A Light to My Path (3 page)

One day the narrow path ended beside a stretch of dark green grass. Papa had pulled Anna back as she’d started toward it. “You can’t walk on that, Anna,” he whispered. “That ain’t grass, it’s water. It won’t hold you.”

Anna didn’t believe him. “Then why is that bird sitting on it? See?” she asked, pointing.

Papa shook his head. “He ain’t sitting.” He tossed a pebble at the bird, and as it launched itself into the air on graceful white wings, the bird’s long, stick-like legs dangled for a moment. Then they curled beneath its body, hidden again, as they had been hidden beneath the water.

But as beautiful as the woods were, Anna recalled that journey with fear. Her family had been running from something. Anna didn’t know where they were going or why, but her parents’ faces wore looks of alarm and desperation. Mama would glance over her shoulder at each new sound, and Papa stopped to listen every now and then, wary and alert. “Lord Jesus, help us,” he would murmur. “Shine your light on our path.”

As the days passed, fear began building inside Anna, too, as she sensed her parents’ tension, absorbing it. Even now, as she stood beneath the plantation’s Great Oak Tree and gazed at the distant forest, that fear twisted inside her.

Their journey had ended in terror. One day Anna had heard a new sound in the distance, a harsh braying that made her skin prickle. Papa had stopped to listen as soon as he’d noticed the faroff barking, and his face turned gray with despair.

“No …” he groaned. “Oh, please, Lord Jesus … no …”

Mama clutched his arm. “What? What is it?”

“Dogs. They’re tracking us with dogs.” Papa scooped Anna into his arms and they began to run.

The barking drew closer. Along with it came the distant crack of gunfire. Bullets whizzed through the leaves around them like wasps. Papa ran and ran with Mama and Anna, never stopping, gasping for breath. They wove and ducked through the tangled woods and swamps, searching desperately for a place to hide. The dogs were much closer now, splashing through the water behind them. Shouts echoed through the woods, men’s voices commanding them to halt. The men rode on horseback and Anna could hear hooves pounding down the trail, sloshing through the swamp, drawing nearer.

Papa ran and ran, but it was no use. The dogs had found them, and there was no place to hide in the gloomy swamp. The hounds raced through the woods, converging on them like a single, snarling beast, snapping at Papa’s legs, tearing at Mama’s skirts, forcing them to stop. Papa held Anna high above their reach, trying to kick the dogs away. But three white men suddenly broke through the woods on horseback, their guns aimed.

“Lord Jesus, help us!” Papa breathed.

Anna buried her face against Papa’s chest as he lowered her into his arms, hugging her close to himself. She was afraid to look, afraid to cry out or make a sound. Then Mama screamed, and Anna felt her father’s body lurch. He was trying to shield Anna and remain standing as the men clubbed him with their rifles. At last Papa staggered and fell, landing on his knees, still clutching Anna, covering her with his own body as men and dogs attacked. The rest of the dream turned into a nightmare that she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—remember.

“Anna! Get over here!”

She came out of her reverie to see Old Nellie beckoning to her from across the yard. “Anna? You hearing me? I said get on over here!” The old woman stood near the carriage house, as far as she dared to come.

Anna pressed her palms against the dark tree trunk one last time and braved a final, fleeting look at the distant forest. Then she turned and dashed across the grass toward Slave Row. Old Nellie had a hickory switch in her hand, and she caught Anna by the arm as she sped past and thrashed her bare legs all the way back to the cabin.

That night Anna lay alone in the darkness, clinging to the memories that the Great Oak Tree had awakened. She was no longer certain that the doomed flight through the swamps had been real—or that she’d ever really had a mama and papa. She drifted to sleep, longing for them to come to her again in her dreams, hoping that the dream would end differently this time.

Chapter Two

Richmond, Virginia 1853

“Get up, boy.”

Grady opened his eyes. Gilbert stood over him, shaking the sleep from him. Was it morning? It seemed too dark, too quiet in the loft above the kitchen for it to be morning. He heard the faint drumbeat of rain on the roof.

“Get up,” Gilbert repeated. “Massa Fletcher wants you.”

The urgency in Gilbert’s voice made Grady’s heart pound faster, like the drumming rain. And there was something else that Grady couldn’t quite place—something very wrong. The day had started out all wrong. Massa Fletcher’s manservant never came up to the loft to wake him. Massa Fletcher never sent for Grady.

