Chasing the North Star

by Robert Morgan

  “Thank you, sir,” Jonah said. The more danger he was in, the more important it was to have good manners. When the deputy returned with the chain and padlock, they closed Jonah’s door and wrapped it shut.

  “George, you ought to be ashamed,” the sheriff said, as he opened the other cell and led the prisoner out.

  “I am ashamed,” George said. “I’m awful ashamed.”

  When they were gone Jonah finished the first plate of grits and picked up the second. He began to eat slowly, chewing and cherishing every bite. He thought each bite might be his last for a long time. He got half the second plate eaten, and then three-quarters. He ate the last biscuit. He was getting full. He listened for footsteps. No one came. After he finished the second plate, Jonah sat on the cot feeling full and lazy. He sipped the last of the coffee and wondered how the sheriff would punish him for digging the hole. Sheriff Watkins had fed him better than he expected, but once he was angered he might be just as mean as he’d been kind before. That was the way with white men: the best of them might do the meanest things.

  Jonah waited a long time, and then he used the piss bucket. Now the jail smelled like shit as well as vomit and piss. He sat back down on the cot and began to be sleepy. The drunk man had kept him awake much of the night. He was tired from worry and digging. It wouldn’t hurt to lie down and rest, waiting for the sheriff to come with manacles and chains. Jonah stretched out on the cot and covered himself with a gray blanket. As he slept he dreamed of digging a tunnel. At the other end of the tunnel was a river. Beyond the river lay another country.

  It was a key in the lock that awakened him. Jonah sat up, and a deputy came inside carrying a mug and a piece of cornbread on a plate.

  “Sheriff said since you had two plates this morning you don’t get nothing but coffee and cornbread for dinner,” the deputy said.

  “That will be fine,” Jonah said.

  Jonah looked for a whip or chain in the deputy’s hand, but he carried only a tray. The deputy handed the plate and mug through the door to Jonah and then he unlocked the padlock and took the dirty plates and mug. The deputy smelled the shit and looked at the chamber bucket.

  “I’ll bring a rag and hot water and you can clean this place up,” he said. “Sheriff don’t want no puke in his jail.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jonah said.

  “Your shit smells worse than regular shit,” the deputy said. But he took the chamber bucket outside and dumped it, then brought it back into the cell.

  After the deputy left, Jonah munched the cornpone and sipped the coffee. He was confused, because nothing bad had happened yet. It was not believable that the drunk man called George hadn’t told the sheriff Jonah was digging under the wall. If he’d not told him at first he would certainly tell him later, when he really sobered up and got angry again.

  But you could never tell what a white man might do. White men were a mystery to Jonah. All he knew was that he couldn’t trust them. They might be kind one minute and cruel the next. He had no choice now but to wait to see what would happen. Might as well let the blanket hang over the end of the cot and hide the dirt pile and shovel as long as there was a hair of a chance he’d not been found out.

  When the deputy returned he brought a bucket of hot water and a rag and told Jonah to clean up the puke in the other cell and to wash out the shit bucket, too. As the deputy watched, Jonah wiped up the vomit on the dirt floor as best he could, but the sour had soaked into the ground and he could only scour away some of it. Dirt got on the rag and in the bucket, and soon the water was filthy. The deputy took the bucket outside and dumped it and returned with clean water.

  Jonah scrubbed the shit bucket and rubbed it clean. He wished he had some water to wash himself. He was grimy and he smelled bad. He hadn’t washed since he ran away from Miss Linda’s five or six days ago. The river water had made him even dirtier. But if he asked for water to wash himself that would only complicate things. Every minute the deputy spent in the jail made it more likely he’d spot the shovel missing from the fireplace, or the hole dug beneath the logs. If he could get by until nightfall, Jonah might be able to start digging again. It was a slim chance, but the only hope he had. He washed out the piss bucket and squeezed the rag into the dirty water. The deputy took the cleaning bucket away and locked Jonah’s cell and the outside door.

