Chapter four, continued

Sayer had built a stone boat, a stout wooden sled that the mule would pull. He hitched the beast and we set out across the stubble of the wheat field, picking up all the stones from the size of a grapefruit to twice the size of my head. Those bigger or smaller we left behind. After three loads, Sayer sent me on my own while he stayed behind to build another section of the foundation using the stones we had gathered.

I was glad to be alone. Ben Sayer was about fifty, but he had done heavy work all his life and he was as fit as the mule was. He hardly talked at all. I was trying to keep up with him, and trying to keep him from seeing how hard it was. The double burden was killing me.

When noon came, I was glad to knock off. Sayer had built a quick fire out of chips from the timbers he had squared earlier, and was heating coffee in a tin can. It went down well with cold ham and corn bread. While I was eating, I looked at the job Sayer was doing. He seemed to be a first rate mason as well as a carpenter.

It was a long afternoon. Ben Sayer stayed at the site, building up the foundation while I brought him stones.

I was tired from travel and tired from my labors. More than that, I was feeling lost. I had been ripped out of my carefully planned life, to find myself working like a field hand under a negro who would have been a slave if he had been at Waterside. Logically, I could plot every step of the change; but emotionally, it made no sense to me. I was disoriented and angry, and there was no one at whom I could aim my anger.

That was about to change.

When I returned with my last load of stones, Sayer said, “It’s getting too cold for the mortar to set right. Let’s unload and call it a day.” It had been clear and cold, but now clouds had gathered and November was really showing its teeth.

We started up the road toward Aunt Rachel’s house, with Sayer leading his mule. Off to our right I could see a substantial house and barn that Sayer said belonged to a family named Trostle. Aunt Rachel’s barn site was at the edge of the timber, but here the road passed between open fields. Two horsemen were coming from the Trostle house across those fields, riding at a proud trot to cut us off. The lead rider jumped the shallow ditch at the side of the road and stopped in the road in front of us; his companion came up behind us. They were both dressed in rough clothing; the one in front had a sheepskin jacket, standing open, with a revolver in a holster belted high up on his side. The one behind us had a carbine in a saddle sheath.

The man in the sheepskin jacket said to me, “We’re looking for some escaped slaves. You seen ’em?”

I shook my head. “We’ve been working on that foundation back there all day, and haven’t seen anybody until you came along.”

He turned to Sayer next and said, “How about you, Boy?”

“No, sir. Just been working all day. Didn’t see nobody.”

“You got papers?”

“Don’t need papers, Mister,” Ben Sayer replied. “This is a free state and I’m a freeborn man.”

“How do I know that?”