Jubilee

Randall Ware visits Vyry the week after the auction. He arrives, bleeding from his arm. A bullet grazed him. He tells her that he must leave the state. Vyry cries. He asks her to run away with him, but she must leave the children behind. They’ll return for them later. Vyry insists that she cannot do this; she can’t risk never seeing her children again, due to the likelihood that Missy Salina would sell them. Ware tells her that he just needs to get Vyry to Maryland where a woman he knows there can get her to Canada. He says that he knows every stop on the Underground Railroad.

Vyry doesn’t know what he’s talking about. She wavers between refusing to go with Ware and agreeing. He tells her to leave on Friday night. She must prepare by dressing in men’s clothes and then dressing the children in warm clothes. She must lie awake until midnight. While the children lay sleeping, she will wade out to the swamp. Bloodhounds lose the scent of footsteps when they reach the water and won’t want to cross anyway. There will be someone awaiting her “on the other side of the creek” (194).