“Don’t hurt him,” said a voice in the henhouse.
“I ain’t gonna hurt him, John,” said the attacker as he tried to pull his head back from Joe’s grip.
Joe bit the hand—tasted like old leather. He stomped a bare toe. The man relaxed his grip and Joe squirmed free. The man grabbed for him, but Joe shot out the door.
Joe ran for the house. “Niggers in the henhouse! Shoot them!”
Belle ran past him and pointed the musket at the henhouse door. “You’uns come outta there or I’ll just shoot up in there.”
Peter lit a stick from the coals by the table. He moved toward the henhouse door. He went past Belle, getting between her and the door, but still out of the line of fire. Joe knew what he was doing. He was not going to throw light on Belle as he lit the henhouse.
Joe stood beside Belle. “When they come out, blast them.”
“Don’t shoot—don’t shoot. We is coming out.”
Peter stood by the door, giving Belle enough light.
Two men came out the door. One was holding Itchy with his head wrapped in a gunnysack. He let him down, and Itchy ran for the house whimpering.
“John?” Peter said when the torch light fell on the men’s faces.
“It’s the niggers that fed us back a-ways,” Joe said. He knew you couldn’t trust any darkies.
“What you’uns doing in my henhouse?” Belle asked.
“Lawd, Missus, we’s juss gonna take a few eggs,” John said.
Belle laughed. “Take all you can find.”
“So this is how you darkies been getting by,” Joe said. “You ain’t nothing but a bunch of thieves and scoundrels.”
The two men said nothing, just stared at the gun.
“Trying to steal eggs isn’t too bad, is it, Mrs. Belle?” Peter said, putting a hand on John’s shoulder.
Joe cooled. Heck, Peter was right. A man will do most anything when he is hungry.
“I reckon I’ll shoot ‘em anyhow.”
Joe looked at Belle. The moon reflected on her white nightgown. The hump on her back looked like a head under the cover. He wondered if the old woman was going to pull the trigger.
“Mrs. Belle, please don’t shoot these men. They meant but just a little harm by taking a few eggs,” Peter said.
“I ain’t a gonna shoot ‘em for stealing—I wanted some eggs, and they ain’t found none.” She lowered the gun and laughed.
Joe picked up his tomahawk from the doorway, saw John’s legs shaking. Joe laughed, too. John had thought it was the end of earth for him. Joe had, too.
***
Joe put some sticks on the fire by the table as the dawn grew. Peter knew there would be no rooster here to greet it, just the chorus of birds.
John and his friend, Burt, sat on the bench at the table sipping a coffee substitute made of sweet potatoes that Belle had blended—they seemed to enjoy it. Peter found the stuff horrible.
Belle boiled oats in the pot for breakfast. Peter believed she was happy to do it. She seemed in good spirits when she was doing something for someone else. That particular spirit was becoming more rare across the land.
“Where are the other people that were with you?” Joe asked as he poked in the fire.
“We has a camp back down the road a piece,” John said. “Spect they be getting worried bout us.”
“They’d really be worried if you had gotten shot,” Joe said.
“Now, Joe, that’s enough of that,” Belle said. “Weren’t no harm done. They’s just after some eggs.”
“Yeah, like a thieving chicken snake, leaving nothing in return but snake shit.”
“Joseph, your mouth is getting foul,” Peter said.
“Pshaw,” Joe said. He threw the stick into the fire and walked over to the mule.
Peter felt a knife in his heart seeing Joe becoming so cross. Peter knew he would have to do better with him—his responsibility until Mr. Taylor was found—if he were found.
“Mrs. Belle, I sho is mighty sorry bout yo dog,” John said. Itchy was peeping from under the steps.
Belle laughed. She filled bowls from the pot. “Well, you’uns didn’t find no eggs, but I reckon I found a chicken.”
Belle set the bowls on the table. “Come on away from that animal Joe and let’s eat.”
Joe slipped in between John and Burt. “Pass that honey, Peter.”
