Chasing the North Star

by Robert Morgan

  AS THE TRAIN CLANKED and rattled uphill from the river, Jonah looked around in the car to see if the man he’d kicked through the door had left anything besides the knife. He might have had a coat or blanket, some matches or a lantern. Something useful. Nights were getting cold and it would be even colder up north, if he actually got to the North. The car was stacked with bales of cotton at one end. The bales reached almost to the ceiling. But nearly half the car was empty, except for straw and cotton lint on the floor. There was a tow sack folded up, which the man with the knife must have used as a pillow. It appeared other sacks had been used as blankets. In the Bible it talked about people who were sad and repenting, wearing sackcloth and ashes. Maybe that was what was meant, the rough fabric of the tow sack, the ashes from the locomotive. He had to repent and lament like those in the Bible. Except they didn’t have trains in the Bible.

  An iron kettle sat on the floor with a rope looped through the handle. In the kettle were matches, potatoes, a piece of cornbread. The man with the knife must have carried the kettle slung over his shoulder. He could use it to boil water, cook potatoes, make coffee. Inside the kettle was a metal spoon wrapped in jean cloth. Jonah ate the cornbread. Beside the kettle and spoon lay a piece of paper folded and worn and dirty. It looked as if it had gotten wet and stained by muddy water or coffee. It looked like a scrap that had been thrown away. Jonah picked up the paper and unfolded it and saw there was drawing on the soiled sheet. Someone had drawn lines on the page and written names in pencil. He stepped closer to the light from the door to see what was written. At the bottom of the page ran a curved line with “Potomack” spelled under it. And crossing that line was another line that came to a dot with “Hagerstown” inscribed beside it. That line continued up the page to a dot called “Harrisburg” and then turned to the right. Someone had drawn mountains like little waves, and another line started through the mountains to a place called “Elmira” and then on to “Auburn.” The line swung left at Auburn and reached a dot called “Rochester,” and then stretched on to “Buffalo.” Beyond Buffalo they’d written “Canada” and then “Canaan.”

  It was a map he’d found, a map that showed how to reach the North, where there was no slavery. Somebody had drawn the map for the man with the knife. According to the sheet the first stop after the train crossed the river was Hagerstown in Maryland. And after that the railroad went on to Harrisburg. At Harrisburg he’d have to get off the train and cross the mountains and follow the river to a place called Elmira.

  “What is that?” Angel said. She’d awakened and was rubbing her eyes.

  For all his bad luck, Jonah knew he’d had some good fortune, too. Sheriff Watkins had fed him well, and then he’d escaped from Winchester and gotten on the train. The runaway with the knife had not cut his throat, but instead had been thrown from the car himself. Angel had proved a comfort, as well as a complication. And now he’d found a map to the North, to Buffalo, to Canada, to the North Star and freedom. Slow down there, he said to himself. You still have a long way to go. You’re maybe halfway to Canada. Even as he thought these words of caution and hope, the train began to slow down. The engine continued to hoof and the wheels creaked, but the rattle was quieter. They were coming into a town, which he guessed was Hagerstown. The train moved steadily but slower past a water tank, some brick warehouses, the backs of houses. He could look down streets that crossed the tracks. A whistle sounded up ahead and the cars slowed down even more. Wagons and buggies had stopped beside the tracks. The train rolled so slow, it took several minutes to reach the station.

  “What happens now?” Angel said.

  “Get behind these bales,” Jonah said. They hunkered down behind two bales stacked one on the other.

  Once the train came to a lurching stop, men walked alongside the cars. Jonah didn’t know if they were checking the wheels, or the hitches between cars, or maybe the cargo inside the cars. Doors rolled and slammed. Slipping the map inside his shirt, he picked up the kettle and squeezed himself lower down. He and Angel had hidden just in time, for two men came to the door of the car and looked inside.

  “What shit-ass left this door open?” one said.

  “Maybe it was you,” the second man said.

