Washington and Caesar

Tom was sitting on a stump, whittling with his long razor knife. He looked up and laughed bitterly.

“She’ll be long gone wi’ them slavers, you ninny. How’d a boy like you grow up so simple, Virgil? She was jus’ honey to catch flies.”

“How bad was the othuh, the other, one hurt, Virgil?”

“Jus’ roughed up, I think. I kicked him pretty ha’d in the weddin’ tackle.”

“So they won’ be back after us right away?”

“No. No, Caesar. We safe fo’ a whiles.”

“Time to move again, though. We should go north. We haven’t been north in a long time. If they send militia, they look fo’ us down here, I think. An’ we need to hit a farm.”

Long Tom looked at the pistol in his lap. He hadn’t fired a shot at the slave-takers, and he was in a mood.

“We should hit that farm that this fool an’ the boy keep goin’ to.” He waved his hand. “They gave them slave-takers a home. Let’s burn ’em out and take what we want.”

Virgil stirred. “They got black folks, and them slaves has helped us and helped us. We burn that farm an’ who’s gonna pay for it? Them black folks. I say no. I say we steal something, or just ax for it from the ol’ woman. But burn ’em out ain’t fair.”

“He got happy memories o’ that place,” sneered Tom. The others murmured assent. They wanted blood.

Caesar rolled off his fern pallet and looked around, his eyes still bloodshot.

“We will go to the farm. We will not burn it!” He looked around at the survivors. “If we burn it and kill the farmers, we will jus’ draw the militia after us. Let’s jus’ take what we need an’ git. We might make it free that way. Tom, you shut it. You jus’ jealous that he got somethin’ you didn’. Now everyone jus’ go sleep. We’ll do it tomorrow.”

The survivors of the band grumbled, but they went. And Caesar, still miserable over the losses, puzzled to figure out why he was still in charge.

They moved well, the remaining men almost silent on the trail and then moving up to the back of the pole barn. There were no horses in the little paddock, and the only smoke came from the slave cabin. The white man wasn’t pulling stumps, either.

Jim led the way to the back of the barn and then darted across the yard to the slaves’ cabin, where he knocked quietly. Then he disappeared inside. He was gone long enough for Tom and Virgil to check their priming, for Caesar to start to sweat from the exertion. He was out of condition and needed to eat better. He was still thin. The size of his forearms startled and disgusted him every time he looked down—like sticks. The weight of the fowler on his arms was enough to make him want to lie down.

The door opened and an old black man emerged, clearly BaKongo, with Jim following behind and hopping along with excitement. The old man came up the edge of the barn and stopped, peering into the bush.

“No one heah but us, boys,” he called, and Caesar moved carefully into the open, well covered, he hoped, by the two pistols.

“You do look a sight, mistuh,” said the old man when he saw Caesar’s scarecrow figure draped in rags. “You boys been livin’ hahd!”

“That we have, old man.” He was old, too, with most of his head white; yet he still glowed with vitality like a village elder. Caesar was respectful of his age and knew that Tom and Virgil would be the same.

“Since the Man and Missus ran off, we got bacon.” The old man smiled. “Come in an’ have some.”

A regiment of slave-takers couldn’t have stopped the rush for the cabin.

“That scatterbrained gal left with those men,” the old woman said while she laid another few slices of bacon on her griddle. Then she busied herself pouring the fat into a little betty lamp on the hearth.

“Ain’t had this much fat since I can’ remember when.” She sounded almost smug.

“What abou’ Sally, ma’am?”

“Don’ you ma’am me, you cock turkey! She gone off with they louts wha’ own her, and good riddance, though I mus’ say she did work she didn’ have to. They kep’ her for her coney an’ nothin’ else, an’ that’s hard on any gal, so I shouldn’ talk mean. But I ain’t sorry to see her gone.” She looked a dagger at her man. He laughed as if it were a compliment and went back to entertaining young Jim. Long Tom was fast asleep, full of corn meal cakes and bacon, and Caesar had a hard time staying awake himself, although it was clear that Virgil still wanted to know where his Sally had gone.

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