My mule, Jim, was standing quietly eating hay. “Mule,” I said softly, “I has done plowed you fo the las time.”
The words startled me. I held my breath. “I has done plowed you fo the las time,” I repeated.
I stroked his head and then left the barn. The night was hot and the air thick. My body was wet with sweat. It felt like there was a fluttering bird inside my chest. “I is leavin this here place,” I whispered. “Yes, I believe I is leavin this here place.”
I walked back to Buck and Corrie’s but was too excited to go inside and go to sleep, so I walked up the familiar path which led to the Big House. I had walked that path for eight years, and I knew each lump and crag to it. When I reached the Big House, I stood by the wooden steps leading up to the back porch. Taking a breath, I opened the door and went inside. I could get a whupping for what I was doing, but I wanted to see Big Mac again.
It was quiet inside. Mary Webb was rolling dough on the big table in the center of the kitchen. She didn’t see me standing in the shadows. The kitchen looked exactly the same as it did the last time I was there, except a little smaller and dingier. I heard voices and hid behind the door. Mistress Beal entered the kitchen with Harriet.
“Harriet, we’ll be visitin tomorrow, and I want those crinolines pressed right nice. I want an extra pinafore for Anna, too, hear?”
The smoothing irons were heating on the cookstove, and I heard heavy feet brush across the kitchen floor.
I wondered where Miz Anna might be and if I could catch just one more look at her. I peeked around the corner. Mistress Beal had left the room, and Harriet was testing the smoothing irons on the stove. She wore men’s shoes on her bare feet, probably John’s throwaways. I was afraid if Mary Webb saw me she’d start to screaming and throwing things, so I remained hidden. After nearly an hour went by and Big Mac didn’t appear, I crept back across the porch and back out the screen door.
I had a longing to see Big Mac, and it was like a tight fist in my stomach. I searched the grounds around the chicken coop, the smokehouse, the well, woodpile, tool sheds, and barns for him, but I didn’t find him. I returned to Buck and Corrie’s shack that night feeling sad and uneasy.
Nearly every day when Buck had returned from the Big House, I had asked him about Big Mac, and he always answered the same, “Big Mac be fine, boy, jes fine.” This is all I had to carry with me for the rest of my life because I never saw him or heard from him again.
Buck and Corrie were in bed. I passed their bed quietly, but I wanted to talk to Buck. “Ssst,” I whispered. “Sssst.”
Buck grunted.
“Buck, don’t forgit me, please don’t forgit me.”
“OK, Robert, we won’t forgit you. Now go to sleep.”
I fell into a deep sleep, and I awoke Sunday morning long after daybreak. I lay for a moment or so in the stillness of the cabin, glad that we didn’t have to go to the field.
Then in a sudden panic I jerked up from the floor and ran to the partition. Climbing up on the woodbox, I peered over the top, not believing what I saw. The cabin was stripped bare. There wasn’t a pot or a rag left. Everything was gone—in fact, it didn’t look as though anyone had ever lived there. Black, dirty, empty, and damp. They were gone, gone without me. They were gone!
I leaped down from the box and ran to the door. The sun was shining and it must have been at least eight in the morning. Frantic, I ran across the yard and through the brush to the road. It was hopeless. There was nobody in sight and no way to find them.
I walked slowly back to the shanty, but I didn’t go inside. I walked on to the barn and stood beside my mule. “Jim,” I said, “they done gone without me.” The mule acted as though I weren’t even there. I filled the water tub, and as I stood there in the heat and the buzzing flies, I heard the sound of my own voice. “I has done plowed you fo the las time.”
Without even being aware of making a decision, I turned and walked out of that barn, walked down the dirt path toward the Big House, walked right past the Big House, past the circular drive, and onto the road leading to the highway.
