Out From This Place Read online

  “He right here with us.”

  Easter’s face spread in a wide smile. “Mistress Jennings didn’t give him to Missy Holmes?”

  “When your master and Mistress Jennings leave for the West, they sell Jason to Mistress Phillips. I hear Mistress Phillips pay one hundred dollars for him. And I hear Mistress Jennings wanted to take Jason with her, but your old master sell every living and breathing and growing thing, including Jason. Your old master lose a lot of money when you and Obi run.”

  “Good,” Easter said. “He wasn’t suppose to be ownin’ us in the first place.”

  Rose led Easter to a chair in front of a large oak table. “Well, Jason is Mistress Phillips’s special servant now.”

  “What you mean?”

  “Just what I say—he her special servant. Wear a fancy suit and has nothing to do with the rest of us.”

  “He act different then?”

  “Everything different, Easter.” Rose tried to brush a smudge off Easter’s nose. “You hungry and need to wash. I get the tub and draw you some water and give you something to eat. Then I tell you everything that happen.”

  The worry lines creased Easter’s forehead. “I don’t want anyone to find me here.”

  “No one come in this kitchen ’less I invite them in,” Rose said as she went toward the door. “Mistress is takin’ her afternoon rest. I keep things the way the cook use to keep them.” Her round eyes clouded.

  Easter scanned the kitchen. “That’s what’s different in here. What happen to the cook?”

  “She die, not long after you leave,” Rose answered, her voice cracking slightly. Easter felt a lump rising in her own throat, as she remembered how she and Rose used to spend hours and days helping the cook prepare food for the Phillips family on special occasions, how they’d have the kitchen smelling of pies and puddings and candied yams.

  Rose brushed her hands quickly across her face. “I miss her,” she said.

  “So you the cook now?”

  Rose nodded. “Yes. I the boss over these pot and pan. I get one of them children out of the yard to fill the tub with water, and you can clean yourself.” She called several children to bring her the tin tub out of the woodshed and fill it with water from a barrel outside the door. Easter got up and stood by the pantry closet. If someone came in the kitchen, she’d duck inside.

  Rose dragged the tub inside. “Don’t look so worried. Nobody come in here.” She handed Easter a cake of homemade soap and a clean rag. Easter took off her filthy clothes and slid into the clear water. Rose held up the torn and filthy shirt and pants and wrinkled her nose. “Think we better burn these before mushrooms sprout out of them.”

  Easter closed her eyes as she soaked. “This better than peach cobbler or sweet potato pie or any good thing to eat.”

  Rose chuckled. “You must be hungry.”

  While Easter bathed and Rose cooked, Easter told her everything that had happened to her and Obi. When she finished her bath, Rose brought her a plain homespun dress and a hairbrush. Easter brushed her thick hair, enjoying the feel of the stiff bristles on her clean scalp.

  “Now, I see it’s my Easter.” Rose smiled. Her deep dimples appeared in her round face. Easter felt even more tired after the bath. But she was also hungry. Rose gave her a plate of rice and greens cooked with ham.

  “Food kind of scarce because of this war. Mistress always feedin’ them soldiers. She never did give the field hands too much ration. Only reason me and the cook ate good was because we work in the kitchen.”

  Easter wiped her mouth. “This like a feast after eatin’ nothing but pork fat and hardtack.”

  Rose grimaced. “Sound like something that put a hole in your stomach. What’s hardtack?”

  “Biscuits the soldiers make.”

  Easter dozed off at the table while waiting for Rose to finish serving dinner to Mistress Phillips. Rose shook her gently when she returned to the kitchen. “Easter, you sleep in the shed with me. I come back later to finish cleaning and to …” Her voice trailed off.

  “To what?” Easter asked.

  “Nothing,” she answered quickly, wrapping her plump arm around Easter’s shoulders. “You don’t know how happy I am to see you.”

  “Rose, I happy to see you too, and I want to see Jason.”

  “Let’s go to the shed, and I give you the news.”

  It was dusk when they left the kitchen and walked toward the tiny shed where Rose slept. A black couple strolled from the slave quarters past the big house to the gate of the plantation. That struck Easter as unusual. She remembered that there used to be a curfew, and no one could walk toward the gate without being stopped. Maybe they have a pass to go somewhere, she told herself.

