A Light to My Path (31 page)

“Kitty, run upstairs and fetch the baby,” Missy said. “And be careful with him. We’ll be in the morning room.”

Baby Richard was asleep in his cradle, his hands curled into tiny fists. He had no hair and his skin was as pale as Missy’s was, but Kitty had grown to love him as she’d helped take care of him these past two months. Sometimes she would close her eyes as she cuddled him in her arms and imagine that he had beautiful coffeebrown skin and wooly black hair—and that he belonged to her and Grady. She lifted Richard from his cradle, careful not to wake him, and carried him downstairs to meet his papa.

Massa Fuller rose from the sofa as Kitty carried Richard into the room, but he didn’t ask to hold him. Instead, he stood gazing down at his new son for a long moment, and the lines of fatigue that were etched in his face grew soft.

“I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to see new life again, after so much—” His voice faltered slightly, then faded into silence.

“He looks like you, Roger,” Missy Claire said. She remained seated on the sofa. Massa Fuller touched his sleeping son’s hand, then sank down beside his wife again.

“You think so?” he asked.

“Of course. He’s been surrounded by so many Fullers,” she said, gesturing to the portraits on the walls, “what other choice did he have?” They laughed together, and Kitty felt another stab of loneliness. Maybe if she talked to Massa Fuller alone and begged him to let Grady come home—maybe he would allow it. Massa Fuller had always been good to Grady.

The baby stirred in her arms and yawned. “Shall I take him back upstairs now, Missy Claire?” she asked. She knew better than to offer him to Missy to hold. She seldom wanted to.

“Not yet,” she replied. “He seems content for now.”

Kitty remained standing, rocking the sleeping baby in her arms. She was a little surprised that Missy and her husband didn’t want their privacy after being apart from each other for so long. She decided to daydream about Grady as she waited, but when she realized that Massa was talking about the war, she suddenly became alert. This was the first real news she or any of her fellow house slaves had heard in months.

“Mother sent me a Charleston newspaper,” Missy said, “and I read about the naval battles last month. I was so proud that our little Confederate navy was victorious.”

“Yes, the battle of the ironclads must have been a sight. We’ve enjoyed several land victories as well, I’m happy to say. But it always comes down to numbers. I heard about a battle up in Shiloh, Tennessee, earlier this month, where we had the Yanks all but licked until they sent for reinforcements. Our men always fight better than theirs do, but there are always more of them than there are of us.”

“Have you heard from Ellis?” Missy asked.

“I recently received letters from both my sons. Ellis is in Yorktown, Virginia, bracing for a huge assault that may be coming soon. The Union commander is expected to launch an attack against the Peninsula this spring with the goal of taking Richmond. Rumors are that he has amassed an enormous arsenal and a hundred thousand men. But Ellis says they’re dug in behind earthworks and they’re ready for him. The news from John,” Massa said with a sigh, “was worrisome, I’m afraid. He left the Citadel and enlisted in a new South Carolina regiment as soon as he became of age. He isn’t sure where he’ll be sent yet.”

“What about you, Roger? Will you be sent up to Virginia, too?”

“No, too much is happening down here at the moment. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Fort Pulaski fell into Union hands.

It guarded the harbor of Savannah.”

“No, I hadn’t heard. Thank God Charleston is well protected.”

“Yes, the Yanks will have a tougher time there. But what’s worrisome about the fall of Fort Pulaski is that more and more slaves are escaping to Union-held territory, and the Yankees are refusing to return them.”

“I thought the Fugitive Slave Law said that they had to return them.”

“It does. But Major General Hunter isn’t honoring it. He’s calling the fugitives ‘contrabands of war,’ like any other property that’s been confiscated during wartime. Of course, word of this has spread to the slaves somehow, and more and more of them are trying to escape to Union-held territory—all along the coastal area between Charleston and Savannah.”

Kitty didn’t realized how tense she had become as she’d listened to this news until she felt the baby squirm in her arms. She looked down and saw that his eyes were open. If he began to cry she would have to take him upstairs—and then she would miss the rest of the conversation. She shifted Richard to her shoulder and rubbed his back, humming softly to soothe him.

