Chapter 5
FIVE
ZINNIE
We passed from Mississippi into Tennessee on our sixth day of walking. My back ached too much to bend down and kiss the soil I was leaving. I simply crossed over on weary feet, kicking rocks from my path and saying farewell, silently.
We’d managed a mere forty-odd miles at a snail’s pace due to the size of our caravan as well as the plantation man in the lead wagon misreading his map.
We’d gone miles off course before steering onto the correct trail again, resuming days of dust and oxen.
Of herding. Walking. Cattle and wagons. Noisy sheep.
Stubborn goats. And dust again. It was tedious.
Taxing. Despite fatigue, I couldn’t forsake tending my daughters and ensuring their wellbeing.
I often fell behind when stopping to nurse Hattie or change her nappies.
Or accompany my oldest two off the trail to relieve themselves.
Motion and my need for diligence were constant.
I felt stretched like a string. Such was life as we traversed Mississippi’s flat terrain, moving forward long after our feet felt like they’d break and bleed.
I’d known all manner of labor in life, but this long-haul walking added a new kind of weariness to my limbs and staleness to my mind.
There was no excitement of discovery, no exodus of bondage as life became strange, making us wayfarers and nomads.
Our stationary homesteads had been replaced with outdoor living and the elements.
It was a new vulnerability, adding to the uncertainty of my enslaved existence.
Yet having my precious newborn as a constant companion snuggled safely against me day after day was soothing. When moving my feet felt too much for my tired body, I moved for Hattie’s sake. “Littlest bit, I miss everybody being together in the cabin.”
I smiled at her responding to my lament with a yawn.
The cabin Lovie, Ella, and I shared with our children was drafty in winter, broiling in summer.
But it provided what the elements didn’t.
A roof over our heads, albeit with holes in it.
Now, our surroundings changed daily. Setting up camp each evening; dismantling at dawn.
We lay down with the moon, rose before the sun.
The ground and the back of oxcarts became our beds beneath the stars.
We were seen and noticed by nothing and no one except nature and God.
This trek feels endless. Like it might take more than a lifetime to reach Salt Lake Valley and its Mormon kingdom.
“Stop grousing, Zinnie. This ain’t but a touch of the journey.” It was too soon on our trek for me to be complaining. According to Buck, while serving libations at one of those planning meetings, he’d overheard the plantation men say our trek could take half a year.
I slapped away a cloud of gnats and prayed every month and mile would be worth it, that the west would be better than where we’d been.
And if it ain’t?
Maybe God would let me clutch my Annabelle and Abigail by the hands and melt into the thicket along the way and escape to freedom with Hattie safely bound against my breasts.
Until then, I’d suffer life’s daily limitations while reminding myself to appreciate the changing landscape of God’s creation.
No amount of walking could change the fact that the Creator was a divine artist. God took spring and laid her glory across the world with reverence.
The grass was thick. The woods dense. Towering pines and oaks offered shade to creatures and critters.
Flowers danced in the breeze. Marigolds.
Black eyed Susans. The skies were clear but cold, blue as a robin’s egg.
I grinned seeing a mother fox and her pups poking their heads from their den only to disappear at the sight of humans.
Sometimes in the morning before night fully faded into day, we saw deer.
Thankfully, we hadn’t encountered bears.
I yawned and rotated my head against the stiffness in my neck, thinking Mother Earth magnificent.
Nature would be even prettier without seeing all my captors.
“Miss Hattie, I have the misfortune of having four of the six folks arrogant enough to ever call themselves owning me right here in one caravan.”
I paused near the back of the trail, rubbing Hattie’s back with one hand and shielding my eyes with the other while scanning the band of travelers ahead.
Anyone or anything beyond eyesight was already lodged in my memory.
Two hundred conveyances—oxcarts and wagons—with sturdy teams of oxen.
Copious heads of cattle and livestock. Household goods.
Hound dogs. And Mississippi Mormons, or Mississippi Saints, as these religious zealots called themselves.
I’d lived among and taken care of white folks my entire existence and still these Mississippi Saints with all their trappings were nearly too much for my system as our west-bound caravan moved like some giant snake from Mississippi into Tennessee those first days of spring.
There were fifty-nine plantation people to the thirty-six of us enslaved folks who had no say in whether we left the region.
