Trouble Don't Last

by Shelley Pearsall

  Harrison had seen his ghost more than a few times near the barn, and he told me Old Master Hackler was still wearing the same black cloth suit he was buried with. Only his ghost didn't have any skin.

  The thought of the rattling skeleton of Old Master Hackler walking around in his burial suit prickled all the skin on my arms and legs.

  That's when I heard a noise outside the kitchen.

  It was the scraping sound of the kitchen door slowly creaking open and a draft of cold night air gliding through. Closing my eyes, I slid myself back into the shadows of the kitchen corner. Soft footsteps shuffled through the doorway. The footsteps moved toward the dining room, stopped, and turned back toward the kitchen. Slowly, they crossed the kitchen floor, looking for something.

  I pulled in my breath as they moved past the cupboards and over to the stone hearth. Coming closer. Then they slid quickly toward the corner where I was hiding. Before I could move, an old hand smelling of dust and earth reached down from above and clamped itself across my mouth.

  Old Master Hackler had come for me!

  In the darkness, I thrashed my arms back and forth and tried to call out for Master and Miz Catherine, so they would know a dead man's spirit was stealing me away to the grassy burying-ground. But, even dead, Old Master Hackler was as strong as an ox. He held my mouth tight-shut and twisted a bony arm around me.

  Keep your top eye open, Harrison had warned.

  Maybe Harrison had known that Old Master Hackler's ghost was abroad that night. Maybe he had known his dead spirit would be trying to whisk people's souls away.

  Although I felt like dying of fright, I opened one eye and stared straight up at the ghost, thinking that would scare it off. Maybe that's what Harrison had been trying to tell me. Keep your top eye open.

  But instead of seeing the skeleton face of Old Master Hackler grinning in front of me, I found myself looking right into the wild eyes of Harrison himself.

  “Be quiet, child,” he whispered, holding my mouth so hard I could taste the dust on his hands. “Lord Almighty, just hush up.

  Around us, the house was suddenly filled with sound. Upstairs, Master Hackler started coughing loudly, and the slop jar scraped across the floor. Then the back door slammed. Cassius came cursing and stumbling into the hall, returning from his card playing.

  Harrison's hand tightened, and I could feel his whole arm begin to tremble.

  But Cassius didn't walk toward all the commotion we were making in the kitchen. He started up the hall stairs instead. We could hear him talking and humming to himself like a person gone mad, and he missed the last step on the stairs, same as always. There was the loud smack of his knees hitting the top floor, a sharp curse, and then a shuffling sound as he crawled toward his room, feeling nothing on account of too much rum, of course.

  Right after that, two barn cats started up an unearthly yowling outside, and a gust of wind made the shutter upstairs start banging.

  As I waited there in the darkness, my mind was spinning with questions. Why had Harrison crept into the kitchen to get me? Was someone coming after him? Or me? Had Lilly taken sick? Had something gone wrong in the barn?

  But Harrison kept his hand over my mouth, and stayed as still as if he'd turned to stone. I couldn't speak a word, or even hardly breathe.

  “Ain't nothin wrong, Samuel,” he whispered finally. “You just listen to me now. Ain't nothin wrong,” and I could feel his hand loosening little by little.

  “Why you here?” I asked as soon as I was allowed enough room to speak, but Harrison didn't answer. He stood up and tugged on my arm to get me up. That's when I noticed that he had an old tow sack from the barn, setting on the floor beside him. Stuffed full with things.

  “You just ease on over and take one of them skillets and one of them sharp knives,” Harrison said, pointing to the kitchen wares scattered in the soft glow of the hearth. “And watch yo’ step. Go on, now, do what I'm tellin you, child.”

  Steal a skillet and a knife? Why would Harrison be taking things from the kitchen? Or cooking in the middle of the night? I started thinking that maybe he had gotten a little mixed up in his head. There were times he forgot that Old Master Hackler was long gone, or he didn't recollect right away what year it was, or he told me the same story over again. Could be this was one of those mixed-up times.

