In the Shadow of the Hanging Tree Read online

  “My, look at that back,” he said as he tied Henry’s hands. “You ain’t been whipped yet—at least not by someone who cares about what they’re doing. Well I’m gonna whip you now, so I don’t have to whip you later. That’s so if down the road you get to thinking about being a lazy nigger, or stealing from Mister Abbott, or running off somewhere, you think about this whippin’ and imagine it being tenfold. That’s fifty lashes for you, boy. You think about that.”

  Townley walked off and the next thing Henry heard was a loud crack, and simultaneously his back exploded into blue fire. He glanced over at John, who was staring at him intently, as if willing him not to cry out. Henry gritted his teeth together and closed his eyes: Craack! the lash hit him again, tears welled up in his eyes and his vision blurred. He could feel blood running down his back and down the cleft of his buttocks. Craack! Henry screamed, his knees came unhinged. Craack! Townley missed his mark and the whip spun around Henry’s face, tearing a deep gash into his left cheek. Now, hanging limply from his bindings, he stared blankly at a brilliant late summer sky scattered with big puffy clouds resembling ripe cotton. He heard the crack again but it was far away. The sky went gray, then black.

  Henry came around with his face in hay. He was on his stomach. He tried to roll over but two hands pressed firmly on his shoulders.

  “You just lie still now,” the female voice spoke softly. “We have to take care of these so as you don’t get the rot in them.”

  Something cool touched his back and it stung fiercely. Henry inhaled sharply.

  “There now. You can sit up, I have to look at your face.”

  Henry slid his hand up to his face and touched it gingerly. His fingers came away bloody. He pushed himself up, wincing at the pain in his back, and was looking at the girl who’d brought the beer and eggs to the fat man. John Brown was sitting behind her, shirtless, on a milking stool. He was looking at Henry gravely. Henry averted his eyes.

  “There’s no shame. You did fine. You let that girl get you fixed up. The master’s gonna ‘spect a whole day’s work out of you tomorrow an’ this here’s a whippin’ master.”

  “Am I gonna get whipped every day?” Henry asked, his hand reflexively darting to his face with the fresh flare of pain from speaking.

  “Not so long as you work hard an’ do what you’re told. Now be quiet an’ let her finish.”

  “I’m Eliza,” the girl said, kneeling in front of him and gently daubing a damp cloth on the cut on his cheek. She rinsed the cloth several times in a small clay bowl full of water. She was wearing a plain white housedress and had a white scarf on her head that was patterned in tiny blue flowers. Henry thought she was beautiful.

  “This is going to hurt some,” she said as she scooped some foul smelling mixture out of a second bowl and began applying it to the cut. It looked like mud to Henry.

  When she was finished she smiled at him and said: “I don’t have enough cloth for a proper poultice, but it should be fine if you keep your fingers out of it.”

  She picked up the two clay bowls and stood. “The missus says I can bring you all some supper once I’m finished here. I’ll tend to the other one now.”

  Eliza walked over to John Brown and set the clay bowl with the poultice mixture in it next to him. “I’ll just fetch some clean water, then I’ll tend to your back.”

  “Thank you, missy.” John said.

  Eliza hurried out of the barn.

  “That girl was born a house-nigger. She talk almost jes like one of the white folks.”

  “I like her,” Henry said.

  “I like her too. But you be careful how much you be trustin’ house-niggers. Sometimes they ain’t the same as we are.”

  “All right,” Henry said dubiously.

  A few moments later Eliza returned with the fresh water and knelt behind John.

  “Don’t you worry over it too much. My back’s so scarred up it’s about as tough as a bull’s hide anyhow.”

  “It don’t look as bad as his does,” she agreed.

  “His name’s Henry.”

  Eliza looked over John’s shoulder at Henry and smiled. “Henry’s a good name.”

  About an hour later Eliza returned to the barn with several ears of hot corn and some biscuits on a wood plank.

  “This is about the last of the corn,” she said. “It’s tough but sweet.”

