“You gonna get better,” I said loudly. “Nothing's gonna happen to you.”
“How you know that, Samuel?” Harrison snapped. “You the Lord?”
Closing his eyes, he leaned back against the barrel to rest, and my heart thundered inside me.
Outside, the wagon swayed and rattled through the rainstorm. Tinware and baskets fell over and rolled loose in the wagon bed. Buckets tumbled down. Seemed like everything I knew, and didn't know, was rolling around in my mind like tinware and baskets …my momma being free in a place called Chatham, Canaday…Green Murdock's fortunes all coming true…Harrison being terrible-sick with the fever…Lilly not wanting me to leave atall…
You ain't allowed to cry, Lilly whispered in my mind.
Negro Hollow
It was late, almost dark, before Green Murdock came around to the back of the wagon to fetch us. As he untied the canvas flaps, all I could see was one little stripe of yellow in the sky. Everything else was woods and darkness, soaked full of rain.
“Dog bite my tail, I thought I would never get us here. You still in one piece, Young and Old?” Green Murdock peered into the wagon. “The Negro Hollow is just down this road, maybe a quarter mile, and if you hurry, you can get there before it's too dark to see, I imagine.”
But Harrison was worse. As he slowly climbed out of the wagon, he was taken by a bad spell, and he could only lean against the side, eyes closed, his hand clutching at the blanket around his chest. “Can't take in a breath of air,” he whispered.
“You,” Green Murdock said, pulling hard on my arm. “Run to the Hollow and get some of the colored folks there. Tell them to hurry back here, fast as they can. I ain't gonna stay here long with him.” He looked up at the sky and shook his head. “I knew this was gonna happen. Too sick to get out of my wagon. I knew this was gonna happen.
“Go on, run now.” He gave me a hard push, and I started down the dark road, my feet sloppy and unsteady in the mud and ruts. Didn't even know what I was running toward. Just ran.
The road got narrow and more narrow, until it was only two wagon tracks through weeds. Seemed like even those tracks were about to leave my feet and fade into the fields.
Ain't nothing here, my mind kept saying. There's no Negro Hollow. What if Green Murdock has taken the wagon and left you in the middle of a woods? White patro Hers could be riding anywhere around. Never gonna find your way back now even if you try.
But then I saw the lights. Looked just like a flicker in the darkness. As I got closer, I could see a patch of silvery-gray houses. Most were leaning, one-room cabins next to a few wood frame houses. No more than a dozen in all.
Feeling trembly as leaves, I crept toward one of the houses. It had a square porch along one side. I set one foot at a time on that porch, keeping an ear toward the door. I could smell the sour-sharp smell of cabbage cooking, and it sounded like colored peoples’ voices inside. Made me think of Lilly making cabbage soup for our supper. I raised my hand to knock.
But instead, the door flew open in front of me.
I caught my breath and froze.
A colored woman the size of Miz Catherine, maybe larger, filled the whole doorway in front of me. Her skin was pure black, the blackest skin I had ever seen. Black as an iron kettle.
Holding a skillet in one hand, she stared down at me, eyes snapping. “I saw you from the window. Why you creepin round my house? You lookin to take something that don't belong to you?” She raised the skillet as if to bring it right down on my head. “You lookin to make mischief with all I own in this world? Answer me straight now, child.”
My feet stayed stuck where they were, like they were nailed to the porch, and nothing but a small whisper came out of my mouth. “Green Murdock, he tol’ me to come here. Harrison's got a bad fever. He said to come here.”
The woman narrowed her eyes until they were just two mean slits. “Don't know Green Murdock and don't know why he tol’ you to come here,” she said sharply. “Git off my porch, and don't you come callin round here again. I don't take care of no poor colored folk.”
The door slammed shut, and there was the sound of heavy footsteps walking away. The tears that I'd been holding back came spilling out faster than I could stop them. Whole rivers of tears.
