Trouble Don't Last

by Shelley Pearsall

  If she knew I had gotten us lost in the woods at night, running from a wild animal, she would be in a fit. I could hear her saying, “You always bringing us trouble we don't need, Samuel.”

  While I was finishing the sweet potato, Harrison opened his tow sack and drew out two blankets. I stared wide-eyed at those blankets because they looked like the same ones Master Hackler had taken from me, saying, “Going cold ought to get to him too.”

  Harrison gave a slow grin and held up the striped wool blanket and the worn green one. “Ain't it a pity? Mas'er Hackler threw these two warm blankets out in the yard to get all wet and miry. Wonder who in the wide world they belongs to?”

  The blankets smelled like Lilly's kitchen. Smelled of wood smoke and baking bread. Almost as if Lilly was setting right there with us. Harrison fixed the blankets around our shoulders, and we huddled beneath them like two snap peas inside a pod.

  Beside me, Harrison gave a heavy sigh.

  “You worrying ‘bout us being lost?” I said, looking over.

  “Naw”

  “You think Mas Hackler is gonna find us tomorrow?”

  Harrison stared into the dark woods. “Don't none of us know tomorrow,” he said real quiet. “But we only run a mile or so, I figure. Or could be we circled right back to the tree where we started off. Too cloudy to see them stars now …” His voice trailed away.

  “I'm sorry for what I done. I didn't mean to get us lost.”

  “Oh, hush now about that. Don't wanta hear no more.” Harrison tugged at the blanket and turned away from me. “No use singing spirituals to a dead mule,” he said sharply. “Now, git some rest.”

  Spiders and Candles

  But I woke in the morning to find that Harrison had gone and left me. Same as if I was a dead mule.

  My heart pounded. Had he run off while I was sleeping to save his ownself? White wisps of fog curled around the dark tree trunks. A sliver of early-morning sunlight cut through the trees. Overhead, crows called back and forth to each other. There was no sign of Harrison or the tow sack.

  Did he leave me behind to be caught and taken back because I had been nothing but trouble? Or had he known that Master Hackler would rather find me because I was worth more than Harrison, who was old and worth almost nothing?

  Lilly would have given me a crack across the face for even thinking that.

  One time I had eavesdropped on Master Hackler bragging to a gentleman visitor about me. “Seven hundred dollars right there,” he had said when I walked by. “Good, strong Negro boy grown up right.”

  All day I had walked around feeling as if my skin was made out of squares and squares of Lilly's Christmas dollars, all sewn together. But when I'd told Lilly what Master Hackler had said, she'd reached out and given me a hard slap across the mouth. “You oughta be ashamed of yo'self, Samuel. Lord, have mercy on your soul and your poor momma's too, for being proud of things like that.”

  That was the meanest thing I could remember Lilly ever doing to me. Later on, when we were boiling clothes in the wash pot and battling them on a stump to get the water out, she told me she was sorry for it. “But being worth money means being bought and sold. You understand that, Samuel?” she said, pointing her battling stick at me. “You proud of the fact that yo’ black skin ain't no different than these clothes or this wash pot? You proud it's got a price, same as them?”

  But sometimes I still thought about being worth a pile of money, more money than I had ever seen, because it made me feel important to be worth something big like that. Seven hundred dollars.

  “You ‘wake?” Harrison's voice startled me.

  He came up quiet behind me and thumped my back with his walking stick. “Wondering if I run off without you, Samuel? Or you lookin out for more of them wild animals?”

  “No, sir.” I kept my eyes cast down, sure he could see what I'd been thinking.

  “Time to be movin on.” Harrison began gathering up my blankets and stuffing them inside the tow sack. “Quick now. ‘Fore Mas'er Hackler and Cassius git themselves up and start nosing around.”

  I helped Harrison scatter leaves and brush so no one could tell where we had been sleeping. Unless, of course, the dogs found it.

  “Can't do nothin about that,” Harrison said, waving his arms. “If them dogs come, they gonna smell that we was sleepin there. They ain't fools.” He tossed one last handful of leaves on the ground and moved the dirt around with his feet. “But you and me, I figure we jest lay low and hide ourselves for a time. Jest keep still all day, and maybe they won't come lookin for us.” He pointed into the woods. “Found us a place to hide this mornin. Over there,” he said, and started off through the trees.

