Chasing the North Star

by Robert Morgan

  The French Broad was maybe a hundred yards wide, and it frothed and jumped, galloping over rocks and trotting through troughs of shoal water. Water leapfrogged, overtaking itself. The river seemed to move at different speeds and in different directions all over the surface. The river appeared to be sorting and resorting its pieces.

  It was a good thing the sky was lighter now, for he was going to have to be alert.

  Five

  Jonah

  It seemed very strange to Jonah that a river could be called the French Broad. He’d heard of the Broad River, which ran out of North Carolina into South Carolina. It made sense that a wide river could be called the Broad River. But he could think of no reason why any stream would be called the French Broad. In the early dawn light he paddled fast around rocks and down dashing, slurping chutes. The river moved so fast through its many channels and currents, he had to look out for obstacles and paddle hard to stay ahead of the tide. His hands were getting sore where they gripped the shank and middle of the paddle. Resin still stuck in patches to his skin.

  The little boat pitched and dipped and shot ahead. The river swung this way and that, around gravel bars and rocks, swapping sides, as though it was braiding and unbraiding strands of bouncing water. He passed a little dock built in a bend, and then the mouth of a sizable creek. As the sky got lighter still, Jonah knew he was going to have to pull to the bank and stop for the day. He was worn out and his hands and back were sore. His arms felt numb. And it would be dangerous to continue on the river in daylight, so he started looking for a place to land. Because he needed to pull the boat up on the bank out of sight, he knew it would be better if he turned into a branch or little creek. He needed a place to hide and a place to conceal the boat. He scanned the shore for a likely spot, and saw a hollow that opened back from the river ahead. Wherever there was a hollow coming down to the stream, there would be a branch. He began to turn the boat in the direction of the hollow on the right bank. Sure enough, a small creek fed into the river there, but its mouth was cluttered with overhanging brush and grapevines. Jonah had to bend low and pull the boat forward by grabbing limbs and vines.

  Soon as he was out of sight of the river, he pulled the boat up onto the creek bank and tied the rope to a small birch. He was pleased to see that the fishing line had a hook and sinker on the end of it. He would indeed be able to catch fish in this river. A tow sack lay on the floor of the boat and he folded that for a pillow. Placing the cushion in the prow of the boat, Jonah found he had just enough room to lay his head there and rest his feet on the seat. That was more comfortable than lying on the ground where ants might bite him again. As he floated into sleep he kept feeling the dip of the boat, the thunk of the prow butting a rock.

  WHEN HE WAS TIRED, Jonah often had long dreams, and that day, as he slept in the little boat, he dreamed of searching through pine woods on a hill. Seeing a red light ahead, he followed the glow. Suddenly it was night, and he came to a clearing where people circled around a bonfire. They’d thrown their clothes on the ground and danced naked, their bodies glistening like polished leather. Some danced with their hands on the shoulders of the person ahead, and others danced alone. Both men and women danced, and as they moved they sang in some language Jonah didn’t understand. They shook their bodies and chanted.

  A woman spotted Jonah and beckoned for him to join them, but he held back at the edge of the pine woods. “We’re going underground,” the woman said. She pointed to a rock in the hillside, which he hadn’t noticed before. And beside the rock was an opening that looked like the entrance to a cave. The dancers took up sticks from a pile and lit them at the bonfire. They carried the torches around in a circle.

  “We’re going underground,” another woman with large, shiny breasts said to him. She came to the edge of the clearing and took his hand. One by one the dancers entered the mouth of the cave. Rocks at the entrance resembled teeth. The mouth looked like it could close anytime it wanted to. Still chanting in the unknown tongue, the dancers slipped through the orifice one by one. The woman handed Jonah a torch and pulled him behind her toward the cave, drawing him as if he was under a spell. He stepped forward through the teeth, and could see ahead a long room that looked pink. The cave walls glowed like he imagined the flesh inside a throat or belly would. The torchlight flickered on the walls and ceiling. Pictures of animals and whirling dancers covered the walls.

  “This be the way to go home,” the woman said.