“We should thank the Lord first,” Peter said.
“That right—that right,” John said.
Joe glared at Peter, and it cut to his soul. Had Joe really turned from God? Had this war really damned his soul?
“Peter, will you please thank the All Mighty for our blessings?” Belle said.
Peter bowed his head. He searched his heart for the right words. It was never hard before, but he never felt someone he loved was lost. Seconds dragged on, and he felt the others staring.
“Heavenly Father—” He couldn’t think, couldn’t find the appropriate words.
“I’m hungry, Peter,” Joe said.
“Ye shush!” Belle said.
Peter didn’t think about it. It was no good. He just let the words come of their own accord.
“Dear God, please bless this food. It is a gift from a kind lady, a lady that doesn’t have much to offer because of this horrible war.”
Peter felt his lips tremble and felt the tears well in his eyes. It suddenly all became too heavy. It was all too much. He had been a witness to too much. He thought of the picture of Belle’s sons. He thought of Joe turning from God. He thought of Dr. Taylor, thought of Mam, the unknown in the Valley. But he had to finish.
“Father in Heaven, please help us.” His voice broke. “It is all madness. We seem to have lost our way. I don’t understand how all of this can be happening.” He wiped his eyes.
No one said anything. Only the bird songs could be heard.
“I know you have a plan, but we don’t understand it. Please help us to understand. Please help us to find our way out of this nightmare. Please help Joe. I pray for help from you to look out for him. I love him so, but I’m afraid for him. Please help all of us at this table, and forgive us our sins. Forgive us all and help us to find the way. Help us to understand your will. Show us a sign. Show us...help us to...” Peter wiped his eyes again. “Amen.”
When Peter looked up, all were looking at him. He wiped his eyes.
“Peter, that was a lovely prayer,” Belle said.
“Amen,” the two men said.
Joe looked at Peter for a long minute. Peter saw no anger in his eyes, maybe a small smile, but it was gone in an instant.
“Now, can I have the honey?” Joe said.
***
John guided his small group into the dooryard. Including John, Joe counted four men, three women, and three children. There were two mules, four goats, and two ducks. They had a wagon, and a shoddy cart. This wasn’t near the number of people Joe and Peter had eaten with back down the road.
“You’uns pull around to the back of the house,” Belle said.
Joe grabbed John’s arm. “Where’s everybody else?”
“Here and there. Some reckoned they’d go back to they massuh. The white man with us went crazy yesterday, talking foolish. He staggered off down the road, and I reckon I don’t know what happened to his nigger. We’s all that’s left. We ain’t got no massuh to go to and we a little scared of them Yankees, so we is wandering like a Moses.”
Joe couldn’t understand why Belle would have all of these Negroes on the place. She had said they could stay there a few days until they figured where they were going. What would they eat? Well, whatever, Joe knew where he was going, and he and Peter were striking out tomorrow.
“You’uns pick ye out a cabin. They’s ever bit as comfortable as my own house,” Belle said. “They’s still some firewood stacked up around the back.” She seemed happy to have the Negroes on the place, and Itchy took to the children right off.
“Joe, come here,” Peter called from behind
the quarters.
Joe found him under a grove of huge chestnut trees. The trees looked to be over hundred feet tall, and three men couldn’t reach around either one with joined hands. “These are some of the biggest trees I’ve ever seen,” Peter said, looking up at the trees. “Look, they are loaded with nuts and it won’t be long before they start to fall.”
“Yeah, like right now,” Joe said, as he picked up a stick.
The first limb was over twenty feet high, and Joe missed it. Peter retrieved the stick and gave it a toss. Nuts rained down on the boys. The burrs were still a little tight on the nuts, but they were soon peeled away. The sweet taste was just what Joe remembered.
“I see you’uns found the five kings,” Belle said as she approached the boys.
“Five kings?” Peter asked.
“These five chestnut trees are some of the biggest anywhere, and five of them right together is a gift. My husband called them the five kings. Soon the ground will be covered deep with the nuts. I will gather them after I have killed me a few turkeys that’ll come down out of the hills after them.”
