Crow

by Barbara Wright

  We sat in the dark, in silence. After a while, I said, “Mama, I’m scared.”

  “I know, honey, but you be just fine tomorrow.”

  The next day, I met Daddy at his office near the docks and we walked together to Dry Pond, with me pushing the bike. When I found the house, I looked over the fence. The dogs were not in the yard, so I leaned the bike against the fence inside the gate and went to the porch, praying no one would be home. But the man answered the door. Standing a step above us, he was even larger than I remembered, and he smelled of liquor. I glanced behind him. Empty tins littered the floor, and a sheet was wadded up on a bare mattress. A sour stench came from the room, so different from my house, which was filled with happy smells.

  He looked at me, then at Daddy, and chewed the corner of his lip. He didn’t recognize me until he saw the bike against the fence.

  “What you want?” he growled.

  The porch felt wobbly beneath me. I fixed my eyes on my feet and waited without speaking, afraid my voice would crack. Daddy gently poked me in the side. “Go ahead, son.”

  I looked down and mumbled, “I’m sorry.”

  Daddy said, “He can’t hear that. Look the man in the face and tell him.”

  I gazed directly into his hard eyes and explained how I had mistaken the bike in his yard for my friend’s bike.

  “Your son’s a liar,” the man said.

  “My son’s not a liar. He’s apologizing, which shows character.”

  “Get off my porch,” he said.

  I wanted to tell Daddy “I told you so,” but he pulled back his shoulders and, without any display of fear, said, “We’ve done what we came to do. Good day.”

  FOUR

  A sunken train track divided Darktown from Lewis’s neighborhood, which was mostly white. A bridge allowed people and carriages to pass over. I knew the schedule of the trains by heart. Our house was only a few blocks away, and I heard the whistles. Grandpa Tip was a porter on the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, and I took a great interest in trains.

  Grandpa Tip was freed by a Quaker lawyer in Jamestown when he was a boy. He went to a Quaker school and learned how to read and cipher. Education was important to him, and he made sure that Daddy went to college. Boo Nanny grew up as a house slave and never learned to read and write. For whatever reason, she didn’t get along with Grandpa Tip. I’d heard her tell neighbors that he put on airs, but really I think she was ashamed to be around him because she didn’t know how to read.

  Grandpa Tip promised to give me and Daddy train tickets for my twelfth birthday in October. I was so excited. Nights, I lay awake listening to the whistle of the locomotive and counting off the weeks.

  The banks to the sunken train tracks were steep, but easy to go down if you grabbed the struts of the bridge and lowered yourself by holding on to the woody bushes that clung to the banks. One day in July, Lewis and I were playing in our territory along the tracks. I say our territory because some white boys our age liked to play on the tracks, too. I recognized two of the four from the swimming hole earlier that summer. The redhead I called Barberry was the ringleader. Heron, the one who had lost his brother, was also part of the gang.

  The dividing line was the Fifth Street bridge, with the space directly under the bridge designated as neutral territory. No one wanted to stay under the bridge for long, since manure often plopped through the slats when a carriage passed overhead. Weeds grew freely under the bridge, even though the space was in shadow most of the time.

  That day, the white boys hurled pebbles at us. “Dare you to come on our side,” Barberry said.

  They had us, four to two. “No way we’re coming over there!” I yelled in answer to the challenge. “Your side’s haunted.”

  “You’re fibbing!” Barberry shouted.

  “Ask the old-timers. A woman was run over by a train. Right over there.” I pointed to a spot deep in their territory. “Her head was sliced off and flipped up into an open cargo car,” I said, making up the story as I went along. I had heard enough tales from Boo Nanny to create my own.

  The white boys’ eyes widened, and they listened closely.

  “They say she waits here for the train, hoping to get her head back,” I said.

  “Was she white or colored?” said Heron. I wanted to feel sorry for him because he lost his brother, but he made it hard.

  “It doesn’t matter after death. All haints are white,” I said, wondering if a colored ghost would be more or less frightening to them.

