A Light to My Path by Lynn Austin Read Free Book Online Page A

was being sold around here, they’d make us walk.”
    The slave who was chained to Amos gave a tug to make him keep up. “I heard the guards talking yesterday,” he said. “Massa Coop ain’t buying us for hisself. He’s a slave trader. Gonna sell us off in every port along the way, all down the coast, far as Florida and maybe New Orleans.”
    Amos swore. “Farther south we’re sold, the harder it’s gonna be to escape. Gotta go through too many slave states to get north again.”
    Grady didn’t care about escaping to freedom, only about going home. But the farther they sailed from Richmond, the smaller the likelihood that he would ever see his home or his family again.
    They turned a corner and Grady smelled the raw, fishy odor of the river. Sunlight reflected off the water, making him squint in the sudden brightness. Dozens of ships crowded the piers at Rockett’s Wharf: steamboats with tall, black smokestacks, sailing vessels with masts and rigging, barges and keelboats and paddleboats. Well-dressed passengers ambled around the docks, preparing to board, saying good-bye to their loved ones: men in dark suits and hats, children dancing with excitement, women in brightlycolored dresses, their stiff skirts flaring like bells. Families stood near their carriages and drays, waiting as house slaves shouldered trunks and carried satchels onboard. As Massa Coop herded Grady and the other slaves past, chains jangling and scraping, the white passengers took no more notice of them than they did of the sacks of grain and other cargo being loaded into the hold.
    Panic swelled inside Grady at the thought of sailing far from home. He turned to look back at the city of Richmond, searching for St. John’s steeple on Church Hill near his house, desperate for one last glimpse of the only home he’d ever known. But William gripped his arm and turned him around, marching him up the gangway onto the steamship. Grady tried to look over his shoulder, but before he could spot the familiar landmark nestled among the trees, he tripped over a coil of rope and fell facedown on the deck. William grabbed the back of his shirt and hauled him upright again, shoving him toward an open hatch with a steep set of stairs leading down into the bowels of the ship. Grady peered into the dark hole and felt as though they were shoving him into his grave.
    Suddenly, the urge to fight back, to save himself, welled up inside him, out of control. “No!” he screamed. “No, help me! Somebody help me!” He ran to the ship’s railing and clung to it, fighting with all his strength to keep from being sent below with the others. “Help me, Massa Jesus! Please help me!”
    “Stop it, you little fool!” William hissed as he pried Grady’s hands loose. “Don’t make no trouble for me—or for yourself.” He clamped his hand over Grady’s mouth and carried him back to the hatch and down the stairs. Grady kicked and struggled all the way as William dragged him into a room in the hold with all the other slaves, men and women alike. He heard the door being bolted shut from the outside.
    “Shut up!” William said as he dropped Grady to the floor.
    He could feel the ship rocking gently. The room was dark and stuffy, the stench and despair even worse than it had been in the slave pen. Grady and the others were no longer human beings but trade goods being shipped to market like the bales of cotton, barrels of salted fish, and sacks of grain that had been loaded into the hold with them. His stomach ached with the injustice of it. Rage at his helplessness burned inside him until he thought it would consume him. When he looked around he saw the same anger mirrored on every man’s face and heard the anguish he felt in the women’s quiet, mournful weeping. Unable to stop himself, Grady closed his eyes and clenched his fists and roared with despair.
    Without warning, William dealt Grady a blow to his stomach that knocked the wind out of him and sent him sprawling