June 16, 1853
Diary
We were doing our late-night rounds to search for runaway slaves. There had been a rash of escapes. There was a legend stirring among the slave population that a messiah, carrying a sledge hammer had come to free them from tyranny. Some had waited with patience; others had tried to escape to find this savior and help in the cause.
We had the jailers wagon that night, outfitted to two horses. There were four of us on horseback: Jeb, Sam, Robert, and myself. John had control of the wagon. We were making our way down the road beside Stones River, the path most frequented by runaway slaves. The moon was full and I was admiring its reflection in the dark night river. I saw a person emerge from the water, head, then shoulders, and finally the figure stood with torso exposed, waist buried in the water. We were about fifty feet from the edge of the river. The shadow stopped and didn’t move any further towards the shore.
“Hey, who is that. Is that a runaway?” I asked. No one had been looking. Jeb yelled the posse to a stop.
We made our way down to the river. John held his lantern up high. There standing in the river was a runaway slave, a towering man with a slick bald head.
“Come up outta there boy!”
The man began wading towards the shore. His wrists were shackled but the chain was broken. Somehow, he had broken the link. As he come further ashore, it seemed he grew larger. The water moving in waves with his motion, crashing as it hit the large rocks lodged in the riverbank. In his right hand he was holding a huge sledgehammer, with a bright silver head.
“Put that damn hammer down,” commanded Sam as he climbed off his horse. He pulled out a whip from his saddle bag. “I said, put down that hammer.” Sam snapped the whip across the man’s chest, but he kept advancing, as if nothing had happened. Sam whipped him across the face, but the man kept on walking. Sam lifted his arm again, ready to strike for a third time, but as soon as the man reached the shore, he dropped the hammer.
His ankles were shackled as well, and as was the chain on his wrists, this one too was broken. He was barefooted and for the first time I noticed that he didn’t wear a shirt. His skin was covered in scar tissue from what looked like an infinite number of whippings. He was at least a foot taller than Robert, who was the tallest man I knew. I was hoping he would come peacefully.
“We ain’t gonna have no trouble, are we?” asked Sam. The man didn’t respond, but willingly walked to the back of the wagon and waited. Sam put the key in the padlock and struggled to snap it open. “Damn rusty lock.” After a few tries the lock snapped downward and Sam opened the door. The man got in and sat down on the bench, never resisting, never causing any trouble.
“What about the hammer Sam?” John asked.
“Leave it.”
We made our way down the road. We were about a mile from the Stanton Plantation. I rode up beside the wagon to get a look at our prisoner. I couldn’t see him in the darkness, but I could tell he was motionless.
“Who owns you?” I asked. No response. “Out for a nice swim? Who owns you? If you don’t tell us we’ll just give you to Boss Harriman. That usually scared slave folk. Boss Harriman owned a little land, but he was a ruthless slave owner. He drove them hard, killing a few here and there. A waste of money to give Boss Harriman anything. “Hey, one last time… who owns you?”
In a meek silent voice, he spoke, “the Devil.”
He didn’t say anything else after that, no matter how much I prodded him, until we got in front of the Stanton Plantation.
“Stop,” we heard from inside the wagon.
“Stop Jeb.” The wagon came to a halt. “What? Are you the boss man now?” Sam answered with incredulity.
The wagon door exploded open sending shards of wood into the air. The door hung from the chain, padlock still intact, swinging violently back and forth. It had been torn from its hinges. The big man squeezed out of the gap and stepped out onto the ground. In his hand he held a sledgehammer, the head of which was shining silver in the blue moonlight.
“Did you give him back that hammer?” Sam accused me.
“Hell no!”
Sam pulled out his whip again. From atop his horse, he swung down hard at the man. The escapee caught the whip with his left hand and yanked Sam to the ground in front of him and in one smooth motion crushed his skull like a rotten apple. I heard blood and bone smash into the side of the wagon. Sam’s horse fled back toward the way we came. The rest of the horses were shocked and scared. They were difficult to control, and John was bucked off of his. With no hesitation the big man walked over to John and slammed his hammer down on John’s knee. I heard the kneecap snap and John screech in pain. John tried to back away with his good leg, looking up at the demon determined to end his life. The hammer came down several more times. I couldn’t see exactly what was happening, but I knew it wasn’t good. John was silent.
