Trouble Don't Last

“Sometimes Lilly teased me about being scared of the dark […]

[…] ‘But human beings are supposed to be daylight people. Ain’t that why they sleep at night?’

That would always make her laugh. ‘Then it sho’ was a good thing you was born a human being. ‘Cause if you was some ol’ hoot owl or tree bat, you be in real trouble then.’

But nothing good could come from wandering around in the night. I knew that. As Harrison crouched under each dark window of Master’s house, I could feel those windows watching us. Same as Master Hackler’s cold gray eyes.”

This passage introduces birds and owls as symbols for freedom. At first, Samuel is somewhat afraid of the night birds, and this pattern represents his fear of the outside world and the dangers associated with an escape attempt. This association becomes clear as he expresses his fear of the night and personifies the very windows of the plantation as being just as watchful as “Master Hackler’s cold gray eyes.” However, later in the text, the imagery describing birds becomes less ominous, and this shift will symbolize Samuel’s changing ideas about the value of running away and seeking freedom.

“I stared at the round onions in his hands as if they were hot coals straight from the Devil himself. This was the first time it dawned in my head why Harrison had brought a sack stuffed full of things. I had figured he was mixed up the way he sometimes was, or something had happened out in the fields.

But now I saw why he had warned me to keep my top eye open and why he had crept into the kitchen.

A grave walker’s shiver went clear through me.

Harrison was planning to steal me from Master Hackler and Miz Catherine, and he was going to escape. Truth is, even the thought of going straight to hell didn’t scare me as much as the thought of running away.”

This passage emphasizes The Hardships of Enslavement and The Challenges of Seeking Freedom by illustrating Samuel’s deep fear of running away. The imagery of the devil and hell illustrates the degree of his terror, imbuing it with near-biblical significance. The Hacklers and other proponents of enslavement have tried to discourage people from running away by threatening punishment and convincing them that seeking escape is shameful and immoral. Samuel has internalized these ideas to some degree, but he is malleable enough to change his mind as he learns more of the truth.

“‘Tell you what. I got an idea.’ Harrison opened up the tow sack. ‘Why don’t you put yo’ fear in this here sack, Samuel? And say I carry it for you all the way north. And when us git there safe and sound, say I let it out, and it can float straight up into that free sky and be gone from us forever. How ‘bout that?’

Harrison put on a wide, silly grin and waved his arms at the night sky. ‘Whooeeee, there goes all them things that be skeering the life outta poor Samuel all the time…’

‘Ain’t scared,’ I said.

‘Know what that free sky is gonna look like, Samuel?’ Harrison kept on. ‘Big, blue summer sky going from one end of the north to the other. ‘Magine that. And blackfolks, they git to fly all around that sky. Don’t that sound like something to see?’”

This passage develops the symbolism of birds and the sky as representations of freedom. Harrison describes freedom in a far-fetched way, claiming that Black people can “fly” in free places. This is not literally true, but the image illustrates how different freedom is from enslavement, as Harrison makes it seem fantastical and miraculous. Having been enslaved their whole lives, neither Harrison nor Samuel has experienced freedom, and Harrison crafts an idyllic image to allay his grandson’s fears of the journey, implying that with the acquisition of freedom, there will be no further need for fear.

“We looked just like a pair of out-of-place birds perched in that tree. Harrison reminded me of one of those gray-headed birds, and I was one of those small, brown yard birds. Only we couldn’t fly off, that’s what I kept on thinking. If someone caught sight of us, we would have nowhere to go. We would be stuck in that old tree, nothing but a pair of helpless birds without wings.”

This passage further develops the symbolism of birds representing freedom. Although Harrison and Samuel are “free” insofar as they have escaped the plantation, Samuel does not feel truly “free” because they still have to hide and worry about being recaptured. Samuel and Harrison do not gain their freedom instantaneously once they step foot off the plantation. Rather, as they get further away and closer to Canada, they gain freedom gradually. Only when they reach Canada will their fears finally dissipate. Until then, they must remain on guard.

“We had been gone almost three whole days. Who was taking care of all my work?

I even started to wonder whether me and Harrison had somehow passed on to the Promised Land, the way folks do when they die. Maybe that’s why nobody had found us.

[…]

‘When you find the River Jordan at the top of Kentucky, you is halfways to Canaday, they say.’

[…] ‘And we gonna find the river tonight, I got a feeling.’

