May the Road Rise Up to Meet You: A Novel

by Peter Troy

  You don’t do any arguing with her, knowing there’s not much point, and maybe she’s right anyway. Then Juss sneaks down that night, opens the door with a candle half-burnt down, whispering so as not to wake up Cora, telling you to come up to her room where you can talk. So you go with her, bumping into Cora’s cot and waking her, and Juss starts to laugh, tells Cora not to worry, it’s just the shepherds comin’ to visit the Baby Jesus, and then she laughs some more. Up in Juss’s room she talks about the day and how annoying her cousins are and the presents she got and how she likes your gloves better’n anything her Momma and Daddy give her. Then Juss gets quiet laying there beside you.

  I was so scared this mornin’, Mary, she says. Just the thoughta not havin’ you here …

  Her voice trails off, and she starts to crying again.

  Don’t worry, Juss, you say, and then the words form sadly in your mouth, the kinda words with more meaning than it might seem straight off. I ain’t goin’ nowhere, you say. And it’s about as sad a few words as you ever said in your whole life.

  MICAH

  DECEMBER 25, 1862

  There was a bridge six or seven miles up the James. Micah did some work near it three months earlier. And it only stayed in his mind at all because he’d followed the road that led to it, figuring he could get over the James to the job on the other side. But the bridge turned out to be knocked out entirely. A Yankee cavalry raid took it out earlier in the year, and then instead of fixing the old one, they built a bigger one a quarter-mile upriver. So on Christmas Day, when all Micah cared about was left behind in Richmond, that wreck of a bridge provided a perfect place to wait. On the south side of the river. The rowboat tucked away in the brush along the shore. Him tucked beneath what was left of the bridge.

  He got there around first light, after everything went wrong back at the Kittredges’ house. He didn’t eat any of the cornbread or pork jerky. Didn’t drink from the river. Didn’t do anything but think about her all day. Thought about how close he was to her. How they could’ve still slipped away and started upriver before Longley rousted a single slave-catcher from bed. He played those moments over and over in his head. Trying to figure how it went wrong. Trying to figure what he could have done. She was just eight miles away from him all that day. And the distance was crushing. It wasn’t until the last of the sunlight began to fade that he stopped thinking about what had happened, and started thinking about what was going to happen, instead.

  So by nightfall he was on the move again. Not upriver, but back down it to the edge of the city. He pulled the boat up onto the shore and left his satchel beside it, taking only the knife, slung through a belt loop. Then set off. It was an even longer route to the Kittredge house, coming from west of the city now. Walked along the railroad tracks for a while. Then slipped through the fields of the slaughterhouse and the textile mill and eventually to the woods along the northern edge of the city. Two hours after he’d left the boat behind, he came to the open field behind the Kittredge house again. And hid there until the lights in the house were extinguished. Waited an hour or so past that, the cold biting at his limbs. Then made the same walk he’d made the night before.

  Every step was short and considered. Five minutes, maybe more, passed before he finally reached the stables. Then he dropped to the ground, pulled himself along by the elbows as he’d done before. Waited to hear horses on the cobblestones. But nothing this time. When he reached Mary’s window, he was covered in mud. He looked around in every direction over the field, then stood up slowly, sliding across the wall to the edge of the window. Tried just to get his left eye across the edge of the window pane. His heart racing as he peeked inside and saw her figure in the bed beside the window. Thinking she was that close to him once again, and they could have this chance to slip away. He tapped his finger against the glass. Two three four times. Lightly first. Then a few times more, harder than before, and she started stirring. Took a few more taps to let her know it wasn’t a dream, and she lifted her head up off the pillow, and all at once he and she were shocked at the sight of each other. It was Cora in the bed. But she didn’t shout, and he didn’t jump back with shock either. Instead she lifted the window just a little. Started explaining the whole thing to him.

  She done changed her mine.

  She too scared to go runnin’ off with ya.

  Dat’s what I come to tell you las’ night.

