Trouble Don't Last

by Shelley Pearsall

“She's cheap as a secondhand toothbrush,” he said, grinning. “But when I stopped at her house this morning, I just happened to notice a broken bowl swept off to the side of her porch. And a little idea came into this clever head of mine.” Green Murdock tapped his forehead.

  “I told Rose Waverly I had just the thing to fix her broken bowl. Old Green Murdock can make it look as good as new, I told her. And while she was fixing me a piece of pie, I brought out two of my best willowware bowls and set them near the porch. Then I called her outside and said, ‘Why DOG BITE MY TAIL, your broken bowl has changed into two fine, new bowls, Miz Waverly!’ “

  Green Murdock shook his head. “Well, you shoulda seen the look on her face. She bought those bowls from me right then and there.” He walked over to the hearth and turned the side of bacon. “Dog bite my tail,” he said, licking the grease off his cooking fork. “Sometimes I think I'm the best peddler on this side of the Ohio.”

  “Sure enough,” Harrison answered, rolling his eyes at me.

  I thought about how we had given Green Murdock two silver coins for nothing more than a side of bacon, a bag of mealy potatoes, and half-worn clothes. Maybe we weren't much smarter than old Rose Waverly.

  After supper, Green Murdock brought out a deck of cards and told us he would foretell our future. His white hands slid the deck of cards toward Harrison.

  Lilly always said cards were nothing but trouble. When Seth dragged me into playing a game with him, she would always pinch my arm and whisper, “You let him win, Samuel. You just be as awful slow and addle-headed as you have to be, but you let him win. We don't want no hard times.”

  Harrison pushed the cards back. “Me and Samuel don't want none of our future read,” he said.

  But Green Murdock leaned back in his chair and waved his hands. “Go on. Go on. Go on. Make sure they ain't anything but plain old ordinary playing cards. I'll even let you shuffle them, if you want to, Young. Make it even harder for me.”

  When Harrison didn't pick up the cards, Green Murdock crossed his arms, frowned a little, and said, “Dog bite my tail, Young, you want me to shuffle the cards too?”

  Harrison didn't answer.

  “All right, I will, I will.” Green Murdock shook his head slowly back and forth.

  Me and Harrison didn't have a choice in the matter. Seemed like he was going to foretell our future, whether we wanted to know it or not. Shuffling the cards with his thumbs, he put four cards facedown on the table.

  Then he looked across the table at me. “Now, Old, you turn the first card faceup on the table. Go on”—he tapped the first card with his finger—”turn this one over.”

  I shot a quick look at Harrison, who was staring straight ahead, not paying any mind, and I turned over the first card.

  Green Murdock nodded and smiled. “You can turn over the others now too.”

  I set the cards faceup on the table—a ten of diamonds, an ace of clubs, a five of spades, and an ace of spades.

  Green Murdock leaned forward, staring at the cards. He drummed his fingers on the table. “Well, now,” he said, frowning, “I see a few unlucky cards here. You had any bad luck up ‘til now, Old?”

  “Why?” I said, looking closer at the cards, as if our bad luck was drawn right on those squares. As if maybe there would be a picture of Master Hackler or Cassius. Or bloodhounds hunting for us.

  “Well,” Green Murdock said, tapping the first card, “the ten of diamonds ain't all bad. It just means to look out for a long journey.”

  Harrison snorted. “We already on a long journey. Don't take no one smart to tell us that.”

  Green Murdock smacked his hands together. “Dog bite my tail, see there. That fortune has already come true. Green Murdock and his cards are always right…” He leaned back in his chair and clucked like an old red hen.

  Harrison squinted his eyes and tapped the next card with his finger. “How ‘bout that one?”

  “Hmmm …” Green Murdock rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “The ace of clubs means, let's see … I think it means an important, ah, letter or SIGN, that's right, a sign is coming from somewhere. Have you gotten any signs?” He glanced around the room, as if he was expecting them to come sailing through the ceiling.

  “What kinda sign?” Harrison said sharp, fixing his eyes on Green Murdock like he knew something that Green Murdock didn't.

