The Healing

Chapter 46





For years to come the puzzling events following Little Lord’s miraculous recovery would be hotly debated by the inhabitants of the Mississippi Delta, both white and black. In fact, most could only agree upon a few things.

First, Master Ben, being a gentleman of his word, gave Polly her Freedom as promised. Of course there were those who insisted nobody gave Polly Shine a thing. She took it.

Second, as soon as her Freedom papers arrived, Polly struck out on foot, alone, carrying only her snake stick and a tote sack swinging from her shoulder.

Third, two nights following her departure, during a rain so heavy it breached the levees in four locations and flooded the great house and all the cabins, sixty-four of the master’s slaves, including his most loyal servant, Silas, went missing, the largest single incident of runaways in the history of the state of Mississippi.

And finally, it was common knowledge that when Master Ben was alerted to the mass escape, he immediately sent for the dogs, and it was Bridger who had the unpleasant task of telling his boss that every one of those ferocious slave-catching hounds was too violently ill to join the hunt, forcing the men to wander the rain-swollen swamps with benefit of neither track nor scent. They spent three miserable days in the swamps only to come back empty-handed.

Other than that, nothing could be said for certain, but that didn’t stop the speculating. Granada discovered everyone had his theory. And each of them put Polly Shine at the center.

Some swore that the band of runaways were biding their time, trapping and fishing on some secret bayou, waiting for the abolitionists to find them and escort them to Freedom.

Those with religion believed that Polly, after bartering for her Freedom with the life of the pharaoh’s son, had led the escaped Negroes right up to the banks of the Mississippi River and commanded it to split wide open like the Red Sea. Some went as far as to say that Polly and her followers carved out their own Promised Land out West, some milk-and-honey Canaan for Negroes only.

A favorite theory held by the master and his fellow plantation owners was that the runaways never got out of the swamps alive.

Granada wasn’t sure where Polly ended up, but the girl was good enough at riddles to figure how she got away. Granada knew that the best riddle is the one whose solution is obvious. You think, “Why didn’t I see that before! The answer was in front of me all the time!”

Indeed, after repeatedly sifting through the facts, Granada decided Polly’s planned escape had been right in front of her. Silas didn’t have some miracle conversion. He had been working with Polly ever since she began taking him his medicine. His access to the settlements through holding preaching meetings was in no doubt beneficial in planning such a large-scale operation. She remembered the stormy night he came into the kitchen out of the rain, quoting Bible verses about the two men working in the field, one being taken up and the other left behind. He had told anybody with ears to hear what was coming. How many times had he preached that same message to his three hundred congregants? Freedom was coming like a thief in the night. Only the Father knew the day. But get ready if you were going.

Charity, who walked her baby out in the open, always chose to circle by the hound pen until the dogs grew accustomed to her presence. Granada had even heard Polly tell Charity to feed the dogs when she passed. Quietly slipping them the same purgatives the white doctors were so fond of could be done easily, with little fuss.

Charity’s husband, Barnabas, who had hollowed Little Lord’s canoe out of a log and then showed him how to use it, was also one of the runaways. He could certainly be counted on to build a cypress-log armada, keep it hidden in the swamps, and then teach the group what to do with a paddle.

Silas, who had first settled the swamps with the master, mapping every river, stream, tributary, and alligator slough, would know how to captain a fleeing army of canoeing slaves.

Polly had been warning Granada about the snake called Freedom for months, trying her best to get the girl ready without risking the entire scheme. And maybe if things hadn’t happened so suddenly, Granada could have been ready.

The only person to blame was Granada herself. Polly had to speed up her timetable when Granada told the mistress about Rubina. Granada had forced her hand.

With the riddle solved, there was just one lingering question, and it meant more to Granada than any other: Would Polly Shine do as she promised?

Granada could recite aloud the exact words, the last thing she heard Polly say: “Wherever you be, however old and crooked you get, I promise, you will be remembered.”

“Will you really remember me?” Granada asked the night sky from her window. “Years from now, when you cast your eyes at these very stars, wherever you are standing, will you see me in the weave? Will you remember that you loved me?”

If the answer was yes, if Polly, who knew Granada before anyone, remembered her, then Granada believed she could bear anything.