“For now, I’m stationed close by,” she heard Massa Fuller say, “but our lines shift constantly to protect the railroad. We’re more like bush-fighters than regular combatants. Our lookouts watch all of the Union’s movements along the coast, and we’re able to move quickly if an attack on the railroad seems imminent. We know all the inlets and rivers and waterways in this area much better than the Yanks do. So if we spot Union vessels heading up one of them, we know where they’ll end up and we can be ready for them. We’ve placed mines and other obstructions in the main waterways, and we have batteries placed in all the strategic places. So far, we’ve been able to keep the enemy confined to the Sea Islands and off the mainland.”

Later that evening, Kitty walked down to Slave Row for the first time, looking for Grady. She was afraid that he would hear the rumors about slaves not being returned to their owners, and he would try to run away. She needed to warn him that the Confederates had lookouts everywhere and were guarding all the waterways. It would be nearly impossible for him to get off the mainland to safety.

The stench of Slave Row, the atmosphere of squalor and hopelessness, nearly made Kitty turn back. But Grady suddenly stepped out of one of the huts, spotting her before she had a chance to change her mind.

“Anna? What are you doing here?” he asked in surprise.

Kitty wondered if she would have recognized him if he hadn’t spoken first. He looked older and rougher, his wooly hair longer and poorly trimmed. His body was leaner yet more muscular, if that was possible. But the biggest shock was seeing him dressed in rags when he’d always worn his coachman’s livery with such pride.

“Is there someplace we can talk?” she asked. “I can’t be gone from the house too long.” He led her inside the hut he’d just come out of, and she had to battle not to show her shock at how he was forced to live. The room had a fireplace but little else—most of the space on the dirt floor was taken up with rough, narrow wooden beds with cornshuck mattresses. Three other men Grady’s age lay on three of the beds, but Kitty knew which bed was Grady’s even before he gestured to it and invited her to sit. He had decorated the walls above it with her drawings.

Kitty sat down and quickly told him what she had heard that morning. The other three slaves also listened intently. As Kitty expected, Grady reacted to the news with anger. “I ain’t giving up! There has to be a way to get free from here!” he said in a low, harsh voice.

“Grady, listen, I’m going to talk to Massa Fuller about you. Just as soon as I can get him alone, I’ll ask him if you can come home and—”

“No, don’t do that,” he said quickly. “It’ll only make trouble for me. And maybe for you, too. Supposing Missus Fuller finds out I wasn’t whipped?”

Kitty’s eyes filled with tears. “I miss you,” she said softly.

He reached out to stroke her cheek. His hand was rough and callused, his forearm scarred with insect bites. “You drawing any new pictures since I been away?” he asked.

Kitty hesitated. “I can’t … I ran out of paper again.”

“And you won’t ask your missy for more.” He made it a statement, not a question.

“Missy don’t have any paper, either,” she said, shaking her head. “She can hardly get enough to write letters on now that there’s a blockade.”

The anger faded from his eyes. Sorrow took its place. “You better be going,” he said. Kitty knew he was right. If it was painful for her to see him again, how much harder must it be for him to see her, and to be reminded of all that he’d lost? She stood. Grady rose from where he’d been sitting on the bed across from her. Kitty leaned toward him and held him in her arms for a long moment, just to remember what it felt like.

He hugged her in return, but nothing was the way it had been. His embrace was brief and passionless, his homespun shirt rough beneath her cheek. He no longer smelled of soap and leather and horses the way she remembered. She stepped away again.

“Bye,” she whispered.

“Good-bye, Anna.”

Chapter Sixteen

Fuller Plantation, South Carolina
April-November 1862

The horn blew before the roosters crowed or the sun rose, and Grady’s long, exhausting day began. Instead of meals in the kitchen with Delia and Kitty, he had to cook his own rations as best he could and pack his dinner can to carry with him into the field. The foremen doled out rations of smoked pork and cornmeal each week, but it seemed to Grady that he never had enough to eat, that hunger gnawed around the edges of his stomach all the time.

He walked the long road to the fields with the other slaves each day, carrying a hoe or a shovel or tugging one of the mules along by its bridle. He would leave his dinner can at the top of the row, waiting as long as he could before eating it, knowing that it would be after sundown before he ate again. And even then, he would have to cook the food himself.

