshift spit. When he glanced over and noticed me, he spoke. “You feelin’ better?” he asked.

I nodded and tested myself by moving about. Though my arms and legs felt weak, my head did not throb as sharply as it had before.

Henry lifted a stick and poked it twice into the hot coals. When he raised it, the spear held two crusty roasted potatoes. He set each one in a wooden bowl, then removed the perfectly browned chicken from its spit onto a slab of wood.

“Sit,” he said, waving me over with a dangerous-looking knife. Driven by my newly awakened hunger, I overcame my wariness and sat down across from him, watching as he used the knife to split the chicken in two. After he placed half a fowl in each bowl, he handed one to me, then set the large knife down on a flat rock between the two of us, putting it easily within my reach. The gesture gave me some relief, for I hoped it meant that he did not see me as a threat.

Then I could wait no longer. I used my teeth to tear the tender meat from the bone, slurping and sucking the juice off my fingers. The potato crunched, then steamed when I bit into it, and I sputtered an oath when I burnt my mouth, causing Henry to laugh, a solid sound that came from deep within.

“Boy, you somethin’ to see when you eatin’,” he said, shaking his head.

As my stomach filled, my worry about trusting this man was slowly replaced with curiosity. Although of average height, he was powerfully built across the shoulders. I guessed him to be close to thirty-five or forty years of age. His hair grew out wild from his head, and his skin color was of the darkest I had ever seen. He was a fierce-looking man, and under ordinary circumstances I would have given him a wide berth.

When he speared another potato and handed it to me, I noted he was missing a thumb. He saw me looking and held up both his opened hands, wiggling stubs where his two thumbs once were. “They take ’em before I run.”

“Who did?” I asked, though I wasn’t certain I wanted the answer.

“The masta, down Lou’siana,” Henry said. He looked out into the dark, and speaking in a removed voice, he told me about himself.

Born into slavery, he had grown up with his mother and younger brother on a large cotton plantation. The master was brutal in his handling of his slaves, and when he learned that Henry was involved in planning a revolt, he punished Henry by cutting off his thumbs and forcing him to witness his mother’s flogging. She died as result, and that was when Henry and his brother decided to make their escape. “We out by two days when he get shot down. Nothin’ for me to do but run.” He shook his head.

Somehow Henry eluded his pursuers, and after months of indescribable trials, he found himself in Philadelphia. Now, though free for two years, he remained on constant alert.

“If that masta get ahold a me, he finish me off. That’s why I stay hid. Every day I’s lookin’ out. I ain’t never goin’ back to bein’ a slave. They got to kill me first!” He sat quiet, as though exhausted from telling his story. Finally, he roused himself. “And what ’bout you?” he asked.

I was startled by his direct question. I had not expected to have him share his past so openly, and now he wanted the same from me. But how far could I trust him? Negroes were liars and thieves and always ready to take advantage of a white man. Yet so far, this one had only helped me. Dare I tell him how alone I was? Was it safe to tell him that when I fled my home, I left behind everyone and everything I cared about, knowing that I could never return?

“I knows you runnin’ like me. Why you got to get away, it don’ matter none to me.”

“I shot my father,” I said quietly, hoping that he heard me, for I did not want to repeat those words.