  Cora said a whole lot more. Talked all about how Jeremiah was the one that turned him in. How Jeremiah heard their plans. How it didn’t matter far as Mary was concerned since she changed her mine befo’ that all happen. She told him how Mary made things all right with the Kittredges. How they didn’t figure she was ever in on anything. Then Cora shook her head back and forth. Seemed genuinely sad for him. Didn’t do nothin’ to change nothin’ though. And he stood frozen by the window ’til Cora started saying how they were out lookin’ for him.

  Best you got now is to make a run fo’ yo’sef.

  Her words were enough to make his feet unstuck. They moved slowly away from the house, back the same way he’d come. But it wasn’t like he was doing any of the telling them what to do or where to go. Everything was a haze now. Didn’t bother hiding from tree to tree. Or look out for anyone around him as he went. She done changed her mine, he kept hearing. Not Mary’s sweet voice, but the scratchiness of Cora’s. The tired old nag. Just like he used to be. Like he would become again, without the hope of her. She done changed her mine. And it was hours, three maybe four, way into the early morning. Not far from first light, when he emerged from the woods again.

  He saw the horse first. Tied to the tree a few feet from the boat he’d left by the shore. Then he saw the Home Guardsman, digging through the satchel he’d left beside the boat. Spilled the clothes out, the tools clanking on top of each other as they hit the ground. But he ignored them, went for the cornbread instead. Started stuffing great chunks of it in his whiskered mouth. Turnips and potatoes rolled out of the blanket and the horse took some interest in them.

  Then everything happened at once. All his actions nothing more than simple instinct. Spurred on by the madness growing inside him. Everything seeming like it was someone else doing the moving, and he was standing just a little distance away, watching it all. Watching his body dash at the Home Guardsman. Watched the man panic, drop the cornbread, and make for his horse. For his gunbelt draped over the saddle. Micah’s body tackling the Home Guardsman to the ground just before he reached it. Then they were rolling around over each other and back again, ’til Micah saw himself roll on top. And reach for the knife tucked inside his belt loop. The Home Guardsman began screaming loud as he could. Bits of cornbread flying from his mouth. And then there was Micah, plunging the knife into his chest. The man gasping, trying to yell some more. Then Micah’s powerful hands wrapped around the man’s throat. Silencing him. Squeezing tightly until the man stopped breathing altogether.

  Then Micah could see himself, hands and knees and arms all covered in blood. And his body froze for a while at the sight of them. ’Til there he was dragging the man’s body to the river. Rolling it in. Watching himself watch the current take the man’s body a few feet downstream. Before sinking out of sight. Then he was wrapping up his satchel and the gunbelt, and riding off on the Home Guardsman’s horse fast as he could. Whatever was moving his body doing the holding on to the reins, and him just along for the ride. And they rode fast up the bank of the river, leaving the terrifying remains of those few moments. Leaving everything he cared for, quickly and completely behind. Leaving. Like it didn’t matter none anyway. ’Cause she done changed her mine.

  MARY

  RICHMOND

  JANUARY 1, 1863

  She’d hardly ever spent much time in the kitchen before, not even on holidays or dinner parties, and especially not on the rest of the days of the year, when she was plenty busy with all manner of work to do in the dress shop or just to pass the time with Justinia. But this was something different altogethe
r, since the Misses decided to close the dress shop for a whole week on accounta her brother and his family being here. And Juss was forced to spend most all her time with her cousin Ashleigh, who not Mary or Cora, or Juss most of all, could much stand for more than a few minutes at a time.

  That chil’s what Miss Juss was fixin’ on bein’ if you never come along, Cora said after about three days of Ashleigh.

  And Mary couldn’t help but laugh a little to hear it, one of those little bits of kindness Cora’d been throwing her way sometimes at night when it was the two of them sleeping in her room. Of course, those little bits of kindness only ever came at night, with the candle blown out, and just about the time Mary was ready to start crying about what’d happened on Christmas Eve. The resta the day Cora was her old self, a chubby old bitta meanness with the wrinkles collecting along her cheeks and chin like they were conspirin’ to make her face into a permanent sorta scowl. And every time Cora mentioned the man she was gonna run off with way back when, then said like your’n, like both her and Mary’s man were the same sorta man, and both her and Mary’s situations were the same sorta situations, well then … Mary spent an hour at least crying herself to sleep, thinking about how her face was gonna soon enough take on that same permanent sorta scowl.

