The boy did not want to waste time in the ghost tree since he had a long way to walk and wanted to reach his aunts’ farm before dusk.
At sunset the boys’ longing for their mother became acute. At that time, they knew, she would be singing the sun to sleep. She had a variety of lullabies — one for each day of the week. On sunless days the sun did not set, for it was not there in the first place. Still she sang at the time she estimated the sun would be setting if the clouds had not imprisoned it. They could imagine her sitting under the ghost tree, singing softly as if to herself, and this time adding to the words that were meant to lull the sun to a restful sleep after its long journey across the sky, the plea that it should rally all its heavenly friends and relatives — the stars and the moon and the comets — to look after the boys and to guide them to safety. They imagined her singing until dusk, but failed to imagine that at that very moment she was lying in the throes of death in her room, with the blind matriarchs doing their best to nurse her back to life with a variety of herbs brewed in blindness at their hearth.
Dusk meant the journey should resume. It was difficult to leave the warmth and the relative safety of the ghost tree. If only they could take it with them. Perhaps they would find other ghost trees along the way. Reluctantly they walked on, and the Spirit (or Massa Blue Fly, as Abednego insisted) filled the skies with stars this time. Whiteness flooded the world. Silvery and shimmering. The ground was white. The trees were white. Usually in summer their foliage was green and could not be penetrated by the eye. But now they were naked and ghostly, although only a few of them were ghost trees. If anyone was following the boys, they would have nowhere to hide. They were two little black blobs charting a path on the whiteness.
The sampler nagged them: follow the North Star. Their eyes scoured the skies for the guiding star. Abednego pointed at the brightest star and decided that it was what they were looking for. But that was not the right star according to Nicodemus. The mother’s lessons had sunk well into his head, complemented by book reading — rudimentary books stolen for his reading pleasure from the big house by The Owner’s children. Books to be returned, of course, before they were missed by the lady of the house.
To find the North Star one had to locate the Big Dipper first. They traced with their eyes the two stars at the end of the cup of the Big Dipper. These were the Pointer Stars, for they pointed the boys to the next bright star, which was the North Star. From there it was easy for them to tell which way was north. They changed direction and trudged northward.
The impression the boys had got from their mother’s stories was that throughout their journey they would come across quilts hung out to give them directions. But there were no such quilts. No Jacob’s Ladder hanging out of a window or from a fence, empowering them with information that they could use for their survival. Perhaps it was because their whole journey was undertaken at night and people only sunned their quilts in the daytime. In the day they hid in the woods, in deserted barns or among boulders that they roofed with dead leaves retrieved from under the snow. They slept, for they did not want to invite the eyes of the enemy. However, despite the risk of capture, they could not resist building a fire after every few miles to warm themselves lest they be frostbitten.
The sampler reminded them: follow the Drunkard’s Path. It was one of the lessons the Abyssinian Queen had drummed into their skulls. Never take a straight line in all your journeys. Only evil travels in straight lines. From time to time the boys took a zigzag path instead of walking straight northward. They headed northeasterly. Then northwesterly. Then northward for some time. And then again northeasterly. It was like a game. Occasionally Massa Blue Fly visited and hovered above their heads and then disappeared, only to materialize again when they had forgotten about him. By now they were convinced that it was indeed a familiar spirit: the Spirit that allowed them to escape in winter in the first place and that must now protect them against other spirits that were bent on facilitating their capture. As long as they kept to the Drunkard’s Path they would be safe even from trackers.
As the boys followed a combination of the North Star and a Drunkard’s Path the Spirit made the snow fall heavily and once more covered their tracks as soon as they had made them. Even the sharpest of bloodhounds would have lost their scent. But, as before, the snow’s effort was not needed, for the chasers and their dogs were not anywhere near the area. They were ahead of the boys and were heading toward Gallipolis, reputed to be one of the major crossings of the Underground Railroad. At that time the boys were trudging in Mason County in the direction of Pomeroy.
When it was unbearably cold they prayed for snowstorms. Just minor ones. During snowstorms it was generally not so cold. When snowflakes were thick they knew there would be a blizzard. They sought cover in yet another ghost tree.
The distance between Fairfield Farms and Pomeroy was about fifty miles. But because of the Drunkard’s Path it became almost a hundred miles, and it took them a number of days to travel. Delays were caused by lack of food after their dried fruit had run out. A number of times they had to dig in the snow to feed on the soil under it. On two occasions they robbed the scaly bark of the nuts that had been stored by the squirrels for winter survival. Then there were the two nights they had to spend in a cave while Abednego was recovering from fever. Nicodemus had to nurse him back to health by burning twigs and forcing him to inhale the smoke. On the second day Massa Blue Fly visited and Nicodemus knew that his brother would be well again.
But it was the visit of another friendly soul that convinced the boys that the Spirit would always be there to protect them throughout their flight. The soul, in the solid form of a haggard Caucasian male, had been invited by the smoke. He introduced himself as an abolitionist who would save them and lead them safely across the Ohio River. And indeed he saved them from starvation by giving them deer jerky and a swig each from his flask of home-distilled whiskey. There was no time to waste, the man told them. They had to leave immediately and did not have to travel by night since no one would suspect they were fugitives if they were with him. They would pass for his slaves.
Abednego, who was still not strong enough, rode with him on his horse while Nicodemus trotted beside it. But after a few miles it dawned on him that they were no longer moving northward where the great river would surely be, but in a southwesterly direction. The moss on the bark of the trees planted this doubt in his mind, for it was growing almost on the opposite side to the direction they were taking. He voiced his reservations to the abolitionist but he assured the boys that he knew all the shortcuts to Ohio and the route they were following was the correct one. They walked for the whole night and at dawn they reached the river. It seemed the fever had returned to Abednego and he was having the shits all over the abolitionist’s horse. The man could not take this affront to his beloved horse. His attitude changed and he was no longer the friendly soul he had been for the past hours on the road. He demanded that the boys clean his horse and bathe themselves in the river before he could proceed on the journey with them. It was a reasonable demand, Nicodemus thought, for who would want to take stinking boys to freedom on a stinking horse?