William Henry is a Fine Name

by Cathy Gohlke

  FORGETTING IS A BLESSED THING. My mind wont remember all I saw or did that night. I don’t know how I got to the trestle. I don’t remember when the train whistle stopped its piercing cry. But I remember my breath standing in frozen clouds before my face. I remember Joseph Henry’s unbroken stream of shining tears when the lantern light found him on the ground, rocking and cradling his dead son’s body.

  I remember picking up William Henry’s shoes, which had been yanked from his feet and thrust down the tracks by the force of the train. I held them next to my chest, breathing the smell of William Henry’s fear, or was it mine, wondering why I couldn’t sense him near me. I followed Joseph as he carried what was left of his son, his only child, down the hill and across the meadow to Laurelea. I stood on the doorstep as Joseph, burdened and bloody, carried William Henry in to Aunt Sassy. When her scream rent the night like a wounded animal I backed away, still clutching my best friend’s shoes. I don’t remember that Pa found me, crouched in the yard, and walked me home. I only heard about it later.

  Jake Tulley was buried late the next day.

  “I won’t go to Jake Tulley’s funeral.”

  “It’s only decent,” Ma insisted. “He was our neighbor.”

  He wasn’t my neighbor, and I considered that he as good as murdered William Henry. I knew William Henry had lured Jake there. I could imagine him telling Jake to look closely at the tracks, under the speeding train, to catch a glimpse of the Underground Railroad. I wondered if William Henry had intended to go on that ride all along or if Jake pulled him down with him.

  “It might help the Henrys more for you to go, Son.” Pa placed his hand on my shoulder. “Sheriff Biggs is questioning everybody, trying to find out why the boys were at the trestle that night. We don’t want to give him any hurtful ideas.”

  So I went, for the Henrys’ sake. But I couldn’t bring myself to speak to the Tulleys.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss, Mr. and Mrs. Tulley,” Ma said. “If there’s anything we can do …” But there wasn’t anything, not beyond the fried chicken and cake Ma did up for them, and maybe, they suggested, Pa could donate a wagon of straw and a hog or two for winter. The Tulleys never missed a beat.

  Ma didn’t push me. She told folks I was in shock. Pa didn’t push either. I think he wondered what I knew but didn’t probe. Sheriff Biggs probed. I was careful not to say much. He finally figured it was two boys tried to jump train in the dark and got pulled under. Jake and William Henry were the least likely two boys to run off larking together, and everybody knew it. But nobody had another explanation. Jake Tulley was buried in the woods behind his house, next to his older brother, Zach. Charcoal-scratched slates marked both brothers’ graves, but you could no longer read Zach’s. Preacher Crane came and said words. There weren’t many there. The Tulleys had kin but didn’t make friends.

  William Henry was buried in the colored cemetery at Laurelea, beside the church Mr. Heath built. Preacher Crane didn’t come and I was glad. Mr. Heath and Pa and several of the workers from Laurelea prayed and said words. Joseph Henry held Aunt Sassy, who in three days had lost her world. Granny Struthers sang. Her old voice cracked, but the spirituals she sang came from a deep well. There was a goodly crowd, but no gathering afterward. Nobody had the heart for eating or visiting. A long life well lived is one thing. But a young life snuffed out of time is nothing to celebrate.

  The weather had turned overnight. Before the last shovel of dirt covered William Henry’s pine box, the freezing rains started. They whipped our coats and hats, beat through the trousers against our legs and stung our faces, then poured and whipped some more. We walked home through the swelling storm and sat till dark.

  Pa gave the evening read. I felt no power in it. Why had God let this happen? Why did William Henry have to do such a fool thing? Had he committed murder? William Henry was my best human friend, and now that he was gone I felt more alone than ever. Why hadn’t he thought ahead to what it would be like for the rest of us? Had he meant to die? Did he feel he had to give his life to take Jake’s? Those questions haunted me like Tulley’s hounds. If it hadn’t been for my watch, maybe—but what was it that William Henry had said? Jake knew about the wagon. The wagon couldn’t be explained away.

  “I think our going is for the best, Charles,” Ma said. “I only wish you would come with us now, too. There is just too much sadness here.” My ears came alive.

