CHAPTER ONE

Matt tells about the plantation.

I SCOOTED OVER IN the seat as Jack squeezed next to me in the Imagination Station. He didn’t say anything. I was glad. Nothing a guy hates worse than to have his best friend make a fuss about the fact that he was crying. I turned away and rubbed my eyes. I hoped my nose wouldn’t run. It always runs when I cry, and I didn’t have a tissue.

It was kind of dumb to get so upset, I know. But I felt bad about promising to help Eveline find her father and then—zing—all of a sudden being yanked out of the slave wagon and brought back to my time. Don’t get me wrong; I was happy to be home. I didn’t think we’d ever get back. I hated being a black kid in a world where everyone thought blacks were good only for being slaves. I hated being treated worse than an animal. I wanted to get back to my Odyssey, where people treated me like…well, me.

But poor Eveline was stuck back there on that wagon without her father, and it was my fault in a way. If Jack and I hadn’t gotten into the Imagination Station in the first place, things would’ve turned out the way they were supposed to. I mean, what could I do except go back and try to fix everything? What would you do?

“Just push the red button when you’re ready,” Mr. Whittaker said as the door to the Imagination Station whooshed shut. The lights on the panel blinked at us like a Christmas tree.

“We have to be out of our minds to go back,” Jack said.

“Yeah, we probably are,” I answered.

Jack reached over and pushed down on the flashing red button.

The machine hummed louder and louder until it felt like it had suddenly jumped forward. I had the same feeling in the pit of my stomach that I get on a roller-coaster ride. Or in the car when my dad hits a dip in the road too fast. It turned my stomach upside down and sucked the breath out of me. Everything went dark. For a minute, I wasn’t sure where I was. Then I smelled old straw and heard the clip-clop of horses’ hooves and the slow creaking of a wooden wagon. I guessed that somehow the Imagination Station had put me right back where I was before. Only now I was half-buried in a pile of straw. I sat up and my body ached all over. I forgot about being knocked around by Mr. Ramsay’s overseer and kicked by the man at the slave auction.

“Are you all right?” Eveline asked. The tears were still in her eyes, but now they were wide like she’d just seen a ghost.

“I’m all right,” I said. I had no idea what had happened—if I suddenly disappeared right in front of her when the Imagination Station took me back to my time, or if I just reappeared, or what. “Why?”

She watched me carefully. “You rolled under the hay all of a sudden. Were you afraid of something?”

“I…I…” I couldn’t think of an answer that would make sense. “Never mind.”

“You were crying, weren’t you?” Eveline said softly.

Oh, brother, I thought.

“You two better shut your traps!” the wagon driver growled. He was a heavyset man named Master Kinsey. He was the overseer, the man in charge of the slaves, at Colonel Ross’s plantation. “A few days in the field will take the spunk out of you,” he threatened.

I believed him. But Colonel Ross was the owner of the plantation, and he had other ideas.

My mother once made me watch a movie called Gone with the Wind. I didn’t like it much, because it was long and boring and all about a woman who didn’t care who she hurt as long as she got what she wanted. There was a big fire in it, which I thought was okay, but other than that, the adults can have it. Anyway, Colonel Ross lived in a house like the one in the movie. It was real big, with large windows and giant pillars along the front. Master Kinsey pulled the wagon around the back where the sheds and barns were. Beyond them was a “compound” of shacks where the slaves lived. And beyond that was a field that went way out to the horizon.

The place was so pretty that I was beginning to think that it might not be so bad there after all. Then I remembered that I wasn’t here as a visitor; I was a slave. How could I ever forget it?

A wiry man in a dark butler-type suit hustled down the stairs from the back door and raced to the wagon. He was out of breath with excitement. “Saints be blessed, they’re here,” he said.

I looked around to see who he was talking about and was surprised to realize that it was me and Eveline.

“You can just forget about it, Jonah,” Master Kinsey said. “I’m putting them in the fields.”

Jonah waved his arms around nervously. “No, sir, Master Kinsey. Colonel Ross said they’re for the house. You can ask him yourself; they’re for the house.”

Master Kinsey punched the seat of the wagon. “You can be sure I will, you old liar.” He leapt from the wagon and marched into the house.

