High Rider

HIGH.

RIDER.

BILL GALLAHER.

For Philip Teece, who welcomed me into the circle.

He was born a high rider, born to make his mark upon the day.




-Diamond Joe White, "High Rider"

PROLOGUE.

OLDMAN RIVER, ALBERTA, SPRING 1883.

Far from being the colour of his name, Mustard was a black stallion. Yet the appellation fit, because it described a temperament as hot as the condiment. He was one of a few "green" horses on the roundup-animals that required breaking. This was usually a relatively simple task, but not with Mustard. He would let you stand beside him and stroke his neck, make you think he was easygoing, that he'd be quite happy to go prancing off with you on his back. But throwing a saddle on him brought out his inner beast. He would go crazy, bucking blindly into a brick wall if one was nearby, wanting only to rid himself of the load on his back. The day before, he had tried to destroy the chuckwagon. He broke the fold-out table, scattering cooking utensils and a bag of flour everywhere, and sent the crew scurrying to safety. The cook was so angry he wanted to shoot him, and any member of the crew whom Mustard had embarra.s.sed would have eagerly provided the gun. Some referred to him as "that f.u.c.ker of a bucker," and there was no one left in the outfit willing to ride him. Except John Ware.

He had watched it all with great amus.e.m.e.nt, and this morning, when the others avoided their black nemesis, he grabbed a hackamore and reins from the supply wagon, jammed his Boss of the Plains Stetson down to his ears, and strode to the animal's side. John stroked him for a minute or two, talking softly, and slipped on the hackamore, an act that Mustard always tolerated, as if he were trying to fool a man about his real intentions. While the stallion was digesting that small change in his life, John leaped onto his back. Mustard's eyes bulged. He reared, snorted, and flew into his mad gyrations.

Some of the crew whooped and cried, "Ride 'im, John!" while Mustard spun in circles so fast, John almost lost his bearings. But he hung on as the crazed animal crashed into another horse, nearly knocking it to the ground. His back arched and his nostrils flared, moaning like a demon, Mustard bucked in ever-widening circles. Someone yelled, "John, the river!" Another yelled with even more alarm, "Get off, you fool! You'll be killed!"

About fifty yards away was the Oldman River, flowing at a good spring pace below a twenty-foot cutbank that dropped straight into the water. Unaware of the river's proximity, John was as much into the ride as Mustard, and he rowel-raked the animal's flanks, angering him even further. Also oblivious to the precipice, Mustard reached the edge at the beginning of another spin, but this time, when he descended, there was nothing but air beneath his hooves. Until that moment, John had not realized how precarious the ride had become. He saw the water twenty feet below and knew that he was in trouble: if the fall did not injure or kill him, he would probably drown.

Horse and rider seemed suspended in mid-air for a split second, then plunged straight down, frozen in position like a granite statue honouring bronc-busters, and splashed explosively into the river. They sank beneath the surface and John could not see a thing-not because of the muddy water, but because he had his eyes clamped shut. He was still on Mustard though, his legs gripping so tightly he worried he might break the animal's ribs. He could feel the chaos of the ice-cold water around him, feel it surging up his nose, and Mustard thrashing beneath him. He sensed he was still right side up, but in a spate of panic did not know whether they would ever rise to the surface or if he should let go and try to flail his way up and to sh.o.r.e. But then they broke into the air and the horse began swimming, his wild eyes scanning the bank for a place to land. Gasping, John leaned forward, wrapped his arms around Mustard's neck, and hung on for all he was worth. Reaching a low spot farther downstream, the animal clambered out of the water, heaving for air, slipping on the slick, muddy bank, with John still on his back and breathing with some difficulty himself. Once on dry ground, Mustard stopped and hung his head, still panting, all the fight gone out of him.

John heard a rousing cheer and saw the crew at the top of the cutbank, waving their hats at him. He tugged off his dripping Stetson and waved back. He noticed that the spot where Mustard had launched himself into the air was the only part of the bank that dropped straight into the river. In most other places, it sloped. He thanked his lucky stars. Had they hit a slope, horse and man would have tumbled into the water and might not have survived the fall.

He urged Mustard up the grade to the camp, where the crew greeted him with a smattering of applause and congratulations. He dismounted and said, as if he did this sort of thing every morning after breakfast, "Nothin' like a mornin' swim to take the fuss out of a horse." He reached down, pulled his boots off, and dumped the water out of them. "That river can sure get a man wet."

