The Coming Of Dawn

It all began with Big Yank Jefferson being born a slave on a huge plantation in the mean state of Mississippi. Though it seemed chains had a kinship with his skin, in the secret caverns of his mind, he was a free spirit confined to the body of a tortured soul. His parents had died in a barn fire when he was ten, and he hated that he belonged to no one but himself. On the day before he entered his seventeenth year, his thoughts spun wildly, as he paced back and forth in the small, cramped cell of the town’s makeshift jail. It was his second night of staring at the spider webs that covered the walls territorially. His body shivered in fear, as he recalled his latest escape attempt and how he was foiled once again by a bullet that came too close.

In the dank darkness, he fought mightily to forbid his tears the release they yearned for. He grabbed his head in utter despair, as he vividly recalled the agony of his capture and the pain of the whip against his back. He closed his eyes and imagined the steady raindrops hitting the thin tin roof were the drum sounds of the homeland bidding his return to the roots he’d never known.

Suddenly, he heard a strange sound. He froze in mid-motion, and listened intently. Panic enveloped him, as his heart thundered loudly against the bony wall of his chest. He knew he was about to die. The old wooden planks on the other side of the iron door creaked loudly under the weight of the giant-like guard outside his cell. As the guard stooped and peeked curiously through the rusted bars, Yank watched his clumsy movements through squinted eyes. Without blinking, he cautiously moved from the center of the squalid cell and slid his body down the jagged stone wall to the soggy earth.

The rain turned violent, hitting hard upon the leaky roof, transforming the matted dirt floor into a collage of muddy footprints. Under the bellowing thunder claps, Big Yank closed his eyes and pretended to sleep.

The guard slowly unlocked the door and stepped inside. He slammed it shut behind him and stepped into the musty smell of the tiny cell. Yank stretched his body, as if awakened by the noise, and quickly dropped his head, as expected in abject submission to the superiority of white skin. Deep inside, his heart rallied to be free from subjection to another man’s will.

He knew the jailer feared him because of his size, and would shoot him quicker than a jack rabbit could jump, if he made the wrong move. Thus, he barely breathed, when the guard stuck his shotgun under his chin and gestured for him to rise. He began to gloat over Yank’s recent capture, as he pulled him to his feet, handcuffed his hands behind him, and shackled heavy iron to his ankles.

“The boss say you might try to run agin, nigger boy, fore we hangs you, and we can’t take no chance on that! They say tomorrow is hanging day, and you first in line. I heah they even gon hang you before they hang those two horse thieves they caught yesterday! They gonna make a lesson outta you to keep these other niggers in line!””

Yank shut his eyes in resignation to defeat, as the chains clanked noisily with each movement. The memory of his capture was still vivid in his thoughts, as the guard shoved him down to the muddy floor and slammed the jail door shut.

He had been hiding in a cave covered by brush and weeds for two days without food or water, and was stark raving hungry. The mysterious voice, which he heard often in his head, but listened to seldom, warned him not leave his hiding place. Yet, as soon as the sun went down, he ventured out in search of food. He let loose a child’s giggle when he spotted a nearby apple tree and began picking and eating the juicy fruit voraciously.

Suddenly, out of the darkness, he heard the whishing sound of a long cowhide whip as it slashed painfully across his back and pulled him to the ground. He fell hard, but scrambled quickly to his feet and ran wildly into the woods. When a shotgun blast whizzed past his head, he dropped to the ground. To his dismay, he looked straight into the eyes of the most feared bounty hunter in the country, Bedford Slang. He stood slowly in resignation to defeat and held forth his hands to be bound.

Bedford Slang’s tracking skills were known throughout Mississippi, and he made a profitable wage out of finding runaway slaves and returning them to their wealthy owners in a beaten and bruised state. In the slave quarters, his reputation was a strong deterrent to any escape plan hatched under the hot sun in the grimy cotton fields. The story was often told among the slaves of how ’s hunting instincts were fueled by the memory of an escaped slave who got away, after he bit off the tip of ’s thumb. From that day forth, his hatred for black skin became an obsession that helped exalt his fame as a skilled slave catcher.

