Walk Through Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page A

intimate moments had been that much more fragile for the proximity of others. They had whispered, murmured and moaned only for each other. He used to speak with his mouth brushing against her ear, the scent of her hair filling him. She would taste him with the tip of her tongue. She said she loved the sweat of him, that she wanted him most when he was ripest, for then he seemed that much more a man. Sometimes she would run her hands across his sweaty shoulders. She did this as if she were cleaning him, but he knew that she wanted his scent on her, a reminder of him that she could carry with her.
    One morning near the end of his second week of flight, William halted near a narrow lane in the woods. Some fifty yards from it, he paused and squatted in the bushes, waiting to see what type of traffic the road might carry, if any. The path meandered off to the east, vanishing into the trees; to the west it rose up a gentle hill and dropped out of sight. He sat for twenty minutes without anyone passing. He had just decided to cross the road and carry on when a motion stopped him. A man, marked first by his prominent headdress, crested the western rise and camedown the trail at a brisk pace. It was a white man, and though he propelled himself by the power of his own two feet, he was clothed in the garb of the gentry. William froze. His first thought was how tenuous his situation was. Here, yet again, was a moment of providence. If he had stepped forward a few moments earlier … If, at any time, for any reason, God and circumstance conspired against him … He had to be more careful still. He pressed himself low to the ground. It was from there, with his nose touching the leaves of the forest floor, that he noticed the man wasn’t alone.
    A Negro boy trailed behind the man. He was tiny, barefoot, and dressed only in the rough shirt of childhood, his legs and feet bare. His steps doubled to keep time with the man’s. He was anxious in this work, his full attention focused on the back of the man’s thighs, on timing his own steps and not letting himself fall behind. William saw something frantic in the child’s motions and he wondered what particular variation of the slave’s curse this child was living. Had he been sold away from his mother? Was this his first day with a new master? Or did he even remember his mother? Was this man and his whims all the child had to anchor him to the world? He was too young to do much work, but one never knew what type of service a white man might require.
    William felt his insides knot. This one image filled him with the fear of fatherhood. It was one thing to suffer a life of slavery oneself, but to bring a child into this world, into all of its dangers and indignities … The thought of it was enough to keep him still long after the man and boy had disappeared down the path. The image of the two lingered long in his mind, bringing back memories of his own childhood, his old owner, dead some years now but not forgotten.
    Howard Mason had generally been considered a good master. He didn’t push his slaves beyond the limits of their endurance. He didn’t beat them overly, break up families permanently, ortake liberties with the female servants. He was a much-avowed man of learning and of God, who tried hard to live by Christian principles. He sustained his family’s finances upon the lifeblood of some fifty to sixty slaves, but he did so with the permission of his God. Or so he believed. He found this consent within his religion’s text, as he explained to William two days after his eighth birthday.
    Mason had ridden up to William and greeted him cordially, an act which set the boy trembling from his knees right down to his bare feet. He had heard it was the boy’s birthday, and he offered him a present, a large, golden apple. It was no small feat for a Negro to make it through to a good working age, he said. William was a fine boy for doing so. He dismounted, left his horse to graze and