The slaves were safe!
.
They heard Joe Boy screeching long before he made the gate.
But they couldn’t make out his words. When he finally burst in the door and stood before them he was panting, unable to speak.
“What! ” they shouted.
But the little Negro had no voice. Finally he got out two words: “The slaves —” Pant, pant. “The slaves —”
“What!“
Pant, pant, little lungs burning.
“The slaves are safe!”
“Where! “
Pant. “North Barn!”
How many! “
Pant. “All of em!”
“All of em! “
“All twenty!”
“Who’s with em!”
“Veatch. And Pierce and Sump!”
The family considered these ratios: Veatch and his men, 20 slaves, an inland barn.
Then they roared to Heaven. They filled their lungs and screamed. June offered a shriek to be heard in Darien. The twins yodeled up and down the scales.
It was kisses and bear hugs all around. The men drank whiskey from bottles, and grouped and regrouped, and finally formed a circle and joined in chants — grave full-throated chants, high-pitched and rapid chants, chants in no known tongue, chants set to fist-pump rhythms and accompanied by secret signs learned at the University.
Tom T. swept June into Lummie’s hall and whirled her. Barrow grabbed his fiddle and everybody came in and danced a spinning reel. Even Tether Mama hopped down in her bedclothes. Everyone said she was frail, not well, but that day she was spry as a frog. She waved her cane, shined her toothless grin, danced jigs, and rasped over and over in a high hoarse voice: “The slaves are safe!”
The children were delirious. They danced and jumped and yelped and charged up the stairs, ran round and round, and charged back down screaming. “The slaves are safe! The slaves are safe!” First among them was Joe Boy. At one point the little darkie was seen leading the entire company, adults included, in an Indian war whoop.
It was the culmination of a dire turn of events, a close call if ever there were. Yankee gunboats had entered the river.
The boats had come into the sound several times but never the river. The earlier forays had been harmless, and this one had seemed to be, especially after the vessels had lain quietly at anchor for two hours. But then, instead of making leisurely steam back out to the lanes, the boats had turned their noses inland, and entered the Altamaha.
When the news reached Hebrides the Justuses did not take it lightly. Those who had taken it lightly had educated the rest. Stafford Spalding had lost every one of his slaves to Yankee raids. Stafford said it was because he lived on the north island and was the most vulnerable, but Tom said Spalding was a stubborn dumb ass and deserved what he got.
The Yankees were coming upriver!
There had been no time at all. They packed frantically and carelessly. Jewels, pictures, clothes, turnips — they left things of value and took things of none. The twins dragged out a side of bacon. Young T. brought the rifles. Tom specifically told Barrow to bring the company books, but Barrow managed only a Bible and his crate of crumbling agricultural journals. Luckily June insisted on one last sweep of the house and brought out a sackful of business papers.
Then the family fled. Tomorrow, depending on events, they might ride to a railhead and break for the interior. But tonight they made for Lum’s Crossroads and the ample house of Lummie Lee Macintosh. They brought Sarah and Norrie with them, thank God, but the other 20 slaves of Hebrides were not to be seen and the family had to leave without them, their whereabouts and safety unknown.
Hebrides was the smallest of the Justus holdings, just 23 slaves and barely 160 acres under plow. But it had been their very first place, a century ago, and it had served as the family’s base of operations ever since. Those operations now included thousands of acres and hundreds of slaves.
Joe Boy told the story. He said the Yankee soldiers had come into the field to run off the slaves. The slaves didn’t want to go but the Yankees ordered them to the dock. But when they were almost there they ran right into Veatch and his crew. Tthe plantation men had killed the Yankees — “Sump got two!” — and then everybody had boarded the flatboat, poled upriver to Four Mile, and walked over Peck’s Neck to the North Barn.
Tom said that was very good thinking by Veatch.
Joe boy continued. Finally when Veatch had everybody safe in the barn he had sent Joe Boy to Lummie’s house to deliver the news. Veatch knew they would go to Lummie’s because Tom T. had gone over emergency plans with him in detail.
Now, in the midst of the celebrating, everybody wanted to go up to North Barn and see the miracle. But only Tom and Lummie and Barrow and Joe Boy went. That was lucky, as it turned out, because it was a trick. The three white men got themselves locked up in a barn stall with Veatch and what was left of Sump and Pierce. Sump was dead, his head caved in, and Pierce was bleeding badly from a long slash down his frontside. Veatch was tied like a hog on the floor.
Through the boards of their prison they could see slivers of the sunlit world.
What they saw was property assembling for travel: 21 slaves, 6 wagons, and 13 horses. One of the horses was Big Cotton, Tom’s huge and handsome white stallion. When the caravan stepped off it was led by Cotton, stepping high, guided by a dark little Joe Boy riding high on his back.
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steve@BillyJustice.com
