Don't Hang My Friend

by Raffensperger, John;

  Almost the whole town was at to Pa’s funeral. Old Isaiah and his family came from all the way across the river and were as respectful as white people but Reverend Pendelton made them stay outside the church. The little dark children never let out a peep. The reverend preached his usual hell and damnation sermon about Catholics and Democrats. Once or twice he mentioned Pa. but never said a word of comfort for Aunt Alice. Pa’s friends carried the pine wood coffin out the front door to the black hearse and most folks got in carriages but Old Isaiah and the darkies walked all the way to the cemetery, carrying their hats.

  It took two men with pickaxes and shovels to dig a hole in the hard dry ground. I balled when they lowered the coffin and filled the grave. Mr. Friday the saloon keeper shook my hand, like I was a grown up and said he was sorry. When most of the white folks left, Isaiah and his family stayed.

  “Your Pa was kind to us folks and always gave the chilluns a peppermint,” Isaiah said. Obediah got a bucket of dirt and wildflowers out of the wagon. They all helped dig little holes and planted the black eyed susan’s and the wild daisy’s.. “I’ll bring water every day, so’s next spring there will be flowers on his grave,” Isaiah said.

  The church ladies twittered around Aunt Alice, who sat in her black bombazine church dress and never said a word. It was like she had gone off into a world of her own. She had grieved over so many folks who had passed away and had held our little family together for so long, she had given up. Aunty didn’t even get up for breakfast the next day. There was plenty of food in the house, but I wasn’t hungry.

  Just before noon, Mr. Farnum drove up in his surrey and came through the front door without so much as knocking, like he already owned the place. He settled down on the horsehair sofa and talked fast while he spread papers out on a little table. He never once looked me square in the eye.

  “Your Pa was behind in his payments.. Way behind. This house and the store belongs to me. The only way to get my money back is to take over all those bottles of medicine and this here furniture to pay the debt,” he said.

  He shuffled e important looking papers with his fat fingers and studied the shine on his shoes. “The bank will collect the money that people owed your father and I will sell the stock of medicines.”

  I never thought to ask questions and Aunt Alice was too helpless to know any better. I walked around in a daze, wondering how I could tell Dr. Steele I couldn’t come to Chicago. The words in books didn’t mean anything and the anatomy book reminded me of Pa’s organs. I curled up in a ball and let the tears come.

  A few days later, Mr. Farnum returned. “It is settled. You are going to an orphanage and your aunt will have to go to the county poor farm,” he said. “Can I take my clothes and books to the orphanage?” I asked. “You can keep you clothes and one book. Everything else will be sold to pay your Pa’s debts,” he said.

  Reverend Pendelton came later and went back in the kitchen. He put a pen in Aunt Alice’s hand. “Sign these paper,” he said. Alice took the pen and didn’t ask questions.

  The next day, the sheriff came in a wagon for Aunt Alice. I fixed a bundle of her clothes, some old letters, and a few pictures. She walked out of the house like she didn’t even see me. Just before she got up on the wagon, she ran back, held me tight and let down the tears like her heart would break. The sheriff took her by the arm. I don’t even remember if she said goodbye. Billy Malone came to say he would miss me. I bawled so hard I could hardly see him through the tears.

  The Reverend dug his fingers into my arm and led me to his buggy. I wore the suit Aunty had sewed out of heavy woolen cloth, a bundle of my regular clothes and Gray’s Anatomy. I didn’t know nothing about the orphanage, except that once a year the missionary ladies collected old clothes for the poor children like it was in the middle of Africa. “You are lucky the orphanage has a place for you. This way, you won’t be a burden on the church,” Reverend Pendleton said.

  Folks at the depot were all excited about a fire in Chicago. According to the newspapers, thousands of people had lost their lives and all the main buildings were burned. One article said the Rush Medical School had burned along with the rest of the city. Even if Dr. Steele was alive and would still take me, there wasn’t any school left. I might just as well lie down next to Pa and die. I bawled and bawled until the Reverend slapped my face. “Stop sniveling,” he said.

