The Way North
Copyright© 2025 by Art Samms
Chapter 5
We made good time that morning, spirits still lifted by the kindness of James and Saphrona. The sun was out, the road sloped gently northward, and the maps gave me a sense of control I hadn’t felt in weeks. It was easy to believe, for a few short hours, that this might actually work.
Around midday, we came to a river—narrower than the French Broad, but fast-moving and high from the recent rains. A wooden bridge stretched across it, crooked but sturdy enough, with moss-covered beams and slats that creaked under our steps.
I glanced back as we crossed—habit now. Nothing but woods and water behind us.
But it was ahead where trouble waited.
We had just reached the far side when I heard it—hooves. Fast. Angry.
“Down!” Lena hissed.
We dropped to the ground behind a cluster of rocks, peering through gaps in the brush. Two riders crested the hill to our left, rifles slung across their backs, wide-brimmed hats pulled low. One pointed. The other stood up in his stirrups.
“There! Black woman with a white man!”
My stomach dropped.
We ran.
There was no time to think—just instinct, just feet pounding soft earth, branches slapping our faces, breath rasping in our throats. I heard shouts behind us, then the crack of a rifle—too far to hit, but close enough to send a jolt through my spine.
Lena moved like she knew the woods better than gravity itself—ducking low, weaving between trees, barely making a sound. I followed as best I could, stumbling twice, heart hammering.
We found a patch of dense undergrowth near a fallen tree, thick with vines and wet leaves. Lena dove into it without hesitation, and I followed, dragging branches back over us, hands trembling.
“Don’t move,” she whispered. “Don’t even breathe.”
So, I didn’t.
The hooves came closer. Then voices—low, frustrated, southern. One rider passed barely fifteen feet from us. I saw the muzzle of his rifle glint in the filtered sunlight.
“Tracks just end,” one muttered. “Swear I saw ‘em.”
“Maybe they doubled back.”
“We’ll ride east. If they circle this way, we’ll cut ‘em off.”
The hooves faded.
Neither of us moved for what felt like an hour. My legs ached. My shoulders screamed. But we stayed still, pressed into the dirt, soaked in sweat and fear.
Only when the forest grew quiet again did Lena shift slightly.
“We stay here tonight,” she said. “They’ll search the road.”
I nodded, though I hated the idea.
We cleared just enough space under the thickest part of the brush to lie side by side. The ground was wet. Cold seeped in through our clothes. Every branch seemed to find a rib or hip to poke. But we didn’t complain. It wasn’t worth the breath.
As darkness crept over the forest, I listened for hoofbeats that didn’t come, and sleep that wouldn’t either. Lena lay beside me, back to back. At one point, her shoulder brushed mine—and she didn’t pull away.
We stayed that way—damp, cold, silent—waiting for morning to tell us if we were safe.
By morning, the forest was draped in fog—thick and low like breath on glass. Everything was damp, even our bones. My back ached, my knees throbbed, and my right shoulder had gone numb from where I’d slept half-curled in wet leaves.
Lena stirred beside me. Her first instinct, even now, was silence—eyes sharp, breath shallow, like the danger might still be crouched out there.
We waited, barely whispering the minutes to each other with our eyes. Then, slowly, we rose.
No sound of hooves. No shouting. Only the rustle of birds and the distant thrum of water.
We stepped cautiously from our hiding spot, brushing twigs and mud from our clothes. The path ahead was narrow, overgrown, and slick—but it was empty. For now.
“They’re gone,” Lena said finally.
I nodded, not quite willing to believe it. “We need to keep off the roads. No more bridges unless we know who built them.”
She gave a dry, humorless chuckle. “Ain’t no safe bridges for folks like me.”
I didn’t argue. She wasn’t wrong.
We walked for a while without speaking. The silence wasn’t awkward—it just held the weight of what we’d been through. I watched Lena’s eyes move constantly, sweeping the terrain, cataloging risks. She didn’t miss much.
After a mile or so, I broke the quiet.
“You okay?” I asked.
She nodded, but it wasn’t convincing.
“That was close,” I said.
“Closer than I like,” she replied. “But not the first time I’ve run.”
That surprised me a little. I glanced at her, but she was looking straight ahead.
We walked another hundred yards in silence. Then she said, “I didn’t tell you what made me run. Not really.”
I slowed my pace.
She went on, eyes forward. “A week, maybe two, before I left ... I heard Master Bryant and some man talking in the parlor. I wasn’t supposed to be nearby, but I was sweeping the hall. I heard my name.”
She stopped walking for a second, jaw tight. “They were talking about a debt. Bryant owed this man money—gambling, maybe. Said he didn’t have it in cash, but he had assets.”
I felt a cold weight settle in my chest. “You were the asset.”
She nodded once, eyes still ahead. “They said I’d be sent to Mississippi. A farm there. Hotter. Meaner. Worse in every way. I was part of the deal.”
“Jesus,” I murmured.
“That night,” she continued, “I took a canteen from the kitchen. Found the last crust of bread in the pantry. And you’ve seen my little flint striker—bartered a quilt square for it months earlier, just in case.”
She looked at me then. “I guess I always knew something like that was coming.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t try to fill the silence.
“You asked if I’m okay,” she said, resuming our walk. “I’m not. But I’m free.”
Her words hit me in the chest like a slow-breaking wave. Not okay. But free.
“I’m glad you ran,” I said quietly. “Whatever happens from here ... I’m glad you made that choice.”
She glanced sideways at me. “You believe in fate?”
