Page 60 of Good Dirt

Badge

A t one time, the port city sold as many as four thousand badges a year to people who wanted to hire out their enslaved laborers. And, as it had always been the way of the world to counterfeit things of value, there was an underground network of skilled enslaved workers who had learned to copy just about anything, including those badges. It also was the tendency of people to subvert rotten systems by taking advantage of them, and Willis had been giving the matter serious thought for some time. He had already begun making inquiries when he saw the inscription on the bottom of Moses’s jar.

As he prepared to take a load of stoneware to the port city, he acquired a badge that read Porter , delivered in clandestine fashion by one of the rivermen down the way. On the outskirts of the city, he removed his regular Turner badge and pulled the leather string holding the new counterfeit over his head. He then drove the wagon all the way into the city and down to the docks. His fake badge would give him an excuse to linger in town, should it be necessary, rather than return immediately to the pottery. But Willis hoped that it would not be necessary to stay.

By that time, the decline of the once-great city was in full swing. The rails from the backcountry stopped far short of the docks, leading to the costly and time-consuming transfer of cotton and other goods to waiting vessels. Increasingly, merchandise was traveling to and from rival ports in the region, or directly to Northern cities like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.

In less than twenty years, the city would be ravaged by conflict and fires, and, later, a powerful earthquake. But on that particular day, no one at the docks could know this. On that day, the arrival of an enslaved porter with a handsome-looking load of alkaline-glazed jugs and jars was a small sign that commerce was still alive, if not well, in those parts.

Willis, now thirty years of age, had been hiring himself out on small jobs, with his owner’s permission, and keeping a small portion of the income he produced. He built and painted signage for buildings and ships and was skilled in the repair of wagon wheels, something he’d learned from Old Joe. He knew of men who had saved enough to buy their own freedom or that of relatives. He also knew of men who had pretended to be free and had been caught without a badge. Everyone knew what could happen to an enslaved man who was picked up by the guardsmen and sent to jail. Everyone knew what would happen to a woman if she was caught without a badge.

Willis had saved nearly enough to buy his freedom. But after what had happened to Betsey, he was scared. He couldn’t be sure that, even with sufficient funds, he would be granted his desire. It was time to make a move, no matter what the consequences. After unloading most of the pottery, Willis rode the wagon away from the wharf and to a riverbank outside the city. He watered and fed the horses and tied them up in the shade of a large tree, where they would be seen by one of the rivermen. Before his passing, Old Joe had made Willis promise to take good care of those mares. He patted their necks, then began the walk back to the city, carrying a small sack on his shoulder and a single storage jar in his arms. Moses’s special jar.

Willis looked at the ramp leading onto the ship. Could anyone hear his heart, pounding as it did? Just a few more steps, he thought as he mumbled, over and over, the words that were written on the bottom of the jar. He felt his limbs trembling but held his back straight as he walked up the ramp. Willis had layered dried beans over the items inside: a jacket wrapped around pieces of bread, salted meat, and other provisions. Unable to resist, he’d also tucked a few sheets of paper and a pencil against the inside wall of the jar.

He stepped onto the deck and headed straight for the hold where food and other goods for export would be stored for the voyage. When he heard footsteps coming his way, he scurried to the farthest point of the hold, deposited the jar, and crouched behind a row of large barrels.

Willis had reached the point of no return.