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Moses: A Short Story

Decent Essays

I think my first memory of the all power Moses was from when I was fifteen. I was laying on my stomach in my cabin, listing to the sound of what I recognized to be a barn owl. I then heard two other slaves walk past my permanently open window. “Listen for the whippoorwill. That’s when you’ll know Moses had arrived.” “Okay, tonight, right?” “Yes, tonight.” The two men continued to speak in their hushed tones, but I could not hear them after about ten seconds because they had already passed my window. Unconsciously, I rolled onto my back to look up out the window from my heap of blankets I called a bed, causing me to wince in pain.
Early that day, I was working the cotton gin. It had just started to get hot, so I took a few seconds to stop …show more content…

Nevertheless, I remember the night she came for the second time. Well, at least the second time I know about. She made the easily-recognizable sound of a whippoorwill just outside the slave quarters. I knew it was her because there was no way that kind of bird would be making noise at that time of year or at that time of day. At that moment, I knew that Moses existed, but I was unsure if I should go. I knew that there were heavy punishments for attempting to escape, but if I made it into Union territory, I would be safe. Because my mother had died about a half a year earlier and there was nothing else good at that cursed place, I decided that it would be best to …show more content…

From trial and error, I was learned how to mend my shoes if they ripped and to reattach the heel if it were to fall off. At the time, these skills seemed to be tactics of moderate importance, but later on I found them to be quite useful.
During the treacherous hikes through the Northern woods, we could not make fires because they would draw attention to us, which is the last thing we wanted. We also had to be watchful and discreet as we walked, for a danger could be lurking in the unknown. The whole experience made me uneasy and quite uncomfortable because I had never left the plantation before. Considering this, all trees, rocks, and forests looked the same to my inexperienced eyes. Somehow, though, hypersomniac Moses knew the way, when she was not asleep or experiencing dizziness, of course. There was one time, however, when we got

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