Running Out of Night Read Online Free Page A

then Mama’s fingers brushed over me softly, like moth wings, and I heard her a-whisperin to me. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want Mama’s touch or voice to go away.
    I opened my eyes, but all I saw were black. Black as the bat cave over to the river. But the smell here, the smell in this black, were a mix of apples, smoke, earth, my throwed-up bitter waters, and none of the stink of the bat cave.
    I moaned and tried to sit up, but a rough hand pushedme down and covered my mouth. A voice whispered in my ear, “Shhhhh.”
    “Am I dead?” I asked. Was the sperrits arguin over me?
    “You be dead if you don’t stop talkin. Let them git out the cabin,” the voice whispered.
    The voice. I remembered the girl comin out of the cabin. The shots, the bird nests all blowed up, the girl, that trouble girl, were the one who caused all this, and it were her voice talkin to me now.
    I laid still but couldn’t stop shakin. The girl’s hand took ahold of mine and gently squeezed and patted it. Hot tears spilled down the side of my face and onto the hard-packed dirt floor.
    Just a few feet above my head I heard the shufflin and clompin of boots, the thunk of somethin hittin the floor, and then the familiar sound of the heavy oak door slammin shut. Nothin but the creakin of floorboards settlin back into place—and then nothin.
    “You, girl, you got a mess a trouble in your life too,” she whispered. “I thought I were worst off to anyone, but you got it bad.” Her hand patted at me, then rested on my good arm.
    “Are you pityin me?” I asked. I pulled my arm out from under her hand and moved a few inches away.
    I don’t know how long I slept, but when I woke, I felt the scratchy warmth of a feed sack laid over me and heard the soft, low sounds of her hummin nearby. I tried turnin onto my other side, but the pain kept me still.
    “What we gonna do now?” I asked.
    The girl stopped hummin and turned over toward me. I could feel her breath on my face.
    “We goin to get away from here afore you … we get killt,” she said.
    I felt about near as killt now as I ever had.
    “Did you hear where they be lookin for me? Did you see the way your pa went when he left?”
    Samuel’s words, “trackin upriver,” run through my mind. “North along the river, but they could be anywhere the dogs lead them.” I groaned as I tried to move into a comfortable position.
    “North where I’m goin,” she said. “Follerin the North Star now for all the nights since I run.”
    She started talkin at me, soft-like, tellin me a story, but tellin herself the story too.
    “My ma and papa, they gone now,” she said. “Ma sold and sent away south; Papa sold and sent I don’t know where. Last time I saw him his arms was tied behind. He had a bit in his mouth, his lips curled back like he smilin, but the blood drippin from his mouth and runnin down him. And my baby sister, I can still hear her cryin, and my ma screamin when the soul-driver man pull Promise out of her arms. He tell Ma that she never see her baby or me again.”
    She paused. The colors of her story faded, then brighted as she talked. “Why don’ they sell us together the waythey say they goin do? He shove my baby sister into a wagon full a people. People she don’t know.”
    I felt the girl shudder next to me.
    “I tried to run after my Promise.” Her voice caught as she continued. “But the man hit me over and over, knock me down, and throw me into his wagon. He thinks I am hurt some bad, so he don’t chain me. Soon as I could move, I slip over the side of the wagon and hide all day in a ditch. I want my ma and papa, my baby sister, but they gone. I do what my ma always told me, I foller where the Drinkin Gourd points to the North Star.”
    Even through the darkness I could see everythin. The cart crammed full of people chained together, the little girl cryin, lookin for her sister’s face and listenin for the sound of her ma or pa’s voice. Her sorrow made me