I remembered Lilly telling me about the River Jordan. Almost every river in the Bible was named Jordan, seemed like. Jordan or the Red Sea. On Sundays, Lilly would always read out loud from her little Bible. ‘Same as I did for my own flesh and blood,’ she’d say. Only, truth was, Lilly couldn’t read a word, same as all of us. She would just turn to a page and tell the stories she had saved up in her head. […]

[…]

‘Blackfolks, see, they call it the River Jordan, and whitefolks, see, they call it the Ohio River.’”

This passage highlights the author’s tendency to use bodies of water to symbolize different aspects of freedom. The Ohio River is significant because it separates the slave-holding state of Kentucky from the “free” state of Ohio. This would seem to suggest that the Ohio River is “holy” like the River Jordan because the “promised land” is on the other side of it. However, Ohio is not as “free” as one would hope because the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 makes it dangerous for freedom seekers to remain anywhere in the United States, even in states where enslavement had already been abolished. The Ohio River, or the River Jordan, represents a step toward freedom, but not freedom itself. The true “promised land” lies in Canada, where the Fugitive Slave Act does not apply and Harrison and Samuel will be able to live in peace and enjoy basic human rights.

“You don’t know nothing ‘bout what’s waiting for us in them bottomlands, Samuel. […] Them cornfields is full of patrols. Whitefolks down there, they hunt flesh-and-blood people. Got guns and dogs and whatever else they can find to catch blackfolks. Hunting you and me ain’t no different than trapping animals to them.”

This passage develops the theme of The Challenges of Seeking Freedom. Having escaped the plantation, Harrison and Samuel must now come to terms with the fact that their journey is far from over, and they have to watch out for patrols who would return them to enslavement. The simile of hunting animals illustrates the degree of violence practiced by the patrols, as well as the racist ideology behind enslavement, which dehumanized Black people.

“‘We can’t go across the river like that, Harrison,’ I tried to tell him.

‘Who says?’ Harrison flapped his arms like wings above the water and the lantern bobbed crazily, up and down, in the darkness. ‘You and me is gonna turn into owls and fly away.’ Holding the lantern high in one hand, and cupping his other hand around his mouth, Harrison gave a loud hoot that echoed across the water. ‘Who-who-who-whooo…’

[…]

Close by, an owl called soft and low.

Only this time it wasn’t Harrison.”

This passage further develops the symbolism of birds standing for freedom. Bird calls are used to communicate inconspicuously, and the boat that carries them across the river is aptly called an “owl.” Birds often represent freedom, but the type of freedom symbolized by birds in the novel is freedom from enslavement rather than a more generalized sense of freedom.

“I squinted into the darkness, trying to see what strange kind of bird was coming to save us. Even though I knew it was downright foolish, I conjured up a picture of a big, silver owl flapping across the River Jordan and plucking us from the riverbank just as a crowd of white patrollers burst out of the cornfields with their dogs and their guns.

But what came out of the darkness was not an owl at all, of course. As we stood on the riverbank, an old rowboat slid out of the shadows. In the moonlight, I could see the silver ripple of its oars in the water and the dark shape of someone sitting in the middle. The way that shape looked, whoever was sitting in that boat was big. Powerful big.”

Although the novel frequently uses birds to represent freedom, the literal inability of a human to fly like a bird also emphasizes the fact that escaping from enslavement was so difficult that it often seemed impossible, just as flying like a bird seems equally impossible. When Samuel sees the rowboat with a stranger coming to help them, he is almost as surprised as he would have been if there had been an actual giant owl coming to rescue them.

“‘You think getting away with your life is something to be laughing about, boy?’ The river man turned quick. ‘Well, you just keep on laughing.’ Then, with a smack of his oar, he hit me and Harrison with a wave of river water, hard as a hand slap.

As me and Harrison gasped for air, the river man’s voice rumbled low and mean. ‘Your two scraps of life ain’t worth a thing. Not one thing to whitefolks.’ He squeezed my arm and pointed into the darkness. ‘You are gonna get to the other side of this river, boy, and open up your hand, and what are you gonna see inside of it? Nothing. See if you laugh then,’ he said. […]

[…]

It felt strange to stand on the Ohio riverbank and look across the water toward the Kentucky side we had left behind because, truth was, the Ohio side didn’t look any different than the dark Kentucky shore.”

This passage develops the theme of The Challenges of Seeking Freedom. Samuel feels relieved enough to laugh once they evade the riverbank patrollers, but the river man warns Samuel that more trouble will likely await him in Ohio, even if it is a “free” state. Samuel is initially disappointed that Ohio looks just like Kentucky and not like a magical promised land. This moment illustrates the fact that Ohio is not much safer for Harrison and Samuel than Kentucky was.

