The Color of Your Skin Ain't the Color of Your Heart

by Michael Phillips

  It got quiet for a minute, then Katie walked to the door and opened it. I got up and followed her and stood a few steps behind her.

  There stood a man neither of us knew. He was wearing a tie and a suitcoat even in the heat, and had a business kind of hat on his head. His eyes were narrow and squinty-like and reminded us of Mrs. Hammond when she was peppering you with questions. He was a man who looked suspicious. The stranger looked straight at Katie without smiling.

  "I am sorry for coming to the kitchen door like this," he said. "I went around front but saw no one, and then I heard the voices in here."

  "That's all right," said Katie. "This is the door we use most of the time anyway."

  "Is the man of the house at home ... uh, Mr. Clairborne?"

  "No, sir."

  "How about Mrs. Clairborne?"

  "Uh ... no, sir. She's away. But I am Kathleen Clairborne.

  "Mrs. Clairborne would be your mother?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Ah yes ... I see. Well, I need to ask her about this," said the man.

  He pulled something out of his pocket and held out his right hand. In the middle of his palm sat one of the nuggets of gold that Katie had given to the man at the bank. Katie recognized it immediately. She knew from the shape that it was one of the same ones. She swallowed hard, though her mouth was suddenly dry.

  "Uh, why?" said Katie. "What about it ... IT, uh, tell my mother when she gets home."

  "I understand she took this to the bank," he said. "Mr. Taylor brought it to me. I am an attorney and also the acting government deputy clerk for Shenandoah County. Among my duties is that of assayer. We have been investigating a theft of government gold that occurred during the last year of the war. Before I could process Mr. Taylor's request, I had to investigate further."

  By now Katie's mouth was really dry!

  "But that couldn't-" she started to say. She was going to tell him that her mother had had the gold for years and that it had come from California with her uncle. But she stopped herself. She knew it was probably best to say nothing, since we hadn't wanted anybody to know about the gold at all.

  "Uh . . ." she fumbled after a second or two, "uh ... I'll tell my mama you were here," she said.

  "All right, then, tell her that Leroy Sneed from Oakwood needs to talk to her ... and soon," answered the man. "Please tell her everything I said, and that I will call on her again tomorrow. Good day, miss."

  The man turned and walked back to his carriage.

  "He was asking about the gold," Katie said as she closed the door and walked back into the kitchen.

  "I know!" I exclaimed. "I heard him."

  "He said he was from the government."

  "How'd he find out about it?"

  "Mr. Taylor showed him."

  "I thought he wasn't supposed to tell."

  "I think this man made him," said Katie. "He said the gold was stolen!-What if we're in trouble, Mayme? Maybe we shouldn't have taken the gold to the bank."

  "It's too late to worry about that now," I said. "Besides, what else were you going to do-there's still the loan that's gotta be paid."

  "What if the gold was stolen? What will we do then?"

  "Do you believe the man?" I asked. "Do you think he's who he said he was?"

  "I don't know," said Katie. "But I don't know if he believed me. And he said he was coming back tomorrow to see my mama!"

  "Uh-oh," I said. "That's no good. You're not going to have anything more to tell him than you did today."

  I thought for a minute.

  "We gotta find out if he's really who he says he is," I said, "and if what he says about the gold is true"

  "Why wouldn't it be?"

  "I don't know. I just don't like so many people being so almighty interested in your uncle's gold, that's all. It seems a little funny to me."

  All of a sudden Katie grabbed my arm. I looked over. Her eyes were big again, but this time with excitement along with a little bit of fear.

  "Let's follow him, Mayme!" she said.

  "How could we?" I said.

  "On horses," Katie said. "He was going slow. We could catch him before he's halfway back to town!"

  "What if he sees us?"

  "We'll disguise ourselves. We'll wear some of my brother's clothes."

  "Wait!" I said. "Jeremiah's still here. Let's get him to go with us!"

  "All right. You go tell him and I'll go upstairs and start getting the clothes ready!"

