“None,” Caesar said. His voice did not waver, to fortify Cora as much as himself. He told her that Fletcher had made contact with one slave previous but the man never made it to the rendezvous. Next week the newspaper reported the man’s capture and described the nature of his punishment.
“How we know he ain’t tricking us?”
“He is not.” Caesar had thought it out already. Just talking to Fletcher in his shop provided enough grounds to string him up. No need for elaborate schemes. Caesar and Cora listened to the insects as the enormity of their plan moved over them.
“He’ll help us,” Cora said. “He has to.”
Caesar took her hands in his and then the gesture discomfited him. He let go. “Tomorrow night,” he said.
Her final night in the quarters was sleepless, even though she needed her strength. The other Hob women dozed beside her in the loft. She listened to their breathing: That is Nag; that is Rida with her one ragged exhalation every other minute. This time tomorrow she would be loose in the night. Is this what her mother felt when she decided? Cora’s image of her was remote. What she remembered most was her sadness. Her mother was a Hob woman before there was a Hob. With the same reluctance to mix, the burden that bent her at all times and set her apart. Cora couldn’t put her together in her mind. Who was she? Where was she now? Why had she left her? Without a special kiss to say, When you remember this moment later you will understand that I was saying goodbye even if you did not know it.
Cora’s last day in the field she furiously hacked into the earth as if digging a tunnel. Through it and beyond is your salvation.
She said goodbye without saying goodbye. The previous day she sat with Lovey after supper and they talked in a way they hadn’t since Jockey’s birthday. Cora tried to slide in gentle words about her friend, a gift that she could hold later. Of course you did that for her, you are a kind person. Of course Major likes you, he can see what I see in you.
Cora saved her last meal for the Hob women. It was rare for them to spend their free hours together but she rounded them up from their preoccupations. What would become of them? They were exiles, but Hob provided a type of protection once they settled in. By playing up their strangeness, the way a slave simpered and acted childlike to escape a beating, they evaded the entanglements of the quarter. The walls of Hob made a fortress some nights, rescuing them from the feuds and conspiracies. White men eat you up, but sometimes colored folk eat you up, too.
She left a pile of her things by the door: a comb, a square of polished silver that Ajarry had scrounged years ago, the pile of blue stones that Nag called her “Indian rocks.” Her farewell.
She took her hatchet. She took flint and tinder. And like her mother she dug up her yams. The next night someone will have claimed the plot, she thought, turned the dirt over. Put a fence around it for chickens. A doghouse. Or maybe she will keep it a garden. An anchor in the vicious waters of the plantation to prevent her from being carried away. Until she chose to be carried away.
They met by the cotton after the village quieted down. Caesar made a quizzical expression at her bulging sack of yams but didn’t speak. They moved through the tall plants, so knotted up inside that they forgot to run until they were halfway through. Their speed made them giddy. The impossibility of it. Their fear called after them even if no one else did. They had six hours until their disappearance was discovered and another one or two before the posses reached where they were now. But fear was already in pursuit, as it had been every day on the plantation, and it matched their pace.
They crossed the meadow whose soil was too thin for planting and entered the swamp. It had been years since Cora had played in the black water with the other pickaninnies, scaring each other with tales of bears and hidden gators and fast-swimming water moccasins. Men hunted otter and beaver in the swamp and the moss sellers scavenged from the trees, tracking far but never too far, yanked back to the plantation by invisible chains. Caesar had accompanied some of the trappers on their fishing and hunting expeditions for months now, learning how to step in the peat and silt, where to stick close to the reeds, and how to find the islands of sure ground. He probed the murk before them with his walking stick. The plan was to shoot west until they hit a string of islands a trapper had shown him, and then bow northeast until the swamp dried up. The precious firm footing made it the fastest route north, despite the diversion.
They had made it only a small ways in when they heard the voice and stopped. Cora looked at Caesar for a cue. He held his hands out and listened. It was not an angry voice. Or a man’s voice.
Caesar shook his head when he realized the identity of the culprit. “Lovey—shush!”
Lovey had enough sense to be quiet once she got a bead on them. “I knew you were up to something,” she whispered when she caught up. “Sneaking around with him but not talking about it. And then you dig up them yams not even ripe yet!” She had cinched some old fabric to make a bag that she slung over her shoulder.
“You get on back before you ruin us,” Caesar said.
“I’m going where you going,” Lovey said.
Cora frowned. If they sent Lovey back, the girl might be caught sneaking into her cabin. Lovey was not one to keep her tongue still. No more head start. She didn’t want to be responsible for the girl, but couldn’t figure it.
“He’s not going to take three of us,” Caesar said.
“He know I’m coming?” Cora asked.
He shook his head.
“Then two surprises as good as one,” she said. She lifted her sack. “We got enough food, anyway.”
He had all night to get used to the idea. It would be a long time before they slept. Eventually Lovey stopped crying out at every sudden noise from the night creatures, or when she stepped too deep and the water surged to her waist. Cora was acquainted with this squeamish quality of Lovey’s, but she did not recognize the other side of her friend, whatever had overtaken the girl and made her run. But every slave thinks about it. In the morning and in the afternoon and in the night. Dreaming of it. Every dream a dream of escape even when it didn’t look like it. When it was a dream of new shoes. The opportunity stepped up and Lovey availed herself, heedless of the whip.
The three of them wended west, tromping through the black water. Cora couldn’t have led them. She didn’t know how Caesar did it. But he was ever surprising her. Of course he had a map in his head and could read stars as well as letters.
Lovey’s sighs and curses when she needed a rest saved Cora from asking. When they demanded to look in her tow sack, it contained nothing practical, only odd tokens she had collected, like a small wooden duck and a blue glass bottle. As for his own practicality, Caesar was a capable navigator when it came to finding islands. Whether or not he kept to his route, Cora couldn’t tell. They started tracking northeast and by the time it got light they were out of the swamp. “They know,” Lovey said when the orange sun broke in the west. The trio took another rest and cut a yam into slices. The mosquitoes and blackflies persecuted them. In the daylight they were a mess, splashed up to their necks in mud, covered in burrs and tendrils. It did not bother Cora. This was the farthest she had ever been from home. Even if she were dragged away at this moment and put in chains, she would still have these miles.
Caesar tossed his walking stick to the ground and they took off again. The next time they stopped, he told them that he had to go find the county road. He promised to return soon, but he needed to take measure of their progress. Lovey had the sense not to ask what happened if he didn’t return. To reassure them, he left his sack and waterskin next to a cypress. Or to help them if he did not.
“I knew it,” Lovey said, still wanting to pick at it despite her exhaustion. The girls sat against the trees, grateful for solid, dry dirt.
Cora filled her in on what there was left to tell, going back to Jockey’s birthday.
“I knew it,” Lovey repeated.