Chapter Four

 

The next morning Ben startled Bess by being up and in the kitchen by five-thirty.

“Ben, what for you coming down here so early? You know I don’t have food on this here table afore six sharp.”

“I know, Bess, but I’ve got a lot to do today, and I need an early start. Can’t I have a couple of biscuits and a slice of cold ham? Then I gotta go.”

Bess shook her head, and muttered, “Child, I never can keep up with the likes of you. You was gonna have porridge for breakfast, but you can’t take that alongsides yo’self. Here.” She handed him a broad knife. “Cut some ham and I’ll throw some bacon on the fire.”

In a few minutes, the bacon was finished, and Ben left the kitchen with his kerchief full of cold ham, hot bacon, and several of Bess’s butter biscuits. He put the kerchief carefully in his jacket’s deepest pocket to eat later, and began throwing hay to the horses. The sweet smell of the alfalfa offset the pungent odor of the manure as he threw each pitchfork-full into a wheelbarrow. With ten stalls to clean, the wheelbarrow filled quickly, and after more than twenty trips to the manure pile, he was hot and tired, but finished just as the sun topped the weather vane on the roof of the barn.

He swiped the sweat from his forehead with his arm and raced out the doors to Traveler’s corral. The horse was busily munching his morning hay, but Ben walked up to him with his bridle in hand.

“Come on, boy, we got places to go. I’m sorry you’re not finished eating, but I’ll mix up some sweet feed for you when we get back.”

Ben bridled the big bay Morgan and led him as quietly as possible out of the corral. He could hear his brothers and his father talking in the barn. He knew they wouldn’t be going out to the track for a few minutes, which gave him enough time to ride past the barn and get behind the slaves’ quarters. From there, he could reach the woods without anyone seeing him.

Ben swung himself up on Traveler’s back and picked up the reins. He heard a noise and saw Josiah standing near his quarters, watching him. Ben put a finger to his lips and shook his head, hoping Josiah would understand. Josiah nodded and limped off in the opposite direction.



* * *



The dense forest was at the far northern edge of the plantation, and it took Ben awhile to get there. He pulled Traveler to a halt beyond a tall strand of trees. He couldn’t see the plantation house or barns from here, so he guessed no one there could see him. Traveler was restless and began to prance around. Ben gave a short tug on the reins.

“Now you whoa, Traveler. I have to think on this some more. Once we start we’ve got to keep going.”

He sat still for a minute, looking into the forest, before he pulled an old compass out of his pocket. He waited for the needle to settle on N, patted Traveler on the neck, tightened his legs against his sides, and boy and horse moved off into the dark forest.

There was no trail of any kind, so Traveler had to make his own. He plodded on, his heavy feet smashing down the thick weeds and undergrowth that at times reached up to his belly. Downed tree limbs meant either Ben had to guide the horse around them, or jump over the smaller ones. By the time Ben realized they had probably been gone a couple of hours, Traveler was snorting and breathing hard, his neck slick and white with foamy sweat.

“Whoa, boy.”

When Traveler stopped, Ben saw a large patch of wild oats a few feet ahead of him. He walked Traveler over to the oats, slid off his back, and tied the reins to a low hanging tree branch, loosely enough so Traveler could get his head down and nibble to his heart’s content.

“I’m sorry, old friend, but I think I’d better make my own way. All these weeds and vines are making it too hard for you to walk. You’ll cool down in a few minutes.”

Ben gave him a pat on the neck, and turned back to the thick woods ahead of him. He took a deep breath and caught the ripe musk of a nearby skunk, which make him sneeze. This, in turn, aroused a few birds that loudly protested the intrusion. Ben laughed and started walking. After a few feet, he turned around to make sure Traveler was okay. He could barely see him through the trees and all the brambles and thickets. He knew he would never be able to find his way back to the horse without leaving some kind of trail.

He reached into his pocket and brought out his jack knife. He moved over to a tall oak tree and carved an “E” onto the trunk. “E” for escape, I reckon that’s good enough.