  But, it turned out, Harrison's hiding place was just a little thicket of weeds. Nothing more than what deer and rabbits hide themselves inside—and we weren't either one. Harrison poked his walking stick into the scratchy knot of goldenrod and jimsonweed and stirred up a cloud of white flies. “They gonna have to look high and low to find us here,” he grinned. “Crawl in.”

  I went into the thicket slowly, waving my hand at the flies coming up from the ground in clouds. A spiderweb stuck across my face. I scrubbed my cheek, and it stuck to my hands. I rubbed my fingers on my trousers, my shirt, and the ground, trying to get that spiderweb off. Seemed as if unseen webs were sticking to everything on me, as if I was caught in a whole thicket of spiders and webs.

  “Settle yo'self down now.” Harrison gave me a poke with his walking stick. “Stop movin so much. Just stay where you is.”

  “I don't want to be in no weed patch full of spiders,” I said under my breath.

  “Be thankful it ain't full of dogs and whitefolks.”

  I pulled my knees up to my chest and stretched my shirt over my legs. Didn't want spiders crawling all over my skin. Nohow.

  Sitting there, I thought about going back to Master Hackler's farm. I pictured how Miz Catherine would sweep into the kitchen in her silks. When she saw me, her eyes would fly wide open. “Samuel!” she'd say, looking surprised as Christmas. “You came back just like Lilly said you would.”

  Although, truth was, Miz Catherine was too fat to sweep into a room, and she almost never smiled. Most of the time, she kept her lips pressed so tight, they might have been stitched shut. And nearly everything she said to Lilly was mean. Breakfast was too late, too early, too hot, too cold, too overdone, too underdone, too sweet, or too filling.

  Also, she liked to do mean things. One time, she let Young Mas Seth stick my finger in a burning candle because he wanted to see if it would turn white.

  “Maybe underneath the black, their skin is white,” Seth had said to his mother at breakfast one morning. “I want to know.”

  “Of course his skin isn't white,” Miz Catherine snorted. “But stick his finger in the candle if you want to see for yourself.”

  So Seth had held my finger in the candle until the skin was all bubbled and burnt, and I was screaming and crying loud enough that Harrison heard me all the way in the barn.

  “It ain't turning white,” Seth said, finally letting go of my hand.

  “Of course it isn't,” Miz Catherine replied, calm as could be. “I told you they are black all the way through. Now, go tell Lilly to get him a cloth for his finger.”

  Strange thing was, I could always find the scar on my finger because it was almost white against my brown skin. So Miz Catherine had been wrong after all.

  Twisting my finger this-away and that-away, I studied the small oval of gray-white skin. Thinking about it, I couldn't decide which was worse: running away with Harrison, and being hungry, lost, and covered in spiders—or staying with the redheaded devil Miz Catherine and Young Mas Seth for the rest of my life.

  “You sleepin, Harrison?” I whispered over my shoulder.

  “Naw”

  “What you doing then?” I asked.

  “Prayin,” he answered. “I'm prayin all day that you and me be safe. You oughta be prayin too. Two prayers is better than
one.

  I stretched my shirt over my face and squeezed my eyes shut. Truth is, I said only one short prayer because Lilly always said the Lord didn't have time for people who carried on and on about themselves.

  “Me and Harrison's been good, so far as I know,” I whispered, breathing in my own hot breath. “We never hurt nobody, far as I know. Please keep us from being caught by dogs and being cowhided for what we done. We didn't mean to do nothin wrong.”

  But in the middle of my praying, there was the sound of something in the distance.

  “Don't move atall,” Harrison whispered.

  Seemed like the sounds started coming from all directions after that, and you couldn't tell one from the other. A hundred far-off voices echoing inside a big kettle, that's what it sounded like. Were they after us?

  An hour passed, maybe more.

  The long-legged spiders crawled over me, and I didn't move. I stayed as still as the weeds. The voices swirled around us like water boiling, getting louder and softer, louder and softer. Everything scratched, and I wanted to holler and cry at the same time.