  I didn't know what to do, though. If I hollered for Master or Miz Catherine, they'd come down, figure we were stealing around, and likely cowhide us both. But what would happen the next day when Lilly told Miz Catherine her skillet and knife had gone missing in the night? The redheaded devil would blame me sure enough because I was the one who slept in the kitchen. And then I'd have to tell how Harrison had gotten all mixed up and taken them, and he'd be in worse trouble.

  I remembered Lilly telling about a cornfield slave named Willis John, who had worked in Master's fields years before. He had two fingers gone at the top knuckles because he'd stolen something when he was a boy. Tried on Old Master Hackler's hat, Lilly thought. She said getting the toppen part of your fingers cut off was some masters’ punishment for blackfolks who took what didn't belong to them.

  As I wrapped my fingers around the warm handle of the iron skillet and one of the best knives, the thought of what had happened to Willis John's fingers and what could happen to me, if Master or Miz Catherine saw me doing this, set my hands to trembling.

  “Hurry, child,” Harrison whispered, holding the door and waving his arms at me. “We gonna git caught if you don't hurry yo'self up.” Not knowing what to do, I hugged the pieces close to my chest and followed him.

  !Outside, it was dark as a jar of ink. I couldn't even tell where the ground had gone to, and I nearly fell face-flat in the darkness, sending the skillet and knife clattering to the ground. Harrison clamped his hand around my arm. “Walk quiet, Samuel,” he said low. But the ground felt strange under my bare feet, cold and prickly, with uneven places and crumbly, dry grass.

  “Where we going to?” I tried to ask. “I don't want to get in no trouble with Master and Miz Catherine for bein out. I ain't s'posed to leave the kitchen at night. Lilly know what you doin?”

  “Ain't got time for a hundred and one questions,” Harrison hissed, giving my arm a hard squeeze. “You just follow my say-so from now on. I got things all figured out.”

  I'd never been out of Master's house at night before. I wasn't allowed. Even if I had to use the old outhouse that belonged to Lilly, Harrison, and me, I wasn't to leave the kitchen at night, Miz Catherine said. Of course, it didn't much matter to me, because I didn't care for the darkness nohow.

  Sometimes Lilly teased me about being scared of the dark, just to start a good argument when we were doing nothing but shelling peas or cutting up potatoes maybe. “You more afraid of the dark than the daylight is,” she'd say.

  “Maybe so,” I'd tell her. “But human beings are supposed to be daylight people. Ain't that why they sleep at night?”

  That would always make her laugh. “Then it sho' was a good thing you was born a human being. ‘Cause if you was some ol’ hoot owl or tree bat, you be in real trouble then.”

  But nothing good could come from wandering around in the night. I knew that. As Harrison crouched under each dark window of Master's house, I could feel those windows watching us. Same as Master Hackler's cold gray eyes. I held my breath as we passed the cracked-open back door with Cassius’ boots standing on the top step. I half-expected the boots to come stomping down the steps after us. But they stayed where they were. Still and empty.

  After that, Harrison hurried along the edge of the yard, between the apple and peach trees that stood in dark rows. I'd never seen him move so fast, even when he got a scolding by Master Hackler for working too slow. Harrison always said that working in the fields, sunup to sundown for all those years, had worn out his leg bones until there was hardly nothing left to stand on. But his bones didn't look worn out to me anymore. He looked as strong as the field hands Master Hackler brought in ev
ery spring and fall.

  Where was he in such a hurry to get to? I wondered.

  And then, just beyond the row of bushes, I heard the low growl of a dog. Me and Harrison froze in our tracks. I knew trouble would find us, one way or another. Always does.

  “You just stay where you is,” Harrison whispered to me. “Don't make one sound.” I watched as he slid his hand real slow into the tow sack and brought out something wrapped in cloth. Smoked meat, by the smell. He tossed a piece toward the bushes, and I heard the snap of teeth closing around it. There was a whole graveyard full of silence once the piece was gone. Was the dog waiting for us to move? Or was it holding its howling bark until we took one more step?

  I could hear Harrison breathing fast.

  Then a shadow hobbled toward us, swaying this-away and that-away as it came closer.

  “Hallelujah.” Harrison heaved a sigh, watching the dog come around the bushes. By the way it moved, I could tell right away who it was too. The only shadow that walked like that was Jake, Master's oldest hunting dog.

