After the court-martial, we had to sneak away from New Bedford practically in the dead of night.
Now we don’t talk about those days much. Though Father was a smart and brave man, he left a lot of loose ends for us to tie up. Mother’s too fragile to handle it all, which is why I try to do the things the head of the household would do, as if he were still here.
I lie back and twine my fingers together under my head like a pillow. I stare up at the thin white clouds. Things go hazy. They go muffled. My throat gets thick and I feel like I’m underwater. I close my eyes and drown in the loneliness.
CHAPTER 4
The wind blows. It sounds like whistling through a cracked window.
Then I hear far-away yelling. “Fob!” On these plains, it’s sometimes hard to tell if I’m really hearing what I think I am or if it’s just the wind being tricky. I flick an ant off my dress, an old hand-me-down of Priss’s. Not that I mind wearing hand-me-downs. I don’t like fussy clothes and prefer a dress that I can get dirty without anyone yelling at me about it. Priss will do it once in a while when she tries to act bigger than me. Even though she’s older, I can look her right in the eye, my feet are bigger, and I’m still growing. I’m what a lot of ladies call big-boned.
“Fob!” I hear it again. Then: “Get back here!”
It’s Eustace yelling for his dog. I sit up. The haze seems to have cleared. Before long, the lankiest, longest-eared specimen of a yellow dog known to man lopes through the grass toward me.
I put out my hand. “Whoa, Fob,” I say. He springs at me with his tongue lolling out of his watery maw. He slobbers and licks. Fob walks like the back half of his body wants to be in the front. I’d never tell Eustace this, but when this dog dies, I’d like to cut him open and see whether he’s got some nature of crooked spine causing such a strange manner of mobility. Eustace, my best and only friend in this place, walks up. He’s picking his way with a long stick.
“Nice to see you, Lu,” says Eustace.
“You, too, Eustace!” I say. I stand. I’m happy to see him, but I don’t want to go whole hog with excitement. I don’t want Eustace to know how lonely I was. “How did you get away today?”
He kicks some grass. A galaxy of grasshoppers and crickets fly in all directions. Fob goes wild chasing them. “Ma wanted me to come over and ask you if you need help this Saturday,” he says. “She can spare me, she says to tell you.” Eustace snatches a grasshopper off his pant leg and pops it in his mouth. He eats anything.
“Blech,” I say. I stick my tongue out.
“They’re good,” he says. “If you were starving, you’d try it.”
“I doubt that.”
“Ma says they’re as good as eating meat,” he says.
Eustace’s ma, Ruby, is the house slave of the Millers, who live on the north end of Tolerone. Mrs. Miller and Mother used to be friends before Mother took to her rocking chair. They used to spend long hours paging through their Bibles, looking for passages that approved or disapproved of slavery. They listened to each other and didn’t argue the way all the other folks around here do.
Do you know what abolitionists are? Well, they’re knotty people who fight for the freedom of slaves, which is good. But some of those abolitionists are making life dangerous around here. They are always riling up the slave owners.
My mother was an abolitionist before Father died, and a quiet, mourning pall fell over her. She was a nice one and didn’t condone violence. She certainly didn’t start fires everywhere. She preferred to talk with people calmly and try to get them to change their minds and their evil ways. Sometimes her abolition talk bored me. But I’d give about anything to hear her talk again now. I’d also give about anything for people to stop fighting all the time. If they don’t quit it pretty soon, the whole country will be at war.
Mrs. Miller is awfully old. About a hundred, probably. She’s from Missouri, and slavery has been in her family for years. She talks a lot about white responsibility and guiding black folks as God guides his followers. Her talk is real boring, too. Sometimes I’ve seen Ruby, Eustace’s ma, roll her eyes at Mrs. Miller or groan real loudly when she goes on that way. Mrs. Miller can barely walk and hardly see, so Ruby would always come along to our house to take care of her when she and my mother got together. And Eustace would come with Ruby. That’s how he and I became friends.
