Standing alone at the back of the Atlanta Greyhound, I could not help feeling a sense of regret and shame that I was deserting my friends. I was fleeing like a coward from the people I knew, the only life I had ever known. I tried telling myself that if I had stayed in Miller’s Ferry, instead of letting deputy Eaker run me out of town, it would have been no more than a last, grand gesture. I would have been dead before the following sunrise. The thought did nothing to assuage my guilt.

My vision blurred as tears filled my eyes, tears that ran unchecked down my cheeks. Perhaps it was just the light of the early morning sun searing my face, or maybe the fact that I had not slept in nearly two days. More likely though, it was shock. Over those two days I had watched helplessly as my daughter Jessica was burned to death; my mother had been beaten and then hanged; and I had been hunted like an animal, fearful for my own life. None of the other passengers paid any heed to the sound of my sobbing. No-one offered me comfort. No-one even turned to look at me. I was just a nigger woman, and they had all seen the deputy escort me onto the bus.

Deputy Eaker was not a bad man, not when compared with many of those who lived in Miller’s Ferry. I appreciate now that he had kept me alive, protected me from another attack by the Klan. In his own brusque way, he was thanking me for the lives of his wife and son. Had I been more clear-headed there on the bus, I might have realised that his intent was one of compassion. Instead, at that moment, I hated him even more than those who had destroyed my family.

And my crime? I had tried to help people when there was nobody else that would offer aid. It had been my dream. For a few short months, I had run a clinic open to the black community of Wilcox County. It harmed nobody; yet there were those who wanted to destroy it, and to hurt me. The Klan considered me uppity and a troublemaker because I had not heeded their warnings. I had been beaten and brutalised: others had died because of my obstinacy, those who were closest to me. First it had been Ben, then my mother and poor Jessica, still only a baby. I owed it to them to stay.

I wanted to go forward and ask the driver to stop, to let me off along the roadside. Then I could walk back to what remained of my home, and to the doctor's surgery that I had run there. Only by doing so, by taking a stand once more, would I be able to expunge the shame that I felt.

So, on that Winter morning early in 1916, I stood at the back of the bus, my soul a tumult of emotion, as it carried me through the cotton fields of Alabama. I prayed for the courage to turn and face my persecutors, but I never took that one step which would have purged my soul of guilt. Instead, I left behind the life I had known, left all my friends. My heart cried out that I was abandoning them; yet never once did I look back.

If truth be told, I ran because I was scared.

***

I was born a slave on a large plantation near the village of Dry Forks in Wilcox County, Alabama. It was 1897, barely thirty years after the end of the Civil War. In 1865, with the addition of the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, slavery had been abolished in the United States of America. That minor legality was of small consequence amid the cotton fields in the heart of the South. Alabama chose not to ratify that particular amendment, as did many of the Southern states. My mother was a slave, so I too was a slave, the property of the master of the plantation to treat as he pleased.

Mother was not one of the field workers, but rather, a house-girl. She spent her days inside the grand plantation homestead, cleaning and polishing. When I was old enough, perhaps about three, I too became a house-girl, and was set to work in the kitchens. My earliest memories are of hauling buckets of water from the well in the courtyard to the scullery, and of the imprint of stone tiles on my knees from scrubbing the floors. As I grew older, I was assigned more important chores: washing the pots, polishing the work surfaces, tending the fires or scouring the stove. Later still, after my eighth birthday when I was considered more responsible, I was entrusted with cleaning and chopping vegetables and preparing herbs, but only under the close supervision of Monique, the cook.

There were times when I did something wrong, or worked too slowly, or even if I just made too much noise. Then I would be beaten. Though a slave herself, Monique ruled the kitchens. She was a big, grey-haired woman with a fiery temper, fists the size of dinner plates and a quickness that belied her age. If it was the cook that I angered, she would swipe at me with her hand, then continue with whatever she was doing as though nothing had happened. Her wrath evaporated as suddenly as it rose. I soon learned to duck, or to step away out of reach when I saw that look in her eye telling me I had erred. The master of the house carried a riding crop wherever he went. On the few occasions when I elicited a whipping from him, it left me cut and bleeding, running tearfully to find my mother. Fortunately, he spent most of each day out riding on his estate. He never came into the kitchens, and I rarely ventured beyond those confines. Usually I was able to avoid him around the house.

It was the master’s younger son, Luke, that I feared most. He was perhaps three or four years older than me. Luke needed no excuse to beat me, and seemed to go out of his way to make my life miserable. Whenever he caught up with me, and there was no-one else around to witness it, he would lash out with his fists and feet. With each blow, he would call me names and taunt me for the colour of my skin. From talking with the other children I knew that he treated everyone the same way, but each time he caught me it felt as though he was singling me out for special punishment. There were many nights when I went to sleep bruised and sore, and with my eyes swollen from crying.

My chores about the kitchen were normally finished by midday. During the afternoon, the other children and I attended school in the big barn. Even the boys and girls who worked the fields joined us for lessons, when we all learned reading, writing and arithmetic. I do not believe our master was especially liberal, I just think he was shrewd enough to realise that literate slaves had a longer working life. Once they were too old to do manual work about the plantation, they could be put to work in more administrative roles, and they also commanded a higher price when they were sold. Whatever his reasons though, I did receive an education.

The best day of the week was market day. That was when Old Samuel would hitch up the cart and we would ride into the nearby town of Camden. I was only along to run errands, and to carry small parcels, but every trip was an adventure. The market was always bustling, filled with exotic aromas, vibrant colour and the sound of a hundred voices. The redolent odours of cinnamon, nutmeg and other spices permeated the air. Stall-holders hawked their wares: fruit from Florida, spirits from Kentucky, grain from Kansas and cheeses from Wisconsin. Poultry, squawking and clucking at the butchers’ stands, competed with raven-clad, itinerant preachers prophesying immanent doom. Vendors haggled over the price and cut of fine linen, shouting to be heard above the noise of knife grinders. And through it all, or so it seemed, the entire population of Wilcox County, black and white, wound their way.

