Folktales and Legends of the Middle West by Edward McClelland

Author:Edward McClelland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Published: 2018-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

Grabbing the half-cooked chicken, Mattie ran toward a creek they had passed the night before, Henry following behind. The barking was growing louder. They jumped in and sat in the water up to their necks until the barking faded, but they were soon faced with new predators: a pair of water moccasins, writhing on the surface, began circling them. Henry waded to the bank, broke a branch off an overhanging tree, and beat it against the water until the splashing drove away the snakes. When both dangers were gone, they stuffed bits of the sodden chicken into their mouths, choking down the barely-edible meat before hiding themselves for the day.

Mattie and Henry could cook no more meat, and the crops were still too young to eat. The next night, when they stumbled upon a lumber camp, Henry had an idea. The couple concealed themselves in the woods, in a spot where they could observe the comings and goings of the workers. In the morning, an all-black crew arrived with a white overseer, armed and on horseback. After giving his crew their instructions for the day, the white man rode off. When he was confident the overseer would not return until the evening, Henry emerged from the woods and approached the crew. It was risky: there were steep rewards for the capture of escaped slaves, so it was always better not to count on the friendship of strangers. But his wife was hungry, so Henry pressed his luck.

“Sir,” Henry addressed the oldest workman, “my wife and I are travelers, and desperately hungry. We were hoping you could spare us some food.”

The logger could see that a week’s flight had already sharpened Henry’s features, pushing his brow and cheekbones against his skin. He gave Henry two strips of beef jerky.

“You go back into the woods where you come from,” the logger instructed. “No telling when the boss comes back. I seen the posters for you, and that’s as much as he makes in a year. But if you stay where you are, I’ll bring some more food tomorrow. I’ll leave it in that hollow stump over yonder, so you can come get it after dark.”

Henry thanked the man and returned to his hiding place to share the jerky with Mattie. They slept through that day, and then through another day. When the overseer had led away the loggers, and darkness had fallen, Henry looked inside the hollow stump. He found a burlap sack, containing a fugitive’s feast: enough jerky and corn meal to feed them for a week. Rationing themselves to two strips a day, and mixing the corn meal with water to make a soft sort of cake (they dared not repeat their mistake with the fire), Mattie and Henry passed the next two landmarks in Peg Leg Joe’s song: climbing the pass between the peaks of Woodall Mountain, they found the Tennessee River, and began following its course downstream. Clearly, though, it was going to take more than a week to reach the Ohio, and the boat that would carry them to freedom.

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