  I smoldered with hatred for that man and decided to never, ever cry again. I stopped being a boy and grew up.

  Pretty soon the train came chugging along and we got into a car. Riding in a train had always been exciting, but this time, I hardly looked out the window. We got off at Bureau Junction where trains on the siding were loaded with food and supplies for Chicago. The reverend rented a sorry-looking hack with a sway backed gelding from the livery. We clopped along until a blue bottle fly stung the horse. He flung his head back and stepped sideways. The Reverend whipped him until the old horse settled down. Along the way, we passed heaps of slag from the coal mines. It was a dismal looking country. The wind had shifted to the northwest and low dark clouds were scudding across the sky. I scrunched down and pulled the collar of my homemade suit up around my neck and had a fit of shivering. It could have been getting colder or it could have just pure misery.

  We jogged along for about an hour before we got to a sorry collection of miners’ houses and a store. A little further on down the road, there was a big archway over an iron gate with a sign:

  PRESBYTERIAN HOME FOR ABANDONED ORPHANS

  “The man who started the mine and founded the town gave money for the orphanage. He needed the boys to work the mines when they got old enough,” the Reverend said. “I don’t’ want to work in a coal mine,” I said. “You ain’t got much choice.” When we drove under the arch, thunder crashed and lightning struck a field not far away. We got to the gray stone building just before the rain. The Reverend beat on the door with his cane, and after a while a woman dressed in black with a face like a dried-up apple peeked through a little window in the door. Spectacles perched on her nose and white hair hung down to her shoulders. . “What’s your business?” She asked.

  “I got a boy,” the Reverend said. “Come in,” she said.

  We shuffled through a dark hall to a stuffy little room where coals smoldered in the fire place. The man behind the desk was nearly bald with a meaty nose, bags under his eyes and folds of skin hanging down over his jaw. His bushy white side whiskers sagged like his face was made out of putty. The shade was drawn over the one window and a smoky lamp on the desk made just enough light to see a case with a few books and a picture of Christ feeding little children. The room smelled worse than any combination of an outhouse, swamp, dead animals and stale food. The man must have brought manure in on his feet and hadn’t had a bath in a month.

  “He’s got a boy,” the woman said.

  The man at the desk raised his head and his side whiskers twitched.

  “I’m Reverend Gideon Burns.”

  Reverend Pendelton put a piece of paper on the desk. ‘The boy’s father died and his aunt is turning him over to the home. He don’t have no other kin.”

  Reverend Burns looked me up and down like I was a side of beef. “He’s too old and doesn’t look very strong. Is he a trouble maker?”

  “His name is Tom Slocum. He’ll work hard and won’t make no trouble.”

  Reverend Pendelton put another paper on the desk. “I expect to get paid for bringing him here.”

  The Reverend Burns held the scrap of paper to the lamp and read out loud. “Four dollars train fare, five dollars for the horse and buggy and fifty cents for lunch.”

  “We didn’t have no lunch, I haven’t et since early morning,” I said.

  Reverend Pendelton just about jerked my arm out of its’ socket. “Don’t pay him no mind, the boy forgot.”

  I bit my lip and had a real bad feeling about the Presbyterian Home.

  “What’s that book? He don’t need no book here,” said Reverend B
urns.

  “I need that book so I can learn to be a doctor,” I said.

  “You ain’t got no need for book learning here.”

  Reverend Burns opened Gray’s Anatomy, turned the pages and ran his fingers with broken dirty nails down the pages. His face got redder and redder until it looked like he would boil over. “Evil blasphemy, oh, the worse sins of mankind, unclothed bodies,” he shouted.

  The Reverend Burns ripped out a page at a time, then tore out whole chapters and threw them on the coals. Each page smoldered, then caught fire and went up in flames. I grabbed for what was left of the book. “No, No, it belongs to Dr. Steele,” said I.

  The Reverend Burns came up out of his chair like he was shot and grabbed my left ear. He was stronger than he looked and twisted and yanked my ear until he drew blood that ran down my neck. The pain was awful; I tried to get away, but he yanked harder and harder. I didn’t cry maybe that made him madder.

