He reached for the canteen as he spoke the old man’s name.
“Who is dat knows me?”
He moved closer, on his knees.
“It’s John.”
“John?”
Caleb’s eyes moved slowly, like flies in blood.
“Yes, it’s John. I’ve come back.”
Slowly the thin arms lifted their chains, then dropped them again.
John placed the canteen to the split lips and tilted it. The water trickled down the grizzled chin. Caleb’s Adam’s apple worked rapidly. He mouthed her name and John could not speak. The others groaned for water. He crawled away with the canteen.
“I’ll have to fill it at the cistern,” he said. “I’ll be back directly.”
Outside he leaned against the house, panting. Caleb was alive. The overseer’s brutality opened inside John like a raw wound. He saw the grinning face clearly as a harvest moon, felt the searing iron on his cheek. The taste of blood filled his mouth.
Back in the dirt room, he lied, as he knew he must. He told Caleb that Daney and his children were sold to a plantation in Alabama, that they were all together. The old man closed his eyes and said nothing. There was no point in lying to a clever man like Caleb, but John could not bring himself to speak the truth. Not yet. He asked about the overseer. Caleb said he was worse than ever, crazed with spirits. That he’d taken over the farm when the master had died—over two years ago, a few months after the trader had taken them away—and had sold most of the other blacks, replacing them with blacks from the Deep South who could hardly speak a word of English. When the federal army entered Maryland, the overseer left Cray, the mulatto, and several other vicious white men in charge, and disappeared for long stretches. Some said he was a spy for the Confederates. Some said he was a soul driver himself, that he made his living that way because he sure didn’t work the farm.
“But where’s he now?” John said. “And why are there no women here?”
“Dey somewhere near. Dey his living and his pleasure too, him and Cray together. Dey no more dan two devils. Cray? Oh, he’s jes as bad. I don’t think he b’lieves he’s coloured at all. He b’lieves he goin to git de overseer’s place once he done drink hisself into de grave.”
“But where are they? Where are they?”
Caleb sighed and dropped his head to his chest.
“What you gwan to do? Dey ain’t no point in it now.”
“I’m going to see that they don’t hurt anyone again.”
“But dey two devils, you hear? Dey evil and dey know how to stay alive.”
“I’ve come here to kill him,” John said, “and I can kill the other too. Why else would I come? He said you were dead. I believed you were dead.”
“Den Daney and de chillen thought so?”
“Yes.”
Caleb’s tears filled his deep wrinkles. For several minutes he did not speak. At last he raised his bleary eyes and fixed them on John. A flicker of triumph touched his face.
“Jancey knows different. I got word to her.”
“Jancey!” John’s heart banged against his ribs. He couldn’t speak.
Caleb smiled. “De overseer didn’t catch her. She’s clear away. In Canada.”
With a sickening sensation, John understood that Caleb’s mind had been damaged along with his body. The old man needed to keep one of his daughters alive in order to keep himself alive. That he chose Jancey only increased John’s own pain.
“She knows de truth about dat hog too,” Caleb said, reading his thoughts. “I figure she always did know. Inside. Probably her mother did too.”
He slumped against the dirt wall, ran his thick tongue over his cracked lips.
The mention of Daney struck John like cold water. He remembered where he was, and when. The overseer’s face crossed over Jancey’s just as if he’d come up from behind and wrapped his arms around her. John knew he couldn’t waste any more time.
“Orlett and Cray. Where are they, Caleb?”
But the old man just sighed and shook his head. Fortunately, one of the other blacks explained. Orlett and Cray did some kind of work for the Union army. There was money to be made from the war, he had heard Orlett say. Maybe they sold horses. They owned plenty of them, had been buying them up for months. Generally they returned to the house at nightfall, but on account of the battle, it was hard to know when they’d come back this time.
Carefully, and with much effort, John struck the irons with a mallet and chisel he’d brought from the barn and told the men he’d take them straight away to a Union camp. If they were too weak to walk, he’d carry them. He wanted to get them safely away before the overseer and the mulatto returned. Did they have any idea where the women were kept?
“Dey somewhere in de house,” Caleb said. “We could hear de screaming sometimes. Jes days ago. De overseer, he like us to know what he doin with dem.”
John told them to stay put until he came back. Then he ran upstairs. But a search of the other rooms revealed nothing. Finally he remembered the attic. Climbing the stairs to it, he did not think anyone was there, for the air was not so foul and there was no sound. But when he pulled his head through the hole in the floor, he saw the bodies, gagged and handcuffed with rope. The overseer must have kept the space clean because… he didn’t want to think of it. He spoke gently to the women, told them he was a friend who had brought freedom, that he would lead them away from this place. Urging them to be quiet, John undid the gags. Light fell in thin shafts through the ceiling cracks, and he saw that the six women were mostly young and very black. They just stared at the air as he undid their ropes, trying his best to be gentle even though he could feel the overseer’s foul warm breath on his neck. Whenever one of the thin cotton shifts slid away to reveal a breast or stomach, he paused. Once, he discreetly pulled the shift back up. The smell of the women’s bodies stirred him despite the situation, and he was ashamed. The women began to speak to each other in a foreign tongue and he urged them again to be quiet. Hurriedly he prepared to lead them downstairs, not knowing exactly what he should do with them or the men in the cellar. The Union army would not welcome any new contrabands now, not so soon after a horrific battle. And besides, he already knew that the slaveholders of Maryland were to be respected, given that the state remained neutral. Perhaps he could find the home of a free black on the other side of the village. Caleb would know what was best.
John told the women to wait for him, then he rushed back down to the cellar. The men had already begun to stir; several had gone through the broken door into the cellar itself. But Caleb had not moved. John bent over him, urged him to stand. Caleb shook his head.
“Dey’s no hurry for me. I knowed the truth long ago. I could feel it happen.”
“What truth?”
“Doan lie to me, son. I know dey gone. All of dem gone ’cept… I could always tell when something bad happen fo us. I’d have been dead since dat time if word hadn’t come down de underground about Jancey. Listen, now, you take dese people as far away as you can, dat’s what you got to do.”
“But Orlett. I want to…”
“If dat’s goin to be, den it will come. But you get dese people away.”
And Caleb told of the house of a free black man south of the village, a man who’d been harbouring runaways since before the war and knew all about the underground railroad. That man would know best how to protect the blacks.
“But you can’t stay here,” he told Caleb. “When Orlett comes back and finds the others gone, he’ll kill you.”
Caleb’s face was blank; the tears had gone from his wrinkles.