“Hide me,” he says.

I feel a tingling fear just from him asking.

“Not long. Just a few days, till my leg heals.”

I mean to say no. I can’t risk all that for a stranger. But on his face I see the desperate determination I’ve been seeing on my own face these last weeks. Maple calls it being sour, but it’s long past sour. It’s being ripe.

“Come on,” I say.

I help him to his feet and lead him, leaning heavy on my arm, to my cabin. I know Bessie won’t be there. Master’s got her with him on his talking tour to show everybody the slave who asked “please don’t set me free.” Red won’t hardly look at her since it happened, even though she’s up there next to him on that buggy day after day. I told him she was just asking to be with her family, but he don’t care how it happened. He says if someone’s giving out freedom you got to grab it for all of us, and don’t let no one or nothing turn you round. He says there’s bigger things to think of than where you get stuck in the ground. Master’s touring just proves his point.

In my cabin, there’s Bessie’s table and chairs, her bed and my pallet, and a fireplace against the wall.

“Get under the bed,” I tell him.

It’s a poor hiding place, but it’s the only one in the room, unless I stick him up the chimney.

I go back out to the well where my buckets sit waiting on me and pump some water to clean my hands with. My heart is racing, thinking about what I’ve done, and I stop to just breathe, trying to steady myself. With Annie and Willa up cleaning out the Big House, nobody’s around who would have seen. Except maybe Maple if she took that moment to step outside.

I pick up the buckets and head to the kitchen house where Maple’s muttering to herself over a pot of stew. She’s moved the buckets I left on the fire to the side. I dip my finger in and find them lukewarm.

“You moved these buckets?”

“I don’t want your buckets in my way when I’m trying to—”

I cut her off. I’m spitting angry but my words come out calm. I say, “If you don’t let this water get hot, I will throw your stew on this floor.” I mean it too. Right at this second, I would fight her to the death over those buckets.

Maple pulls up shocked, but for once keeps her tongue.

I step in front of her and make her see me. “Or maybe I’ll just use the chili like Bessie,” I say. I know I got that look, that desperate determination, and she reads it right. I will do what I say. That and more.

She sucks her teeth and blows out her lips, but then she moves the buckets over to the fire.