Chasing the North Star (19 page)

His supper in the rain was coming back to him, leaving him. He puked into the darkness and vomit ran down his chin and on his chest. The shack smelled of puke and dirty water and rotten wood. As he staggered in the darkness and held on, Jonah heaved again and again. He threw up as if he was expelling everything he'd eaten in his whole life. He strained so long, his eyes burned and wept stinging tears. Jonah heaved so deep, he felt his back was going to break, and his throat was raw. When the heaving stopped, he wished he had some clean water to wash his mouth with. His legs were so weak they trembled at the knees, and he was short of breath, as though he'd run five miles.

When Jonah wiped his chin and opened his eyes he saw gray light in the window of the shack. The rain had slackened and almost stopped. The house bumped against something and turned sideways. But all he could see through the door and window was grayness. The light was too faint to make out anything distinctly. Surely there would be more light soon and he could tell where he was, and look for a way to escape. Something nudged his leg, and he reached down and found the lantern floating with pieces of boards and leaves and trash. He picked up the lantern and water spilled out.

Though Jonah was dry inside and empty, spit sweetened his mouth a little. He spat and his mouth felt cleaner. The gray outside was getting lighter. He couldn't make out anything distinct, but he saw something go by, a black tree or post. Things bumped and knocked on the walls of the shack. As his mouth and throat sweetened, Jonah felt the strength of his emptiness. His empty belly had a glow, a rightness, as if he'd gotten rid of a sick burden. He was empty and filled with light. Or maybe he felt that way because there was light in the little house now. He could see boards floating around his knees. Jonah looked out the window and saw something else go by. He studied the gray and found he was looking at fog. More surprising still, he was looking
through
fog, at trees and muddy trash. The fog that had seemed impenetrable before was full of ragged holes, and thinning. Jonah looked through the door and saw water rocking and swooping, and the riverbank beyond. He was drifting in a stream that spread far beyond its banks into fields. The shanty drifted catty-cornered to the current. He weighed one side down so it tilted deeper into the muddy water.

As the fog lifted slowly off the water, Jonah saw what a predicament he was in. The little house had washed out into a swollen stream and was drifting near the middle of a river. He was trapped, knee deep in muddy water, and he couldn't see a way to get out except to plunge into the raging current. If it was possible to climb onto the roof of the shack, he might see what was ahead. He could look out for a log or branch of a tree he might grab onto. He could call to somebody as he passed a town or farm. Maybe somebody in a boat would come and rescue him. When Jonah stood at the door, he tilted the building so far he thought it might tip over. The little house rocked and sloshed. If he climbed onto the roof, he could get out of the dirty, smelly water.

As he studied the little building, Jonah saw that his only hope to escape was through the window. If he could put his feet on the window sill he might be able to hoist himself up to the roof. With the floor slick and so unsteady, it was hard to see how he could get purchase. If he went through the window headfirst he would only push himself out into the flood. Jonah backed up to the window and placed his hands through and felt for the lath outside above the opening. Gripping the slat with all his strength, he pulled himself up through the window, scraping his back on the sill. Only his coat prevented him from cutting his lower back. It took him several heaves to get his butt onto the window sill.

Jonah's raised weight tilted the shack even more. He felt as if he was going to be dumped into the water as the building tipped on top of him. He sat in the window trying to decide what his next step must be. He had to get his feet on the sill to push himself up on the roof. But what was he going to hold to while he shifted his weight to get a foothold? The roof of the little house was rotting cedar shingles, slick and steep.

As the shack drifted and turned in the stampeding water, Jonah studied his chances. If he drowned in the flood, no one would ever know. His flesh would rot and he'd be eaten by fish. Mama would never know what had happened to him. Mrs. Williams would forget he'd ever been at the Williams Place. If only he had something to hold to, he could pull himself through and stand on the sill and throw himself onto the wet roof. The only possible thing to grip was the corner of the roof to his right. He grasped the eave in his right hand, and moving his left leg an inch at a time, he lifted his knee and slid it under the top of the window. Straining every tendon and muscle in his body, he held the corner of the roof and raised himself on his left foot, pushing on the corner of the window. He began to shake and totter, threatening to fall backward into the flood, but at the last instant made a final effort and heaved himself onto the leaning roof so his fingers caught on the comb, and then his elbows. Hanging by his elbows on the dipping roof, he lay still and looked around.