“You plant them?” Joe asked.
“Heaven no, boy, I ain’t that old. I reckon they’s just here when my husband settled the place. He never would cut them down, would have been some fine lumber.”
Joe believed if they were older than Belle, they, indeed, were old.
“See that clearing back yonder?” Belle said, pointing.
“Yes, Ma’am,” Peter said.
“That there is my real garden. You’uns help me get some things from it for supper.”
Joe didn’t see how this old humpbacked woman could work a garden of such size. Most of the vegetables were gone now, but there was still squash, pole beans, a few tomatoes, and different greens. It was a huge garden. Joe reckoned her husband had helped her, but without his help and a mule, she would never maintain such a plot.
“Ye see, ye can’t see it from the house. The five kings and these bushes hide it,” she said. “The Yankees think that little garden at the house is all I’ve got, but ain’t they fooled.”
Joe picked a tomato and bit into it. He smiled and thought, yeah, ain’t they fooled. He liked old humpback more and more. She had fooled him, too, and that wasn’t easy.
Joe spotted a stack of split rails behind the garden with bark piled on it. “What’s that?”
“That there is my corncrib. I couldn’t leave it close to the house or it would all be stoled.”
“You have plenty to eat, don’t you, Mrs. Belle?” Peter said. “More than we thought.”
“Iffen I keep it all hid, I got right smart of it. I ain’t got no salt and chickens and other stuff, but I got my garden.”
Joe raised some planks behind the corncrib. It was a pit lined with hay and grass filled with Irish potatoes and sweet potatoes. “Pshaw, you have enough to feed an army. Can me and Peter take some with us?”
“Joseph!” Peter said.
“His’n manners ain’t none too good, but his’n sense is first rate,” Belle said. “Hun, you’uns can take whatever ye need for ye journey home.”
Joe smiled at the woman. She was gnarled, old, and humpbacked, but she was beautiful. When he could, he would come back to visit her; he knew he had to. Some day things would be better and he would return her favors.
***
It had been the best meal Peter had eaten in a long time—sweet potatoes, squash, beans, and rabbit. Belle was a good cook and so was John’s wife, Diane. John was a smart trapper and had snared three rabbits for supper.
Peter sat at the table listening to the women sing as they prepared their cabins. They sang happy songs. You could tell a lot about a place and time by the Negro songs, and this was a good place and a good time by that gauge.
The evening was cool, but not too cool, just nippy enough to make you appreciate the fire. Peter rubbed his arms and watched the flames dance. He heard Joe’s voice over the singing. He was helping the Negroes arrange their things in the cabins—had to be in the middle of it, never content to just leave things alone. Peter smiled.
The stars were being born and they speckled the sky like scattered jewels. Peter locked his fingers behind his head and stared at them. How many soldiers were looking up right this instant at the very same stars? How many runaways were following a certain star to the North and freedom? Moses had looked up and gazed at these stars and Jesus, too. Suddenly two shooting stars streaked across the sky with green and orange trailers. God’s doing. However, isn’t it all God’s doing? Of course it is. God has a hand in everything. We don’t know why things are what they are, but he does have a hand in it all. It’s all part of a greater plan.
Peter heard Joe behind him at the animals. He turned to see Joe and John rubbing on the mules. It was just enough daylight left to make out a big man and a short boy—a boy with very light hair reflecting the firelight.
“Yessuh, Massuh Joe, you has to take care of the animals so they can take care of you,” John said.
“I had a horse back at the Shenandoah Valley, but I had to leave it behind,” Joe said. “Probably gone now.”
“I don’t know on that. It might be right there a-waiting for you to come home.”
Peter could hear a brush stroking the animal, but heard no talking for a long time; Joe broke the silence.
“John, what’s it like being black?”
Peter strained to listen, but there was a long silence.
“I don’t know, Massuh Joe. I don’t know no different.”
“Do you ever wish you were white?”
