The Way North
Copyright© 2025 by Art Samms
Chapter 9
Three days after we left the abandoned farmhouse behind, we found ourselves on the southern edge of Charleston.
It felt different here. Busier. A little louder. There was the sound of hammers and wagon wheels, the occasional barked order from a dock worker or merchant, and the constant low murmur of people going about their lives. We stayed to the fringes, careful not to draw too much attention.
That morning, I offered my labor again—clearing rocks from a field on the edge of town, then chopping wood for a man with more trees than muscle. He was the kind of man who preferred silence to conversation, but he paid fair, and that’s all I needed. By the time the sun was low, I had enough to buy another shirt—plain, brown, serviceable—and a pair of sturdy boots for myself. I managed to find a smaller pair for Lena too. She hadn’t said much about the state of her feet lately, but I could see the limp she tried to hide.
We ate a bit of jerky on a bench beneath a tree just outside the market square, grateful for the shade and the relative quiet. I had just tucked two new coins—another silver quarter and a well-worn half-dollar—into my stash when he approached us.
“Good evening, friends.”
We looked up. A man in his fifties, well-groomed, clean-shaven but for a patch of white at his chin. His eyes were sharp, but his voice was soft and warm.
“I’m Reverend Josiah Jackson,” he said, folding his hands. “Pastor at Mount Olive Chapel, just up the road. We host a prayer supper every Wednesday evening. Food for the body and the soul.”
He smiled at us both. “You’d be welcome.”
Lena didn’t respond. Her shoulders were a little stiffer than before.
“What kind of supper?” I asked. “Just a meal, or...?”
He chuckled. “A bit of scripture, a bit of music, and more than a bit of good food. You look like travelers, and travelers always need a warm meal.”
He turned slightly toward Lena. “And a warm welcome.”
She gave him a tight nod, her expression unreadable. I could tell she was weighing him in her mind and not finding the scales quite balanced.
“What do you think?” I asked her quietly once he’d walked on.
Lena’s voice was barely above a whisper. “Somethin’ ‘bout him don’t sit right.”
“Too smooth?”
She nodded. “Ain’t sayin’ no. But we watch ourselves.”
“Agreed.”
The promise of hot food was too tempting to pass up. And if it was a trap, well ... we’d gotten out of worse.
As the sky darkened, we headed in the direction the reverend had indicated, both of us quiet, both of us hungry. I tried to reassure myself. He’d looked kind. Spoke like a man of God. Everything about him screamed safety.
But then again, so had the men who’d stolen from us. So had others.
We would go. We would eat. But we would not let our guard down.
The prayer supper was everything Reverend Jackson had promised—warm light spilling from the chapel windows, the low hum of voices, the scent of cornbread and stewed greens and something rich and meaty simmering in iron pots out back. We ate like people who hadn’t tasted much in the way of proper food for a while—because we hadn’t.
The Reverend moved through the gathering like a well-oiled machine, all kind smiles and shoulder pats and “bless you, brother” and “sister, have some more.” I caught Lena watching him with narrowed eyes more than once. I nudged her under the table once when she didn’t respond to someone offering her another slice of sweet potato pie. She blinked, nodded politely, and thanked them, but her shoulders never dropped.
After the meal, as things wound down and people drifted off in pairs or small groups, the Reverend approached us again.
“I’m glad you came,” he said. “It’s a rare thing, seeing two strangers sit so quietly and eat with such gratitude. We have a shed behind the chapel—we keep some old tools and barrels in it, but it’s dry and warm enough. You’re welcome to stay the night.”
Lena looked at me, then back at him, her face carefully blank. I thanked him, and he smiled again.
“Sleep well. Morning light brings new roads.”
We followed his deacon to the shed—bare floor, a couple of wool blankets, a small window that barely let in the moonlight—but it felt like a palace compared to the ground we’d been sleeping on. We laid the blankets side by side and stretched out, full-bellied and exhausted.
Sometime deep in the night, I stirred to the sound of soft movement beside me—Lena, rising slowly, her hand on my arm. Her voice was barely a breath.
“Wake up. Now.”
I blinked at her. She crouched beside the door, eyes sharp.
“I heard him,” she whispered. “Reverend. Talkin’ to someone outside the chapel. Said there’s a bounty for a girl who matches my description. Said we’d be ‘secured’ come sunrise.”
I was fully awake now, the weight of those words slamming into my chest. “You sure?”
She nodded once. “I know what I heard.”
We moved quickly, rolling up the blankets, tucking everything back into Lena’s bag. I shoved my few coins deep into the lining of my coat.
As we eased the door open, a soft whistle caught our attention. A figure stood in the shadows near the stable—young, maybe seventeen, with a mop of unruly hair and a pitchfork slung over one shoulder.
“Go,” he said in a low voice. “Now. He’ll have folks here at dawn.”
“Why’re you helpin’ us?” Lena asked, her voice wary.
He shrugged. “‘Cause I seen the kind of look he gets when gold’s on the table. And ‘cause my mama taught me better.”