  4

  Six years later Frederick Abbott’s plantation house burned down. Master Abbott, along with his wife, his daughter, and two of his house slaves died in the blaze. Eliza and two other women who worked in the big house managed to escape.

  Eliza ran to the tiny but neat looking house that Henry and John Brown had built from scrap wood at about an hour after midnight. Frederick Abbott had allowed Henry and John to build themselves the place with cut-offs and discards from the drying shed and a secondary tack-barn they’d built. Since they were carpenters, they were treated slightly better than field slaves, though not nearly as good as house slaves.

  The plantation was in chaos, and Henry and John were already running out of the house when Eliza arrived.

  “Master Townley wants everyone to help with the bucket line,” Eliza said breathlessly.

  John looked up at the big house, which was fully engulfed in flames. It was at least three hundred yards away but it lit Henry and John’s little porch like sunset.

  “Ain’t no bucket line going to save that place. Did the family get out?”

  Eliza shook her head. “Mathilda and Old George neither.” She began to weep and Henry took her hand.

  “Good,” John said bitterly, then added: “Course not Mathilda and Old George—that’s a sad shame—but I don’t feel a lick of sorrow for Master Abbott nor none of his folk. That man’s already in hell, if there is such a place. And for his sake I’m hopin’ there is. Now I’m quittin’ this place. You two comin’ with me?”

  “Where are you going to go, John?” Eliza asked nervously.

  Henry started to retort, “If’n they catch you—”

  “Then they can goddamn kill me,” John said angrily. “There ain’t nothing left for them to take but my life, an’ that’s all they’re gettin’ if they catch me. An’ I tell you I ain’t givin’ that up without a fight. Now you’re a long sight from that wet-nosed boy they shackled me with six years back but you’re still a young man an’ you ain’t broke yet. But you will be. You’ll be a broken down ol’ nigger jes like me, an’ Eliza’ll jes be a sad recollection that you weep over on cold nights when you think no one can hear.

  “Now you look at that house. They’s all gone. What do you think the chances are that you two stay together through this? By tomorrow one of you could be on your way to Arkansas and the other a mile up the road from this very spot. I heard we can live as free men—and women—down in Mexico. That’s where I’m going and you both should come with me.”

  Just then Norman Smith, one of the field foremen, came running by shouting, “C’mon, get a move on, now! We got a fire!”

  John grabbed Henry by the wrist and nodded his head in the opposite direction of the burning house. Henry looked at Eliza. She shook her head slowly back and forth. “Henry, I can’t…I’m afraid.”

  John tightened his grip and looked at Henry intently. “It has to be now,” he said urgently.

  “I have to stay with Eliza,” Henry said.

  “It’s been good knowing you, then. Both of you…wait a minute.” John ran back into the little house and was back out in seconds.

  He had a grain sack (much like the one Henry carried three years later) and he fished around at the bottom of it and pulled out a small, folded scrap of leather. “It’s a flint and steel. Been meaning to give it to you for some time, jes kept slippin’ my mind. You take care now.”

  John Brown ran into the Missouri night.

  Three

  1

  There was about two hours of daylight left, and Eliza was already sitting up with her back against the downed tree. Sh
e was thinking about how good some rabbit would taste and hoped Henry’s snares worked as well as they usually did. She rubbed the top of his head, massaging his skull through his closely cropped hair. He opened one eye and looked up at her.

  “I’d say good morning but it’s evening,” she said, then leaned down and kissed him. “Now are you going to go see whether we’re eating salted pork again or rabbit or squirrel?”

  “On my way, missus,” Henry joked. He reached up and patted her belly then sat up. “I know you must be real hungry.” You just leave that pork wrapped up. My snares never miss…leastways back ’round Lawson’s Bend they didn’t.”

  Henry was gone less than ten minutes when Eliza heard breaking branches and voices coming from behind her. Dropping to her hands and knees she raised her head and peered over the fallen tree. She could see men moving through the woods—four or five—and they were coming straight for her.

