Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [184]
Her luck wavered again late on her last afternoon east of the Mississippi. Under the deep cover of several layers of carpets she could not smell the river. But when the wagon halted abruptly, she could hear the voices of men in disagreement, though she could not make out all the words.
“What is it?” her half-Cherokee friend said in a whisper.
“I don’t know,” said Liza.
And then she knew, as someone pulled the top layer of blanket away, and then the next, and she and her companion stared blinking up at a pale blue sky.
“Lookee here,” said the man who pulled the cover aside.
“Two snug bugs,” a companion said.
The women remained silent, not knowing who the men were, or where any of them were—except that the breeze off the river made clear their proximity to freedom.
“Leave them be,” put in another voice, which Liza recognized as that of their driver.
“You leave us be, nigger-stealer,” said the first man, holding up a pistol—Liza saw this by raising herself up off the wagon bed and holding on to the side railing. The driver sidled away down the embankment, as if to wait for what he believed to be the inevitable to end.
“Keep quiet,” said the man with the pistol.
Liza stood up in the wagon bed.
The Cherokee woman stood up next to her, holding a pistol she had apparently kept strapped beneath her baggy clothing.
“I’ll make you pay dearly…”
Liza noticed the woman’s hand shook violently as she tried to keep control of her weapon.
“No, you won’t.”
The man with the pistol walked right up to the side of the wagon.
“Now you just hand that pistol to me and my pal and I will climb aboard and show you a little fun before we return you to your rightful owners.”
He walked around to the back of the wagon and put a hand on the flatbed as if to raise himself up.
Liza snatched the pistol from her companion, took a deep breath and held it, and shot the man between the eyes.
The other man turned and ran.
“You killed him,” the Cherokee woman said.
“I’ve done it once before.”
“You have?”
“Yes, but it doesn’t make it any easier,” Liza said, “except I know that I can do it. He was going to have his way with us, and then sell us. What should I have done?”
Another man came running—but it was their driver.
“Get back down,” he said, motioning toward the flat bed as he jumped into the seat behind the horses. “People heard that shot, they’ll be coming.” He turned and looked back at Liza and smiled. “Or running the other way.” He clucked at the animals, and the wagon began to roll, traveling only about a quarter of a mile along the river before stopping at a small sailboat tied at a dock.
A short man with a white beard waved them aboard.
“Hurry, ladies!” he called to them.
“Goodbye, ladies,” said the wagon driver, rolling away down the pier before they had even boarded the boat.
***
So that was how on a late afternoon that promised cold rain they crossed the rushing though meandering Mississippi, hidden on this short segment of their journey beneath a load of grain in the boat of a friendly anti-slaver. (Oh, my mother, carrying me as seed and then as burgeoning innocent fetus all these many months! Oh, mother, hiding me among grain!) The rain seeped from the sky and soaked everything under its rule, making the great broad water road of tangled currents even wetter than it already was. Her stomach heaved along with the surge of the river. If she had not been burdened by having shot the nasty man on the embankment she might have reveled in this crossing over water, because she knew it would not be the end of things, but rather a beginning. She was dreaming of this when the boatman shouted, and the Cherokee woman grabbed her hand. Liza turned to see a large shadow filled with lights churning alongside them in the near-dark.
The steamboat rushed past.
“Hold on,