The Freedom Thief Read online

  The Freedom Thief

  Tales of the Freedom Thief

  By Mikki Sadil

  Digital ISBNs

  EPUB 9781771453721

  MOBI 978-1-77299-902-0

  PDF 9781771456395

  Print ISBN 9781771453912

  Amazon Print 978-1-77299-901-3

  Copyright 2015 by Mikki Sadil

  Cover art by Michelle Lee

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  Dedication

  To my son, Jeff. A loving son, a wonderful husband, and an adoring father. I wish you had been able to read this book, for I know that you would have been proud of it, and proud of me. I love you.

  Chapter One

  Whup. Whup. Whup. The unmistakable sound of rawhide against bare skin whistled through the bedroom window, followed by shrieks of pain. Another slave was being beaten. Goose bumps played tag along Ben’s spine. He hated that sound. More, he hated that slavery was the cause of it.

  The whup sounded again accompanied by a small scream, but this time it came from inside the house. What in tarnation… Soapy water slopped onto the floor as Ben knocked over his washbasin in his haste to pull on his overalls. He ignored it and ran barefoot down the back stairs to the kitchen. He stopped short at the doorway and stared in disbelief at his father.

  Pa slammed a short whip against Josiah, the ten year-old crippled slave who was Ben’s best friend. Josiah’s mother, Bess, stood by helplessly, twisting the corners of her starched white apron.

  Ben gasped as his heart crashed against his rib cage. His throat was so dry he couldn’t speak.

  “Massa Tom, Josiah don’t mean to break nothing. He just tryin’ to help me. Please, suh,” Bess implored as tears rolled down her cheeks.

  As Pa raised his arm to bring the whip down again, Ben was finally able to force the words out. “Pa, wait. What are you doing? Please stop.”

  His father’s fierce glare made Ben cringe, but his arm came down anyway, finishing the stroke that Ben interrupted. Pa dropped the whip and grabbed the sobbing boy by the shoulders. He shook him so hard tears splattered on the floor.

  “Josiah, you are never to come in this house again unless the mistress summons you. Do you understand me?”

  Josiah took a shuddering breath and swallowed his sobs. He raised tear-filled eyes to his master. “Yes suh.”

  Pa pushed the boy toward his mother, and Bess quickly pulled him to her. He stood quivering with pain as Bess patted his tears with her apron.

  “Bess, take the boy to your quarters and then come back and finish up breakfast.”

  “Yes suh, I be right back.” Bess wiped the tears from her eyes before taking Josiah out the door.

  Pa turned his attention to Ben. “Benjamin, you know better than to interfere when I discipline the slaves.” Pa’s frown was so deep his brown eyes crinkled up and almost disappeared.

  “Pa, Josiah’s just a little kid. What did he do that’s so terrible you had to whip him?”

  “It doesn’t matter what he did, I will discipline him as I see fit, and you do not question me, understand? He is clumsy and awkward and Bess should have known better than to bring him in.”

  Ben shook his head. “So you whipped him just because Bess brought him in here?”

  His father’s face tightened with anger. “No, I whipped him because he broke one of your mother’s teapots. I’m tired of your attitude, son, and I want it to end. Now, finish getting dressed, come down, and get your breakfast. After your regular chores are finished, I want the foaling stalls mucked and fresh straw put down.”

  “But, Pa, I’m supposed to have lessons this morning and…”

  “No, I think no lessons.” Pa held up his hand when Ben started to object. “You may not like the way I discipline the slaves, but that doesn’t give you permission to question me. Maybe a little more work will teach you the respect your lessons have not.”

