Trouble Don't Last

by Shelley Pearsall

  Too bright, I thought.

  As we crept through patches of moonlight, I felt as if the world was holding a bunch of candles right over our heads. Harrison was breathing loud and coughing, and August kept taking quick looks behind us, putting his finger to his lips to be quiet so he could listen for something coming.

  Suddenly, there was the sound of fast hoofbeats behind us.

  Me and August dove face-flat in the short grass, and Harrison hunched down and pressed his face into his coat, trying to cover up the sound of his coughing. My heart pounded in my ears. Anyone coming by would see us. We were caught out in the open.

  Three horses passed by, close enough for us to hear the sound of their hard breathing. “Gid-up, girl, gid-up, gid-up!” The riders were laughing loud and shouting to their horses.

  I didn't dare lift my head to see if I knew any of those riders. Even after they passed us, I stayed stuck to the ground. Seemed like the sound of their voices echoed in the air, even after they had long gone.

  A shiver went through me. Were they the snow that was coming?

  “Railroad's down this road,” August whispered and pointed. “Just a little ways more.”

  The iron horse sat next to a cluster of dark buildings, but no wheels were turning or smoke coming out of it this time. Looked like it was sleeping almost. Beyond the buildings, I could see the lights of the white town of Hillsboro.

  “You gonna be riding in the whiskey car,” August whispered. He waved his hand in the direction of the cars. “Dark as pitch inside. But all you does is hide in there, back of the whiskey barrels, keep quiet, and come morning, that railroad is gonna take you all the ways to the lake.”

  Harrison was quiet for a while, like he was thinking.

  “What lake we talkin about?” he said.

  August looked over at Harrison and shook his head back and forth, grinning a little. “The one with Canaday on the other side of it, I imagine.”

  “How we s'posed to know THAT,” Harrison asked, pointing his walking stick at the railroad, “if me and Samuel is shut inside the car?”

  “Well, now.” August cleared his throat. “I ain't been on the cars my ownself, but folks say you just stay on them until they don't go no further. And when they don't go no further, then you know you come to the lake.” He squinted at Harrison. “I figure it's prob'ly gonna take you all day with the cars stopping and starting the way they do. After dark, they say a white fellow at the lake opens all the cars and whistles.”

  “Whistles?” Harrison said.

  “Some kinda little tune. That's what I been tol’. And you s'posed to whistle back, and when he hears that, he takes folks to the boats.”

  Harrison didn't say a word, just shook his head slowly from side to side.

  “We never had no one come back here to the Hollow, so they must get to Canaday I figure,” August said, looking down and kicking the dirt with his shoe. “You ready, then? Better get on the car while everything's good and quiet.” He stood up and took a quick look around. “Stay close, you hear?”

  But I didn't want to get on those railroad cars. Nohow. Harrison hadn't seen them thundering across the field, but I had.

  “Lord Almighty,” Harrison whispered as we crept closer to the railroad. “Ain't seen nothin like this my whole life.”

  August pushed open the door of one of the cars, and the sour-sweet smell of whiskey drifted out. There were no windows like the other cars I'd seen with whitefolks inside. August said it was a freight-carrying car. It carried things, not people.

  “You want me to help you climb in?” he said to Harrison.

  But Harrison sat on the edge of the car and slid his own legs inside, one at a time, and I crawled in behind him. It was dark inside that car. Couldn't even see where Harrison had gone to at first. Nothing but kettle black in front of me.

  Outside, August whispered good-bye.

  Harrison leaned out the door and said low, “Me and Samuel's always gonna be in your debt for what you done for us. Ain't no two ways ‘bout it.”

  “Naw,” August answered, waving his hand. “That's what we does. You move on to Canaday now, and don't pay us no more thought. Just keep yo'selves hid, remember.”

  But my heart leaped as the door slid closed and the latch fell into place. Seemed like everything suddenly vanished in darkness. August and Belle were gone. The Negro Hollow was gone. The field, the night sky—everything gone.

  “Harrison!” I whispered loud.

  But somebody else answered me.

  “Who's there?” a voice said from inside the car.