  I ran out of the house and toward the field where Jeremiah was working. By now Aleta and Emma were hurrying after Katie and drilling her with questions.

  "We have to leave for a little while," said Katie as she started hurriedly changing her clothes.

  "But what you doin' wiff dose feller's clothes?" asked Emma.

  "I'll tell you later," said Katie. "It's just a little game. We're trying to fool some people. We don't want them to know we're girls."

  "Can I come too!" asked Aleta excitedly.

  "I'm sorry, Aleta," said Katie. "We have to do it alone."

  By the time I ran back to the house with Jeremiah, Katie had some clothes all laid out for me.

  Three minutes later we were hurrying back downstairs to meet Jeremiah, who had been saddling three horses for us. Aleta was scampering along after us, still trying to change Katie's mind.

  "Please, let me go! I promise I'll stay out of the way."

  Katie knelt down and looked seriously into Aleta's face.

  "Aleta," she said. "I need you to be very brave for me, and stay here and help Emma take care of William. Sometimes Emma needs somebody else to help her think straight and not get confused about things. Can you do that? Can you help Emma?"

  "I'll try, Katie."

  "Good girl! We'll be back as soon as we can."

  OOR JEREMIAH! IT SEEMED HE WAS ALWAYS GETting roped into doing something for us that he didn't understand. Last year Katie had flown into town to the livery to get him to help her rescue me from William McSimmons. And now suddenly he found himself riding off with us after a man he'd never seen for reasons he knew nothing about.

  "What you need ter foller him fo'?" he asked as Katie and I ran out to the barn to meet him.

  "There's no time to explain, Jeremiah," said Katie, jumping onto Dover's back. "We'll tell you all about it later. Right now we just have to find out if the man who was just here is who he says he is, and why he's got my uncle's gold."

  "Gold!" exclaimed Jeremiah. "Tarnashun, Miz Katie -I never heard nuthin' 'bout no gold!"

  "It's not that much, Jeremiah," she said. "Just enough to get me and Mayme out of a pickle. And now some man has the gold and we want to know why."

  "Dad burn, Miz Katie, dat's 'bout da blambdest-"

  Whatever else he might have been going to say was drowned out in the sound of Dover's hooves as Katie galloped off toward town.

  Jeremiah and I followed her in the direction of Greens Crossing and that put an end to any more conversation for the moment.

  We rode hard for five or six minutes, then eased back. The man hadn't been going fast when he left Rosewood, just clomping along leisurely in his buggy. We had to be careful we didn't ride too fast and come right up behind him. So we kept watch as we gradually slowed, and about halfway to Greens Crossing we spotted him a quarter mile or so on the road up ahead of us.

  We slowed our three horses to a walk and kept back just far enough that he couldn't see us. Every time I'd look over at Katie dressed in her brother's clothes with her blond curls tucked up into a big floppy men's hat, her eyes big and wide, I knew she was a little scared. But she had that determined grown-up woman's look in her eyes too. She sure had changed! If she'd have been a man, I wouldn't have wanted to argue with her!

  We followed for another ten minutes until he came to where the road split.

  Then, as we expected, he turned off in the direction of Oakwood. Katie and I looked at each other, both silently thinking about what had happened at the McSimmons place and none too
anxious to go near it again. But we had no choice.

  We passed a few people as we went, but we just kept going, looking straight ahead. A couple of men stared at us as we went by, but we pretended not to notice. I don't reckon we looked too much like men! Two blacks and a girl dressed up in men's clothes-I doubt we fooled anybody! We passed the McSimmons' turnoff without incident, saw nobody, and kept going.

  As we got closer to Oakwood I recognized where we were. We stopped as we reached the edge of town. I could see the man's carriage on the main street straight ahead just disappearing past the general store, then turning off left on the street right after it.

