As we traveled, I felt that we were being watched. The night before, wolves had sounded particularly close, and I worried that they were stalking us now. I didn’t allow myself to think of what might happen to Sukey’s body back in the cave.
As before, we fought the endless vegetation, and while Pan kept up the pace, he traveled silently. Alone, I might have despaired, but saving both Kit and Pan gave me purpose, so I plunged ahead, using the moss-covered trees and bits of sunlight for direction. A few hours into our trek, we came to a dry spot where I decided to check on a silent Kitty. I held my breath when I lifted her still body from the basket. “Kit, Kit,” I called, tapping her satin face until she gave a weak cry.
Pan grabbed hold of my arm so abruptly that I almost dropped Kit. “Mr. Burton!” he whispered as a short Negro man stepped out from the trees. “He got a knife!” Pan pointed to the long curved weapon the man carried.
“Don’ mean no harm!” the aged man said, quickly sheathing his weapon and attaching it to the cord that held up what was left of his pants. “I’s Willie,” he said. “Been watchin’ you. What you doin’ with that baby?”
“She needs milk!” I said.
“Come, we get some,” he said, and motioned us forward.
“Let’s go,” I said to Pan.
The old man turned southeast and moved so quickly that had we not been so determined to keep up, we might have lost him. Within a half hour, we arrived at a large island. There, back in the woods set three small huts, similar to those of the quarters on a plantation, but these were built up on stilts. Under the shacks, chickens pecked in the dirt, and a staked goat bleated out a greeting to Willie. An old woman, seated in the doorway of the largest hut, gave me a startled look.
“Peg! Come!” Willie waved her over. The old woman hesitated until she saw Pan. Then she set aside the basket she was weaving and came forward.
“Please! She needs milk,” I said, holding Kitty out. My heart sank when the baby’s little arms flopped down.
“Do you have some milk?” Pan pleaded. The woman leaned forward for a better look, then abruptly went for a bucket that hung from the side of the hut. In a few minutes, Kitty was slurping warm goat’s milk through a small piece of swamp reed.
“Can’t she have more?” I asked when the feeding stopped.
“Fir’s we got to see if she can hold it down,” Willie said to me.
“Like he know what he talkin’ bout,” Peg mumbled to herself. “Give me that chil’.” She snatched Kitty from my arms. “Give the boy somethin’ to eat,” she directed Willie, her deep, gravelly voice all the more surprising because of her tiny frame.
“Can Mr. Burton have something to eat, too?” Pan asked, and the woman gave me a dark look before she walked away.
I was concerned for Kitty, but Willie waved me forward. “She take care a that baby. She jus’ don’ like to see no white man here. Come.” He led us over to a fire pit. From a large black pot, he ladled out simmering stew into bowl-sized turtle shells, then handed us each a rough wooden spoon. Pan looked as though he might weep at the sight of the nourishing stew, and we both ate with relish while Willie disappeared into the hut. When Pan went into the woods to relieve himself, I sat back against a tree and closed my eyes in momentary contentment.
Suddenly, I was thrown to the ground. Though it was futile, I fought a ferocious-looking Negro, one who was twice my size. When he flipped me around to face him, his long tangled hair fell forward into his unshaven face but didn’t conceal the hatred in his dark eyes. Willie and Peg, with Kitty in her arms, rushed from the house. “Pete!” Willie called. “Let him go!”
“What this white man doin’ here, Willie?” the large man shouted.
“He lost, but he got two little niggas with him,” Willie said.
“Oh, he gon’ be lost, all right,” Pete replied with a harsh laugh.
I groaned when his knee dug into my stomach. A knife pricked my neck, and I closed my eyes. Let it happen fast, I prayed.
“Let him go!” Pan flew out from the trees to strike at the large man’s back. Pete caught Pan with his elbow and sent the boy flying while he twisted what was left of my shirt and pulled me to my feet.
“What you doin’ out here?” he asked, pinning me against a tree.
I spat dirt from my mouth. “I’m trying to get up north! We came from a place south of here. There are patrollers after us.”
“South a here? You talkin’ ’bout Southwood?” Pete asked, and I nodded. “You hear that, Willie? He say he comin’ up from Southwood!” I had long since lost my eye patch, and Pete studied my useless clouded eye. “So you that one-eyed man they sayin’ is black! There men all over the canal lookin’ for you. They give big money for you. Where’s the gal you was runnin’ with? Name a Sukey?”
“She died,” I said.
Pan pointed to Kitty in Peg’s arms. “That’s her baby.”
“And who’s you?” Pete asked.
“I got took for a slave,” Pan said, “and Mr. Burton is taking me home.”
Pete turned back to me. “You say Sukey, the one who run that sickhouse, she die, and that’s her baby?”
“Yes,” I said, unexpectedly hopeful. “There’s a man who lived somewhere close to this swamp who went by the name of Doc McDougal.”
“Ol’ Doc. Yeah, we know a him, don’t we, Willie?”
Willie nodded.
“He has a friend, Mr. Spencer,” I added. “If you can get word to Mr. Spencer of our whereabouts, I’m sure he could help us out.”
“How you think anybody gonna get you outta here? They huntin’ you like a dog,” Pete said.
“Look,” I said, pleading now, “I came down here to find the boy. He was stolen from Philadelphia.”
Pete grunted, then he and Willie exchanged a furtive glance.
“Please,” I begged, “I need your help.”
“We’ll see” was Pete’s answer.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
1830
James
DURING THAT FIRST week, as Kitty adjusted to the goat’s milk, Pan and I grew stronger from the hearty stews cooked by Peg. The woman liked no one and especially disliked me, but Pan trailed her as a boy might a mother. Soon she was favoring him and even taught him to milk her beloved pet goat, the only living creature she seemed to care about.
Willie usually left early in the morning to hunt or forage for food. Though Pete left each day as well, he was more secretive about his doings.
One evening, after we had all eaten our fill of a roasted wild pig, Peg divided the remainder of the meat into two wooden buckets before Pete and Willie carried them out into the night. “There’s others needin’ food” was Peg’s explanation to Pan, and later that night Pan told me more: “She say there’s others who live out here. They was all slaves, just like Peg and Willie, and they all been here for a long time. She say this is their home now.”
Toward the end of the week, Pete came back with news that there were patrollers along the canal route searching for us. “Everybody want that money,” he said, and worried that he and Willie were not immune to the same temptation, I began to press for a departure date.
“We got to wait,” he said, then indicated with a nod for me to continue chopping wood.
I was so anxious to leave that, foolhardy as it would have been, I might have taken Pan and Kitty and struck out on my own. However, through Willie, I learned that this island had been chosen for their home because it was protected—surrounded by alligator and snake-infested waters. As dangerous were the numerous still ponds around the island, covered by a greasy surface sheen that camouflaged thick sucking mud. “Man don’t know where he goin’, he step in that, don’ never see him again,” Willie said.
ONE EVENING TOWARD the end of the second week, as Willie, Pan, and I sat at the fireside and watched while Peg tested the readiness of a roasting possum, Pete burst through the trees.
“We set for tonight! ’Fore sunup, we got to get you to the cross-ditch. Barge comin’ up, gon’ take you to a wagon that get you to No’folk.”