There were laughs at the understatement and John felt pleased, knowing that he had once again proved himself to men who believed that he might not be up to their standards because of the colour of his skin. It was the way of his world, and it had been like that for as long as he could remember.

ONE.

No better than a snake!.

SOUTH CAROLINA, 1867.

Abe Lincoln had asked, "Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people?" but John Ware was tired of waiting for it. On his way out of Georgetown, he purposely pa.s.sed the colonnaded stone courthouse, glad he was seeing it for the last time. The justice it dispensed mirrored a South that had not yet turned a blind eye to colour, and that was only one of the reasons he would not miss the town, or South Carolina for that matter. He avoided Front Street, with its stone-built homes and businesses occupied by people who had little time for his kind, and took grid-patterned side streets to the main road leading out of town, whistling softly as he walked. The post-dawn air, which would soon give way to the oppressive heat of the day, was warm and pleasant. The land was level and grew stands of pine, oak, sycamore, maple, and flowering magnolias. Occasionally a driveway reached back from the road, marking the entrance to a rice plantation. A few still operated in limited fashion, while others had gone to seed.

Before long, he neared the plantation on which he had been born and raised. Even from the road, he could see that weeds now surrounded the red brick columns marking the entrance to the estate. He could also see that the main house, a square, white two-storey box with a veranda across the front and a portico supported by four columns, had not been maintained, and that the slaves' quarters had been dismantled. Probably for firewood, he surmised. A rider on horseback was coming down the oak-canopied driveway, and John wondered if it might be his former master. He did not have a single fond memory of the man; the few he had of the plantation existed only because of his family.

John, his parents, his seven brothers-four older and three younger than himself-and his two younger sisters lived in a one-room log cabin in which they sweltered in summer and shivered in winter. It was one of six cabins forming the slaves' quarters. The man who owned them like chattel was Sebastian Chambers II, who had inherited the plantation from his father. A widower with no children, he was short and thin, a pinch-faced, miserly man who, like many born into it, believed he was ent.i.tled to wealth and that it was part of the natural order. He had few virtues; however, while other plantation owners did not care if they broke up families, Chambers at least kept John's together. This did not rise from any wellspring of altruism, but from an a.s.sumption that his bondsmen would be more productive and less p.r.o.ne to rebellion if their families remained united. Even better, these families had children, who would grow up to have children of their own and supply him with an unbroken line of free slave labour.

Chambers usually allowed Sat.u.r.day afternoons off so that his slaves could tend to their personal ch.o.r.es, such as laundry and cleaning. On Sundays, slaves attended church in the morning and, because there never seemed to be enough food, spent some of the day catching catfish in the creek that meandered through the edge of the plantation. Sometimes they would gather with a fiddle or a banjo outside their quarters and sing and dance to forget the misery that cloaked their daily lives. Christmas was the only time of year when Chambers displayed any generosity, allowing his slaves three consecutive days free of work. He also permitted exchange visits to and from nearby plantations. It was a time of unusual conviviality, enhanced by the strong corn whisky that was supplied by most of the masters, with the exception of Chambers. He did not approve of the custom, though his own drinking habits were excessive.

Beyond those small concessions, Chambers was cruel and drove his slaves without mercy. John's childhood was more about work than play. He and his fellow slaves, about forty altogether, not including children too small to work, laboured from dawn until dusk on any task Chambers had a mind to set for them: working in the rice fields and the plantation's large vegetable garden, digging irrigation ditches, building and mending fences, and cleaning out his horse and mule stalls. There was never a shortage of work to do, because he believed that idle slaves meant less production, and idle hands meant the Devil himself was lurking in the vicinity. It was his further belief that an educated slave was a dangerous one, so there was no schoolhouse on the plantation. There was a small church, however. The slaves were steeped in religion and despite their illiteracy knew many biblical pa.s.sages by rote. The one most often repeated on the Chambers plantation was, "Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them as sincerely as you would serve Christ." Most did.

To entertain himself and his friends on special occasions, Chambers would make all of the teenage boys gather in a roped-off ring and fight until only one remained standing. It was usually John or one of his older brothers, for they towered above the others and were stronger. Still, they didn't like hurting their friends, and they themselves always came away with some part of their anatomy bruised and sore. They dared not pull their punches either, for fear of incurring Chambers's wrath. And no matter how serious the injury, he expected the boys to be in the fields the next day.

