Kyla and Zammie couldn’t believe what they were hearing.
“They hit babies?” asked Kyla.
“Lord, yes, child,” said Ben. “They hit anythin’ that move if they feel so inclined. They take a swing at the wind if they think they could catch it.”
“We all been beat,” said Robert. “That’s jus the way it is for a slave. You have to endure cause you know its comin’ at some point.”
“All of you?” asked Kyla. “You too, Harriet?”
Harriet kept her eyes on Baby Claire. “Maybe a few times.” Harriet had actually received beatings as a near matter of course since she was very young. Some of the scars left would stay with her for the rest of her long life.
“That ain’t nothin’,” said Henry. He looked at the two cousins. “I once knew a boy not much older than you two. His name was Oscar. He was owned by a man near Bucktown where we from. An’ one day Oscar run off from his master, and they searched for him for several days. No one had any idea where he went to. Then one day, jus like that, he come back. His mama ask him where he went an’ he say he tried to run north. He was sick of bein’ a slave. But he got lost and got hungry so he come back. When the master found him in the slave cabin he drug him out and tied him to a tree where he lashed him across the back with the whip seventy-five times. Now it’s only legal to whip a slave thirty-nine times but that ol’ brute whipped that little boy seventy-five times. That young boy’s mama was cryin’ and pleadin’ for the master to stop the whippin’, pleadin’ on her knees, but his heart was cold as stone. The boy was near bleedin’ to death, but didn’t matter none to the master. When he was done he put a large metal collar on the boy’s neck that had bars like this.”
Henry used his hands to pretend that thin metal bars were sticking out from his neck and then rising up over his face. Zammie imagined poor Oscar having something that looked like a birdcage surrounding his head.
“Why did he do that?” asked Kyla.
“Well at the end of those bars were some bells that the boy couldn’t reach. That ways no matter where Oscar went, he could be heard by those bells. Master made that boy wear that collar for the near six months. All day, every day. Couldn’t even take it off even to sleep. That way no other slaves get any ideas to run away. When he finally took that collar off, Oscar’s shoulders were crooked for good. Never to be healed up. His back was all scarred and diseased. Never to be healed up proper. Soon he couldn’t work. He was in constant pain. He couldn’t lift his arms up all the way cause his neck and shoulders was so damaged. Not even twenty years old now and he worse off than an old cripple man. An’ all that jus cause he wanted freedom.”
Kyla and Zammie sat in silence digesting the terrible story. For several seconds only the rhythmic patting of falling rain could be heard inside the corncrib.
-- The story of Oscar
From Time Trip #2 (Chapter 13)
Image from History.com
Image from Freewebs.com
Image from Then and Now
TIME TRIP ADVENTURE 2
A RIDE ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
TIME TRIP ADVENTURE 3
WITNESS TO THE FIRST THANKSGIVING
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