On the sixth attempt, he found his way upriver in a place called Missouri. He’d heard that Tia was sold to a man there, living on a farm. Making his way through the darkness, he went shack to shack asking for her.
“Boy, you gonna get us all killed,” whispered an old man. “Ain’t no girl here named Tia.”
“I think he’s talkin’ about the new girl that came a few months ago. Came from New Orleans, right?” asked another man.
“Yes. Yes, that’s her!”
“I’m sorry, boy. The boss, he used her. Used her bad. She went crazy and tried to kill him.” Grover shook his head back and forth. “He hanged her. Right out there from that tree.”
Grover backed out of the shack, staring at the massive mansion in the darkness. Without thinking of his own life, he ran toward the mansion, breaking through one of the long front windows. He could hear talking upstairs and looked around for a weapon.
On the wall, hanging from a coatrack was a whip. Gripping the leather handle, he heard the creak of leather beneath his fingers. As he raced up the stairs, he turned toward what should be the master bedroom and found a large, rotund man rubbing his body against a young, barely a teenager, black girl.
Taking the whip, he reared back and let it strike the man’s backside. He howled in pain, rolling off the girl. She stared at the ceiling, not moving.
“Run,” he said to the girl. She didn’t move, and he yanked her arm, pulling her out of bed. “Did you hear me? Run.”
The girl finally moved slowly, obviously in pain.
“Boy, you picked the wrong man to come after. I’ll slice you to ribbons!”
“You killed my wife,” he said calmly. He reached back, cracking the whip again. The fat man fell to the floor, his gelatinous body jiggling with every breath. He whipped him three more times, enjoying the sight of the man’s blood.
“Stop! I beg you, stop!” he cried.
“Beg me? You beg me? You rape little girls, beat men and women for pleasure. You work them like animals in the fields, day and night, for nothing!”
“You are animals, boy,” he chuckled, his fat flesh moving in a sickening rhythm. “You’re all nothin’ but animals.”
Grover lost control. He whipped the man over and over again until his body ceased any movement at all. Staring at the broken skin, blood, and the horror of what he’d done, Grover knew he was a dead man.
So he ran.
He ran until his body couldn’t run any longer. He followed the river, hoping to get as far north as possible, maybe make it into the northern territories, and hide in the wilderness.
But the river is a fickle lady. She had twists and turns, bends and tributaries. Without knowing it, Grover found himself in a place he didn’t want to be. Asleep against a tree, the sun was just coming up over the horizon when he realized his fatal mistake. Someone tapped the bottom of his foot.
“Lookee here, boys. We caught ourselves a runaway.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“There wasn’t a trial. No one wanted to hear that the boss raped my wife or that the man he sold her to raped her, beat her, raped children, and beat them. It didn’t matter. We were animals, and I had murdered one of them.”
“Grover, honey, you were not animals. You were treated as an animal, no doubt, but you were not an animal,” said Ruby.
“What I did to that man was only something an animal would do,” said Grover. “They brought me back to boss, he whipped me like I’d never been whipped before. Then, he brought me here to the Square and hanged me from this tree. This is where I’ve been. Right here.”
“I’m so very sorry, Grover,” said Irene. He could only nod and slowly faded from their view.
“I think we need to try and get him to tell us what plantation he was on and who the boss was,” said Ruby.
“You think that will help?” asked Irene.
“I think it will help us to know how all this could be connected. I don’t know, Irene,” she said, shaking her head. “Hearin’ that boy’s story just turns my stomach and makes me so sad. All he wanted to do was go to England and make his fortune for his family.”
“Mama Irene? Miss Ruby? I found a few things on Grisella St. Jean. She was only seventeen when Grover left home. He’s listed as lost at sea. They thought he was dead.”
“That’s just horrible,” said Irene.