  Ben left the kitchen and shuffled up the stairs. Anger at his father’s actions filled his heart and left little objectivity in his mind. The image of Josiah’s torn shirt sticking to his small bloody back brought back the memory of what had been the worst day of his young life — his grandfather’s funeral. He had been ten years old at the time, barely remembered his grandfather, and the funeral had been a sad, dismal affair that scared him. Afterward, Pa had announced they would not be going home to New York. They were staying in Kentucky to help his grandmother run the plantation. He had started to cry, and knowing Pa would only get mad at him, he ran out to the barns and straight into a scene he would never forget — a large black man was whipping a slave. When he heard the skin ripping and saw the slave’s blood spattering against the barn wall and dripping on the ground, he gagged and threw up all he had eaten that day. He had nightmares about it for many months to come. Even now, almost four years later, that image was one he couldn’t seem to forget, and it still turned his blood cold.

  * * *

  Ben reached the top of the stairs and came out of his reverie with a start. His older brother, Andrew, was standing there frowning at him.

  “You never learn do you, Ben? Every time you interfere with Pa’s disciplining the slaves, all you do is rile him up. Now he’s gonna take it out on me and James today at the track, because he won’t be satisfied with anything we do. Thanks a lot, little brother.”

  Ben scowled. “Josiah didn’t deserve to be whipped. He was only trying to help Bess.”

  “He’s still a slave and Pa can whip him any time he takes a notion to. No need to come undone about it.”

  “I’m not coming undone about it. I just hate it, that’s all. I’ll never understand why slavery was wrong in New York and right here. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Andrew grinned at him. “It makes perfect sense, because they don’t have plantations in New York.” He reached over, mussed Ben’s hair, and sauntered down the stairs.

  Ben went into his room and changed into his work clothes. As he pulled on the heavy boots, he thought about the lessons he wasn’t going to have time for today. He had completed the public school regime, which only went to the eighth grade. Ma and Grammy gave him lessons twice a week to extend his education. He wanted to go to the school down in Lexington when classes began again in the winter, but first, Pa had to agree.

  As he headed for the kitchen, his stomach growled at the aroma of rich bacon frying and butter biscuits baking. He remembered how Bess, Grammy’s cook, had complained that she would never learn to cook on this “new-fangled contraption,” which was a wood-burning cook stove. Pa had set up the pot-bellied cook stove in the house kitchen instead of out in the separate cookhouse. Now, Bess cooked wonderful meals on the stove, and the house always had a tantalizing aroma.

  Bess was placing the biscuits in a napkin-covered basket when Ben entered the kitchen. Her face was stony, and she refused to look at him.

  “Bess, I’ve got lots of chores to do, so can I take some biscuits and bacon with me to the barn?”

  She nodded without speaking, wrapped several up in another napkin and handed it to him.

  He walked outside and stood for a moment. The sun was just wending its way through the clouds, and the wind was still full of the early morning chill. The horses nickered in the barn, and Ben heard his brothers Andrew and James talking as they threw the morning alfalfa to them.

  Outside of the near barn, Josiah sat on a bale of hay while Tootie, a young house slave, gently dabbed a mi
xture of warmed lard and linseed oil on his back. Even though the wounds weren’t deep, blood seeped through the concoction in small droplets.

  Ben walked over and sat next to him. “Josiah, I’m sorry about what Pa did. I know he hurt you some bad. Do you feel like helping me with the horse leathers?”

  Josiah brushed at his round cheeks. “Yah, Ben, I come help. It okay with da Massa?”

  Ben touched the small black hands and said firmly, “Yes, it’s okay with the Massa. We’re friends, Josiah, so you can always help me when you feel like it.”

  Ben saw the slanted look Tootie gave him.

  “There, Josiah, maybe you feel some better now. I’ll give what’s left to your mama an’ she put it on again come night,” she said.

  Josiah stood up and followed Ben inside, and for a while, they worked side by side. Ben cleaned and oiled the bridles, harnesses, and reins, and handed them to Josiah to hang up. It wasn’t long before Josiah started making little sounds as he was hanging the tack, and Ben knew he was in pain.

  “Josiah, you want to go back to your quarters and rest for a while? We’re mostly through, so I can finish up. Thanks for helping me.”

