The Escape Part. 1
Jim knew it was time to run as soon the burly, sandy-haired overseer lowered his gaze and disappeared behind the side of the big house. The song in his head was almost deafening, pushing him from the field with the force of a hurricane. Really he had always known. The song had always been with him. He knew it the first time that same big man beat him with the iron-tipped whip. He knew it as he lay on the bed of straw later that night and felt the pieces of skin trying to ache and itch their way back together. That was when the song had come to him. When he saw his mother being driven away on the back of a wagon, her belly heavy with the master’s baby and the mistress watching from the window- he had known then. The song had finally become clear and it told him to run.
Redman, the overseeer, always took his time with his evening piss. Smoking a cigar a few feet away, sometimes blocked by the swaying sugar cane plants. Jim inched closer to the back of the field, avoiding the red-veined eyes of the other slaves. And then, when he had gone as far as he could without raising suspicion- he ran.
The scars in his back tensed and he forced himself to breathe. This was the farthest from the Law Plantation he had ever been. He ran faster.
Redman’s hoarse shout followed him into the woods, then there was the crack of a rifle. A warning shot. Redman would not kill him, he would get the hounds. Jim let the late evening shadows of the forest hide him from view, running quickly but carefully to avoid falling.
He had expected the mountains to be big. He thought they would swallow him up like a mother’s embrace. Instead they remained stubbornly in the distance. Even as he heard the snarls of the dogs behind him and pain dug like a needle into his chest.
Luckily, he was no stranger to pain. She visited him every evening when the machete got too heavy and the sugar cane too thick. It was in those times that he let the motion of the blade carry him and he had learned to lose himself in the rhythm of the work. Jim found that same rhythm now, desperately sprinting away from the Law plantation towards the impassive mountains.
He let the slapping of his bare feet against the wet earth match his painful breathing. He spent a long time Iike this: listening and breathing and running. Eventually, he realized he could no longer hear the dogs between each loud breath and so he stopped, holding his knees to keep from falling over. By now the sun was gone, replaced by a big, white moon.
Jim was tired and cold. He shivered against the cool wind that cut through his tattered clothes. He lowered himself carefully against the trunk of an old tree, closed his eyes and listened for the dogs.