A more dangerous form of entertainment was one that John actually enjoyed-riding Chambers's mules bareback. The animals had nasty dispositions and always tried to trample thrown riders. Once he hit the ground, a boy had to be quick to get out of the angry beast's way. The spectacle never failed to delight Chambers and his guests. But as he got older, John's height and long legs allowed him a firmer grip on the animals, and once he rode one to a standstill. The planter never made him ride again.

Chambers demanded deference at all times. His slaves had to stand and bow when he came into their presence. They could not sit down until he left. He carried a whip that seemed attached to his right hand, for John had never seen him without it. Chambers used it at will, as much to reinforce his superiority as to mete out punishment. A sycamore tree grew in front of the slaves' quarters; he would secure transgressors to it and whip their behinds and backs, sometimes until they bled. And no one dared cry for mercy.

Given the ethos with which the slaves grew up, most believed theirs was an inferior race, but John's father was vitriolic in his opinions about their master, and white folks in general. He was, however, wise enough to know that the best way to avoid the cutting sting of the whip was to be submissive and obedient. He hated being that person, but he was a practical man and saw it as little more than a way to survive. Otherwise, he possessed considerable integrity and dignity, and his role as a decent, responsible father, combined with the respect he received from the other slaves, allowed him to maintain those qualities, as well as his manhood. He found solace in a deep and abiding faith that freedom from bondage was inevitable and would come in his lifetime. He repeatedly advised John never to run away, even when stories began circulating about Negro insurrections and the possibility that the northern and southern states would soon be at war with each other. "You'll probably only get yourself shot," his father insisted, "when the only thing worth dyin' for is defendin' your mother or sisters."

As it turned out, that almost happened during John's fifteenth summer. It was a humid Sunday afternoon and he and his father were at the creek, fishing. He had just pulled his third catfish from the murky water when Thaddeus, his youngest brother, came running up, breathing hard.

"Come on, quick!" the youngster cried. "It's Nettie! She in some trouble!"

"What kind of trouble, boy?" his father demanded.

"Master Chambers gone and hurt her bad!"

John thrust the string of fish into Thaddeus's hands and he and his father rushed to their ramshackle cabin at the end of the short row of slaves' quarters. Reaching it first, John burst through the door to find his mother and siblings gathered around twelve-year-old Nettie, trying to console her. Tears smeared her pretty face, her right cheekbone was swelling, and the eye above was red. When she saw her father enter behind John, she blurted between gulps of air, "Master . . . done . . . a thing to me . . . an' hurt me bad! An' . . . he boxed me . . . when I tried to get away!"

Rarely quick to anger, John felt the heat of it rise from his gut and flare across his chest. He was at the cabin door in two strides and then outside, running along the tree-lined path to the main house, heedless of his parents' calls to come back. Through his rage, he saw Chambers stepping down from the veranda stairs onto the pathway. When the planter saw John charging toward him, he uncoiled his whip and let it fly. The tip hit John on his right shoulder and bit into his cheek, but he never felt it. Reaching Chambers, he shook his fist in the man's face and cried, "You ain't no better than a snake!" It was the worst name he could think of; he hated the slithery devils. "You lay your hands on my baby sister again and I'll kill you!"

Chambers snarled, his breath a blast of sour mash whisky. "You insolent n.i.g.g.e.r! You do not speak to a white man like that, let alone your master!" He brought the whip handle up and struck John in the face. Without thinking, John lashed out with his fist and caught Chambers square in the eye, knocking him to the ground. The planter lay there dazed, as much from shock that a slave had struck him as from the blow itself.

John shook his fist again. "You been warned! She's only a child an' I'll kill you!"

He turned and strode back to the slaves' quarters, trembling from anger and from the horror of what he had said and done. Slaves didn't strike their masters and get away with it. Chambers might not shoot him, because good workers were hard to replace and John was one of the best, but at the very least, he would be in for a severe whipping.

Back in the cabin, John's kinfolk were frightened, but he detected a glimmer of pride in his father's eyes. "You went too quickly, boy," he said, his voice trembling. "It shoulda bin me gone and put that man down in h.e.l.l where he belong!"

