Jay Fox — that's what the slaves called him — seemed frustrated as usual, standing by the weigh-in machine, watching the sixty-five black cotton pickers slowly approaching with heavy cotton sacks on their backs. Their eyes were inflamed from the piping-hot, smothering sun, and their tacky clothes clung to sweat-soaked, smelling bodies.

It was shortly after the six o'clock quitting time, and the overcast was fast filling up with dark gray cumulus clouds, bellowing out like giant puffy fingers scattering eastward. Still the atmosphere rained brimstone of impurity and heat against the smothering earth.

Big Bill was not of this group. He was a gardener slave who kept the big yard at the Karmans' plantation.

Exhausted and sweating profusely, he shot an acquisitive eye up at the blistering sky and retied the old rag around his forehead to check the flow of sweat dripping down into his eyes. Then he decided to check on ninety-five-year-old Miss Kate, with only her little mutt for comfort. A sudden stir of wind swatted him in the face with a foul odor. Big Bill stopped in his tracks, and his dark eyes dashed about the thickets. He knew that sickening smell. He had smelled that odor before. A dead body was nearby. Around the bend, he discovered a male slave who was shot dead and lying facedown in the gully leading down to Blackwater Creek. The sight of the dead man with maggots and blowflies crawling over his head pricked Big Bill in his heart. His strength failed him, and his bones felt disconnected. Sickened, Big Bill staggered backward, and he looked hunchbacked, almost crippled, as he turned from the dead man and headed for old Miss Kate's hut. He could smell her freshly brewed tea as he stepped inside the neatly swept dirt floor. He waved for her to remain seated as she rose to greet him, and he complimented her on the crochet that she had made that covered the trunk she used as her table. He drew in a deep breath as his eyes flashed about the room; his eyes caught hers again as a slow smile creased his lips. "It's good to see you, Miss Kate," he said, giving her a big tight hug. "This heat made me afraid for you."

"Same here, big boy." She grinned. "Big Bill, you like a son I never had. Son, I miss you every day."

"You like a mother to me, Miss Kate. My mother is dead now, but you bridged the gap," he said as he looked away. He was afraid to tell her about the incident, fearing the shock might cause the old woman to drop dead of a heart attack and there would be another body to be put into the ground.

Big Bill would have drunk another cup of Miss Kate's pine top tea, but it was time to leave, so he stood up and hugged her again and headed for the door.

"Big Bill, you take that bag hanging on that string by the door. It's catnip. It's good for one's nerves, you know. I'm an old woman, Big Bill. I can sense things. I love you, Big Bill, and I will send up my prayer for you. The Big Man upstairs named Jesus, well, he has not forgotten us, you know."

At the end of her path leading to Black Water Road, Big Bill looked back, and there was Miss Kate standing in the door, waving.

In spite of those horrible sights, those unthinkable brutalities, it did not deter Big Bill's quest for freedom. Such horrible experiences caused him to be wise without help from books. His hunger for deliverance made him religious without pages from the Bible. He seemed to know a little bit about everything, and yet in some ways, this big hunk of a man was as helpless as a newborn. Big Bill knew the dead man for only a short time. The slave was Dell Jones, a handsome tall black man. He was passing through and had stopped by the plantation to ask for work and scraps of food. Now his body awaits an overseer's order to have him cremated or to be buried in Harper's Cemetery.

Being tall, good-looking, and husky, Big Bill knew better not to look into any faces of white women as they stared sensuously back at him. Big Bill was feared among the overseers because they felt uneasy around him and spied on him day and night. At six foot four in his bare feet, which was mostly covered in red clay mud and specks of green grass, he had suspicious and shifty black eyes like a jungle ape. He was always pondering, shuffling, and glancing. His job at the plantation was raw and harsh — woodcutting, hoeing, cotton picking, and ditch digging — until Mr. Karman, the master of the plantation, discovered that Big Bill had this knack for sculpture and assigned him to the big yard, which he soon turned into a sculpture paradise. Big Bill stopped clipping the hedge swan and blotted the sweat from his forehead. His smoky black eyes raced quickly along the green lawn spread out like heavy carpets winding around white marble statues, the gold fishpond, and water fountains. A variety of sweet-scented roses tossing in the midday July breeze jerked out like octopus tentacles over white fenced gates.

Big Bill was both proud and vengeful to have created such an enchanted garden — vengeful because he could not claim a single red rose for Neva without casting an eye over his shoulder for an overseer. Those bastards were like bloodsucking leeches. They were everywhere. The dirty rag was already soaked when he ran it over his face again. His eyes traveled up the trunk of the four-hundred-year-old oak tree with branches like mountain peaks thrusting heavenward, strengthened by heavy rain and years of hot summer sun. Unknown to the suffering man, God had already answered his prayer, and like that great oak tree, there was still hope for him. Oh, he couldn't see his victory yet, but he sure as hell was hoping. His breathing was audible now, sort of wheezing, his black body drenched in the ninety-eight-degree temperature, and he restlessly returned his attention back to the hedge swan. A deep groan escaped from Big Bill's dry lips, bloating up from the depth of his belly.

Since 1864, hundreds of slaves escaped from both the North and South Carolina fields. Two young males in their midteens, the taller one shot and slightly bleeding, escaped one night with only a crescent moon guiding them as they weaved through horrible snake-infested creeks, struggling to hold on to their makeshift craft. In the distance they could hear the high-pitched howls from bloodthirsty hounds tracking urgently, nose pointed to the ground, lapping up their fleeing scent. In the still night, bullets echoed, ripping...