Trees lined the creek, but water swirled and sucked through the trees. He felt like a sailor clinging to an overturned wreck. The creek was crowded with trees and all kinds of debris, boards and pieces of buildings. And then he saw an oblong box with the lid broken off. It was a shape that made him shiver, a coffin, a new coffin, apparently.

Clinging to the ridge pole of the little roof, Jonah turned to stare at the long wooden box and thought he saw a nose in the end where the lid was broken. The coffin rocked in the current as if someone inside was shaking it. And then he saw another coffin, older and partly rotted and mostly sunken in the river. This box was closer than the first, and the lid completely gone. Current nudged the shack and the older coffin closer, but Jonah couldn't bear to look inside, and he couldn't prevent himself from looking. Muddy water filled the open box, and at first it seemed filled with mud and weathered sticks. Then he realized the sticks were bones, rib bones and arm bones. The box bumped a limb and a skull grinned at him through gray teeth.

Jonah turned away, but when he looked in the other direction he saw another box and another. The stream was full of caskets and burial boxes. The caskets were made of carved wood. The flood must have scoured a hillside and opened all the graves. Since coffins float like boats, they must have raised themselves once the ground was flooded. The current melted the dirt and drew the boxes out of the hillside. The dead had been raised, but not as they were supposed to be at the Second Coming, in shining glory. They'd been summoned forth by the storm and gathered into a convoy down the raging river. I'm traveling in company with the dead, Jonah thought. I've joined the deathly procession. Perhaps I, too, am already dead.

As the fog disappeared and the sun came over the ridge, Jonah saw living people along the edge of the swollen stream. Where roads ran down into the floodwater, people stood watching him pass by. Some in buggies and some on horseback studied the raging flood that stretched hundreds of yards across fields and forests. They studied the angry water as though watching a race. Landslides had torn away whole hillsides where wet soil had given way under its own weight. Red clay showed through like bloody wounds with tangles of roots and stumps, limbs and rocks. Roads seemed to continue on air where bridges had been swept away.

Jonah saw a body floating and at first thought it was a corpse from one of the coffins. But the clothes looked rough and the back full and strong. It was a man in overalls drifting facedown in the muddy tide. And a snake was riding on the dead man's back.

As the sun got higher Jonah saw other snakes. He saw blacksnakes shimmying themselves through the water, and he saw snakes wrapped on limbs or clinging to trunks of floating trees. The snakes in the water were looking for a perch, a place to rest, a boat or raft to ride on. There were snakes on boards and snakes on coffins. The flood had scoured snakes out of dens and stripped them off perches on branches. The current looked stitched and threaded with serpents. Snakes laced themselves around floating brush and stretched on the roofs of floating chicken coops. Snakes hung from the rails of a bridge like ribbons tied there for decoration.

Since he had no paddle or pole, and no way to guide the small house under him, Jonah saw he had no choice but to drift with his awkward craft. The shack had kidnapped him from the shore and could set him down wherever it sank or came to rest. It bobbed along fast in the middle of the river, but if it drifted into an eddy or stuck in the mud he could get off. If he jumped off in midstream he would risk being bitten by snakes, and surely he would drown.

Ahead the river narrowed into a gorge between hills and he saw two boys on a bluff. They waved to him and he waved quickly and grabbed hold of the roof again. It took both hands to hold on, as the shack rocked and tilted every time he shifted his weight. The boys shouted something to him, but he couldn't tell what they said. At first it sounded as if they were asking him a question, and then it seemed they were shouting an order.