“‘There’s two things I learned when I run off like you and got away from my own master…First…you always walk as if you have the perfect right to do so, the same as whitefolks walk.’ […]

[…] ‘Draw attention to yourself…Don’t scuttle around like some poor, bent-over beetle carrying a few crumbs to his master. You slave or free? Walk like it. WALK!’

[…]

‘You run, they know exactly who you are. Haste will always be your undoing. You wait and look for their weakness. Then you plan a way out. Never go running off.’”

The river man gives Samuel some advice for how to continue to evade capture as he and Harrison travel through Ohio. Later, Samuel repeats the river man’s words to himself to remember what to do in certain situations. These pieces of advice end up saving Samuel, Harrison, and Ordee Lee from being recaptured by patrollers, and therefore, although the river man demonstrates questionable ethics at key moments, he nonetheless serves as a crucial helper to Harrison and Samuel on their journey.

“Harrison said, ‘Now, if my hands don’t belong to me and they take something that don’t belong to me neither, is that stealin’?’

[…]

‘This cellar don’t BELONG to us, and our hands don’t BELONG to Mas’er Hackler no more, so if we take something from this cellar, THAT would be stealin.’”

Harrison points out that accusing enslaved people of stealing from whoever owns them does not make sense legally. Since enslaved people are the legal property of someone else and cannot own property of their own, they cannot be guilty of stealing in this case. Moreover, when enslaved people take something, such as fish or food, from the plantation where they work for no pay, this is not exactly stealing because they were never properly compensated for any labor to begin with, nor would a fish or piece of food begin to compensate them adequately for years of their labor that produced profits for the plantation. Hearing this, Samuel initially thinks that he should be able to steal from anyone, but Harrison explains that it is different now that they are no longer enslaved; it would be wrong to take things from Mrs. Taylor, who is trying to help them, whereas they were justified in taking things from Mr. Hackler, who was enslaving them.

“‘You can step away now,’ the lady said, and after we moved far enough back, she bent over and lifted each lace corner of the handkerchief real careful-like, so that her white fingers didn’t touch the same coins that our black hands had touched. Miz Catherine was always that way, too. Made me feel like my skin was no different than fireplace soot.

[…] ‘I didn’t want to keep on hiding colored people in the cellar,’ she said, turning to leave. ‘But Jacob told me to carry his rifle and to keep doing the things just the same as he would do. You’ll tell me if you see him down here, won’t you?’”

This passage complicates The Role of the Underground Railroad in American History and adds nuance to the theme of The Challenges of Seeking Freedom. Even though Mrs. Taylor is participating in the Underground Railroad and helping Samuel and Harrison on their way to freedom, she makes it clear that she is only doing this to honor her deceased husband’s wishes. She also demonstrates a degree of racism that rivals that of Mrs. Hackler. This moment illustrates the fact that racism is pervasive even in northern states and even among people who are helping formerly enslaved people. Although Samuel finds this reality disappointing, he still ultimately finds satisfaction upon gaining his freedom.

“‘I’m just sayin that I got enough things of my own to feel sorry about, and a white lady and her dead husband who I never met before ain’t something I feel sorry about. If I died right here, you think she’d feel pity for my ol’ black skin? You figure she’d raise one finger to help you?’

I thought about how she had picked up the coins in the handkerchief, corner by corner. ‘I don’t know,’ I told Harrison. ‘Maybe.’

‘No maybe ‘bout it,’ Harrison snorted. ‘You a fool if you think so.’”

Harrison does not expect white people to help him, but ironically, Mrs. Taylor is technically helping them even if her reasons for doing so are lacking. Throughout the text, several characters resemble Mrs. Taylor in that they are partially helpful but still imperfect. This complicates the theme of The Role of the Underground Railroad in American History.

“I thought that this side of the River Jordan would be better than the side we had come from. From what Harrison had told me, I figured all of the black folks over here would be free, and all of the mean whitefolks and dogs would be gone, left behind. But this side of the river was full of its own kind of trouble, seemed like.”

This passage develops the theme of The Challenges of Seeking Freedom by illustrating the degree of “trouble” that exists even in the “free” state of Ohio. Despite having escaped the part of the country where enslavement is still legal, Harrison and Samuel must still watch out for dogs, patrollers, and even racism on the part of members of the Underground Railroad.

“On the table, something caught my eye.

