The Underground Railroad Read Online Free Page A

Cora, or Mabel, or her grandmother? There was no point in confronting the woman. Alice had been beloved of Randall, and now James Randall, who had grown tall on her mincemeat pies. There was an order of misery, misery tucked inside miseries, and you were meant to keep track.
    The Randall brothers. Since he was a young boy, James could be placated by a treat from Alice’s kitchen, the sugarapple that cut short a fit or tantrum. His younger brother, Terrance, was a different sort. The cook still had a knot next to her ear where Master Terrance expressed his displeasure over one of her broths. He had been ten years old. The signs had been there since he could walk, and he perfected the more distasteful aspects of his personality as he lurched into manhood and assumed his responsibilities.James had a nautilus disposition, burrowing into his private appetites, but Terrance inflicted every fleeting and deep-seated fancy on all in his power. As was his right.
    Around Cora, pots clanged and pickaninnies squealed over the delights to come. From the southern half: nothing. The Randall brothers had flipped a coin years ago to determine stewardship of each half of the plantation and indoing so made this day possible. Feasts like this didn’t happen in Terrance’s domain, for the younger brother was stingy with slave amusements. The Randall sons managed their inheritances according to their temperaments. James contented himself with the security of a fashionable crop, the slow, inevitable accumulations of his estate. Land and niggers to tend it were a surety beyond what any bankcould offer. Terrance took a more active hand, ever scheming for ways to increase the loads sent to New Orleans. He wrung out every possible dollar. When black blood was money, the savvy businessman knew to open the vein.
    The boy Chester and his friends grabbed Cora, startling her. But it was only children. Time for the races. Cora always arranged the children at the starting line, aiming theirfeet, calming the skittish ones, and graduating some to the older kids’ race if need be. This year she kicked up Chester one slot. He was a stray, like her, his parents sold off before he could walk. Cora looked after him. Burr-headed and red-eyed. He’d shot up the last six months, the rows triggering something in his lithe body. Connelly said he had the makings of a top picker, a rare complimentfrom him.
    “You run fast,” Cora said.
    He crossed his arms and cocked his head: You don’t need to tell me anything. Chester was half a man, even if he didn’t know it. He wouldn’t race next year, Cora saw, but loll at the sidelines, joking with his friends, devising mischief.
    The young slaves and the old slaves gathered on the sidelines of the horse path. Women who had lost their children driftedover little by little, to mortify themselves with possibilities and never-would-bes. Huddles of men swapped cider jugs and felt their humiliations slip away. Hob women rarely participated in the feasts, but Nag hustled about in her helpful way, rounding up little ones from their distractions.
    Lovey stood at the finish as the judge. Everyone but the children knew that she always proclaimed herdarlings the winner, when she could get away with it. Jockey also presided at the finish, in his rickety maple armchair, the one he used to watch the stars most nights. On his birthdays he dragged it up and down the alley, to give proper attention to the amusements held in his name. The runners went to Jockey after they were done with their races, and he dropped a piece of ginger cake onto theirpalms, no matter what they placed.
    Chester panted, hands on his knees. He had flagged at the end.
    “Almost had it,” Cora said.
    The boy said, “Almost,” and went for his piece of ginger cake.
    Cora patted the old man’s arm after the last race. You never could tell how much he saw with those milky eyes of his. “How old are you, Jockey?”
    “Oh, let me see.” He drifted off.
    She was