"It was right for me to go, Pappy." Their roles temporarily reversed, the son tried to ease the pain of failure the father felt. "You might notta come back. At least I got a chance."

A half hour raced by and Chambers still had not shown himself. The Wares did not know what to make of it. Surely he was not going to let the matter slide by without doing anything about it. That was inconceivable. A few minutes later, James, John's eldest brother, who was stationed at the window, said, his voice quavering with alarm, "Here he come!"

John looked out and saw the reason for the delay. Chambers had taken time to change his clothes and clean up, presumably, John guessed, because he did not want his slaves to see him in a dishevelled state. But he was sporting a blackening eye that he couldn't conceal, and it was obvious he hadn't come to parley: he had a pair of holstered pistols strapped around his hips and he was carrying his whip. He stopped in front of the cabin and spoke in a loud, clear voice so that all of the slaves could hear him, his plantation English accent so distinct and recognizable that even a blind slave who had never heard him before would have known that an owner stood outside.

"John Ware will come out of his cabin and face his punishment! He has one minute. Every extra minute that he makes me wait will mean one full day without food for every slave on this plantation."

Nettie began to cry, as did her mother and younger sister, Millie. The three huddled together for comfort. John's father and brothers were anxious and fidgety. Together they could have gone out and overwhelmed Chambers; after all, he was a single man against many. But it wasn't only Chambers they'd be up against; it was a powerful, widespread system that would run them to ground and lynch them, if it didn't shoot them or beat them to death first. His mother begged John not to go outside, but he knew he must. He could not make the rest of the slaves pay for his misdeeds, regardless of the punishment. His mother and sisters wailed in torment. Nettie ran to him and grabbed his shirt in an effort to stop him. "Let me go!" she cried. "Maybe if he got me, he leave you alone!"

His sister's bravery brought tears to his eyes. He gently removed her hand, knelt, and laid his palm on her cheek. "You ain't goin' nowhere, child. This ain't your affair no more." He took her in his arms and held her as if she were gossamer. "You wait right here for me. I'll be back soon. I promise." The words tumbled out with a bravado he did not feel.

He stood, gave her thin shoulder a squeeze, and walked out into the yard. Once the other slaves saw him, they came out of their quarters too, bowing to Chambers, a.s.sembling in family groups without a whisper among them, fear and apprehension etched on their faces.

Chambers transferred his whip to his left hand and drew a pistol with his right. He aimed it at John's chest. "You will remove your clothing and go directly to the whipping tree. I will not repeat myself. I will shoot you instead."

John would never forget that voice, as cold as the creek in winter. To ignore its command would have meant certain death. In a strange way he felt relieved-he was only going to be whipped and not executed. He undressed, frightened and embarra.s.sed at the same time, trying to still his trembling body. But he held his head high in defiance and walked to the sycamore with as much dignity and grace as he could muster. Chambers instructed another slave to tie John's wrists together around the bole. Not until John was securely bound did the planter holster his pistol. Before administering the beating he cracked his whip in the air, and many of the slaves recoiled at the sound, particularly those who had felt its awful bite on their backs. He set to work with a fury they had never seen before. John heard his mother's and sisters' high keening, which tore into his soul as much as the whip tore into his flesh. He kept repeating in his mind, "Oh, Mama and baby sisters, don't you be weepin' for me now! Don't you be weepin'!" and soon he was no longer certain whether the words were contained in his mind or if he was crying them aloud. He fought to stay conscious through the whipping, so that he could walk away from it strong and defiant, but the excruciating pain became more than he could bear and he blacked out.

That had been several years ago. Sometimes it seemed like a bad dream, but the ugly scars across his back and rump testified to its reality. (And often they itched terribly.) The days immediately following the whipping were the hardest John had ever endured, Nettie and his mother comforting him in the evenings after work by rubbing a soothing balm into his wounds. Yet he felt a modest victory, because Chambers had never gone near Nettie again.