  So by the time the New Year came around and the Misses’s brother and his family were just another day from traveling back home, Mary couldn’t help but feel relieved. She’d have her room back to herself, have Juss back to herself, and her work most of all, to help someday push these terrible memories back down inside enough ’til one day it’d all be just another set of shadows. But there were still these two days to get through, even more so now, now that she’d picked up Mista Kittredge’s paper he left in the library, where she was dusting just the day before, wanting something to do, and glanced through it until she came upon the notice that terrified her and gave her hope all at once:

  REWARD: $1000 Gold! For the safe return of Micah, a slave, run off from Richmond on 24 Dec. Dark brown skin, square broad shoulders, five feet eleven inches tall, strongly built. Some whipping scars on back and traveling with tools. Well spoke. Left handed. Reward will be paid only if returned in good condition. Contact: J. M. Longley, Longley Timber and Construction Co., Proprietor. Richmond, Va.

  And it was the last part of that notice that she liked the most—Reward will be paid only if returned in good condition. Micah wasn’t likely to go easy, she knew. He wasn’t about to let some slave-catcher throw a rope around him and prop him on the back of a horse and ride him back to Richmond. But at least that slave-catcher wouldn’t shoot him or whip him anymore, not with a thousand dollars gold being offered. It was at least twice as much as she’d ever seen offered for a runaway, and there was that odd sense of pride attached to it, to know that he was that valuable, her man … well, once her man.

  She told Cora that night about the notice, forgetting to wrap it in the usual lies, like she heard such-and-such at the dress shop, or the Mista said this, but instead just coming straight out and saying that she’d read it in the newspaper. But Cora didn’t get mad at Mary the way she used to when she was stealing lessons from Miss Randall or standing too long around the bookshelves she was supposed to be dusting. Instead she just let out a frustrated laugh, like she’d done her best to learn Mary some sense and a merciful Lord wouldn’t hold it against her for how she’d turned out. But then after a little while in the silence, Cora’d said another one of those little sideways kinda compliments she’d been paying Mary every now and again in their week together.

  ’Magine what that reward a’been if you’da gone wit’ him, she said. And then let out a whistling sorta whooo, thinking about so much money.

  And Mary went to sleep that night thinking if she woulda been worth a thousand dollars too, even though she was a woman. Of course, that only made her dream about Micah all the more that night and do nothing but think of him all the New Year’s Day, one minute thinking maybe he’d let himself get caught if it meant coming back here to see her, then the next minute thinking he’d get killed by some slave-catcher or the Boys in Gray or the Yankee Army even, and she’d never see him again. And the hoping had a tough time trying to find its way through all those sad possibilities.

  By the time the New Year’s dinner was ready to be served, Mary propped herself on a stool over on the wall not far from the oven, figuring that watching Ginny do her work, and watching Mabel and Cora and Bessie doing the serving, would help take her mind off of Micah. None of them had mentioned Micah since Christmas morning, but she could tell they all knew what their plans had been. And it was strange the effect it had on them, like Ginny and Mabel and Bessie were almost her friends now, like they’d been softened a little to hear of her loss and didn’t look to poke their finger into the wound the way they woulda before, like somehow losing a love like that was something they could all relate to.

  And when Mary asked Ginny what she could do to help, Ginny didn’t snap at her and tell her it was her kitchen, but just told her to sit over by the stove where it was warm and she’d let her know if something came up. So Mary watched quietly as Ginny took one dish after another out of the oven, always complaining about how this wasn’t gonna taste the same without enough butter, or how could she make this dish without any vegetables and such. Mary just nodded her head at Ginny the first few times she turned to her and complained how the war was getting in the way of her cooking, but then mentioned that it was the same for them in the dress shop. Ginny thought about it for a moment, and Mary worried that it might turn Ginny against her again, not wanting to go back to her room and have to be alone. But then Ginny musta figured trying to make a dress without silk was about the same as making a cake without sugar, and that was all right with her then. Then Ginny let Mary help with some of the little things, like putting out all the serving dishes on the counter before Ginny filled them, or holding the gravy bowl while Ginny scraped the last of the drippings into it.

