Which Way Freedom (10 page)

Obi was startled. He hadn't noticed Daniel standing beside him as he hammered in a plank of wood.

“Maybe,” Obi mumbled. Rumors about Yankees and upcoming battles drifted through the camp like the river mists. He paid little mind to them.

Daniel looked around the riverbank. “Guess Jameson settin' with he whiskey jug.” He rested his elbow on one of the planks and watched the soldiers. “If they's a battle, these soldier be busy. Too busy to worry with us.”

Obi nodded and continued working. He'd said little to Daniel or any of the other men in the camp since he'd been
there. He was only interested in Buka's getting well so that they could get on with their journey.

On clear days like this one, when the sun burned away the fog and mist, he could see the island, just within reach—yet almost impossible to get to.

“These soldiers start fightin' them Yankees, that be the perfect time to run,” Daniel muttered. He stared at Obi as if measuring the effect of his words.

Obi was interested, but he wasn't going to be baited. “You don't like it here?” he asked, hammering in another piece of wood.

“Like it much as you do,” Daniel said. His voice was serious. “I have a woman an' child on the island. I miss them.” He was from the same plantation as Mariah and Gabriel.

Obi had never seen the serious side of the man, who always seemed to be laughing and joking with the other slaves and the soldiers. His face looked different without the smile—older and harder.

Picking up another plank, Obi said, “So when the war done, you go back.”

“That might take too long.”

A man working near Daniel nudged him. “There go that Ezra, the Colonel's boy, gatherin' palm leaf an' reed with he own little hands.”

Obi looked up from his work and saw Easter strolling along the riverbank with an armload of grasses and palm fronds. Her short-cropped hair made her small face and smiling, brown eyes stand out even more. He hated hearing the men ridicule her. “He just a young boy,” Obi snapped.

“I just teasin' about your little brother,” the man said and went back to work.

Obi didn't answer but banged the nail so hard that the wood splintered. Daniel watched him for a moment. “You love your brother. When we know we family we best love 'em,” he muttered, watching Obi closely.

Obi sensed that Daniel might suspect that Ezra was a
girl. Since he was friendly with Mariah and Gabriel, he was often in the cabin when Easter was there.

Most of the time Easter was cooking, cleaning, and washing for Colonel Andrews. Sometimes, though, she would sit in the cabin in the evening. Mariah was teaching her how to make baskets and rugs out of the palm fronds and grasses.

The conch horn blew to signal lunch, and Obi walked alone to the cooking shed. Mariah was dishing out the food. He picked up a plate from the pine table and walked over to her.

“Obi,” she said, nervously spooning the food onto his plate, “when you go in to see Buka, try and make he eat.”

Obi had been eating his lunch each day in the cabin with Buka. Buka ate little, usually drinking something Mariah made from molasses, vinegar, and water. He rarely left the cabin. Sometimes in the evening, when the heat inside was unbearable, he'd sit on the porch with Obi.

A few others, including Daniel, would occasionally join them and talk to Buka.

“He not eatin' at all?” Obi asked Mariah.

“No, not even he grits in the mornin'. Maybe he eat some of this,” she said, placing an extra spoonful of peas and rice on Obi's plate.

Obi walked quickly to the cabin. Buka, lying on a straw mattress near the entrance, smiled weakly as Obi helped him sit up. He was glad that Buka was awake. Some days he slept the whole time Obi was there. “How you today, Obi?”

“I fine.” Obi sat cross-legged in front of him on a mat that Mariah had woven to cover the dirt floor. “Buka, Mariah tell me you ain't been eatin'.” He rested his plate on the floor and, taking a spoonful of rice, put it up to Buka's lips. “Here, let me feed you this.”

Buka lay back down and shook his head. “No. I don't eat noon meal.”

“You don't eat
no
meal. Come outside and sit. Take some air.”

He closed his eyes. “Tomorrow—I sit out tomorrow.”

“You need to eat. You get your strength and we cross the river.”

“Not hungry,” he said.

“We have to go to the island. You help me find Lorena.”

“I goin' pass that river and pass that island.” He turned slowly on his side and watched Obi. “Lorena was a long time ago. You have to move on.”