  “I can’t leave now, Caroline. It makes sense for you and Robert to go. But I can’t leave Isaac or Joseph or Sassy. They are as much my family as your father is yours. And there may be more that needs to be settled with Sheriff Biggs.” I felt Pa’s eyes on me.

  “We need to be together, Charles. We are a family, too, and we need to start behaving like one. I understand your loyalty to Isaac and the Henrys, but what about your loyalty to Robert? To me?”

  “I’m not saying I won’t come. Just not now. Stay here with me, and we can all go together later.”

  Ma shook her head. “Papa needs me. But I want you to promise me you’ll come by Christmas.”

  Pa looked at Ma and then into the fire. “I’ll do my best. Let’s see how things go here.” Neither spoke after that. I didn’t care if I stayed or went. What mattered, anyway?

  Ma helped Aunt Sassy some, but mostly it was the colored workers at Laurelea that gathered ’round the Henrys and drew them in, forming a protective net, a small shield against the world. I knew how flimsy that shield stood in a white man’s world. I knew Sol Tulley longed to take his anger out on Joseph, even though he didn’t know why Jake had been with William Henry that night. Except for Mr. Heath there would have been no protection from people like the Tulleys.

  We hadn’t been home a week when our bags were packed and loaded on the wagon. Ma spent her last hour before leaving for the train at the Heaths’ house with Pa and Mr. Heath. I spent mine in the freezing drizzle at William Henry’s grave. “I don’t know what you’re doing now, William Henry,” I whispered, “but I sure hope you’re all right. I hope there’s fishing holes in heaven…. Why’d you do it, William Henry? Why?” I swiped my tears with my sleeve, as I pulled away some leaves that had blown against Jake’s grave.

  “I guess Jake never told his pa about the Underground Railroad or the watch or the wagon or any of it. You saved us all. And I reckon I ought to be grateful, but I’m mad as a hornet. I miss you, William Henry, and I’m not ashamed to say it.” I pushed back the hot tears that kept coming, angry with myself for crying, angry with William Henry for dying, and above all, angry with God for letting it happen. A twig snapped behind me.

  “William Henry gone to a better place, Robert. Gone to a better place.” It was Granny Struthers cradling her basket of herbs and flowers beneath her dripping shawl.

  “Yes, ma’am.” I turned a little away from her so she couldn’t see my face and tried to get hold of myself.

  Granny crumbled some dried herbs over William Henry’s grave and chanted. “Go long home, William Henry. Go long home. No need to tarry ’round here. No need to tarry ’round here. Ooooh—ahh. No need to tarry ’round here. We’ll carry on, William Henry. We’ll carry on. Go on over Jordan, William Henry. Row your boat. Go on now. Go on.” Granny kept on.

  I wasn’t sure she knew I was standing there anymore. I took a good look at her as she chanted, something I never did when her piercing black eyes were turned on me in daylight. She wasn’t more than four and a half feet tall, withered and bent like a bare tree branch, her blue-black skin wrinkled like winter-dried apples. Coarse white hair escaped the calico turban wound around her head, reminding me of the wool Aunt Sassy spun. Granny’s hands, small and gnarled, dove in and out of her basket like sparrow claws. She crumpled different herbs for different parts of her chant. I didn’t know what they meant. She spoke to me, at least I thought she did, but it still sounded like a chant.

  “Work’s not done. Work’s not done. You know moss grows on the north side of trees? You know the star paths? You know when t
he moon be right? You know where the drinking gourd shines? You know to walk in the river to kill scent? You know onions rubbed in the feet kill it, too? Tell me, now, do you remember Moses? Moses be our deliverer. You go on back to the land of Egypt and you lead my people home. That’s what William Henry be tellin’ you. That’s what he be crying from the grave in this rain for.” And then she began to sing a song I’d heard all my life but never gave meaning to. “Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land. Tell ole Pharaoh, let my people go.” And all her words made me think of Nanny Sara and her talk of Moses and star paths.

  “Granny Struthers, you hush that kinda talk. Robert not needing to hear that now.” Joseph Henry limped between the graves. “You say your prayers and go on home. Sassy’ll be down directly to see you ’bout some herbs.”

  Granny Struthers lost her trance-like stare. “I expect her. Sassy be all right. She strong. You drink what I give her. It make you sleep when sleep won’t come.”

