Which Way Freedom (7 page)

Rayford's grip loosened, and Obi noticed that Julius seemed interested when he said Buka's name. He took a chance.

“Can you show me how to get to Buka?” he asked.

“It dangerous, Obi,” Julius said nervously. “Patterollers come right here, an' the dogs is let out too. One side the patterollers, an' the other side the dogs. Just go in the cabin Obi, like you supposed to,” he said softly.

“Tell me where the dogs be—I take my chance with them,” Obi pleaded.

“What business you have with Buka?” Rayford whispered hoarsely.

Obi decided to gamble once more. “Buka takin' me an' Easter to a funeral at Brantley's farm.”

Rayford grabbed Obi's arm and pushed him in the cabin. Obi twisted and tried to speak, “Rayford, suh, I—”

“Quiet,” he ordered.

Obi's head pounded so hard he thought he'd faint. He should never have mentioned the funeral. Julius followed them into the cabin, empty of men. “Light a candle,” Rayford told Julius.

When the candle was lit, Rayford knelt on the floor near one of the pallets. He quickly loosened an area of dirt with a hoe and pulled out a tin box. He looked at Obi. “What you say the girl's name is?”

“Easter,” Obi mumbled. His hands were clammy as he tried to figure out what was happening.

“She in the nursery,” Julius informed Rayford.

“Get her,” Rayford ordered him.

Julius left the cabin and Obi tried to explain. “Rayford, suh, I—”

Rayford held up his hand. “No time for a lot of talk.” He opened the tin box and took out a pen, ink, and parchment. To Obi's amazement, he began to write in a beautiful hand:

Permission is granted to Obi and Easter to attend the funeral at the farm of D. Brantley on the evening of July 27, 1861, and return to the Phillips plantation by ten p.m.

Signed: George Phillips

Rayford folded the note and handed it to Obi. “In case we're stopped,” he said. This
where Buka get he pass,
Obi realized. Rayford placed the box back in the hole and carefully covered it over with dirt. “I thought you was sent to
spy. You usually with that carpenter, and he love the ground ol' Master step on.”

It seemed strange to Obi to hear loyal Rayford speak so disrespectfully about George Phillips. He smiled. “Thank you for the pass. How you learn to read an' write? I ask Mistress once to teach me—she say it against the law.”

Rayford's stern face softened as he continued to pack the dirt over the box. “She probably can't read or write herself. Tyler taught me. When I take him back an' forth to school I tell him, ‘Show me what you learn today.'”

Rayford stood up. “But I never let on that I learn. I always say, ‘You a smart boy, Tyler. Dumb Rayford can't catch that at all.' The boy taught me everything he knew, God bless his soul.” Rayford laughed.

When they left the cabin, Easter was waiting with Julius outside. She rushed over to Obi. “What happened?”

“We meetin' Buka,” he said happily, expecting her to share his excitement.

“But what about Jason?”

“You look for Jason by you own self,” he said angrily. “I goin' to meet Buka!”

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the
Union and is not either to save or destroy slavery.

President Abraham Lincoln
August 22, 1862

Rayford led them behind the large oak trees and weeping willows toward the open cotton fields. When they heard growling, Easter grabbed Obi's hand and he spun around. Rayford reached out to a dog that charged from behind one of the trees.

“Hey, boy,” he said quietly. “Good boy!” The dog whined contentedly and chewed the small piece of meat Rayford threw to it. Rayford went hunting with George Phillips and knew all of the dogs that were used for plantation patrol.

They made such a winding route through the woods that Obi lost track of the direction in which they travelled. It didn't seem as if they were going toward the Jennings farm and the creek. He wondered who had died and why the funeral was such a big secret. Rayford and the rest of Phillips's people could have obtained real passes to go to a funeral.

There was a constant barking of dogs, and the sound was beginning to unnerve him. Somehow the barks were familiar.
Then he realized that they were at the creek near the Jennings farm.

Suddenly a small, hunched figure appeared out of the bushes.

“Buka!” Obi almost yelled. The barking dogs
were
the Jennings's hounds. Easter pulled Obi's arm. “Let's get Jason.”