  Ordee Lee

  “That you, Samuel?” Harrison said sharply.

  “No,” a colored man's voice said with a low chuckle. “I ain't Samuel.”

  “Samuel,” Harrison hissed. In the darkness, his hand wrapped around my arm and pulled me back toward the door we had come through. “Who's hidin in this car with us?” he called out. “Somebody else in here?”

  “You runaways?” the voice echoed.

  “You tell us who you is first,” Harrison snapped. He took another step backward, until our shirt cloth was up against the latched door of the car. Nowhere else to go. We were shut inside the four walls of the whiskey car.

  “We got a gun and knife with us, you hear?” Harrison called out, even though we didn't have a thing except Belle's biscuits and turnover pie in our hands. And I had a little roll of yarn with the words Chat-ham Canaday in my pocket. “So you better not give us no trouble.”

  There was quiet. I could hear the other fellow breathing and sniffling loud and clearing his throat. “I sho’ didn't run all the ways from Kentucky to get shot at and kilt. Not by two folks the same color as me. Who you think you are, anyways?” There was the smell of a candle being lit and then the sound of shoes shuffling around the barrels. “Lemme see what you look like.”

  The fellow that came toward us was just about the tallest black fellow I had ever seen. It looked as if someone had taken his body and stretched it in the middle, like it was a piece of dough, and then taken his arms and legs and pulled on them too. Never seen such long arms and legs on anybody before.

  “You the ones I been talkin to?” he said, shuffling over. Holding up his flickering stub of a candle, he leaned closer. His eyes were big and set far apart, and they stared, checking us over real serious. First Harrison, then me.

  Then the man's whole face cracked into a crooked grin. “Why, you both runaways too, ain't you?” He shook a finger at Harrison. “You only funnin with me. Here I thought you was planning to grind my bones to powder, the way you was sounding …”

  “You just go on back where you was and leave us be,” Harrison snapped.

  But the fellow didn't pay Harrison any mind and kept right on talking loud. “You the first runaways I come across. I'm Ordee Lee, belonged to Master Webster from Maysville, Kentucky. I run off last week, and I been hopping one car after another trying to get north.” He tapped the wall behind us with his knuckles. “You know where we is? We close to Canaday? You know anything about how to get up there?”

  “Hush, now,” Harrison said sharply. “Folks outside is gonna hear you.”

  The man reached into his worn-out coat. “Want to see my family? I got a beautiful family back in Kentucky, where I come from.” Pulling out a folded-up piece of paper, he said, “Here they is.”

  He handed his candle to Harrison and opened the paper in his hand carefully, square by square, until he held the whole piece open, and I could see what was inside.

  I had to swallow hard when I saw it.

  Three knots of blackfolks’ hair lay on that white paper. Looked like it was a page from a letter or book, folded and folded. And in the middle of all those fancy words, the black-folks’ hair lay there like three lost rings.

  “This my wife, Nancy,” Ordee Lee said, pointing to the darkest ring. “Most pretty woman in the world. And these our babies, Isaiah and little Moses.” Softly, he traced his finger around the two smallest ri
ngs. “Moses, he just born in the spring, got lungs like two bellows, and Isaiah, he just walkin when I went to my master and—”

  Ordee Lee's voice caught and stopped. He looked at us, his eyes blinking fast.

  “When you went to your master and did what?” Harrison said, holding up Ordee Lee's candle and squinting at him.

  Ordee Lee folded up the piece of paper without saying a word and stuck it into his coat. Then he cast his eyes quick around the car and over his shoulder, like he was expecting something to come out of the shadows.

  “When you what?” Harrison said again.

  Ordee Lee cracked all of his knuckles and twisted his hands together. “When I brought a shovel down on his head,” he whispered. “And tried to kill him.”

  “What?” Harrison stared, and I could feel all the blood drain right down to my feet. Ordee Lee had gone after his own master. He had taken a shovel to a white man. There was no trouble worse than that.

