The realization hits me like a cold slap. It’s followed hard on by revulsion and horror. According to the law, the child follows the condition of the mother. A slave owned by a master. I push down the panic rising up and grab Sarah close to me, wrapping myself around her. I will not let it happen.

“He’ll never own our baby,” I say, making another promise I’ve no earthly idea how to keep.

Holding my wife tucked up in my arms, with my child nestled inside of her, I know that America is a lie. Because where’s the liberty and the freedom and the rights and the justice, when the law says Matthew Johnson owns my child after already owning my wife? What kind of Constitution for the people allows a thing like that? A country can claim that wrong is right, but that’ll never erase the sin of it.

I’m taking my family out of Jubilee. My child will not be that man’s slave.

Chapter 56

Sarah

The water buckets slosh at my sides, wetting my skirt, as I carry them from the well pump out by the kitchen house back inside. When I pass through the carry-through and head up the stairs into the main house, I go slow and careful though my arms are tired. I can’t be spilling water on Master’s floor.

In Missus’s room, I pour the buckets into the bathtub that’s starting to fill up good. When I go back to the well, I think I see someone creeping behind the tree line. Straightaway I think it must be Henry. When I get my buckets full, I set them down and, looking round to make sure no one’s watching, I go down into the trees. I don’t see him. When I call, I don’t get an answer. Pushing deeper into the woods, I search through the shrubs, behind trees. When I’m ready to call myself good and crazy and turn back, I see a man crouched in a ditch, holding long, wide fern leaves over himself to keep from being seen. He’s wearing the slave rags of a field hand and his right foot and ankle are torn and bloody. His eyes lock on me, but then dart around everywhere like he’s looking to see who all I brought with me.

“Where’d you come from?” I ask.

He don’t answer, and I reckon I don’t need to know.

“You break that?” I ask, pointing at his ankle.

He shakes his head. “Dogs got me.”

I step in close to get a look at his leg. I can’t see the bite clear through all the blood. I rip a clinging vine off a nearby oak and strip the leaves and wrap it tight around the man’s leg above the bite. I work fast so I can get back before someone notices I’m gone.

“Thank you,” he says as I tie his leg up.

He shouldn’t walk on it for a day or two, but you can’t expect that from a man who’s running. “Good luck,” I say, standing. I turn to go, meaning to leave him in the ditch. I’ve barely taken a step when he calls to me.