Paul D relives the savage treatment that he endured while shackled to ten other slaves and transported to a brutal prison for the crime of threatening to kill Brandywine, the man who bought him from schoolteacher after the attempted escape from Sweet Home. From Kentucky through Virginia and on to Alfred, Georgia, to the underground cell that housed him, Paul D struggled against the despair and dehumanization that accompany forced labor. For example, each morning, the white guards forced the chained row of black men down on their knees, and a few men were chosen to perform oral sex on the guards before beginning the grueling day. Chained in one long line of 46 convicts, Paul D learned the nuances of wordless gestures and expressions and mourned his captivity in song.
Eighty-six days into his sentence, Paul D and the other prisoners, chained together and threatened with suffocation under a mudslide, dived beneath their cells’ restraining bars and escaped. The prisoners fled to a Cherokee camp, where Native Americans fed them mush and released them from their leg irons. The scent of their trail was drowned in mud, preventing dogs from tracking them. Secure for the moment, the survivors discussed alternatives. Paul D was the last to make a move. A month after his escape, he headed north and was taken in by a Delaware weaver lady.
