Chasing the North Star

by Robert Morgan

  “Then why didn’t you?” Jonah said.

  “Boy, you sure are a friendly cuss,” Angel said. But she didn’t say any more. They walked along the wet road up a hill and over. The river was so full, it seemed almost level with the road.

  “Didn’t want to be the play toy of white men the rest of my life,” Angel said, after a while. “Of course you wouldn’t understand that.”

  “I might,” Jonah said. “And then I might not.”

  ONE AFTERNOON JONAH SMELLED something sweet as he reached the top of a hill above the river. He was used to the smell of rotten things, mud along the stream bank and fester of sinkholes, manure in barns and hogpens, skunks and dead animals along the road, chicken houses and tan yards. But this was a pleasing smell, familiar, though he couldn’t name the scent. The breeze carried fumes where the road ran high above the river.

  The sweet smell made him more awake, for it suggested something good. He looked for a house nearby where somebody might be baking, or boiling something. But all he saw were trees on the hill above him and ahead of him. The thought of boiling reminded him where he’d sniffed that scent before. It was the way Mr. Williams smelled when he’d been drinking brandy. It was the smell of the toddy Mrs. Williams had taken sometimes when she was feeling faint.

  “That is the smell of brandy,” Angel said.

  “Or corn liquor,” Jonah said.

  “Wouldn’t mind a sip of that to keep me warm,” Angel said. Her feet were covered with mud. She’d washed her dress in the river, but the hem was dirty again. She shivered because she didn’t have a coat. If they kept going north she’d have to find a coat somewhere, before they went much farther.

  Jonah wondered if there was a liquor still ahead. There could be moonshiners in the mountains of Pennsylvania same as in the mountains of South Carolina. But he didn’t see any smoke or smell any smoke, and he thought the scent was sweeter and more subtle than the smell of corn liquor. There was a mustiness in the aroma of fruit on the breeze. And then he saw the apple trees on the hillside ahead of him, stretching evenly in rows all the way to the top of the hill. They turned off the road and climbed through brush to reach the orchard. An apple would taste mighty good, and maybe he could gather a few to carry with him in the kettle.

  But when they reached the apple trees, Jonah saw the orchard had already been picked. It was late October and the harvest was over, and most of the limbs were bare. The weeds around the trees had been mashed down by the pickers. Some trees had one or two apples high on limbs where they would be hard to reach. There were a few red apples and pink apples, streaked apples and yellow apples. There were apples so dark they looked purple. He saw one apple still green. He would have to climb a tree to reach each one.

  Jonah stepped into the orchard looking for a tree easy to climb, but his foot stumbled on something in the grass, and when he stepped sideways to catch his balance, his other foot crushed something that crunched. The grass and weeds were full of apples, apples that had fallen or apples rejected by the pickers. Some apples were so rotten they looked boiled and ready to melt to pulp. That was where the wonderful smell came from, fruit touched by frost and rotting or fermenting on the ground. The aroma lifted through the weeds and grass and filled the breeze.

  But some of the fallen fruit was not rotten, or not completely rotten. A few apples had one good side and others had one good spot. He picked up an apple and wiped the good side on his sleeve and took a bite. The skin had a kind of wax on it, but his teeth cut into the cold and juicy flesh. He ate the good part and threw the rest away and picked up another. After rubbing away dirt and grit on the good section, polishing the shiny skin, he took a bite. Sweet as only a perfectly ripe apple can be, the taste of the second apple was slightly different from the first.

  Angel got down on her knees and wiped an apple on her dress before taking a bite. She threw the rotten part away and grabbed another. “Wish it was brandy,” she said, and searched in the grass for another apple with a sound spot.

  Jonah picked up an apple and rubbed the dirt off and bit into the foamy meat. This one tasted slightly different also. Apples even from the same tree all tasted a little different. He’d never noticed that before. He looked for apples that were mostly sound, and put them in his pockets and in the kettle. Because of the recent rains, the fruit needed to be brushed off. He found a yellow apple tree, but those apples had rotted faster than the red ones. He located only one sound yellow apple to put in with the others.