  “Boy, you gonna learn to keep your mouth shut.”

  He was breathing hard when he sat down and went to tearing pages and throwing them in the fire. I watched the book burn, page by page, while the Reverend Pendelton took his money and left.

  “There, that’s the end of this nonsense,” Reverend Burns said.

  I felt like crying but there weren’t no more tears, just a hard, cold knot of anger that seemed to grow and grow.

  He pulled a big ledger off the bookcase. “Boy, what’s your name?’

  “Tom Slocum.”

  He reached over the table, cuffed my ear, then dipped a pen in ink and scratched in the ledger. You gonna learn to say ‘sir’ when you speak to me. Age?”

  “Fifteen-- sir.”

  “Employed, farm work or anything useful?”

  “I go to school and work in Pa’s shop--- sir.”

  “Here, if you want to eat, you work. If you work hard, obey the rules and lead a moral life, we might find a family that wants a boy. You can start by digging potatoes.”

  The witch woman opened the door a crack. “You finished?”

  “Take this young cur to bed without supper.”

  I stared at his enraged face and didn’t talk back. My torn ear hurt like blazes. The woman yanked me into the hall and then to a low dark room. There were about thirty children of all ages gobbling food at two long tables under one smoky coal oil lamp. The kids didn’t look up from their plates. I brushed against one boy.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  The boy ducked his head and flinched like he was used to being beat. The old lady jerked my arm and didn’t offer supper, even after she went to another table and grabbed a meaty chicken leg for herself. My stomach growled and flat against my backbone. I was too scared to ask for food. I didn’t know anything about mothering, but most women were kindly to boys. That woman didn’t have any human kindness. She lit a lamp and we went through another door, and up a flight of stairs to a hall that ended with two doors, one marked “girls”. The place for boys was a long narrow attic under a pitched roof. The lamp didn’t make much light, but I made out a small iron stove set on a box of sand and a row of wooden sleeping pallets built next to the wall. The one window was tight closed, and there was a powerful smell of stale pee and poop. The lamplight threw our shadows against the wall like two ghosts. I felt all hollow inside and shivered like I had the ague in that forlorn place. She showed me to an empty bed near the end of the room. “Sleep her tonight and get a straw tick tomorrow.”

  A frayed blanket that looked like it had seen use in the war was at the foot of the pallet. She went away and the darkness closed in. I took off my good clothes and shoes and put them at the foot of the pallet and used my bundle of regular clothes for a pillow. The wooden planks dug into my back and my ear hurt so bad, I grit my teeth to keep from crying. The scratchy blanket was pretty thin and the wind whistling through the cracks in the eaves was mighty chilly. The pain in my ear and my growling stomach kept me awake until I dropped into an uneasy sleep. When a crying baby woke me up, I had to pee real bad. The door was locked, but in the dim light from the window, I found a chamber pot and peed.

  The wind sighed, the roof creaked, a boy moaned in his sleep; I pulled the blanket over my head and bit down on my lip to keep from crying.

  Chapter Eight

  A bell woke me up to the gray light of early dawn. A baby cried. The door opened and a girl in a raggedy green dress picked up the baby and sang a lullaby. She had a sweet voice that seemed out of place in that forlorn room. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and watched the girl tending to the baby. My swollen ear throbbed and I was desperately hungry. Boys, mostly younger than me, got out of bed and made for the door. It looked like they had slept in their clothes. Even though the girl wasn’t looking my way, I scrunched down so she wouldn’t see me putting on my pants. The flannel shirt and denim pants weren’t too warm, and it was chilly enough to wear shoes and socks. I had to get over a spell of bashfulness to ask the girl how to find the privy.

  She was maybe a little older than me and plain looking, but she knew how to tend babies. It had stopped crying.

  “Uh, miss, I just got here and don’t know where to wash up.”

  The girl pushed a lock of brown hair away from her face and wrinkled her stubby nose, like I smelled bad. You got blood on your face. What happened to your ear?”