  “I ain’t skeert. Ghosts don’t come out in the day,” Barberry said. For a white boy, he had bad grammar.

  “Not usually. But you know how sometimes you can see the moon in the afternoon sky? It’s like that,” I said.

  “I don’t believe you,” Heron said. He had a few whiskers and his voice had already started to change.

  “Fine, then meet Moses at the bridge after dark and wait for the ghost,” Lewis said. I shot him a glance. What was he getting me into?

  “So you’ll wait with us?” Barberry asked me.

  “Heck no. That’s your side,” I said. “I’ll watch from the bridge.”

  “What’s the matter? Too skeert?” he said.

  “No, too smart. You couldn’t pay me to go on your side, not even in broad daylight,” I said.

  The white boys looked nervously at each other. Heron was the first to back out. Two others made excuses. That left Barberry. He hesitated.

  “Go ahead, Tommy. You do it,” Heron said, and pushed him toward our side.

  So the redhead had a name. Tommy didn’t suit him as well as Barberry.

  “Dare you,” Lewis said. “You’re too scared.”

  “Am not,” said Tommy.

  “Are too.”

  “Not.”

  “Too.”

  Lewis put his hands under his armpits and flapped his elbows, going “polk puck puck polk” and thrusting his head forward like a pecking chicken.

  After some negotiating, we agreed on a time to meet and sealed the deal with a handshake under the bridge. Both of us quickly hopped back onto our respective sides as a wagon rattled the planks overhead.

  Later, after the white boys left, Lewis said, “That ghost story wasn’t true, was it?”

  “I made it up.”

  “Shew. You had me fooled for a minute.”

  We mapped out our plan for the evening and then parted company.

  That night at the appointed time, I snuck out my window. I didn’t have anything to be scared of, since I had made up the yarn about the ghost, but my stomach felt fluttery nonetheless.

  I arrived at the bridge just as a city worker was climbing a ladder to ignite the kerosene streetlamp. Light fell through the slats and striped the neutral territory beneath the bridge.

  I didn’t expect Tommy to show up, but he did. I offered to go down by the tracks and wait with him.

  “You’d do that?” he said.

  “Sure.” I felt guilty for getting more credit than was my due. I knew there were no ghosts.

  Light from the streetlamp allowed us to see our way to the bottom of the steep bank, but its reach ended as we walked along the tracks, deep into Tommy’s territory. I had never walked on the white side before, even when the boys were not there to guard it.

  We sat by the tracks and waited. It was dark and silent, but for the occasional clip-clop of hooves on the bridge and the bobbing light from the carriage lanterns.

  “If we talk, it might keep the haints away,” I said.

  He told me about his two little sisters and his dog, Rusty, who had fur the same color as his hair. He was so lucky. I had always wanted a little brother or sister. Sometimes it got lonely living with adults. I didn’t even have a dog.

  Tommy didn’t seem interested in my family, but when I told him that I was going to ride the train to Fayetteville in October for my twelfth birthday, he said, “Wow. I’ve never known anyone who’s taken the train.”

  Lewis rode the train all the time, b
ut I didn’t want to make Tommy feel bad. His family lived in Dry Pond, the poor neighborhood where I’d snatched the bicycle.

  Tommy made me promise that I would remember every detail of the train ride so I could tell him. “If you do that, I’ll show you the tunnels under the city.”

  “The ones used as an escape route for runaway slaves?” I asked.

  “No, the ones the Confederate soldiers used to hide from the Union Army,” Tommy said.

  “You’ve actually been there?” I said. Wait until Lewis found out about this.

  “Yep.”

  “Deal,” I said. We agreed on a time and place to meet the following day. I couldn’t believe he would let me in on such a prized secret.

  Suddenly Tommy grabbed my shoulder and said, “What’s that?”

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “No, listen.” We were silent, and from the darkness above there came a moan that sounded like a cross between a hoot owl and a whip-poor-will.

  “There. That,” Tommy whispered.

  “Probably some bird.”

  The sound continued, and it was indeed spooky.

  “There she is!” Tommy yelled. “Up there!”

