April 20, 1829
Glen Echo, Georgia[1]
Not long ago, this had been a plantation house. SINC had bought the property and was digging the Grand Southern through it, but they’d left the house itself standing. It was still a nice house, and today was a beautiful day. It was warm, but not too hot, the sky was clean and blue, the air was heavy with the smell of scarlet honeysuckle… and March was on the porch with no shirt on and his wrists tied over his head to one of the porch columns. And the militiaman behind him had a whip — March could hear the swish as it was waved around. And the old militia colonel seated in front of him was eyeing him with the least sincere smile he could remember seeing in his thirteen years of life.
“Tall for your age, ain’t you, boy?”
“So they tell me, sir,” said March, desperately trying to keep a level tone despite the increasing pain in his shoulders. “Ain’t got nothing to measure myself with.”
“How tall is this young buck?” The colonel directed the question over March’s shoulder.
“One point seven meters, sir,” came the voice behind him.
“What’s that in feet and inches?”
“About five foot seven, sir.”[2]
“Any distinguishing scars?”
“Not yet.” The man behind him chuckled.
“Now, now,” said the colonel. “That should not be necessary. We know this is one of the boys reported missing.” He turned back to March.
“Your master’s told us all about you, March,” he said. “I know you ain’t a bad nigger. He says you ain’t never made trouble before. But you fell into some bad company, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.” And never worse than right now, he thought.
“We’ve been talking to the others. We know it was either Chester, Levi or Cobey who led your little posse.” March was less than impressed by this. They had been a group of five. March was thirteen, and Shoofly was a chucklehead who could barely talk and needed Levi to look after him. “Would you care to tell us which one of them it was?”
Cobey, but we should’ve listened to Levi. He wanted to go the other way, make for Autherley[3] and the Brunswick Spur. We’d done that, we’d be halfway to the border by now. “You ask any one of them three,” he said, “they’ll say ‘I was in charge.’ Those boys didn’t do nothing but argue the whole way down here.” It was the only lie he could think of. The pain was getting worse.
“That’s as may be, but somebody had to win them arguments or y’all never would’ve got this far.” The colonel leaned forward and dropped his phony smile. “And you will tell me who that was, boy.”
March let himself look a little afraid. “It was Chester, sir.” The damn fool. Put on airs on account of his father was a white man, but he didn’t know no better than anybody else. Not that Cobey was any smarter — he knew his brother was working on the Grand Southern and thought that meant none of them niggers would turn us in for the reward.
The colonel nodded sagely. “I thought so,” he said. “We found a map in Levi’s possession of Georgia and northern Florida. Someone gave him that map.”
White man. About forty. Cleft chin, curly hair. Educated fellow with a funny accent. “Didn’t see the fellow myself. He was gone afore they picked me up.”
“And which of them niggers was it read the map?”
Me, you damn fool. Why else would they have brought me along? Never shoulda told ‘em I could read. “Couldn’t none of us read it. Tell you the truth, sir, it warn’t much use to us.”
“So how did Chester know which way to go?”
Finally, a question he could answer truthfully — and just in time, the pain was making it hard to concentrate. “That was easy, sir. You wants to go south, you looks up at night… you finds the North Star… and then you goes the other way.”
The colonel glanced behind him and gave a little nod.
March felt the blow at the same moment he heard the crack of the whip. For the first moment it was like a line of bees along his right shoulder, all stinging him at the same moment. Then the burning started.
“Don’t you lie to me, boy,” said the militiaman. “We can cause you a lot of pain without damaging your master’s property.”
Even without the whip, they were causing him a lot of pain. Doing a man’s work around a stable had strengthened his shoulders, but it hadn’t prepared him for standing like this with his arms straight up in the air. His shoulders felt like they’d been impaled with rusty bolts, and he had no feeling at all in his hands or arms. And the burning was getting worse, as if there’d been so much pain in that whiplash that his skin couldn’t tell him about it all at once.
“The map showed the Hidden Trail safe houses on the far side the border,” said the colonel. “It did not show the ones here in Georgia. Not even niggers could be fool enough to try crossing the state on foot without a rest somewheres. I want to know the names and addresses of the people in this state who are moving stolen property.”
Half a dozen names and locations — things the educated white man had told him, things he’d taken pains to memorize — appeared in March’s mind of their own accord. Any one of them would spare him another blow of the whip, would get his arms free. His eyes were streaming with tears.
“Ask Chester!” said March. “He said he knew the way, but he wouldn’t tell us nothin’! Scared we was gonna go runnin’ back to Massa! Especially me!” He broke down and sobbed openly.
“Of course,” said the colonel. “You’re still just a child. Children always want to run home when it gets dark. I got one more question — what was you planning to do when you got to Florida?”
Work. For pay this time. And get back to learning my letters, this time without nobody telling me I can’t. “Didn’t know,” he forced himself to say. “I just heard the stories. They say it’s like Canaan… a land of milk and honey… only they makes the milk into something like butter and calls it ‘ghee.’” He took a deep breath. “Sounded right good to me.”
The colonel nodded. “You understand that on principle, I can’t send you back to your master without a few stripes. Not after you ran away.” He looked over March’s shoulder. “Five strokes, then untie him.”
The militiaman gave March six strokes. The colonel gave him a disapproving look, but didn’t say anything.
As his back was being washed with salt water (which added a whole new layer of pain, but was supposed to prevent mortification) three things went through March’s mind.
One, if they had sent him back to South Carolina with no marks on him, no other slave would ever trust him again. This was not much comfort to his back.
Two, he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life like this.
Three, the next time he tried to escape, he’d have his own plan.
[1] Ellabell, Georgia
[2] A lot of the older generation outside Washington and the major cities have been slow to adapt to the metric system.
[3] No OTL equivalent. About five miles south of Baxley, Georgia. The Brunswick Spur meets the Grand Southern there.