  Josiah smiled shyly and limped off toward the slave quarters.

  * * *

  Bess walked into the barn as Ben hung up the last bridle. She handed him a mug of coffee with a large piece of buttered sweetbread and an apple.

  “I reckoned you be hungry ’bout now, seeing as how you didn’t eat no proper mornin’ meal. I be thankin’ you for tryin’ to help Josiah this mornin’, but you don’t rile up your pa over somethin’ like this. You best not be foolin’ with him or you be in a heap of trouble.”

  “He’s just a little boy, Bess. I...”

  Bess shook her head. “You never mind, boy. Your pa’s the massa around here, and you best not forget that.” She turned and went back to the house.

  * * *

  It was late afternoon by the time Ben finished cooling out the horses that James and Andrew had run into a lather. He went up to his room to clean up for dinner, and saw his grandmother’s door open. He leaned against the door jam. “Hi, Grammy.”

  “Come in, Ben. You look mighty hot and tired. What’s wrong?”

  He walked in and sat down on the window seat. “I had more barn chores to do, plus cooling out the boys’ horses, so I didn’t get my lessons. It was my punishment for talking back to Pa this morning.”

  “Why did you talk back to your father?”

  “Bess brought Josiah in the house to help her and he accidentally broke one of Ma’s teapots. Pa whipped him like he was all grown up, and I tried to get him to stop.”

  “I’m sorry, Ben. I heard the commotion this morning but I didn’t know what it was all about.”

  “Josiah gets picked on a lot because he can’t work in the fields. I guess he just wanted to do something to help out, but Pa couldn’t see that.” He clenched a fist and hit the window seat. “I’m never going to have slaves when I leave here.”

  Grammy smiled. “That statement doesn’t surprise me in the least. But for now, you can’t change what your pa does with the slaves. However, I am proud of you for defending Josiah.”

  He stood, kissed his grandmother on the cheek, and went on to his room. He lay down on his bed, his thoughts in turmoil. He knew his grandmother didn’t believe in slavery any more than he did. She had been married all her life to a plantation owner, though, and had no choice but to go along with his grandfather’s beliefs. He sighed and turned over. I wish Pa could see my point of view about slavery sometimes. I guess that’s never going to happen.

  * * *

  Ben started downstairs for breakfast the next morning and heard his mother and grandmother talking. Ma was saying, “There’s trouble at the Williams’ place again, so Tom and Mose took the boys and some of men from the track over there. I purely hope there won’t be a big problem from all this. The slaves all over seem to be getting very restless. No telling what will happen.”

  He stopped on his favorite “spy step,” where he could hear and see down into the kitchen, but no one could see him from below.

  He saw his grandmother shake her head. “It is long past time for slavery to be done away with. I don’t know what it will take, but the coloreds have to be let free.”

  Ma shrugged. “I’m sorry, Mama. I know how you feel about this. But how do you think we would work this place without slaves? Besides…”

  “If I had my way, I’d set the slaves free and then hire them back to work. I tried to convince your father to do that, but he was so set in the southern ways he wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “Of course he wouldn’t, Mama.” Ma took a sip of her coffee. “What I don’t understand is where you got your ideas about freedom for slaves. After all, you were brought up here.”

  “Daughter, I won’t argue the point with you, except to say that you don’t have to be a Northerner to believe coloreds have as much right to freedom as whites do.”

  Ben walked down into the kitchen, pretending he hadn’t heard a word. “Where are Pa and the boys, Ma? They’re never late for breakfast.”

  “Sit down and eat, Ben. There’s trouble at the Williams’ so your pa and brothers went over there. I sent Bess out to the cabins to see if she could find out if troubles are in the air here.”

  Ben saw his grandmother glance quickly at his mother, her lips compressed into a thin line. He decided not to say anything more.

  The silence was thick as the three of them ate without speaking. As soon as she was finished, Grammy went out on to the front porch, leaving Ben and Ma alone.

