A Light to My Path (51 page)

Joseph bowed his head and closed his eyes, praying out loud. “O Lord, please lead us to her. Please help Grady find his wife and bring her home, safe and sound.”

His prayer made Grady’s entire body tremble—with anger and with something else that he couldn’t quite place. He wanted to yell at Joseph to shut up. God had stayed a long way off, all these years, unheeding when Grady had needed Him the most. But there was something else in Joe’s simple, heartfelt prayer that made Grady feel like a little boy, seated on Eli’s knee. He longed to have that little boy’s faith again—to believe that Massa Jesus heard and answered his prayers.

He stepped from the boat on rubbery knees and hurried up the driveway, glimpsing beautiful gardens to the right, the carriage house and other outbuildings to the left.

“Slave Row must be that way,” Joe said, gesturing to the left.

The captain nodded. “We’ll start there.”

Grady knew that Anna was most likely up at the Big House, but he felt relieved that they were going down to the Row first. This risky trip ashore would be worth it if they managed to save a few other slaves, even if Anna refused to come with them.

Joseph and Captain Metcalf ran to search inside the stable and carriage house. Grady and the other men hurried toward the slave huts. The first few cabins they searched were empty. But as he ran to kick open the door of the next cabin, he heard a baby crying inside. He halted, unwilling to scare the occupants, and slowly opened the door.

Delia! Delia was inside. Grady couldn’t believe it.

She sat on the bed, surrounded by children, staring up at him in surprise. Then recognition lit her face. “Grady? O Lord, Lord!” she cried as she sprang to her feet and into his arms. She seemed even smaller than Grady remembered. “The Good Lord brought you here—He brought you!” she wept.

Grady could scarcely comprehend that he had found Delia. And if she was still here at Great Oak, then that meant that Anna must be here, too. He released his grip.

“Get your stuff together, Delia, you’re coming with me. I’m going up to the Big House to find Anna, and then we’re leaving.” He turned to go.

“No, Grady, wait!”

“I ain’t arguing with you, Delia. This time you’re coming.” He ran out the door and was halfway across the yard when he heard her calling to him.

“Grady, stop! Come back! She ain’t up there! Anna ain’t up at the Big House.”

He halted. His racing heart felt as if it might burst inside his chest. They had taken Anna away with all the others. He wouldn’t be able to save her. He slowly walked back toward Delia. “Where is she?” he asked.

Delia motioned for him to follow her as she led him to a windowless, stone building behind the outhouse. “Kick the door in, Grady,” she said. “I ain’t got time to be stealing the key again.”

He stared at Delia, unable to comprehend what she was saying. What were they doing here? He needed to find Anna. They were wasting time. Why had Delia brought him here?

“Go on, kick it in,” she repeated. “Anna’s inside.”

He backed up a step and did as Delia said, aiming his foot as close to the lock as he could. He had to kick it three times before the metal locking pin bent far enough for the door to fly open. Anna sat slumped on the floor, her wrists in shackles, the shackles chained to a post. Grady couldn’t imagine what she was doing there. Why was his beautiful Anna caged like an animal? She was covered with sweat and filth, and her dazed eyes were filled with despair.

But then she recognized him, and her expression changed to one of joy and disbelief. “Grady… ? Grady, is it really you? You’re really here?”

He dropped to his knees beside her and wrapped her tightly in his arms. Tethered to the post, she couldn’t hug him in return. He wanted to ask her what they’d done to her, why she was here, but tears choked off his words. Instead, he took her face in his hands and covered it with kisses.

“Is it really you?” she repeated. “You came for us?”

“Yes,” he whispered. “Yes.” She felt so small and broken and fragile. What had they done to her? It made him half crazy to imagine. But then a sense of urgency suddenly gripped him. “We have to get out of here,” he said. “Where’s the key to these shackles?”

“I don’t know,” Delia said. “The overseer must have it.”

Grady stood up to examine the shackles. They were too strong to break. The only way to free Anna was to pry the ring they were fastened to, out of the post. He glanced around the shed, searching for something to use as a pry bar and decided to try his steel bayonet. It seemed to take forever to wedge the weapon into the ring and force it open. And it required every ounce of strength he had. But the chain on Anna’s shackles finally came free. He lifted her to her feet and looked around. For some reason, Delia had disappeared. Grady hoped she had returned to her cabin for her belongings.

