“My father’s plan would have used you the same way society has used me. Reduced you to your reproductive function, treated you as valuable only for what you could produce. And I realized I couldn’t participate in doing to someone else what’s been done to me. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “It makes perfect sense.”
We traveled through the night and into the dawn. As the sun rose, we pulled off the road into a grove of trees. I unhitched the horses and let them graze. Delilah and I ate some of the food I’d brought. Bread, cheese, dried meat.
“We should sleep in shifts,” Delilah said. “Take turns keeping watch in case anyone comes. You should sleep first.”
“You worked all day yesterday. I just worried.”
“All right, wake me in a few hours.”
She lay down on a blanket and was asleep almost instantly. I watched her for a moment, this woman I barely knew, who I was risking everything to help escape. She looked younger in sleep, less guarded. The intelligence she normally hid was visible in the peaceful lines of her face.
What had I done? I’d thrown away my entire life on an impulse to save one person from one specific evil. It was irrational, possibly foolish, definitely dangerous, but it was also the first time in my life I’d felt like I was actually doing something that mattered.
Over the next 13 days, we made our way slowly north. We traveled at night, slept during the day, avoided towns where possible. I used the forge travel passes three times when we were stopped by patrols or passed through checkpoints. Each time my heart raced as the patrol officer examined the documents.
“Says here you’re traveling on Judge Callahan’s business, escorting his property to Vixsburg for sale.”
“That’s correct, officer. The judge needs to liquidate some assets and Delilah here is prime stock. Should fetch a good price.”
“Mhm. And why is the judge’s son doing this instead of an overseer?”
“Father wanted me to learn the business. Can’t run a plantation if you don’t understand all aspects of it.”
The officer would hand back the papers, wave us through. Each time I’d keep my face calm until we were out of sight, then nearly collapse with relief.
Delilah was remarkable during the journey. She was stronger than me, more capable, more resourceful. When a wheel came loose, she fixed it. When we needed to ford a stream, she waded in first to check the depth. When we ran low on food, she knew which plants were edible and how to set snares for rabbits.
“Where did you learn all this?” I asked one night as we ate rabbit she’d caught and cooked.
“You learn things when you’re enslaved. You pay attention to everything because knowledge might be the difference between surviving and dying. I watched the men fix wagons. I learned plants from women who gathered herbs. I learned to hunt from my father before he was sold away when I was 10.”
“I’m sorry about your father.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just keep moving north.”
We talked during those long nights of travel. Really talked, in ways I’d never talked to anyone. Delilah told me about her life. Born on a plantation in Alabama. Sold to my father when she was 15. Nine years of fieldwork that should have broken her but didn’t.
She told me about dreams of freedom she’d barely allowed herself to have. About the constant vigilance required to survive slavery, about watching friends sold away, sisters raped by overseers, mothers separated from children.
I told her about my life. The isolation of being sickly and strange. The education that set me apart. The loneliness of having wealth but no real friends. The shame of being called defective. The growing realization that my comfortable life was built on others’ suffering.
“You’re not defective,” she said one night. “You’re different. There’s a distinction.”
“Society doesn’t see it that way.”
“Society’s wrong about a lot of things. Wrong about slavery, wrong about women, wrong about you.”
By the time we crossed into Tennessee, something had shifted between us. We weren’t master and former slave anymore. We weren’t even just traveling companions. We were two people who’d begun to genuinely care about each other.
It was Delilah who first voiced it. We’d stopped to rest in a barn we’d found abandoned. It was raining hard outside and we decided to wait out the storm.
“Thomas, can I ask you something personal?”
“Of course.”
“When we get north, when I’m free… what happens then between us? I mean, I’ve been thinking about the same question.”
“I don’t know. I suppose we’ll find you a place to live, help you get settled, find you work… maybe I’ll stay nearby in case you need help, but you’ll be free to make your own choices.”
“What if…” She hesitated. “What if my choice is to stay with you?”
My heart skipped. “Delilah, you don’t owe me anything. I didn’t help you escape expecting—”
“I know that, but what if it’s not about owing? What if it’s about wanting?”
“I don’t understand.”
She moved closer. “Thomas, over these past two weeks, I’ve gotten to know you. Really know you. Not as Master Thomas, not as the judge’s defective son, but as Thomas the person. And that person is kind and intelligent and brave in ways he doesn’t even recognize.”
“I’m not brave. I’m weak and sickly.”
“And you gave up everything to help me. You risked imprisonment and death. You’re traveling through hostile territory to bring me to freedom. That’s not weakness. That’s courage.”
“Delilah, even if you feel this way now, you might feel differently when you have real freedom. When you can make choices without desperation or gratitude clouding your judgment.”
