Cy in Chains Read online

  Rosalee appeared from the barn, leading one of the horses. Bulging saddlebags hung from the saddle. At first, Cy didn’t recognize her. She had cut her wavy brown hair very short and had somehow darkened the skin of her face. She was wearing a man’s outfit: shirt, pants, jacket, and boots. Cain’s pistol was tucked into her belt, and a slouch hat was clutched in her hand.

  Rosalee had thought things out carefully. Cy respected her for that.

  “You got ’em ready?” she asked.

  “Yeah. We can go anytime. Which way we headed?”

  “We? They ain’t no we, Cy. You told these boys they got to go in small groups, two, three, maybe four. Go different ways, you told ’em. That what they got to do, if they wants any chance at all.”

  He could feel himself going tense. “I know that. But I figured you was gonna come with me.” The words surprised him. Cy didn’t remember ever having thought that, but now that the idea was spoken, he realized, embarrassed, that he wanted Rosalee to be with him. He needed her.

  Something touched his hand and he jerked away. He turned to find it was Billy, searching his face with imploring eyes.

  And he need me, Cy realized. What had Jess called out to him, about looking after Billy and Mouse?

  Rosalee’s voice brought him back to the world. “I ain’t goin’ with you,” she told him coldly. “I done what you asked me. Now I got to look out for myself, and I can’t have none o’ y’all draggin’ me down.” She put one foot into the stirrup. “I reckon they get me sooner or later, but till then, I’s gon’ enjoy every minute, knowin’ I got revenge on the man who killed my children.”

  With that, she swung into the saddle and tossed the keys to Cy. “Open the gate,” she commanded him. He obeyed, too stunned to argue or refuse.

  Rosalee urged the horse forward. Once in the road, she turned back, and her eyes locked with Cy’s. “I hope it all turns out good for you,” she told him. “The others too. And I thanks you for givin’ me the courage to do what shoulda been done a long time ago.” She kicked the horse’s sides and disappeared into the darkness.

  No one spoke for a few seconds, then everyone started talking at once. Cy ordered silence, and the boys quieted down. Someone was whimpering.

  Cy felt alone—and he felt scared. But now that the moment had arrived, he had to act.

  Billy took his hand again, and Mouse left the other boys and came and stood beside him. They looked pitiful in their ragged clothes. Of course, Mouse’s pants were too large, and he’d found a length of rope to use as a belt. Cy knew Mouse and Billy didn’t stand a chance on their own.

  “We got to get outta here,” Cy told the boys. “Billy and Mouse is comin’ with me. The rest of y’all, decide who you’s goin’ with. Older fellas, take a couple o’ the younger guys. Some of you head north, up toward Tifton.”

  “What about the other horses?” Jack asked. “We can take them.”

  “Too risky,” Cy said. “Somebody sure to recognize ’em. ’Sides, we got to stick to the woods, and horses can’t go there.”

  “Where Tifton?” someone asked.

  Cy wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t let on now. “Turn right on the road once you get outside camp. Some o’ you go through the woods back o’ here, and some go straight.” He had no idea what lay in those directions, but that wasn’t his problem.

  “Which way you goin’?” a boy asked.

  “Left, down toward someplace called Moultrie.”

  “To find my daddy,” Billy said softly.

  “We’s comin’ with you,” another boy said.

  Cy took a step toward the boys. His hand touched the pistol tucked into his belt. “No, you ain’t!” he declared. “We’s all goin’ different ways, like we said. That the only way we got a chance. Long as it dark, you can pretty much stay on the road. If you go through the woods, just get as far as you can, then stop and wait till the sun come up. Then you can see where you’s goin’.”

  “And where that?”

  Cy didn’t want any more questions. He had no answers, and he was desperate to leave.

  “Look for folks to help you,” he said. “Colored folks. They hates the white man just like you do. Tell ’em you runnin’ away, and they hide you, find you places to live.”

  Maybe, said a voice in his head. Remember Sam Arnold?

  It was time to quit talking. “If we doin’ this, we got to do it now,” he said. “It be dawn soon, and we got to be far from here as we can. Get movin’.”

