Washington and Caesar (18 page)

The old woman’s head shot around. “What othuh tales, missuh? What you heah fro’ that gal that I don’ heah?”

“You don’ know everythin’, now do you, Sukey?”

“I don’ take gals fo’ no rides in the hay now, do I? An’ that gal young enough to be my granddaughter? I imagine she said things under her shift that she don’ say to no ol’ woman with a hoe.”

The old man just shook his head and chuckled.

“I think you tryin’ to flatter me, woman.” He looked at Caesar. “Sally says that they’s rumors that the governor in Virginny is gon’ free the slaves to fight for him agin’ the farmers. You know ‘bout that?”

“We heard something like that back some months.”

“Yeah, well now seems to be fo’ sho. Sally said they was gon’ have a proclamation in Williamsburg. I ask her how she know and she jus’ rolls that bottom and smiles.”

“They slave-takers came heah fro’ Richmond. They knew a few things, too.”

“They said they came to take the bounty ‘cause all the militia is gettin’ ready to go aftuh the governor.”

Caesar tried to assimilate all this. He tried to sound the old man out on the sides forming up in this war, but to the old man it was just the governor and his soldiers against the back-country farmers.

“Same thin’ happen a few years back,” he said, leaning forward over the hearth to light a pipe. The night was dark and the cabin completely without light except the little betty lamp burning a scrap of rag in the fat above the fire’s last coals. It was deadly hot in the cabin, but no one seemed to want to leave it for the cooler outdoors, at least not while there was well water, tobacco, and bacon to be had.

“Farmers down south decided not to pay the Carolina Assembly taxes. They got an army together. Then Tryon, he the governor, he gets an army loyal to the assembly an’ kicks they tails right back into the mountains. He threatened to arm the slaves, too. But he didn’.”

“Will Dunmore do it? Will he free an’ arm the slaves?”

“I don’ know him that well, boy!”

Tom laughed in the half-darkness on the other side of the hearth.

“Virgil? Tom? What do you say?”

“Say to what?”

“That we get us going up to Williamsburg an’ see if we can join Governor Dunmore?”

Tom laughed his cynical laugh. “Then we can be the militia an’ hunt white boys in the swamp! We’d be good at it, too.”

Virgil was less assured.

“Long way to Williamsburg. Lot o’ bad men between heah and theah.”

The old man’s face showed for a moment in the dark as he sucked on his pipe and the coal glowed.

“You jus’ go quiet, you be all right, I reckon. If all the
white folks is as scared as these,” he waved his pipe toward the larger cabin, “an you take care, you ought to get theah.”

“Don’ have to decide tonight,” Caesar said, walking to the door in search of a breeze. But he had already made up his mind.

“You jus’ wan’ go an’ follow that gal!” Long Tom’s head hurt and he was not happy that they were heading straight off in the morning, away from what he saw as free food and an easy life.

Virgil so obviously wanted to follow the girl that it was pointless to argue. Caesar left them to it and went to the white cabin, where he lifted the latch and went in. There wasn’t much left but the furniture and some food, although he got enough powder in a keg to fill his horn and the little mermaid horn as well. And he took the man’s clothes. They didn’t fit him well, and the breeches were almost like trousers, the man had been so tall. He hadn’t left any shoes, and he’d taken his greatcoat. There was a small woman’s cloak, and Caesar took it. Virgil hoisted out a side of bacon and cut it in half with a sharp little ax he found, and gave the half of it to the old black couple.

“Tell ’em we held you at gunpoint.” Tom laughed. “Stand and deliver the bacon!”

Young Jim picked up a shovel and an old pack, which they filled with corn meal and made him carry. With the corn meal and the bacon, they were good for five days, more if they skimped, though Caesar doubted that they would. He had them on the road before the sun was very high, walking quickly as the shadows shortened and the bugs came out. Somehow the stinging ones seemed thicker on the little one-hump trail than in their own heart of the swamp. Jim, used to moving unencumbered along the trails of the swamp, thought he was going to drop under the burden of the pack and the torment of the bugs.