Then I heard a window opening near me. There was the scraping sound of someone nearby pushing up a window frame, slow and careful-like. It whispered through my mind that maybe the woman was going to aim the skillet at my head. But instead, a voice called out into the darkness.
“You there. Child,” the voice said real low. “Go three doors down. They take you there. Go round back. Knock twice and twice again. Twice, twice again. Don't you forget.” Then the window scraped closed, and when I looked around, I couldn't see a soul anywhere.
A shiver went clear through me.
I wanted to leave the Negro Hollow right then and run back down the road to Harrison and Green Murdock. Didn't want to go creeping around the tumbledown houses anymore. But you don't come back to whitefolks with empty hands, I knew that. If they tell you to do something, you do it.
So I crept toward the third house in the Negro Hollow. It was a small, white-painted house set in a dirt yard like the others. Go around back, the voice had said, so I slipped around the side of the house, keeping close to a row of bushes. There was a flickering lamp in the back window. Enough light to see that the stone steps in the back were all empty and swept clean. A broom leaned against the side of the house as if it had just finished sweeping.
It made me jumpy to see how everything was neat as a new pin, like the people inside were just waiting for someone to come and pay them a visit.
A colored woman's voice was talking in the house. A man's voice answered now and again, only I couldn't tell what they were saying, except for a word or two. I put one foot on the stone steps.
On the other side of the door, I could hear the sound of dishes being clattered together. “You want some of this pie, August? You hear me?” the woman's voice called loudly. “It just got done now.”
I drew in my breath and raised my hand to knock. Knocked light and soft as I could, twice and twice again.
The feet paused, and the woman's voice stopped.
“August. August …” I heard someone whisper. “The door.” There was the sound of quick footsteps moving back and forth as if they were running across the floor. Then the light in the back window went out, turning everything into darkness.
I had been sent straight into trouble.
In front of me, the door latch rattled. I dug my fingers into my palms, waiting to be hollered at or sent away.
“Why you come knocking here?” a low voice said as the door creaked open.
The skin on my neck prickled. Past the door, I could see nothing but darkness. The smell of snuffed-out candles drifted out.
“Tell us,” the man's voice said, louder this time. “Tell us why you knocked, or you won't be setting one foot inside this house.”
I couldn't think of a word to say. Just like the candles, all my words were snuffed out and gone.
A woman's voice jumped from another part of the shadows. “It's a child, August. A colored boy. You don't need to go scaring the life out of a poor child.”
A chair scraped behind the door. “Now, how am I s'posed to see some child standing on the steps if I'm setting behind the door, Belle?”
“Well, that's who it is. I can see him standing in the doorway, plain as day. You gonna bring him in, August, or just leave him standing in the dark?”
“I tol’ him to come in,” the man's voice kept on.
“No, you didn't.”
I shifted from one foot to the other, thinking about running off.
“Yes'm, I did.”
“No, you did not.”
The man behind the door heaved a loud sigh, and before I could turn on my heels and run, he came through the doorway, took ahold of my arm and pulled me into the house.
“That child be standing right no
w in the middle of your kitchen, Belle,” the man said, closing the door with a hard push. “And I sho’ hope he's a colored child, otherwise”—he paused and chuckled—”we gonna have to peel and pickle him for our supper.”
“August!” the woman said sharply.
The man kept on chuckling. “You gonna light your lamp, Belle, so I don't fall over and shoot him with this pistol I'm holding?”
My heart jumped.
A woman's dress rustled in the darkness. “Lord, I don't know why you talk that way and why you fool with that ol’ gun, August. You gonna kill somebody yet.”
A lamp flared in front of me, and I found myself being stared at by a colored man and woman dressed in whitefolks’ clothes. The woman had on a fancy green checked dress and a small white bonnet over her hair. The man was wearing a good brown-cloth coat and trousers.
They were both tall and strong-looking. If they hadn't been wearing whitefolks’ clothes, they would have looked just like the field hands that Master Hackler hired every year. Only, none of his field hands would ever be caught dead in those fancy clothes. He would work them until there were no bones left for fine clothes.