I rode off of the road and into the grass, turned my horse to get a better look at the scene. Robert had fled. He was small in the distance and barely visible. I assumed he had high tailed it out of there as soon as Sam had been pulled off his horse. I was almost about to do the same when I saw Jeb come out from in front of the wagon and shoot the man with his pistol. The man fell to the ground face first. I rode over to where Jeb was standing and got off my horse.
“Is he dead?” I inquired.
“I sure hope so.”
The man suddenly grabbed Jeb by his ankles and pulled him to the ground. Jeb fell to his back. The man quickly crawled up Jeb’s body and shoved his thumbs into his eyes. Jeb yelled out for mercy, but none was given. I lowered my shoulder and ran as hard as I could into the man’s side. He didn’t budge. He was an unmovable boulder. The man threw me aside, causing me to stumble into a tree stump, hitting me squarely in the gut. I couldn’t breathe, the muscles in my abdomen tight, struggling to pull air into my lungs. I was helpless. The man got up off of Jeb, grabbed his hammer, and demolished Jeb’s head. He walked over to me, raised his hammer high, and stopped. I couldn’t see his face, but his eyes glinted yellow. He lowered his arms, turned, and walked towards the Stanton Plantation.
When I finally caught my breath, I ran towards the house. The house was far off the road, but I could see a flash of light as he busted in the front door. I was in a haze, irrational, my thoughts erratic, trying to figure out what I should do. Was this a man or was this revenge incarnate? He knew his mission. That much was certain. This was his destination. Should I, a mere mortal, interfere? I forgot about my horse and sprinted across the meadow to the porch of the large columned house. The door was in pieces. I ventured inside. The parlor was somewhat dark but there were lit candles throughout the room in various places. In front of me was a large winding ostentatious staircase, with carved pomegranates and painted grapevines climbing up the length of the railing. I grabbed a candelabra off a nearby cabinet and made my way slowly upstairs.
I heard no sound but the chirping katydids outside in the trees. In the back yard, where the slave quarters were, I could hear some conversation, some low muttering, which for some reason comforted me. There were other humans around. It was nice to know I wasn’t alone. I came to the master bedroom. Just on the inside of the room lay a woman in her night gown. Her head was missing and in its place was a hole encircled by blood and flesh. I peered down through the hole with my candelabra, and I could see lying on the kitchen floor below me was the woman’s head. I heard a low moan from the other side of the room. I lifted my light; J.C. Stanton, the distinguished town official and owner of the five-hundred-acre plantation, was lifted high into the air against the wall with the big man’s hand plunged deep into his gut. He pulled out his hand and tossed J.C.’s entrails to the floor. He shoved his hand in that fleshy crevice repeatedly, pulling out everything he could, leaving nothing inside. J.C. had defecated on his expensive mural he had paid handsomely for his wife’s thirty fourth birthday. It was a painting of Orpheus with lyre in hand, traveling to Hades to free the love of his life.
The man threw J.C. to the ground near the newly deceased’s crimson canopy bed. It was as immaculate as all the other furniture in the house and sat high off the tiled floor. I saw something emerge from under the bed, crawling on all fours. It was a dark, emaciated figure. It grabbed the body of J.C. and dragged it under the bed. The big man turned away from just staring at the wall, as if knowing that the thing under the bed was now gone and ready for him to resume his work. He grabbed his hammer and walked toward me.
I got up and ran like hell down the stairs and out the front door. I kept running until I found my horse. I heard a scream coming back from the plantation. I was ready to be out of there. There was a demon loose and I wanted no part of it. I looked back out of curiosity, and I saw that the slaves were running through the front door. Where had the man gone. I was struck by a feeling of obligation, so I stuck around, hoping to convince the slaves to go back. The first slaves arrived where I was waiting.
“Go back. You can’t be seen on the road.”
“We’re free. We’re gone.” A man responded and walked past my horse and to the other side of the road, making for the hidden footpaths in the woods. The rest of the slaves followed his lead and when almost all had past, a woman stopped and questioned me.
“‘Was that an angel or a demon?”
I thought about that for a minute as I heard the sounds of joy, echoing through the forest. “I guess it depends on who you are?”
I rode back where we had first encountered the man. From a distance I saw him standing on the bank, waiting. I felt a nervous rumbling in my stomach. I stopped the horse and watched. The man walked back into the river, slowly submerging himself, until even his head was under the water. I patiently made my way back to where he had disappeared, not wanting to get there too early in case he reappeared. At the edge of the river, was a sledgehammer, silver-headed, handle pointing to the moon, covered in blood. A part of me thought that maybe I was supposed to throw it back into the river, but then again, I didn’t want to see what would catch it.