  When she and Rose reached the shed, Rose lit a candle. A lumpy old horsehair mattress covered with a patchwork quilt lay on the floor. A stool standing next to the mattress and a small scratched table were the only furniture in the room. A red and white gingham dress hung on a peg, and one set of underclothes was neatly folded on the table.

  Rose and Easter sat on the mattress. “There be a lot of change since you an’ Obi run away. Girl, I pray Master Jennings and his brother Wilson don’t find you. Wilson so angry at how you two get away he say he goin’ to kill Obi. Master Jennings say no, he ain’t lettin’ Wilson kill two thousand dollars. They look for you all up and down the countryside. Then they sell the farm and leave for the West.”

  “How you know all that they say?” Easter asked. She knew that Rose liked a good story and often added her own little touches to the telling.

  “Rayford tell me. He overhear Master Phillips talking about it.” Rose gazed at her worn slippers. “You remember Rayford?”

  Easter nodded. How could she forget Rayford, with his sparkling white shirt and pants that made his smooth black face look like polished ebony; Rayford, who stood as stiff and straight as Master Phillips; Rayford, who had secretly learned how to read and write. He had been Master Phillips’s proud personal servant. Some of the other blacks on the plantation called him Massa Rayford.

  Easter knew something else about Rayford. “Rose, I tell you a secret, but you promise not to say anything.”

  Rose moved closer to her. “Lip tight like a clam,” she said.

  “The night me and Obi run, it was Rayford who help us. He and some of the people here is hidin’ guns and knives in coffins.”

  Rose laughed. “I know about that, Easter. I been to one of them fake funerals. Everything change all at once. Master Phillips take sick and die, then all we hear is that the Yankee is comin’ to free us, and the people run away from this place like mouse runnin’ from cat.”

  “I could tell things was different around here, Rose. Where they run to?”

  “Some stay in the swamp and the woods. Some get caught by the patterollers—they in the prison. Most we never see again. That’s when Master get sick, when all his property run away.” Rose lowered her voice to barely a whisper. “Mistress plannin’ to move the rest of us to Texas till the war over. But some of us ain’t going with her. That’s why Rayford an’ them been hidin’ guns an’ knives—so we can protect ourselves when we leave here.” Her round eyes were frightened and excited at the same time. “I know I could trust you with this news, Easter.”

  Easter nodded. “Where you runnin’ to?”

  “Rayford and some of the other men have it all plan. Rayford been sneakin’ and readin’ the paper and he know everything that’s happenin’ with this war. Yankee take over the Sea Islands and that’s where we goin’. You free if you get where them Yankee is.”

  Easter grabbed Rose by the shoulders. “That’s where I want to go, to the Sea Islands! That’s where Obi is!” Her eyes shone with hope and excitement as she smiled. “I get Jason and we come with you.”

  “Well, we wasn’t plannin’ on takin’ Jason. He stayin’ here in his fancy clothes.”

  Easter’s smile vanished and the creases appeared on her forehead. “I come back for Jason, to
take him to the islands with me.”

  “I sure Rayford won’t mind you comin’, Easter. Jason probably won’t want to leave here anyway.”

  “He’ll come with me. I find my way back to the coast, just like I find my way here. But I ain’t leavin’ without Jason this time.”

  “He won’t go with you, Easter,” Rose insisted.

  “Where is he now?”

  “In the sittin’ room with Mistress. He singin’ and she bangin’ on the piano. That’s what they do every evening God send.”

  Easter stared wistfully at Mariah’s rug lying at her feet. “Jason always love to sing.” Her head throbbed. “Rose, can’t you get him to come see me now?”

  “He go right back to Mistress and tell her you here.” Rose stood up, looking away from Easter. “I speak to Rayford, but I know what he say.”

  Easter watched her friend. “What’s wrong with your face? Look funny every time you say the man’s name.”

  Rose smiled shyly. “Oh, hush. I just get his supper for him in the evening. Mistress make him the overseer now, since the soldier draft the white overseer. That’s why Mistress workin’ so hard on Jason. Tryin’ to make him a special servant, like Rayford was.”