“But why? What’s he want?” Grady asked. His movements felt sluggish, his limbs still heavy with sleep as he pulled on his trousers.

Gilbert opened his mouth as if to speak, then stopped. He quickly looked away but not before Grady saw Gilbert’s chin tremble the way a woman’s does when she’s about to cry. “If you got shoes,” Gilbert said hoarsely, “better put them on.”

A sick feeling gripped Grady’s stomach as he climbed down the ladder to the kitchen. He smelled ham frying and biscuits baking, but something was wrong here, too. Esther wasn’t bustling around in her usual way, clanging pots and yelling at Luella. Instead, Esther stood beside the fireplace, her hands over her mouth as if she was trying to hold something terrible inside. Tears trailed down her broad face the same way the rain washed down the kitchen window. Esther’s eyes never left Grady’s face as he finished descending the ladder and slowly headed toward the door. He wanted to ask Esther what was the matter, but before he could speak she suddenly reached for him, pulling him into her arms, hugging the breath from him. Her body shook the way it did when Eli told one of his funny stories, but Esther wasn’t laughing.

“Here, now!” Gilbert said. “Don’t you do that, Esther. Don’t, now.” He pried her arms open, freeing Grady, then pushed him toward the door. The sick feeling in his belly tightened as he emerged into the cold rain. Then he froze at the sound of his mother’s horrible, anguished cries.

“No …
no!

” She was running toward him from the Big House wearing only her nightclothes, her eyes wild with fright. “
Please
don’t take him. Please don’t take my boy from me.
Please!

” Eli ran right behind her, grabbing her and stopping her before she could reach Grady. “Mama!” he cried. He started toward her, but a white man Grady had never seen before lunged at him, gripping his arm and wrenching it painfully as he pulled him backward.

“Hey! Come back here, boy!”

Grady began to scream. It was what people did when they wanted to wake up from a nightmare—and that’s surely what this was. He screamed and screamed, longing to wake up and see his mama bending over him, to hear Esther’s familiar clamor downstairs in the kitchen. He would begin this day all over again, the way he always did, toting water and fetching wood for the kitchen fire, helping Eli with Massa Fletcher’s horses. In the afternoon, when Missy Caroline finished her lessons in the Big House, they would play together in the backyard beneath the warm Virginia sun.

But Grady didn’t wake up. This wasn’t a dream. He cried out for help as he twisted and kicked, desperate to free himself from the stranger’s grip. He could hear his mama’s cries above his own.

“
Please
don’t send my boy away. I beg you, Massa!
Please!

” A second white man gripped Grady’s other arm and they dragged him down the brick walkway toward the street. Massa Fletcher stood near the wrought-iron gate, his arms folded across his chest. Rain darkened the shoulders of his overcoat and the brim of his hat as he calmly watched, deaf to Grady’s screams and his mama’s anguished cries.

“No! Don’t take my boy! He’s all I got!
Please,
Massa!
No!

” Grady glimpsed Massa’s cold, dark eyes for a moment and saw neither pity nor regret in them. Then the strangers dragged Grady out of the safety of the yard, propelling him toward a wagon filled with Negroes that was parked by the curb. One of the white men prodded the slaves with the butt of his whip, shouting at them to make room on the wagon. Then the two men lifted Grady like a sack of feed and tossed him onboard.

Grady struggled and fought for freedom as the damp bodies of strangers pressed all around him, holding him down. Rain soaked his clothes and ran down his face along with his tears. The wagon jolted and began to move.

“Mama!”
he screamed.

“Don’t you let them white folks hear you cry!” The hushed voice in Grady’s ear was urgent, demanding. “Don’t you ever give them that power over you.”

But Grady couldn’t have stopped crying even if he’d wanted 27 to. “Mama! I want my mama!”

“Don’t you let them know that,” the man insisted. “That’s how they keep us down, how they torment us. Show some pride, boy.” The man gripped one of Grady’s arms, but he continued to kick and squirm, desperate to break free.