We didn’t wait to ask more. We thanked him with our eyes, then slipped into the darkness, moving fast and quiet.
Behind us, the chapel bell gave a slow, mournful creak in the wind, like a warning we were just lucky enough to outrun.
We ran through the dark like hunted animals, branches tearing at our sleeves, roots grabbing at our feet. The narrow moonlight offered just enough to keep from tumbling headlong into the underbrush, but not much more. Lena kept slightly ahead of me, moving fast, silent, sure-footed. I followed her without question. I didn’t need to ask where we were going—just away.
Every now and then, I thought I heard something behind us. A horse, maybe. A voice. Maybe it was just wind threading through trees. We didn’t stop to find out.
Eventually, we veered off the road entirely and collapsed into a patch of thick brush. It wasn’t ideal—too damp, too exposed—but we didn’t dare light a fire. We lay close, pressed into the earth, breathing hard.
Neither of us said much. There wasn’t anything to say. My heart was still pounding too loud in my ears.
The ground was cold. The sky above was beginning to pale at the edges. I must’ve dozed for a short time—fitful, uneasy sleep—because when I opened my eyes again, the world was touched with that first breath of morning gray. Lena was already sitting up, scanning the woods like she expected trouble to come walking out of them.
“We should move,” she said softly, her voice hoarse.
I nodded, sitting up and brushing leaves off my coat. “Yeah.”
We got going again—no real breakfast, just a swallow of water, then step after step deeper into nowhere.
When the sun finally broke through the trees, gold and quiet, I looked over at Lena. Her eyes were sharp, but tired. She’d saved us. Again.
“I should’ve listened to you,” I said.
She didn’t answer right away.
“I mean it,” I added. “You knew the reverend was trouble. I didn’t want to believe it. I thought he was just ... decent. Kind.”
She gave me a look—half-wry, half-weary. “Plenty of them know how to look kind.”
“From now on,” I said, “I’m trusting your judgment. No questions asked.”
She raised an eyebrow at that. “Even if I tell you to run the opposite way you think we should?”
“Even then.”
She didn’t smile, exactly, but the tightness around her mouth softened. For a moment, the danger behind us felt far enough away to breathe.
We kept walking. The road ahead still had miles, and maybe more close calls waiting. But we weren’t walking it alone. And that made all the difference.
We didn’t stop walking for four straight days.
We kept to the edges of the Kanawha River, its constant current beside us like a steady drumbeat urging us forward. We barely spoke. Our feet moved on instinct, and when we paused to rest, it was only long enough to set the trap, drink from the river, and eat whatever we could find or catch. Mostly squirrel. Once, a skinny rabbit. Hunger became a dull ache, a familiar companion.
Then we reached the next town—small, working-class, tucked into the crook of a bend in the river. The kind of place where a traveler doing a little hard labor didn’t raise too many eyebrows.
“I figure we’ll be crossing the Ohio in three days,” I told Lena as we looked down at the rooftops from a hill above. “Let me earn us something decent to eat. Just enough to get us the rest of the way.”
She hesitated, but finally nodded. “I’ll stay out of sight.”
I found a man who needed help unloading barrels at a dry goods store. He paid cash—enough for three days’ worth of provisions: beans, cornmeal, and a hunk of cheese wrapped in wax paper. I managed to pocket a couple of silver coins from the change and added them to my new collection, which was quickly growing in size.
I was just tying the food bundle closed when I heard a voice behind me.
“Hey. Didn’t I see you at Reverend Jackson’s supper a few nights back?” The man was older, his face scruffy and sun-weathered, but his eyes were sharp. “You were with a colored girl, weren’t you?”
Every part of me went still. My blood turned to ice.
I forced a quick laugh, shaking my head. “I don’t think so. I was just passing through. Must’ve been someone else.”
He frowned, chewing on his lip like he wasn’t convinced. I didn’t stick around long enough for him to decide one way or the other. I turned and walked fast—then ran once I was out of his sightline.
Lena was waiting where I said I’d meet her, crouched under a small overhang beneath the riverbank. When she saw me jogging toward her with urgency in my step, she stood up fast.
“What happened?”
“Someone recognized me. From the prayer dinner.”
Her face darkened immediately.
“We’re gone,” I said. “No more stops. No more towns. We’ve got food to last three days. That’s all we need.”
She nodded once, briskly, and fell into step beside me. We moved fast—faster than we had in days, not looking back, not slowing down.
Two days later, we reached the abandoned shack just as the first cold drops of rain began to fall. I had a sense of déjà vu.
It sat crooked and half-swallowed by weeds, the roof sloping low, the front door hanging by a single hinge. But it was shelter—and after days on the run, it felt like fortune had finally tilted in our favor. Lena pushed the door open with the edge of her boot and stepped inside. I followed, ducking low beneath the sagging frame.
The place was musty but dry. A few planks in the wall had warped, and we could see daylight between them, but the roof held. That was all that mattered.