By force or choice, every person present was bound for Salt Lake Valley.
From the oldest (Miss Tandy from the Peterson plantation) to the youngest (my Hattie), we’d been assigned the building of Brigham Young’s Mormon kingdom.
I shook my head at the smallness of the world and this tightknit fellowship of white men whose intersected relationships and common, newfound faith had impacted my life and narrowed my experiences between them.
Four of my six human-captors are here!
The Jessups from Georgia. The Carters of South Carolina. The Petersons from Mississippi. And the Tollivers. I’d been bought, sold, handed down and passed around by every plantation family in this pilgrimage.
Except for the Carters. John Carter didn’t sell me. He gave me to his cousin Norene twelve years back as a gift at her and Master Ryland’s wedding.
“Hattie, baby, it’s more than a notion.”
I lowered the hand shielding my eyes and moved forward despite my aching feet. We were three days deep into Tennessee and free of Mississippi with all its ugliness. Yet there I was unable to walk fast or far enough to not be haunted by old familiar bondage.
“Mama, look what we found!”
I glanced over my shoulder to see my Annabelle with a cluster of little bits running in my direction. I stopped, curious what the fuss might be about. My oldest girl had the hem of her smock lifted like a makeshift apron, carefully carrying whatever they’d collected.
“What’re y’all younguns up to?” Seeing their glee smoothed the edges of the cantankerousness trying to get the best of me, left me grinning at the delight on their faces as they hurried towards me looking the way little bits ought to look. Carefree.
They were as bad as me, fresh to this thing and already complaining or asking countless questions about the voyage.
Children being children, their legs tired quickly and they needed to relieve themselves often.
The times they were allowed to ride on the oxcarts they fell asleep or played hand games until sitting was burdensome.
Rejoining us on the trail, they knew to stay near the rear of the Tollivers’ contingent, close to us adults, in our watchful view.
When not riding, they’d been told to make themselves busy foraging foodstuffs to keep our supply from dwindling, refilling water jugs in streams, or gathering kindling should one of the plantation people ride back in our direction and the children’s lack of labor be misconstrued as shiftlessness.
Even while trekking across God’s earth, they could never not be in service.
“We found dinner.” Annabelle’s excitement bubbled over as they neared.
“And it’s enough for all of us!” My Abigail’s smiling face was smeared with dirt. Burrs and leaves decorated her plaits. “We had to crawl under a bush to get ’em.”
I plucked debris from her hair and peeked at what Annabelle’s makeshift apron held. Breath caught in the back of my throat when I saw funny-looking oblong eggs.
“Lord, have mercy.” My voice was shaky.
“What’s wrong, Aunt Zinnie?”
I looked at Juniper, Lovie’s oldest girl. “Where’d y’all find these?”
A child in the group, a newly acquired friend from one of the other farmsteads on the pilgrimage, pointed to a cluster of bushes at the side of the trail. “Under there.”
“Put ’em down! Put ’em on the ground right now.” I didn’t bother waiting to ensure they complied. I pivoted and went in search of the biggest stick I could find. Finding nothing suitable nearby, I remembered a fallen tree we’d passed not long ago. I swung about in its direction.
“Zinnie? Whatcha doing and where you headed?” Ella had kept pace with Lovie, who’d been moving slowly due to kinks in her back from “sleeping bad.” Now both craned their necks to watch as I circled back and rushed past them and the goats they were herding.
“Finding an egg-killing stick!”
I didn’t need to tussle with that felled tree to release a limb. Nice fat branches lay scattered about the considerable trunk as if tossed aside by a tremendous wind. Snatching one up, I stomped back the way I’d come with Ella and Lovie tagging along, nosey as the day is long.
“Lovie, take Hattie.” I gave my sister my youngest before addressing the children. “Y’all move back.”
Our little bits moved aside as I approached, watching me as if I was a strange curiosity. Their collective gasps filled the air as I lifted that heavy stick and smashed those eggs repeatedly.
“Mama! We got those for supper.”
I paused my destruction to respond to Annabelle’s lament. “Child of mine, y’all eating these eggs? Or are these snakes chomping on you?”
“Those’re snake eggs?” Her eyes widened.
“Yes.”
Several girls squealed and ran in the opposite direction. I laughed lightly and resumed my destruction. The bravest of them huddled near, peering at the decimated eggs.