“We have to move on,” Buka said. “Them dogs know our smell. Wake the family an' find us like bear tracking honey.”

“Hurry!” Julius whispered to them.

“Obi, please!” Easter grabbed his arm. “We sneak in the house an' get Jason easy.”

“I not goin' back there. You go!” he said harshly.

She followed him silently.

After walking for nearly an hour, Obi was startled by the unexpected light of pine torches. A group of mourners walked slowly into a small slave cemetery on the outskirts of a farm. Rayford and Julius fell in step with the mourners, and Obi, Easter, and Buka followed. There were about twenty men and women. Six of the men carried a plain pine box.

Several of the women began to sing a dirge as they approached an open grave. Obi had heard those songs before—so different from their work and play songs.

The other mourners took up the song, and the coffin was placed on the ground next to the grave. When the men pulled up the lid, Obi couldn't believe his eyes. As the light of the torches fell on the contents of the coffin, he saw that it was filled with shotguns, rifles, daggers, and anything else that could be used as a weapon.

While they sang, the mourners reached into their sacks and deposited more weapons. Buka led Obi and Easter behind a tree, away from the light of the torches.

“We runnin' tonight like we planned,” Buka rasped. “I got britches for you an' the boy,” he said to Easter.

“I can't leave without Jason!” she cried.

“There's no help for it,” Obi said sharply.

Buka patted her hand. “No time to go back, daughter. It take a while to get to the farm. We have to be long gone from here by sunup.”

“We can't go without him,” she repeated. “No one makin' me go.” She stood before them with her arms crossed.

“We go east to the swamp,” Buka patiently explained. “We return to the farm, then we get caught for sure. Dogs track us to the edge of the land.”

“Jason waitin' for us!” she replied with a determined face.

Obi clenched his fists. “Then go back for Jason! Me an' Buka leavin'. I tell you at Master Phillips, we can't get Jason.”

“I goin' back.” Tears streamed down her face. “He waitin' for us an' we never come. I go with Rayford an' them.”

“They won't take you back to the plantation,” Buka said. “When Obi discovered missin', you the first one your master come to. They beat the truth out of you.”

“I won't tell nothin', an' I ain't afraid of beatin',” Easter said, her firm voice beginning to tremble.

“Can't take that chance, daughter,” Buka insisted. He took the overalls and a shirt out of his bulging sack. “Maybe we find Jason when the war done.”

“I not goin' without Jason.”

Obi was about to grab Easter and shake some sense into her.

“Rayford shoot you before he let you go back. You can't return because you know about all this funeral business now,” Buka whispered.

Easter stared at the old man in disbelief, but she accepted the overalls he handed her. Obi and Buka turned their backs while she changed. After she put on the man's shirt and overalls worn by the plantation slaves, Buka gave her a large straw hat. He took her dress and apron and, borrowing a torch from one of the mourners, burned her clothing.

The singing stopped. Obi watched the mourners turn around and walk slowly from the grave containing its coffin
of guns. Rayford and Julius walked over to Buka and Obi, and they all embraced. When Rayford rested his hand on Obi's shoulder, Easter watched resentfully.

“God be with all of you,” Rayford said as he handed Buka a shotgun. He then joined Julius in the line of mourners. Buka hid the gun in the sack as the torchlight disappeared with the mourners.

“We walk till light, then we hide in the wood,” he said.

Obi took the sack from Buka and slipped the pass Rayford had given him inside. As they picked their way through thickets and brambles, Easter walked silently between Obi and Buka.

“We must move fast,” Buka warned. “When the overseer know you gone, they use the Jennings dogs to track you. Them hounds know your scent.”

Buka right. Them dogs run to us barkin' an' waggin' their tail,
Obi said to himself. He wondered how fast or far Buka could walk, but Buka limped along at a surprising speed.

Easter, looking like a slim, young boy, still wasn't speaking.

After walking for a couple of hours, they stopped and rested in a spot thick with vines and underbrush. It was so dark, they could barely see their hands before them. Buka wearily eased his body to the ground and leaned against a log. Obi sat next to him, but Easter kept her distance. She drew up her knees and rested her head on them.