  Jonah lay on the cot again and wondered if the sheriff was going to play a trick on him. Maybe they planned to let him dig his way under the logs. They’d be hiding outside in the dark waiting for him. Soon as he crawled through, they’d seize him and put him in chains. Should he give up trying to dig the escape hole? Yet there was a tiny chance they hadn’t noticed the missing shovel and the fresh dirt by the logs. It was nearly impossible that the man called George hadn’t told the sheriff about Jonah’s digging. Could the man have been so sick with a hangover he’d forgotten about the shovel, forgotten about the digging?

  Fourteen

  Jonah

  As soon as it was dark Jonah began digging again. Apparently the drunk had not told the sheriff about the shovel, yet. It seemed impossible a white man had protected him, a drunk man at that. Could it mean they were setting a trap for him? Would they beat him and put him in chains as soon as he slipped out under the logs? The second deputy brought a supper of fatback and soup beans and cornbread. Soon as he finished the beans and bread, Jonah started to dig. Without a light it was hard to see where to aim the shovel. No longer trying to hide the dirt, he worked as quick as possible. In half an hour he had the hole a foot deeper. Next he had to reach under the log to make an opening on the other side. That was the hardest work of all because there was no way to get a purchase on the shovel at that awkward angle. He could only stab and jab in the dark.

  As he strained Jonah thought he heard a knock on the logs outside, just above where he was digging. He paused and listened. The knock came again and he froze. Somebody had heard him digging. Was it a trick? Was the sheriff making fun of his efforts to dig out?

  “Is that you, Jonah?” a voice whispered. It sounded familiar.

  “Who are you?”

  There was a chuckle. “You don’t recognize Angel?” the voice said.

  “No,” Jonah said.

  “I’ll help dig from this side,” Angel said. Jonah was so astonished he couldn’t think of anything to say. If it was a trick, then he was already caught. He started shoveling again. It took another few minutes to make the tunnel reach far enough outside for him to slip under the log. He scraped his shoulders wiggling through. Angel had enlarged the hole from the other side.

  “You run off and left me,” Angel said.

  “How did you follow me?”

  “Miss Linda got a telegram that said where you was, and I took the train,” Angel said. “I know where to go by that.” It was so strange to see Angel here outside the jail that Jonah could hardly think. He stood up in the fresh air, dazed, brushing the dirt from his clothes, and tried to recall the direction of the river. He reached back under the log and pulled his coat through the opening. Jonah seemed to remember the river was to his left, but wasn’t sure. The trees and houses all looked different from what he remembered. There was a hedge along the street at the back of the jail, and Jonah paused to listen. He thought he heard something move in the hedge, and stepped as quietly as he could to get a closer look.

  “Let’s get away from here,” Jonah said. He began running in the other direction, stiff from sitting all day and digging in the hard clay. He ran as hard as he could away from the hedge and dark street and he heard Angel following, almost keeping up with him. Lamplight shone in some of the houses and he heard her steps behind as he ran across yards and jumped a fence and continued down the middle of a street.

  Jonah ran so hard, his eyes burned and his chest hurt. His only hope was to forget about Angel and vanish into the dark. He ran behind a hedge and jumped over a ditch. He climbed over a picket fence and dashed through a pigpen. He thought he’d left Angel behind, but sudden
ly she was beside him, her hips bouncing. He must find a creek where he would leave no tracks. Jonah ran so hard he didn’t notice the barrier in front of him until he almost slammed into it. It looked like a row of low buildings or sheds. It was too high to climb over. And then he saw the row was moving. The walls creaked and rattled and moved to his left. And he heard a whistle.

  At that instant he knew it was a train blocking his way. He’d seen trains in Greenville, but had never been this close to one before. The cars appeared in the dark to be long sheds on wheels. In the moonlight he spotted a ladder up one end of a car and he ran and gripped the ladder and found a foothold on a lower rung. Jonah climbed to the top of the boxcar and lay flat on the roof. He didn’t know where Angel had gone. He dropped as flat as he could on the roof and listened to the rattle and bang of the wheels on the steel below. He thought he heard men shouting, but he couldn’t be sure. The train began to move faster. It was thrilling that he’d gotten away from Sheriff Watkins and his deputies, and that he was riding on a train. And most thrilling of all was the fact that the train appeared to be heading north.