Ben pushed his way through the dark woods, stopping every few feet to carve an “E” into the trunk of a tree. Each time he stopped, the sounds of the forest seemed to overpower him. The wind whistled around the thick tree trunks, causing the squirrels to chatter loudly and birds to take flight; insects chirred, and the scrabbling and rustling of unseen animals in the underbrush made his heart beat faster.

He was determined to find the old barn, if it existed at all. Thick grasses and low-lying vines twisted around his legs, and he gasped as he walked into a sticky strand of spider web hanging from a branch. He stopped to carve an “E”, and sap clung to his hand. As he went deeper, the patterns of light began shifting and fading away, and the forest became darker, even though it was only midday. He kept checking the compass to make sure he was still traveling north. A few more yards, another “E” on a tree, and he stopped in mid-stride. He realized there were no longer any sounds. The forest was silent. The air was thick, unmoving. Ben licked his dry lips, and tasted something bitter and foul. Fear ran through him like water through a sieve. For a moment he wondered just what he was doing. He was hardly more than a kid, yet he was about to take on adult responsibilities.

Ben shook his head, angry for having doubts about something he had to do. He moved forward again, and soon he caught a glimpse of what he was searching for.

Fear left him, and excitement took its place. He approached the barn slowly. The sides were weather-beaten, with cracks between the wood planks. Boards once covered the windows, but most had come loose from their nails and hung comically against the structure. Some of the shingles on the roof had blown off, and a curious whistling sound came from those left on.

Large doors suspended from rusted metal runners squeaked as he pushed and pulled to open them. With a final groan, the doors opened into darkness relieved only by tiny slivers of sunlight shimmying down from the broken shingles on the roof. The interior was cold and damp. Little puffs of air snarled through the open cracks in the walls. His eyes slowly became accustomed to the black interior. When he breathed in, the odor of long-dead animals and human sweat tickled his nose.

A flash of sunlight brought a glint of something shiny on the far wall. Ben walked closer. A steel chain with a spiked ball attached, and two leather whips hung on the wall. The whips divided at the ends into nine separate “tails”, and he recognized them as the cat-o-nine-tails he had read about. Reddish-brown stains covered the tails and the spiked ball. Splotches spattered around the wall were the same color. He swallowed, and tried to keep his stomach from heaving. He knew these were instruments of torment once used to beat runaway slaves.

He turned away and walked farther into the barn. Remnants of stalls, now only rotting segments of wood, leaned haphazardly against one another. A faint odor of sweaty horses still lingered in the air, and Ben wondered what breeds had once been stabled here.

He stepped around them, and crept along the side of the wall, gingerly feeling his way. The wood was rough and splintery and small slivers came off and embedded themselves in his gloves. He wrinkled his nose against the dank smell of rot and mildew.

Piles of hay and years of dust and dirt, undisturbed by human feet, lay in front of him. He shuffled his way through to the far end of the barn where the doors there had several large wooden beams nailed across them. No one was going to come or go by those doors.

He continued feeling his way around the barn walls. After a few minutes, he was back at the front door. He stopped and stared at the walls. Grammy told me this was a good day for exploring. She must have known I’d find the barn. But what’s the key for? I don’t see any door or anything that would take a key.

Mounds of moldy straw and horse manure covered the dusty floor, as though someone had started to clean out the barn, but had simply piled it up in places and left it. His glance rested on a huge mound of rotting debris that appeared to be piled higher than the rest. He walked over and kicked some of the putrid mess out of the way. A large rat ran over his boot, and he yelled, “Dang it!”

The rat disappeared, but Ben felt bile in his throat. In New York, rats were associated with garbage and disease, and he shuddered any time he saw one. He moved on closer to the wall.

Decaying straw, hay, and manure, matted tightly together, climbed halfway up the wall, well over his head. He stared hard at it, and after a minute, could barely make out the faint outline of a door almost completely hidden by the mass of debris.

His stomach clenched a second time in disgust. He hesitated. Maybe I should just go on home. I don’t like this place. He shook his head, as if trying to dislodge his uneasy thoughts. No, I’ve come this far, I’m going to find that door, if there is one.