“Come on!” he told Anna. “You’re coming with me this time.”

“Yes, Grady! Yes!”

He half-supported, half-carried her as they raced back across the lawn. Anna was crying uncontrollably, babbling as if trying to tell him something. He wasn’t listening. Whatever she’d been through, he would deal with it later. He would help her heal.

When they reached Delia’s cabin, Anna ran inside ahead of him and scooped up one of the babies in her arms. She had to hold it awkwardly with her hands still bound.

“Come on, Delia,” Grady said. “We have to hurry.”

Delia shook her head. “I ain’t coming.”

“No! Not this again!” he shouted. “Don’t try and tell me God’s wanting you here! I’ll tie you up and carry you to the boat if I have to!”

She rested her hand on his arm to calm him. “It ain’t that, honey. I can’t leave all these little ones here alone.” She gestured to the cabin full of children, and Grady saw them as if for the first time. There were at least a dozen children of various sizes and ages. Most of them were crying.

“Where’s Lucy?” Anna asked. “Can’t she watch them?”

“She passed on, honey. I’m here all alone, now. Go on, Grady. You got your wife and baby to look after.”

“My … my
what
?”

“That’s your baby, Grady. Your son.” Delia gestured to the child in Anna’s arms.

Anna nodded, hugging the child as tightly as her bound wrists would allow. Grady stared at them, speechless, and slowly realized what Anna had been trying to tell him. He couldn’t grasp it. He had a son?

“The overseer loaded all the field hands into wagons this morning when they heard that the Yankee gunboats was coming,” Delia explained. “They took the house slaves, too. Left just me and the babies. Who knows when they’ll be bringing all their mothers back home. Go on. Get going, now. I’ll be praying for you.”

Grady knew that Delia wouldn’t change her mind. He pulled her into his arms and hugged her fiercely, devastated that he would have to leave her behind a second time.

“Go on, honey,” she said, freeing herself from his grip. “Take your wife and son—and may the Good Lord watch over all three of you.”

Grady wiped his eyes on his sleeve and reached for Anna. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder, gripping his rifle in his other hand, and hurried out of the cabin. They raced toward the landing together.

Captain Metcalf and the others had found only one or two old-timers in the cabins, and they were leading them toward the waiting rowboat. Joseph saw Grady coming and his narrow face lit with joy. “Bless the Lord, is that her, Grady? You found your wife?”

Grady could only nod. Anna was coming with him. Anna and his son.

His son
.

Grady felt dazed as the soldiers pulled him and Anna onboard the gunboat. As he led her downstairs belowdecks, he slowly became aware once again of the sounds of battle in the distance upstream and of his ship’s engines laboring as the crew tried to free them from the mudbank. And his son was crying. Grady realized that he had been crying pitifully ever since Anna had snatched him from his bed in Delia’s cabin. Grady found a quiet corner where they could sit down, and the distraught cries finally stopped as Anna put him to her breast and fed him. Grady watched, and the love he felt for both of them overwhelmed him.

“I’ll be right back,” he whispered. He went into the engine room and asked to borrow some tools. Then he sat by Anna’s side again as she fed their son and began sawing her shackles off.

“Are you okay, Anna?” he asked. “What happened? Why’d they chain you up like that?”

“I hit Missy Claire.”

“You … you
what
?”

“She wouldn’t let me be with our baby, and she said she was gonna sell him to the slave auction or throw him into the river—”

“Oh, God!” Grady reacted instinctively, dropping the tools as he enveloped Anna and his son in his arms. As his horror slowly subsided, he released his grip and gazed down at the baby. He was asleep. His tiny brown face was as wrinkled as Delia’s, his arms and legs curled tightly against his body. He had Anna’s long eyelashes and beautiful, full lips. Grady saw a drop of milk in the corner of his mouth and wiped it with his finger.

“I just started hitting Missy—hitting her over and over,” Anna said. “I couldn’t stop. I wanted to kill her.”