  Ordee Lee's hands knotted and unknotted themselves. “I took a shovel and hit him. Run, they says. Run. I run all night. Never looked back. Just run.” He reached in his coat for the folded-up paper again and held it toward us. “He was gonna sell me off from them. My Nancy and Isaiah and Moses,” he said, tapping the paper. “Why would somebody do something like that? That's what I kept on sayin. Why?”

  Ordee Lee's voice trembled. “The day they was planning to take me away from them, I just raised the shovel, raised it, and brought it—” Ordee Lee took a step backward, staring wide-eyed at us. “I'm gonna go back to my own side of the car and lie down,” he said fast. “Do ‘preciate meetin you.” And he shuffled into the darkness, bumping and stumbling into barrels, leaving his candle behind.

  Harrison stared at the flickering candle in his hands. White wax dripped all over his fingers and onto the floor. “We been stuck inside a car full of whiskey and trouble, Samuel.” He shook his head. “Snow outside and trouble inside.”

  ‐ ‐ ‐

  All night, me and Harrison sat inside that car, waiting. Then morning came, and the car started to move. I was sleeping on the floor when I caught the sharp smell of burning wood. I lifted up my head, looking around for Harrison in the gray shadows. Outside, there was a loud bell ringing and someone's voice calling out.

  “Harrison,” I said, sitting up fast. “Something wrong?”

  Harrison was over by the wall of the car with his eyes pressed against the chinks in the wood, trying to see out. “Can't see nothin,” he whispered, turning around, his eyes wide with fear. “Only thing I smell is smoke—”

  The car jolted forward and back, all of a sudden. Harrison tried to reach for the side of the car and fell against a stack of barrels. He groaned and put his forehead down in his hands.

  “ORDEE LEE!” I hollered.

  As the car began to sway and rumble forward, Ordee Lee came flying out of the shadows in the back of the car, going from one barrel to another, holding on. “You callin for me?” he said, looking around wide-eyed. “Something done happen while I was sleepin?”

  Harrison was on his hands and knees trying to get himself up. “Ain't you never been on a railroad before?” Ordee Lee hollered over the noise. “You gotta hold on to something. Here—” He reached for Harrison. “You just take ahold of my arm—”

  Me and Ordee Lee pulled Harrison to standing. Around us, the car swayed and shook like thunder, going faster and faster. Whiskey sloshed back and forth in the barrels. My heart roared in my ears.

  “We on fire?” Harrison hollered.

  “Naw.” Ordee Lee shook his head and waved his hand at the front of the car. “They's burning wood up there in that iron horse and making clouds full of smoke and soot. Come afternoon, you gonna be tasting them ashes in your mouth, believe me.

  Harrison looked toward the door of the car. Light flashed through the chinks in the walls, on and off, making thin stripes of lightning on our faces. Felt like we were heading straight to the gates of hell itself.

  “How fast we going, you think?” Harrison asked.

  “Fast,” Ordee Lee hollered. “No old horse and wagon'd keep up with us, that's for sure. Not ‘less it had wings.”

  Going North

  All day, the whiskey car stopped and started at places we couldn't see. More places than we could count, just like August had said. We heard people walking past the car, and barrels being rolled and loaded. Me and Harrison and Ordee Lee stayed crouched down in the back of the car each time we stopped, in case someone opened the door. But no one did.

  When we were moving, Ordee Lee almost wore out the floor. Pacing back and forth, he talked and cracked his knuckles and tapped his fingers on each of the barrels. He told us about all the cars he had been on since running off. A pork-barrel car. A lumber car. A baggage car. And this one.

  Didn't breathe a word again about his master or what he had done.

  “Trouble is,” he said, “you don't know the direction the cars is going when you get on. So one went west instead of north. Another went south, and took me all the way back to Cincinnati—prob'ly woulda took me to the fields to pick cotton,” he chuckled, “if I hadn't been watchin close. And another just sat on the tracks, never moved once.”

  “This one's going north to the lake,” Harrison told him. “That's what we heard in Hillsboro.”

  “Huh,” Ordee Lee said, chewing on a piece of straw. “We'll see ‘bout that. Maybe we open the door and it's New Ore-leans.”