“How you?” The man leaned closer, giving me a squint look.
“You can't ask a child questions pointing a gun at him.” The woman flapped one hand in the air. “Go on and put that gun away, August.”
“See, child,” the man said, turning the flintlock pistol in his hands. “She's worrying ‘bout something as old as George Washington himself. Only thing I keep it for is making sure it's always colored folks giving the signal and no whitefolks sneaking around, trying to catch us—”
“August.”
“Yes'm.” Walking over, August stuck the nose of the pistol in a clay pot beside the door. “There,” he said, straightening up. “Don't know why you all the time fretting about a gun that ain't hit a thing in years, Belle.”
The woman called Belle shook her head. “You nothing but trouble.”
The colored man grinned. “Uh-huh, that's me.” He nodded his head in my direction. “You gonna get the boy something to eat? He sho’ looks like he could use something on them skinny bones.”
“I imagine so,” she said.
I looked down at my feet, not knowing what to say about Harrison and going back to the wagon where he was waiting.
Belle stepped closer and gave me a curious look. “You think he run off all by his ownself? Or other folks coming behind him?”
August shrugged his shoulders. “All I know is I threw down that whole pipe of tobacco I was smoking when he knocked on the door,” he said. “And I'm gonna find it before any more folks start pouring in.”
As August walked away, I tried to say how I had run off from Master Hackler with Harrison, and how he had been taken sick with a fever and was waiting by Green Murdock's wagon on the road to the Negro Hollow, and how we needed to hurry down the road to get him. But nothing I said seemed to make a bit of sense to them.
“Speak up, child,” Belle said. “Who's Harrison? Someone else out there?”
August's eyes shot a quick look at the closed door. “You saying there's two blackfolks hiding outside? Green Murdock and Harrison? Or they inside a peddler's wagon? Which one is it?” he asked. “They both sick with a fever?”
But I hadn't even opened my mouth to answer when the door smacked open, and Harrison himself stood there in the doorway, leaning on his walking stick with both hands.
“You all right, Samuel?” he said in a trembling, far-off kind of voice. “You was gone and you didn't come back. I tol’ that peddler to just go on with his wagon and leave us be. And I came looking. Didn't know what else to do. Looked everywhere in the Hollow, trying to find you.”
Harrison's fever-bright eyes turned to stare at the man and woman standing behind me. “My name's Harrison. Who you?” he said sharp.
“August Henry.” The colored man stepped forward and reached out his hand toward Harrison. But Harrison didn't move or raise his hand, just stayed where he was, so the man's hand stayed stuck in the air until he put it back down.
“And I'm Belle.” The woman nodded, smoothing her dress with the flats of her brown hands.
“Belle,” Harrison said, and the shadow of a smile crossed over his face. “Belle,” he repeated. Then his eyes slid closed, and his body seemed to fold up on itself. Before any of us could move, Harrison's walking stick clattered out of his hands and his body crumpled to the floor.
“Belle,” he whispered, and lay still.
And truth is, I fell to the floor too because I thought Harrison, who had looked after me my whole life, was dead.
Red Stars in a White Sky
Harrison had the lung fever.
After they had carried Harrison to the upstairs chamber and covered him with blankets, Belle came back to the open door where I was still holding Harrison's walking stick and staring out into the darkness, as if I had turned to a piece of stone.
“He run away with you?” she asked quiet.
“Yes,'m” I said, not turning around.
“You run from Kentucky?”
“Yes'm.”
Belle said they had seen the lung fever before in other runaways that had come through. She said it was from being out in the damp woods and night chills too long.
I remembered sitting in that old tree in the downpour when Master Hackler had been looking for us, and sleeping in the woods when I had gotten us lost, and making Harrison pull himself out of that shallow river when I was feeling mad. “We don't die but once,” he had said, driving his walking stick into the ground.