  “Ah, hmmm, well,” Green Murdock stuttered. “A small sign, a very small sign, from somewhere far away. Somewhere that people live. But a good, ah, sign, from what I can see, that is.” He hurried on. “Now, the next card—the five of spades— that is one of those unlucky cards. It means something unexpected is coming.”

  “Ain't nothin sure in this life,” Harrison said, tapping the card with his hand. “ ‘Cept death.”

  “Well, now, yes, that's the truth, Young.” Green Murdock chuckled at Harrison and shook his head back and forth. “I'm just telling you to keep an eye out for little things you ain't been expecting. That's all.”

  And then, quick as anything, he slid the last card off the table and turned it facedown. “And we don't need to talk about the ACE of spades,” he said, stacking the cards and putting them away in his coat. “Because you folks probably know that is the most unlucky card of all.”

  I started to say that I didn't have the smallest idea what the ace of spades meant, but Green Murdock pushed his chair back and stood up fast. “Dog bite my tail, I am worn out as an old shirt,” he said, yawning. “All this card reading and future telling is hard work. Don't know why I do it day in and day out. Never get so much as one copper cent for all my work helping folks.”

  Harrison tapped the floor with his foot. “It gonna cost us money to sleep here?” he said. “ ‘Cause I ain't laying my head down if it is.”

  Green Murdock leaned his head back and laughed real loud again. “Course not.” He grinned. “Won't cost you a thing, but you are awful humorous, Young. Awful humorous. Don't know when I have ever met an old colored fellow who talks smart like you.

  He kept on chuckling to himself as he walked into his bedchamber. “Good night,” he hollered, and not a minute later, we heard him breathing and snoring in his bed. Me and Harrison were left to bank the ashes, scrape and wash the plates, and snuff out the candles.

  “Don't like him atall,” Harrison whispered as we fixed a pile of blankets for sleeping near the hearth. “He don't see things and read minds anymore than I does. Just goes and steals money away from folks.” Harrison pulled a blanket around his shoulders. “Nothing but a liar and cheat. That's all he is. You and me gonna find someplace else tomorrow. I ain't stayin here one more day, Samuel.”

  But as I listened to the sound of Green Murdock snoring like an old pit saw in the darkness, I couldn't help thinking about that ace of spades again.

  Why was it the most unlucky card of all?

  When morning came, I knew.

  Ace of Spades

  Harrison woke up, burning with a fever.

  “Don't know what come over me while I was sleepin,” he moaned.

  He threw off all of the blankets and then pulled them back on again, threw them off, and then pulled them back on again.

  “Can't catch my breath. Seems like I got no air left to breathe,” he whispered, pressing a trembling hand to his chest.

  I felt weak all over, watching Harrison suffering and calling out.

  Green Murdock was still half-asleep when I crept into his bedchamber to fetch him. “It ain't the yellow fever, is it?” he said, jumping up. He tugged on a pair of trousers and his broadcloth coat. “I knew something bad was coming when I saw that ace of spades last night. Dog bite my tail, I knew someone was gonna come down sick and die.”

  I could feel the snake wrap itself around my throat. Squeezing tighter and tighter until I couldn't speak at all.

  Green Murdock leaned over a small table near the window. A whole field of bottles and tins sat on that table. Holding up one after another, Green Murdock took a swallow from a blue
glass bottle and two small brown ones. “Doggone it,” he said, wiping his hand across his mouth. “I don't want to catch the yellow fever from that old fellow with you, no, I don't. Nothing scares me more than dying of something awful terrible like that.” The glass bottles rattled as he set them on the table and turned back toward me.

  “I can't keep you and him here any longer,” he said, casting his eyes down and buttoning his coat fast. “I have my rounds to make, see, and my food is already getting low, feeding two extra mouths, and now one of them is sick. And I can't be taking care of all kinds of sick colored folks.” He picked up a hat from the floor and brushed off the dust. “Green Murdock's business is peddling, not doctoring, see,” he told me, turning the hat around in his hands. “I don't know a thing about doctoring. I'm awful sorry about that, see, but that's just the way it is.”

  He moved toward the bedchamber door. “I'll take you to the Negro Hollow outside Hillsboro, how about that? There's colored folks there. Those folks should take care of that old man with you, don't you think?”

