them, an invitation to leverage. Give them a calf and they demand the herd. I thought for a moment of leaving them right there. But this was a matter for those more senior than I. So I said nothing and led them back into the forest to the small area where Hawkins and Bland were waiting.
“Who the hell is she?” said Hawkins.
“She with me,” said Johns.
“Hell are you saying?” said Hawkins. “We had arrangements for one cargo, now you trying to dump more?”
“It’s my daughter, Lucy,” he said.
“Don’t care if it’s your momma,” said Hawkins. “You know the plan. What the hell are you doing?”
“I ain’t leaving without her,” said Johns.
“It’s all right,” said Bland. “It’s all right.” Hawkins and Bland were friends. I knew this because Hawkins could make Bland laugh, not just giggle but uproariously laugh, and Micajah Bland did not much laugh.
Hawkins shook his head, frustrated. Then he looked at Johns and said, “If we get even a sniff of Ryland, I am dropping you both. You got it? We know the way North. You don’t. If I get a hint of anything strange, we will drop you here and leave you for the hounds.”
But there wasn’t anything strange—or at least not in the way Hawkins suspected. We kept a good pace for the rest of the night and had made some good distance by daybreak. Hawkins and Bland had scouted the land well. They found a cave for a mid-point rest and we arrived there just as the sun came up over the hills. We took turns sleeping and keeping guard over our cargo. Contrary to what Hawkins said, we could not leave them. We could not risk any word getting out about our methods. If they became too much of a load, I feared what might be done.
We took three-hour shifts. I took the last one—late in the afternoon until nightfall. Everybody was asleep except for me and Lucy, who was having trouble adjusting to the time of things. I watched Lucy step out of the cave and into the open air. I did not stop her but followed just behind. She was not Johns’s daughter, that I could tell. They shared not a single feature. He was high yellow and she was dark as Africa itself. But more than that, it was in the way they walked, held hands, and whispered to each other.
“I don’t know why he lied,” she said.
“Nervous,” I said. We were just outside the cave. I was seated on a stump behind her. She was watching the sun as it began to bed down in the west.
“He didn’t want to do it,” Lucy said. “Don’t blame him. It was all me. You know he got a family, right? A real family—woman at the other place, two daughters.”
I don’t know what it is about me that made people want to unburden themselves. But I knew from her mention of Parnel Johns’s family where we were going. And so we went.
“Master Heath, who own us, used to have this young wife,” she said. “She was cruel as all hell. I know, I was her serving girl. She was the type to take the whip to you ’cause it rained too hard or the milk was too warm. She was as pretty as she was mean, and all the men in town knew. Master Heath held her tight for fear of losing her. He was the jealous kind. Well, one day that young wife took to religion. Wasn’t sincere for what I could tell, but it was a way to see some of the world.
“She got friendly with this old pastor, who’d come around every day and minister the good word. And it got real clear to me—though not to Master Heath—that he was ministering more than that.”
Here Lucy laughed at her own insinuation and then turned to me to see if I had caught on, and though I had, there was no real register in me and this somehow made her laugh even more. And then she said, “You know they left one day? Just up and ran out. Picked up and, I’m guessing, started all anew. I hated that girl, and in some just other life, I do declare, I will be holding the whip and she’ll be underneath. But I could still see the beauty in it, you know?
“We talked about it,” she said. “Dreamt about it—dreamt about it all the time. It was powerful, I tell you.