  As the boxcar lurched and rattled under him and banged on rough places in the tracks, Jonah began to shiver. In the jail it hadn’t seemed very cold, though he’d wrapped himself in the blanket and his coat. But he’d worked up a sweat digging the hole, and had gotten even hotter running across the town. The open air was chilled and the breeze on the moving car made it even colder. He shivered and his teeth chattered. And the air he breathed was filled with smoke that made him cough and sneeze. The wind was full of soot and ashes and winking sparks and glowing cinders. The engine up ahead blurted out cinders that fell around him. He coughed and shivered and knocked a piece of glowing ash off his arm. The train moved under a trail of sparks.

  Jonah looked over the side of the car and saw a rail that ran over the doorway. The sliding door rolled along the rail on wheels. The door was half open. It occurred to him that if he grasped the rail with both hands he might pitch forward in a somersault and land inside the car. It was dangerous, but no more dangerous than freezing to death or choking to death on smoke and hot ashes. He would have pneumonia if he stayed on top of the car.

  Turning to face the left side of the car, he reached for the rail and gripped it with both hands. Closing his eyes, he pitched forward. But the flat shape of the rail tore out of his grasp as he reached the end of his somersault. Letting go, he fell and his legs hit the floor of the boxcar as his head and shoulders fell outside the door above the clacking rails. Reaching backward, he was able to pull himself into the dark car. Jonah hauled himself deeper into the car until he touched something rough and firm, something bound in ropes and tow sacks. It felt like a bale of cotton. He wrapped his coat around him tighter and pushed himself against the bale to keep warm. As the car rattled and shivered, his teeth stopped chattering. Jonah sat and thought about where the train might be going. He thought about Angel, and the strangeness of her reappearing, just as he dug his way out of the jail. And he thought about where he was going to get something to eat on a moving train loaded with bales of cotton.

  As he sank into sleep, Jonah began to dream about Jonah in the Bible, who got swallowed by the big fish and then was spewed out on the beach. That was in the Old Testament. In the dream Jonah was in the belly of the train and he wondered where the train would vomit him out. With luck the train would carry him somewhere far to the north of the Potomac.

  During the night Jonah thought he heard something stir in the boxcar near him, and wondered if it was a rat or cat trapped on the train. Or maybe he just dreamed that something was moving in the bales and dirt around him.

  “Wake up, boy,” a voice said. But it was not a dream. It was a voice in front of him. Jonah woke and saw a Negro man holding a knife to his throat.

  “You get offen this train,” said the man, who wore a gray wide-brimmed hat.

  “Ain’t hurting nobody,” Jonah said.

  “And you ain’t going to hurt me,” the man said.

  “You think you own the train?” Jonah said, anger rising out of his sleepy guts.

  “I own this knife,” the man said. “Don’t give me no dumb backsass.”

  “I’m just going north,” Jonah said.

  “Well hurrah for you,” the man said. “Ain’t you the clever one.”

  Jonah remembered that Sheriff Watkins had taken his knife. He had nothing in his pocket but a pencil.

  “Now go on, git,” the man said and pushed his knife against Jonah’s throat.

  “Who are you?” Jonah said.

  “Never you mind who I am,” the black man said. “I come a long way, and I killed a white man, and I don’t mind killing nobody that get in my way.”

  “I could help you,” Jonah said.

  “Three runaways is four times more like to be caught than two,” the man said and jerked his head sideways. Jonah saw Angel sitting between two bales of cotton.

  “Can’t get up unless you stand back,” Jonah said.

  The man with the knife stepped back a foot or so and Jonah raised himself against the cotton bale. Instead of standing he braced his back against the bale and kicked with both feet, hitting the man in the lower belly and crotch. The Negro fell back toward the door of the boxcar and Jonah stood up and kicked him in the groin and in the face. As the man fell backward through the door, the knife clattered to the floor of the car.

