“You’re a sight,” he said. High in pitch, like a bird’s chirping. “You need something?”
Cora shook her head.
“I said, do you need anything?”
Cora shook her head again and rubbed her arms from the chill.
The third wagon was commanded by an older negro man. He was thickset and grizzled, dressed in a heavy rancher’s coat that had seen its share of labor. His eyes were kind, she decided. Familiar though she couldn’t place it. The smoke from his pipe smelled like potatoes and Cora’s stomach made a noise.
“You hungry?” the man asked. He was from the south, from his voice.
“I’m very hungry,” Cora said.
“Come up and take something for yourself,” he said.
Cora clambered to the driver’s box. He opened the basket. She tore off some bread and gobbled it down.
“There’s plenty,” he said. He had a horseshoe brand on his neck and pulled up his collar to hide it when Cora’s eyes lingered. “Shall we catch up?”
“That’s good,” she said.
He barked at the horses and they proceeded on the rut.
“Where you going?” Cora said.
“St. Louis. From there the trail to California. Us, and some people we going to meet in Missouri.” When she didn’t respond he said, “You come from down south?”
“I was in Georgia. I ran away.” She said her name was Cora. She unfolded the blanket at her feet and wrapped herself in it.
“I go by Ollie,” he said. The other two wagons came into view around the bend.
The blanket was stiff and raspy under her chin but she didn’t mind. She wondered where he escaped from, how bad it was, and how far he traveled before he put it behind him.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Nicole Aragi, Bill Thomas, Rose Courteau, Michael Goldsmith, Duvall Osteen, and Alison Rich (still) for getting this book into your hands. At Hanser over the years: Anna Leube, Christina Knecht, and Piero Salabe. Also: Franklin D. Roosevelt for funding the Federal Writers’ Project, which collected the life stories of former slaves in the 1930s. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, obviously. The work of Nathan Huggins, Stephen Jay Gould, Edward E. Baptist, Eric Foner, Fergus Bordewich, and James H. Jones was very helpful. Josiah Nott’s theories of “amalgamation.” The Diary of a Resurrectionist. Runaway slave advertisements come from the digital collections of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The first one hundred pages were fueled by early Misfits (“Where Eagles Dare [fast version],” “Horror Business,” “Hybrid Moments”) and Blanck Mass (“Dead Format”). David Bowie is in every book, and I always put on Purple Rain and Daydream Nation when I write the final pages; so thanks to him and Prince and Sonic Youth. And finally, Julie, Maddie, and Beckett for all the love and support.
About the Author
Colson Whitehead is the New York Times bestselling author of The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and one collection of essays, The Colossus of New York. A Pulitzer Prize finalist and a recipient of MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships, he lives in New York City.