  Seized by panic, Eliza scrambled to her feet and began running through the brush. She struck off in the general direction she’d watched Henry go but was soon only following the path of least resistance and running blindly away from danger like a frightened animal. The inevitable happened, and she tripped over a hidden branch and went down, tearing her dress from hip to hem on more woods detritus. She lay there for a moment, breathing heavily and gingerly running her fingers over the nearly foot long scrape down her right thigh. She heard movement from her left and froze, staring into the deepening twilight. Snatches of a familiar tune being whistled low came to her and she leaped up and ran toward the sound.

  Henry looked up, startled by the sound of something moving fast. He caught movement in the shadows nearly dead in front of him and raised his hands reflexively—dropping the two rabbits he’d been carrying in the process—just as Eliza collided with him.

  “Henry…oh, Henry,” Eliza panted, with a frightened whisper-shout. She threw her arms around him and clung to him while twisting her head around to look back the way she’d come. “There’s men, we have to run—”

  Henry didn’t wait for further explanation, he just reached around his back, grabbed Eliza’s hand and headed off in the opposite direction of their makeshift camp. Fighting the urge to run, Henry steered them back a few yards to the animal path he’d followed to set his snares.

  Once there he dropped her hand; the path was too narrow for them to move side by side. “C’mon, stay close and be as quiet as you can,” Henry said before setting off at a jog.

  They’d only moved a dozen or so steps when two men appeared from behind a thick stand of trees and stepped onto the path.

  “What are you doing out here, niggers?” One of the men asked while the other leveled a musket at Henry.

  “I’m not going to ask you a second time…James, shoot the woman.”

  “Pa?” The man holding the musket, who was obviously younger than Henry’s twenty years, sounded unsure.

  “I said—”

  “We’re free!” Henry blurted. “We was given our freedom two days ago by Master Samuel Cromwell down by Lawson’s Bend. We have our free papers.”

  “That so?” The man walked a few steps closer, rubbing his salt and pepper beard thoughtfully. Henry backed up until he felt Eliza then stood in front of her protectively. “You keep still, nigger,” the man said, leveling a finger at Henry. “Now, show me these papers.”

  “Yessir. They’re right back there a ways.”

  “Well, let’s go and see ‘em, before it gets too dark to see.” The man put his fingers in his mouth and whistled twice. It was a melodic heehoo heehoo like a birdsong.

  He cocked his head as if listening, then whistled again. Seeming satisfied he looked back at Henry.“Go on, get moving.” Then: “My boy here’s going to shoot you if you try to run.”

  Henry turned and gave Eliza a nod, pointing in the direction of their makeshift camp. He walked behind her, keeping himself between her and the men.

  About a third of the way back to the deadfall, four more armed men came tramping through the brush and joined the other two. None of them appeared to be older than seventeen.

  “More runaways, Emmet?” one of them asked, falling in step with the older man.

  “Looks that way.”

  “What’re you going to do with ‘em?”

  “Just get the horses, Bob,” the man replied flatly, without taking his eyes off of Henry’s back.

  A minute later they were at the deadfall. Henry retrieved the papers from his grain sack and handed them to the man named Emmet.

  “I can’t read these,” he said, indifferently stuffing the papers in his coat. “We’ll go up the road to our camp where I can have some light. If you’re telling the truth, you can be on your way.

  Henry looked around apprehensively at the men, then at Eliza. “Let’s get our things.”

  “You can leave your things here. They’ll be waiting for you when you get back. Let’s go.”

  Emmet led them through the brush. There was a road less than two hundred feet from the deadfall, and Henry felt the fool for missing it the previous night. Might as well camped right in the open, he thought grimly. The one named Bob was waiting for them with a string of horses a short distance up from where Henry, Eliza and the others exited from the trees.

  “Tie their hands,” Emmet said when they reached the horses.

  Eliza began to sob. “Henry—”

  “And shut that bitch up, unless you want me to,” he added, mounting a horse.