  But, strange to say, nobody came into the thicket and found us. We lay in that weed bed from morning until night, and no dogs came to track us down. Maybe Master Hackler and the others were looking somewhere else. Or maybe the dogs couldn't find our trail with all the rain. Or maybe the praying worked. But even Harrison couldn't believe it.

  “We been saved,” he said as the last evening light melted into the weeds. “I don't know why, but this time, poor ol’ me and you was saved.”

  I also noticed that the long-legged spiders had disappeared.

  Two Fingers Gone

  When it grew dark enough, we crawled out of the weeds and began to head north again, now that Harrison could see the stars in the night sky and had his senses back. All night, we hurried through woods and cornfields and along wide-open roads that made my heart thump in my chest when we crossed them. The moon was three-quarters full and stayed up most of the night, giving us a good bit of light to run by.

  Come morning, we crawled into the middle of someone's cornfield to sleep and hide ourselves. Master Hackler's cornfields ran in straight, even rows. But this cornfield rolled back and forth, with rows going wide, then narrow, then real wide again. “Looks like somebody's plow horse was drinkin whiskey,” Harrison chuckled as he peered down a row. “Never seen a field so crooked.”

  The ripe ears of corn still hung on the stalks too.

  Harrison grinned and pulled off a few sweet young ears. “You and me's gonna eat forever and a day here. Yes, we is.” Then he pulled a small stone jug of water and two apples from the tow sack. “Breakfast,” he said.

  “What else you got in there?” I asked, curious, because the sack still looked as full as when we started.

  Harrison squinted at me. “Why you want to know so bad?”

  “ ‘Cause I does.”

  “You been peeking inside of this sack when I wasn't lookin?” he asked, smacking the side of the tow sack with his palm.

  “No, sir.”

  “All right, you git one look at what's inside, but you better keep yo’ mouth shut about it.” Harrison pointed his finger at me. “Anyone ever asks, you don't give them no bones, you hear?”

  “Yessir,” I answered.

  “And stop saying ‘sir, this’ and ‘sir, that,’ or I'm a-gonna tie you inside this sack and carry you clear to freedom. You gonna git us caught, sho’ enough. Lordy Lordy”

  Mumbling to himself, Harrison opened the tow sack and began to pull out what was inside. My eyes nearly went rolling out of my head when I saw what he had done.

  The first things Harrison brought out of the tow sack were Master Hackler's riding boots with his big footprint still pressed into the fancy leather.

  All the breath inside me was snuffed right out when I saw that. Those boots looked as black and mean as the night.

  “I went and took Mas'er Hackler's riding boots for my ownself ‘cause, well, it ain't something I can explain in words, I just did,” Harrison said, setting the fancy black boots down in the field dirt.

  He reached into the tow sack again. “And then I took Mas'er Hackler's best beaverskin hat. For you,” he said, and held the hat toward me. “Here.”

  I felt the blood drain right down to my feet, but Harrison gave a little half-smile and smoothed the top of the hat with his hand. “Well,” he said, pausing. “It's a mighty fine hat, anyways.”

  He set the hat next to me and reached back into the bundle. “And then I took an old bridle, in case us find ourselves a horse someday …and Cassius’ silver pocket watch ‘cause he was careless where he left it, and maybe we can sell it for money …”

  By the time he was finished, he had pulled out an old green silk bonnet from Miz Catherine, a pair of riding gloves belonging to Cassius, Seth's worn hunting hat, my two blankets, Lilly's skillet and knife, a barn lantern and sulfur sticks, and a roll of gray wool yarn.

  I felt the snake tighten around my throat as I stared at the pile of things Harrison had stolen from our master. If we were caught with them, we would be in worse trouble than I could even imagine. No one would believe me and Harrison owning a silver pocket watch or a pair of fancy boots. They'd know we were thieves and runaways for sure.

  “You feeling poorly, Samuel?” Harrison asked curiously. “You givin me the strangest look.”

  “Why'd you go and take all them things?” I whispered, looking quick over my shoulder, as if Master Hackler was creeping through the field toward us right at that very moment. “They ain't ours.”