Not long after the incident, the rumours of war became reality, and that was accompanied by new rumours of the abolition of slavery. When the war ended and abolition became law, John did not understand how life could still be so difficult. Despite his inability to read or write, he understood the writing on the wall. It spoke to him with glaring clarity: South Carolina was no place for a coloured man. To make matters worse, most of the state, including the area around Georgetown, fell into an economic slump. The rice crops, which supplied most of the country, failed because there were no slaves to work the plantations, and many planters, so accustomed to keeping their tidy profits to themselves, were unwilling to negotiate wages with freedmen. Even if they had, they would have been short of workers because the labour of women and children was no longer available to them. And more than ten thousand black men had gone north with General William Tec.u.mseh Sherman when he and his Union army had marched through South Carolina on their way home from their destructive tramp through Georgia.

On an immediate level, the war and Reconstruction had done what John's former slave master had not-split up the Ware family. Four of his brothers had joined Sherman and stayed in the North after the war, and his three remaining brothers, believing that there was a greater tolerance for coloured folk there, had later joined them. But John wasn't interested and stayed behind with his two sisters and their parents. Nettie and Millie were live-in domestic servants in Georgetown, and John worked as a blacksmith for a thoughtful white Republican named James Ball. Together, the three siblings supported their parents, with whom John lived in a small wood-frame house at the edge of town, where other coloureds had gathered to form a community. But two years had pa.s.sed since the Confederacy surrendered, and even a fool could see that the Southern Democrats, with their racist policies and white supremacy beliefs, were going to control the region. John's position was that they could control whatever they wanted but it wasn't going to include him.

Hope for a decent future lay in some place other than South Carolina, or anywhere in the Lower South for that matter. Therefore, it was time to go, to leave behind this land of cruel deeds committed by heartless, single-minded people. He would walk west into Texas; he would go as far as it took to put the last plantation behind him, until he found the ranches with horses and cattle that he had heard so much about. The stories excited him, because he had always loved horses. His former master had kept a pair in a small stable, and John had enjoyed cleaning out their stalls and caring for them. He had a natural affinity for the animals, but then most white folks had always considered him and his kind a related species.

His parents did not want him to go west. Instead, they implored him to go north, to find a wife and raise a family among his own kind. It was safer, they insisted. Heading west meant running a gauntlet of the Ku Klux Klan several hundred miles long, and only G.o.d knew what he would find in Texas.

"Near as I could learn," said his father sagely, "coloured folk are as scarce as trees out that way. Mostly white folks an' Indians. How're you s'posed to find a wife in that bunch?"

John shrugged, knowing he would never be able to offer any responses that would satisfy his father. "Settlin' down ain't somethin' on my mind just yet. And far as I know, there ain't no ranches up north."

John told James Ball that he was leaving and that he would never forget the kindness shown him. "Ah, it weren't so much kindness as it was respect, John," Ball said. "If a man don't hold respect for all G.o.d's creatures, what good is he on this earth? Anyway, I'm truly sorrowed to see you go-you been a mighty fine hire and any man out west would be doin' himself a great favour by takin' you on."

At the end of the day, John collected his pay, a small bonus that Ball called "travelling money," and a note of reference. He visited Crowley's store on Front Street, a place he had avoided because it always reminded him of what he did not have and could not afford to get. He purchased a rain tarp, a blanket, a tin pot to boil water in, a cup, a good clasp knife, and a flint to light fires. At home, he gave half of the remaining money to his parents and then he visited his sisters to say goodbye. Nettie sniffled her way through the parting and hugged John as if she did not ever want him to go. They had formed a special bond after Chambers had raped her and John had risked his life for her. But the incident had turned her world darker, and she had never been the same. In the deeper shadows at the edge of her mind lurked men in the guise of their former master, and it instilled in her an unshakable fear. Unlike Millie, her younger sister, she never spoke of the possibility of marriage. John did not like leaving her and boasted that he would own a ranch one day and would send for her. Perhaps it was a hollow boast, but he could think of nothing better to say and he wanted to leave her with good feelings.

That night sleep eluded him. After breakfast the following morning, he wrapped a single change of clothing in his bedroll, along with a package of biscuits his mother had baked, tied a rope to each end, and slung it behind him with the rope slanting across his chest. He kissed his tearful mother and doubtful father goodbye, stepped out onto the road in the still, post-dawn air, and put his back to the rising sun. He was twenty-two years old. Spread out before him was a world he knew very little about.