  “Gimme your hands, boy,” Bob said, grabbing Henry and spinning him around so his back was turned. Another yanked Eliza toward one of the horses where he removed a length of rope from a saddlebag. Eliza let out a cry as he pulled her arms behind her back and began roughly tying her wrists. Henry shook free and started toward Eliza but was stopped short when James, the one holding the musket, stepped forward and clubbed him in the side of the head with it. Henry went to his knees. Bob came up behind him, cursing under his breath, and planted a boot in the middle of his back, pushing Henry down face first in the road. James spun the musket back around and put the business end to Henry’s head.

  “You move again, I’ll put a ball in your skull.” he said, tapping the barrel of the musket on Henry’s head.

  Bob sat on Henry’s legs and tied his hands tightly, then he yanked Henry to his feet by the rope. Henry tottered and almost fell but Bob grabbed him under the arm and steadied him. “That knock some sense into your dumb runaway skull? Well, I reckon not.”

  They’d marched Henry and Eliza—who were tied together by a short rope and then tethered to Bob’s horse by another, longer leader—about two miles when Emmet stopped the group just short of a sharp bend in the road. He whistled twice; the same melodic sound as before. This time Henry heard the response coming from some distance away. It was a similar whistle to Emmet’s only the notes were reversed. After a moment they continued on.

  Some hundred yards or so past the bend they came upon a small group of armed men sitting in the back of a horseless wagon. The wagon was blocking all but a narrow strip of the road—just enough to allow horses to pass single file. Emmet cued his horse over to the wagon and exchanged words with the men there as they passed. Henry could see campfires and lamplight up ahead.

  The camp was set up in the middle of the road. There were several wagons and dozens of horses and mules. Campfires burned here and there. Henry’s stomach rumbled from the smell of cooking meat and beans, despite his fear. He guessed there were around forty men, most as young or younger than he was. He looked back at Eliza; the only thing in the world he’d ever cared about.

  Her face was a mask of despair. Seeing the hopelessness there made him feel as if his heart was being ripped out. He tried to give her a reassuring smile but knew it missed the mark. She could always tell exactly what he was thinking.

  Emmet stopped just inside the camp and a boy of about ten came running up. “I’ll take your horse, Mister Dawson,” he said eagerly.

  Emmet Dawson di
smounted and handed over the reins. “Mind you rub her down, and get someone to help you with the saddle.” He gave the boy’s hair a quick ruffle then turned and walked past the spot where Bob was standing, holding the reins of his own horse in one hand and the rope leader tied to Henry and Eliza in the other. He was looking at Emmet expectantly. Emmet ignored him and walked up to Henry and Eliza.

  “What is your name?”

  “Henry, sir, and this is Eliz—”

  “I didn’t ask you her name,” Emmet interrupted.

  “Yessir.”

  “Henry, did you see that boy?” He nodded his head in the direction the boy had taken his horse.

  “Yessir.”

  “That boy’s house was burned to the ground by bloodthirsty unionist jayhawkers two days ago along with every other house and farm between here and Osceola, including your…” He pulled the crumpled sheets of Henry and Eliza’s free papers from his coat and held them close to his face, squinting. “…Samuel Cromwell.” He held the papers out. “Can you read these?”

  Henry averted his eyes. “No, sir,” he lied.

  “No, of course you can’t. It’s not only near to impossible to teach a nigger to read but it’s also against the law—God’s and man’s.” He lowered the papers to his side. “These jayhawkers are burning and pillaging their way across our great state. They’re murdering innocent Missouri families in their sleep then setting niggers loose on the land like a pestilence. That boy’s an orphan. His father, his mother, and his little baby sister were inside the house when it was set ablaze. They were unable to escape. We found their niggers a few miles away,

  riding their horses and leading their pigs just like they had the right to. We are at war, Henry. We are at war to save our families and our way of life.”

  Emmet turned and looked at Bob. “Hang him with the others.”

  Eliza let out an anguished wail and dropped to her knees where she began screaming hysterically. Henry tried to kneel down with her but Bob yanked the rope tight and wrapped it on his saddle horn. This left Henry standing at an awkward lean as he tried not to drag Eliza.