  “And maybe it was your grandma,” the first man said. They slid the door shut with a bang, and a latch or lock clicked shut. Jonah and Angel looked at each other with alarm: they were locked in, and for all they knew it was impossible to open the sliding door from inside. They could be locked inside until the train reached its destination in New York or Boston. The car must be going where there were cotton mills. They could starve to death or freeze to death before the door was ever opened. They could die of thirst even sooner. A rumble spread through the train, and the car began to move again with jolts and clinks. According to the map, they were off to Harrisburg. He had no way of knowing how long it might take to reach Harrisburg, far to the north. But at least he was going in the right direction.

  As soon as the clanks and rocking of the car grew steady, Jonah and Angel came out from behind the bale of cotton and tried the sliding door. There was a kind of handle on the inside of the door, but he couldn’t budge the heavy panel. It was locked on the outside, or at least latched securely, and there was no way he could reach the latch. If the door remained closed until the train reached the cotton mills of New England, they were indeed in danger. They might wrap themselves in the tow sacks to keep warm, but they had no water, and no way to get water.

  At least it was daylight, and a warm sun sliced through the cracks of the car. He wondered if there could be another door, and examined the walls and looked behind the bales of cotton. The only opening he saw was in the ceiling near the middle of the car. The stacks of cotton bales came about to the middle of the car, but not close enough for him to stand on them and reach the hatchway in the roof.

  “What do we do now?” Angel said. The night before she’d seemed all confidence and cheer. Now she was scared and looking to him for a solution.

  “Got to think,” Jonah said.

  Jonah sat on a bale of cotton and studied the problem. He’d heard Mr. Williams say a bale weighed about five hundred pounds, much too big for him to lift or move around. There seemed to be nothing else in the car, no boards or ladder, no wooden box, no pole. He could tell the door above had a latch and a hinge, and the latch had to be released and the lid raised and turned back. He climbed up on the bale to get a closer look at the latch. It was too far to reach unless he had a stick. Even if he got the door open, he couldn’t reach the hatch to pull himself through. As far as Jonah could tell, he was trapped until the brakeman or someone else opened the sliding door. The car was made of heavy oak planks too hard to break. Even if he had a crowbar, he wasn’t sure he could break out.

  “We are stuck here,” Angel said. She picked the straw off her dress, one little piece at a time.

  “I will find a way,” Jonah said.

  Jonah sat back down on the bale and studied the floor. It was hard to see the cracks there because of the lint and dirt and straw. The floorboards felt heavy, at least two inches thick. He raked away straw with his foot, and then brushed away more with his hands. It felt as if there was a crack, some kind of break in the floor. He swept away more straw and lint and saw there was a kind of trapdoor. The panel seemed to be attached to hinges on one end. The problem was how to lift the heavy door that fit so flush with the floor. With a crowbar or screwdriver he could have done it quickly. The knife would break if he used it to pry the door. He tried to fit his fingers in the crack but couldn’t get a grip there.

  “What you gone do now?” Angel said.

  Jonah looked around the floor for a stick, a nail, a piece of wood, anything that would fit into the tight crack and lift the trapdoor. As far as he could tell there was no latch or catch. The heavy lid simply lay in its bed. He felt his pockets. The only other thing he had was the kettle. The kettle had a stiff wire handle in the shape of a half moon. It was a very strong ha
ndle. Jonah pushed the knotted ends of the rope to either side of the handle and tried to slip the top of the handle into the crack. It fit! Pushing hard on the wire, he lifted the trap door a little. Pressing even harder on the handle, he raised the boards enough to get a grip on the door. He raised the trapdoor back and dropped it on the floor. The clacking and clanking of the wheels came loud through the opening. Crossties and the gravel bed of the railroad blurred below. The track stank of grease and tar, cinders and ashes.

  “You gone leave me here?” Angel said.

  “I’ve got to get outside, so when the train stops I can open the door and let you out,” Jonah said.

  “Don’t you leave Angel,” she said and laughed. “I am your guardian Angel.”

  Jonah lowered himself to look under the car. The sleepers rushing by so close made him dizzy and a little sick at his stomach. But he saw rods stretching under the car, rods that strengthened the floor and held the car firm between its wheels. If he could lower his legs through the trapdoor onto the rods he might be able to slide his butt and back onto the rods and ride there. When the train slowed down enough or stopped he could jump off and run before the brakeman could catch him. Easing himself onto the bars was the most dangerous thing Jonah had ever done. If he slipped he would be ground to pieces under the train. But it seemed he had no choice, if he didn’t want to die of thirst in the boxcar. Holding to the sides of the opening, he lowered his legs through and slipped them onto the rods. Pushing with all his strength he slid his behind and his back onto the bars. The clank was deafening and the gravel and crossties were only a foot below him. When he seemed to be firmly in place, he reached back and found the kettle and pulled it through until it rested on his chest.

