“We should be going that way.” Honor pointed at the pole star. “Toward Oberlin.”
The woman shook her head. “I jes’ come from Oberlin. From the woman in the red house-make one fiery stew. Who said to stay away from you. Now I start to understand why,” she added. “Don’t you understand? I’m goin’ south, not north. Already been in the north.” She crossed back to Honor. “You don’t remember me, do you? I expect we all look alike to you.” She clicked her tongue. “Well, I tell you somethin’: white folks look the same to us too.”
“I do remember thee,” Honor whispered. “Thee left water by my bed when I was ill.”
The woman’s face softened. “I did.”
“But I don’t understand-why is thee going south?”
“My children. See, after I got caught I ran away again first chance I got. I even stopped at your farm one day, got the victuals you left under the crate. This time I made it to Canada. But once I was there, I couldn’t stop thinkin’ ’bout my girls, and worryin’ ’bout them. It felt good up there, the freedom. Ain’t nobody tellin’ you what to do. You make your own decisions, where you live, what you do, how you spend the money you earn. You earn money! And livin’ with other black folk, it’s-well, it’s like you livin’ with your Quaker kind. It feel right. I want my children to feel that too. So I’m goin’ back for them.”
“Where are they?”
“Virginia.”
“But that is far! What if thee is caught?”
“If I is caught I’ll jes’ wait till I can run again. That the thing about slavery. They needs you to work, they can’t always be lockin’ you up. You wait long enough, you always find a time to run. That’s why I don’t worry if I get caught. They take me back to Virginia, and I’ll run again, with my children this time. I done tasted freedom now. I always gon’ be wantin’ that taste again.”
Honor felt as she had done when playing a game with her brothers and sister, where they blindfolded her and spun her round, and when she removed the blindfold, she discovered she was facing a completely different direction from what she thought. It was as if she were standing in the corn, and it had turned around her 180 degrees, so that north was south and south north. She had been expecting to walk to Mrs. Reed’s in Oberlin, then make her way northwest to Sandusky, a town on Lake Erie where she could get a boat across to Canada. That was what fugitive slaves did. Now, though, she would have to go the opposite way, or go north without a guide.
“So where you goin’?” the black woman asked.
“I…” Honor had no idea where she was going. She had only considered what she was running from, not what she was running to. Those were usually two different directions. It was not really a question of her going north or south; she was not a black slave escaping from unjust laws. Hers was more of an east-west decision: known or unknown territory. “I will go with thee to Wellington. From there I will decide.” She preferred a companion going south to a night in the woods alone, tasting metal.
“Come on, then, if you really comin’.” The woman began crossing the field, weaving through the rows of corn. A breeze had sprung up, rattling the stalks naturally so that the fugitives did not have to worry so much about the noise they made. Still they went slowly, Honor stumbling in the dark.
At the edge of the corn they dropped into a ditch and lay there for a time. Honor was not sure why, and asked. “Waitin’ till it feel right,” was all the woman would say.
Eventually Donovan rode by, on his own this time, seeming to taunt them by slowing down on the road near to where they lay, then speeding up again.
“He know we ’round here somewhere,” the woman said. “He can feel it. But he’s confused, ’cause he don’t know I-we-headin’ south. Thinks it should be north, even though his sense tellin’ him otherwise. We jes’ got to wait him out.”
Donovan returned a few minutes later. Stopping his horse, he called out, “Listen here, Honor Bright. I know you’re out there with that nigger. I tell you what, I’ll strike a bargain with you. Give yourself up and I’ll let you go wherever it is you’re goin’. Your husband asked me to find you-even said he’d pay good money-but I don’t care ’bout him or his money. You wanna run away from him, I ain’t gonna stop you. I always knew you wouldn’t take to the Haymakers. He told me you ain’t spoken since that nigger died. Well, you don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to. Just throw a rock at me so I’ll know you’re out there, and I’ll find you.”
The runaway watched Honor, the whites of her eyes flashing in the dark. Honor shook her head to reassure her.
After a minute, Donovan began to laugh. “Listen to me, sittin’ out here on my horse talkin’ to myself. Guess you’ve made me crazy, Honor Bright.”
He turned and rode north. Honor wondered how many other fields he would stand next to and repeat his offer.
The black woman was glaring at her. “What’s with that slave catcher? You friends with him? You leavin’ your husband for him?”
“No! No. I’m leaving because-because I don’t share the same views as my husband’s family.”
The woman snorted. “That ridiculous. You don’t have to agree ’bout everything with the people you live with.”
“They forbade me to help runaways.”
“Oh.” The woman clicked her tongue.
They remained in the ditch for a long time. The sky was filling with stars.
“All right. We go now,” the woman said. “He lookin’ for us toward Oberlin, makin’ his little speech to you ever’ now and then.” She chuckled, and led the way into the woods. With every step Honor expected to feel a hand on her shoulder or a shout from behind. But he did not come.
It was much cooler now; not cold, but dew was falling, and Honor pulled her shawl around her. They tramped through the woods, Honor tripping at times, the woman steady and quiet.
The other side of the woods was bounded by a field shorn of its oats. They could not cross it, for they would be easily visible, even without a moon. Instead they went further east, away from the road, to another wood, where they turned south again. Now that they were away from the road and from Donovan, Honor thought they might be able to relax. But the woman hurried on, fearful of cropped fields that could easily be ridden across. “He’ll be crisscrossin’ every field to the north,” she said, “till he realize we not there. Then he’ll come this way.”
“He may go west,” Honor reasoned. “North and west are where runaways go-not south and east.”
“Them slave hunters got a sense makes ’em good at guessin’ where a runaway is. Otherwise they be out of a job. He’ll turn up again tonight-I can guarantee it. But I gots a sense too.”
“How does thee do this every night? And all alone?” Honor shivered, thinking of the cold metallic pressure of the night.
“You get used to it. Better to be alone. This”-the woman waved her hand at the woods around them-“this is safety. Nature ain’t out to enslave me. Might kill me, with the cold or illness or bears, but that ain’t likely. No, it’s that”-she pointed toward the road-“that’s the danger. People’s the danger.”
“Bears?” Honor looked around.
The woman chuckled. “Most bears scared o’ you. They ain’t gon’ bother you, ’less you get ’tween them and they children. ’Sides, ain’t no bears round here. Got ’em in the mountains, where I’m goin’. Got to scare me some bears to get to my children. All right now, we can go.” The woman seemed to be obeying some silent signal only she could sense.
They crept and stopped, crept and stopped. At one point they came upon water-the Black River, Honor suspected. The runaway did not hesitate but waded in, holding her bundle above her. Honor had no choice but to follow, emerging cold and sodden on the other side. “You’ll dry off soon,” the woman said.