One section of the market, though, was always empty. We never visited town on days when slaves were sold. Even the white traders and buyers seemed to avoid that corner of the square where the auction platform brooded ominously.

Those early years of my life were unremarkable. Each morning, I worked in the kitchens, and in the afternoon there were school classes, except at weekends of course. Every Sunday morning, I dressed in my finest gown for church. The rest of the time, I was free to play with the other kids on the plantation. There were times when I could forget that I was a chattel…. almost.

***

Life on the plantation was pretty uneventful until my thirteenth birthday. That was the day when I was put up for auction. My sale was a punishment for some supposed infraction of my mothers. I never knew what the reason was and by the time I next saw her, several years later when I was a grown woman, she had forgotten the nature of her misdemeanour.

On my weekly visits to the marketplace, I had on occasion glanced in fearful fascination toward the blocks where the slaves were sold, but they had always been silent and empty. I had never before witnessed an auction: now I was the commodity on sale. It was a traumatic experience for a young child. For once, all the cacophony of the market was directed at me, and yet I felt so isolated and alone. The rough, leather collar that the master had looped about my neck chafed my skin. Everyone was looking at me: someone even checked my teeth. All I could see was my mother’s face. Her eyes were filled with anguish as I was dragged away from her. The calls of the bidding rose around me. The only sound I heard was that of my mother’s wailing. Then, with a clap like thunder, it was over and I was led away to my new master.

My new owner was Frederick Searle, the doctor in Miller’s Ferry, a small settlement of only a few hundred souls, straddling the Alabama River about thirty miles from Dry Forks. A few weeks earlier, his young wife had broken her back in a riding accident. Before her fall, Lenora Searle had assisted him with the administration of the small surgery that he ran. With his wife incapacitated, the elderly doctor needed somebody to cook and clean about his home and to help him in the clinic, someone who could read and write.

The tasks that I performed for the doctor around the house and surgery were less onerous and more varied than my work in the plantation kitchen. One day, I might be told to count the stocks of pills and medicines on the shelves; the next I would be cleaning the house. The following morning, I could be running errands around the community, shopping for food or delivering prescriptions; then mixing out solutions of drugs and medications in the afternoon. Every two weeks, always on a Saturday, we made the trip to Camden when we would replenish the stocks of medicines. Sometimes the doctor would take me along when he visited a patient, and I would find myself administering medicines or changing dressings. On other occasions, I might be updating the patient histories; carefully transcribing details from Doctor Searle’s large, black notebook onto individual record cards, one for each person that he treated.

It was the work with patients, and their medical records that interested me most. Frederick Searle was a meticulous man, who noted every symptom and the reasons for his diagnosis, and the treatment that he administered. His handwriting though, was atrocious. On many occasions, at least when I first started working for the doctor, I needed to ask him to decipher his crabbed scrawl. By the end of my first year in the Searle household, I no longer needed to ask. The doctor’s writing was no easier to read. Rather, I began to understand the skills of his profession. Open cuts should be cleaned with a carbolic spray to kill the germs that might lead to infection. When a man’s broken forearm was splinted, it was to mend a fracture to the radius or ulna, or possibly to both bones. Ether could be used to dull the pain of an injury. A high fever and diarrhoea mixed with blood, sometimes accompanied by a sharp pain in the abdomen, were symptoms of dysentery, for which quinine in a solution of chloride was the prescribed remedy. I soon knew the records better than he did, and my young fingers were more adept at stitching a cut or administering a vaccine than his own. My gentle touch calmed the feverish in a way his own rough hands could not. It was not long before I was able to assist him in tending those who were hurt or ill. In later years, after I had left Miller’s Ferry, I learned new and better treatments, but even then my knowledge of the doctor’s simple remedies helped me to save lives.

Sometimes, when the doctor did not have any work for me to do, Mrs Searle would ask me to read for her or just to talk with her. The accident had left her crippled and unable to walk. She could no longer busy herself about the house, or visit the shops, or call round to see her friends as she had done before the fall. Miller’s Ferry was not a large community, just a few hundred homesteads including the outlying farms and plantations, but her husband was the only doctor in town. His territory covered several miles either side of the river, though thankfully a bridge made crossing easier than the original ferry. He was always busy during the daytime, and often called upon to attend the sick and injured after darkness fell, and thus rarely able to spend time with his wife. I think Mrs Searle was lonely ¾ she was still an attractive, young woman ¾ and she enjoyed the sound of another voice, the companionship of another woman, even a slave. She would talk to me about everything, her upbringing in the city of New York, the tragedy of the Titanic, Winifred Beecher Howe and the movement for women’s suffrage, the revolution in China, the outbreak of the Balkan wars and the impending war in Europe. Although I had been bought as a servant, I would like to believe that over the years I served in the Searle household she and I became friends.

***

I remember that first night when Doctor Searle came to me as I lay sleeping. It was the sound of the door latch, and the pale light shed by the flickering flame in the lamp he held, that roused me. Drawn from slumber, I wakened to find him kneeling, naked, beside the mattress that was my bed. Pulling the blanket up about my neck, I looked up at him in fear. His eyes held no recognition, yet they were dark with hunger, and I was paralysed. I lay transfixed like a jackrabbit caught in the gaze of a rattler. When he reached to tug at the covers, they fell through my fingers like water. Too scared to react, I could do nothing as he lifted my nightgown and parted my legs. Only when I felt the searing pain inside me was my voice restored, and I screamed aloud. It was over quickly, and the doctor clambered off me without a word and returned to his own room. I was left alone to cry myself to sleep.

