The Emancipation of Robert Sadler (13 page)

Another year went by, and I labored and prayed and grew stronger, but never better at being a field slave. I couldn't plow, hoe, cut stalk, or pick cotton right. It was misery twenty-four hours a day. My only relief was in the winter months when I was put to other chores before plowing time would begin again. I missed Big Mac. There was hardly a day went by when I didn't think of him.

The summer of 1925 I turned fourteen years old. I had grown large. Though I wasn't tall, I had broad shoulders and thick arms. The other boys didn't want to fight me because I could beat them. Jed, who still worked the same fields as I did, often teased me because I was so clumsy with the plow. “One of these days thet mule gonna plow
you,
Robert.”

Jed told me his real name was Zephaniah. The white master had it changed to Jed. “They find Zephaniah too hard to say. So they shorten it up an' call me Jed.” A Jeremiah was called Jerry, a Josiah would be Joe, and a Delilah Lee was changed to Lucie. I thought of Tennessee, who refused to allow her name to be changed and wouldn't answer to Carolina. I smiled and said a quiet prayer for her right there in the field, for her and for John Henry and the baby.

It was on a Saturday night in the middle of the summer that Buck cleared his throat and told me, “Boy, we's leavin this here farm.” When it had sunk in, I jumped up and down. “Buck! Buck! Don't leave without me! Promise me yoll won't leave without me!” Buck promised.

That night there was a dance going on down in the quarter and they were “settin the floor,” but I didn't go. Though I wasn't sure if my life was in danger in the quarter, I surely wasn't welcome and everybody stayed away from me. I walked slowly across the yard, past the chicken coop, and up the hill to the barn where the mules were.

My mule, Jim, was standing quietly eating hay. “Mule,” I said softly, “I has done plowed you fo the las time.”

The words startled me. I held my breath. “I has done plowed you fo the las time,” I repeated.

I stroked his head and then left the barn. The night was hot and the air thick. My body was wet with sweat. It felt like there was a fluttering bird inside my chest. “I is leavin this here place,” I whispered. “Yes, I believe I is leavin this here place.”

I walked back to Buck and Corrie's but was too excited to go inside and go to sleep, so I walked up the familiar path which led to the Big House. I had walked that path for eight years, and I knew each lump and crag to it. When I reached the Big House, I stood by the wooden steps leading up to the back porch. Taking a breath, I opened the door and went inside. I could get a whupping for what I was doing, but I wanted to see Big Mac again.

It was quiet inside. Mary Webb was rolling dough on the big table in the center of the kitchen. She didn't see me standing in the shadows. The kitchen looked exactly the same as it did the last time I was there, except a little smaller and dingier. I heard voices and hid behind the door. Mistress Beal entered the kitchen with Harriet.

“Harriet, we'll be visitin tomorrow, and I want those crinolines pressed right nice. I want an extra pinafore for Anna, too, hear?”

The smoothing irons were heating on the cookstove, and I heard heavy feet brush across the kitchen floor.

I wondered where Miz Anna might be and if I could catch just one more look at her. I peeked around the corner. Mistress Beal had left the room, and Harriet was testing the smoothing irons on the stove. She wore men's shoes on her bare feet, probably John's throwaways. I was afraid if Mary Webb saw me she'd start to screaming and throwing things, so I remained hidden. After nearly an hour went by and Big Mac didn't appear, I crept back across the porch and back out the screen door.

I had a longing to see Big Mac, and it was like a tight fist in my stomach. I searched the grounds around the chicken coop, the smokehouse, the well, woodpile, tool sheds, and barns for him, but I didn't find him. I returned to Buck and Corrie's shack that night feeling sad and uneasy.

Nearly every day when Buck had returned from the Big House, I had asked him about Big Mac, and he always answered the same, “Big Mac be fine, boy, jes fine.” This is all I had to carry with me for the rest of my life because I never saw him or heard from him again.

Buck and Corrie were in bed. I passed their bed quietly, but I wanted to talk to Buck. “Ssst,” I whispered. “Sssst.”

Buck grunted.

“Buck, don't forgit me, please don't forgit me.”