  “That reverend fellow with the side whiskers pulled it pretty bad,” I said.

  “He’s real mean. It don’t pay to make him mad. Go on down the stairs and straight through the door to wash, and that’s the way to the privies, too.”

  The wash-room was nothing but a lean-to with a hand pump, a can of lye soap and a trough. I smelled the boy’s privy that was only a long board with a half dozen holes over a pit. I gagged and couldn’t go after I sat down. Maybe I didn’t have enough inside to make anything. Our privy at home didn’t stink because Pa always shoveled dirt in the pit every couple of days. I scrubbed my hands and face in ice cold water with the other boys then lined up for breakfast in the big room with long tables. Boys were on one side of the room and girls on the other.

  The old witch with white hair looked for dirt on our hands and sent one boy back to scrub again. We each took a bowl and a spoon and went to the woman who ladled cornmeal mush and thin, bluish milk.

  The boys at the table were no more than ten or eleven years old. Most had shaved heads that smelled like they had been treated for head lice with kerosene . Instead of digging in and eating we sat with folded hands. The girl in the green dress, holding the baby and with a bad limp came to the boys table and sat next to me. I guess it was because the baby was a boy. When everyone was quiet, Reverend Burns strutted into the room like he was the Lord Almighty hisself. He stood at a pulpit in front of the serving table with a big black bible. Everyone bowed just like in church. He said a long-winded prayer and read a passage from Judges about the people of Israel when they were evil and sinful. He scared the britches off of the kids. No wonder they sat still and didn’t eat until he gave the signal.

  The mush and milk was cold and lumpy; it wouldn’t have been bad with sugar and cream but even so, I licked the spoon clean. The girl fed mush to the baby, but most dribbled down his front and got on her dress, which was already stained. She leaned down and the top of her dress popped open a little bit. For a skinny girl, she had big titties. She pushed the baby to me. “You hold him while I eat.”

  She dug into her bowl of mush while I held the squirming baby until he spit up about half the mush all over my flannel shirt.

  “We got to take good care of him on account of the rest of the babies died with the flux last summer. Some of the older ones died too.”

  “Didn’t you give them sassafras tea?”

  “Didn’t have no medicine. They either threw up the milk and mush or it squirted out their hind ends.”

  I wondered why they didn’t give the babies medicine when they got sick. Hardly anyone died with the flux or fevers when they took Pa’s medicine. Doc Evans
used them too. When she was done, the girl limped. That’s when I noticed she wore a leather boot with a high heel on her left foot, like one leg was short.

  I scurried out with the other kids to wash my bowl and spoon at the pump just as a bell sounded. “Work time, work time,” said the old witch. Some kids swept down the hall and others went out back to the a coal shed, a barn and pens with cows.

  Reverend Burns grabbed my arm and took me down a path past a little cemetery with fresh dug graves with wilted flowers among little wooden crosses. We went to a shack where a stooped, worried-looking man was laid out hoes, spades and gunny sacks.

  “Set this new boy to digging potatoes,” the Reverend said.

  It had quit raining, but the wind was up and the Reverend went back up the path like he had important business somewhere else. The man pushed a Union forage cap back over his head and looked me over with distant eyes like he had never seen a boy before. He was a smallish fellow with a beard and his hair was combed. If it hadn’t been for his overalls and boots, he would have looked like a teacher. “I’m Ned. The Reverend doesn’t much like being out here where he might get dirty.” he said.

  We shook hands. “I am Tom Slocum.”

  “Tom, Either your folks died or they just gave up on you. If you keep your nose clean and work hard, someone might take you. If they don’t, the Reverend will send you to the coal mines and that’s worse than farm work. Trouble is, the harvests are about done and farmers don’t want extra mouths to feed until it’s time for spring planting.”

  “What’s so bad about the mines?”

  “Those poor fellows work in dark, wet, cold tunnels where there’s no room to stand up straight. They hardly ever see the sun. The bosses like orphan boys because no one much cares if the tunnel caves in and kills a homeless kid. They ain’t nice places to work.”