Prentice Alvin: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume III Read Online Free PDF Page A

riverbank knowing she would die, and what a horror waited for her back at the plantation, and what she’d done last night to get away.
     
    See the sun there, three fingers over the trees. This runaway Black slave girl and her little bastard half-White boy-baby, see them
standing on the shore of the Hio, half hid up in trees and bushes, watching as the White men pole them rafts on down. She a-scared, she know them dogs can’t find her but very soon they get them the runaway finder, very worse thing, and how she ever cross that river with this boy-baby?
    She cotch her a terrible thought: I leave this boy-baby, I hide him in this rotten log, I swim and steal the boat and I come back to here. That do the job, yes sir.
    But then this Black girl who nobody never teach how to be a mama, she know a good mama don’t leave this baby who still gots to suck two-hand times a day. She whisper, Good mama don’t leave a little boy-baby where old fox or weasel or badger come and nibble off little parts and kill him dead. No ma’am not me.
    So she just set down here a-hold of this baby, and watch the river flow on, might as well be the seashore cause she never get across.
    Maybe some White folks help her? Here on the Appalachee shore the White folk hang them as help a slavegirl run away. But this runaway Black slavegirl hear stories on the plantation, about Whites who say nobody better be own by nobody else. Who say this Black girl better have that same right like the White lady, she say no to any man be not her true husband. Who say this Black girl better can keep her baby, not let them White boss promise he sell it on weaning day, they send this boy-baby to grow up into a house slave in Drydenshire, kiss a white man’s feet if he say boo.
    “Oh, your baby is so lucky,” they say to this slavegirl. “He’ll grow up in a fine lord’s mansion in the Crown Colonies, where they still have a king—he might even see the King someday.”
    She don’t say nothing, but she laugh inside. She don’t set no store to see a king. Her pa a king back in Africa, and they shoot him dead. Them Portuguese slavers show her what it mean to be a king—it mean you die quick like everybody, and spill blood red like everybody, and cry out loud in pain and scared—oh, fine to be a king, and fine to see one. Do them White folk believe this lie?
    I don’t believe them. I say I believe them but I lie. I never let them take him my boy-baby. A king grandson him, and I tell him every
day he growing up. When he the tall king, ain’t nobody hit him with the stick or he hit them back, and nobody take his woman, spread her like a slaughterpig and stick this half-White baby in her but he can’t do nothing, he sit in his cabin and cry. No ma’am, no sir.
    So she do the forbidden evil ugly bad thing. She steal two candles and hot them all soft by the cookfire. She mash them like dough, she mash in milk from her own teat after boy-baby suck, and she mash some of her spit in the wax too, and then she push it and poke it and roll it in ash till she see a poppet shape like Black slavegirl. Her very own self.
    Then she hide this Black slavegirl poppet and she go to Fat Fox and beg him feathers off that big old blackbird he cotch him.
    “Black slavegirl don’t need her no feathers,” say Fat Fox.
    “I make a boogy for my boy-baby,” she say.
    Fat Fox laugh, he know she lie. “Ain’t no blackfeather boogy. I never heared of such a thing.”
    Black slavegirl, she say, “My papa king in Umbawana. I know all secret thing.”
    Fat Fox shake his head, he laugh, he laugh. “What do you know, anyway? You can’t even talk English. I’ll give you all the blackbird feathers you want, but when that baby stops sucking you come to me and I’ll give you another one, all Black this time.”
    She hate Fat Fox like White Boss, but he got him blackbird feathers so she say, “Yes sir.”
    Two hands she fill up with feathers. She laugh inside. She far away and dead before Fat