The following morning it was still very painful. I could not even sit down without discomfort. The blood that stained my nightdress scared me as well. Although I had only started menstruating earlier that year, I knew it was not the time of the month for the pains and the bleeding. I was not yet wise enough to understand that this was a natural consequence of having my virginity taken in such a brutal fashion. Fearful that the awful experience had injured me in some way my hands were still trembling as I served breakfast to the doctor and his wife.

I believe Mrs Searle knew what had occurred, although she never said so in words. When the doctor instructed me that I was to update all the patient records that morning, a task I knew I would need to sit down for, Mrs Searle insisted that she needed my companionship for the day. Normally, she only requested my company if there was no other work that needed my attention. After some discussion, the doctor acquiesced. She even told him to place a cushion on the chair where I normally sat when I was reading to her. When I indicated that I preferred to stand, she merely raised an eyebrow.

After that first time, he would come to me several nights each month. He would gratify his lusts, while I would lie there gritting my teeth for the few minutes that he lay on top of me, thrusting into me. It was always a painful experience: Doctor Searle never showed any finesse. Not that he was ever intentionally cruel, just unmindful of the hurt that his satisfaction caused me. The only consideration he showed was that he never paid one of his nocturnal visits at those times of the month when it might have resulted in my becoming pregnant.

It was some time before I really understood the reason for his visits. At thirteen, I was tall and gangling, still growing. I was not exactly pretty: not like Mrs Searle. When I was still on the plantation, my mother had never been secretive about her own relationships. On many occasions, the creaking of bedsprings and the grunting of her and her boyfriend of the moment as they made love had kept me awake at night. Surely the doctor had his wife to fulfil that need. Even though Mrs Searle was crippled, it never occurred to me that she and the doctor no longer shared a bed. Yet in coming to me, he was not being unfaithful to his wife. I was no more than a possession, an object that he had bought, and that could be used in any way he wished.

***

I served Doctor Searle for nearly five years. During that time, I was witness to his gradual deterioration into drunkenness. It started with his taking a glass of whiskey each evening before bed. I noticed, even before Mrs Searle, from the smell on his breath when he came to my room at night. Before long, he was having a drink with his dinner, then settling down for the evening with the bottle close by his hand. Many were the times that he fell asleep in his chair, and then it fell on me to carry Mrs Searle up the stairs to her bedroom, a task that the doctor had always performed himself before. Eventually we decided to clear a room downstairs and move her bed in there.

We tried to keep his condition a secret from the folk of Miller’s Ferry, but once Doctor Searle started drinking during the day it began to affect his work. I remember one occasion when a farmhand came into the surgery following a shotgun accident that had peppered his shoulder with buckshot. After the doctor had extracted the pellets, he sank back into a stupor, leaving me to clean and bind the wound. The following week, he passed out before even starting with a worker from the nearby lumber mill who had sliced his arm open on a saw. I was left to clean the injury and stitch it up myself. At first, the man objected to being "ministered to by a nigger"; but I was able to convince him that the doctor had done the real work in assessing the extent of the wound. Actually cleaning and sewing the laceration, I assured him, was a menial task that could be given over to a slave without risking his health further.

Not everyone objected so strenuously when I worked alongside the doctor. Miller’s Ferry was a fast-growing community spread across a large area, with only one midwife. If Mary was indisposed for any reason then the doctor would be called upon to preside over difficult births. It was not a task with which he felt comfortable. Each time, he would prepare himself for the labour with the aid of a bottle of Jack Daniels, and the drink always made him irritable. While he attended them, he would shout and rave at the expectant mothers, cursing them with words that shocked the religious-minded of the town. Twice that I recall, he was actually banished from the birthing room by the womenfolk. He would frequently lapse into a state of insensibility hours before the child was born, which was really a blessing. Naturally the women, both blacks and whites, preferred my calming presence to his.

***

The Fall of 1914 was characterised by strong winds and heavy rains. During one tremendous storm, the bridge across the Alabama River was swept away. That was the night when Jane Eaker went into labour, and it was clear from the start that it would not be easy. Her husband Warren, the town deputy, was out supervising a gang of workers trying to sandbag the river banks when their house-girl ventured through the gale to bring him the news. Mary lived on the wrong side of the bridge. Even if Deputy Eaker could have got a message to her, she would not have been able to cross the swollen river. His first reaction was to despatch a rider upstream to the ford at Selma even though it would take several hours in each direction. Then he hurried home to his wife, stopping on the way only to collect me. The doctor had already succumbed to his alcoholic sleep, even before nightfall, so I presided over the birth alone.

Jane Eaker was in labour for over fifteen hours, and there were complications with the birth. The baby was nearly four weeks premature, and looked set to be a breech delivery. Even had the midwife been there, it would have been a risky birth for both mother and child. Deputy Eaker was an unusual man: knowing the danger to his wife, he insisted on staying with her throughout the labour rather than pacing about another room. I did what I could for them, working the baby to bring its head round, trying to ease Mrs Eaker’s pain, keeping his spirits high. It was a worrying time for all of us, though I could not let any of my own concerns show. Shortly after the dawn, at the end of that long, tortuous ordeal, Jane Eaker gave birth to a son.

The baby was small and underweight, but strong for his size and in good health; and Mrs Eaker, while exhausted, would recover. I was tired myself, but I kept watch over both mother and child until the following morning when the midwife finally arrived. Only when I knew she was in Mary’s capable hands, was I able to relinquish my responsibility and trudge wearily back to the doctor’s surgery, in time to start work on the day’s chores.

