“Keep your hands out of here,” I say. “I’m not doing all this work for you to fill your belly.”

“Why don’t you set that down and come take a walk with me?”

I shake my head. “Why don’t you leave me to my own self?”

“I want to talk to you. Alone.”

I know what he’s going to say and I’ve heard enough about how I need to stay away from the blacksmith. I keep shelling and he watches me do it.

When I get to the last ones, he says, “I need your help. Something important.”

The way he presses the words out makes me stop and really see him. His tensed-up shoulders and restless moving tell me what his too-big smile is trying to cover up. He’s in some kind of trouble.

I nod and he strikes off along the row of huts toward his cabin with me following.

He ducks into his doorway and closes the door behind me. His cabin’s almost the same size as Bessie’s from the outside, but inside, with him taking up all the air, it’s a lot smaller. There’s a chair and table pressing in on one side and a rough-carved pinewood bed pressing in on the other, and him and me standing between.

I wait for him to tell me what’s wrong, but he hems and haws so long I just ask.

“What happened?”

“You can’t tell nobody.”

“Who’m I gonna tell?”

“Swear you won’t.”

“I promise,” I say. “What’d you do?”

He pokes his head out the door to make sure no one’s around. Then he pulls me further in, right up against the back slat-wall. He huddles close and drops his voice and says, “I found someone.”

“What do you mean?”

“He came all the way from North Carolina. Left fourteen days ago.”

He means a runaway and I push from him. I don’t want to know about this.

“I need you to do something,” he says.

“You crazy?”

“He needs food and rest and he’ll be on his way. We just got to know when it’s safe.”

“Why you asking me? I can’t help him.”

“You sleep in the Big House. You’re the only one. You can tell us when Master and all the rest fall asleep. And if he gets up in the night.”

I shake my head.

“All we need is a light. In the window. To tell us to go, or warn us to stay.” He takes my hands, and I pull them away.

“I don’t wish him no harm, but I can’t help him. I’m not gonna get peeled open, or sold off, or strung up for some runaway.”

“Ain’t just some runaway.”

A pounding in my ears makes it hard to hear him. All I can think of is that time on Summerville Plantation when a man ran. They gathered up his wife and children and sister and anybody else who might’ve had a hand in it and, after they whipped them, they chained them together in the smoke house and lit a fire and smoked them. One of the children died before Master let them out. Three weeks later, slave catchers brought back a body so beat up his own wife didn’t know him.