  Bessie was quiet as ever, but Cora and Mabel seemed to be having more and more fun as the night went along. It wasn’t until they served the sugarless cake for dessert that Mary understood why. Mrs. Kittredge asked for Ginny to come out and enjoy a small toast with them to celebrate the meal, and while she was out of the kitchen, Mabel poured some of Mista Kittredge’s claret into an already-used glass, then looked at Cora, who held out her glass to be filled, then looked over at Mary with wide eyes asking if she wanted some too. Mary just shook her head, and Mabel and Cora swallowed that one down, and then each took a little more before Mabel poured the rest of it into the crystal decanter and handed it to Cora.

  Boy, they sure drinkin’ lotsa wine tonight, Mabel said to Cora with a nod into the dining room. And Cora laughed like Mary’d never seen her do more than once or twice in all the years she’d known her.

  Then Cora smoothed down her apron and walked back into the dining room. Mabel looked over at Mary and made a pretend frown.

  Aww cheer up, Mary. Donchu know this here’s our ’Mancipatin’ Day!? Mista Lincoln done said we all free! Dinchu know that?

  And she laughed the way Cora had before, more from sadness than actual joy, and went back into the dining room herself.

  There was the usual talk in the darkness of her room that night, and Mary grew a little sad when she realized that it would be the last night with Cora and probably the last time they ever spoke to each other for this long, with this much kindness. And hearing Cora talk about her man from back almost thirty years ago, she realized that this was what Cora could hold on to just to survive. Most of the year she spent closed up and mean and forging that scowl ever deeper into her face, but then there might be a few dirty glasses of wine on New Year’s or a piece of half-eaten cake on one of the Kittredges’ birthdays, or the chance to relive some of those memories from all the way back for a few moments in the safety of the darkness.

  And Mary, feeling closer to Cora than ever, brought up the notice in the paper from the day before, hopi
ng Cora might be of a mind to tell her it was worthwhile hoping Micah’d come back.

  He ain’ th’sorta man like to give up wit’out a fight, Cora said.

  I know, Mary answered. I just thought that maybe, once they caught up to him and weren’t gonna shoot him, maybe he’d figure it was worth coming back so … so he could see me again.

  Now why he gonna go an’ do that when he know ’bout how you changed yo’ mine on goin’ wit’ him?

  The words were a jolt to Mary.

  You told me he thought you were me right to th’end, she said in a voice above a whisper now. You told me you didn’t say anything to him, just shooed him off an’ ran back to the house.

  And Cora was silent.

  What did you say to him that night? Mary asked.

  Nothin’.

  So why would he think I changed my mind? He saw Mista Longley there by th’door. Why would he—

  ’Cause he come back th’next night lookin’ fo’ you, afta you gone up wit’ Miss Juss, Cora said, a little stern but still like it was a confession. That’s when I told him ’bout you changin’ yo’ mine.

  And she wanted to yell at Cora then, wanted to demand that she somehow fix this thing that she knew was beyond repair. Even if Micah did get caught, even if he was brought back here, there’d be no detours in the wagon to the front of the shop and lifting his hat to tell her he loved her. There’d be no kisses behind the store or little notes passed in secret.

  Why would you do that? Mary said. Why didn’t you tell me about that?

  And Cora’s explanation was all the same sortsa things she’d been saying to Mary all along, her recipe for how to live life closed up tight, every day building that scowl on her face, looking forward to the next dirty glass of wine or half-eaten piece of cake or the memories in the tiny doses they could be taken. None of it interested Mary, though, and she said nothing more to her through that whole night or even the next morning, preferring to be an island once again, than to have Cora for a confidante.