The Millers inherited Ruby and Eustace, their only two slaves, from a relative who died after getting snake-bit. Eustace was just a baby and doesn’t remember, and he doesn’t really work for the Millers yet because he’s too young. Most of the slaves around here don’t go to work until they’re fourteen, unless they’re girls. Then they can do housework or baby-rocking when they’re eleven or twelve, but white girls have to do that, too.
Around here, no matter whether the girl is white, Negro, or Indian, as soon as she’s old enough to churn the butter, someone’s trying to get her married and make her a mother. The white ladies, especially Mrs. Miller, are the worst culprits. They’re always ready to plan weddings and knit baby blankets. If I think about getting married and having babies, I shiver all over.
“You cold?” Eustace asks.
“No,” I say. “I’m just thinking about something.”
“You’ve always got interesting things going on in your head. That’s for sure.”
I smile a little bit. Sometimes Eustace says things that remind me of the way my father used to talk to me. And that makes me happy.
“Hot today,” I say. I think about Eustace eating that grasshopper, and suddenly I feel thirsty.
“Surely is.” He pulls a hankie from his overalls and wipes his face. Eustace’s cheeks have a ruddy tone to them, like he’s always blushing.
“I’ll ask Priss if she needs work done,” I say. “I’m sure she does.”
“I saw your sows have gnawed at the fence posts you got on the south end of the sty. I can fix that so they don’t run away, which they’ll do if you give them the chance.” He shakes his head. “That is the sorriest fence I ever saw. Pigs are real smart. They’re going to walk right on out of there one of these days.”
Eustace is forever talking about how smart animals are. “I guess they’re entitled to their freedom like everyone else.” I pick my teeth with a thorn I found in the grass. “If I were going to be an abolitionist, I’d be an animal abolitionist,” I say in a way between serious and jest. Eustace knows I’m talking about the collection of animals he keeps in his mother’s backyard. He has trapped every species of critter imaginable—raccoon, possum, fox, bobcat, and turkey, to name a few—and keeps them in cages.
“You’re not funny,” Eustace says. He reaches down and gives Fob a scratch behind the ears. Then he looks out over the plains. His face is stony, like there’s something the matter with him. I nearly ask what, but then I remember that Eustace comes and goes, talks and doesn’t talk to me in his own time. No use rushing him.
I sit back down in the grass and pat for Fob to sit next to me, which he does. Fob lifts a leg and scratches himself. I giggle a little. I’m hoping that our sitting will encourage Eustace to sit, too, and stay awhile. I don’t want him heading back home too quickly. But I know it’s not really up to him. Sometimes his ma needs his help getting her work done.
Eustace is on the side of the abolitionists because he’s a slave and wants to be a freeman. But for the past couple of years, the abolitionists have been coming here and starting fights that scare everybody. The town is full of threats and agitation. I wish they’d figure out a way to free the slaves without force. Violence doesn’t seem like a very scientific solution to the problem.
Eustace says it’s the slave owners’ own fault the abolitionists have had to get tough with them. He says the slave owners have been stealing, beating, and even killing black people for centuries. It’s time for that to stop, even if it takes fires, violence, and war.
I understand what he’s saying. But war talk scares me.
Eustace stands there, f
idgeting around and staring off.
“Anyway,” Eustace says as he finally sits down next to me, “sows and peoples aren’t the same.
“Did you discover anything new today?” he wants to know. He’s not looking at me, though. I figure he’s got something to tell me. One thing about having a true friend is that sometimes you get to a point where you can practically read that friend like a book.
I stay quiet for a minute. I wonder if he’ll get to it. When he doesn’t, I say, “Nah.” I sigh. I pick at my teeth with the thorn some more. “I think I’ve documented every ant, animal, and plant in this part of Kansas.”
“I’m sure you have,” says Eustace. We both look out at the nothing all around us, nothing but acres and acres of dirt, rocks, and grass and the huge wide sky above them.
“I have to tell you something, Lu Wonder,” he says, “but I don’t want you to get upset and commence shouting.”
I spit. I’m quite annoyed that he is suggesting I might overreact to whatever he’s going to say. “You know me,” I say. My heart is already beating fast.