“Well, Massuh Joe, I has studied on that there. I reckon I don’t want to be white. I just wants what a white man has. I just wants to come and go when I gets a notion, and I ain’t got to answer to nobody.”
Peter moved to the big oak behind the table to hear better.
“I wouldn’t want to be no darky, I tell you,” Joe said. “I’ve seen how slaves have to work on those plantations, and I don’t want no part of it.” Joe took the brush and started stroking the mule’s side.
“Massuh Joe, now let me ask you: what it like being white?”
Peter heard the brush stop.
“Uncle John, I ain’t never thought much about that.” Joe began brushing again. “Let me see. Well, you can come and go when you like, but don’t seem like such a big deal. I don’t know, but it’s better than being a nigger on a plantation.”
“Massuh Joe, being a dog is better than that. I reckon—”
“John, come catch this here coon!” Diane called from the cabin. Joe and John ran toward the cabin.
Peter sat back at the table. Joe had never asked him such a question. Why?
He looked toward Belle’s house, and through the windows, he saw her moving around in there.
Suddenly Itchy started barking. He had found Diane’s coon. There was laughter at the cabin.
Peter moved back to the fire and placed a crooked stick on it. He believed he knew why Joe had never asked him about him being black. Of course, it was obvious: Joe didn’t think of him being a Negro. Oh, he knew he was a Negro, but not like other Negroes—he was Peter. Peter couldn’t explain it to himself, but he knew Joe thought of him differently.
Belle stepped out the back door and stood with her arms crossed. Her white hair glowed like the moon. She spotted Peter and went to the table.
“Lovely evening,” Peter said as he wiped the bench for her to sit.
“I always like it at candlelighting,” she said as she lowered herself to the bench. “Just dark enough for the stars, yet still a little light to see by, a purple-blue sky.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
She turned to Peter. “You’uns look behind the henhouse tomorrow and fetch that old buggy. It ain’t much, but I reckon it’ll get ye two boys to the Valley. That old mule should be able to tote it iffen you’uns don’t go the whole hog.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Belle. You have been most kind to us.”
She looked at Pet
er for a long minute. “Peter, ye are a special person.”
Peter said nothing.
“Ye think ye are taking care of Joe all by your lonesome, but ye ain’t.”
Peter looked into the gray-blue eyes. He could see the fire reflection fluttering in them. Those eyes had seen many things in many years—wisdom. He waited for more.
She looked up toward the sky. A shooting star flared. “See that?”
“Yes, Ma’am. They are beautiful, a good many this evening.”
She looked back toward Peter. “Ye are a tool, Peter.”
“Ma’am?”
“I knowed it when I first talked to ye. I see how ye are with the boy. The All Mighty is using ye. Ye ain’t no ordinary young man. Ye are a huckleberry above a persimmon.”
Peter didn’t understand. Of course, he was ordinary.
Joe ran up to them with the dead raccoon held by the tail. “Look here, Mrs. Belle. We’ve got dinner for tomorrow.” Itchy sniffed at the animal and barked. Joe swung it toward the dog. Itchy yelped and ran under the house. They laughed.
“Clean that critter and we’ll cook him for you’uns trip.”
Joe ran back toward the cabins, laughing and yelling.
Belle turned to Peter. “Ye are his shepherd.”
Peter looked into those gray-blue eyes again. Suddenly the weight he had been carrying since Arkansas grew heavier.
***
The mule was reluctant to be hitched at first, but soon resigned itself to the harness. Anything other than this small covered buggy would be too much, but Peter believed the mule could pull it fair enough.
Peter loaded their bags into the buggy, making sure his Bible was secure and hidden under the seat. Joe’s bag was the heaviest. Peter remembered the revolver. He didn’t like it, but it had saved lives in the past, and no one knew the future.
Belle brought a basket to the buggy. “Here is you’uns dinner. I cooked Joe’s coon and some vegetables to go along with it.” It smelled delicious.
Chase The Wild Pigeons Page 33