  The creaking and clanking changed their notes and he looked down and saw he was far above a river. Jonah had noticed on a map the river that went through Harrisburg, but he couldn’t remember its name. Lying on the bars and holding the kettle, he couldn’t reach into his pocket to get the paper. If he shifted two inches, he might slip off the bars onto the ties of the trestle. The water looked far below the bridge, though he guessed it was really not that far down to the river. Jonah shivered and jerked as the cold wind sliced under him. His teeth rattled and his knees jerked. He saw, far below, two men fishing in a rowboat, and he saw the shadow of the trestle and the train across the water. The smoke from the engine cast a ghostly shadow.

  As soon as they were across the river, the train began slowing down. The wheels creaked and shrieked on the rails, and the clanking slowed and quieted. Whoa now, Jonah thought. And as if the train were an animal that heard him, it braked even more. He held on tightly as the car came to a complete stop. The gravel and ties below him looked oily and sooty. He had no choice but to push himself off the bars onto the roadbed. Then he rolled over the rail and out into the open, dragging the kettle behind him. The depot stretched alongside the train a little farther on, and beyond the depot, the dome of a big building rose high in the sky. It was the biggest dome he’d ever seen, ten times as big as the courthouse in Roanoke. The dome had windows and doors all around it, and there was a statue on top. Beyond the town a long ridge ran above the river.

  “Hey, you there!” someone called. Jonah wheeled around and saw a man sitting in a wagon holding the reins of a horse, not far away. The man must have seen him get out from under the train. Jonah thought of running, but there was nowhere for him to flee except right into the station platform where people were getting off the train and unloading trunks and barrels. And Angel was still locked inside the boxcar.

  “Yes, sir,” Jonah said and took off his hat.

  “Come here,” the man said. Jonah crossed a side track, some gravel and a ditch to where the wagon stood.

  “Are you looking for work, boy?” the driver said. He wore clean overalls and a heavy jean jacket and a gray hat.

  “Yes, sir, I am,” Jonah said. It seemed the safest thing to say.

  “Then I have a job for you,” the man said. He told Jonah to climb up on the wagon seat beside him. Jonah hesitated, and looked back at the train.

  “Don’t you need a job?” the man said.

  “I got to go back and get something,” Jonah said. But just then he saw Angel roll out from under the train. He was going to call out to her, but a man in uniform came running toward her. Then he saw another policeman come dashing along the tracks. They grabbed Angel and held her on either side. Jonah mounted the wagon still holding the kettle and didn’t look back at the train. He found he’d been holding his breath. There was nothing he could do for Angel. The wagon driver flicked the reins and the wagon began to move. They followed a road that ran along the edge of town and by the river and north into the hills. The farmer said his name was Driver and he lived about three miles above the town. He needed to clean out his well, but couldn’t do it by himself because it was a job that took two men, one to hold the ropes while the other was lowered into the well. He’d come into town to find help.

  “I’ve only got girls,” Mr. Driver said. “Girls ain’t much help on a place.”

  The farmer looked at Jonah’s shoes and at the kettle he held on his lap. “We don’t ask no questions here,” he said, as if he knew Jonah was a runaway. “I figure a man’s business is his business, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, sir, I know what you mean,” Jonah said.

  Mr. Driver said he would give Jonah a dollar to help him clean the well, a dollar and his dinner. “And there may be other work besides,” he added. “Bet you could use a dollar.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Bet you could use two,” Mr. Driver said and laughed.

  They passed barns made of stone and houses built of stone and wood. The barns were large and Jonah saw no haystacks or corn top stacks beside them. All fodder must be kept inside the barns. Each pasture had several cows.

  “Something fell in the well,” Mr. Driver said. “We reckoned it was just muddy. We didn’t know it was there until we tasted something foul in the water.”

