Mind Of A Slave

Amos's Family

18.

"AMOS, YOU ALRIGHT?"

"He ok?"

"Come, get 'im inside."

They help me lie him down on his bed. As one of them pats his hair and others talk to him to no avail, I notice how caring they all are. I have never met any of the men who Amos shares a cabin with, but watching them now, they seem to treat him like a brother or a son. Amos once told me that his mother died and he doesn't know where his father is. He has no family, yet maybe he does. Maybe to him, these boys and these men are his family.

The way they speak to him, watch him, help him, they must have known him for most of his life. They must have watched him learn to walk, listened to his first words, and watched him grow up.

"You're Cass?" A tall man asks.

"Yes," I say.

"Amos's tell us a lotta 'bout you."

I smile a little.

I walk over to Amos and sit down on the edge of his bed. His body is wracked with tremors. I wipe the cold sweat from his forehead with the corner of his sheet.

"Hey."

I turn. The tall man is squinting at me. He clears his throat and bites his lip.

"You...um...he's tell you 'bout Patrick?"

The cabin falls silents.

"That he escaped?" I say. The people nod, and I remember that they don't know. They don't know what I saw. They don't know that Patrick's dead.

"I heard from my Mama," I explain, "An' from Agnes."

"Patrick live in this cabin wiv all a us," says the tall man, "he were real good to 'is wife, he were. He were a good man, an' 'e were like a father to Amos, you know."

"Amos told me," I say.

"Amos...he....'e were talkin' 'bout tryna fin' 'im, after the war is ended." The man continues. "'e says 'e were gonna go a lookin' for 'im. Said if 'e couldn't e'er fin' his real Papa, 'e were gonna fin' Patrick instead, an' they were gonna live together an' 'e were gone be 'is son."

The man stops speaking and something inside me twists. I suddenly feel sick. I think about the hope that Amos must have, and I consider revealing what I know, the truth about Patrick. I should tell Amos. I should tell every staring face, every innocent man in this cabin. They have a right to know.

"I thinks he can do that. An' I'd like to help 'im," I say.

I can't tell them.

Not yet.

"Thin' is, we ain't gone win the war," says a boy behind me. I spin around and realise that the voice belongs to Jack. I didn't notice him standing there before.

"Sure we might," I say.

"You said that before, but we ain't gonna. We ain't even close," he says.

Nobody speaks.

I survey every eager face in the room. Everyone is waiting for my verdict, waiting to hear what I think, waiting for some hope, for even the tiniest chance of potential freedom.

"I heard gunshots today," I say slowly. "Loud an' clear. Four a them."

The muttering begins quietly in the corner of the cabin and increases in volume until the room is filled with excited voices. Men shout at one another is tense disputes. Young boys run around the cabin, weaving between the legs of their elders, basking in the excitement, in the hope.