Obi told Buka about Jeremiah's capture. “We might have to use this shotgun on Yankee as well as snake,” Buka said, looking at the sack lying at his feet. “Carry the gun,” he told Obi, “though I don't think Yankee trouble us. From what you say, seem like Jeremiah went to them, an' that's where he make he mistake—trustin' white mens.”

Obi wiped his face on the sleeve of his shirt. The moist, heavy air was filled with the sweetish smell of rotting wood. “How far is we from the Jennings farm?” Obi asked anxiously.

“Not far enough,” Buka answered. “But no one lookin' for us yet.”

Wiping his face again, Obi sighed. “But Buka, I askin' you how far we is. I know we not far enough.”

“Only three mile or so,” he answered finally. Shifting his weight and grunting a little, he said, “Now let me tell both of you this plan before we go farther.”

Easter didn't change her position or make a sound.

“We goin' to the river. My friend Gabriel, from years gone by when I live on the rice plantation, have a cabin at the river—on he master's farm. He have a boat. He use this boat to carry the sheaves of rice from the island to the rice mill on the mainland side of the river.”

“Do he know my mother?” Obi interrupted him.

“Obi, that a long time ago. Even I just know her from the day I see her at the boat. Didn't I tell you that?”

“Yes, Buka,” Obi said softly.

“Gabriel take us to the other side of the river, to the island.”

“How you know he still there?” Obi asked.

“I just hopin'. I see him a few years ago when I walk this same path we takin' now an' visit he and Mariah, he wife, at the farm.”

“What we do if he not there?”

“We get across. The farm belong to Master Turner. Master Turner and he family only stay at the big house by the river in the summer. The rest of the time they on the island, an' just the overseer an' some of the slaves run the farm.”

“But it summer now. Suppose the master still there?”

“It almost August. I remember Gabriel tell me Master an' Mistress leave the highland farm, as they call it, by the end of July, when the rice field drain. We mix in with the slaves. Don't worry. We get far as the river. Somebody take us across in the boat.”

Buka started to cough then, and Obi patted him on his back. The old man cleared his throat. “I okay. Now, listen,
Easter name is Ezra if we caught. Obi, you an' Ezra is my two grandson. The patteroller do what they want with her if they find she a girl.”

Easter still sat quietly with her head on her knees. “Remember, Easter, your name Ezra now, an' you an' Obi my grandson,” he repeated. She didn't respond.

“You hear what Buka tellin' you, Easter. You answer!” Obi said angrily.

She raised her head. “My name Ezra,” she said dully.

“Now, the next thing is this,” Buka continued. “I not able to get to Rayford soon enough for he to make us a pass like I plan. So we have to say we lose we pass if patteroller stop us,” Buka chuckled. “I yell an' make fuss with you, Obi. Like you the one lose it.”

“But we have pass, Buka!” Obi pulled Buka's arm excitedly. Then he related the story of how Rayford had helped him.

“That pass most likely for Brantley's farm, Obi. None of us can read, so we don't know what it say.” He thought a while. “Maybe the pass help us if we stopped. I have to think on it, Obi. It dangerous to show pass an' not know what it say.”

Buka eased himself off the ground slowly. “We best move on. Have a long way to go.”

Obi picked up the sack and placed the shotgun over his shoulder. Easter stood up, her face hidden by the big straw hat and the dark night.

As they started to walk, Obi asked Buka another question: “Why Rayford and them sneakin' guns in coffins?”

“They storin' guns in case the white men stop fightin' each other and fight blacks. An' they helpin' runaways like us. See, one of them women at the funeral bring me clothes an' the food we need. The huntin' knife is mine, though,” he added.

They continued walking until they could go no farther. Even Obi was beginning to stumble from exhaustion, and Buka coughed frequently.

Easter still hadn't said anything. They crawled into a thicket of leaves and vines just as the birds were beginning to sing. Soon all three were asleep.

At first Obi didn't remember where he was when he woke up. Easter slept against his shoulder, and Buka snored heavily on Obi's other side. Carefully, he placed Easter's head on the leaf-covered ground and crawled out of their enclosure. Easter stirred and moaned slightly. Rays of light filtered through the tall oaks, cypresses, and other trees. A rabbit scampered under a bush and startled him.