“I’m Jonah,” he said to me and Eveline. “Now, come down from the wagon, young’uns. Let me have a look at you.” We jumped down and the jolt made my ribs hurt all over again. He circled us to get a good look. “I think little Nell’s old clothes’ll fit you,” he said to Eveline. Then he eyed me up and down. “Nate’s will do for you.”

“Won’t Nate mind me taking his clothes?” I asked.

“He might mind if he were here and still wanting to wear them,” Jonah said.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Got shot trying to run away.”

The back door slammed and Master Kinsey stomped down the stairs, muttering the whole way. “He spoils these slaves, I tell you! You don’t break them in and you have nothing but trouble from them.” He climbed back onto the wagon, swearing and fuming, and slapped the reins for the horses to get moving.

Jonah smiled. “I reckon the Colonel told him. You’re to work in the house with me.”

Jonah led us into the back of the house to the kitchen. It was a massive room with a big, wooden table in the middle and a gigantic fireplace off to the side that someone had bricked up. Nearby sat an enormous cast-iron stove. A woman was fussing over the stove, trying to get a fire started in it. The walls were lined with shelves covered with plates and bowls. Pots and pans hung from the ceiling.

Jonah called out to the woman to say that the new house servants were here. “Looky here, Lizzie!” She waved at us without a lot of interest and returned to the stove.

A sturdy-looking beagle strolled into the kitchen to see what was going on. Jonah and Lizzie watched it nervously. “That’s Scout,” Jonah said. “Don’t try to pet him; he’ll take your hand off. He don’t like slaves much.”

“He doesn’t? Why not?” I asked as I tucked my hands under my arms and froze in place while Scout sniffed at me.

“He’s trained to catch runaways,” Jonah replied.

Scout turned to Eveline.

“You’re a pretty dog,” she said and reached down to scratch him behind his ears. I braced myself for an attack. To everyone’s surprise, Scout closed his eyes and panted happily.

“Well, look at that,” Jonah said.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

Jonah waved at us to follow him up a narrow flight of stairs. At the top were a couple of rooms. He gestured to the one on the right. “That’s my room. You’re in this one.” He pushed open a dried up, scarred, wooden door.

“We have our own room?” Eveline asked.

“You want us to share a room?” I asked. I couldn’t believe it.

Jonah went on like he didn’t hear me. “It’s got its own window and two beds—”

Two cots, he meant.

Eveline raced over to one and dropped onto it. Dust flew everywhere. She bounced around like she’d just been given a bed at the White House or something. I didn’t get it. They were two cots with ratty blankets on top. I kind of snorted to show I wasn’t impressed.

“I’m not gonna sleep on that,” I said.

Jonah suddenly grabbed my arm and leaned into my face. His eyes had a yellow color and his breath smelled of old cabbage. “Look, boy, you could be sleeping out in the compound with no bed and no blanket and working in the fields until you want to drop. You better thank the Lord you’re in here. Got it?”

I nodded.

He let go, but kept a stern tone in his voice. “Let me tell you how things are around here. You’re house servants and that means you have to behave. You do what I say, stay out of the master’s way, and everything’ll be good. Step the wrong way and you’ll be licking Master Kinsey’s boots.”

“But we never liked the house slaves,” Eveline said. She didn’t mean anything by it, but said it as a matter of fact.

“You’ve been a field slave, haven’t you?”

Eveline nodded.

Jonah hitched his thumbs in his pockets. “Well, I know field slaves don’t trust us house slaves. That’s how it is in some places. And I know some house slaves I wouldn’t trust neither. But let me tell you that around here, we house slaves watch out for the ones working in the fields. So don’t give me an attitude.”

Eveline nodded again. For her, the case was closed.

It wasn’t for Jonah. He continued, “I know the field slaves think we house slaves have it easy as pie. But we don’t. You’ll see that soon enough. You’ll run errands, go to the market, work in the garden, milk the cows, serve meals, help take care of the horses, dust the house, sweep up, polish the silver, and set the table in the dining room. As a house slave you’re always on duty—the master may call anytime day or night. You’re the last one to bed and the first one to rise.”

I got tired just listening to Jonah talk about all the work I’d do. The only thing that kept me hopeful was that I’d come back to help Eveline find her father—and then we’d all escape. The only problem was that I didn’t know how we’d do it.

I wondered where Jack was—and if he and Reverend Andrew had come up with a plan.