A powerful-big book sat in the middle like a split-open piece of tree trunk. I leaned over to look at it. Words filled one whole side of the page, thick as weeds, and on the other side was an ink drawing so real it seemed as if it would come alive. The drawing showed two whitefolks with wings flying over an old man with a long beard. His eyes stared up at them in a frightened way, and the flying whitefolks reached out of the sky toward him. Their hands looked like such soft human hands that I had to touch the page to make sure they weren’t.

‘Never seen a book the size of that before,’ Harrison whispered, coming over. ‘Looks like something sent straight from the Lord himself.’

‘That a whitefolks’ Bible?’ I asked Harrison.

‘Could be. Looks that way.’

[…]

‘Nothin like Lilly’s Bible,’ I said.

‘Course not,’ Harrison snorted. ‘Whitefolks, they got their big fancy Bible. We got ours.’”

Ohio, despite being a “free” state, still harbors people who exhibit extreme racism and support segregation. This passage symbolizes the racial divide that exists in both northern and southern states, and the division is illustrated with the description of an ornate Bible used by white people, which does not resemble the Bibles that Samuel has seen Black people using.

“‘Our forty-fifth visitor was a boy named Samuel, eleven years of age. Light chestnut-colored skin, features good, wide-awake, well made, but he speaks little, the way children in bondage are apt to do. Samuel ran away from a Kentucky master who caused him to suffer severely by selling off the boy’s own mother when he was only a small child. He appears of good moral character and traveled north with an aged slave named Harrison.’ […]

It felt awful strange listening to the Reverend tell a story about me as if I wasn’t even standing there, saying ‘Samuel this and Samuel that…’ as if he had raised me the same as Harrison and Lilly had done.

Truth is, no one had ever written one word in ink about me before. Whitefolks did their writing about whitefolks, and blackfolks didn’t have any use for writing. So I didn’t see why a reverend would bother to write a straw about me. All the same, it made me feel like I had turned into a whitefolk and grown about two feet, to hear him go on and on like that.

[…] ‘Why you writing that about Samuel? We don’t read none at all.’ […]

[…] ‘As I told the boy, I write the stories for my congregation.’

‘Don’t believe a word of that,’ Harrison shook his head. ‘No, I don’t. No whitefolks in their right minds want to hear the story of us poor colored folks, no, sir, they don’t.’”

Samuel and Harrison disagree on whether having their story written down is a form of liberation or an exploitative danger. On one hand, Samuel would like his story written down because this has never happened before and it feels empowering. On the other hand, Harrison believes that Reverend Pry is using the story to turn their lives into a spectacle, and the author implicitly supports this view, as the reverend’s very name suggests that he likes to “pry” into the private lives of the freedom seekers who come to him for help.

“‘Don’t want no whitefolks reading ‘bout me and you. I been thinkin’. Say Mas’er Hackler or Miz Catherine reads it. Say one of them white patrollers reads it. They gonna be circling us like buzzards, sure enough.’

[…]

‘And know what my first master did ‘fore he sold me years and years ago? I remember it plain as yesterday…He took out his fancy quill and wrote something down on a piece of paper. And Old Mas Hackler did the same when he bought me later on…know what I’m sayin, Samuel? I don’t like writing atall, nothin good comes outta putting down words.’

[…]

And he walked to a half-open window, tore the paper to pieces, and flung the writing out into the darkness. Stunned, I watched the scraps of paper flutter away. My whole story, the first story anyone had ever written down about me, was gone on the night wind.”

Because white people use writing to support the institution of enslavement, and because enslaved people are likewise not allowed to write or read, Harrison reasons that writing will not produce any positive results. Samuel understands that writing can be used for evil, but he has hope that it can also be used for good. This moment is significant because in reality, narratives written by formerly enslaved people like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs really did help the abolitionist cause.

“‘You remember me telling you how my ol’ master’s son caught me fishin one night when I was young?’ […]

[…]

‘They went and gave me a lash for every one of them fish I caught that night. […] They said the pond wasn’t mine, and the night wasn’t mine, and the fish wasn’t mine.’ […]

‘Got eleven scars on my back from them fish, Samuel, and the whole time my master was laying his cowhide across my back, […] I was thinkin that someday when I got myself free, I was gonna have me my own pond in the north, and I was gonna own every one of them fish in my pond, right down to the muddy bottom.’

He picked up the fish head. ‘Walked all this way north to find out it ain’t no different here atall. Nothing belongs to us here neither.’”

This passage develops the symbolism of ponds standing for freedom—or in some cases, the lack thereof. While enslaved, Harrison was punished for fishing in a pond, so he looked forward to fishing freely one day. However, in Ohio, white people still steal his fish, even though he is no longer enslaved. This pattern illustrates the fact that even in areas that supposedly espouse freedom for all, true freedom remains elusive.

