But we knew it could never be us. We was tasking folk.”
Now she turned back away, and I heard her crying a bit.
“And then it happened,” she said. “Listen, I look young, but I ain’t so young. I been left by a man before. I know what it look like. I know that face. And he came to me with that face, and before he said a word he broke down and cried, because he knew that I knew he was gone. Don’t blame him. He wouldn’t say where. He wouldn’t even say how. Just that come the next morning he’d be gone and he’d being going without me.
“They say Parnel’s a scoundrel, well, so am I. And he is my scoundrel. His crime is he don’t want to live just—and how can a man, when the whole house is wrong? They blame him for what Master Heath do to them. But I blame Master Heath.
“I followed him last night. Caught him out in the trail, some time fore he got to you. And I told him, he either take me or I was gonna go back and tell em he was running. I never would have done it. Ain’t built that way but…I tell you this to say, it was me. He was too weak to leave me.”
“Don’t make it right,” I said.
“The hell I care about right?” she said. “Hell I care about you or your men? You know what they did to us back there. You done forgot? You don’t remember what they do to the girls down here? And once they do it, they got you. They catch you with the babies, tie you to the place by your own blood and all, until you got too much to let go of to go. Well, I got as much right to run as Parnel. Much right as you or anyone.”
Lucy was no longer crying now. Unburdened, she walked back to the cave, where the rest were beginning to rise. Hawkins gave me a wary a look. I saw him but paid no heed. I focused on Lucy, who had by then walked over to a smiling Parnel Johns and laughingly embraced him.
We made good time that night. By midnight the moon was high, and I could see the mountains in the distance. And I knew then that we were near Bryceton. We kept going right past it. An hour or two later we found ourselves at a small cabin. Smoke rose from the chimney and fire-light flickered in the window.
Hawkins whistled. He waited, then he whistled again. Waited. Then whistled one last time. The fire went out inside. We waited a few minutes longer. Then we followed Hawkins around to the back. A door opened and out came an old white woman. She walked over to us and said, “The two-fifty been late all week.”
Hawkins said, “No. I believe the schedule changed.”
At that the woman said, “You said it was only one of them.”
“Sure did,” said Hawkins. “Not my notion. You do with ’em what you will.”
She studied the group for a second and said, “All right, y’all get in here quick.”
We walked inside and we helped this old woman start up the fire again. Hawkins stepped outside with her. They talked for a few minutes and then returned. Hawkins said, “I reckon it’s time for us to make our way home.”
Micajah Bland turned to Parnel Johns. I could see the tenderness of his face against the fire-light. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll be fine.”
Johns nodded. And then as we walked out he said, “When we safe, can I send word to my daddy?”
Hawkins laughed to himself and turned back. “You most certainly can,” he said. “But if the Underground find out, it’ll be the last word you ever speak.”
* * *
—
With this now done, and with my actions against Georgie Parks, it was felt by Corrine and by others that it was time for me to see more of the Underground’s work, to journey out of the country of slavery and into the North. Philadelphia would be my new home.
I was given a few days’ notice, and was lucky to have even that. The Underground would give me no chance to reconsider, for though we all dreamed of going north, all sorts of fears might overrun a man when the dream descended into the real. There is always a part of us that does not want to win, wants to stay down