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 at a safe inland barn . . . themselves with 3 at Lummie’s . . . a total of 23: the full roster at Hebrides.
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 swigged whiskey from bottles. Tom T. carried June into Lummie’s hall and whirled her, and Barrow grabbed his fiddle, and they all danced a reel. Even Lummie’s grandmother hopped down in her bedclothes, spry as a frog. She waved her cane, beamed her wide eyes and vast horsey grin, and rasped in a high hoarse voice: “The slaves are safe!”
The children were delirious. They squirmed 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!” Their little heads bobbed along the balustrade, but only when they thundered past its end could their leader 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 events that had seemed dire.
Yankees in the river!
Barrow yelled it at the back door. The family made to leave but suddenly nobody could find the slaves. And the packing had not gone smoothly – they had left things of value and taken things of none. Tom told Barrow to bring the financial books but the fool had managed only a crate of crumbling agricultural journals and some turnips. The twins had performed better, dragging out a side of bacon, and Young T had brought the rifles as assigned. June, bless her, had brought the ledgers.
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 had been the family’s homeplace for more than a century. Today it served as the base of Justus operations, which included many thousands of acres and at least 200 slaves.
Lum’s Crossroads was not far from a railhead, whence the Justus family could remove further inland if the Yankee situation worsened.
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. Of course the slaves didn’t want to go but the Yankees made them walk 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 that not only did he understand the Negro but also his own race, and that he could recognize the best of both. Men like Veatch were important to him, men to have nearby in a crisis. Veatch had sent Joe Boy to Lummie’s because he remembered Tom’s instructions from months ago. So many white hands would forget. “Most whites are at least as stupid as niggers,” “Tom used to say. “Even more so on the coast.”
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 a trick. When the three men entered the barn they found no slaves at all, but only the plantation men who were in poor shape. 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, of course, and they heard the bar drop. Through the boards of their prison they could see slivers, and what they saw in the sunlit world was property assembling for travel. They counted 6 wagons, 13 horses, and 20 slaves. Lum said it didn’t add up — 20 here and 2 back at Lummie’s … there should be 23.
Just then the caravan stepped off, Big Cotton in the van, and it was Tom’s great white stallion that solved the mystery of the 23rd slave: Perched upon his neck, a raisin on a cloud, was Joe Boy, pointing north and summoning all the runaways forward.
“That’s the blackest little boy I ever saw,” said Barrow.
“Shut up,” said Tom.
steve@BillyJustice.com