  I could hear the sound of rain drumming on the roof, and a low roll of thunder rumbled overhead. Green Murdock looked up at the ceiling and frowned. “Storm's coming,” he said, tugging his hat down over his head. “Won't be long.”

  Holding a striped handkerchief to his face, he hurried across the room where Harrison and me had been sleeping. “Once I get my wagon loaded, you bring that fellow outside,” he said, opening the front door fast and waving his hand toward Harrison. Then he shut the door and was gone.

  After Green Murdock left the house, I wrapped all the blankets I could find around Harrison's shoulders, one on top of the other like husks of corn, as if the thin, old blankets would somehow keep out trouble.

  “We gotta move somewhere else,” I told Harrison. “Green Murdock's takin us somewhere else.”

  “Where?” Harrison shivered as another tremble shook him.

  “Place called Hillsboro.”

  “Don't know Hillsboro. Just let me lay here a while.” Harrison sighed and closed his eyes. “Ain't got the strength to go nowhere.”

  “We gotta do what Green Murdock says,” I tried to tell him.

  “Leave me be,” he whispered. “Go on and leave me be.”

  It took me forever to pull him to standing.

  “I'm feelin awful downright bad, Samuel,” he said, trembling. His fingers curled around my shoulder. “Awful downright bad.”

  I swallowed hard and tried to keep back all the tears that were filling up my eyes. “Just a little ways more,” I said.

  Harrison nodded toward the door. “Go on, Samuel. Move on. ‘Fore I fall over.”

  Outside, the rain was coming down in heavy, splattering drops. I just stood there on the crooked front porch, staring up at the black clouds racked overhead. Little bits of white ice came down from some of those clouds and jumped in the yard, looking like kernels of popping corn.

  “Lord,” Harrison whispered.

  “THE WAGON's READY,” Green Murdock hollered and waved at us from the middle of the yard. But me and Harrison stayed where we were, eyeing all that rain and ice coming down.

  Hunching his shoulders against the rain, Green Murdock ran toward us. “You coming?” he yelled, standing at the foot of the porch steps, with water pouring off the sides of his hat. “My horse is already jumpy as spit. And the road to Hillsboro is gonna be a sea of mud if we don't start going.”

  Me and Harrison were soaked clear through by the time we got across that yard. When we reached the wagon, Green Murdock lowered the tailboard, and Harrison crawled into the wagon on his hands and knees. He leaned against a molasses barrel, eyes closed, water running in rivers down his face. I crawled in after him.

  Green Murdock leaned his head inside the wagon. “Keep away from those good bolts of black silk in the corner,” he said, pointing. “And be careful of the crates of crockery and glassware. And don't put your hands on anything that might break.” Then he closed the canvas flaps and tied them down.

  Me and Harrison were the only things in that wagon he didn't care about. That's what went through my mind. Black silk, glass, willowware bowls, he said. But not a word about me and Harrison.

  “Gid-up,” Green Murdock hollered to his horse.

  Creaking and swaying, the wagon started down the road. A row of wooden buckets tumbled over in the corner of the wagon bed, and everything rattled as the wheels rolled into one rut after another. Rain splattered on the canvas top, and outside, I could hear Green Murdock cursing at his horse.

  Harrison moaned and tugged at the rain-soaked blankets around his shoulders. “We movin?” he whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “You see anything for me to drink?” Harrison cast his feverish eyes around the dark wagon. “I am ‘bout festered with thirst. You see anything to drink?”

  Only thing I found was an old tin ladle. Holding it under the canvas, I tried to catch some of the rain coming off the canvas sides. But the rain ran every which-way in thin little rivers. Couldn't catch more than a trickle for Harrison.

  “Better than nothin,” he said, letting the little bit of cold rainwater run between his lips. “Better than nothin.” After it was gone, he leaned back against the molasses barrel and closed his eyes. “I got something on my mind to tell you, Samuel,” he whispered.

  “What?” I said, looking over.

  “You still got that roll of yarn? The one I brung along in the tow sack?”

  I had almost forgotten the roll of yarn tied around my neck. The only thing the river man had let us keep. Slipping it over my head, I held it out for Harrison, and thought about my momma again, thought about her holding that same roll of yarn, years and years ago.

  “Know where that yarn come from?” Harrison said.

