freedom

He runs, vigorously through the plantation's fields. The clock just banged six and the train will be passing the deep woods soon. He has but one chance, tomorrow the master will have returned and found the dead foreman, he will be lashed if not hanged for certain. The master always punishes him first. Thoughts run through his mind as he runs through the corn knobs, the first trees approaching and freedom just a train ride away. It has been planned, it has been decided, it has been prepared, all will happen as the Lord wills it, and the Lord surely wants his freedom. The trees grow less sparse and the ground more uneven, less than a mile to the tracks, he runs faster if faster is even possible, jumping logs and roots, dodging branches and looking always forward, towards the tracks he can't see, only sense. The night is calm all around him, no sounds but his footsteps on the dead leaves, the air feels paralyzed as he cuts it with his lean, muscular, well shaped body, years of work on it. The old used shirt hides the scars of the beatings, master always was careful not to hit his slaves on any visible place as that would lower their market value, he used to say, he will still say. He runs no more, the tracks are at his feet, the log he cut at his side. Pushing it into the track is no great workout for someone as used to carrying burdens as him, hiding on the right tree also a easy task, the hardest part was already behind him, now he only has to wait and jump. He thinks of all those he will leave behind. Maybe he can return, the war is approaching soon and he will be on the right side of it. His fantasies of killing master, dressed in the pretty uniforms of the Northern soldiers are interrupted by the long awaited trepidation of the tracks, the train comes finally, the five-thirty-five cargo is soaring through the endless plantations, the fields where uncountable brothers and sisters of his lost their lives, their dignity, their humanity. Soon he will be free. The white round light of hope starts shinning down the tracks, ir screams of freedom, his voice a mechanical thundering roar. The train is now within eyesight and he lets a small prayer out that the driver sees the log, and God answers in the form of a miracle, the miracle of freedom, he thinks, as the train comes to a full stop. In the dark he runs towards a carriage, slowly opening a door and jumping inside. He closes the door, careful not to make noise, even if the roaring of the great steam engine silences anything. He hides behind the crates and, for the first time in hours, breathes easily, his freedom a few stops away.