  “I appreciate it, Granny. You’d best go on home now and mind the slick path. This cold rain be no place for you.”

  Granny nodded. She didn’t look at me, but toddled away, leaning on her cane, whispering to herself.

  Joseph and I stood by William Henry’s grave. I knew there were things to say and this was my chance to say them. “Joseph,” I began, not sure how to go on. “I’m sorry about William Henry dying.” Joseph nodded but did not speak. He stared at the mound that covered his son. Joseph Henry was one of the tallest, straightest, smilingest men I’d ever known, black or white. But he wasn’t so tall now, and he didn’t carry himself proud. He surely wasn’t smiling. “He was my best friend.”

  Joseph placed his hand on my shoulder, but kept his eyes on the mound. “I know, Robert. I know.” And then the work of holding it there seemed too heavy. His hand slid from my shoulder.

  “It’s my fault,” I whispered. “It’s my fault William Henry got killed by that train.” And then the story poured out. I told my best friend’s father about skunking the dogs and dropping my watch, about Jake Tulley’s threats, and how he knew about the wagon with the false bottom, having seen it while coon hunting one night. I even told him about William Henry coming to me the night of the accident, and that I should have guessed what he was up to, and about the horrible dream I had that very night. I didn’t tell him that the dream had come before, so many times before. I clutched my hands to still their trembling. Joseph wrapped his arm around me and pulled me to his chest.

  “No, Robert. It ain’t your fault. It was William Henry’s calling.” He held me until he had to pull away to blow his nose. “It’s good you told me. I just wished he’d come to me. I figured it had something to do with them dogs. I been blaming myself ’cause I was the one told him to skunk them dogs.” He shook his head. “But if Jake knew about that wagon, William Henry’d done it anyhow. I know him. I know my son.” He shook the drizzle from his hat and pulled his collar up the back of his neck. “But why them railroad tracks? I been puzzling on that, but can’t make it out.”

  “That was William Henry’s trade,” I said. “Jake wanted to see the railroad underground. William Henry showed it to him.”

  Joseph looked at me like I’d grown antlers. “Showed him the what?”

  “Jake didn’t understand that the Underground Railroad is a route of safe houses. He believed it was a real railroad under the ground and he meant to ride it, said he’d never ridden a train before but he meant to ride that one. William Henry promised Jake that he would show him the Underground Railroad if Jake wouldn’t tell what else he knew, and if he’d give back the watch first.”

  Joseph Henry looked at me a long time. He nodded slowly, the realization of what had happened unfolding in his mind. Gradually, lines crept from the corner creases of his eyes. One side of his mouth turned up in a smile, and before long he chuckled. Pretty soon we were both belly laughing and crying at the same time, so hard we could barely stand, slapping the rain from our clothes and one small layer of sorrow from our souls. Even in the sadness and the horror of it all we realized that William Henry had skunked Jake Tulley one last time.

  THIS TIME THE MILES ON THE TRAIN passed without me knowing. I kept picturing William Henry. In those pictures I lived all our growing-up-together years over and over in my mind. Always, at the end, was that plot of ground in the cemetery, and his marker. Pa wrote the letters and Joseph Henry carved them. Joseph and I set the finished marker in place, near William Henry’s head. It wasn’t enough, but this way nobody’d ever forget William Henry’s name or that he lived—not them that knew him, or those that come after.

  Our last night of travel we stopped in a boardinghouse in Jamestown, a small town in Guilford County, North Carolina. The plain clothes and large bonnets of Quakers lined the streets. I wondered if these Quakers were abolitionists or if living in the South had changed their views of slavery. I remembered what William Henry had said about going to the Quakers if I ever needed help on the railroad. I knew he meant the Underground Railroad, but I swore never to go near it, ever again.

  We hired a coach to drive us to Salem and arrived about noon on Friday. We knew there’d be somebody from Mitchell House in Salem to pick up the weekly edition of the People’s Press. Cousin Albert and Old George met us by the newspaper office. Pa had telegraphed ahead.