Bedford relished the moment when an angry slave owner yelled out “dead or alive, you get the same gold,” as he rode off in pursuit of an escaped slave, with a wild evil grin. Big Yank knew would have killed him the first time he caught him, if he wasn’t afraid of Ol’ Man Jefferson, who was the only man Yank ever saw take a humbling to.

Pate Jefferson was one of the wealthiest plantation owners in the state, and most men who knew him feared his power and his wrath. Each time Big Yank escaped, Pate paid big money to have him brought back, and Big Yank hated him for it. It seemed the more he longed for freedom, the tighter Pate Jefferson held the reins. Yet, Big Yank was determined to leave Mississippi on “The Underground Railroad,” which he heard helped many slaves to escape to the North. He vowed to try again and again, until death blocked his way. He had been born on the Jefferson Plantation, but he held no plan to die there.

When Big Yank awoke the next morning in jail, with the sun shining brightly through the bars of the cell’s window, hopelessness tried to impose its will upon the one bright spot in the midst of his misery. He knew when Pate Jefferson’s son Thom found out he was in jail, he’d find a way to get him out, if they didn’t hang him first.

He and Thom Jefferson had been friends since they were children and were molded together like brothers. They had been a secret society of two, since they were small boys of eight. At the age of seven years, Pate Jefferson brought Yank in from picking cotton in the field to be Thom’s live-in playmate while Thom was under quarantine from scarlet fever. For one solid year, Yank slept on the floor at the foot of Thom’s bed, and they became as one. After Tom recovered from the illness, Yank was sent back to the slave quarters, and Thom often sneaked down to see him. Their friendship and adventures became a well-kept secret among the slaves.

On Yank’s fourteenth birthday, after a trusted house servant escaped in the middle of the night, he and Thom began to plot for Yank to become free. Thom taught Yank how to swim in the nearby river, and breathe underwater through the hollow reeds that grew along the riverbank. By the end of his sixteenth year, Thom had helped Yank escape four times under the unsuspicious, but steady gaze of his father. However, their determination had been no match for the bloodhound instincts of Bedford Slang. Each time he caught Big Yank and brought him back, he was bound in chains, but never in spirit.

After the guard came and checked his chains again, Big Yank dozed back to sleep on the muddy floor. He dreamed he was running and laughing in a sunny open field shouting joyously in his newfound freedom. Moments later, he was awakened by the cranking sound of a key in the jail door. His heart leaped wildly in his chest when he saw Thom Jefferson’s silhouette in the doorway. He hoped someone from the plantation would be coming to get him before the day ended, but he never expected it to be Thom. He figured it would most likely be the two Salem Brothers, who were the most-feared overseers in the county. They were hated in the slave quarters because they used their thick rawhide whips on the women, young and old, and the children.

As Thom loomed large in the doorway, he winked at Yank, while the guard kneeled and fumbled to unlock the shackles on Yank’s feet. Not one word was spoken, as Thom eased behind Yank with a double-barreled shotgun pointed at his back, and nudged him to move toward the door.

Big Yank was so overcome with relief at the sight of his friend that he began to tremble with excitement. But the smile on the inside of his face quickly faded when he saw the Salem Brothers waiting outside with pointed shotguns. His heart sank to his bare feet, as he slowly shuffled through the iron gates surrounding the jail. Reluctantly, he climbed aboard the horse-drawn wagon with Thom still prodding him in the back with the barrel of the gun.

When he squatted to sit in the thick scattered hay still warm from the afternoon sun, he wished for the speed of death over the slow agony of bondage. He knew he was bound for the “Black Box,” behind the Big House, where he would sit locked in confinement for at least three days with nothing but water. At the end of the third day, if he survived, he would be returned to the slave quarters with a neck iron locked around his neck. This was done as a warning to other slaves that all escape attempts would be stopped.