“I didn’t used to. But I might be reconsidering.”
That earned a small, tired smile.
We kept walking—two people wet from rain and silence, bound now by more than just necessity. Every step we took away from that bridge felt a little lighter, though the road ahead was still long.
And the ghosts we carried—still very much with us.
We were walking through a thick stretch of forest, tall pine and sycamore all around us, the air heavy with midspring heat. Our legs ached, but we’d found a kind of rhythm—together in silence, each footstep a quiet act of survival.
Then I saw them.
Just up ahead, maybe fifty yards out, two figures reclined beneath a patch of shade near a slope of exposed rock. They looked relaxed, but watchful—heads tilted back, limbs stretched out but angled just enough that I knew they were ready to move if they had to. Two Black men, maybe late twenties or early thirties. Dust-covered, lean, sharp-eyed.
I slowed to a stop and motioned for Lena. She froze, eyes narrowing, reading them like a hunter tracking deer.
“Travelers?” I murmured.
She didn’t answer right away. Then she offered warily, “Runaways. Gotta be.”
I looked again. No weapons, no uniforms, no horses. One of them had a cloth bundle at his side. The other seemed to be fiddling with a knot on his boot.
I leaned closer to her. “Maybe we should talk to them. There’s strength in numbers.”
Lena shot me a look. “Maybe. Or maybe they’re desperate. Maybe they’ll see what you got in your pack and decide it’s theirs now.”
“They look like us—on the run.”
“Everyone out here’s on the run,” she muttered.
We dropped back into the brush, squatting low. The sun filtered in patches through the trees above. She stared through the branches a moment longer, then exhaled slowly.
“I’ll talk to them,” she said. “You stay right behind me. Don’t say nothin’ unless they ask you direct.”
I nodded, and we moved.
We stepped into the open slow, no sudden moves. Lena walked with her shoulders square, head high. I followed just behind, hands visible, nothing threatening in my posture.
The two men spotted us instantly—jumped to their feet. One took a step back, hand on something hidden at his hip.
“We don’t mean trouble,” Lena called out, holding up both hands.
The taller of the two squinted at us. “Who’s he?”
“He’s with me,” she said, voice firm. “He’s safe.”
The other man didn’t look convinced. “Ain’t never seen a white man travelin’ with a colored woman and it be safe.”
Lena nodded once, as if she understood completely. “That’s why I came out first.”
There was a tense pause, and then something in the air shifted. The taller one lowered his hand.
“I’m Elijah,” he said. “This here’s Micah.”
“I’m Lena,” she said. She glanced back at me, and I stepped forward a bit.
“Caleb,” I offered. “Just Caleb.”
Elijah and Micah looked at each other.
“You two headin’ north?” Micah asked.
“We are,” Lena said. “We’ve been on foot since North Carolina.”
“Same,” Elijah said. “Been stickin’ to the woods, followin’ old advice. Heard talk of Quakers in Ohio.”
“We’re headin’ that way too,” I said carefully.
Micah’s eyes flicked to me, then to Lena. “You trust him?”
Lena didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
That one word carried weight. Micah seemed to consider it, then gave a small shrug. “Then we can walk together. For now.”
“We can share food,” I added. “And watch each other’s backs.”
“That’d be welcome,” Elijah said. “Long road left to walk.”
We stepped off the path and moved back into the trees, careful not to linger too long in one place. As we walked, the four of us kept a few paces of space between each other—still strangers, still measuring the ground. But something unspoken had shifted. For now, we weren’t just two. We were four.
We thought we’d found something steady—an alliance, a rhythm, maybe even a tiny community. Elijah and Micah had seemed like the real thing: guarded, sure, but decent. That first night, we sat together by a low fire Lena started with her flint striker, sharing cornmeal and dried meat. We didn’t talk much, but there was a sense of uneasy camaraderie. Four shadows against the dark.
The next morning, we kept moving. The sun rose warm and gold through the treetops. We stayed off the road and walked single file, ducking low through dense thickets. I was toward the back when nature called.
“Be right back,” I said.
Lena gave me a faint nod. Our two new companions didn’t react.
I walked maybe a hundred paces off, careful not to leave too obvious a trail. When I returned, Lena was standing still, her arms crossed tight against her chest. Her eyes tracked Elijah and Micah, who were walking slightly ahead.
She didn’t say anything, but I saw it. That tension in her jaw. The distant look in her eyes. Something was off.
I made a mental note to ask her later, when we were alone again. But later came too late.
The next morning, they were gone. As if their very existence had been a figment of our imagination.
I felt the weird stillness when I awoke—no fire crackling, no murmured voices, no one rustling leaves. I sat up and saw it immediately: their bedrolls, vanished. So were our canteens. Our food. The maps James Willis had given us.
My stomach flipped.
I looked to Lena. She was already sitting up, staring at the empty space where our supplies had been.
“They took them,” she said, her voice like gravel. “Everything but your bag.”
I checked—my backpack, still tucked under my head like a pillow, was there. But it only had a few spare clothes and a notebook. Nothing we actually needed to survive.
I stood up too fast and nearly stumbled. “Why would they—?”
“They waited till we slept. Left before first light.”
Lena knelt beside the fire pit, turning over ashes with a stick. Her flint striker was gone too.
I knelt beside her. “Did they say anything to you?”
She hesitated.
“They tried to turn me,” she said finally. “Yesterday, when you were gone. Pulled me aside. Told me I was making a mistake trusting you. Said no white man helps a Black woman for nothing.”
I sat back on my heels, jaw tight.
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