  Because of the last time I was there, I was a little familiar with the town and how the streets were laid out. As we started up again and rode slowly along the dirt street, I had the feeling every eye in the place was looking at us, though they probably weren't. We stopped by the general store again where I'd bought the lace, hoping the man inside didn't recognize me. I may have been wearing some oversized men's clothes, but I was still colored. There was no way to hide that!

  We got off the horses. Jeremiah busied himself leading them to a nearby trough for water, while I went to the corner, took a step around it, and looked down the street.

  The carriage we'd been following sat in front of a tall building down at the end of the street. It wasn't a house or a store. It looked a little like a hotel, though from where I was I couldn't see a sign on the front. The man had just gotten out of the carriage and was walking up a flight of wooden stairs on the side of the building.

  I went back to where Katie was waiting on the walkway in front of the store, thinking as I went. If we were going to find out more about the man, we had to get closer and see where he was going.

  "Hey, what are you doing there!" said a gruff voice as the owner of the store walked out the door. Quickly I turned my face away.

  "Nothing, sir," Katie replied to him. "We just had ... I mean, I had some errands in town."

  "Why are you hanging about here ... with them?" he said, nodding toward Jeremiah.

  "I told him to water the horses, sir."

  "Well, then, do your business and git, young lady. I don't want no coloreds hanging about in front of my store!"

  Katie's eyes flashed with anger, but she swallowed whatever she was thinking and just said, "Yes, sir," then led us a little way down the street from the store.

  "Did you see him, Mayme," she whispered as we went, "-the man in the buggy?"

  "He's down at the end of that street there," I said, pointing to the side street where I'd gone to look. "His carriage is sitting in front of a big building and his horse is tied to a rail. The man walked up some stairs and went inside."

  We got to the end of the street and I showed them the building and carriage.

  "Why don' we go back roun' where we came into town," suggested Jeremiah, "an' den come at dat buildin' from dose woods dere on da other side."

  "That's a good idea, Jeremiah," said Katie. "That way we can get away from that store man, and no one in town will see us.

  We mounted up and rode back toward Rosewood. We got to the edge of town, then turned and led our horses on a street that led to the right off the main road, with the woods on our left. The street went along the outskirts of town with a few houses and other buildings along the way, until up ahead we saw the side of the building I had seen, with the street in front of it leading toward the general store and the center of town.

  "That's it up there," I said.

  "Let's leave our horses here and walk the rest of the way," said Katie.

  We looked around to see if anyone was watching us, then got down, walked our horses off the road to the edge of the woods, and tied them to some trees.

  "What you want me ter do, Miz Katie?" asked Jeremiah.

  "I don't know, Jeremiah," she said. "For now just stay with the horses. I'm more concerned for you than I am for us. Just the sight of a black man makes some white men angry, and I don't want you getting in any danger. But nobody will hurt us."

  "All right, Miz Katie, but if dey tries ter-"

  "We'll be careful," said Katie.

  Leaving Jeremiah at the edge of the woods that ran along the side of town, Katie and I walked slowly ahead toward the building where the man's buggy was parked on the street that ran at right angles to the direction we were coming from. By now we'd made a big wide circle almost back to where we started.

  When we got to it, there were windows all around, but I didn't see any people inside, and I figured the man was still up on the second floor. Keeping next to the wall, we walked around from the back, then stopped at the corner.

  I poked my head around real slow. The front of the building faced the street leading up to the main street where the general store was. Now that I was this close, as I looked I saw that there was a small wooden sign hanging from the front of the building. I tried to read it but didn't know what it said.

  "Come here, Katie," I whispered. She was up next to the wall right beside me. "Peek around and see what that sign says.

  I stepped back to give her room. Slowly she stuck her head out around me and looked, then pulled back.

  "It says, Leroy Sneed, Attorney at Law," she said. "Then underneath there's another sign that says, County ClerkAssayer."

  "What's that?" I asked.

  "I don't know. But whatever it is, that's what Mr. Sneed said he was."

  "This must be where that man at the bank brought the gold," I said.

