THE MORNING AIR WAS WARMING AND THE DARK SKY brightening as the frost lifted from the Birchtown trail. At first a mere footpath cut through the trees, the trail was now worn and widened from the daily travels of hundreds to and from Roseway—a bustling town with homes, businesses and warehouses.
It was only a mile more to Prince and Beulah’s place. Sarah stepped aside to let a man hauling a cart filled with wood go by. She turned to Grandmother and out of the blue said, “I never dreamed of such a dreadful place. There are days I yearn for home.”
Grandmother looked at Sarah, her face drawn tight. “Why on earth would you do that, Girlie?”
“I miss having chores and good food—sweet potatoes, melons, peanuts and greens, and I miss the music and dancing. Such fun. And the sermons and singing at the camp meetings, too. Do you miss it?”
“I do think on it sometimes.” Grandmother stopped for a minute. “Oh, that revolution. War shakes things up and brings about something different. Maybe the Lord was telling everyone that it was time for a change.”
“Nothing left but the memories,” Sarah droned.
“Yes, yes, the pain of memories. You be careful, Girlie. Things we thought we left behind will haunt us. We must think on mending our lives like patching an old pair of breeches. We must find our way here.” She rubbed the wooden ring on her finger and said, “We must keep the bad juju away.” Grandmother slowed down and her voice softened. “Some of mine never got to see this old world. Others be snatched from me. Oh Lord, I pray that one day I will get to see all my children … before I go to Glory.” Her words trailed off and there was no mistaking the pain behind the grief.
Sarah was confused. Grandmother had two sons: Sarah’s papa, Fortune, who had gone off and joined the revolution, and his younger brother, Prince, who was married to Beulah. Were there others? She looked off in the distance and brushed aside her eagerness to learn more about the past and this woman who seemed just as much a stranger as any of the other Birchtowners.
Sarah shifted her baskets. Slavery had denied them their right to have a real family. They had been the master’s property and he had the right to sell children, mothers and fathers, scattering them to the wind. She wondered if there was any chance of the old woman’s longing coming true. Would it be possible for her to find her other children? Was it possible that they might be here in Nova Scotia?
“There’s not much family left,” Sarah said.
“We have each other and your Uncle Prince and Aunt Beulah for now.”
“There are four of us and one more on the way. That’s five.” Sarah grinned. It was her mother who had taught her numbers and words. How different her mother had been from the woman marching ahead with her feet coming down hard on the ground. Grandmother’s words were always sharp, to the point, while Dahlia’s light-hearted nature had caught people up.
Sarah pictured her mother in the driving heat of the midday sun. Saw her walking the mile-long rows with her dress drenched in sweat as she filled her bags with cotton. Saw her scooping out food and placing it in hollowed gourds from the barrels Mr. MacLeod brought to the fields. By day, she lit up the fields with her spirituals. By night, while Sarah kept watch for Cecil, slaves gathered round to hear Dahlia spin magical tales of Africa, of casting out spells, of romance and of people gone missing in the middle of the night. “A sweet woman,” Papa had said. “She be the scented sap running through a honeysuckle vine.”
Dahlia had loved to read. She learned how by sneaking off with Mingo, an escaped slave who returned to the plantations late at night. He taught them by drawing numbers and letters on the ground. One day Dahlia and another slave were standing by a wagon loaded with barrels of rice. The words on the barrel rolled off her tongue: “Carolina Rice, Finest Quality, 25 Pounds.” When she turned and saw Cecil, she knew there was trouble. He grabbed her hard by the arm. She tried to tell him that she was just repeating words she had heard. Cecil sneered, tied her to his horse and dragged her to the wheelhouse. “Chop one thumb off,” he told one of the slaves. Sarah had gathered wild herbs and made a potion to bathe the thumb.
Sarah shook her head to toss off the memory, slowed her pace, for her heart suddenly grew almost too heavy to carry.
Grandmother took a long drag on her pipe as Sarah plodded along. Pointing upward, she said, “The sun’s far from overhead. We’re making good time. I trust Prince is holding on.”
The wooden ring on her finger, polished with pig grease, caught the light and shone like a diamond. The ring unsettled Sarah. Where had she seen another like it?
“What are you thinking about now, Girlie?” Grandmother asked, for she had never known anyone as busy in the head as Sarah, always with a clever thought or something new to say.
Not wanting to mention the ring, and trying to lighten the air, Sarah said, “Oh, I’m just thinking about the get-togethers for the big feeds after harvest. When the music from the spoons, washboards and calabashes got our feet to stirring. Do you remember ol’ Plenty Fat, what a good dancer he was? That slave sure could make the dry earth crack with his stepping.” She envisioned the man’s high jumps and twirls and how he could kick up his heels like a crazy mule, and she chuckled.
“The Lord will remember all that carrying on. He sure will. He cannot step his sorry self into heaven. There’s none of that allowed up there.” Grandmother let out a turkey chuckle. “Yes Lord, none of that goin’ to be allowed up there.”
With that, Sarah stopped her chatter. Surely freedom was not so narrow—some stuffy old woman smothered in snarls and fear. Sarah wondered if Grandmother had ever felt the belly-shaking joy of laughter in her pitiful and cruel life, always with child and nothing but work.
