On the journey from my home in southern Virginia, I spoke to no one, mute from fear of discovery. I traveled with two secrets, one as damning as the other. The first was that, just weeks before, I had discovered that I was part Negro, a race I had been taught to loathe. The second was that I had killed my father, for though I was raised by his mother as one of her own, and was as white-skinned as my father, he denied me my birthright and was going to sell me for a slave. Because of his murder, patrollers were searching for me and would hang me if I was found.
I should have felt relief as I boarded each new passenger coach that took me away, but instead I became more fearful. The question of what I was going to do next loomed before me. Where would I go? How would I support myself? In my thirteen years, I had never been away from home. I had been raised as a privileged white child, cared for by servants on an isolated plantation. My doting grandmother, the woman who raised me as her son, had provided me with a fair education, but she had not taught me the fundamental skills of providing for myself. Now she was dead, my home was gone, and I was alone and in great danger.
When I arrived at the tavern outside of Philadelphia, I was so ill, frightened, and travel-worn that I scarcely knew to make my way inside. It wasn’t until the coach horses were led back to the stables that I roused myself enough to walk into the noisy inn and ask for a bed. My head ached so that I was careless and withdrew my full purse. Then, before the transaction could take place, the smoke-filled room began to spin and my stomach heaved.
I just managed to stuff the purse back into my carrying case before I hastily made for the door; once outside, I ran for the back of the stables. There I leaned against the building as my stomach violently emptied. Then, before I could recover, I was struck from behind. I fell forward, though instinct had me clutch my traveling bag to me during the whaling that followed. In the end, the bag was wrestled from me, and with a last oath and some final kicks to my body, the thief was off. I tried to raise myself up to follow the man but, in the effort, lost consciousness.
When I awoke, I was looking into Henry’s dark face. “You got to quiet down,” he said. “You yellin’ too loud.”
Painfully, I raised myself on my elbow to look around. I was on a pallet on the dirt floor of what appeared to be a hut. I attempted to lift myself farther, but my head throbbed so that I lay back down. “How did I get here?” I asked.
“I find you out by the stables,” he said. “Somebody work you over, but look to me like you sick before he got to you.”
“Who are you?” I asked, squeezing my head to stop the throbbing.
“I’s Henry. I work the stables back at the Inn. I’s a runaway, like you.” He stopped, then looked at me to see if I understood what he was trying to say. “I’s a slave, like you,” he said, as though to finalize a pact.
His words struck me like a blow. “I’m no slave!” I protested. “What makes you say that? I’m white!”
He looked at me sideways. “Maybe you is,” he said, “but that not what you say when you outta your head.”
“What did I say?” I struggled again to sit up. “Tell me! What did I say?”
“You say you is runnin’, that somebody comin’ after you.”
Who was this man? Had he already alerted the patrollers? Suddenly I remembered my few belongings. “My traveling bag!” I said.
“?’Fraid they got it,” he said.
“Oh no!” I said, and defeated, I lay back down. There was nothing left! The money, the clothes, all were gone. Then another thought. “My jacket!” I cried out. “Where is my jacket?”
“You mean that coat you’s wearin?” Henry asked. “Even when that fever got you sweatin’ it out, the one thing you don’ let me take off a you is that coat a yours.”
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.