The Underground Railroad

by Colson Whitehead

The southern white man was spat from the loins of the devil and there was no way to forecast his next evil act.

Or the underground railroad could help you, with its secret trunk lines and mysterious routes.

Antislavery literature was illegal in this part of the nation. Abolitionists and sympathizers who came down to Georgia and Florida were run off, flogged and abused by mobs, tarred and feathered.

Without a special kiss to say, When you remember this moment later you will understand that I was saying goodbye even if you did not know it.

The tunnel, the tracks, the desperate souls who found salvation in the coordination of its stations and timetables—this was a marvel to be proud of.

But nobody wanted to speak on the true disposition of the world. And no one wanted to hear it.

The whites came to this land for a fresh start and to escape the tyranny of their masters, just as the freemen had fled theirs. But the ideals they held up for themselves, they denied others.

Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood.

begun stealing futures in earnest. Cut you open and rip them out, dripping. Because that’s what you do when you take away someone’s babies—steal their future.

They were ghosts themselves, caught between two worlds: the reality of their crimes, and the hereafter denied them for those crimes.

Freedom was a thing that shifted as you looked at it, the way a forest is dense with trees up close but from outside, from the empty meadow, you see its true limits. Being free had nothing to do with chains or how much space you had.