John remained on the road in front of the plantation as the clip-clop of horse hooves coming up the oak-edged driveway grew louder. John's heart rate accelerated as Sebastian Chambers, mounted on a grey mare, rode out onto the road and turned toward him, apparently on his way to Georgetown. John had seen his former master around the village a couple of times but had always avoided any encounters, uncertain of what he'd do if their paths crossed. But it is curious how fate sometimes plays its hand in a man's life, how stepping out in new directions can sometimes take him to places he never imagined he'd go. Now, with no one else in sight, John saw an irresistible opportunity.

Chambers appeared to be paying John scant attention as the gap between them closed, but the planter was intentionally directing his horse toward John so that he would have to step out of the way. John kept his head down to hide his eyes from Chambers, letting the horse get close to him. As it brushed by, he reached up and yanked the planter from the saddle. Startled, the horse whinnied and galloped several yards down the road, while John dragged his sputtering bundle into a grove of pine trees and threw him to the ground. Chambers got to his knees and held up his arms, cowering.

"Don't kill me," he pleaded. "I have no money!"

John sneered. "I don't want your money! Do you remember me?"

Chambers shook his head. He looked awful and it was difficult to believe he was the same man who, without a st.i.tch of compa.s.sion, had dictated the terms of John's life for so many years. But along with fear, John could see recognition dawning in his captive's bloodshot eyes. He lifted his shirt, half-turned, and displayed his scars.

"You did this to me when I was a boy. And you hurt my baby sister so bad she ain't never been right. Maybe you disremember but I don't. It's been stuck like a knife in me every day."

Without a gun and a whip to fall back on, Chambers's belligerence and arrogance had vanished. He whined, "I could have you arrested for this!"

"Well, you better make sure they hang me quick 'cause I'll find you and beat you until you're blacker than me. Truth of the matter is, I could do that right now and it'd be no more than a snake like you deserves."

Chambers remained kneeling in the pine straw, his lips quivering, perhaps imagining all sorts of horrid punishments, but said nothing. He looked terrified, a look that John had seen on many a slave's face before Chambers took his whip to them. For the first time in his short life, he understood what real power over another human being felt like. It filled every nook and cranny of his body and he knew that he could do anything he wanted to this man. He could beat him to a pulp or he could kill him and no one would ever be the wiser. Yet he sensed the danger in carrying it too far, of having to live with the consequences. He reached down, grabbed the planter by his coat lapels, and hauled him to his feet. Chambers seemed much shorter than John remembered, and twice as contemptible. His face was flushed red and his breath reeked of whisky. He covered his face with his arms, fearing a punch. John drew him close. "Look at me!" he demanded.

Chambers moved his arms and John glared into his eyes. "You're lookin' into the face of your master, boy," he hissed. "You belong to me now and it'll mean your life to forget it! I see anybody on my tail and I'll be back for you, and there'll be no good place for you to hide. You clear on that?"

He held Chambers's eyes. The man nodded that he understood.

"Speak to me, boy! I want to hear you say it loud!"

"I understand, sir," Chambers whimpered, his eyes glistening with tears.

John cast him aside like a corn husk used for privy paper. The planter staggered, smacked into a tree, and tumbled to the ground. He rose up on one elbow, breathing hard, sobbing now. He would not look at his captor. Satisfied, John left him there, returned to the road, and continued on his way. He knew that Nettie, gentle soul that she was, would be proud of how he handled himself. He also knew that while it would be better to forget Chambers and everything connected to him, it probably wouldn't be happening any time soon. Maybe not until John had grown so old that his memory failed him completely.

TWO.

I'm just pa.s.sin' through.

As John made his way through South Carolina, asking for directions when he needed to, he did odd jobs for food, mostly for coloured folk but once for a sympathetic white family. All along the way, he found other black men in transit, most still looking for displaced members of their families-wives and children, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles-to give true meaning to their freedom. Three weeks later, he reached the Savannah River, the murky waterway separating his home state from Georgia. An amiable freedman who lived off the river's bounty and a vegetable garden rowed him to the far side. John offered to pay him but the man refused, saying, "I got a boat, a roof over my head, I eat when I want and I work when I want, and I got plenty of both. Don't need your money."