  Easter laughed in spite of her aching head. “Jason like Rayford?”

  “Stupid, ain’t it? Mistress a little touched in the head. ’Specially after Master die and she have to run this place. Is we who really run the plantation.”

  Rose patted the large, lumpy mattress. “Sleep, Easter. Tomorrow I think of a way to bring Jason to see you. But I afraid he open his big mouth.”

  “Jason will listen to me. I know him good.”

  Rose smoothed her dress. “You use to know him good.”

  Chapter

  Two

  We felt perfectly justified in undertaking the dangerous and exciting task of “running a thousand miles” in order to obtain those rights which are so vividly set forth in the Declaration.

  From “The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery”

  Easter felt as if she’d just fallen asleep when she found herself being gently shaken. “Someone here to see you,” Rose said. Easter’s body was still stiff and sore, and for a moment she didn’t know where she was. When she opened her eyes fully, though, and saw Jason standing by the door, she jumped out of the bed and ran to him.

  He squirmed in her arms, but she didn’t notice until he yelled, “You a runaway an’ I tellin’ Missy.”

  Rose twisted his arm. “You ain’t tellin’ nothing.”

  Easter was too shocked by his accusation and threat to say anything at first. She could only stare in disbelief at his thin legs encased in white stockings, his brass-buckled shoes, and his green velvet britches and vest to match. The ruffles on his fancy white shirt puffed out over his vest.

  She recalled how he looked the last time she had seen him, shirttails made out of sacking flapping around his spindly legs. Now he was dressed like a boy in a painting she’d once seen in the Phillipses’ drawing room when she was helping the maids clean; the only difference was that the boy in the picture was white.

  Easter’s eyes narrowed as she put her hands on her hips and brought her face down close to his. “What you say, Jason? You tellin’ on me? You ain’t happy to see me?”

  “I tellin’ Missy,” he whined, averting his eyes.

  “I come back for you like I promised.” She reached for him again but he backed away from her grasp.

  “You and Obi leave me.” He rubbed his snub nose.

  “Jason, I try to come for you, but I couldn’t. I here now. I could’ve escape to the Yankee, but I come back here to get you.”

  “Missy Phillips say Yankee is the devil.”

  “You believe anything,” Rose said angrily.

  Jason’s eyes became teary, and he rubbed his nose again. “I don’t like you, Easter, and I tellin’ Missy that you back here to worry me.”

  Easter’s brown eyes took on a glazed expression. “Jason, you know you ought not talk to me that way.” She balled her fist. She’d like to pull those fancy britches off him and give him one good spanking.

  “You leave me alone. I hate you, and I tellin’ Mistress on you too, Rose, if you put a hand to me.” He still made no move to leave the shed.

  Rose clenched her teeth. “I like to wring your little chicken neck. See what a brat he is, Easter? See what I tell you?”

  This wasn’t the same Jason Easter had left. This wasn’t her Jason. The real boy was hidden somewhere under the velvet and the ruffles. She’d find him. Ain’t come all this way for nothing, she said to herself, trying to control the urge to box his ears. “Jason, I back now. And me and you is goin’ to find Obi. And all of us be together again,” she said firmly and slowly. “I been through misery to get back here for your little tail.”

  “I with Missy now. Don’t want to be with you and Obi.”

  Suddenly Rose grabbed him by the collar. “Jason, you a lying rascal. You was up and down the road every day lookin’ for Easter and Obi. No matter how much Master Jennings yell and Wilson beat you, you still there every day, in good weather and bad.”

  The tears streamed down his baby-soft brown cheeks. Easter reached out for him. “Jason, I never forget you.” She held him, and after a few seconds she felt his arms shyly circle her neck.

  “You ain’t leavin’ me no more?” He sniffled.

  “No, Jason. But don’t tell nobody I here. Not even Mistress Phillips.”

  He nodded. “But you won’t run away from me again?”

  “I won’t, Jason. I never leave you.”

  Rose folded her arms. “You go back to Mistress, ’fore she come lookin’ after you. And don’t say a word about Easter, else you get the whipping of your life. Not even Missy stop me.”