Every time they heard a sound they melted into the woods, turning ankles on roots in their hurry to clear the road, but they never saw another soul, and by the end of the long day they were too tired and footsore to care. None of them had even a scrap of shoe left, but the swamp had not hardened their feet even enough to deal with the soft mud that made the road for most of its length, as it still had rocks and pebbles and gravel where farmers had filled the wettest spots.

They passed six farms, most of them new. All were abandoned. One farmer had left his slaves, but they were as scared of Caesar’s runaways as they were of whites and wouldn’t unbar their doors. At the last empty farm, they tried the door but found the bar across, and slept well in the barn. An early winter rain on the shingles woke them, but they were dry. Jim built a little fire that barely smoked the rafters and made bacon, and they wasted the day. Caesar encouraged it; they were as safe as they ever might be again, and dry and well fed, and he needed the rest. They had come a long way the first day. They had a very long way to go.

The third morning they moved on again. Their track was punctuated with crossroads and bypaths that confused them more and more. When the road forked or offered a branch, Tom or Virgil would run off down it a bit and come back and describe what he had seen. Then they would all decide, although Caesar’s vote began to hold more and more weight as he was proven correct. He wasn’t infallible, and one of his choices came to a dead end in a clearing with a tiny plot of vegetables and the start of a cabin. It had been abandoned, and wasted them a mile of walking, but it was well off the road and safe, and he decided that they would make camp there. They built a big fire and piled brush over the cabin’s base to make a hut. Caesar got two rabbits with as many shots—a poor use of powder, but he had enough for the moment and refused to worry
overmuch. The shots were loud in the wild silence and somehow made him tense, but he was tired of the bacon and wanted to make it last. They were wandering lost at the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp, and until they got clear, he would be worried about the food and the threat of pursuit.

It wasn’t a good night, but it wasn’t impossible to sleep, although Caesar’s new breeches had chafed him unmercifully and he couldn’t find a way to lie easy. They didn’t fit at the crotch at all. None of them had a needle and thread, either; that was all gone with Old Ben. They talked about him and Lolly, and even Fetch—all their dead. Caesar worried a little about Jim; he was seeing too much death for his age. He wouldn’t be right, later. But the boy seemed cheerful enough, delighted with the notion that he was going to be a soldier. It was a cold night, and they had no blankets. They all huddled in a ball together and slept by turns, those on the outside too cold to sleep, those on the inside warm but crushed.

In the cold and wet of early morning, it was hard to get them to move. The walking kept taking its toll, and the tedium of constant anxiety was sapping their desire to go to Williamsburg at all. They were all tired from bad sleep, and a little hungry all the time. The wet was new. Their camps in the swamp had been snug. The rain was hard on their brush shelter and beginning to drip through, the drops cold on Caesar’s skin as he considered the others, mumbling to each other as they tried to crawl deeper into the shelter for warmth. He let them lie a while, and the rain brought warmer air. Caesar stayed awake. Four days of walking and good food were building him up. He felt better than he had since the fever hit. After a bit he threw the woman’s cloak over Jim and got up into the light rain and cleaned their pot with ash from the fire, a very rudimentary job. Then he wiped down his fowler, checked his pouch, gathered their few belongings, and woke them all up. In a few
minutes, they were shambling off back up the track to the road, although Virgil slowed them while he fetched a coal from the old fire and tried to get his pipe lit. As soon as they reached the road, they were faced with choices of direction.

Caesar looked at the three paths headed off into the endless trees. “They all go north, now.”

“Right enough.” Tom had a strong sense of direction.

“Williamsburg is north and then some.”

“And across the bay, too. How we gon’ cross the bay?”

“Deal with that when we get to it. I reckon we can get a boat, or steal it.”

He looked at the three trails and reached out for Virgil’s pipe, which was lit and making the round. He didn’t usually smoke, but it helped his energy, and it kept the flies at bay.

“I figure it’s time to go east a bit. So we take the right.”

No one argued, and off they went.