He clears his throat. “Well,” he begins. Then he pauses for what feels like several hundred years.
“Tell me,” I practically shout. Fob moans. I smack my lips closed.
Eustace clears his throat again.
“When you’re ready, I mean,” I say.
“Well,” he says, “I heard Ma talking with Mrs. Miller, and I think Captain Greeney’s coming back here straightaway.” He picks up a small rock and throws it. When it lands, a puff of dust rises and blows away.
At the mere mention of the captain’s name, my face gets hotter than ever. I close my eyes and wish Eustace had said something else. “Maybe he’s just coming to rile up the abolitionists again,” I say. Captain Greeney is an abolitionist, too, but he is not nice at all, and happens to be a liar, a cheater, and a murderer. Father used to call him a charlatan, which is a word I don’t know the exact meaning of but which sounds right. It sounds like a word that means you’ve got to look on the inside to see what the person’s really like instead of being fooled by what’s on the outside.
“Maybe,” says Eustace, “but maybe he’s gonna keep coming back here until he finds what he’s looking for. That thing that you got hidden.”
I toss the thorn and pick a grass strand. I chew on its sweetness and try to be calm. The thing that Eustace is talking about—I know exactly where it is. It’s safe, for now, and it’s my responsibility to keep it that way. “I got it hid good.” I feel sweat sliding down my temples.
“I know you do,” says Eustace. “But Kansas is too flat. People can see for miles. And Tolerone isn’t going to stay a small town.” Eustace scratches behind his ear. “The railroad is here. The people are coming. The lumber is coming. The town is spreading out.” He waves his hand out over the empty plain. “Your hiding place is going to be in the middle of town pretty quick.”
I look out to where he’s waving. I don’t see anything. “I don’t know why anyone would want to come here,” I say. “It’s not nearly so interesting as Massachusetts.”
Eustace hangs his head like he does whenever I get to talking about New Bedford and Massachusetts. “Well,” he says, “eventually, someone’s going to see you and follow you, and you’ll lead that person right to the thing Captain Greeney wants. Maybe he’ll follow you.”
“He doesn’t know me,” I say. “He doesn’t know what I look like.”
Eustace wipes his face with a handkerchief again. “Just seems like you should put it somewhere better, where he can’t get it ever.”
My whole body feels agitated. “Well, I can’t help it that I’m in the most boring place with no good hiding places in the whole territory!” I shout. “Quit meddling.”
Eustace kicks at the dirt. I know he hates it when I talk like that to him. I know it makes him think about all the white folks who are likely to be telling him what to do for the rest of his life. I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant it as one friend telling another friend to shut his trap.
I reach out and give his arm a friendly slap. He rubs the spot like it hurt real bad, which I know it didn’t. “Wanna go swimming in the river?” I ask. Swimming is how Eustace and I spend a good part of our time, but the rainless months have left the river low and muddy and full of slimy weeds and swarms of gnats.
“Nah,” he says.
He wipes his face with his hankie again. “Wanna go fishing?” This is something else we do a lot, even though we never catch anything bigger than a pan fish or two, which Priss says are more work to clean and cook than they’re worth.
“Nah,” I say.
He whistles for Fob, who comes scrambling over, panting heavily. He’s full of thistles.
“Wanna go to the cave?” Eustace asks, more quietly than before. He reaches out and gives Fob a pat on the neck and then pulls a prickly cocklebur off his ear. “We could make sure everything is safe and secure.”
I’m quiet for a bit, so as not to seem too eager. “Sure,” I say. I shrug my shoulder as if going there isn’t such an important occasion. “Let’s go to the cave. That’s a good idea.”
“Sure,” he says. “And it’s nice and cool there.”
I look at Eustace sideways. “You’re not gonna get scared of the bats or the bugs or the dark, are you?”
“We’ll be outta there before dark,” says Eustace. “Won’t we?”
“By all means,” I say. “We can be.” He’s scared of the dark.
“I’m not scared,” says Eustace. “Ma will worry.”
“I know,” I say. He’s also scared of his mother and about as dutiful a son as you’ll ever find.