  “My momma.”

  “Know when it got left?”

  “When she was taken away to Washington, Kentucky?”

  Harrison shook his head. “Naw.” He coughed hard and tugged at the blankets around his shoulders. “You recollect that June day, ‘bout three months ago, when one of Mas'er Hackler's cows ate poison weed in the field and died, and that big rainstorm came over at night and beat down the corn?”

  In my mind, I could see Master Hackler's brown milk cow lying in the field, legs stuck out like a piece of furniture, dead. And I remembered how Lilly had hollered and flapped her apron at it, yelling at it to get up, get up, because she knew we were gonna get in trouble for that cow dying.

  “Well, something else happened that day that me and Lilly never did tell you, ‘cause we was mixed up about what to do.” Harrison heaved a sigh. “It ‘bout harrowed up our souls, worrying.”

  He pointed to the gray yarn in my hand. “That roll of yarn come from your momma that day.”

  I stared at Harrison.

  I knew my momma had been gone since the day she left in Master Hackler's wagon. No one had ever seen her again—not Harrison or Lilly or me. She had been taken away to the courthouse in Washington, Kentucky, with her head down in her hands, and she had never come back. That was the truth.

  “My momma's gone,” I said, closing my fingers around the yarn. “You know that, same as me. You is making up things in yo’ head on account of the fever, Harrison.”

  “I ain't making up a thing.” Harrison coughed. “Just look inside that yarn. Go on, now.” He waved his hand. “Look.”

  I unraveled the tangle of yarn, and when I got to the middle, something fluttered into my lap. A torn scrap of paper. I could see two small words written in brown ink on that paper. One word, an empty space, then another word.

  “Paper says Chat-ham, Canaday” Harrison said, leaning over to look at it. He put his finger on each word. “Chat-ham, Canaday. The colored blacksmith who can read tol’ me what it said. That's where your momma, Hannah, is.”

  I stared at Harrison. “My momma give this to you?”

  “No.” Harrison leaned back and closed his eyes. “It was a sign between me and Lilly a
nd your momma. The day they took her away, ‘bout ten years ago now, me and Lilly tol’ her—you ever get free, you find a way to send us and Samuel some sign so's we know. Just send us a little kinda sign, we said, nothin much, or Mas'er Hackler will figure something is up.”

  Harrison picked up the tangle of yarn from my hands. “Your momma said if she ever got herself free, she'd send us a roll of gray wool yarn. ‘That yarn be my sign,’ she told us, because all her hands did is weave and spin for the Old Mas Hackler and his wife, and gray was the color of their no-good, worthless heads.”

  Harrison shook his head. “Me and Lilly never figured on that sign coming someday. We figured your momma was long gone. Same as being laid out in our little Negro burying-ground. When folks is sold off, you don't never see or hear from them again. Same as bein dead.”

  Harrison leaned back against the molasses barrel. The wagon creaked and groaned on the rough road. “The same day the cow died and the storm blew over, I found the yarn setting on my milk stool in the barn, plain as day. Don't know who brung it or how it got to be there. But when I saw it and found the scrap of paper inside, I knew, sure as anything, it was the sign from your momma tellin us she was free.”

  I thought about Green Murdock foretelling our future. Watch for a letter or sign coming, wasn't that what he had said? A little shiver went through me.

  Harrison closed his eyes. “Knowing your momma was free just about worried us to death, ‘cause we didn't know what to do about you. I tol’ Lilly I was gonna take you to Canaday my own-self And she didn't like that atall.” He shook his head. “ ‘You as old as the hills,’ she told me. ‘How you gonna get all the way to Canaday with Samuel?’ But I just said my mind was made up.”

  Harrison pulled the blankets tighter around his shoulders. “Wasn't gonna breathe a word to you till we got to Canaday and found your momma. Wasn't gonna breathe a word—”

  A bad tremble shook him. “But Lord Almighty, I got the fever terrible,” he said, his teeth knocking together. “I been worryin that maybe the Lord is coming to take me this time. What's Samuel gonna do if I leave him without telling him that his momma is free? That's what I been thinkin.” He fixed his eyes on me. “So if anything happens to me, you keep on runnin, Samuel, you keep on going to Canaday you hear me?”