  When Jonah woke he found his pants wet at the crotch. He had shot off in his dream and his pants were sticky. Whoa there, he said to himself. The dream that had been so intense and vivid was flying away from him. He could recall the color of the cave’s insides and the brightness of the torches. The woman with the gleaming breasts had reached back and taken him by the member.

  Whoa now, Jonah said again, and drifted back into sleep, dreamless and exhausted.

  WHEN JONAH WOKE AGAIN, it was late afternoon. Sunlight slashed into the upper stories of the trees above him. A crow called somewhere up the little creek hollow. And he could hear the mutter and lisp of the river nearby. The river passed beyond the brush at the creek mouth, and he heard the splash and crash of water over rocks. Jonah wished he had some cornpone left, and also some sidemeat. He thought of Mama cooking cornbread over the fireplace in their cabin. The pain of the thought surprised him. He bent over and hit the ground with his fist. You are never going to see Mama again, or Mrs. Williams, or anybody you know, he thought. You’re a fool, and you’re lost.

  The sob that rose in his chest felt like it could tear him in two, and he flung himself down on the ground and cried harder than he had since he was five. Later, he was ashamed of himself. He remembered how, when she saw he felt low and worried, Mrs. Williams had sometimes given him things to perk him up, perhaps a piece of cake, or two bits to spend at the store, once a magazine from London with pictures. But Mrs. William was not here to see his tears and help him. And she never would again, either. Wake up, you silly chicken, he thought. You could cry for a week and it wouldn’t put any food in your belly. Hunger forced Jonah to stand up and pick his way through brush and trees up the bank of the little creek. Before it got dark he would try to find a garden with new potatoes and dig a few. He’d have to get a pot and frying pan if he was to cook things. It was a long way to the North.

  Jonah figured there must be a farm up the little creek hollow, and wherever there was a farm, there’d be a garden, and chickens also. It was too dangerous to steal chickens, but maybe he could grab a few eggs. Why had he not thought of that before? If he had a pot, he could boil eggs. He could steal a few eggs at almost any farm and they’d not be missed. If he got a pan he could fry eggs. He could even eat eggs raw if he had to.

  Jonah walked through the dense woods beside the creek until he came to a field with corn and a melon patch. There was no garden. The house must be farther up the hollow, and the garden would be beside it. In the melon patch he saw both watermelons and musk melons. He turned over a few watermelons, but found them not ripe; a ripe watermelon showed white and yellow on its bottom. Most of the cantaloupes were green, also, but he found two with promising orange color in the rind. The smart way to check for ripeness in a musk melon was to look at the stem attached to the navel. The stems were just beginning to dry up, so the melons were almost ripe.

  After carrying the melons to the creek and washing them, Jonah took them to a little opening in the woods. He sliced a melon and raked out the pulp and seeds. The inside of the cantaloupe glistened, and he carved off a piece, the orange meat dripping with sweet juice, and ate it quickly. He was hungrier than he’d thought. After eating the first slice, Jonah remembered that melon or almost any fruit on an empty stomach could give you the bellyache. The second piece he chewed slowly, mixing the melon with spit and savoring the sweet flesh. He would save the second melon for later. It would ripen even sweeter, riding in the boat down the river. Jonah decided to pick some of the field corn also and carry it
with him. He could roast the corn by the river. He would take it with him and roast the corn when he stopped far down the French Broad the next morning. If he caught a fish with the hook and line he’d found on the bottom of the boat, he could eat corn and fish together.

  By the time Jonah washed his hands and the knife in the branch and returned to the cornfield, it was already far into twilight. But it was easy to locate the fat, hard ears in the rows just by feeling them, and he quickly gathered half a dozen. That would do him for two meals. He’d leave the shucks on the ears to keep them fresh until time to roast them.

  With the knife in his pocket and the corn under his right arm and the melon in his left hand, Jonah started back to the boat. The woods were dark, but all he needed to do was to follow the stream. As he stepped through the undergrowth he heard a low rumble, as if it came from the ground under him. It was more a boom than a rumble, and when it came again he thought it must be from the mountain to his right. The mountain swept up from the river into the eastern sky. He stopped and listened, and the sound came again, a deep bump, a bang like vast rocks inside the mountain had shifted and knocked against each other. The ground he stood on seemed to tremble when the sound came through. It was the lowest sound he’d ever heard, like a drum had been struck. The blow sounded again, a low thunder coming out of the earth, out of the ridge above the river. It was a stroke of doom from deep in the ground.