Each morning he’d be given a task to do, and he’d work until it was complete, sometimes until after dark—every day but Sunday. The work changed with the seasons but the fatigue and monotony were always the same. And it would be this way until the day that he died and they buried him by torchlight after the day’s work was finished.

When winter was nearly over, Mr. Browning assigned Grady to one of the mule-drawn plows and gave him a quarter-acre of ground to till each day, in preparation for planting. They weren’t planting cotton this year, the overseer said, because the harbor in Beaufort was still occupied and there was no way to ship the cotton past the enemy blockade of the coast. Instead, they would plant wheat, rice, and other food crops. The Confederacy always needed food.

As soon as the seeds sprouted, the task of hoeing began, and the fight against weeds continued endlessly through spring and summer. Browning couldn’t be everywhere at once, but he rode up and down the rows on his mule, his lash flying every time he saw a slave chop a plant by mistake or overlook a weed or labor too slowly.

Browning knew about Grady’s experience with horses, and he often made him work with the mules. The animals were strong but proverbially stubborn, and Grady’s horse tricks seldom worked with them. He had to resort to brute force to get them to do what he wanted, and his arms ached at night from wrestling with them. When the spring rains came, the mules’ hooves had to be fitted with wooden boots to keep them from sinking into the mud. Since Grady knew how to shoe a horse, it was his job to help fit these boots into place—and a miserable job it was. Massa’s horses had never kicked him, but he often found himself knocked to the ground by one of the mules. And in Grady’s half-starved condition, the ugly bruises were slow to heal.

When the ground began to dry out, Grady shoveled muck out of the ditches that would be used to flood the rice fields when it was time. They sowed rice twice—in early April and again in June to avoid the migrating birds that swooped down to feast on the newly planted seeds. Grady watched the bobolinks fly overhead, listening to their distinctive call, and he thought of Amos’ words long ago in Richmond.
“That’s freedom, boy … flying away anytime you want, going wherever you want—just like that bird… . You gotta plan for it, boy. Know where you gonna go and how you’re getting there. Otherwise they catch you right away and whip you ’til you wish you was dead.”
Ever since they’d fled Beaufort and Grady had missed his opportunity to escape as they’d waited for the Port Royal Ferry, freedom was all that he thought about. He would plan for it this time. He would be ready. He would not let another chance pass him by.

In time, Grady learned ways to help take his mind off his aching hunger and boredom. Sometimes as he drove the mule-drawn plow up and down the rows, he imagined that he was driving Massa through the streets of Charleston or Beaufort again, and he would try to recall each building and landmark. Other times he would rehearse the fiddle in his mind while he hoed, dreaming that he was still in New Orleans with Beau, before Massa Coop had forced him to play for the slaves. Grady would concentrate on all the fingerings and how to move the bow, humming the melodies in his mind and trying to see how many songs he could still recall after all this time.

But the most painful days were the ones when he couldn’t stop thinking about Anna. He would re-create the details of her face in his mind, or envision her delicate hands as they sketched a tree or a flower. He would remember what it felt like to hold her in his arms, until the pain would overwhelm all his other sorrows—the ache of his muscles, the blistering heat, his never-ending hunger.

The other slaves often sang to help drown their troubles, and when Grady first heard them, it made him angry. They sang as they traveled to the fields, and as they worked throughout the day, and as they journeyed home at night, weary in body and spirit. He wanted to shout for them to stop. Why were they singing? Music was an expression of joy they couldn’t possibly know. The fact that most of the songs had something to do with God added to his bitterness.

But as time passed, Grady gradually began to see that these work songs created a sense of community and shared hardship among his fellow slaves. Like Grady’s own mental exercises, singing helped pass the time, relieved the boredom of their monotonous tasks, and distracted them from their pain. When they had to labor together as a group, the Negro foreman set the pace and rhythm of their work with song. But most of the time the songs sprang spontaneously and unplanned. Someone would sing a line, and the others would quickly join in, echoing the words, adding verses of their own. Some of the tunes were lively, but many were mournful and hauntingly beautiful.