Obi didn't understand. “I know, then you an' me an' Easter, we go on to Mexico.”

Buka patted Obi's knee with his wrinkled hand. “You born a man, not a slave—that the thing to remember. You got to learn which way freedom be. It here first,” he said, touching his own creased forehead. “In you own mind.”

Obi stared blankly at his old friend.

“This a time for joy. The ancestors call me an' I go see them. Think hard an' you find a way to get to the island. My time done.” He closed his eyes.

Obi touched Buka's feverish forehead gently. “Buka, how I find a way without you?”

Buka opened his eyes slowly—like the sun fighting to rise over thick clouds. “You find a way,” he said, gazing a the top of Obi's bent head.

“You know, my real name
Baako.
It mean ‘firstborn'. Over the years people say the name wrong, so I known as Buk now. You as much my firstborn as if you was made from my flesh. You know which way freedom be now. You leave one master—you find a way to leave this soldier master too.”

Obi nodded, not able to speak. Buka coughed and when he caught his breath, Obi could barely hear him.

“Let me rest.”

Buka closed his eyes for the last time, and Obi watched the life seep out of him. He was still staring at Buka when Daniel rushed into the cabin.

“Jameson lookin' for you!”

Obi knocked over the plate of food as he jumped to his feet. Daniel started to say something else but stopped short when he saw Buka lying on the floor. He peered closely at the old man and then bent down and took Buka's wrist. “He dead,” he whispered. “I get the boys to come bury him.”

“He have to get a right burial,” Obi told him. “I makin' a coffin an' he be bury proper.”

“You crazy? You think these soldier let you use they wood an' time to make a coffin?”

Pushing Daniel aside, Obi left the cabin. No one—not even the colonel himself—was going to stop him from making Buka's coffin.

He went to the shed, where Mariah was washing plates in a large tin tub. “Buka dead,” he announced.

Mariah looked at Obi calmly. “I prepare the body,” she said.

Obi ran to the clearing where several of the black laborers were stacking wood. Daniel dashed behind him, breathing heavily.

“Obi, Jameson gettin' angry.”

Ignoring him, Obi pulled out a piece of wood large enough for one of the sides of the coffin. “I makin' Buka's coffin.”

“Wait till tonight,” Daniel said, “an' I help you.”

“Can't wait,” Obi answered and continued to search for more wood.

“Then I start makin' the coffin for you. Jameson ain't gonna say nothin' to me. I tell he I makin' a trap for huntin'. You go back so he see you there workin'. When he leave, then you come back here an' finish the coffin.”

“Thank you, Daniel,” Obi said quietly and returned to the breastworks at the riverbank.

They buried Buka that night under a cypress tree where the woods behind the slave cabins began. Mariah and Gabriel quietly sang a wailing, high-pitched funeral dirge that reminded Obi of the mock funeral they'd attended only a
few months ago. The single pine torch cast a dim light on their small circle.

Besides Daniel, some of the other blacks in the camp were there to pay their last respects to the old African. They were those who sat in front of Mariah and Gabriel shack sometimes.

When the grave was covered over, Mariah said the Twenty-third Psalm while Easter placed a cross she'd woven out of the dried grass on the mound of dirt to mark the gravesite. Obi wiped his eyes on his shirtsleeves as he thought about Buka and him fishing together and hunting small game.

They trudged back to the cabin. Easter walked next to Obi. “Why you didn't tell me that he dead?” she asked. “Daniel have to bring the news.”

“I didn't think you care about Buka dyin'. Didn't think you was comin' to he funeral.”

“Why? He suppose to be my grandfather too!” she said angrily. “I not mad at he. The old man die helpin' us. He know he too old an' sick to make this trip to the river. But he come anyway. For us—for you.”

She paused a moment. “It's you, Obi. You act like you care for nothin' but you self. Even if you try a little to go back for Jason, you act like you care nothin' about he.”

Obi was glad that the night hid the shame in his eyes. “Easter,” Obi whispered, “I promise you we find Jason, and all three of us be together again. I see to that.”

A few days after Buka's burial, Obi, Daniel, and the others still worked on the wall. Daniel turned his gaze away from the river and watched a group of slaves carrying shovels, going into the woods.

