Candle in the Darkness - Lynn N. Austin [134]
Robert stopped eating the cornbread I’d brought him and looked up in surprise. “How far will I have to dig?”
“Only about fifty feet—thirty-three paces, to be exact. You’ll surface inside a fenced yard where the guards can’t see you.”
He stared into the distance for a long moment as if trying to visualize his freedom. “This couldn’t come at a better time,” he said. “We’ve loosened enough bricks to crawl inside the chimney that runs through the center of my building. We just broke through into the basement last night. The east cellar is empty. There’s a kitchen and some cells for condemned prisoners in the middle one, but otherwise there’s nothing much down there except rats.”
Robert seemed stronger, saner, now that he was doing something to control his fate. I didn’t want to remind him of the penalty if he was caught.
“Can’t the guards hear you chipping into the chimney?” I asked.
“We only work in the daytime when it’s noisy. Sometimes if we’re afraid the guards might hear us, we get all the men to sing or start an argument or yell at the lice races to cover up the noise.
But now that we’ve dug through the masonry, we’ll be able to tunnel all night through the dirt.”
“What on earth are you digging with?”
“Chunks of brick, scraps of metal, a couple of spoons—things like that. But as I said, now that we’ve reached the cellar we’re stuck. We didn’t know in which direction to dig or how far.”
Eli had always stood silently beside the door without uttering a word, but he suddenly stepped forward between Robert and me. “Let me take it from here,” he said. He squatted down and began drawing on the floor in the tobacco dust. “This here the northeast corner of the building. This the east wall . . . Go south to the second basement window. If you start digging there . . . and go straight across beneath the empty lot for thirty-three paces . . . you come up here . . . behind a fence.”
Robert was studying Eli, not the diagram. His expression was one of suspicion and disbelief. “Caroline, does he—?”
“You looking mighty amazed to see that I can talk,” Eli said angrily. I’d seldom seen him this way. “Maybe you thinking there nothing up here but cotton?” he asked, tapping his head. “I always was told that Yankees see colored folk as real people. Always told that things is different up north. Guess I was told wrong.”
“I’m sorry,” Robert said. “Forgive me. Some of us from up north still need to change our attitudes. Please continue.”
“Missy Caroline doing this for me and Tessie and the others, you know. She got a lot of love in her heart. But I don’t want her getting into trouble, see? So if something go wrong and you get caught, you tell them the truth—you tell them that it was Eli who showed you where to dig and how far. Understand?”
“I would never betray either one of you.”
Eli bent to return to his drawing. “Like I say, this here the northeast corner of the building. Make sure you start your tunnel here . . . by the second basement window. You be underneath a vacant lot. Go straight across it for thirty-three paces. Come up here, behind a tall fence where the guards never see you. You have to break into the south building—James River Towing Company. Then slip on out through the front door and you be on Canal Street. There still a chance the guards along the canal will see you, so you have to watch when they go around. Wait till they pass on by. You got all that?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Eli swirled his hand in the dust to erase it. “Now I draw you a map so you know how to get out of the city.” He showed Robert the main routes out of Richmond and explained which ones were the least traveled. “I show you again next time I come so you memorize it.”
“Thank you for all your help, but that won’t be necessary. I’ve already memorized it. From now on, we will never talk about any of this again.”
“But I’d like to hear about your progress,” I began, “and—”
“No!” Robert cut me off so quickly I jumped in surprise. “I’m sorry, Caroline, but I don’t want you to know when I’m going to do this. That