Georgia had not yet recovered from the war. The destruction left in the wake of Sherman's march to the sea was still evident as John pa.s.sed burned-out plantations and desperate coloured folk (who even in their crisis shared with him what little food they had). And of all the white folk he would meet over the course of his journey, it was the Georgians who acted the most defeated, the most bewildered by the Confederacy's loss and the added insult-to-injury presence of Federal soldiers still occupying the large towns. Some were angry, too, and a dark-skinned man had to use great care not to step on any toes. As an old, grey-haired black man put it, "We mighta got emanc.i.p.ated on paper, but we still Jim Crow to them, and that ain't no better than a draft mule. Last week a coloured boy over to Newman town was burnt at a stake. Talk is some white folks carted off bones for souvenirs once the flesh was gone. The people who done the burnin' musta been ghosts 'cause when the Federals got there, n.o.body'd seen nothin'."

Alabama was as bad if not worse. After John crossed the Chattahoochee River, a freedman warned him to keep alert because the Klan was everywhere. Sometimes they seemed to materialize out of thin air and their favourite tree decoration was Jim Crow; indeed, they had lynched a black man the previous week for looking at a white man's wife the wrong way. "You be okay in the big towns where there's Federals; otherwise you'd best be careful. You see a pack of white men on the road, you prob'ly seein' the makin's of a lynchin' party."

John heeded the man's advice and gave small towns a wide berth; in isolated areas, he hid in copses when he saw two or more whites together, unless they were a family. He felt safer in Montgomery town because of the large contingent of Federal soldiers, but he did not linger. The Alabama leg of his journey was often hunger-filled. He could not find much work and spent a considerable amount of time searching in the woods for food, eating catsear leaves and greenbrier buds, plants he and his fellow slaves had foraged on the plantation. He found blackberries, past their season and desiccated, but made a kind of soup from them. Once, he got lucky and came upon a creek in which the water level had dropped, leaving ponds here and there along the edges. He followed it away from the road for a hundred yards or so, until he came to a pond that still had a small stream running into it and another running out. Two good-sized catfish were visible in the shallow water, so he gathered stones and built dams at each end, making escape impossible. He used his knife to fashion a spear from a willow bush branch and waded into the water. He stood stock-still. When the first fish swam by, he stabbed at it and missed. After several failed attempts, he realized that the fish was not where it appeared to be, that the water was somehow distorting its position, so he made the necessary adjustment. He speared one and then the other, grabbing them behind the gills and flinging them onto the bank. He whetted his knife on a stone, gutted his catch, and made a fire. He boiled water from the pond and picked leaves from a sa.s.safras tree to brew tea. The fish soon sizzled over the fire, and there was plenty left over to take with him.

Sometimes there was nothing better than losing himself in thought as he walked along, as it was a good way to put miles at his back without noticing them too much. However, it could prove to be a dangerous pastime in Alabama, so he kept an alert eye on both the road ahead and the road behind, even though it made the state seem much broader than its two hundred miles. Near the outskirts of Demopolis, an industrial town about thirty miles from the Mississippi border, he pa.s.sed a log house set well back from the road in a spa.r.s.e grove of pine trees. The entire front yard was a vegetable garden, split up the middle by a path. Two black women were working in the garden, one bent over pulling at something, perhaps weeds, the other using a hoe. It seemed to him a perfect place to obtain some food for his labour. He walked up the path and when the women saw him coming, they stopped working, their stares following him. Both were tall and thin with grey streaks in their hair, and the one holding the hoe looked older.

"Good afternoon, ladies," he said, doffing his hat. "It's a fine day for gardenin', ain't it? I'm just pa.s.sin' through, bound for Texas, and since I don't see no menfolk around, wondered if I could trade some hard work for a meal. I'm John Ware, recent from South Carolina."

Both women appraised him. The older one spoke. "Well, John Ware from South Carolina, I can tell by your manners that your mama raised you right, and you surely look like you be capable of handlin' a man's work. I be 'Liz'beth Adams and this be my sister, Emma, but you can call her Em and me Liza. Or ma'am, if that sets better with you. There's a heap of small logs in back in need of sawin' and splittin' and pilin', and if you can see fit to do that for us, why we'll see fit to set one more place at the supper table."

Liza led John around to the rear of the house where there was a small henhouse with some chickens scratching nearby, an empty stable meant for one, perhaps two animals, and a pile of logs cut into six- to eight-foot lengths.

"Mr. Avery, from down the road a piece, sawed these up for us and said he'd be back to buck 'em and split 'em into firewood, but the poor man's been ailin' lately. It's your job now if you be up to it."