  They came around a bend and Mr. Driver pointed to a stone house with apple trees around it and a great red barn behind it. Some kind of design was painted on the gable of the barn. There might have been a dozen cows in the pasture on the hill behind the barn. A few trees in the woods beyond still had yellow leaves.

  “The well ain’t so deep,” Mr. Driver said. “Still, I can’t clean it by myself.” He turned into the yard and Jonah saw three young women standing on the porch.

  “Don’t pay no mind to them girls,” Mr. Driver said. “They just never laid eyes on a black boy before.”

  Smoke leaned from the kitchen chimney and Jonah smelled something good like sausage frying. Jonah had eaten nothing but the cornbread in the kettle since he dug his way out of the jail in Winchester. Mr. Driver unhitched the horse and turned it into the pasture. Then he got three long ropes from the harness room at the barn and two wooden buckets.

  “I’ll tie the rope around your waist and lower you into the well,” Mr. Driver said. “You can fill one bucket, then while I’m raising it up to empty you can fill the other one. Clear out everything you see down there, rocks, sticks, leaves, rats, birds. If you see the devil himself down there, clean him out, too.” He laughed and handed Jonah the end of a rope.

  “Can I help, Papa?” said one of the girls, who’d put on a coat and run into the backyard.

  “You go back inside,” Mr. Driver said.

  “I can help empty buckets,” the girl said. Her blond hair glistened in the sunlight.

  “You go back and help Mother fix dinner,” Mr. Driver said sharply.

  The girl glanced at Jonah and turned back to the house.

  Mr. Driver said first they had to empty the well. That meant hauling out bucket after bucket of water until the bottom was exposed enough to see what kind of trash was down there.

  “Try not to stir up mud,” he said. “If the water muddies up, you can’t see what has to be picked up.”

  The we
ll had a little roof over it, and a windlass and rope, but Jonah and Mr. Driver set the cover aside. The well hole itself had rocks around the rim. As Jonah tied the rope around his waist, Mr. Driver went back to the barn for a lantern.

  “You’ll need this,” he said when he returned and lit the lantern.

  The well shaft was about a yard across and Jonah braced himself against the sides with his feet and elbows as Mr. Driver lowered him into the darkness. The lantern gave a weak light as he dropped out of the sunlight. The sides of the well had rocks and moss for a few feet down, and below that the walls were clay. Jonah touched the water after maybe fifteen feet, water so cold it burned. When he glanced up at the opening above he saw Mr. Driver looking down and stars in the sky behind him. It was true what he’d heard before: you could see stars from the bottom of a well in the middle of the day.

  Mr. Driver lowered two buckets and Jonah filled one and then the other. As a bucket was drawn up, water and bits of dirt dripped on his head. His legs ached in the cold water. Mr. Driver emptied the buckets and lowered them again. As the water at his feet got lower Jonah saw something black and gray. It was the hair of an animal. And then he saw the rings on the tail. It was a rotten raccoon. Jonah wished he had gloves to touch the putrid carcass. He should use tongs or even sticks. But he had nothing but his hands for lifting the foul thing.

  “They’s a coon,” he yelled up the shaft.

  “Put it in the bucket,” Mr. Driver shouted down.

  The furry body was so soft Jonah feared it would tear apart before he could lift it into the pail. And he was afraid that if he picked the thing up by the tail the tail would break off. Holding the lantern in his right hand, he scooped up the awful dripping fur and slid the mess into the bucket. He expected to be assaulted by the stench, but there was little smell. The cold water seemed to have absorbed the stink or killed it. He was glad the light was bad and he could hardly see the horrible muck of fur and bones. The eye sockets were empty.

  As Mr. Driver hauled the bucket up, water dripped on him, foul water, stink water. He would have to wash with lye soap to get the filth off him. If Mr. Driver dropped the bucket on his head, it would kill him. He was in the worst place he could be, trapped at the bottom of a well. Mr. Driver could go for the sheriff, or one of his daughters could go. Angel was probably in jail and he couldn’t help her. Maybe she wouldn’t tell the police about him. He was down below grave level and couldn’t get away. All for the promise of a dollar, Jonah had put himself in a dozen kinds of danger. You fool, he whispered, you blockhead idiot.