So when he showed up out of the dark to say he loved me and always had, I teased him a little and asked when he was going to up and leave me again. When was he going to run off on his own as he had done already four times. But all the same I told him yes, because I knew he was my only hope, too, in this shivering place. I was all he had left of home, and when that Preacher Belue married us in his fine church, I wore a turban just like the one my mama wrapped around her head for jubilee. There was no jubilee in these winter hills by the lake except what I made my own self.
One thing I liked about Joshua was how he could always spin a tale. He could talk big to the white folks in Ithaca, like he had read a lot of books and knew just what to do. He remembered everything he heard, and he could spread more bullshit with his tongue than ten wagonloads and men with pitchforks. And Preacher Belue loved it, and everybody in the mill and at the church seemed to love it, too. And they made a fuss over Joshua like he was somebody special.
He worked as a janitor at the mill and next thing I knew he was put in charge of fixing things, of keeping all the machines running. And whether he knew what to do or not, he always acted like he did. And that was almost as good as knowing, for he learned quick and remembered.
Now Joshua wanted to teach me to read, but I told him it wouldn’t do any good, but he kept on till I gave in and he taught me to write my name and make letters and read a little bit so I could tell street signs and count money and tell time by the clock on the mantel. And once I started reading I kept going, for I found it was fun. And finally I learned almost as many big words as Joshua had, in the Bible and in newspapers, and in the dictionary he bought, and all the novels we got from the lending library.
But I hadn’t forgot my dream on the road in Virginia when I saw those houses with pretty flower gardens and apple trees and cherry trees and chicken houses with big brown eggs in pine straw nests. I loved flowers much as I loved good potato patties and hog sausage with pepper in it. After we got the house on Albany Street, the first thing I did was put geraniums in boxes alongside of the porch, red geraniums, a color so bright you thought you dreamed it.
And I put bulbs in the dirt along the walk, so I had tulips and dahlias and such in their season. Such colors you wouldn’t think to see this side of heaven. At the Thomas Place I’d hated working in the dirt, but here I was happy to get my hands in soil. And I got grape hyacinths, too, coming early. Those colors show God loves us I reckon. It was a blessing to have these beauties. Joshua said it would break us up, all the money I spent on flowers for yard and porch, but he didn’t mean it. He had all those big words and talked to Preacher Belue about things in the Bible and in the paper. I read the Bible, too, and I had my flowers and the floor of my parlor, which I kept shined like a mirror.
When Joshua became the man who fixed things at the mill, I told him not to get too big for his britches, because I’d seen him when he don’t have any britches. But he didn’t pay any attention to my teasing because he knew I liked his strutting and bragging with all those fine words. But I still gave him the lash of my tongue when he stomped into the house with muddy boots and smeared the floor I’d polished like it was fine silver.
Now I wondered in secret if I would ever have kids after I’d been with so many men and never got pregnant. I didn’t mention this to Joshua, because we never talked about all those things I had done back then. There was no use to rake up the memories. But in my own heart I wondered if we would ever have children like I dreamed of way back on the road when I thought of my own house and yard and flowers and it seemed impossible for me to ever have such. I didn’t say anything, but fear ran through me like a cold blade stabbing my spine. So much good had already happened to me. Girl, I told myself, how can you expect any more?
I don’t need to explain to you how scared and excited I was when my bleeding stopped that next summer, after we got married. I’d never been one for praying much, but I prayed every night that it would be true. After one month the bleeding didn’t return, and then a second month. That was when I told Joshua I might be expecting; most likely I was expecting. I don’t think he believed me at first. Then he saw that maybe I was telling him the truth and he was the happiest man I’d seen since the jubilee.
“We’ll name him Frederick Douglass,” he said. Frederick Douglass was the colored man that published a newspaper called North Star in Rochester, New York.
“What if I want to name my baby something else?” I said, just teasing him a little.
“We’ll find no name better than Frederick Douglass,” he said. He was so excited he didn’t hear anything I said anyway.
“How do you know it will be a boy?” I said. “It’s just possible we’ll be blessed with a little girl.”
But I was so tickled I didn’t argue with him anymore. I’d be happy with a child of my own, whether a boy or a girl, and I knew it would be as clever as Joshua, and wise and pretty as myself.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the historians of the Ithaca area for their help with local history and the story of African-Americans in the Finger Lakes region in the 1850s. In particular I would like to thank Carol Kammen for her advice, and for her Ithaca: A Brief History, and The Peopling of Tompkins County. I would also like to thank my agent, Liz Darhansoff, for encouraging this project over the years. My editors Shannon Ravenel and Chuck Adams have generously shared their wisdom as this novel was completed. The staff at Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, especially Elisabeth Scharlatt, Anne Winslow, and Brunson Hoole, have given invaluable assistance at every step.
Born in North Carolina, ROBERT MORGAN was raised in the mountains in which much of the story of Chasing the North Star takes place. A poet and biographer as well as a novelist, he is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. He lives in Ithaca, New York, where he is Kappa Alpha Professor of English at Cornell University. (Photo by Randi Anglin.)
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Published by
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
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© 2016 by Robert Morgan.
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
eISBN 978-1-61620-627-5
Chasing the North Star Page 30