  Once when Jonah was in Greenville with Mr. Williams, he’d heard a church bell ring out again and again, with a pause in between each note. Mr. Williams said it tolled in memory of the governor of the state who’d died. It was an eerie sound, like a warning—a reminder, that even while you went about your business, somebody was dying, someone was being mourned.

  It was time for Jonah to push off in the boat and continue downriver before it got completely dark. He needed a little light to find his way among the rocks and chutes of the shoals. But the doom sounds from the mountain rang out so regular, he had to listen. They repeated on the count of twelve. Saying the numbers slowly, he got to twelve every time before the jolt came through the ground again. Jonah placed the corn and the melon in the boat and decided to climb partway up the ridge to see where the sound was coming from. Could there be a mill with a large hammer that crushed rocks? He’d heard of a hammer mill and the loud noise one made, but the jolt seemed to be coming from inside the mountain. Jonah climbed higher on the ridge. The river below appeared to wave white handkerchiefs from its shoals, but the woods were shadowy, except for a glow on the top of the ridge. When he looked at the shadows farther up the slope, Jonah saw a spark in the air just above the ground. At first he thought it was a lightning bug, but this spark stayed lit, and it had a yellower, warmer light than fireflies made. And then he saw another spark, and then another. All the ridge ahead was covered with the little lights. The sparks hovered a foot or so above the ground and seemed to light a trail to the top of the mountain. He climbed to get closer, but as he moved they moved, too, floating just off the ground. Whoa there, Jonah said to himself, for he knew he should go back to the boat and continue his journey. He should turn back, but first he had to know what the little sparks were. The ridge was so steep, he dropped on hands and knees and crawled. The trail of lights up the mountain was like something out of a dream, and he wondered if he was still asleep. But he’d wakened and found the cantaloupes and corn. He’d walked along the little creek, and he’d seen the sunset. Jonah could not turn back. He climbed over rocks and logs, and picked his way through laurel bushes. The lights retreated to the very top of the ridge, but still he couldn’t turn back. He was far above the river. There was a faint red glow in the west, the river a ghostly band between the dark mountains. He seemed at the top of the world.

  The points of light seemed to spill into the laurel bushes on the other side of the mountain. Slow down there, Jonah said. You can’t lead me all the way to the top of the mountain and then disappear. But in fact the hovering sparks seemed to have burned out. Were they bugs or flies, or the glimmer of the swamp gas in the air? He’d heard of the will-o’-the- wisp that floated in the air above swamps, sometimes called fairy lights. But that was a bigger light. He’d heard of the light called a jack-o-lantern that appeared to people lost or hurt in the woods and led them to safety. But this light had just been sparkles.

  Jonah searched the woods below him. The laurel thicket was black as a cellar. He’d been so busy following the trail of lights, he’d forgotten the boom inside the mountain. But it came again, a dull stroke that shook the dirt right under his feet. It sounded like the shudder of doom, from a cavern below the mountain, below the river, below the deepest well. As Jonah looked into the thicket, he saw another light. This was not floating sparks but a glowing mist, like a cloud of lighted vapor. It was a blue and orange light, the kind that comes from burning applewood. What are you doing here? Jonah said to himself. You’re a runaway. You have been beaten, and if you’re caught you’ll be whipped again and branded with a red-hot iron. You can be attacked by dogs and sent back to the Williams Place. You have one chance in a hundred of reaching the North. And yet you follow a will-o’-the-wisp, or swamp gas, into a snaky thicket. The boom shoved through the ground again and the jack-o-lantern slipped farther into the thicket, as though lighting his way. Jonah followed a few steps, and then a few more. The light appeared to beckon to him. Its glow was strong enough to show him brush and roots and rocks to avoid. He took three steps and the boom sounded again.