  A white filmy form floated above us, dancing and changing shapes as it descended through the darkness.

  Tommy shouted, “Beat it!” and made a beeline for the bridge. I followed.

  He was terrified, and I felt lousy about our prank. As planned, Lewis had balled up a sheet and thrown it over the tracks. As it floated down in the dark, the sheet folded in on itself and puffed out again, looking exactly like a ghost.

  I caught up to Tommy and watched as he launched himself against the bank, like a fly against glass, then slid down. He was so scared that his limbs didn’t work properly. I made a stirrup with my hands and he put a foot in. I hoisted him up and he caught hold of one of the bridge supports and was able to lift himself over the top. When he got there, he gave me a hand and pulled me up the bank.

  Then, without a word, he dashed down the road into the dark.

  Lewis came out from his hiding spot. “Ha! Did you see that fellow scramble off? Yellow belly!” Lewis said, prancing about as if at a cakewalk.

  I didn’t like Lewis laughing at him. Truth was, Tommy had been much braver than me, because I knew there was no ghost. “Let’s drop it,” I said, feeling sour.

  “Those boys aren’t coming anywhere near our track again, no way,” Lewis said, gloating over the success of the caper.

  “I don’t want to hear any more about it,” I said.

  “What’s your problem? We just won a major victory.”

  But I felt rotten. I had come to like Tommy, and we had humiliated him with a silly prank. That was no way to treat a friend.

  The next morning, Tommy met me at the appointed spot, holding a lantern in broad daylight. Luckily, no people were around. It took both of us to roll off the heavy iron disk covering a shaft that descended like an old well. A rusty ladder was attached to one side. A tube of daylight fell fifteen feet and then ended.

  Tommy went down ahead of me to the last rung. “I can see the bottom. But I need you to hold the lantern while I jump,” he said.

  I did, and he swung from the bottom rung and easily dropped to the ground. He took the lantern from me, and I jumped.

  We found ourselves in a tunnel a little over five feet high. In a couple of years, I wouldn’t be able to stand without hunching over, but now I could. The brick ceiling arched overhead. Timbers shored up the sides. In some spots, the walls were brick, and in others, merely dirt, with no visible means of support.

  It was low tide, and the brackish water was but a trickle—more like a foul sludge. The ground was covered with rocks, chunks of brick, and broken seashells. The tunnel reeked of fish and night soil.

  Tommy led with the lantern, and I followed. Because of the arch of the ceiling, we had to stay toward the center, and I couldn’t avoid sloshing in the stream and getting the smelly silt on my shoes.

  We came to an area crisscrossed with thousands of silvery lines, giving the walls a strange and beautiful iridescent glow in the lantern light. Looking closer, I saw the source: slugs, leaving their silver traces on the damp walls.

  “Do you think there are ghosts down here?” Tommy said.

  “I doubt it. They like to be out where they can scare humans,” I said, warming to the role Tommy had assigned me as ghost expert. Spirits had a way of leveling out the power between people, and I liked that.

  Up ahead, something splashed through the water and streaked into the darkness.

  “A rat.” I shuddered.

  “No, bigger,” Tommy said. Spooked, he turned and ran. Before he got too far, he tripped and plunged headfirst into the water, no deeper than a puddle. The lantern slipped from his hand. Glass shattered, and then everything went dark.

  I stopped in my tracks and waited a few seconds for my eyes to adjust, but the blackness didn’t get any lighter. I held my hand a few inches in front of my nose and couldn’t see it. Even on the darkest night with no moon or stars, there was enough light to turn the ocean glossy black. Now I realized that everything I had ever thought of as black was not truly black. This was something altogether different: complete, absolute darkness. Chills spread across my back.

  “Tommy, are you all right?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Be careful of the glass when you get up,” I said.

  I held my hands in front of me and moved slowly toward the sniffles.

  “Are you crying?” I said.

  “No,” he blubbered.

  “Stay there. I’m coming.”

  I shuffled forward. My foot got tangled in the handle of the lantern and I stumbled, but I caught myself. Finally my hand hit Tommy’s wet shirt. I was right next to him and still couldn’t see a thing.