***

That was the Winter in which Doctor Searle died. Those last few years of alcohol abuse had taken their toll on his aged body. When he caught bronchial pneumonia, he no longer had the strength to fight off the infection. I tried everything I knew to help him, everything that I had learned from him, but the doctor no longer had any will to live. He passed away in his sleep one night in late December while both his wife and I kept vigil at his bedside.

Almost the whole town turned out for the funeral, shivering in the bitter January cold of the churchyard. Although born in Alabama, Doctor Searle had received his medical training in New York where he met and married Lenora Phillips, but he had not forgotten his Southern roots and returned to practise medicine in the small town of Miller’s Ferry. He had been a man held in high esteem, a pillar of the local community known throughout the County. Even the sheriff from Camden came to pay his respects, and the reverend made a fine speech about how the dear departed had been a good and noble man who would be sadly missed.

Had I been asked to speak, I could not have said in honesty that the doctor had been a good master, although I held a great deal of admiration and respect for the healing work that he had done. Like his horse, I had been no more to him than property, but he had taught me when he recognised my interest in his work. And though he had used me, he had never wittingly caused me harm. While I was not stricken with grief like Mrs Searle, I was sorry for his passing. To him, I had never been anything more than a slave. Even in death, he reminded me that I had been born with no rights of my own. At the reading of his will, the doctor gifted me with my freedom. In his own condescending way, it was a gracious gesture ¾ I had been bought a slave girl: now I was a free woman ¾ but I would never be able to forget that my first eighteen years had been lived in servitude.

His death also marked a transition in my own life. Over the years that I had worked for Doctor Searle, I had grown from a child to womanhood. I had learned valuable skills; skills that could help to alleviate the suffering I saw about me, and I had grown to think for myself. I had found a purpose in my life.

***

Before the first thaws of Spring, a new doctor had arrived in town. Within days of his coming, he had purchased new premises for a modern surgery, which he then proceeded to furnish with the latest clinical technology. A young man recently graduated from the medical school in Birmingham, and even equipped with the luxury of a car to visit the outlying homesteads, Doctor Jacobsen was eager to build his reputation and his fortune. He soon made a name for himself ¾ at least among my own section of the community ¾ charging exorbitant fees, confident that this would ensure the wealth and quality of his clientele.

His uncharitable attitude strengthened my own resolve. Doctor Searle had also bequeathed me a few dollars, and I was able to buy a small property on the outskirts of town. My new house was not large, just an old stable with a hayloft that I could use as a bedroom. With what remained of the money, I was able to install a stove for cooking and to keep my home warm through the Winter. I never made any public proclamation of my intent, but news travels swiftly on the grapevine. Once it became known that I planned to establish a clinic for the black community of Miller’s Ferry, I soon had plenty of willing helpers to clean the place. Within days, I was tending the sick and the injured who called on me. Few could afford to pay for my treatment, and I never asked for money; but all those who came to me gave what they could of food, furnishings for the surgery or my home, or their services. Indeed, there were those who offered their help even though they had no immediate need of my skills. Jethro, my nearest neighbour and a carpenter by trade, built a partition separating my treatment room from the kitchen. His son Tom cleaned the rusty old pump outside the front door so that I could draw water, while others sewed curtains or put up shelving for me.

One night, soon after I had retired for the evening, I was wakened by a knock on the door. Fully expecting another call for help, I opened it to find Clarissa, Mrs Searle’s new house-girl, who bade me visit her mistress. Concerned that some accident had befallen her, I wrapped a shawl about myself and followed. I need not have worried: Lenora was in as good health as I had ever seen her. Indeed, she was in a very happy mood. Though dressed soberly in her widow’s weeds, her face was radiant and smiling as she greeted me.

"Laura, my child. I could not leave Miller’s Ferry without saying farewell, and thanking you for all that you did to ease my poor, late husband’s passing. Now that he is gone, I have nothing to keep me here. In just a few days, I shall be returning home to my family in New York."

I made as though to speak, but she silenced me with a sweep of her hand. I got the impression that this was a speech she had rehearsed as she gesturing melodramatically toward a stack of boxes. Lenora Searle was fond of her theatrical addresses.

"There is much that I cannot take with me. The furniture will remain here for whoever buys the house, but there are Frederick’s books, his bag and other equipment. Doctor Jacobsen has his own surgery, already fully appointed, so it would be of no interest to him, but if the rumours I hear are to be believed, then it may be of some value to you."

And thus, giving thanks to my former mistress, I was able to equip my small clinic.

***

Alabama in the early Spring of 1915 was not a good place and time for a negro woman to open a surgery for negroes. Inspired by the screenings of D.W. Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation, that year witnessed a resurgence of the infamous Ku Klux Klan. When I was a child, mother had told me stories about that fearsome organisation. Formed in the aftermath of the Civil War, the Klan had terrorised blacks and poor whites alike, dressing in ghostly white robes to assume the guise of the spirits of dead confederate soldiers. They had indulged in horsewhippings, burnings and murder, but by the time I was born their power had been broken. Only the tales and the nightmares remained.

I woke one night from a fitful sleep to find shadows from those nightmares standing all about, looking down on me. The sickly moonlight streamed in through the window casting its spectral glow over the loft, while outside the haunting call of an owl added its eerie tone to the horrid atmosphere. Then an ominous silence fell upon the room. Petrified with fear, I tried to shrink through the mattress and the floor beneath me. I prayed for deliverance, that it would be no more than a nightmare, but God did not heed my mumbled, stammered appeals to his mercy. I closed my eyes, willing myself to be invisible, to be some other place, but there was no escape. The shadows drew in closer. From somewhere in the darkness below came the sounds of a lamp being lit and, as though this was a signal, they began.