The road was narrow and hot—the pebbles had barely cooled during the night before the morning sun began to bake them. I heard the insects in the grass, smelled the honeysuckle and azaleas. The road wound through the thick green clumps of trees, and the sky overhead was a deep, rich blue with thin trails of clouds scattered across it.
I walked along the road with my heart pounding loud in my chest. I could be tied up, I could be thrown into the back of a buggy and beaten. I could be strung up, I could be dragged by my heels—I could be— “Oh Lord, hepp me. Hepp me now.”
I reached the place in the narrow road where it met a wider dirt road, Abbeville Road. This is the road which led to Anderson. I took a breath and began to walk toward town. As I walked, the fear began to leave me. I had the feeling that I wasn’t alone—that there was someone walking alongside me very close, so close I could have touched Him.
“Jesus,” I whispered, “I know you with me, and I want to say, I’m thankin yoll.”
I passed a little cabin nestled behind some tall poplar trees. There were wooden chairs on the porch. I noticed the woodpile, the well, and the iron kettles out in the yard for washing clothes. There was the sound of birds singing everywhere. I walked kind of hunched over, never letting my eyes leave the house in case someone would take a shot at me or come running out after me. To my amazement, I saw a colored woman with two little children walking up a path by the cabin, and as they entered the cabin, she paused and waved a friendly “hi” to me. Then a tall man in overalls and a T-shirt followed the family into the house. He waved at me, too. I didn’t wave back. They could be some of Sam Beal’s people, and I hoped they wouldn’t guess what I was doing. I didn’t know they were free people.
I walked for several hours. Many cars passed, but nobody seemed to take any notice of me. One or two buggies passed by, too, drawn by white people, but there wasn’t a word said to me as they passed me. I couldn’t understand it. I fully expected to be caught and dragged back to the Beal Plantation.
Soon the plowed fields on either side of the road gave way to an occasional house, then more houses, some stores, and I was in town. It was midday, and I was very tired, hungry, and thirsty.
I walked along a road with a graveyard surrounded by barbwire along one side and houses on the other. There were black children playing in the street and in the yards. I stopped by a group of young men who were leaning against a stone wall opposite the graveyard. Remembering what Margie told me about a brother, I asked in a parched voice, “Do yoll know where Johnny Sadler live?”
“Sure,” one of the boys replied, “right down yonder, two blocks and turn to your right. It’s the end house.”
Johnny Sadler, I was sure that was the name my sister had given me. Johnny Sadler, my brother? Breathless and shaky, I walked up the quiet, hot dirt road to the end house on the right, two blocks down.
The unpainted house was set up on concrete blocks. There was a small wooden porch lined with pots of blooming plants. All around the dirt yard were rich green trees, and wild shrubbery and flowers.
I walked cautiously up to the porch. When I arrived at the door, I called, “Johnny Sadler!”
A woman came to the door. She wore a cotton dress and an apron, and her hair was tied up in a bandanna.
“Is this where Johnny Sadler live?”
“Yes,” she answered, a puzzled expression on her face.
“I be his brother, Robert Sadler, and I be runnin away from the Beal Plantation where I—”
“Oh my Lord!” she cried and, throwing open the door, she swept me inside.
“Johnny! Johnny!” she called. “Come in, honey. Come in and set down. Johnny!” I heard noises from another room, and in a few minutes a figure just awaking from sleep appeared in the doorway, smoothing his hair.
“Johnny!” the woman cried very excitedly, “this here is yor brother, yor brother Robert!”
The man’s mouth fell open, and his hands froze in midair. “Rob—” He walked over to me, looking at me with wide eyes. “Is you really Robert?” he asked.
“Yessuh,” I answered.
“How’d you git off’n that farm?”
“I done walked. I done walked off this mornin.”
“Oh, Lord A’mighty!”
The man and the woman looked at each other with alarm on their faces. Finally, the woman said, “Honey, you must be hungry. I’m gonna fix us all somethin to eat.”