“Nothing you coulda done or not done,” Belle said as if she could see all the thoughts in my mind, plain as day. “Some come down with the lung fever and some don't.”
I looked at my hands curled around the top of the walking stick, and thought about Harrison's hands. “He gonna get well?”
“Well, now,” Belle said real quiet. “Some does, yes, but your friend's got the fever awful bad. Worse than we've seen in a long while. And me and August, we seen a lot.”
I knew by the way her voice trailed away, and she cast her eyes down, that she meant Harrison's fever was bad, bad, bad. That I shouldn't be expecting anything good to happen. But somewhere inside me, I did. I know I did because my eyes were as dry as salt, dry as bones.
You don't cry unless someone is dying or dead.
Belle wiped her hands on her apron and told me she was going to mix up some brandy and egg for Harrison. “Why don't you close that door, and come help me, Samuel?” she said, trying to make her voice nice and pleasant. “That is your name, right? Samuel? No use standing there”—she reached over and pushed the door closed—”looking out into the darkness like that. You ever hear of brandy and egg for fevers where you come from?” Belle moved toward the kitchen table.
“No'm,” I said, thinking about Lilly's fence-grass tea. That's what she always made for fevers. She would put fence-grass and water to boil over the fire, and she would stand there, stirring and tasting, until her whole cabin smelled sharp and green as the outdoors after a hard rain.
“Brandy and egg's my momma's old remedy. She was a slave in Mary-land, and one day, her master just set her free.” Belle reached into a basket of eggs on the table, pulled out two, and cracked them on the side of the bowl. “He said, ‘Eliza, you free,’ just like that.”
The yolks slid into the bowl, and Belle poured in brandy from a stoneware jug. “I was born a free person, and my brothers and sisters all free too. Imagine that. We just about the luckiest folks in the world, I suppose.”
Seemed strange to hear a colored person saying they were free. I had never heard of any blackfolks who called themselves free before. Not on Master Hackler's farm. Only person who was almost free, I figured, was the colored blacksmith who could come and go from farm to farm, and who was allowed to read.
Belle stirred the bowl fast, sending yolk and brandy flying. “My momma, she's still living in Philadelphia, where she
went after they set her free. She's ‘bout the same years old as the man with you.
“There.” Belle lifted the spoon to her lips and took a taste. “I put all my faith in her doctoring. If the brandy and egg don't do what it's supposed to, then the Lord has other plans, that's what she would say. You can't fool the Lord.”
But that's exactly what we tried to do.
Me and Belle, and sometimes August, sat beside Harrison, spooning brandy and egg into his mouth, and pressing cold cloths on his skin, hour after hour. “Another little while or so, we gonna get his fever starting down,” Belle would say, giving August a look. “Don't you worry, Samuel.”
But Harrison's brown skin stayed hot and dry as sunbaked field dirt, and the water trailed off him, fast as we put it on.
“Tell me about Harrison and the place you run away from,” Belle would say. She would try to cover up the uneven and trembling sound of Harrison's breathing with question after question. “Was Harrison the one who raised you? From the time you was a baby? What work did he do on your master's farm? How many slaves did your master keep? What did your master grow in his fields? Corn? Tobacco? Is the corn as tall here in Ohio as it was in Kentucky?”
Mostly, I only answered “yes'm” or “no'm,” and kept my eyes on the quilt that covered up Harrison. The quilt had red stars in a white sky. “You like how fine and bright them stars look?” Belle would say as she smoothed her hand on the top of the quilt. “I cut and pieced those stars my ownself Took for-ever.
On every one of the stars, I wished things. Foolish things. I would look at the center of those stars until I could see nothing but color in front of my eyes, like staring straight into the afternoon sun, and then I would make my wish.
I wished to be back at Master Hackler's farm, living just the same as always with Harrison and Lilly. I wished for Harrison to open his eyes and holler, “Let's get a-movin, Samuel. “ I wished for Lilly to run away and find us in the Negro Hollow.
Trouble Don't Last Page 13