  Ma acted as though we’d never been away. She fell right in with Grandfather and planning the meals and running the house. She and Cousin Albert spent even more time together, giddy as children, planning their Christmas ball. Grandfather had asked that it be hosted at Mitchell House, since he didn’t know how long Ma and I would be away. Both houses were full of Christmas smells—pine and cedar garlands, plum cakes and gingerbread and sugar cookies in all shapes. Ma and Rebecca paraded the hallways, new clothes, gifts, and ribbons in tow. It was as if she didn’t remember that Miz Laura and William Henry had just died. But I could not forget, and all the smells made me sick. Everything tasted like tin. I only wanted time with Stargazer, and to be left alone to spend my grief. But Ashland and Mitchell House had been turned upside down, and Ma kept at me till there was no time and no place to be alone, inside or out, anywhere.

  The only person who might understand was Emily, or Jeremiah. But I’d hurt Emily with my snubbing. Besides, Alex watched us closely and the risk of his telling all he knew or guessed was too great. I’d learned that the hard way through Jake Tulley. And how could I tell Jeremiah that William Henry was dead—the only friend he’d ever had?

  Ten days before Christmas I made my way outside to Nanny Sara’s kitchen. Ashland was quiet for a few hours. Ma was at Mitchell House supervising the tree trimming. Grandfather was napping. At last I could be alone and quiet. In all contrariness, I didn’t want to be alone.

  Late afternoon light filtered through the kitchen window and cast a glow around Nanny Sara as she rolled piecrusts. Rebecca tended meat sizzling in the Dutch oven in the fireplace. Something about the light or the kitchen smells or the hard wooden bench pulled up to the plank table reminded me of Aunt Sassy and her kitchen in the Heaths’ house at Laurelea. I sat down across from Nanny Sara. She didn’t look up from her work but cut me a slab of warm hoecake, slathered it with butter and molasses, and pushed it across the table toward me.

  I tasted it and relished the warm sweetness. It was the first thing that had tasted good to me in a long while. I drank the glass of milk Rebecca quietly set before me. “This reminds me of home and Aunt Sassy.” I realized Nanny Sara didn’t know who I meant. “Aunt Sassy cooks for the Heaths at Laurelea.” And then I remembered, and the hoecake stuck in my throat. “Now I guess she just cooks for Mr. Heath. Miz Laura died just lately.”

  I traced the wood grain in the table with my finger. “Aunt Sassy is William Henry’s ma. William Henry is—was—my best friend.” The hoecake nearly spilled out, but I pushed it down. “He got killed just before we came back here. There’s others there, too. Pa and Joseph, that’s William Henry’s pa. And there’s Granny Struther
s, Aunt Sassy’s ma. She’s an old midwife and herb doctor. She knows more about folks than sometimes they know about themselves.” I talked faster, trying to run over my pain. “Granny Struthers talked to me about star paths and Moses, like you did. Is it the same Moses?” But Nanny Sara wouldn’t answer. She just started humming as though she’d not heard. “Is it?”

  But still Nanny Sara hummed. Rebecca looked from her to me and back again, but didn’t say anything, either. After a while I pushed my plate away and walked out. What was the matter with everybody? Why wouldn’t she answer me?

  Ma nearly ran into me in the front hallway. “Oh! Robert! I’m glad you’re here. Call Rebecca for me. I want her to make up the north bedroom. We’re having company! Rev. Andrew Goforth is coming from Wilkes County to preach our Christmas Eve service, then he’s to fill Rev. Cleary’s pulpit on Christmas morning. But he will be back here to stay through New Year and to preach our Watch Night service on New Year’s eve—the first one our little church has had in years! And he’s staying with us! Abuella Cooper wanted him to stay with them, but I insisted. This will be our first real company and I hear he’s quite young, so you and he might have a good deal in common. Hurry, now! He’ll be here before supper!”

  Ma turned us all upside down giving orders right and left. Company might be good for the grown-ups, but I didn’t relish having a preacher under the roof. I was mad at God, but didn’t want to talk that out with anybody. I couldn’t pretend to have the Christmas spirit.

  A banging on the back door and cries from the quarters stopped our work and called us outside. Jeremiah, Nanny Sara’s grandson, was tied with leather thongs to the whipping post in the quarters. Jed Slocum, vengeance on his face and the bright light of drink in his eyes, cracked the whip across Jeremiah’s back.

  Nanny Sara ran to Slocum and pulled at his clothes. “Please, Mr. Jed. Don’t do it. Not again. Please!”