They started kicking me, laughing and cursing and swearing as they did so. Their voices were muffled, but some I recognised: Dan Williamson from the sawmill, Matthew Owen who ran the town saloon and Luke, the son of my former master from Dry Fork. Knowing them to be men rather than ghosts did nothing to alleviate my fear, still their boots hurt when they struck me. I tried to shield myself, curling up as small as I could, holding my hands before my tear-stricken face. When I realised that their blows were driving me toward the edge of the loft and the fall to the ground below, I thought they were going to kill me. I began to plead and beg for my life, but my panic seemed to goad them further. They just laughed all the more as they pitched me over the side.

I felt my ribs crack as I crashed to the clinic floor, the breath driven from me. Before I could recover my wind, rough hands grasped at me and dragged me across the room. I was too stunned even to struggle as they tied me tightly, face downward on the table. The rough wood bit into my cheek. The coarse rope chafed at my skin like the leather collar of the auction blocks. The sting of the whip ripped through my nightdress, slashing my flesh, cutting to the bone so that I cried out in agony. After the tenth stroke, I lost count. I was praying for death to free me from the torture. By the time they had finished, I could do little more than whimper.

But the torment was not over as they untied me and turned me over. I screamed in pain at the harsh caress of the wooden table on my cut and bloodied back, nearly fainting. God would not grant me even that release. Barely conscious, yet still sensible to all the anguish they could inflict and with tears streaming down my face, I was subjected to every indignity that a woman can endure. Only when darkness came with the setting of the moon did they leave me, fading into the night as silently as they had appeared, leaving me to my pain.

***

Poor, simple-minded Ben. Yet it was Ben who taught me that the act of love was one that could be enjoyed rather than merely endured.

Ben Standing was a simpleton who did odd jobs around the town. Gifted with a mind unable to express itself comprehensibly in anything save the simplest of words, but with an open and honest soul and the strength of two men, he was always in demand when there was heavy labour to be done. During planting time he often worked in the fields, while in the harvest season, he could normally be seen about the smithy. It was he that found me curled up like a frightened child, clothed only in the shredded remains of my night-gown, lying in a pool of my own mess, blood and vomit on the floor of the clinic. Everybody in town knew that the Klan had ridden that night, and the nearest households had heard my screams, but none had the courage to come and see what had befallen me, none save Ben.

For the next few days I drifted in and out of consciousness, insensible to my surroundings. I remember little of those who cared for me save Ben. I do not know who bathed and cleaned me and clothed me in a new, clean nightdress, but I do recall Ben carrying me like a child up the ladder to my bed. I cannot recollect those who bandaged the cuts across my back or bound up my broken ribs, but still vivid in my memory is the picture of Ben keeping watch over me. Sometimes in the darkness of the night relived the nightmare, starting from my sleep in fear and trembling. Always when I awoke, my body coated with sweat, Ben would be there strong and protective. If I could not see him when I opened my eyes, I would cry out in terror until I heard his soft voice reassuring me that no harm would come to me while he was there.

I was young and healthy, and soon found my strength returning. The nightmares might haunt me still, and I will bear the scars of the lash on my back till the day I die, but my body recovered quickly enough from the ordeal. After a week of recuperation I was able to walk, albeit painfully, with Ben close by my arm to catch me if I stumbled.

Even though I could name some of those who had attacked me, it would have done no good reporting the incident to the authorities. The men who had attacked me weren’t just bored youths in search of some perverse entertainment to bring excitement into their lives, but figures of influence and respect in the community. I was merely a nigger woman. News that the Klan rode once more soon spread across the county. The sheriff in Camden did nothing to stop them. Rumours even suggested that he and some of his deputies were involved, passing on the names of those suspected of a crime. Tales came to us of others who had received a night-time visit from hooded, robed men bearing burning crosses. Some were less fortunate than I. A farmhand in Flatwood, alleged to have raped a white woman, was hanged from a tree. In Boykin, a slave was shot for daring to try and protect his family; while over Bellview way, a woman died from the flogging she received.

Mindful of these and other incidents, it was with great trepidation that we heard a rap on the door one evening just after the sun had set. Only the thought that the Klan would not bother to knock persuaded me to answer. I opened the door with Ben standing guardedly close by to find my mother standing outside. I had not seen her for five years, and she barely recognised me as the child who had been dragged from her arms to be sold, so our reunion was tearful. She had heard about my beating even as far away as Dry Forks. Now a free woman herself, she had packed her few belongings and came to live with me.

While we talked into the night making up for all those lost years, Ben made up a cot for her in the kitchen. She had wanted to sleep in the loft with me, to be on hand should I need her, but Ben was insistent. In a moment of quiet that left me embarrassed but unsure why, some silent communication passed between them, something I could not comprehend. She looked at him for a moment, as though weighing him up. Then, with an indecipherable glance at me and a strange half-smile on her face, my mother conceded. From that point on, she slept in the kitchen by the stove, and Ben retained his post as my guardian.

***

My visitation from the Klan had been only a warning, telling me that I should not try to do white man’s work. Yet none of my medical equipment had been broken when I was attacked, a fact that surprised me. At first I wondered if they had just considered my beating and humiliation enough of a warning, but that seemed unlikely; subtlety was not a hallmark of the Klan. It was more probable that they had been so involved in punishing me they had not even thought about it. Regardless of their reasons, my clinic was intact. I could still minister to the sick and injured. The only question that remained was whether I had the courage to carry on with my work.

I knew that people had put their faith in me when they helped mend and decorate and furnish my home; and they needed me. None of those who called on me could afford doctor Jacobsen’s high fees, yet each morning there was a queue of patients waiting outside my door. While I was recovering from my own injuries, they were understanding when mother sent them away again, untreated; but it left me feeling ashamed. Nobody else would tend to their ailments. They needed me. The Klan had beaten me; next time they would surely kill me, and I was scared. I did not want to die. And if I took heed of the warning, what would I do? Perhaps I should have opened a school, teaching others to read and write as I myself had been taught at the plantation; but might not the Klan have taken exception to a school as to a clinic? Or could I have gone back to being a house servant after seeing the demand for my nursing skills? Torn between fear and shame at my own cowardice, as soon as I was able I opened my doors once more.