“We sat there in the closed-up woodshed, listening to the birds call outside, and a big yellow hornet buzz and peck at the window. Truth is, the sound of those birds made me feel worse inside. I thought about all those birds soaring around the treetops while we were hunched over like rats in the woodshed. My stomach grumbled. Last thing we had eaten was the loaf of bread at the whitefolks’ church. Running and hiding. Seemed like that’s all we had done for days and days. How many days had it been? I tried to count. Was it five or six since we had run off? There’s nowhere in this whole United States that a runaway is safe, the river man had said. Would me and Harrison be running and hiding our whole lives?”

Forced to hide once again, Samuel does not feel as though he is truly free. This passage complicates the association between birds and freedom because Samuel feels like the animals are actually much freer than he is. In this moment of deeply restricted freedom in a supposedly free land, he cannot imagine that he and Harrison will ever achieve their goal.

“‘I saw you from the window. Why you creepin round my house? You lookin to take something that don’t belong to you?’ […]

[…]

‘Don’t know no Green Murdock and don’t know why he tol’ you to come here,’ she said sharply. ‘Git off my porch, and don’t you come callin round here again. I don’t take care of no poor colored folk.’”

Green Murdock makes the racist assumption that if he takes Harrison to a Black neighborhood, surely the Black people there will look after him. However, the immediate rejection of the first woman that Samuel approaches renders Murdock’s assumption absurd. She has no interest in helping strangers even if they do share her racial heritage. Throughout the text, the author finds multiple ways to demonstrate that a shared racial heritage does not necessarily guarantee that one person will deign to help another, especially if they might put their own lives at risk for doing so.

“‘You thinking about how it will be up there in Canaday? What it’ll be like to be free your whole life?’

I tried to think about freedom, but the only thing I could see in my mind was a big, empty field. And the free people wandering around in that field were holding nothing in their hands. If you were free of everything, what did you have left? That’s what I kept on thinking. Freedom was just like being given a cornfield in winter, with everything green pulled up and taken away.

Even my momma was nothing but a shadow in that field. Only thing I could see was a far-off wagon with her sitting inside it, the same as Lilly said she looked like when she left.”

This passage further illustrates The Challenges of Seeking Freedom. Samuel still has trouble imagining freedom because, so far, he hasn’t really experienced it at all. Instead, he has been forced to hide and sneak across the so-called “free” state of Ohio. This passage also illustrates the fact that freedom without one’s loved ones is bittersweet at best.

“‘Know how MANY I lost in my life, Samuel?’ Harrison hissed. ‘I lost as many people as there is stars on this quilt.’ Pointing a finger at each star, he recited named I’d never heard before. ‘Mary Epps, my birth momma. Sold. My father, James Johnson. Whipped to death. Emeline and Rebecca, my two little sisters. One sold. One sent off as a wedding gift. My three brothers. Abraham, Charles, and James…All put in irons and sold south, same time they sold me north to Old Mas Hackler.’

He crumpled the corner of the quilt in his hands. ‘And my only wife, Belle, worth more than all the stars in the sky—took away from me and never heard from again.’

He raised a trembling finger and pointed to me. ‘I don’t know what you heard, Samuel, but I ain’t answering no more of your questions. It’s better to be all alone in this world, you just remember that. You can’t lose nothin then. After your momma was sold, I told Lilly that the Lord Almighty could strike me down, but I was gonna raise you as if you was all alone in this world. “Maybe if we git free, maybe I’ll tell him then,” I said.’”

Harrison elaborates on The Hardships of Enslavement by listing the many people he has lost over the years. The scathing nature of his recitation reflects the deep bitterness and anguish that he still feels. Because this compounded grief is so painful, he thought it was better to conceal his relationship to Samuel in order to protect the boy from similar pain in the event of their separation.

“‘Tu-ee, tu-ee,’ the person whistled real low. It sounded just like a little night bird whistling. But before me and Harrison could whistle back, Ordee Lee jumped up and said loudly, ‘We here. Don’t go and shut that door. There’s three of us colored folks hidin in here.’”

Bird calls are once again used for inconspicuous communication on the Underground Railroad, further emphasizing the significance of birds as a symbol of freedom. Ironically, Ordee Lee doesn’t understand the code and answers conspicuously, but this isn’t a problem because no one else is around. The moment provides a quick flash of comic relief in the midst of an otherwise tense and serious chapter.