  Silently, the boys moved forward and stepped into the road. Cy pulled the gate closed and snapped the padlock shut. Then he took the ring of keys Rosalee had given him and hurled it into the woods.

  “Hurry now,” Cy urged. One by one, each group disappeared into the night, leaving Cy, Billy, and Mouse. Cy stood looking at the camp, wishing its fences would fall to earth, its bunkhouses crumble, all the chains and locks turn to powder and blow away in the wind.

  Billy brought him back to the real world. “Thank you for takin’ us with you,” he said. “It ain’t but a few miles down to Moultrie. We can get there for breakfast. Daddy gon’ be right surprised to see us. He for sure gon’ cook us up some hotcakes and fry up some bacon. And coffee—”

  “Stop,” Cy told him. He couldn’t let himself think of such things—not yet. “Let’s go,” he said.

  Off they went down the dark road to freedom.

  Twenty-One

  CY LED THE WAY, STAYING TO THE SIDE OF THE road so they could melt into the blackness of the woods at the slightest sound of an approaching traveler. From the start, Mouse had a hard time keeping up. It was torture for Cy to wait for him to catch his breath, when everything in Cy shouted that they must run. If Cy were on his own, he’d be racing through the woods, panicked like a deer fleeing a pack of hunting dogs.

  Cy searched his memory for the directions to reach the woman called Aunt Miriam. Somewhere, they had to leave the road, turn off—he wasn’t sure which way. He fought down the thought that in the darkness, they would miss the turnoff. In the gray half-light before sunrise, that fear was replaced by another: getting caught. Soon they would have to move into the woods.

  You just sent all the rest o’ them boys to the Alabama mines, a voice in his mind accused him. What chance they got, not knowin’ where they goin’? What make you think any black man or woman gon’ offer them help? Them boys gon’ be picked up, taken back to camp, whipped till the skin fall off they backs, and then sent off to die diggin’ coal. They was better off the way they was.

  I won’t listen to you, Cy told the accuser.

  But the taunting voice was not so easily silenced. You gon’ be caught too, lynched, and sent straight to hell. And for what?

  “Shut up!” Cy cried out loud.

  “You okay?” Billy asked him. “Cy, you all right?”

  “Yeah. Never mind. Follow me. We got to get off the road now.”

  They headed into the woods and stopped to rest. Cy had no idea how long they’d been walking. Dawn was coming quickly now, and rays from the rising sun turned the young spring leaves to gold.

  “Eat somethin’,” Cy told Billy and Mouse. “I can stand watch. Get some sleep if you want.”

  “I’s too tired to eat,” Mouse complained. But he did fall asleep. One moment he was awake, shaking his head to refuse the food Cy was coaxing him to try, the next second, he was out. Cy wondered if he himself would ever be able to sleep again. But as he listened to Billy’s quiet breathing and watched Mouse curl up just the way he used to on the straw tick back in camp, Cy found his own eyes beginning to shut. Right away, images of Stryker’s and Davis’s bloody bodies loomed in his mind.

  Cy’s head jerked up, and he realized he had been asleep—for how long, he couldn’t exactly tell, but the sun was fully up and the birds were in joyful song. He stood up and stretched, reaching for the sky. No matter what happened later, at this moment, he was a free man. A free man.

  He let the others sleep while he crept up to the road and li
stened. No sound. Then he crawled back and lay down again.

  The sun was overhead when he woke. Billy and Mouse still slept. Cy roused them. Now it was time to move, to find the turnoff that would lead them to Aunt Miriam—if she really existed. Failing that, they would make their way to Moultrie and find Billy’s father—if he existed.

  When Cy told them they were going to Aunt Miriam, Billy objected. He wanted to keep heading toward Moultrie. If they hurried, they could still get home by suppertime, he argued. Cy said no. They would go to Aunt Miriam first, and she could help them go the rest of the way.

  They gathered their things and started through the woods, keeping the road to their left. Right away, Mouse complained of being thirsty. Then Billy did, too. They had brought all the food they could carry, but no one had thought about water. They looked for a low place where there might be standing water or, better, a creek.