She fixed a feast beyond anything I could imagine—eggs, grits, bacon, buttermilk biscuits, and hot coffee. They watched me eat with eyes so wide they were as big as the fried eggs on the plate.
“Didn’t you never learn how to use a fork, honey?” the woman asked.
“No, Ma’am,” I said, pushing the food into my mouth with my hands.
Johnny said, “Robert, you wasn’t nothin but a baby when I las saw you. I didn’t think I’d ever see yor lil ole face agin.”
He told me he had a job in Anderson working in a textile factory and that he had been working there a long time.
Over and over again he asked, “You mean yoll jes walked off down the road?” He shook his head and repeated, “Impossible, that’s impossible . . .”
“Well, I done it.”
He explained that it wouldn’t be safe for me to stay in Anderson because Sam Beal would be sure to be around looking for me. They decided to take me to the train station and put me on a train to Belton. From there I could catch a train to Greenville.
I grew frightened. The train station was where they caught John Henry.
“We got a cousin there yoll can stay with. Name Bessie. Bessie Watts.” He gave me a few dollar bills and folded them carefully into my pocket. Then the lady packed me a box lunch.
They took me to the station in a car. “Git down on the floor,” Johnny told me. “An’ stay there.” They were plenty scared as we drove, and they dropped me off about a half block from the station. I walked inside and did as they told me to do. I purchased a ticket to Belton and waited outside because I didn’t see any colored people in the station. They warned me to be careful not to sit where there were white folks. There was a special place for us. They drilled me about the bathrooms and drinking fountains, too.
I boarded the train without incident, though my heart was pounding wildly. When the train arrived in Belton, I still held my lunch on my lap untouched. I got off and went into the train station. The noise of the train, the newness of a depot and people, and the strange town terrified me.
The colored section of the station was easily recognized. It was a narrow room like a hallway that nobody bothered to clean. I saw a man and a woman and a child sitting on the bench in the back. I gasped at the sight of them. Buck and Corrie!
They were startled at the sight of me. Buck sprang to his feet and ran to the window. He hurried to the other side of the hallway and looked out the door.
Corrie began gathering things together and held her son to her heart. “Did you bring him, boy? Did you bring him with you?”
“Bring who?”
Buck hurried back to the bench. “Robert,” he said gruffly, taking my arm and holding it hard, “did yoll come here with Massuh Beal?”
“No, Buck!” I answered, surprised. “I done run away, too.”
“I swear, boy, if you done brought him, we all be daid, and then some—”
“Buck, I didn’t bring nobody. I done run away, too!”
Finally he let go my arm. I slumped down on the bench with them. They sat still, staring at me. I was quiet and didn’t look at them.
We got on the train and it was not until we were almost to Greenville that Buck could speak to me. “Robert, chile, we has been walkin all night. We took the desert way.”
“The desert way?”
“That’s right, boy. Through the woods, the fields, the back roads . . . We ain’t slept a dot—”
“Why didn’t you wake me, Buck? Why didn’t you take me with you?”
Buck looked at me sadly. “Son, if’n they’da caught us, they’da hung us, and I couldn’t do that to you.”
“But you promised!”
“Son, I couldn’t get ye killed.”
We wept together then, and I shared the lunch Johnny’s wife had prepared. There were apples, raisins, bacon sandwiches, and chocolate candy bars.
Buck and Corrie were exhausted and dirty. Their clothes were stained with mud and sweat. They had carried their belongings packed in boxes and blankets and toted six-year-old Adger over twenty miles through the swamps and woods of South Carolina to Belton, but they would not rest until they reached Greenville. They sat rigid, with their eyes darting up and down the aisle of the train, expecting any minute to see Sam Beal come bursting through the door to take them back.
We didn’t notice the rolling hills and the lush forests of the up country pass by the train’s window. We hardly saw the moss-draped oaks, the tall pines, or the flame azaleas and the mountain laurel in bloom. Our hearts beat in time with the clashing of the wheels of the train, and we would not rest until we reached Greenville. And even then, once in Greenville, there was no guarantee that we would be safe.