  We stood for a few seconds out of sight by the wall, then I crept back toward the rear of the building again with Katie following me. I hadn't seen anybody nearby, but we ducked down when we passed the windows just in case. A few voices were coming from upstairs.

  Along the back and sides there was a landing all around the building where people walked from the stairs I had seen on the other side to the rooms of the second floor. We couldn't very well just walk around in plain sight and go up the stairs. They would hear our steps coming up the wooden stairs, and probably see us from the windows.

  We got to the back of the building. I looked up at the landing from underneath. It wasn't that high above my head. If I could just get up there, maybe I could sneak around to where I'd seen him going.

  "Katie," I said, "I'm going to try to climb up this post and get up onto that second-floor walkway."

  "What for?"

  "I think he's up there and I want to find out."

  "Make sure he doesn't see you, Mayme."

  "He won't know who I am. How else are we going to find out what's going on?"

  "All right," said Katie.

  "But I'm going to need to climb up and stand on your shoulders," I said.

  "On my shoulders!" Katie whispered.

  "Just for a second, until I can hoist myself up to the landing."

  I reached my foot up onto a crosspiece of the supporting post and pulled myself up with my hands.

  "Okay now, Katie," I said, "let me step onto your shoulders-get a little closer to me."

  She got up right next to the post and grabbed it to steady herself. I reached my left foot up and gently put it on her shoulder.

  "I'll try not to hurt you," I said as I eased my weight down, "but I've got to get higher."

  "It's all right," she said.

  "I'm stepping down a little more," I said, "-all right, hang on ... here comes my other foot."

  I set the weight of both my feet onto her shoulders. She wobbled some and I heard a little groan, but she held my weight.

  Keeping hold of the post, I reached up as high as I could. But I couldn't quite get hold of the crossbeam of the walkway above me.

  "I've gotta get a little higher," I whispered. "Are you okay?"

  "Yes," she grunted.

  "I'm gonna give a little jump and try to reach up ... here I go."

  I bent my knees a little and then, as well as I could on a wobbly foundation, tried to jump. Katie groaned again and I knew my boots must be grinding into h
er shoulders. But I managed to get my hand up above the beam where I could grab hold. I pulled up with all my might and got my second hand over it, then pulled again. I was off Katie now and hanging free. My feet were swinging in midair, trying to keep my body balanced. I pulled and swung some more, then threw my right foot up over the beam and twisted until I could get the rest of my weight up.

  Half a minute later I was climbing to my feet on the second-floor walkway, with Katie looking up at me like I was a monkey or circus acrobat or something.

  "What are you going to do now?" she asked in a low voice.

  "Wait here," I whispered down to her. "I'm going to see what I can see."

  "How will I know what to do?"

  "Just wait. IT be back in a minute. If you think there's danger, run for the horses and skedaddle out of here. I can run faster than most men. I'll be after you at full chisel."

  "I'm not going to leave you, Mayme. Remember what happened last time you said that to me. If anything happens, I'm staying with you!"

  "All right, then," I whispered back. "We'll both be careful."

  Leaving Katie below me on the ground, I crouched down to keep below the windows and crept on the walkway along the back wall of the building, past one closed door. I got to the corner and poked my head around an inch or two. Up ahead I saw the stairs that led down to the street in front. I heard the voices clearer now than before. One of the windows up ahead was open a crack.

  I got down on my hands and knees and snuck toward it until I was right below the window, then stopped and tried to listen. The only voice I knew for sure was Mr. Sneed's, 'cause I'd just heard his an hour ago in Katie's house.

  "... the gold ... don't know ... lady wasn't there . .

  "Who was?" asked another man.

  "Some kid?" he answered. "Kind of a thick-witted one.

  I thought I recognized some of the other voices too, but-

  All of a sudden I remembered!

  It was the voices of two of the men who had come to the house a year ago who we'd chased off with the guns! They were the same men who'd come snooping around again just two weeks ago that Henry had overheard at the livery stable talking about Katie's two uncles.