  A creek. Now Cy remembered. His daddy had told him the road crossed a creek, and beyond that . . . he wasn’t sure. He would have to trust that when they got to the place, he’d know.

  The going was slow because Mouse was so weak. Soon, Cy had to pick Mouse up and carry him on his back. That slowed them even more. The road was deserted, and Cy wondered why until he remembered that it was Sunday. God-fearing folks would be in church and sinners still lying in their beds, sleeping off last night’s whoring and drinking.

  Just when Cy was beginning to believe they’d missed the place his father had told him about, or that his memory was all wrong, the land started going downhill and the woods grew thicker. Cy knew it was a sure sign that water was ahead. They came to a creek, running brightly over a white sand bottom, and all three threw themselves face-down on the ground and scooped cool water into their mouths. Never had anything tasted so good, Cy thought.

  When they had drunk their fill, Cy sat and tried to jog his memory. What had his father told him about the creek? He ventured up to the road and saw a bridge—yes, Pete Williams had said there was a bridge. Looking left and right, Cy climbed up a weedy bank and scrambled onto the road. He crossed the bridge and—yes!—there was a turnoff to the right. That was the way to Aunt Miriam’s!

  In two minutes, he was leading Billy and Mouse along the narrow path that wound its way into thick oak woods. When they came to an enormous dead oak and an even smaller path to the right, Cy knew which way to go. His heart was beating fast again, but not from fear. Soon, he felt in his bones, they would be safe.

  The path plunged into thicker woods, went down through a low place where the ground was soft and wet, up again to higher ground, and at last into a clearing. At the far end stood a shabby cabin. Behind it, a falling-down barn.

  “Stay here,” Cy told the others. “I’ll go find Aunt Miriam.”

  “I’s comin’ with you,” Billy said, grabbing his hand.

  “Me too,” Mouse added.

  “Naw! Get behind them big trees and wait. If anything go wrong, run like hell.”

  Cy freed himself from Billy’s grasp and took a few steps forward. When the door to the cabin opened, he dodged behind a tree and watched as an old black woman came onto the porch. She wore a shapeless long dress and was barefoot. Her white hair was pulled back and tied in a knot. Over the colorless dress she had on a bright red coat.

  The woman reached the porch steps and stopped. She scanned the clearing and then, Cy was certain of it, raised her head and sniffed the air.

  Cy felt himself trembling. Was the woman Aunt Miriam? There was only one way to find out. He came out from hiding and took two steps toward the cabin. Immediately, the woman had her eyes fixed on him. He kept walking toward her.

  But he stopped short when the woman asked, “Cy Williams, that you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She nodded, satisfied. “What done took you so long?”

  He wasn’t sure what the question meant or how to answer, so instead he said, “I got two others with me.”

  “And where they be?”

  Cy felt sure it was safe. “Billy, Mouse,” he called, “come out.”

  They appeared from behind their trees and stepped into the clearing.

  “It’s okay,” Cy said. “We’s here.”

  With slow steps, the boys advanced. Mouse was staggering with exhaustion, and his breath came in big, wheezing gasps. Billy rushed forward and grabbed on to Cy’s arm. He began to cry.

  “Aw, sugar, it’s all right now,” the woman said, making her way slowly down the steps. “Aunt Miriam gon’ take care o’ you.”

  Aunt Miriam. They were truly safe, then.

  What happened next felt like a dream, the first good dream Cy could remember having in years. He had to keep reminding himself that it was real. He and the others had hot baths in the copper tub Aunt Miriam filled, emptied, and refilled so that each boy could wash in clean water. She fed them fish coated in cornmeal batter and fried crisp—redbreast and sunfish caught in the creek just that morning. She set out slices of yeast bread slathered with butter and peach jam, and a salad of fresh dandelion greens from the nearby fields mixed with sweet lettuces from her garden. And then there was hot coffee, served with sugar and fresh cream. Cy felt like weeping when he tasted that.

  Mouse nibbled at the fried fish, but clearly he had no appetite. Cy noticed Aunt Miriam looking at the boy, and her eyes showed her worry.

