Walk Through Darkness by David Anthony Durham Read Free Book Online

death of water, just like they all were. He said that the rain had just scuddled the scent. He paused and looked between man and dog and added that perhaps the hound wasn’t much of a tracker.
    Morrison studied the dog. She studied him back. Don’t believe she’s the problem here, he said.
    Again the other man countered, saying that all the other slave hunters had turned their hounds to the north and were halfway to Delaware by now, and probably right on the boy’s heels. He said that there wasn’t anything else for it. A nigger don’t just disappear. And a nigger don’t swim across the Chesapeake Bay. I’ve known three men in my life who could swim, he said, and not a one of them had a drop of black blood in him.
    Morrison knew what he knew and now that he had mentioned it he had no more doubts. He proceeded cautiously, not wanting to share too many of his thoughts with this man, but needing some aid where his local knowledge failed him. He asked if the fugitive might not have crossed the water by boat, but Humboldt doubted this. There hadn’t been any boats in that immediate area, nor had any gone missing. He didn’t doubt that there were Quakers and other godforsaken sons-a-bitches who would help a slave escape, but he was dead sure that none of that element had gained access to this particular boy.
    So there it was, Humboldt said. He hadn’t stolen a boat, hadn’t been picked up by a boat, and he sure as hell hadn’t swum it. The boy ran north, he said. You get yourself in that direction and you might catch him. Otherwise you’re wasting my time.
    He turned to walk away, but the tracker asked him one more question.
    Did he have any family across the Bay?
    Humboldt spun around, annoyance in the crags of his forehead. No, no family, he said. But he did have a bitch he was hungered for.
    A woman?
    That’s right, the planter man said, and, as an afterthought and a kind indulgence, he went on to tell him what he knew of her and her owner.

F IVE The two men sheltered in the nook between the overturned trunk of a fallen oak and the base of one still standing. As Oli unwrapped the cheese, William swallowed hard to keep down the saliva that flooded his mouth. It was a frightful-looking block, slimy with the day’s heat and dotted with fungal growth. But when Oli’s knife bit into it, the flesh of the cheese sliced open beautifully, white inside and so soft on his tongue that it melted almost instantly. With this came great mouthfuls of corn bread, smoked fish and fresh peas eaten raw and so crisp that they popped between the teeth. They drank from a large skin of watered-down beer. It had little to recommend it over creek water, but William drank it down all the same.
    Oli enjoyed talking. As they ate he told a painful story of life on a Virginia plantation. He had been a sickly child, the only one of six to survive into his second year. He grew into a sickly man, never built for the hard labor to which he was put. His master had tried each year to sell him but was unsuccessful every time. Oli came to suspect that his master was planning some deviousventure with him. He had been approached by a slave trader who was willing to purchase Oli cheaply for resale into the deep southwest, into the fabled bottomlands of malaria and dysentery where owners hardly expected their chattels to live through a full summer. They get what work they can out of them, then write them off as little more than a footnote in a logbook on their deaths. Oli couldn’t abide that prospect. That was why he had hit the road north, his eyes set on that Canadian horizon.
    The day faded into dusk. Deep within the woods as they were, their hideout was almost dark as full night. The branches above them obscured the sky and unhinged the clockwork that marked the passage of the hours. For the first time in days William forgot to measure the progress of the sun. On Oli’s prompting, they built up a tiny fire, which they contained in a small bowl and