  Harrison said that the cotton fields of the south were dead hot, and if we were going south, the car would be getting hotter and hotter inside, and we would know it. The wind coming through the chinks in the car was cool—cold almost—when we were moving, and it smelled like pastures and fields outside. So Harrison said he was sure we were heading the right direction. North.

  But Ordee Lee kept on worrying and walking all day. “Thought you says someone was going to come for us and let us out? When they s'posed to come?” he would ask Harrison for the hundredth time. “We been on this railroad car all day, where's that lake gone to?”

  Didn't matter how many times Harrison told him that we had to wait until dark. Each time the car came to another stop, Ordee Lee would ask, “You think we come to the lake yet? You think Canaday's out there now?”

  Me and Harrison kept to our own side of the car. Sitting there in the rumbling darkness, I tried to think about Canada. Tried to conjure up a picture of people waiting there for us, the way people wait for visitors.

  “What you think it's gonna be like?” I asked Harrison. But Harrison closed his eyes and said it was bad luck to talk about things before they happened.

  I remembered Young Mas Seth showing me a silver coin once and telling me that I had to chase him all over, trying to take it away. Seemed like Canada was the same as that silver coin. We had chased all over, and now we had almost caught it.

  I tried to picture what Canada would look like. Tried to picture myself living in a real house and walking around calling Harrison my granddaddy Or maybe we would live in Chat-ham with my momma if she had a spare bedchamber. And maybe if I was free, I could get up some mornings and do what I wanted to, just like Young Mas Seth. I could carry one or two fancy white-folks’ books in my hands, and have a mule to ride, and learn to write words like Mr. Keepheart.

  Strange to think about all of that. It made me feel scared and pleased inside at the same time.

  “Car's slowin down,” Ordee Lee whispered loud. “Listen.”

  The rumbling deepened and lengthened like a horse in a slow gallop. After a string of jolts and pulls, we came to a stop. Only this time, we didn't move on again. The bell stayed silent, and one by one, all the voices outside died away.

  Seemed like an hour passed, maybe more. It was night outside, we could tell, because the car was pitch-black inside. We heard an owl hooting and a pair of tomcats fighting and clawing. “If this ain't the height of madness,” Ordee Lee said, lying down next to us and flinging his arms over his face. “They ain't gonna
let us out. We gonna shrivel up and die locked in this here railroad.”

  Harrison didn't say a word. His rigor mortis had set in, bad, from being on the hard floor all day. He was leaning against one wall, with his head down on his chest. I could hear him whispering the words of the same song, over and over. “Lord, Lord, Lord,” he mumbled low. “What you want me to stay here for, this of world ain't a friend no more, no friend, no more, what you want me to stay here for …”

  And then there was the soft sound of footsteps coming around the car.

  My heart thudded.

  The latch on our car moved, rattled, and the door creaked a little ways open. I could hear the sound of someone leaning in. Breathing.

  “Tu-ee. Tu-ee,” the person whistled real low. It sounded just like a little night bird whistling. But before me and Harrison could whistle back, Ordee Lee jumped up and said loudly, “We here. Don't go and shut that door. There's three of us colored folks hidin in here.”

  “Lord Almighty,” Harrison hissed. “You hush, now.”

  It didn't matter because whoever was outside had already heard us.

  There was a long silence, as if they were waiting, or listening, or maybe thinking about shutting the door and leaving us right there. “You runaways?” a hoarse voice said finally. Sounded like a white voice.

  We didn't have a single choice but to answer.

  “Yes.” Harrison heaved a sigh. “We is.”

  “All right,” the voice said quickly. “Come out then.”

  Sliding our hands along the tops of the whiskey barrels, we moved slowly through the darkness toward the door. First Ordee Lee, then me, then Harrison. I could see the night sky and a few pale wisps of clouds through the open square. There were stars out, too.

  It sent a shiver clear through me.

  Everything looked exactly the same as my dream in the white-folks’ church.

  I remembered leaning over the hole in the church floor and staring at the same stars and the night sky. I remembered how Reverend Pry and Mr. Keepheart lowered Harrison into that open square, and how he had floated away from me, spinning and turning and falling in that terrible darkness …