Now that I was well enough to start seeing patients again, there were those who suggested that Ben’s presence in my home was no longer necessary ¾ indeed, that it was not proper ¾ but I silenced their words. The scars on my body were healing, but the terror remained. It was only because Ben was there to protect me that I found the strength to continue working.

Nor was there anything improper in his presence. Even without my mother always close by as a chaperone, he always behaved like a gentleman toward me. It made me feel good to be treated so respectfully and politely. When I bathed, or changed for the night, he would step outside the door, giving me my privacy, yet close enough that a call would bring him running to my side in an instant. When I went to sleep, he would curl up like a guard dog in the far corner of the loft. Invariably, if I wakened during the night, I would find Ben looking at me from across the room, an expression of deep concern in his eyes, yet he never once tried to touch me.

One morning though, shortly before the first rays of the sun crept through the window, I was drawn from restless slumber to find Ben snoring in his corner. It was the first time I had ever seen him sleeping. The dreams had come to me again that night and I needed comfort, but I did not wish to disturb his rest. Carefully on tiptoes lest I wake him, I crept over to his sleeping form, wrapped myself in the crook of his arm and pulled my blanket about us both. Even sleeping, his strength gave me such a feeling of security and I luxuriated like a cat in the heat of his body. Despite my stealth, I had not been as quiet as I thought. When I realised that his snoring had stopped, I looked up to meet his eyes. Our faces were so close that I could feel the sharp gasp of shock as he drew in a breath. My lips parted hesitantly, as though to speak, to apologise to him, yet not wanting to break the silence of the moment. Then my mouth was on his, his arms came about me and I gave myself over to a hunger I had never felt before.

I am sure that I was not his first ¾ he was too skilled in giving pleasure ¾ but that did not matter to me. I was no virgin myself, though I had never given myself willingly, but I had never realised the passion that a good man could instil. Those strong hands that could straighten a horseshoe touched me with such gentleness. The brush of his lips on my skin sent me into rhapsodies of delight. Mindful of the expected pain, to which I had grown accustomed, still I opened myself to him. And there was no pain, only a vast, glorious sensation of ecstasy welling up within me. When it was over, I lay warm and relaxed within his embrace, tears of joy running down my face. With a tenderness that belied his strength, he brushed away the moisture from my cheeks.

"Laura cry. Ben hurt Laura?"

"No Ben, you didn’t hurt me at all. I’m crying because I’m happy."

"Ben glad. Ben not want to hurt Laura. Ben love Laura."

"Laura love Ben too. Oh Ben! This was what my mother meant. I wish I’d understood her sooner."

On the first day of April that year, in a short, quiet ceremony, the Reverend Pierce endorsed our living arrangements in the sight of God and of men. We left the church as husband and wife, but I knew already that I carried Ben’s child.

***

Marriage and impending motherhood added a new sense of happiness to my life that even fear of the Klan could not dampen. Each morning I drove mother insane with my singing as I washed and bathed though Ben never objected to the sound of my voice. Within a few months the cause of my joy was obvious to everyone. My demeanour in the clinic, suddenly dancing a few paces for the joy of it, made the children giggle and the mothers smile. When I walked across the fields to visit a sick patient in one of the outlying farms, it was with a skip in my step. The nights with Ben at my side were filled with passion and love.

Wrapped up in each other, the days passed swiftly as Winter faded into Spring and in her turn Spring gave way to Summer then Fall, and the child within me grew. With Ben and my mother to see me through my pregnancy, everything felt good. Mother mixed strange and foul-tasting concoctions of herbs to relieve my morning sickness. Ben carried me up the ladder to the loft each night once I grew too large to manage it myself, and assured me that I was beautiful when I felt fat and ugly. They both shared my delight when the child began to move and kick inside me. I felt fulfilled. I had my family with me, I was bearing the child of a man I loved dearly and I was doing work that satisfied my soul for those who desperately needed the healing that I could offer.

It was not only the black community that called upon me for help, the poor white folk of Miller’s Ferry also began to join the queue that formed outside my door each morning. I treated everyone that came to me as well as I knew how, regardless of their colour and their ability to pay. They each gave whatever they could; wood for the stove, a basket of freshly laid eggs, watermelon, a small sack of grain or a few heads of corn, occasionally even a chicken. As my time drew near, some repaid me with baby’s clothing and blankets. I could ask nothing more of them. We ate well and the child, when she was born, would be warm, but to replenish my stocks of medications and pills required cash. The pharmacist in Camden would not accept offerings of food in exchange for drugs.

To supplement our meagre income and to bring in the needed money Ben returned to his odd jobs around the township, while mother started to take in sewing work. I had never known that she was a seamstress, but she demonstrated a keen eye and a deft hand, and even some talent for embroidery. While I attended to patients in the clinic, mother would be sitting outside in the morning sun chattering away as she stitched to those still waiting my attention. When I closed the doors at midday and went on my tour of house calls she would accompany me with a basket of finished work under her arm, which she would deliver along the way.

As harvest time approached, Ben found himself working later and later at the smithy. Every plantation needed work doing, and it was always required immediately: scythes wanted sharpening, new handles had to be fitted to old blades. The nights began to draw in and I grew concerned again. During the day we were safe but the Klan still rode after darkness fell, casting a shadow over our happiness. To reassure us, Ben fitted a bolt to the door allowing us to lock it at night, but it did little to relieve my concern each evening until he was back home beside me.