  Harrison snorted loudly. “Lord Almighty! Nothin BELONGS to us, Samuel. Nothin in this whole world. Gotta have something good before I roll over and die, don't I?”

  Tugging one of Cassius’ white riding gloves over his hands, Harrison waved his fingers at me. “Lookee here, Samuel. I got all ten of my fingers, but see what's happened. Lordy, my hands done turned WHITE—pale as whitefolks’ hands! What's poor ol’ Harrison gonna do now?”

  Even though I knew it was wrong, the sight of Harrison's old fingers half-stuck in Cassius’ fancy white glove set me to grinning, then laughing. And while I was laughing, Harrison put Seth's hunting hat on my head and pulled it clear down over my eyes.

  “Why, if it ain't Young Mas Seth!” he chuckled. “Dim-witted as his older brother. Can't even find his way outta a hat.”

  So I took Miz Catherine's bonnet, slipped it on Harrison's head, and tied the green bow under his gray-stubbled chin. “You the most outrageoust pretty lady I ever seen.”

  Harrison sucked in his cheeks and pouted his lips together. “You s'posed to call me MIZ Catherine,” he mimicked.

  Me and Harrison both fell facedown in the field dirt at that, and laughed until our sides ached. If Lilly could have seen us, she would have shaken her head and hollered at us for acting like two black fools, carrying on in the cornfield and making fun of Master and Miz Catherine. But we didn't care a straw.

  •••

  We stayed in the field the whole day. When we weren't sleeping, we were lying back, cutting up, and doing nothing. Above the green corn, the skies were as clear and blue as I'd ever seen, and the air was full of the warm smell of cornstalks baking in the sun. I lay back on the dirt and breathed it all in, feeling as if the world had forgotten about me and Harrison.

  It did feel awful strange to be gone so long from Master Hackler and Miz Catherine, though. Especially when I knew I was supposed to be carrying the slop jars to the outhouses, raking up the barn lot, collecting the eggs, feeding the hogs, filling the water buckets, and plucking the chickens Lilly would need for supper. By my count, we had been away almost three whole days. Who was taking care of all my work?

  I even started to wonder whether me and Harrison had somehow passed on to the Promised Land, the way folks do when they die. Maybe that's why nobody had found us.

  “You think we died and gone into the Promised Land?” I asked Harrison while we chewed on some ears of c
orn. It was near evening, and we were waiting for the dark to run again. “That why no one's come lookin for us?”

  Harrison gave a low chuckle and looked over at me. “When I pass on to the Promised Land, Samuel, you think I'm gonna bring this old, crippley body with me?”

  I squinted at his wrinkled-up skin, and the bushy crown of gray hair circling his head. “No, I s'pose not.” I grinned.

  “But I got a feeling that tonight you and me is gonna git ourselves somewhere closer to the Promised Land.” With his ear of corn, Harrison solemnly pointed into the distance. “See, when you find the River Jordan at the top edge of Kentucky, you is halfways to Canaday they say.”

  “Who says?”

  “Folks I heard talking, one time or another. I got two ears, you know,” Harrison said, rolling his eyes. “And we gonna find that river tonight, I got a feeling.”

  I remembered Lilly telling me about the River Jordan. Almost every river in the Bible was named Jordan, seemed like. Jordan or the Red Sea. On Sundays, Lilly would always read out loud from her little Bible. “Same as I did for my own flesh and blood,” she'd say. Only, truth was, Lilly couldn't read a word, same as all of us. She would just turn to a page and tell the stories she had saved up in her head. “But I knows what's written down there,” she would always say, tapping her finger on the page. “Don't need to see it to read.”

  “The River Jordan's a real river?” I asked.

  Harrison cut his eyes at me. “You sayin the river I'm talking ‘bout ain't real?”

  I just put my head down then and chewed on my ear of corn. Let old Harrison think what he wanted.

  With his finger, Harrison drew a crooked line in the cornfield dirt. “Say this is the Ohio River right here,” Harrison said, tapping the dirt with his finger. “Blackfolks, see, they call it the River Jordan, and whitefolks, see, they call it the Ohio River.”