  “Grab my hand,” I said.

  “Yuck.”

  “Okay, don’t.” I splashed forward.

  “Wait, wait. Don’t leave me,” Tommy croaked.

  I backed up a few steps. “I’m not going to leave you. Here.” I took off my belt and pressed one end into his hand. “Loop your finger through the buckle. I’ll lead the way.”

  With one hand holding the belt behind me and my other hand over my head, I steadied myself against the crumbling brick ceiling and sloshed through the soupy muck. My hand touched something gooey. Mud? Slugs? I kept going.

  Dragging my feet through the water, I stumbled on something bigger than a conch shell but smaller than a human skull. I kicked it aside and continued.

  “What was that?” Tommy said.

  “Nothing,” I said, trying not to think about what it might have been.

  “They’ll never find us down here,” Tommy blubbered.

  “They don’t have to. We’ll find our own way out,” I said confidently.

  “How?”

  “We can’t get lost. It’s like a train track. It only goes in one direction,” I said. But I felt the underside of my tongue tighten, the way it does before vomiting, when I realized that I could have gotten turned around. What if I was headed in the wrong direction? It was like swimming underwater and getting all confused and not knowing which way was which when you came up for air.

  Nobody knew where we were. Nobody. Nobody knew we were together, nor would they ever guess. I felt a sickness wash over me. My legs started to buckle, but I stiffened them. Stay calm, I told myself. Just stay calm. I took a deep breath and nearly choked on the rank-smelling air.

  Soon I reached a place where the ceiling ended. Now when I waved my hand over my head, I felt only emptiness. My feet didn’t feel attached to the ground, and I had the sensation of floating. Had I been in this spot before? I tried to remember a place with a raised ceiling, but I hadn’t been paying attention. I began to doubt everything. My heart was filled with terror—not the fake thrill of being scared by ghost stories, but a genuine terror. Every step I took could be a step in the wrong direction.

&
nbsp; After a short distance, I found the ceiling again and continued. Finally, up ahead, I saw an eyebrow of light. I didn’t realize I had been holding so much bad air in my lungs until it came whooshing out. It was the manhole cover. We had left a gap so we could easily remove it. The rusty ladder was visible in the sliver of light.

  “We made it!” I cried.

  I hoisted Tommy up, and we climbed into a world bleached white. Rolling around in the grass, we giggled with the pure joy of being aboveground.

  “Pee-yew. You stink,” Tommy said.

  “You do, too.”

  “Let’s ditch these clothes and take a dip in the river,” Tommy said. We were both covered in mud.

  “If they catch us skinny-dipping, we’ll get a fine,” I said.

  “I know a spot where no one will see us.” Now he was the bold one.

  “Okay, why not?” We were two stinky boys, and I’d hear it from Mama and Boo Nanny if I dripped tunnel sludge onto our clean floors.

  Past the wharf, we followed a path along the river until we came to the place where the river forked. Eagle Island was visible across the way. On our side, the wax myrtle and bay bushes had been cut away to form a clearing.

  A tugboat chugged by with a cargo of logs, followed by a trail of noisy seagulls. An osprey had built a nest on one of the buoy markers. The tide was low, exposing barnacles on the pilings.

  Tommy took off his clothes and leaped from the bank in a perfect swan dive. I tried to hide the fact that I didn’t know how to dive and executed what Lewis called the Confederate, folding myself into a cannonball and hitting the water with a slap. Tommy dog-paddled to a spot where the river had washed away the bank under a tree. Half of the roots were exposed, forming a shelter. Tommy had a knack for finding tunnel-like spaces.

  We horsed around for a while, splashing and trying to dunk each other. I was a strong swimmer—Boo Nanny had insisted on that—and I swam out toward the center of the river to impress Tommy. When I was far out, Tommy yelled, “Cops! Head for the roots!”

  Tommy was closer to the bank and hid himself under the tree roots, but I was completely exposed as two Negro policemen approached the clearing.

  “Get out of the water,” the fat one said.