The pair tramped along cautiously, crossing Ackers Brook. Now walking with baskets swinging, Sarah joyfully turned her thoughts to the Charles Town slave, as she called him. It had been several weeks after their arrival in Nova Scotia before she’d had a sighting of him. The first had come after finishing a day’s work for Mrs. Atkins. She had been making her way up a dusty road past the Anglican Church when she spotted him several yards away. She’d hurried to catch up, but making her way along a street packed with folks rushing back to Birchtown proved difficult. When the crowd thinned, he had vanished. It upset her that folks had to rush, but she did not want to be found in Roseway after the six o’clock curfew. Just two months earlier, the white residents of Roseway, accusing the Negroes of lowering wages, formed a huge mob and rioted. With clubs and arms they wandered the streets for days, pulling down or burning Negro houses and chasing them out of town. Finally, the magistrate imposed a curfew from dusk to dawn to keep order. Thinking about it made Sarah cringe. It was so unfair to use a curfew to punish the Negroes instead of those who caused the trouble.
Another time she had seen him at the Roseway Wharf, where she had gone after work to look for fresh fish for Grandmother. He gave her a quick nod with a tip of his cap That was the day she learned his name—Reece Johnson. On this September morning, his name played a thousand times in her head. Perhaps today she would run into him again.
She and Grandmother had walked a good distance when Sarah stopped to watch a blue heron gracefully swoop down and skim across the bog. She looked kindly at Grandmother. Why it was so difficult for her to enjoy life or to talk about the past? Papa had been right. All her living was balled up inside.
Unbeknownst to Sarah, Grandmother had been keeping a close eye to her. Grandmother’s mouth squeezed to the side of her face. “You best let go of the past and think on getting ready for this life in Scotia,” she exclaimed. “It won’t be soft candy.” Surprisingly she added, “Good times do come around once in awhile, but don’t be thinking the way some folks do. Look over there, Girlie, lying in the grass. My, my. Such a pitiful sight.”
“It’s just Cato.”
“Yes, and drunk no doubt from the poison and goings-on last night. How is acting like that going to raise us up? Good times, all right. Being strong is better than being weak. You remember that, Girlie.”
The noise of an approaching cart forced them to the side of the road. Four Black Pioneers sent out a loud greeting as they moved slowly past.
“The Pioneer uniforms remind me of Papa,” Sarah said.
“Fortune joining the Red Coats was a sad day. No need to be talking about him now, Girlie. I swear your mind is like a bee going from flower to flower.”
“Maybe Papa made it. Maybe he is somewhere in the colony. No one is saying he was killed.”
“Maybe so, but Colonel Black has already made it clear that he has no knowledge of the missing soldiers. They got scattered, the healthy and the wounded, and put on different ships at war’s end. So slow your hopes down, Girlie. Don’t you get carried away with the tide.”
After rounding a huge boulder, the pair came across some men raising the rafters on a small hut. Sarah’s heart raced when she saw that one of the men was Reece Johnson. She stole quick glances in his direction, knowing that if the old woman had any inkling of the thoughts in her head, she would drag her down to the river for a confession and a quick baptism. Reece was busy passing poles to one of the men. Sarah was thinking she must look a sight with a big blue bonnet pulled low on her face and a long grey coat in need of cleaning.
“Look,” she suddenly said after spying the fish man. “Over there. Is that Enos? I hear folks saying the mackerel are running. Maybe he will come by, if you ask.”
“I believe so,” Grandmother said, wasting no time in leaving the path to hail Enos.
“Where are you going today, Miss Sarah?” Reece asked as Sarah approached the men.
“I’m going down to Roseway. I see you’ve found work.”
“Work, yes. Pay, no. I was hoping I’d be able to use my trade.”
“Trade?”
“I forged nails for the blacksmith, Steppin’ John, back home.”
“I saw you with him in Charles Town, but I never saw you on the plantation.”
“That’s because pretty girls weren’t allowed around the blacksmith shop.”
Sarah warmed to his compliment. “There aren’t many jobs now. What will you do?”
“I’ll head up north, go whaling … there’s good money in that.”
Sarah sighed. “I see. Do you plan on leaving soon?”
Reece chuckled. “I’m waiting for a spot to open up.” Reece twisted his stout shoulders and wide frame uncomfortably, like a little boy. “I can’t talk now. Rod’s giving me the eye. But I’ll be at the camp meeting on Sunday.”
A smile as long as the Mississippi stretched across Sarah’s face. “I’ll look for you.” Sarah tingled in the bizarre feelings taking charge of her. Well, well, the Birchtown girls would wag their tongues on that since they all had their eyes on Reece.
Grandmother took several drags from her pipe as she made her way back to Sarah. She stared long and hard at Reece and cast a sour sneer in his direction. Then she turned her head and looked at her granddaughter, her face hardening with sternness. “Be careful about getting friendly with strangers, Girlie. Do not get lost in foolish feelings.”
Sarah frowned and said nothing. Little did Grandmother know that she was already hopelessly lost.