***

The sound of horses at the gallop was our first indication that all was not well. One man riding at speed would not have been cause for alarm, but a large group after dark could only mean one thing. Mother and I were alone, Ben had not yet returned from work, and we were both frightened. Fearfully we looked out through the window to see the hooded riders coming straight toward the house. Fleeing before them, silhouetted against the light of the blazing cross that they bore, was a man running. As we watched, too scared even to speak, the figure fell and vanished from sight amid the milling horses. We could hear his screams even over the thud of hoofbeats, but then they too ceased. When the riders turned to face us, my legs weakened and I clung to mother for support. We were clearly visible, silhouetted in the window. Like actors playing to the audience, they circled slowly and mockingly once around the house, then faded into the night. As a parting gesture, the cross-bearer planted his fiery symbol in the ground, and within its glow we could see a huddled form. Only when we were sure they had really gone did we risk venturing outdoors to see what had befallen their victim, and to offer what help I could.

The muddy hoofprints over his body made it clear what had happened; they had ridden him down and trampled him underfoot. I knew that it was Ben even before I lifted the lamp to look at his face. He was flushed, the sweat ran from him and he moaned in pain when I touched his forehead. I could feel the broken bone underneath and my hand came away caked in blood and other, more ominous fluids.

My heart pounded and the baby kicked in protest at the exertion as between us we half-carried half-dragged him inside. He was unconscious. His breathing came in ragged gasps interspersed with fits of coughing that brought up phlegm streaked with faint traces of red. As I examined his injuries I knew that they were beyond my skills to treat. The broken ribs I could have healed, perhaps even eased the pressure on his fractured skull, but I could not do much to mend a punctured lung. I do not believe that even Doctor Jacobsen with all his fancy technology would have been able to help, but there was not time to call upon his aid. Ben died within minutes of our finding him as I wept over his broken body.

***

My daughter was born in the November, just a few weeks after we had buried her father, and for all the pain that my labour brought I loved her dearly. She was all that I had left to remind me of Ben, and of the brief happiness we had shared. And she was born free, not a slave as I had been. Jessica was my hope for the future.

Of all God’s blessings, the gift of life is the most marvellous and bringing a new life into the world is a truly wondrous experience. As I held baby Jessica to feed at my breast for the first time, I considered her the most beautiful creation on God’s earth. She was so tender and innocent, too sweet and good for the harsher realities of the life into which she had been born. As I lay with her sleeping in my arms I prayed that the world would change. With tears in my eyes I prayed that, before she was grown, prejudice and intolerance would cease and that she would never experience the fear and horror that I had known.

***

With Ben’s death and the birth of my daughter I closed the clinic, something I should have done months before. I had not heeded the Klan’s warning after my own beating, and they had murdered my husband to emphasise their point. Now I could not risk Jessica’s life. My patients were understanding; they had all attended Ben’s funeral, but their sympathy did not lessen the remorse that I felt. I had a baby daughter to fill my life, and that should have been enough to satisfy me, but I felt something was lacking. My lover was no longer by my side, but it was more than the aching hole in my heart that left me feeling remorse; I missed my work.

Despite the time that I now had on my hands, my days were fully occupied. Feeding, bathing, comforting her when she cried, changing and washing diapers, my baby kept me busy. For those first few weeks I hardly slept. I would wake at her slightest whimper, tired and aching; but she was my daughter, mine and Ben’s, and I loved her. I soon learned to recognise her different cries and to know what she needed. Jessica was a demanding child but she quickly fell into a regular pattern. Within a month, I could schedule the household chores around her meal times, and she was sleeping through the night.

Twilight was falling early one evening shortly after the New Year when we were startled to hear someone at the door. Mother was sewing, and I was giving Jessica her last feed before bed when the knock came. Ben’s murder had left us both nervous. Mother reached down to take of the logs drying by the stove, not that it would have made a very effective weapon. I shrank back into my chair clutching Jessica protectively in my arms. Sensing the sudden tension, she began to cry.

"Missy Laura, Missy Laura." The voice of Jethro, my neighbour, assured us that there was no danger outside. "Forgive me for disturbing you so late, Missy Laura, but please will you come with me. It’s Tom. He has fallen and hurt himself badly."

Though I had closed the clinic, I could not refuse Jethro’s request. I owed too much to him and his son for all their help in repairing my home when I had first moved there. Indeed even had I not felt indebted, I would still have gone with him. While I had never received formal training as such, nor taken any oath, I was conscious that as a nurse I had a duty, and could not refuse any request for my aid. I was just glad it was not a fever, because then I would have been risking my daughter in tending Tom. Oblivious to everything that was going on around her, Jessica finished her feed and I winded her, then put her to bed for the night. She would sleep till past midnight, and I promised mother that I would be back before she woke. Savouring an intense satisfaction at knowing that I could still help those I cared for, I collected my bag and followed Jethro.

Tom had been up on the roof replacing shingles to repair a leak when he had fallen. His injuries were serious and Jethro had wisely not moved him; instead, he had come straight to me. He and his wife Suzanne hovered close by as I assessed the boy’s condition: compound fractures both of the tibia and fibula, the lower leg, and a concussion. The latter worried me; it could be indicative of other, more severe damage to the head, and I was reminded suddenly of Ben. Tears welled up in my eyes, but there was work to be done. Angry with myself for letting emotion get in the way of my professionalism, I brushed them away and concentrated on the task in hand.