“Hush, now … stop …” a woman’s voice soothed. “Ain’t doing no good to fight. You only hurt yourself if you’re falling off this wagon, and then they’re catching you anyways.” Someone gripped his feet to keep him from kicking. The hands holding him all had shackles and chains attached to their wrists. The cold metal bumped against Grady as the wagon rumbled down the hill into downtown Richmond.

Grady was still fighting and struggling, sobbing in frustration and fear when the wagon finally drew to a halt. Every inch of his body ached, and his throat burned from screaming. The two white men climbed down from the wagon and began shouting at Grady and the others, prodding them like animals as they herded them into a fortress-like building. Dark faces peered out from behind barred windows. Grady heard the jangling, clanking sound of iron chains with every movement the captives made, scraping across the paving stones as they shuffled into the building, rattling from their wrists as they wiped the rain from their faces. Only young children like Grady had been left unshackled.

He needed to pray. Jesus would help him. Eli said Massa Jesus was always listening, always standing by ready to answer his prayers. “Please help me, Massa Jesus,” he murmured. “Please, please help me!” He glanced around frantically, searching for help, waiting for Jesus to come. But one of the white men dragged him through the gate and slammed it shut.

Inside the fortress, his captors separated the men from the women and children, pushing them into two different jail cells. The big slave who had spoken to Grady in the wagon pulled him into the men’s cage with him. The air seemed alive with defiance and anger while the white men were present, but as soon as the door slammed shut and they left, Grady felt his fellow captives’ despair. The atmosphere was so thick with it that his insides writhed. He trembled uncontrollably. Why was this happening to him?

The cell was barren and unlit, the floor strewn with straw. The stench of filth filled every breath Grady took. Eli kept Massa’s stables back home cleaner than this. Grady didn’t want the filth to touch him, but there was no place to sit except the floor. As hours passed and he grew too weak with fear to stand any longer, he finally sank down, huddling with his knees drawn up to his chin, trembling. Each man seemed alone in the crowded room, unaware of the others, as if they not only were locked in this room but locked away inside themselves, as well.

Grady closed his eyes and tried to picture his mother’s face. She was usually so happy, always humming or singing as she went about her work. But all he could remember was the terror he’d seen in her eyes that morning, the anguish he’d heard in her voice. He tried to recall the touch of her graceful hands as they soothed him, caressed him—but he couldn’t. He felt an ache in the center of his chest.

Grady sat hunched on the floor for a very long time, wondering why he was here. Someone had made a terrible mistake. They’d realize it soon, and Eli or Gilbert or maybe even Massa Fletcher himself would drive the carriage downtown and make the jailers unlock the door. They would bring him back home to his mother. He bowed his head and prayed the way Eli had told him to. “Help me, Massa Jesus! Please, please get me out of this terrible place.” He repeated the words over and over in his head, but the entire day passed, the rain continued to fall outside, and no help came.

As evening fell and the gloomy cell turned cold and shadowy, Grady smelled food and heard the white jailers’ voices outside the door. As soon as his fellow prisoners heard the voices, a spark of hatred seemed to crackle through the air like lightning. Slumped shoulders stiffened with anger, and eyes that had been moist with sorrow a moment ago now froze with hatred. The hatred seemed to soak inside Grady until his blood turned to ice.

The big slave pulled Grady to his feet. He gripped Grady’s face in one huge hand and raised it toward the ceiling. “You listen to Amos, boy. Hold your chin up, now. Don’t you let them see you crying.” The hard knot of grief in the center of Grady’s chest swelled and grew, nurtured by the hatred all around him.

The jailers brought food to the other cell first. Grady heard the women clamoring and fighting for it, the children crying. Amos’ hushed voice penetrated the men’s cell, rallying them. “Don’t be acting like animals,” he ordered. “That’s what they think we are. Show them we’re men.”

When their food came, the men divided it among themselves with no shoving or pushing. But they were forced to eat with their hands and to lap water from a trough like dogs. Amos offered Grady some food but he couldn’t eat any of it, his stomach a cold, heavy lump of fear.

The cell grew dark, and the men lay down to sleep on the floor wherever they could find space. Grady sat with his arms wrapped around his knees and thought of his bed in the loft above the kitchen. He could cry all he wanted to now that it was dark and no one would see him. But he didn’t think he had any tears left to shed. He had prayed all day, begging Massa Jesus for help. Why hadn’t He answered?