  Jonah picked up the knife and slipped it into his pocket. His hand trembled, his knees so weak he could hardly stand. He leaned on a bale of cotton and began to cry as the anger and surprise washed through him. He wasn’t sure why he was weeping. Maybe it was because he was scared. It frightened him to think that Sheriff Watkins might have let him dig his way out of jail so he could send word ahead to catch him at the next town. It scared him even more that another escaping slave would threaten to kill him with a knife. He was shaken to see how desperate the other man was. It was everyone for himself, which meant that nobody had much of a chance. He might as well have been shot by the sheriff, or drowned in the flooding river, or had his throat cut by the other runaway. He wept because Angel kept showing up and getting in his way and confusing him. After one night of pleasure with her, was he doomed to have her always follow him? Slow down there, boy, he said to himself. The world was empty as a cold fireplace full of ashes. The world was bleached and dead inside. Whoever had made the world made it cruel and crazy. Nothing made sense or was consistent, except the pain.

  “You got no call to cry,” Angel said. “You done got on the train going north.” She sat down beside him and leaned against the bale of cotton. Straw was stuck to her dress and hair.

  “Never going to make it,” Jonah said. He’d never killed anyone before. The man who fell from the boxcar might well be dead.

  “Never going to make it if you cry like a baby,” Angel said. She leaned her soft shoulder against Jonah.

  “How come you keep following me?” Jonah said.

  “ ’Cause I got to get to the North,” Angel said. “Ain’t nobody else to follow.” She laughed like everything was all right and there was no need to worry.

  “We’re a long way from the North,” Jonah said.

  “I bet we are halfway there,” Angel said. “You the one that knows the map. You tell me.”

  “I learned the map at Miss Linda’s.”

  “Who learned you to read so good?” Angel said.

  Jonah told her about the Williams Place, and learning to read from the tutor’s lessons. He told about reading to Mrs. Williams and about the Bible she’d given him. He described the whipping Mr. Williams had given him, and running away.

  “I found a boat and paddled down the French Broad,” Jonah said.

  “I seen that boat,” Angel said. Jonah leaned his cheek on her breasts. She was acting different, now that they were alone on the train.

  “How come you to run away?” Jonah said.

  “Because I seen you, seen you was running. Figured if you
could go north, I could, too.”

  “You look well fed,” Jonah said.

  “I was the prettiest girl on the Thomas Place,” Angel said. “Massa Thomas said if I sleep in his bed I don’t have to work in the fields. That sound good to me. He give me everything I want. Fatten me up to be his plaything in the dark. All I had to do was let him have his way. He so old he sometimes don’t even try. I be his foot-warmer, what they call me.”

  “And he never whipped you?”

  “No need to whip me. I was good to him. But I can’t stand it no more. When I see you and know you are on your way, I have to go.”

  “So you’ll blame me when we get caught,” Jonah said.

  “You the best thing that happen to me, so far,” Angel said. They sat like that a long time, swaying together to the rocking of the train. And then they lay down in the straw and enjoyed each other. It seemed impossible to Jonah that two people with nothing in the world but themselves could create suddenly so much comfort and pleasure between them.

  When Jonah looked out again it was now full daylight. The train ran on a higher and higher embankment and the clattering and banging got louder. He saw they were on a trestle, on a long bridge, and a wide muddy river ran below them. It was the widest river he’d ever seen, with little islands and rocks tearing the current. The river puckered, shiny as scar tissue. It must be the Potomac, had to be the Potomac. With two steps he could leap out of the car and over the ties of the trestle. He could dive a hundred feet into the brown galloping water below. He could disappear into the mess of water and never have to fear again guns and dogs and sheriffs and men with whips. The water seemed to be waving to him.

  Angel lay sleeping on the floor. He didn’t want to wake her. When she woke she would be in the North.

  Jonah stepped back from the door and rested on the bale of cotton. It occurred to him he was already almost to the North, for the train was crossing into Maryland. He was more than halfway to the light of the North, the promised land.