Something whistled near him, and at first he thought it was a bird. And then he heard a shot and knew it was a bullet that had twanged by. He looked at the boys on the bluff, and one was holding a stick, but the stick was pointed across the river. It was a rifle. The boy rested the rifle butt on the ground and began to reload it. Out in the middle of the stream, Jonah had no way to turn the little house away or drop out of sight. He hugged to the roof as flat as he could make himself and another bullet stung the air close by. Lying flat on the roof as it drifted in the gorge, Jonah was an exposed target and there was little he could do. He pressed himself to the roof and tried to make himself flat as paper. But there really was no way to shrink himself. He tried to squeeze tight, as if he could make himself disappear. Another bullet whined and thunked into the side of the floating house below his feet. The boys were either bad shots or were just trying to scare him. As Jonah flattened himself against the roof, it occurred to him what river he was on. In the atlas in Miss Linda's parlor he'd seen two rivers north and east of Roanoke. First was the James going generally to the east, and next was the Shenandoah flowing to the northeast. It must be the Shenandoah, or a branch of the Shenandoah, he was on. The Shenandoah ran all the way to the Potomac.

Pling!
A bullet spat by and splashed on the river.

As the little house drifted farther from the bluff, Jonah was less afraid of being hit by a rifle shot than he was of the boys telling what they'd seen. If men heard there was a Negro boy floating on top of a building in the flood, they might row out in a boat to seize him. And soon as they rescued him from the river, they'd put him in chains. In the middle of the river, in broad daylight, he couldn't hide. And it would be many hours before it was dark. Jonah saw dead chickens floating in the river, and a dead collie dog. He saw what appeared at first to be a mule, but noticed, because of the small ears, that it was a pony. Though he'd not eaten since the evening before, and he'd puked up most of what he had eaten, Jonah wasn't hungry. The ugly, muddy floodwater, the corpses and snakes and dead animals, had killed any hunger he might have had. But he was thirsty. His lips were dry and his mouth was dry and he felt parched inside. Looking at the muddy water made him thirstier still. He thought of cold spring water. He thought of water sparkling and twisting from the spigot of a pump. He would like some cold cider or lemonade. A bottle of ginger beer or sarsaparilla would be wonderful. The bubble and bite of soda water would taste good in his sticky mouth. Lying against the rotting roof, Jonah must have drowsed off, for he thought he'd come to an even bigger river that must be the Potomac. All he had to do was get to the left shore and he'd be on his way to the North again.

All that day and into the night Jonah rode on top of the little house. He grew thirstier. In the darkness he saw lights along the shore, far away, at the edge of the floodwaters. The shack rocked and dipped and bumped into logs and other floating buildings. At some point he sank into sleep again, still grasping his perch on the roof. When he woke it was already light, and he saw the mountains beyond the river, long and low and smooth. He slept again.

He was awakened by voices. Jonah raised his head and looked at the far shore and saw nothing but more rushing floodwater. Only when he looked behind him did he see a boat making its way toward him. Two men rowed the boat and a third man stood in the prow holding a rope. The man standing had a pistol in his belt.

“Hey, boy,” the man in the prow yelled to him. The boat edged alongside the floating little house. Jonah pretended he didn't hear the man.

“Climb down and take this rope,” the standing man called.

Jonah was afraid of the man's pistol. If he didn't obey, the man might shoot him. But even if he got away from this man he would tell others and they'd catch him farther down the river. It was not only fear but thirst that made Jonah obey the man with the rope.

“Jump down,” the man ordered.

Jonah tried to slide down slowly, put a foot on the window sill and lower himself to the water. But once he let go of the ridge pole he slid quickly and had no way to brake himself. He clawed at the rotten shingles for a hold, but only slid faster. He hit the water and flailed his arms, trying to find the rope. The boat came to him, and instead of the rope he grasped the prow. “Hold on there,” the man with the rope said. It took the man several tries to pull Jonah into the boat. Meanwhile the little house drifted on, rocking and spinning in the current, as the oarsmen directed the boat toward the bank.

“A sorry sight you are,” the man with the pistol said, once Jonah rested dripping on the floor of the boat. The man pulled a canteen from his coat and gave it to Jonah. When Jonah put his dry cracked lips to the mouth and drank, he thought it was the sweetest, coolest liquid he'd ever tasted.