  The Israelites had followed a pillar of fire in the Bible. He’d heard more than once of lost or sick men following such a jack-o-lantern and reaching safety. If such a thing appeared to him, it must have a reason. He took three more steps and the strum deep in the earth sounded again. Jonah came to a kind of bench on the mountainside and paused beside a big rock. The jack-o-lantern faded and he was once again in complete darkness. He could see nothing and he was lost. The jack-o-lantern had led him away from the river and the boat. It must be a light of cruelty and not of safety. He’d been deceived by the glitter of the points of light and the will-o’-the-wisp. He would have to find his way back up the mountain and across the top and down to the boat.

  The darkness around him appeared limitless, and the mountainside dropped away beyond the rock. He’d have to find a dry stick and light it for a torch. He would have to strike a match to find a stick, and he had only about ten matches left. Jonah took the box from his pocket and was about to strike a lucifer when he saw a red glow farther down the mountain. It was firelight and he wondered why he’d not noticed it before. The fire leapt and flickered, and he heard singing and chanting. It was odd he’d not heard them before. Maybe he’d been too busy watching the jack-o-lantern and listening to the bang inside the mountain. Maybe the wind had shifted.

  Now that he’d come this far, he had to see what the chanting was about and what the fire was for. As soon as he found that out, he’d hurry back to the boat and continue his journey. He’d stay hidden and no one would ever know he’d been there. Keeping his eye on the fire below, Jonah skirted brush and trees, descending the steep ridge. He held on to limbs and dropped a step at a time on the steepest places.

  When Jonah got close to the clearing where the bonfire blazed, he gasped. It was so much like the scene in his dream, he wondered if he was still dreaming. Black bodies glistening with sweat danced around the flames and chanted. Negro men and women pranced and shouted. A fat woman with enormous breasts saw him watching from the edge of the woods and beckoned to him. He stepped into the firelight.

  “Ain’t you got no jubilee?” the woman said. She grabbed his hand and pulled him into the circle of dancers.

  “I’ve got to go,” Jonah said.

  “Don’t your mama teach you no manners?” the big woman said. She pulled him along and he had no choice but to step with the dancers. He moved to the beat of the drum and the long, low beat inside the mountain.

  “Don’t you listen to your belly?” the big woman said. Ther
e were only black folks around the great blaze. Women shook their breasts and men thrust out their hips as they circled. The women shivered their hips and shook their breasts again.

  “Boy, you got to learn some jubilee,” the big woman said. Jonah saw she was not old, only fat. Her hips were big and her breasts even bigger. As the woman quivered her hips, Jonah felt the drum beat in his temples and in his veins. The boom shook in his belly, in his guts. He took off his shirt and threw it aside. The woman, as she danced before him, unbuttoned his overalls and he stepped out of them. The young fat woman raised her arms and shook from side to side. Slow down, Jonah said to himself, but he didn’t mean it. He didn’t want to hold back.

  “Ain’t you never been to jubilee before?” she said and grinned. “Boy, where you from?” When she shook her big hips, it made the earth move under him and he stepped faster.

  “I’ve been around,” he said.

  “I show you round,” she said and bumped him with her hip.

  As he stepped to the drum beat, Jonah no longer felt tired or sore. He’d climbed all the way up the mountain and descended it. His hands were blistered from paddling the boat all the night before, and resin still stuck to his arms. His back was covered with scabs from the whipping Mr. Williams had given him. But tonight he felt both light and strong.

  “Look like you run into a fence,” the fat woman said when she saw his bare back.

  “The fence run into me,” Jonah said, “but I jumped over it.”

  “Maybe that fence come following you,” the woman said.

  There was a great wooden tub at the edge of the clearing, and the fat woman led him to it and dippered out a drink with a gourd. Jonah scooped up a drink for himself, thinking it was water. But the liquid in the dipper smelled of rotting fruit and something bitter and something sweet. It was a kind of beer. The cool liquid sparkled on his tongue, and he laughed as he dipped out another gourd full. As they began dancing again, Jonah noticed a cage near the woods that held chickens. But they were not like any chickens he’d ever seen. They were black chickens with wing and tail feathers that glistened blue and purple in the firelight.