As they slowly entered the nearby woods, Yank thought of jumping out the wagon, and running to hide in the thickets of bush he knew so well. Though he suspected, even with Thom present, one of the Salem boys would most likely shoot him in the back.

Suddenly, the creaking wagon stopped abruptly in a dense part of the woods, and Thom ordered Yank to step down onto the ground. As they walked a distance away from the wagon, Yank stared at Thom with a puzzled look. It quickly turned to shock when Thom put his arm around his shoulder in the presence of the other two white men, and spoke quietly and openly of a new plan he was certain would work.

“I arranged for you to escape for good this time. The Salem Brothers see you, but they don’t see you. I ordered them to have temporary blindness.”

“How’d you do that?” Yank asked, looking back to see if the other men had moved. They were staring straight ahead as if they could hear nothing.

Thom explained how he’d paid The Salem Brothers twenty gold pieces each to go along with his plan. He also threatened to tell his daddy about their illegal moonshine operation up in the backwoods on the Jefferson Plantation.

As they walked side by side up a nearby hill, Big Yank glanced back at the Salem Brothers leaning peacefully against the wooden wagon with their heads still turned in the opposite direction. Struggling to understand what was happening, he listened intently, as Thom told how he arranged for Yank to stay at a safe house until midnight. There, he would wait until the woman they called “Moses” came to guide him and twelve other slaves to freedom on “The Underground Railroad.”

Yank hugged his friend tight and thanked him with tears in his eyes, as he ran down the hill to the house cloaked by huge oak trees.

As he got closer, he recognized the big white house as that of Dr. Ben, the town’s only physician, who was rumored to be a secret abolitionist. When he reached the steps of the wide porch encircling the house, he hesitated. He peeked through the window and saw Dr. Ben’s house servant Mean Mary standing at the stove in the kitchen. As he raised his hand to knock on the door, “The Voice” in his head suddenly spoke quietly in his ear.

“Step away from the door! Wait! Don’t go in!”

Yank stopped, and pressed his ear to the heavy oak door. He heard nothing. “The Voice” spoke again, but this time it seemed with more urgency.

“Step away from the door!”

Big Yank didn’t know what to think. He had been hearing “The Voice” in his head since the age of twelve, after being baptized in the river by a visiting preacher man. There were times when he heeded the strange voice in his head that had mysteriously kept him from harm in the past…but not this time. He was anxious to be free and he trusted Thom Jefferson and his instructions more than some strange voice he didn’t understand. He decided to ignore the urging.

He knocked softly on the back door, inhaling the sweet smell of baked bread, and anticipating its taste. However, he fainted dead away when the door opened. There stood Bedford Slang, who quickly grabbed him by the neck and snatched him inside.

When he awoke moments later, Mean Mary was shaking him, and Bedford lay dead next to him on the floor with a knife in his back. Mean Mary, who’d gotten that name because she was known to kill chickens by wringing their necks with her bare hands, had stabbed Bedford with a carving knife. Yank learned that just happened by to see Dr. Ben about an infected foot he couldn’t put a shoe on. When he discovered he wasn’t there, he insisted on waiting for his return. When Big Yank knocked on the door, Bedford jumped up to open it and Mary stabbed him from behind.

Luckily, Dr. Ben was miles away on an overnight house call, which allowed Mean Mary, who was rumored to be free, and Yank to bury Bedford Slang in a nearby cornfield in hushed silence. They set ’s horse free in the field to run wild and hurried back to the house. After Yank ate, he hid in the horse shed until dark. At midnight, he slipped down to the river and caught the “Underground Train” with the woman called “Moses” leading a group of bedraggled strangers yearning to be free. When he crossed safely into the land of Georgia three days later, he kneeled down in the soft grass by a river and kissed the ground. He dug up a handful of dirt and shoved it into his pocket pouch. That day, he made a vow to never again ignore the mysterious voice in his head and to keep the name Jefferson to honor the friend who helped him gain his freedom.