He looked around for something to move the decayed mound and spotted an old shovel lying beneath the broken rails of a stall. Although the long handle had deteriorated into little more than a mass of splintered wood, the blade was still usable. He removed several shovelfuls, which sent pieces of smelly debris falling on his head and down his jacket.

“Dang it!” he yelled again and shook it off. The unholy stench of the filth that covered the barn’s floor reminded him of having to use the outhouse in the middle of summer. Bile rose up in his throat again, and by sheer will power he swallowed it back down. In a few minutes, he had scraped away enough of the debris to reveal the outline of a door.

He moved closer, removed his gloves, and ran his fingertips around it. There was no padlock, just a small keyhole high up on the edge of the door. Anyone looking from even a short distance away would miss it.

Ben looked around and spotted an overturned wooden bucket. He walked over and picked it up. Something small and vicious hissed at him. He jumped back, dropping the bucket. A gray possum with several babies on her back scuttled away.

He picked up the bucket again and put it in front of the door to stand on. He could barely reach the keyhole. He put the key in, and it fit. He didn’t turn it. If this was the secret room, then it probably had a tunnel below. Ben couldn’t bring himself to think about that tunnel. He stepped off the bucket and sat down on it.

He thought back to the times when he was little, and Andrew and James played “hide and seek” with him. They laughed when he was too easy to find and would put him in a closet with a tightly shut door so he couldn’t open it. Once, they went outside to play and forgot about him. It was almost an hour before Ma found him sitting on the floor and crying. He became deathly afraid of dark and enclosed places and still had not completely outgrown his fear.

Now, if there really was a tunnel, he would have to go down there with the rats and snakes and spiders and every other kind of creature that lurked in dark places. His skin crawled at the thought.

Ben stood on the bucket again and turned the key. He heard the tiny click, jumped down, and wrestled with the door until it opened enough for him to slip through. The room was small and dank, and he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim light seeping in from several cracks in the walls.

In the middle of the dirt floor laid the remnants of a rag rug. When he pushed the rug aside, a large iron ring lay flat on the floor. He pulled up on it, and a trap door sprang up so suddenly he fell backward. Ben got to his hands and knees and peered down into total blackness. A fine mist-like spray of dust floated up from below, along with the rancid odor of something long closed up and unused. He sat back and looked down into the darkness. His skin prickled with goose bumps as he thought about how long the tunnel might be, and where, or even if, it would come out.

He let the trap door fall back with a loud thud, pushed the rug back over it, and slipped out of the room. He closed and locked the door, and kicked the bucket under the dilapidated railing of the nearest horse stall.

Ben tried not to breathe as he pushed the reeking pile of hay and horse manure up against the door. He backed away and looked at it; although the pile wasn’t as high as before, the outline of the door seemed to fade back into the wall until it was almost indistinguishable. He shuffled back through the barn to the door, kicking the debris behind him as he went. The barn couldn’t have had anyone in it for years, by the looks of it, but he didn’t want to take any chances. He squeezed through the open doors and tugged until they shut behind him.

He stood still for a moment, listening. The forest was as still and silent as it had been before, only this time the silence was menacing. The air seemed to hum around him. Ben felt the small hairs on the back of his neck tingle. He walked quickly away from the barn and back into the forest. A few minutes later, he breathed a sigh of relief when he caught a glimpse of the last tree he had carved with an “E”, and headed toward it. He had only gone a few yards when he stopped. He stood so still he couldn’t feel himself breathe.

Whispers came from deep within the woods. Branches crackled and broke, and before Ben could move, a small group of slaves burst from the trees. Four men, two women, and two small children stopped and stared. Fear froze the adults’ faces into deeply creased masks.

There were no more whispers. A deadly silence fell between the group and Ben. One of the slaves moved away from the others and started toward Ben. His heavily muscled arms ended in fists clenched tightly around a thick branch. Fear dropped around Ben like a stone cloak. He was no match for this slave, with or without a weapon. He felt frozen in time. The slave came closer, and still without speaking a word, raised the branch above his head.