WE WERE COMING TO A TOWN. MOVING STEADILY ALONG THE ROAD, A TINY BLACK DOT WAS HEADING FOR THE TOWN. A MOMENT LATER, I SAW IT WAS A HORSE AND BUGGY. I COUNTED FOUR HEADS IN THE BUGGY—A FAMILY. THEY WERE THE FIRST PEOPLE WE HAD SEEN ALL DAY.
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SUMMARY: THE STORY SO FAR…
Josiah, a young slave 12 years of age, lives in a cabin in the slave quarters of a Virginia tobacco plantation with Auntie Bee, Mose, the plantation handyman, two young children, Randall and Emily. He notices Mose leaving the cabin in the middle of the night and follows him to his secret workshop in the woods where Mose is building some sort of strange contraption. Mose tells him it is a machine that will fly him to freedom. Now that he knows Mose’s secret, he stays to help build the flier. After mishaps, false starts and setbacks—the flier tumbles down the mountain and is seriously damaged—they are attacked by snakes—mountain lions lurk all around them—they realize someone has been spying on them and they think their escape plan has been discovered. Finally, their time has come. Now they are in the air, riding on the wings of the wind.
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I don’t know how long I was asleep but when I woke up it was mid afternoon. We were coming to a dense forest. It was so thick I could see nothing but green ripples ahead of us. It looked like we were approaching a vast leafy ocean.
As we drew closer, I realized we were flying low, too low. We were about to hit the tallest branches. I braced for a blow. We ran along the top of the forest, skimming the treetops, so close I could reach out and touch the soft leaves all around us.
The forest was alive with a symphony of bird sounds. Birds were everywhere, hiding in the trees, deep among the branches, protected by a thick green cover. We couldn’t see them but we sure could hear them. Their endless chittering and chirping was so loud and raucous it nearly overpowered the mechanical grinding of the flier. The bird chorus stayed with us until we left the forest behind.
Soon, we came upon a wide meadow with rows of thin brown lines crossing like stripes painted on the field. As we closed in, the brown lines became clear. They were streets and on either side of them were houses. We were coming to a town.
A long dusty road led into the town. Moving steadily along the road, a tiny black dot was heading for town. A moment later, I saw it was a horse and buggy.
I counted four heads in the buggy—a family. The father was driving with the mother on the other side. Between them were two children, a young boy and girl.
They were the first people we had seen all day since we left Mose and Auntie Bee on the mountain.
The clip-clopping of the horse grew louder. By then we had lost so much height we were about as high as the tallest tree. Our path was taking us directly over the family. As we approached, the children looked up and saw us. Emily and Randall waved and the boy and girl waved back and smiled.
The father and mother kept their eyes on the road. I lost sight of them as the wagon passed beneath us. When we got ahead of them, I looked behind us and for the first time I saw the father’s face. It was hard as stone. He looked angry. The children must have done something bad while we went over them because the father took his hand off the reins and was
smacking the little boy and girl. He hit them again and again with an open hand until they cowered low in the seat. I heard him scolding the children. “Close your eyes,” he yelled. “Keep your head down.”
It was a white family and I guess the father didn’t want his children to see us. I don’t know why.
As we pulled away, the horse and buggy receded in the distance and the children were nowhere to be seen. There would be no more waving and no smiles.
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Sunday, June 13th 2010 at 2:47PM
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