Eustace continues to pat Fob all over, feel for thistles, and yank them out of the fur. “You know it’s my birthday next week?” Eustace asks. He shakes a barbed cocklebur off his fingers. It falls onto the dusty ground and Fob steps on it. He holds his paw up and yowls.
Eustace always says that most slaves don’t even know how old they are, much less their birthday, so he’s particular about celebrating his. “Oh,” I say. “Now I remember. I’m not supposed to tell you, but your ma is making you a new pillow.” I kneel down to help Eustace free Fob from the mess of prickly weeds.
“I’m getting out of here,” he says. “I’m about to be fourteen years old, and it’s time I make my own way.”
“Out of where?” I ask. Fob licks my face while I pinch burrs off the fur on his belly.
“Kansas,” Eustace says.
“What?” I ask, a bit too loudly. “What about your ma? Won’t you get lonely for her?”
Eustace sighs real heavily, like he’s expelling a great burden. “I don’t know,” he says. “But I can’t stay here. I’ll get sold away from her before too long, anyway. Like we did from Pa. And my brothers.”
I purse my lips and hold my breath. Eustace hardly ever talks about his father, and I’ve never heard him mention any brothers before. I remember the first time I asked him where his father was.
“Gone,” Eustace had said.
“At work?” I had asked. This is difficult to admit, but for a smart person, I can ask pretty dumb questions sometimes.
“Ma and me were sold away,” Eustace had said. “I haven’t seen him since I was small.”
“Oh,” I had said. I’d tried my best to feel what Eustace must have felt, but I’d said something foolish instead. “My father used to be at sea for months and years at a time.”
Eustace had looked at me and chewed his lip. He was thinking that wasn’t the same as having been sold away from half your family. He didn’t say anything to make me feel stupid, though. I felt stupid enough on my own. And sorry.
I had tried to be extra kind to Eustace for a while. At the time, I couldn’t imagine what it felt like to not have a father around. But when my own father died, Eustace and I became closer than ever. Maybe because we had an understanding between us that very few people share.
Now I try to imagine what life in Kansas w
ould be like without Eustace. I get a big knot in my throat. Loneliness is what that knot is made of. Some people don’t think white kids and black kids should be friends. Sometimes when Eustace and I are in town together, an old man will say something nasty to Eustace and me if he sees us walking side-by-side. When that happens, Eustace walks head-down to the ground as though he’s ashamed. “Never mind him,” I always say. Then I give that old man my worst mad face. I’m not always perfectly nice to Eustace, but I won’t stand for anyone else hurting him. Though I would never tell him it straight, I need him. He’s my best friend, and I won’t stand for him leaving me.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Eustace,” I say. “Where is there to go?”
Eustace raises his eyebrows and takes a big breath, as though he’s about to launch into a long talk. “All these abolitionists are coming from Massachusetts,” he says. “So I figure there must be a lot more like them back east. Maybe I’ll go there. You can keep my place here in Kansas, and I’ll go take yours in Massachusetts.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!” I shout. Fob dashes back into the brambles that caused him all the thistle trouble in the first place. I gesture around at all the flat and boring land. “I don’t even want dumb old Kansas. If anyone’s going to Massachusetts, it will be me!” I stand up and put my hands on my hips so he knows I’m serious.
Fob runs back and jumps on us. The dust puffs up again and rises into the white sky. I try to remember the blue sky of the East, and it seems harder to do so, as though my memories are becoming fainter and fainter. I turn my back to Eustace and start walking away from him. I close my eyes as I walk. The sun beats on my face. Even my eyelids are burning. I worry sometimes that I’ll forget everything about New Bedford or Father.
But suddenly Father’s there in my mind, sitting at our table, holding a magnifying glass above two whale teeth, then lifting them each in turn up to the light coming through the window, and inspecting the objects from different angles. He puts them down and makes notes in his journal. “That my life’s work could wind up in the ignorant and greedy hands of that scoundrel Greeney makes my skin bristle,” Father says without looking up.
Wonder at the Edge of the World Page 2