  As he reached into the grass looking for more apples, something pricked his finger. At first he thought he’d touched a briar, but then a buzzing in the grass told him he’d been stung, and sure enough he saw a yellow jacket blur away from the apple he’d grasped. The yellow jacket flew slow in the cold air, but its stinger had worked. After a few seconds the poison from the sting began to take effect, and his finger started to ache. “You put some tobacco juice on that,” Angel said.

  “Have you seen me with any tobacco?”

  “Then squeeze ragweed juice on the sting,” Angel said.

  Jonah looked around for ragweed. But frost had already singed the weeds in the orchard, turning them into black rags. Only the grass was still green, but he didn’t reckon the juice of grass would soothe the yellow jacket sting.

  He wished he had a sack to carry more apples, though a sack would weigh him down on the road. He needed to keep moving if he was to reach Canada before winter made the roads impassable. But something about the smell of the apples made him sleepy. It was the smell of cellars and barn lofts, the smell of winter and Christmas.

  “Here, I found one by the fence,” Angel called. She held up a half-alive ragweed and brought it to him. The leaves were so stiff there was little juice in them.

  “Squeeze hard,” Angel said. More dust than juice rubbed off the ragweed, but it seemed to soothe the sting a little. Jonah lay back in the grass to rest. Clouds floated above, and as he watched clouds moving at different speeds at different heights, he thought how things just seemed to happen by chance. How many times had he told himself he had to be tough as the world was tough, just to survive. But no matter how tough you were, things still seemed to just happen as they would happen, with little or no connection to how tough he was or how hard he tried. Take these apples. He’d not been looking for apples; he’d not even thought of apples, yet here he was with a kettle full of apples to carry on the road.

  Apples had grown in the garden of Eden. Apples had grown on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. An apple was not only a thing of beauty and pleasure, but a sign of temptation and guilt in a way too complicated for him to figure out. An apple was the sign of the knowledge of good and evil. Maybe that’s why apples were so pungent and memorable. They grew on the heat of the sun and sap from the roots full of minerals from the soil. They grew on rain and the salts of time. It was the black soil of rottenness that gave apples their richness.

  Jonah shook his hand to ease the throb in his finger. His finger would burn until the pain had been diluted. He put his finger in his mouth and sucked. “Want me to kiss it?” Angel said and laughed. Jonah didn’t answer. “That’s what my mama used to do; she kissed a hurt to make it feel better.”

  Jonah lay back in the grass and looked at the sky above the trees. He wondered why apples were always planted on hillsides or even on hilltops. There was some explanation he’d heard but had forgotten. Obviously the fruit trees needed to grow where they had plenty of sun. And they needed to grow where they could stay cold in winter so the sap didn’t rise too early and the blooms get killed by frost. That was why apples didn’t grow well in cotton country, where the winter was too mild.

  But on a slope the cold air drained away into the valley on a frosty night in spring and the blooms didn’t get killed in April. It was a complicated system, for trees on a hill got more cold wind and were liable to be blown over in a storm. And high on a hill they also got loaded with more ice when an ice storm hit.

  Jonah sat
in the grass and felt a little drunk from the poison of the sting, and from the smell of all the frost-fermented apples on the ground. The sunlight had an edge to it, and the breeze was sharper. And then he smelled smoke in the updraft. He raised himself up on his elbows and sniffed, wondering if there was a moonshine still on the hill after all. But mixed with the smoke was another smell, not the scent of ferment but something else, something even sweeter.

  “What is that burning?” Angel said.

  “Smells like blood,” Jonah said.

  “Smells like something is scalded,” Angel said.

  If there was smoke nearby, there were people also. They had to move on. Jonah stood up. The pockets of his overalls were filled with apples of all colors, and he gathered a few more red ones to pack in the pockets of his coat. The scent of smoke seemed to be wafting around the hill. They would get back to the road and keep walking. The road was their only place of safety. Jonah picked up the scythe and laid it across his right shoulder, and grasped the kettle with his left hand. The apples were heavy, but he and Angel could eat them in two or three days as they marched along.

