I became angry and rebellious in my heart. I detested both my master and mistress and White people in general for how they treated the slave people. The abuse we endured in the house and the ill-treatment Captain Barker meted out in the fields galled me. The injustice rankled, especially as I keenly missed my brothers and I saw my mother’s face lined with unhappiness.
All that Elliot had taught me about not looking White people in the eye dissolved as my true condition dawned on me. I began to glower at both master and mistress with hatred in my eyes. When I took tea to my mistress and she said it was “too cold,” I would tell her it was not, because I had just seen Suzette pour the water from a kettle hanging over the kitchen fire. As for my master, I no longer polished his boots to shine. Sometimes I did not polish them at all. Though my mother told me to desist, I could no longer pretend that I did not feel what I was feeling. I could no longer smile when I felt like crying.
I got back at my owners the only way I could think of — by destroying their property. One day while it rained and thundered, and lightning streaked across the sky, I broke my mistress’s hand mirror. When she discovered it, she shrieked my name.
“You broke this,” she said with confidence.
“No, ma’am, I did not.”
Right then, my master entered and saw the broken mirror. “The lightning did,” he said. “The large mirror in my study also broke, and I was there when it happened. A flash of lightning shattered the glass. I saw it with my own eyes.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. I was lucky that time. But even such a close call did not stop me. I cut up some of my master’s shirts, and once, as I walked down to the creek, I saw some bales of hay drying in the sun. Seeing no one, I pushed the hay into the water. Still I was not caught. At every opportunity, I did something that would displease my master and mistress. If Suzette was not in the kitchen, I’d eat from the plates and drink from the cups that my owners used. I dined with their knives and forks. As it was against custom for slave people to eat from the same dishes as their owners, I took great delight in doing so. Sometimes, when my master was away, I would go into his study and cut the pages of his books with a scissor. I cannot remember if I ever considered that my owners might find out what I was doing. I remember only that I wanted revenge and to fight against my powerlessness.
So there I was one day, cutting up the pages of my master’s law books, when I sensed a presence behind me. I turned and beheld my master, staring at me with a look of utmost surprise on his face. He said nothing and quietly walked away. Still, I knew what was to come.
I went and sat in one of the plush armchairs that graced the study. I felt no fear. Captain Barker arrived, dragged me from the room as if I was a sack of corn and took me to the whipping post. He stripped me down to my shirt. Some of the slave people had heard what had transpired, and they gathered to bear witness. The women began to cry even before the captain applied the lash.
All my life, Captain Barker had been threatening to whip me. Now he had his opportunity, and I could see the glitter in his eyes.
My master stood beside him. “Do not maim him, but make this an unforgettable moment,” my master said to the captain, and walked away.
It was, indeed, unforgettable, indelibly marked in my mind and on my back. After the eighth lash, I fainted, but the captain gave me seven more. When Shadrach cut the ropes that bound me to the whipping post, my back was a torn and bleeding mass. But it was not resignation I felt, nor was it regret. I felt only rage and hatred.
After my beating, I started running away again.
My master’s shirt prompted my first flight. Mrs. White was giving a fund-raising party and her husband was to serve as master of ceremonies. He told me to take down his shirt for Suzette to iron, because it did not look pressed. I told him that I had seen Suzette iron the shirt the day before.
“Are you being saucy, Henry?,” he shouted. I kept quiet because I knew his temper. “You have grown rude and insolent of late, and I will have none of it, you understand? Now take this shirt to Suzette for her to iron.”
I don’t know what came over me, but I remained rooted to the spot, my body shaking. I looked at my master’s red face, and a rage came over me that I could not control. I shouted at him. “She ironed it already!”
David White was so startled that he dropped the shirt onto the bed. He walked toward me menacingly. Before I knew it, he was boxing my face with such force that the teeth rattled in my head. Tears spilled from my eyes, but he continued hitting me.
When I came to, in my mother’s cabin, she, Dinah and Shadrach were bending over me. They told me that Shadrach had come to the house to bring Suzette some new knives he had made, when he heard my screaming and my master’s shouting. He ran upstairs and pulled me from my master’s grip. “Looked like he was going to kill you, boy,” Shadrach said.
My body healed, but my spirit did not. I became melancholy. I had no desire to remain in the land of the living. But my master was not going to let his investment go to waste. Not wanting me in the house, he decided to hire me out once more. I decided to run away instead.
By this time I had some knowledge of the geography of my county. To get to the Ohio River I had to go through Oldham County, which bordered that river. I walked for a long time through the woods in the direction I perceived the Ohio to be, but I had not planned my escape properly: I had left with no food. I thought I could live off the land by eating berries, as I did when I used to run away from Widow Beverly. For three days I wandered, but there were no berries. I also lost my sense of direction, often coming back to the spot where I had started from. I became so hungry that I gnawed the tall grasses that grew wild. One afternoon, tired and hungry, I fell asleep on a grassy patch beside the river. I heard the bark of a dog in the distance, but I was too drowsy to rouse myself.
I woke up with Boxer licking my face. Standing beside him was Shadrach. He looked at me, his face serious. “You hungry, Henry?” I nodded. He sat on the ground and unwrapped a corn cake and some roasted chicken from a piece of cloth. I ate ravenously.
“Massa White sent me to find you,” he said. “This is not the way to run away, Henry. When you are really ready, let me know. In the meantime, come on. Your mama is worried to death.”
“What’s Massa White gonna do to me?”
“Maybe hire you out. Maybe sell you. One thing’s for sure. He will not keep you on the plantation.”
I never saw my mother as angry as she was when Shadrach brought me back. “You could have gotten yourself killed. Massa David could have sent patrollers for you. You could have been killed by a rattlesnake.” She boxed my ears, but began crying the moment she did so.
I was now a problem for my master. Slaveholders have one thought on their minds and that is to make money buying and selling slaves and earning wages from their labor. Many slaveholding families in the neighborhood knew that I was in the habit of running away. This made me a “bad example” to their slaves. Thus, my master could no longer hire me to any nearby farm. He resorted to putting a notice in the Louisville News.
FOR HIRE
A mulatto boy named Henry. He is about thirteen years old and is tall and strong for his age. He was brought up principally as a house servant, and can do all manner of housework.
He can also dress ladies’ hair, and has some experience working in a store. He can also tend a garden.
For further information contact David White, esquire, at Aurora Plantation, Trimble County.