  “Go on home, Jake.” Harrison gave the yellow-skinned dog a soft slap on the ribs. “Go on home where you belongs. I don't have no more bones to toss away to you.” Not paying us any mind, Jake took his good old time sniffing the whole tow sack, and smelling me and Harrison up and down, before he sidled away in the direction of the house.

  Harrison reached into his bundle again. “S'pose this be as good a time as any to put these on our feet, Samuel.” He held something toward me.

  “Keeps the bloodhounds away,” he said real low.

  But I stared at the round onions in his hands as if they were hot coals straight from the Devil himself. This was the first time it dawned in my head why Harrison had brought a sack stuffed full of things. I had figured he was mixed up the way he sometimes was, or something had happened out in the fields.

  But now I saw why he had warned me to keep my top eye open and why he had crept into the kitchen.

  A grave walker's shiver went clear through me.

  Harrison was planning to steal me from Master Hackler and Miz Catherine, and he was going to escape. Truth is, even the thought of going straight to hell didn't scare me as much as the thought of running away.

  Onions

  Harrison smacked my shoulder.

  “Stop staring at me like you seen a ghost. Gimme the knife. You gotta put them on like this.”

  I watched Harrison's clumsy fingers slice off thick pieces of onion and reach for his feet, but his back was too stiff to bend far enough down. He cursed loudly and said, “You help me out here, child, and be quick about it.”

  I did what he told me. Scrubbed the strong-smelling onions all over his dark, knotted feet as if I was polishing the legs of Miz Catherine's parlor chairs, not fixing to run away. My fingers stung and my eyes burned so I couldn't even see what I was doing for all the tears.

  “Ain't right to run off,” I said under my breath. Lilly had always told me that running off was the surest way to bring the worst kind of trouble on my head.

  Harrison straightened up and waved his hand toward the direction of the house. “Go on back to Mas'er and Miz Catherine then,” he said sharply. “I ain't stoppin you.” An owl hooted in the distance. I looked up at Harrison's face. His eyes were closed and he didn't have on any expression at all.

  “Why you runnin away?” I asked.

  “Die one way, die ‘nother, soon enough.”

  “But they gonna send dogs after you. Young Mas Seth told me about dogs that can hunt down runaways anywhere. Even two days after they gone. Even if they have run through water, he told me. What if they chase you down? You gonna get all tore up by them dogs.”

  “Why you think I brung the onions, Samuel? To keep them kinds of dogs away,” Harrison snapped.

  He stared at me and pressed his lips together. “I know what I'm doin. I lived long enough on this here earth to know what I'm doin when I decide to do something, you hear?” He was getting angry now. “You just make up yo’ mind. Either you run away or you stay, but I'm goin, and the Devil's dogs can drag my old gray body back, arm by arm, leg by leg, if they want to.” He glared at me. “You runnin off with me or not, Samuel?”

  “Why you want to leave Lilly and me?” I pleaded.

  “ ‘Cause I does,” Harrison finished loudly.

  “I'm afraid of you going, Harrison,” I said, taking a swipe at the tears which were spilling out of my eyes, even though nobody was dying and Lilly would be ashamed of me again.

  I could see nothing but terrible pictures in my mind. Mean bloodhounds being let loose on poor Harrison. Or Master laying open his back with lightning stripes. Pouring salt in each open stripe. That's what masters did to runaways. Terrible, unspeakable things, Lilly said.

  “Tell you what. I got an idea.” Harrison opened up the tow sack. “Why don't you put yo’ fear in this here sack, Samuel? And say I carry it for you all the way north. And when us git there safe and sound, say I let it out, and it can float straight up into that free sky and be gone from us forever. How ‘bout that?”

  Harrison put on a wide, silly grin and waved his arms at the night sky. “Whooeeee, there goes all them things that be skeering the life outta poor Samuel all the time …”

  “Ain't scared,” I said.

  “Know what that free sky is gonna look like, Samuel?” Harrison kept on. “Big, blue summer sky going from one end of the north to the other. ‘Magine that. And blackfolks, they git to fly all around that sky. Don't that sound like something to see?”