  “I’ll carry that,” Angel said and took the kettle from his hand. She was shivering a little from the cold. Jonah knew they’d have to find a coat for her soon.

  “You want to eat them all yourself,” Jonah said.

  “I’m glad you show your thanks,” Angel said.

  They climbed down the bank of weeds at the edge of the orchard and dropped into the road.

  It was only then that Jonah saw the farmhouse around a bend in the road. He’d missed it before because he’d gone into the orchard too far up the hill. The house was made of stone, and an old woman stood in the yard by a fire, stirring a black iron pot. The smoke drifting up the hill smelled of spices. The woman wore a heavy wool bonnet pulled down on her forehead and on both sides of her face. “Howdy,” he called to her.

  “Howdy to you,” the woman said. Jonah figured they’d best keep walking like they were just going about their business. The pockets of his coat bulged and he was afraid apples would start falling out. Apples were stacked in the kettle.

  “Who did you buy them apples from?” the old woman called.

  “I got them down the road,” Jonah said. The woman must have seen them come out of the orchard. He couldn’t pretend they’d gotten the apples at some place far away. It was wise to stay on the road and keep going. But if the woman thought they’d been stealing apples, she might send somebody after them. She might call a sheriff. He’d better act friendly, like he had nothing to hide or be afraid of. He stepped into the yard to pretend he was just a friendly neighbor passing by.

  The steam from the pot the woman was stirring was the source of the nice aroma. It smelled of cloves and cinnamon and maybe other spices, too. The stuff she stirred was brown and bubbling; he realized that it was apple butter.

  “That smells mighty good, ma’am,” Jonah said.

  “Apples is dear this year,” the woman said. “Frost killed half the crop in May.” She looked at Jonah’s pockets and the kettle Angel held. “Looks like you got about a peck there.”

  “I just picked them up on the ground among the rotten ones,” Jonah said. His face got hot. He wished he’d kept walking.

  “Apple trees take lots of work,” the woman said. “Pruning and dusting, fertilizing and mowing.”

  “Yes, ma’am, farming is hard work.”

  “What will you be doing with that scythe?” the woman said.

  “Going up the road a ways to cut some cornstalks.”

  Jonah didn’t see the man until he stepped around beside him from the back. The man wore a wide-brimmed hat and a leather apron, like he’d been working as a blacksmith. He was younger than the woman, young enough to be her son.

  “Good day,” Jonah said. He tipped his hat with his left hand because he was holding the scythe handle with the right.

  “These people have been picking apples,” the woman said. She dipped a wooden spoon in the apple butter and blew on the contents.

  “So I see,” the man said.

  “We picked them off the ground,” Jonah said.

  The smoke from the fire and steam from the pot made Jonah’s face sweat. He wanted to leave, but he dared not just break away and start up the road. He would have offered to pay for the apples, but all he had was a penny he’d found in the road. They might get mad if he offered them only a penny.

  “That’s a nice blade you’ve got there,” the man said.

  “Yes sir, I’m going to cut some cornstalks for a neighbor.”

  “It could use some sharpening,” the man said.

  “I’ve got a whet rock right here in my pocket,” Jonah said.

  “Oliver makes things in his shop,” the woman said. “He can make anything out of metal, hoes and rakes, pokers and hinges.”

  “I even made some irons once,” Oliver said and spat on the grass.

  “What kind of irons?” Jonah said.

  “Irons to put on a runaway slave,” Oliver said. “They caught him up here near Williamsport and held him in jail for a month until his owner arrived from Virginia. They needed irons to hold his hands and feet for the trip back, and I made them. I smoothed the irons and rounded all the edges so they wouldn’t hurt his ankles and wrists.”

  “Oliver can make locks, too,” the woman said. “Not just anybody can make a lock.”

  “Want to see the lock I made for the basement?” Oliver said.

  “I best be on my way,” Jonah said. “I need to cut the cornstalks afore dark.”