  Billy and Mouse were tucked into bed together in a lean-to room off the back of the cabin. Only then did Aunt Miriam invite Cy to sit on the porch and talk. She brought out a corncob pipe from her apron pocket, filled it with tobacco, and settled down to smoke.

  As soon as Cy sat in the comfortable rocking chair, he fell into a deep sleep. When he woke, at first he didn’t remember where he was. Then he knew, but he couldn’t tell how long he’d been out. Aunt Miriam was still there, the pipe clutched in her teeth, gazing at the newly greening trees on the far side of the clearing.

  “How long I been asleep?” Cy asked.

  “Pretty long time,” Aunt Miriam replied. “I don’t know ’bout clock time, but you done had a right good nap. Feelin’ better now?”

  Cy did feel better, but as he looked at this kindly, strange woman, he knew he had to tell her all he had done to make it to her place. But she spoke first.

  “Yo’ daddy was all tore up when he realize what that snake Arnold done to y’all.”

  “He knew? You knew?”

  “Yes, child. Ain’t much happen in these parts I don’t hear ’bout sooner or later. I got my spies everywhere”—she laughed to herself—“and they report how Arnold turn you in fo’ a couple dollars.”

  “Somebody told me Cain had him killed.”

  “’Deed he did! Can’t say I shed no tears when I heard that.” She spat over the porch railing. “When word come, yo’ daddy carry on somethin’ awful. All I could do to keep him from goin’ back to Cain’s camp and tryin’ to bust through the gate and kill that devil. I got him to calm down after a while, and I made him see that they warn’t no use in throwin’ his life away. He kept sayin’ that he didn’t care nothin’ about his life, ’cause it didn’t have no meanin’ without you.”

  Sadness washed over Cy, and he fought back tears.

  “Finally, I got yo’ daddy to agree that they warn’t nothin’ he could do. We jus’ had to sit and wait to see what Father got up his sleeve.”

  “Father?”

  “God the Father. You knows: ‘Our Father, which art in heaven.’”

  “Oh.”

  “After some few days, we got word that you was alive in the camp, that Cain didn’t whip you to death or send you over to Alabam’. I told yo’ daddy best thing for him was to go home and that you be followin’ along behind him when you was ready.”

  “He went?”

  Aunt Miriam put her hand over his. “Yes, child. Back to Louisville. I know that a long way from here, but the farther, the better. Ain’t nobody gon’ think to look for you up there.”

  “But I don’t know the way!”

/>   “No more than the chillun o’ Israel knew the way through the wilderness to the Promised Land. But Father show you the road.”

  Cy wasn’t sure about that. It sounded strange to hear Aunt Miriam referring to God as Father.

  “And Daddy be there now?”

  She nodded. “He ask me to tell you that he be there waitin’, if it take you ten years to get there. He say he ain’t got nothin’ to do now but wait.”

  Cy sat and thought things over. It warmed him to learn that his father had tried to save him and would have gone back to Cain’s camp to try again, no matter how crazy that idea might have been. And now he was far away, waiting for his son to come back—to come home.

  He could feel the old woman’s eyes on him. He looked at her and saw deep compassion in the brown depths of her gaze.

  “You ready to say how you and these boys come to be here?” she asked quietly.

  He was, but having to remember felt terrible. Telling the story made it all come back again. Nothing would ever erase the images of Stryker’s and Davis’s faces, the open eyes, the blood . . .

  Aunt Miriam showed no surprise, no horror. In fact, when he described the killings, she nodded satisfaction. “That Cain had it comin’,” she said. “After all the evil he done. And the evil he let others do.”

  “You ain’t mad at me for what I done?” Cy asked.

  “Should I be?”

  “The only other person I knows who ever talked about God an’ the Bible an’ all”—Cy groped for the words to explain himself—“he always said that killin’ is wrong, and we got to wait an’ let God fix things.”

  Aunt Miriam patted his hand. “Yo’ friend had it right, mostly. ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ the book say. But it also say that Father don’t like havin’ his chillun whipped and starved and killed.” She turned her eyes back to the trees across her yard. “And sometimes, when Father done waited long enough for wicked folks to turn from they evil ways and do right, he decide to fix things once and for all, and he call on us to do the fixin’.”