A Light in the Wilderness Read Online Free

up in comfort as it filled the wooden pail. The switch of Charity’s tail, her steady stand while Letitia milked, always soothed. She wasn’t certain why she needed soothing today. After all, she was beginning a grand adventure, moving to a place where slavery had never been known, and where even if she was mistaken for a slave she could resist the slurs or charges. She had papers. She could trust the papers.
    While she worked, she thought of the young slave girl in contention over Davey Carson’s lawsuit. Letitia had met the girl at the Negro church. Had he abused her? She might have seduced the man. Had justice been served in the suit? Uncertainty settled around Mr. Carson like flies around a carcass. Letitia finished her milking, skimmed the cream, and put it in the cooled churn she drew from the spring. Mr. Bowman fastened the wooden churn onto the side of their wagon instead of overhead as Miss Sarah had told her to do. She wouldn’t disagree, but she’d likely be blamed later. They were heading to Weston on the Missouri and would join there with dozens of others. She wondered how many people of color would make the trip and whether she’d find people to gather with at a campfire. Well, she had Charity now, and at the very least she could talk to the cow when things got tough. And the children. She loved the Bowman children.
    “Hurry up, Tish!” Miss Sarah always got short when she was nervous. It was something Letitia had noticed from the time Mr. Bowman brought her home to meet his father and Letitia had been given to the new bride. “I thought you’d be ready by now.”
    “Yessum. I’s ready as I ever be. Just gatherin’ up hen fruit.”
    “Oh for heaven’s sake, they’re eggs. Why do you persist in using those colloquialisms your mother used?”
    “Yessum.”
    “Well, put your things in the back. Good thing you don’t have much to take. We’re stocked to the top and we still have to pick up flour and rice in Weston. The wagon will be inspected by the master.” She corrected herself. “The wagon master. We’ll all be saying ‘yes marse’ and ‘no marse’ from now on, won’t we, Tish?” She giggled.
    Letitia let the sting pass.
    Back in her room, Letitia folded her dress, tow petticoats, and an extra shawl. She placed her shoes at the bottom of the carpetbag along with the candlesticks and her belt. She added clean rags and an extra pair of underdrawers. She had a few salves and herbs she pressed into paper cones in a side pocket near the paste of coconut oil and honey mix to tame her hair. Her sewing kit with needles, thimble, and pins she folded and put into a pocket on the other side. Then came a pieced quilt she’d made herself of swaddling clothes and snippets of her son’s hemp shirt. Before placing it into the bag, she pushed the cloth against her nose and inhaled. She could still smell her son, though he was long passed. She once thought she might find Jeremiah but learned the boy had died of typhoid at the home of his new master. Like threads piecing her heart together, this quilt held memories. Into the bag it went. It was essential to her.

    It took less than an hour to reach Weston, a busier town than Platte City where the courthouse ruled. Mr. Bowman took the wagon to a staging area while he gathered up the latest news and met with others joining the cluster of wagons. He told Letitia and Sarah to watch the cows until he knew which herd they’d be trailed with. He was also off to look for the driver they’d had to hire to go with them.
    Sarah took Letitia’s offered hand, stepped off the seat, and stretched her back, hands on hips. Sarah’s dress of stripes andprints with columns and swirls reminded Letitia of the front of a plantation she’d lived at for a time when Old Man Bowman had put her up as a bond against a bet and lost. He’d later bought her back, but while she’d served the new household she marveled at the porch columns. She remembered the plantation