  “Won’t take but a second to see the lock,” Oliver said.

  “Whose cornstalks are you going to cut?” the woman said.

  Jonah pretended he didn’t hear her. It was too risky to make up a name. “Reckon I could have a quick look,” he said. “Ma’am,” he said to the old woman, bowing slightly.

  “We best be on our way,” Angel said.

  “Won’t take but a minute,” Oliver said.

  Jonah followed Oliver around a clothesline hung with sheets to get to the back of the house. The backyard was not as neat as the front yard. Tools were scattered around a wheelbarrow, and farm implements littered the ground between the house and the woodpile. The house was bigger than it appeared from the front, with a wing that reached back toward the barn.

  “I heard there was a runaway slave spotted in Harrisburg,” Oliver said and looked him in the eye.

  “A runaway, sir?”

  “Actually two runaway slaves.”

  “Ain’t heard nothing about that,” Jonah said.

  “They say they’re dangerous,” Oliver said.

  At the end of the house, stone steps descended to the basement. A heavy door with a big lock was visible at the bottom of the steps. “This is where we keep cider and store apples over winter,” Oliver said. “Also pertaters and other roots.”

  “I best be on my way,” Jonah said.

  “What’s the hurry, my friend?” Oliver said and slapped Jonah on the shoulder. “Maybe you’d like some pertaters, or a jug of cider to go with the apples.”

  “Got about all I can carry,” Jonah said.

  “I could find you a basket or a sack,” Oliver said. “Here, let me show you the lock.” He put his hand on Jonah’s back and urged him toward the steps.

  “You can leave your things here beside the steps.” He took the scythe from Jonah and set it on the grass. Jonah felt naked without the scythe.

  At the bottom of the steps, Oliver drew a large key from his pocket and inserted it in the lock and turned until there was a click. The padlock was big as an iron purse. The door swung open and Jonah saw the floor of the basement was paved with rocks swept clean as the floor of a parlor. The air smelled of apples and cool earth.

  “Go ahead and I’ll light the lantern,” Oliver said. He pushed Jonah forward so hard he fell on the stone floor. Before he could stagger to his feet, the door closed behind him and the lock snapped in place. The basement had
no window and was dark as midnight except for a little sliver of light around the edges of the door.

  “Hey,” Jonah called, “what are you doing?” He thought he could feel a cobweb on his neck. Several apples had fallen out of his pockets and he stumbled on them beside the door.

  “I have caught myself a thief,” Oliver called on the other side.

  “Ain’t no thief,” Jonah yelled. “I can pay.”

  “And maybe I’ve caught something bigger,” Oliver said and laughed.

  “I be on my way to work,” Jonah said. He didn’t want to sound like he was pleading.

  “What’s your name, boy?” Oliver called.

  “I be named Jeter,” Jonah answered, “Jeter Jenkins.”

  “Have yourself an apple, Jeter, and think about property, stolen property.”

  “Open the door,” Jonah called.

  “I’d better go forge some manacles,” Oliver called and laughed again. “You’ll need some irons for the journey back to Virginia. I bet your master will pay well.”

  With the strong wooden door and the heavy lock between him and the steps, Jonah knew it was hopeless. He’d been stupid, and he’d been caught in the most obvious kind of trap. A few ripe apples, his own hunger and greed, had landed him in this dungeon. It wouldn’t do him any good to call out to Oliver, to beg or plead or threaten. If Oliver suspected there was a reward for him, he could hold him in the basement until a telegram or letter brought Mr. Williams. Jonah decided he’d say nothing else. He sat down on the swept floor of the basement. The stones were cold, and he got up on his knees to think. The basement was damp and chilly. He looked at the wires of light around the sides of the door.

  Jonah knew that at the first sign of danger Angel would have run into the woods. She might have dropped the kettle to run faster. She would run as far away as she could, and there would be nobody to help him escape from the cellar.

  “Are you cold, Jeter?” Oliver called. “It’ll be warm when you get back down south.”