By the end of that day, Caesar was growing tempted to head across country even if it meant facing the wet edge of the swamp. The trails and roads at the edge of the cultivated parts of Virginia were so unmarked, so empty, and so winding that he feared they might be going in circles. The added fear of discovery settled the issue. After a warm camp and no rain, they set off across country the next day, leaving the rough roads. The shortage of food that now worried Caesar was a cause for Jim’s secret rejoicing; the wallet of corn meal was three-quarters empty and no longer hurt him to carry. Virgil’s quarter of bacon was well down, too, although it still drew a cloud of flies every time they stopped.

Perhaps because of the lightened loads, or perhaps because they really were out of the swamp, they moved north quickly, and nightfall found them on the edge of a big plantation, the first they had seen. Caesar gave the word, and after a hasty meal in the woods they moved in the dark across the fields. No dogs barked, although the
houses they saw now were lit. They clutched their guns and moved as quietly as they could, every one of them conscious that capture with a gun in hand would mean certain death. When they were too tired to go further, Caesar kept them at it past several lesser farms until they reached a wooded break extending off into the dark on both sides. The trees were large, and Caesar thought the area had been left for the master to hunt. All the better. He led them in on a deer path, and in an hour, the rising sun found them buried in fresh fall leaves, warm and asleep.

He wouldn’t risk the smoke from a fire when they awoke. They grumbled, but thirst drove them out of the woods before the sun was fully set, and they slipped down to the stream at the base of a long shallow ridge. The water was brackish and muddy from recent rain, and Caesar didn’t want to drink it, but he did. They all did. The sun went down in a blaze of color, somehow startling after the swamp. Sunsets happened in the swamp, but far away above the ever-present trees. The open country stretched away, beautiful and alien after the limited horizons they had lived with for months. They all stopped together in silent wonder. They sat on rocks under the bank of the little stream and watched the sun until the western sky showed only a faint trace of pumpkin afterglow and stars, and then Caesar led them away.

They moved in better moonlight that night, as the half moon was tending toward full. Caesar couldn’t remember the moon waning, and he could only figure that he had lost some time in his fever. Superstition and the sunset tried to tell him that time might pass differently out of the swamp, where things were open and it was harder to hide.

He didn’t want to try the loyalties of other slaves as they passed plantations and farms. He was afraid of betrayal and afraid that any slave who helped him would be dead if his own little band were caught and questioned. But as they
headed a little east and stayed parallel to the road he knew they needed a fire and food. They had about one good meal left.

He led them east for half a day and got into some trees along another little muddy creek. It was miles from the nearest house and the country seemed wild. The last plantation was two days behind and they had seen only scattered cabins. Caesar judged it safe to build a small fire and cook the rest of the bacon. He risked a shot at a goose on the water, which Jim swam out and retrieved. They didn’t do a thorough job of cooking the goose, but it was fatty and it fed them, with the bacon as a breakfast, and corncakes to fill in the nooks and crannies. Grumbling decreased immediately, although Caesar knew they were at the end of the food.

He had a hazy idea that Williamsburg was on the other side of the bay; that much he remembered from the day when he had sailed into the Chesapeake as a new slave. He had no idea how they were going to cross that huge body of water, and he knew that it was miles around and with many inlets, bays, and rivers, all populated by slave owners. This was Tidewater, the heart of plantation country. By comparison, the Great Dismal Swamp was a haven. They were going to need food before crossing the bay. Caesar felt that the obvious solution would be to kill and butcher a big animal like a deer, if any could be found, and he was out early looking at the ground. What he found was both good and bad.

They were all awake when he returned, a tiny fire burning among the roots of an old oak. The smoke ran right up the tree and got lost among the branches, a good trick they had learned in the swamp. It didn’t cover everything, though.

“Smelt that fire a mile away,” he commented acidly as he entered their little camp.

“We kept you some tea, an’ it’s hot,” said Jim. He didn’t seem apologetic for the fire. They didn’t really believe that anyone would be looking for them, thought Caesar. Every one of them had been pursued, or had fought the slave-takers, and yet they didn’t really believe.

“There’s tracks down by the creek,” he said. “Man tracks, in boots.”

“Dogs?” asked Virgil. He was suddenly more alert.

“No dogs. But three men, moving fast. They went off north and east, the way we have to go.”

“Boots means white men,” said Tom.