Photo Gallery
The “Big House,” to which I was brought as a slave in 1917
The Big House, 1975
Buck
Mary Webb, 1973
Detroit, 1936
My brother Johnny Sadler. I went to his home after escaping from the plantation.
Back row: sister Margie, brother Johnny, and his wife, Alberta
Front row: Aunt Julie and my father
Sister Margie with her son Alan and his wife, Betty Jane, 1945
Jackie’s Aunt Cora (left) and my sister Janey
Aunt Cora and me
The Children’s Radio Broadcast, Seneca, South Carolina (Jackie and I are in the back row, center.)
Baking bread in the Clemson College kitchen
Some friends gathered with us around the pump organ
Jackie and me, 1968
Jackie (left, back row), with friends, 1941
Manitoba Indians from the Bloodvein Reservation, where I ministered
Compassion House—my storefront church in Anderson, South Carolina
Me in 1975
My wife, Jackie
My ordination photo, 1963
21
Cousin Bessie’s house in Greenville, a white-washed wooden structure set on brick supports, had a narrow, sloping porch and three wooden steps leading up to it. The dirt yard was broken up with two or three small bushes, and two wooden boards laid in a crooked line served as a walkway from the dirt road.
I was made welcome and given a small room of my own with a bed, a glass window that went up and down, curtains, and a rug on the floor. There was a closet for hanging clothes and, wonder of wonders, sheets on the bed. Bessie had me take a bath in the large tin washtub outside in the backyard with some special soap. I had arrived covered with lice.
The soap burned my skin and she scrubbed my head with it, rinsing me off with a bucket of cold water. So this was what it was like to be clean.
Each day was shocking to me as I learned what it meant to be a free man. Bessie’s husband, Jake, was a porter in one of the hotels in town. He told me, “When you goes for a job, Robert, be sure’n say yessuh, nosuh, an’ act respec’ful.” He drilled me on how to act in town and on the streets. Smile real big and never look at a white woman. Never look at a white man for too long, and never act smart or like you knows any sense. He bought me a pair of shoes, a shirt, and overalls. I strutted around the house like a peacock in my new clothes.
“How old you, boy?”
“Fourteen June las,” I answered.
“Tell them you sixteen.”
I didn’t know a thing about working out, but I walked into a factory, asked for a job, and I was hired as a window washer. I worked ten hours a day, six days a week. I got up at 5:30 a.m., wal
ked to work, and started at 7:00 a.m. I didn’t dare ask how much I would be earning, and on my first payday when I received my wages of four dollars, it was like discovering Fort Knox.
I spent that first paycheck almost entirely on candy. I pointed out almost everything I saw in the candy case to the grocery clerk. I also bought a quart of peach ice cream and a pocketknife, and gave the rest to Bessie. I ate the candy almost all at once and then ate the ice cream. My stomach hurt and Bessie scolded me. “Don’t eat till you sick, boy!”
“I had no idee,” I said weakly.
Cousin Jake drank a lot of whiskey, and one morning after he’d been out all night, someone poisoned him. He managed to get himself home and into his bed. He lay there moaning and complaining, and Bessie thought he was drunk. He died while she was in the kitchen fixing him some coffee.
Nothing was done about the murder. If black people kill black people that’s their own business. The police came, asked Bessie some questions, and then left. We never heard another thing about it. When Bessie asked her friends what to do, they advised her to do nothing. “The whites don’t care if’n it ain’t one of them.”
I continued at my job, and the day after the funeral Bessie went back to her job cooking for a white family on the other side of town. Then she started drinking, too, and pretty soon she was drunk every night. She even went to work in a drunken state sometimes. I hoped she was as smart as Mary Webb, who drank all the time and somehow never got found out.
The Emancipation of Robert Sadler Page 14