  I looked down at my feet.

  Harrison picked up the tow sack.

  “How far off is north?” I asked low.

  “Ain't talkin no more,” he said sharply. “You is just gonna start walkin with me and find out. I got my mind made up, Samuel.”

  And without another word, Harrison started off into the darkness, his long, skinny legs hobbling in a half-walk, half-run, past the horse barn, past the shadows of the henhouse, the corn-cribs, through the old apple orchard, around the field hands’ cabin, and into Master Hackler's cornfields.

  I followed him as if I had no more sense than one of Young Mas Seth's toys pulled on a string. In my mind, I could see Lilly shaking me as hard as she could when she found out, and saying, “How could you have gone and let ol’ Harrison run off like that? And you went with him too? Here I figured you got more sense in yo’ head than that. I raised you to know right from wrong. You shame me and your poor momma both.”

  But Harrison never stopped long enough for me to get a word in about Lilly or turning back. He hurried down row after row in the dark fields, until I lost count and couldn't have found my way back even if I had turned around.

  Truth was, in my whole life, I had never gone this far away from anything. I had never been past Master's cornfields. The only thing that would have taken me beyond the cornfields, and over the low, rolling brown Kentucky hills, was a wagon carrying me to be sold off. So the thought of going outside Master's farm had always sent a shiver through me. Even Lilly, old as she was, had never left Master's farm, and three of her children hadn't either, because they were buried in our little Negro burying-ground past the field hands’ cabins.

  Only Harrison and the hired field hands had come from somewhere else. When he was young, Harrison had been bought from a Virginia farmer. “I recollect I was ‘bout old enough to start workin in the fields when they sold me off. Maybe I was ten or eleven years,” he had told me. But the only thing Harrison could remember of his old Virginia farm was a small pond where he once fished at night, thinking that everyone was asleep. Except, the master's son caught him. “Never done that again,” he'd tell me for the hundredth time. “Never done that again.”

  •••

  As the sky lightened to gray, everything around us looked strange, like a dream that stirs up things you know with things you don't. The field we were standing in looked the same as Master's cornfield, but there was a board fence running along its edge, and
Master used only split rail. And I saw a barn cat slip through the corn rows in front of us, but it was gray with two white feet, and our barn cats were all tabby-striped.

  “Should be findin ourselves a hiding place,” Harrison whispered. “ ‘Fore it gits too light.”

  I glanced up at the sky and thought about Lilly. She would be coming into the kitchen to get the fire started for cooking breakfast. “Samuel,” she'd whisper, opening the door real slow, the way she did every morning. “Just ol’ me here. You ‘wake yet?” Lilly always said it was bad luck to scare a sleeping person out of their dreams, so that's why she kept quiet. But, truth was, I knew she didn't want us waking Master Hackler and Miz Catherine.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to see her calling for me in the dark kitchen, not knowing I had gone.

  “Samuel!” Harrison said louder, nodding in the direction of the woods. “You go on in there, and see if you can find us a big tree with a rotted hollow in the middle and three limbs low to the ground.”

  “Where?”

  “Should be off that-aways,” Harrison said, pointing. “Go on now, look, while I catch my breath.”

  I shot a glance at the dark woods. “I never been in them woods before.”

  Harrison glared at me. “Lord Almighty. You is never gonna earn your salt in this world, Samuel.” Flinging the tow sack over his shoulder, he stalked past me. But we hadn't gone more than a stone's throw or two when I felt my skin raise up with gooseflesh.

  There was an old maple with three limbs close to the ground. A raccoon hollow in the middle. And a lightning scar running down one side.

  “Go on,” Harrison said, pushing me forward. “There's the hiding place I was tellin you ‘bout.”

  I stared at that old tree.

  How had he known what the tree looked like before we got there?

  Lilly said there were some folks who could foretell things in their minds. Things that were gonna happen. She believed in witching and spirits for bad things like cows going dry and hailstorms beating down the new corn. But the thought of Harrison using witching and spirits to help us run away put a chill in my blood. I wasn't about to go anywhere near that tree.