Though he didn’t regain consciousness, sweat beaded Tom’s brow as I set his leg back in place and splinted it securely. He moaned as I cleaned the wound with carbolic and sewed up the torn flesh. Satisfied at last that the break would knit properly, I allowed Jethro to carry him to bed. Then I sat dozing in a chair close by until he awakened, and I was able to verify that the blow to his head had left no lasting damage to the brain or skull. By that time, it was approaching midnight; Jessica would be waking up soon, no doubt fretting for her dinner, and I needed to be on hand to feed her. The night was dark, the moon just a small crescent low in the sky, so I was glad when Jethro offered to walk me home.

Jethro heard the horses before I did and pulled me down into a dip in the ground, from where we could watch without being seen. Silhouetted against the night sky, they rode past us slowly and in single file; and I realised with a shock that they were heading directly toward my home. There could be no mistaking their intent. I was wrong in thinking that the Klan would leave me alone, even after I had closed the clinic. They could not have known about Tom’s leg; but I had failed to heed their earlier warnings and that, by their definition, made me a troublemaker. This time they would only be satisfied with my death. And if they did not find me at home, what would they do to my mother, and to Jessica? They must not kill my baby. I tried to stand up, to draw their attention away from my family, but Jethro seemed to read my mind. He held me down, his hand clamped across my mouth as I struggled against him.

As we hurried across the fields after the Klansmen my mind filled with images of the torment I had received at their hands just a year before. All the pain and terror of that night came flooding back, and by the time we came in sight of my home I was less inclined to sacrifice myself; but nothing could have prepared us for the horror that we witnessed there. The door had been broken down, despite the bolt, and my mother dragged from the house. Jethro’s tight grip stopped me from rushing forward again as the first flames licked at the window and I heard Jessica’s wailing cry from inside. Only when the men looped a rope about my mother’s neck and dragged her off did he let me run to the house.

The fire had already taken hold of the wooden stable that was my home as I tried to reach Jessica. Inside it was an inferno: perhaps the bottles of ether stored on the clinic shelves had broken. I thought I could hear my baby’s cries above the crackle and roar of the blaze but it might just have been my panicked imagination. My first attempt failed when the ladder to the loft burned away beneath me, sending my tumbling into the flames. I staggered outside again, rolling on the muddy ground to put out my burning clothing. The second time I tried, the searing heat from the conflagration drove me back even before I reached the door. I did not get a third chance to save my daughter. With a crashing roar the roof caved inward and I could only collapse to my knees in the dirt and weep.

***

Nothing mattered any more. I had seen my husband murdered and my daughter killed, my mother led away to some unknown fate. The shock of it all numbed my mind. With no will of my own, I allowed Jethro to lead me back across the fields to his house. My hair was unkempt, my clothes scorched and I was covered in soot but I scarcely noticed. While Jethro explained to his wife what had occurred, I sat staring vacantly across the room and heard nothing of what he said.

Throughout the night the Klan crossed the district hunting for me. Riders patrolled the fields trying to catch me in the open. Others scoured the neighbouring homesteads, breaking down doors, searching houses and outbuildings, and beating anyone they believed might have harboured me. Jethro’s home was one of the first places they visited that night. As they rode up, he was already leading me through his workshop and out the back door. He left me with Daniel, one of my regular patients, at his nearby farm. It was not long before we heard the sound of approaching riders, and this time Daniel’s eldest son sneaked me out through a rear window. Nowhere was safe for long. Always, barely sensible of what was happening to me, I was moved from one home to another just ahead of the hunters. We crept along cold, water-filled ditches, crouched in silence amid the cotton or corn in the fields, and lay motionless on the muddy ground while the trackers searched for any trace of my presence.

With the dawn came news that my mother had been found hanged in the woods, but I was too tired to react and too grief-stricken to mourn. Nor did the dawn bring any respite from the hunt. Though they did not go cowled and hooded in the daylight, familiar figures rode the tracks and roads around Miller’s Ferry, scanning the fields and searching isolated buildings. Still too numbed by the night’s events to act on my own, I allowed myself to be smuggled from place to place, from farm to farm, always just a step ahead of the hunters.

By the time dusk fell I had not slept in over thirty hours. I was weak with fatigue and only the dullness of my mind held the terror in check. Nightfall would surely see the return of the hooded riders and I hardly cared whether they found me or not. I was hiding in the church where just a few months before Ben and I had exchanged our vows. Kneeling in prayer before the altar, beseeching God to take to his bosom the soul of my beloved Jessica, I never heard the footsteps coming up the aisle. Only when I felt the rough grasp of a hand on my shoulder did I realise that I was no longer alone, and I started up in terror to find myself face to face with deputy Eaker.

***

So I spent the night in jail, not because I had committed any crime, but for my own safety. I could not resist as deputy Eaker led me through the backstreets of town, to avoid unwanted attention. When we reached the jailhouse he put me in one of the cells, though he did not lock the door, and left me alone with my grief. I went through the motions of washing and tidying myself, but it was a half-hearted effort. The bed was uncomfortable, not that I could sleep anyway, only sit staring at nothingness.

I did have one visitor that night. Jane Eaker brought both food and baby Warren Junior with her. She stayed to talk for a while, but my mind was still in a stupor. I could not bring myself to make conversation; nor could she think of anything to say. The only topic we could share was the baby’s progress, but that brought memories of Jessica to my mind and I burst into tears.

"A jail cell is no place for a young child." I suggested through my sobs, whereupon Mrs Eaker hastily and tactfully withdrew.

After she had left I slept fitfully, but the slightest noise brought me awake. I tossed and turned at the sound of snoring from a drunk in one of the other cells. The slow, steady tread of footsteps down the corridor echoed noisily. A sudden peal of gunshots from outside in the street sent me cowering to a corner where I sat hugging my knees long after the silence had returned.

When morning came deputy Eaker escorted me silently through town to the bus stop, put me on the early greyhound to Atlanta and watched as I was driven away. The only words he spoke to me that morning were a warning, never to return to Miller’s Ferry.