“These soldier busy, Obi. We go dig pit in the wood. I hear Jameson say the Yankee tryin' to get to Charleston and gonna come through here to do it.” He leaned close to Obi. “The first Yankee I see, I runnin' to them. I have to go back to the island.”

“Don't think you better run to no Yankee,” Obi said. He told him about Jeremiah.

When Obi finished, Daniel picked up his hammer. “I
been hearin' different story, Obi. Slave been runnin' to the Yankee camps like thunder follow lightnin'.”

“I want to get 'cross that river too,” Obi whispered. Then he told Daniel about his dream of finding his mother. “An' after I find her we goin' to Mexico.”

“What about your brother?” Daniel asked. “He goin' with you?” He studied Obi with a knowing look in his eyes.

“Yes, he goin' too,” Obi mumbled, avoiding Daniel's eyes. He went back to work.

Daniel cleared his throat. “Your brother ain't really your brother, is he? Ezra a girl.”

Obi nodded and stared at Daniel. “Don't tell no one.”

“I won't. Some of these men an' soldiers trouble her if they know.” He smiled. “I suspect for a long time. Don't worry. I watch out for she too.”

That evening, as Obi, Gabriel, Mariah, and Daniel sat in the cabin, Obi felt as if Buka were still there with them.

“I bring your pallet inside tonight, Obi. You sleep in here with me an' Gabriel,” Mariah said.

“It be gettin' cold, you know, Obi,” Gabriel added. “When them rain come an' the storm blow in from the ocean, you can't sleep outside.”

“Seven of us piled into that shack I in, an' it still be cold. Have to get some clay an' fill in them cracks,” Daniel said.

The cabin door opened and Easter walked in. “What you cook for the Colonel tonight?” Daniel asked. “Bring us anything?”

Easter placed a neatly wrapped package of corn bread and slices of ham on the table. “Keep that hole in your face shut, Daniel. Can't talk whiles you eat,” she smiled.

Obi reached for the package first. “Don't tell he that. Think the whole thing for him.”

“Next time we catch some rabbit, Easter, I bring one for you to cook. You 'bout the best cook—beside Mariah an' my Minna—that I come 'cross in a long time.” Daniel grinned and bit into a piece of ham.

“You just like to keep you belly full,” Mariah grumbled.

“You ain't learn yet that slave never get enough to eat.”

Easter knelt down at the fire and warmed herself, rubbing her hands together. Then she picked up several blades of dried grass that Mariah had spread out to one side of the fireplace. She took a palmetto frond and started coiling it around the blades of grass.

Mariah had been teaching her how to coil the leaves and grasses, and she was about to make her first basket. Obi left the table and sat next to her so he could watch. “Don't tell me you weavin' basket too, Obi?” Daniel chuckled.

“No,” Obi said seriously. “I go weave me a boat.”

After old Ned got such a terrible beatin' for
prayin' for freedom, he slipped off and went to
de North to join de Union Army.

Mingo White, ex-slave
From
Voices from Slavery

October 1861
Everyone except Gabriel stared at him as if he were crazy. Mariah spoke first. “There a kind of root to make a tea to calm mad people. I lookin' for some of that root for you tomorrow, Obi.”

Obi stood up. “Gabriel, what you think the length an' width should be to hold four or five people?”

“Don't put me an' Gabriel in them numbers,” Mariah said as she joined Easter by the fire.

Daniel, laughing, stretched across the bench. “Lord have mercy. We goin' to ride a basket to freedom.”

Gabriel thought a moment. “You could make a boat out of the grasses. Make one the length an' breadth of a big cabin—not a shack like this. Like so—” He strode from the fireplace to the door. “Twelve paces.” Then he pointed from the bed to the other side of the room. “Now if this shack stretch about eight more steps, that give twenty paces. That be just right for a boat to get you 'cross the
river. If you want to go 'cross the ocean, now that a different thing.”

Mariah peered up at her husband. “You as fool as the boy is,” she said.

“My father a African man. He tell me about boats made from reeds,” Gabriel said.

Daniel got off the bench and fingered the rug on the floor. “You know, this be strong.”

Obi turned to Daniel. “We make it in the cove where the grass tall,” he said.