With Every Drop of Blood by James Lincoln Collier

Author:James Lincoln Collier [Collier, James Lincoln and Collier, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: AudioGO
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

We went along mighty slow for a couple more days. The Yankees didn’t know the country: a few times we made wrong turnings and had to backtrack for two or three hours. Things would happen, too. We had to take time to bury my dead fella, and we hardly got going when a wheel fell off a wagon and had to be fixed—it was always something like that.

As far as I was concerned, the slower the better, for once we reached City Point I was likely to get shipped off north. I had to escape before then, that was certain. But I wasn’t sure I’d got Private Turner fetched along to where he’d let me go off alone to water the mules, or some such. I spent a lot of time thinking about how I would manage that—tell him Bridget had come down with the colic and needed to graze on a special kind of herb I saw growing back a ways, that I saw a big beehive I could reach if I drove the wagon under the branch and stood up on the seat. But none of these ideas was any good.

I didn’t have trouble getting his attention, though, for every time we stopped to rest he wanted to go at reading. What’s dedicated mean, what’s hallowed ground, and such. To be honest, I wasn’t sure myself what a lot of it meant, which was a good thing, for it allowed me to learn him wrong by mistake, instead of on purpose. So I said that dedicated meant they was serving refreshments after the speech, and that it was harrowed ground, meaning that the earth was all tore up on account of the battle.

But I understood the words, “All men are created equal” all right, and I wasn’t about to learn him that. “All men are created eagles,” I said. “Like, everybody’s got the same chance to fly up to Heaven.”

He nodded his head. “I knowed that. It’s out of the Scripture. Deacon Jack hollered it out a good deal—‘They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles.’ ”

Generally speaking, though, I was able to twist things around so’s we’d get off that wretched speech and ramble down a side path. Like, one time I asked him how come he was Private Turner instead of Private Stevens—most darkies didn’t have no last name, and if they needed one, they usually were given the name of their master.

“It was when I ’listed up,” he said. “I couldn’t join unless I had two names. They said I should take Stevens, but I wouldn’t, not after the way the old marse whipped us. So I taken Turner, from Nat Turner.”

I knew who Nat Turner was—a slave that got up a rebellion among the other slaves down in Southampton. They murdered a lot of white folks, but he got caught and they hung him. It hit me as mighty uppity for a darky to take the name of a murderer—he dassn’t have done it before the war.

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