Virginia Hamilton Read Online Free PDF

no, Missy,’ ” his mamaw went on, “ ‘don’t take my baby away. Don’t you do that to me. Mars John, he never want you to sell my Anthony. Please, don’t sell my baby. I do anythin’ fer ya. Just don’t do that, oh, please, Missy.’
    â€œSo she say she sell me, for Anthony. She gone send me off for two year, anyway. She movin’ all us and her and everythin’ to that Acquia town. And I got to go on myself someplace for two year. And she won’t let me take my baby. Oh, Anthony! Who will see you all right?”
    â€œIt be hard, but don’t you worry,” Big Walker told her. “I watch out him like I allus do.” He reached to comfort Anthony.
    â€œNaw!” Anthony hollered, and pushed Walker’s hand away.
    â€œAnthony, hush up,” Mamaw said. “He not gwoin’ hurt you.”
    â€œHe bein’ Driver,” Anthony cried.
    â€œTrue, but he leader of quarry, too,” Mamaw said. “He do for Mars John everythin’ as long as Mars be. But Mars done gone oveh now, and Walker through bein’ quarry, make him cough so. Anthony, he don’t mean to pain you. What little he hurt you was to keep Mars John from painin’ you more.”
    â€œWha … what?” Anthony whispered.
    â€œWalker not hurt you,” Mamaw went on. “He your own great big papa, too. No more hidin’ the truth. He your own paw!”
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œMars John said you belonghim, but it’s a lie—I’m tellin’ you so.”
    â€œQuit it, now,” Big Walker said. “The boy don’t have to hear all that.”
    â€œMy own me don’t belong to me nohow,” Mamaw cried, between racking sobs. “Say who come to my bed,” she moaned. “Say who sleep-a-me where. That why that Missy hate me and mine so.”
    â€œIt over now,” Walker said. “I ain’t havin’ no more no way. We gwoin’ to run is what I say.”
    â€œYou gwoin’ to go?” All spoke at once.
    â€œOh, don’t go. Lawd, don’t go!”
    â€œYou gwoin’ do that?”
    â€œThey ketch you. They do the dogs on you.”
    â€œThey ain’t ketch nothin’,” Big Walker said. “Before we move to that Acquia, we gwoin’ lose some us in these woods. She not find us, that Missy Suttle, not no her or he Mars son, Mars Charles, find us neither. Nobody ever find us.” All of a sudden Walker commenced coughing so hard, he had to sit down in a corner. Someone brought him a dipper of water.
    â€œAin’t gwoin’ nowhere,” Anthony whispered to Mamaw. “Me too scared of all bad wolfs.”
    â€œHuh, baby, we go where your paw wants us,” Mamaw said.
    â€œHe the Big Walker. He ain’t no my paw,” Anthony said.
    â€œHe is—now hush.”

5
May 25, 1854
    THE WEIGHT OF the past and the darkness of its nightenclosed Anthony until slowly, with the growing light of day, he returned to the present.
    The windows of the jury room where he was kept under guard were covered with iron bars that seemed to break the day into welts of pain. If he could somehow keep his eyes from those bright stripes, he might keep his suffering at bay. But it was no use.
    Here I be! he despaired. Caught, I am, and no longer a man. Father, protect me!
    He tried retreating again into the past, but all that would come to him was the time of sadness in Mamaw’s cabin. With him these many years was the same question, born out of that night. “Who am I?” For the thousandth time he asked himself, “Be I the slave owner’s own boy or the slave driver’s son? He Mars John’s or Big Walker’s?”
    Again, he lifted his good hand, as he had so many times before. Held it close to his eyes to see it better. There was no denying his skin was light brown. Big Walker had been a dark man, his mamaw a very black woman.
    It had been whispered