Grady couldn’t believe what she was telling him. Anna, who had taken so much abuse from Claire all these years, who had never stood up for herself, had endangered her own life to defend their child. He shuddered at the risk she had taken, aware of what might have happened to her. Striking a white person was a crime punishable by death. He heard the tremor in his own voice as he said, “I’m surprised that all she did was lock you up.”

“No, Missy told them to give me forty lashes. They were going to do it this morning but the overseer found out that the Yankee warships was coming, so he didn’t have time.” She looked up at Grady and her eyes filled with tears. “And then you came.”

He held her tightly again, overwhelmed at the timing that had brought him there at the right moment.

“Delia and I prayed and asked Jesus for help,” she said. “I prayed that He would help set our baby free—and now he is free.”

The ship lurched suddenly as it broke free from the mudbank. The baby awoke, startled, his frail arms and legs jerking in fright. Grady reached instinctively to stroke his head, to soothe him. The ship began to move. He remembered questioning God a few hours ago, asking why He had grounded them here when they were supposed to burn a bridge. Now he knew why. But he heard the thunder of Rebel guns in the distance and knew that they still weren’t safe. He felt an overpowering urge to protect his family, to get them safely back to Beaufort or die trying.

“Anna, we’re moving again. These shackles will have to wait until later. I need to go back up on deck with the other soldiers. We have a job to finish. Stay down here where it’s safe, okay.”

“Please be careful, Grady,” she whispered.

He took the stairs two at a time as he raced up on deck. The ship had stopped again, and Grady quickly saw why. The second boat was floating back downstream, coming toward them. “Our engine is disabled,” he heard the captain shout to Colonel Higginson. “Our engineer was struck by a shell and killed.”

Colonel Higginson lowered his head and closed his eyes. Grady wondered if he was praying. When he raised it again he nodded solemnly. “It’s getting late. We need to turn back. We’ll have to forget about the bridge.”

The tide was turning, as well. The colonel ordered the crippled ship to float downstream ahead of Grady’s vessel, carried along by the current. In spite of the fact that their mission had been aborted, that they had failed to burn the railroad bridge, Grady was surprised to discover that he didn’t feel his usual anger and frustration. God had a reason for this trip that Grady never could have foreseen.

They continued downstream, mile after mile. Grady was about to return belowdecks to sit with his wife when he heard the deadly boom of a cannon. The shell whistled sickeningly as it arced through the air toward him, and he watched in horror as it struck their sister ship a few dozen yards ahead. A long, straight stretch of water loomed in front of them before the river curved around a spit of land. The Rebels had planted a battery at that point, and their cannons were aimed squarely at the approaching vessels. Grady’s ship was heading into their trap with no way to escape.

“Take cover!” the colonel shouted.

Grady dove for the stairs with all the others, but even belowdecks there was no escape from the deadly bombardment. The vessel shook as her cannons returned fire, but it made a much-too-easy target for the waiting Rebels. Shell after shell struck the ship, exploding in a deadly rain of shrapnel and wood splinters and glass. Grady raced toward the corner where he’d left Anna, nearly tripping over a soldier’s lifeless body, and sloshing through a puddle of river water that was seeping inside. He pulled Anna away from the hull, into the center of the ship where it was safer, then crouched over her and their baby, shielding them with his body.

The deafening sounds of battle heightened the chaos around him—bombs exploding, glass and wood shattering, men screaming. But above it all, Grady could hear his son’s helpless, terrified cries. He had been sleeping so peacefully in Delia’s cabin, until Grady had come along and yanked him awake. Now the baby found himself in this terrible, frightening place and he couldn’t possibly know why. If only Grady could make his son understand that he loved him, that he would rather die himself than watch him suffering such terror. If only he could explain that this incomprehensible horror was, in reality, for his son’s own good. At the end of this perilous journey was something so much better than a safe cabin on Slave Row—there was freedom. But the gulf between Grady and his son was too great. There was no way to help him understand.

“I’m right here,” he murmured. “Please trust me … it’ll be okay …”

After what seemed like hours, the deadly explosions gradually faded into the distance as the ship finished running the gauntlet and steamed out of range. She was badly damaged, but miraculously still afloat. Grady rose slowly to his feet and stretched his cramped body. He felt a burning sensation in his neck and reached to remove a wood splinter. “Are you okay?” he asked Anna. “Is the baby okay?”