  “I want to stay with Easter,” Jason said, squeezing her neck tighter.

  “You a contrary devil,” Rose mumbled. “You go on back and I bring you to see her later.” She abruptly snatched him by his ruffled collar again. “Now don’t you say a word to no one.”

  He tried to squirm out of her grasp. “Yes, Rose. Won’t say nothing.” She let him go. He fluffed out his collar and hugged Easter once more before leaving.

  Easter beamed at Rose. “He himself now.”

  “I still don’t trust him.” Rose handed her a wooden plate with grits and a slice of bacon. “Eat some breakfast.”

  Easter sat on the stool. “What Rayford say? Can I come with you?”

  Rose’s eyelids lowered, cloaking her great, dark eyes. “He say yes, but he say Jason your responsibility. If Jason don’t act right, then you and him have to leave the group. He also say you was a fool not to escape to the islands when you had the chance.”

  Easter was relieved. “I make Jason behave. How you gettin’ him away from Mistress Phillips?”

  “That’s easy. Mistress ’sleep by ten o’clock—that’s when we takin’ off. Jason sleep outside her door in the hallway. I wake him and say I bringin’ him to see you like I promise.” She picked up two baskets. “Now I takin’ you to the plantation jail.”

  Easter hugged herself in mock fright. “You arrestin’ me?”

  “The jail been empty since the overseer leave and Master die. We use it for the runaways who need a place to hide and rest.”

  Easter finished eating and picked up her rug. Rose handed her one of the baskets. “Make it seem like we goin’ to the garden—what’s left of it. Last week some soldiers come through here and dig up most of the vegetables.”

  “What happen to the dogs?”

  “Been poison,” Rose answered simply as she stepped out of the shed ahead of Easter. “Come on, ain’t nobody ’round,” she said. “Mistress still upstairs. Better hurry, in case that Jason tell.”

  “He won’t, Rose.” Easter squinted her eyes at the pleasantly warm morning sun. They hurried past the orchards and the magnolia trees. “Rose, you seem upset, but I know Jason ain’t goin’ to say anything.” She smiled at Ros
e reassuringly, and her face became as bright as the sun. Her full mouth, the color of ripe plums, framed her straight, ivory-colored teeth. “The day feel nice, don’t it, Rosie? Sky blue as a jaybird.”

  Easter’s cheerful mood left when they approached the jail, which was at the far end of the plantation. The whipping post was still in the yard. Rose entered the dark, dampish building first. There was a room upstairs where the female prisoners used to be kept and two rooms downstairs, each containing a large cell. Chains and leg irons lay in the corners of the cells. Only a dull shaft of light seeped in through the small windows.

  Easter spread her rug on the floor near the door. Rose stood over her. “Nobody find you here. If Jason open his mouth, I’ll swear he lyin’. This jail is the meeting place for tonight.” Rose stared at Easter’s bare feet. “I find you some old shoes if I can.”

  Easter grimaced. “No, shoes seem like they hurt. Bring me some rags and I tie my feet.”

  The day stretched like years. Rose popped in to see her in the late afternoon, bringing her a slice of bread and a cup of buttermilk. She also brought rags so that Easter could bind her feet. Rose seemed happier than she’d been in the morning. “Jason ain’t say nothing yet. Maybe he keepin’ his mouth shut,” she informed Easter.

  Finally the sun set, and every nerve in Easter’s body seemed to sense the slightest rustle of a leaf. The songs and cries of birds were replaced by the clicks of the night insects. Easter rolled up her rug and stood waiting by the door of the jail. After what seemed like hours, Rose rushed in, pulling Jason behind her. “Where Easter?” he whispered loudly.

  “I here, Jason,” she answered, and he wrapped his arms around her waist.

  “Where we goin’?” he asked.

  “You hush now. You want to be with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then be still. We together now. Don’t you worry about anything else.”

  Other people began to slip into the jail, but Easter couldn’t tell who they were in the darkness. She could see, however, that the men carried shotguns and rifles and the women held bundles. Easter counted five children, including Jason and an infant girl.