“OK, Robert, we won't forgit you. Now go to sleep.”

I fell into a deep sleep, and I awoke Sunday morning long after daybreak. I lay for a moment or so in the stillness of the cabin, glad that we didn't have to go to the field.

Then in a sudden panic I jerked up from the floor and ran to the partition. Climbing up on the woodbox, I peered over the top, not believing what I saw. The cabin was stripped bare. There wasn't a pot or a rag left. Everything was gone—in fact, it didn't look as though anyone had ever lived there. Black, dirty, empty, and damp. They were gone, gone without me. They were gone!

I leaped down from the box and ran to the door. The sun was shining and it must have been at least eight in the morning. Frantic, I ran across the yard and through the brush to the road. It was hopeless. There was nobody in sight and no way to find them.

I walked slowly back to the shanty, but I didn't go inside. I walked on to the barn and stood beside my mule. “Jim,” I said, “they done gone without me.” The mule acted as though I weren't even there. I filled the water tub, and as I stood there in the heat and the buzzing flies, I heard the sound of my own voice. “I has done plowed you fo the las time.”

Without even being aware of making a decision, I turned and walked out of that barn, walked down the dirt path toward the Big House, walked right past the Big House, past the circular drive, and onto the road leading to the highway.

The road was narrow and hot—the pebbles had barely cooled during the night before the morning sun began to bake them. I heard the insects in the grass, smelled the honeysuckle and azaleas. The road wound through the thick green clumps of trees, and the sky overhead was a deep, rich blue with thin trails of clouds scattered across it.

I walked along the road with my heart pounding loud in my chest. I could be tied up, I could be thrown into the back of a buggy and beaten. I could be strung up, I could be dragged by my heels—I could be— “Oh Lord, hepp me. Hepp me now.”

I reached the place in the narrow road where it met a wider dirt road, Abbeville Road. This is the road which led to Anderson. I took a breath and began to walk toward town. As I walked, the fear began to leave me. I had the feeling that I wasn't alone—that there was someone walking alongside me very close, so close I could have touched Him.

“Jesus,” I whispered, “I know you with me, and I want to say, I'm thankin yoll.”

I passed a little cabin nestled behind some tall poplar trees. There were wooden chairs on the porch. I noticed the woodpile, the well, and the iron kettles out in the yard for washing clothes. There was the sound of birds singing everywhere. I walked kind of hunched over, never letting my eyes leave the house in case someone would take a shot at me or come running out after me. To my amazement, I saw a colored woman with two little children walking up a path by the cabin, and as they entered the cabin, she paused and waved a friendly “hi” to me. Then a tall man in overalls and a T-shirt followed the family into the house. He waved at me, too. I didn't wave back. They could be some of Sam Beal's people, and I hoped they wouldn't guess what I was doing. I didn't know they were free people.

I walked for several hours. Many cars passed, but nobody seemed to take any notice of me. One or two buggies passed by, too, drawn by white people, but there wasn't a word said to me as they passed me. I couldn't understand it. I fully expected to be caught and dragged back to the Beal Plantation.

Soon the plowed fields on either side of the road gave way to an occasional house, then more houses, some stores, and I was in town. It was midday, and I was very tired, hungry, and thirsty.

I walked along a road with a graveyard surrounded by barbwire along one side and houses on the other. There were black children playing in the street and in the yards. I stopped by a group of young men who were leaning against a stone wall opposite the graveyard. Remembering what Margie told me about a brother, I asked in a parched voice, “Do yoll know where Johnny Sadler live?”

“Sure,” one of the boys replied, “right down yonder, two blocks and turn to your right. It's the end house.”

Johnny Sadler, I was sure that was the name my sister had given me. Johnny Sadler, my
brother
? Breathless and shaky, I walked up the quiet, hot dirt road to the end house on the right, two blocks down.

The unpainted house was set up on concrete blocks. There was a small wooden porch lined with pots of blooming plants. All around the dirt yard were rich green trees, and wild shrubbery and flowers.

I walked cautiously up to the porch. When I arrived at the door, I called, “Johnny Sadler!”

A woman came to the door. She wore a cotton dress and an apron, and her hair was tied up in a bandanna.

