580
WILLIAM STYRON
was shocked out of his sleep underneath a hedge to find himself in
the midst of a fox hunt. The great bodies of horses hurtled over
him
as if in some nightmare, and their hooves spattered
his
face with wet
stinging little buttons of earth. Crouching on his elbows and knees to
protect himself, Hark thought the end had come when a red-jacketed
horseman reined in his mount and asked curtly what a strange nigger
was doing in such a dumb position-obtaining in reply the statement
that the nigger was praying- and believed it a miracle when the
man said nothing but merely galloped off in the morning mists.
He had been told that Maryland was a slave state, but one
morning when he happened upon a town which could only have been
Baltimore he decided to risk exposure by creeping out of the edge
of the hayfield in which he had been hiding and calling, in a furtive
voice, to a Negro man strolling toward the city along the log road.
"Squash-hanna,"
Hark said. "Whichaway to de Squash-honna?" But
the Negro, a yellow loose-limbed field hand, only gazed back at Hark
as if he were crazy and continued up the road with quickening pace.
Undaunted, Hark resumed the journey with growing confidence that
soon it would all be over. Perhaps there were five more nights of walk–
ing when at last, early one morning, Hark was aware that he was
no longer in the woods. Here in the gathering light the trees gave way
to a grassy plain which seemed to slope down, ever so gently, toward
a stand of cattails and marsh grass rustling in the morning breeze.
The wind tasted of salt, exciting Hark and making him press forward
eagerly across the savannah-like plain. He strode boldly through the
marsh, ankle-deep in water and mud, and finally with pounding heart
attained a glistening beach unbelievably pure and clean and thick with
sand. Beyond lay the river, so wide here that Hark could barely see
across it, a majestic expanse of blue water flecked with whitecaps
blown up by a southerly wind. For long minutes Hark stood there
marveling at the sight, watching the waves lapping at the driftwood
on the shore. Fishnets hung from stakes in the water, and far out a
boat with white sails bellying moved serenely toward the north-the
first boat Hark had ever seen. In his patent leather boots, now split
beyond recognition, he walked up the beach a short distance and
presently he spied a skinny little Negro man sitting on the edge of a
little rowboat drawn up against the shore. This close to freedom Hark
