The Underground Railroad Read Online Free Page B

sure he had claimeda hundred and one years at his last party. He was only half that, which meant he was the oldest slave anyone on the two Randall plantations had ever met. Once you got that old, you might as well be ninety-eight or a hundred and eight. Nothing left for the world to show you but the latest incarnations of cruelty.
    Sixteen or seventeen. That’s where Cora put her age. One year since Connelly orderedher to take a husband. Two years since Pot and his friends had seasoned her. They had not repeated their violation, and no worthy man paid her notice after that day, given the cabin she called home and the stories of her lunacy. Six years since her mother left.
    Jockey had a good birthday plan, Cora thought. Jockey awoke on a surprise Sunday to announce his celebration and that was that. Sometimesit was in the midst of the spring rains, other times after harvest. He skipped some years or forgot or decided according to some personal accounting of grievance that the plantation was undeserving. No one minded his caprices. It was enough that he was the oldest colored man they had ever met, that he had survived every torment big and small white men had concocted and implemented. His eyes wereclouded, his leg lame, his ruined hand permanently curled as if still clenched around a spade, but he was alive.
    The white men left him alone now. Old man Randall said nothing about his birthdays, and neither did James when he took over. Connelly, the overseer, made himself scarce every Sunday, when he summoned whatever slave gal he’d made his wife that month. The white men were silent. As ifthey’d given up or decided that a small freedom was the worst punishment of all, presenting the bounty of true freedom into painful relief.
    One day Jockey was bound to choose the correct day of his birth. If he lived long enough. If that was true, then if Cora picked a day for her birthday every now and then she might hit upon hers as well. In fact, today might be her birthday. What did you getfor that, for knowing the day you were born into the white man’s world? It didn’t seem like the thing to remember. More like to forget.
    “Cora.”
    Most of the northern half had moved to the kitchen to get fed but Caesar dallied. Here he was. She’d never had occasion to speak to the man since he arrived at the plantation. New slaves were quickly warned against the Hob women. It saved time.
    “CanI talk with you?” he asked.
    James Randall had bought him and three other slaves from a traveling agent after the fever deaths a year and a half ago. Two women to work the laundry, and Caesar and Prince to join the field gangs. She had seen him whittling, worrying blocks of pine with his curved carving knives. He didn’t mix with the more bothersome element on the plantation, and she knew thathe sometimes went off with Frances, one of the housemaids. Were they still laying together? Lovey would know. She was a girl, but Lovey kept track of man-and-woman business, the impending arrangements.
    Cora felt proper. “What can I do for you, Caesar?”
    He didn’t bother to see if anyone was in earshot. He knew there was no one because he had planned. “I’m going back north,” he said. “Soon. Runningaway. I want you to come.”
    Cora tried to think of who put him up to this prank. “You going north and I’m going to eat,” she said.
    Caesar held her arm, gently and insistent. His body was lean and strong, like any field hand his age, but he carried his strength lightly. His face was round, with a flat button nose—she had a quick memory of dimples when he laughed. Why had she kept that in her head?
    “I don’t want you to tell on me,” he said. “Have to trust you on that. But I’m going soon, and I want you. For good luck.”
    Then she understood him. It was not a trick being played on her. It was a trick he was playing on himself. The boy was simple. The smell of the raccoon meat brought her back to the celebration and she pulled her