“Is this where Johnny Sadler live?”

“Yes,” she answered, a puzzled expression on her face.

“I be his brother, Robert Sadler, and I be runnin away from the Beal Plantation where I—”

“Oh my Lord!” she cried and, throwing open the door, she swept me inside.

“Johnny! Johnny!” she called. “Come in, honey. Come in and set down. Johnny!” I heard noises from another room, and in a few minutes a figure just awaking from sleep appeared in the doorway, smoothing his hair.

“Johnny!” the woman cried very excitedly, “this here is yor brother, yor brother Robert!”

The man's mouth fell open, and his hands froze in midair. “Rob—” He walked over to me, looking at me with wide eyes. “Is you really Robert?” he asked.

“Yessuh,” I answered.

“How'd you git off'n that farm?”

“I done walked. I done walked off this mornin.”

“Oh, Lord A'mighty!”

The man and the woman looked at each other with alarm on their faces. Finally, the woman said, “Honey, you must be hungry. I'm gonna fix us all somethin to eat.”

She fixed a feast beyond anything I could imagine—eggs, grits, bacon, buttermilk biscuits, and hot coffee. They watched me eat with eyes so wide they were as big as the fried eggs on the plate.

“Didn't you never learn how to use a fork, honey?” the woman asked.

“No, Ma'am,” I said, pushing the food into my mouth with my hands.

Johnny said, “Robert, you wasn't nothin but a baby when I las saw you. I didn't think I'd ever see yor lil ole face agin.”

He told me he had a job in Anderson working in a textile factory and that he had been working there a long time.

Over and over again he asked, “You mean yoll jes
walked off down the road?
” He shook his head and repeated, “Impossible, that's impossible . . .”

“Well, I done it.”

He explained that it wouldn't be safe for me to stay in Anderson because Sam Beal would be sure to be around looking for me. They decided to take me to the train station and put me on a train to Belton. From there I could catch a train to Greenville.

I grew frightened. The train station was where they caught John Henry.

“We got a cousin there yoll can stay with. Name Bessie. Bessie Watts.” He gave me a few dollar bills and folded them carefully into my pocket. Then the lady packed me a box lunch.

They took me to the station in a car. “Git down on the floor,” Johnny told me. “An' stay there.” They were plenty scared as we drove, and they dropped me off about a half block from the station. I walked inside and did as they told me to do. I purchased a ticket to Belton and waited outside because I didn't see any colored people in the station. They warned me to be careful not to sit where there were white folks. There was a special place for us. They drilled me about the bathrooms and drinking fountains, too.

I boarded the train without incident, though my heart was pounding wildly. When the train arrived in Belton, I still held my lunch on my lap untouched. I got off and went into the train station. The noise of the train, the newness of a depot and people, and the strange town terrified me.

The colored section of the station was easily recognized. It was a narrow room like a hallway that nobody bothered to clean. I saw a man and a woman and a child sitting on the bench in the back. I gasped at the sight of them. Buck and Corrie!

They were startled at the sight of me. Buck sprang to his feet and ran to the window. He hurried to the other side of the hallway and looked out the door.

Corrie began gathering things together and held her son to her heart. “Did you bring him, boy? Did you bring him with you?”

“Bring who?”

Buck hurried back to the bench. “Robert,” he said gruffly, taking my arm and holding it hard, “did yoll come here with Massuh Beal?”

“No, Buck!” I answered, surprised. “I done run away, too.”

“I swear, boy, if you done brought him, we all be daid, and then some—”

“Buck, I didn't bring nobody. I done run away, too!”

Finally he let go my arm. I slumped down on the bench with them. They sat still, staring at me. I was quiet and didn't look at them.

We got on the train and it was not until we were almost to Greenville that Buck could speak to me. “Robert, chile, we has been walkin all night. We took the desert way.”

“The desert way?”

“That's right, boy. Through the woods, the fields, the back roads . . . We ain't slept a dot—”

“Why didn't you wake me, Buck? Why didn't you take me with you?”

Buck looked at me sadly. “Son, if'n they'da caught us, they'da hung us, and I couldn't do that to you.”