  “Ma, I know Grammy doesn’t believe in slavery, but Granddaddy did. You grew up with both of them, so how did you decide what to believe?”

  His mother folded her arms across her chest. “Ben, I don’t know how your grandmother grew up in the south and still became an abolitionist. She never talked to me about her feelings. My father wouldn’t have allowed it. He was a stern taskmaster, he believed in slavery, and that was the end of it. This is the world we live in now, and that also is the end of it.”

  Ben started out the door, stopped and looked back at his mother. “You told me when we moved from New York that everything changes, so why can’t slavery change, too?”

  The sound of horses’ hooves pounding up the dirt road behind the house, accompanied by a lot of shouting, interrupted her answer. Ben stepped out on to the back porch, where a cloud of dust enveloped him as a dozen men pulled their horses to a thunderous stop.

  Andrew swung off his saddle and tightened the rope hanging from the saddle horn. The other end of the rope was around the neck of a tall, heavily muscled slave. With his hands tied behind his back, he struggled to stay on his feet. One of the white men from Pa’s horse training track came up behind the slave and hit him viciously in the back, making him fall to his knees.

  When Ma came out, she gasped at what she saw before her. At that moment, Bess ran from the slave quarters, crying and holding her hands out to the slave.

  She turned to Pa. “Massa Tom, what you doin’ with my brother?”

  Pa came up on the porch, brushing the dust from his breeches with his gloves. “Cracker sneaked off last night to the Williams’ place. He’s got a gal down there, and he started a ruckus with another slave. He refused to come when I ordered him to, and he slugged one of my track men. He’s going to be hung.”

  Ma looked at Pa and frowned. “Tom, this is Bess’s brother. Why do you have to do this, anyway? Surely beating him will be enough punishment?”

  Pa shook his head. “When Cracker put his hands on a white man, he sealed his own fate. Hanging is the law, Laura. You know there’s no question about that.”

  Ma looked at him for a moment before turning back to Bess. “Bess, you may go now. Say your goodbyes, and then go on to your cabin. I won’t need you any more today.”

  Bess spoke through the tears running down her face. “Yes, Mistress Laura. Thank you, ma’am.”

>   Ben was too shocked at first to say anything, but now he asked, “Pa, why can’t you let the law take him?”

  “Because Cracker is my slave, and the law says it is my responsibility to see that he is properly punished. I expect you to watch this. It will be a good lesson.”

  Before Ben could respond to his father, Andrew yelled in a voice ringing with excitement, “Pa, come on. Ole’ Cracker is hitched up and waiting for his hanging!”

  Pa started down the porch steps. He turned and said to Ben, “Now, Benjamin. You will…”

  “No!” Ma interrupted. “This is not something Ben needs to see. You do as you wish, Thomas McKenna, but I will not have Ben being a part of it.”

  Ben caught the disgusted look Pa gave Ma as he strode down the steps slapping his riding crop against his leg so hard Ben thought sure he would have bruises.

  Ma put her arm around Ben and attempted to lead him into the kitchen. “Come on, there’s no reason for you to see this.”

  Ben twisted away from his mother. “Stop it, Ma. Stop treating me like a child. I’m almost grown, and I’m old enough to watch a hanging.”

  The look on his mother’s face told him she was not pleased with what he said. “I suppose you’re right, Ben. I reckon if you want to see a man hung, you can.”

  “I don’t want to, Ma. I’m just tired of you treating me like a baby.”

  Without another word to his mother, Ben turned and headed up the stairs.

  Chapter Two

  The cries and wails coming from the slaves, now gathered behind the house, made Ben cringe. As he walked upstairs, he glanced out the window. Cracker sat on a barebacked horse with his eyes covered by a dirty rag, and his hands still tied behind him. The men took the long end of the rope around his neck and threw it over a stout branch from an oak tree. They tied it tightly with several broad knots.