Coastal Georgia
1862
They heard Joe Boy’s screeches long before he made the gate, but they couldn’t make out his words. They opened the door and the little Negro burst in and stood before them, doubled over, panting, unable to speak.
“What! ” they shouted. “What is it!”
They were frantic. The more they shouted at the boy the more he convulsed. Finally he got out two words: “The slaves —” Pant, pant. “The slaves —”
“What!“
Little lungs burning. “The slaves are safe!”
The slaves were safe! “Where! “
Pant. “North Barn!”
All of em?“
Panting, nodding.
“Who’s with em?”
“Veatch . . . Pierce . . . Sump!”
The assembled family considered these ratios . . . the plantation men with 20 slaves at a safe inland barn . . . themselves with 3 at Lummie’s . . . a total of 23: the full roster at Hebrides.
Then they roared to Heaven.
The women howled to be heard in Darien, the twins yodeled up and down the scales, and the men chanted and drank whiskey from bottles. Tom T. swept June into Lummie’s hall and whirled her, Barrow grabbed his fiddle, and then they were all dancing the reel. Even Lummie’s grandmother hopped down in her bedclothes, spry as a frog. She waved her cane, beamed her wide eyes and horsey grin, and rasped in a high hoarse voice: “The slaves are safe!”
The children were delirious. They danced and jumped and yelped and charged up the stairs and round the mezzanine, screaming the entire circuit. “The slaves are safe! The slaves are safe!” When they thundered past the balustrade their leader could be seen, and it was Joe Boy. A few minutes later he was leading the entire company, adults included, in an Indian war whoop.
It was the climax of what had seemed to be a dire turn of events.
Yankees in the river!
Barrow had yelled it at the back door. The family made to leave but nobody could find the slaves. And the packing had not gone smoothly — jewels, turnips, portraits, slippers — they had left things of value and taken things of none. Tom told Barrow to bring the ledgers but the fool had managed only a Bible and a crate of crumbling agricultural journals.
The twins had performed better, dragging out a side of bacon, and Young T had brought the rifles as assigned.
Then the Justus family had fled, making due west for Lum’s Crossroads and the house of Cousin Lummie Macintosh. Only Sarah and Norrie had come with them; the disappeared slaves had to be left behind.
Hebrides was the smallest of the Justus holdings, just 23 slaves and barely 160 acres under plow. But it was the family’s homeplace, and had been for a century. Today the modest spread was the base of Justus operations, which many thousands of acres and at least 200 slaves.
At the moment, however, Lum’s Crossroads offered one advantage over Hebrides: It was not far from a railhead whence the Justus family could remove further inland if the Yankee situation got worse.
When everybody at Lummie’s had settled down, Joe Boy told the whole story.
He said the Yankee soldiers had come to the fields to run off the slaves. The slaves didn’t want to go, of course, but the Yankees had driven them down to the dock. But then up came the plantation men and killed the Yankees — “Sump got two!” — and rescued the Negroes. Everybody got on flatboats and went upriver to Four Mile and walked over Peck’s Neck and out to North Barn. When everybody was safe inside, Veatch had sent Joe Boy to deliver the good news.
This narrative was satisfying to Tom Justus. It confirmed his ability to recognize good men, men like Veatch, men to have in a crisis. Veatch had sent the black boy to Lummie’s because he remembered Tom’s instructions from months ago. So many would forget. “Plenty of white men dumber than niggers,” Tom used to say.
After the celebrating everybody wanted to go out to North Barn and see the miracle. But Tom said only three would go, himself and Lummie and Barrow, with Joe Boy. It was a good thing they didn’t take more, because it was all a trick, and when the three white men entered the barn they found no slaves at all. The plantation men were there, though: Pierce was dead, his head caved in, and Sump was bleeding badly from both arms. Veatch was tied like a hog on the floor.
The door closed behind them, but through the boards of their prison the masters of Hebrides could see slivers of the sunlit world, and what they saw was their property assembling for travel. They counted 6 wagons, 13 horses, and 20 slaves. Barrow said it didn’t add up — 20 here and 2 back at Lummie’s … there should be 23.
Just then the caravan moved off, with Big Cotton, Tom’s champion race horse, in the van. As the beast stepped out the mystery of the 23rd slave was solved: Perched upon the stallion’s great white neck, waving the runaways forward, was Joe Boy.
“That’s about the blackest little boy I ever saw,” said Barrow.
“Shut up,” said Tom.
steve@BillyJustice.com
Posted by billyjustice 
