Chasing the North Star (28 page)

Jonah had walked slow as he approached and passed the men, to show he was in no hurry, that he was not afraid. He'd tried to act as if they were casually going about their own concerns. But soon as they were out of sight of the hog killers he picked up his pace. Better to put as much distance as they could between themselves and the men with sharp butcher knives. The road was slick with snow and muddy water stained through from the puddles. He tried to pick his way through the cleanest, driest places.

“I need some shoes,” Angel said.

“We'll find you some shoes,” Jonah said.

“I'll believe that when I see it,” Angel said.

AS THEY
MADE THEIR
way on the uneven roads, Jonah studied the problem of finding shoes and a warm coat for Angel. Every day it seemed a little colder. The first snow had melted, but there would be more snow any day. Clothes could be taken from clotheslines, but nobody would hang a coat on a clothesline. And Angel would need an especially large coat, big enough to fit over her wide shoulders and belly. A country store would be the most likely place to find both shoes and coat, but every store they passed was in a little crossroads village, with barking dogs and people walking about.

“Maybe we can find a blanket you can wrap around your shoulders,” Jonah said.

“Blanket won't do my feet any good,” Angel said.

The next day they came to a large stone farmhouse just as a family there was getting into a buggy, all dressed up like they were going to church. Jonah realized it must be Sunday morning. As the buggy pulled out into the road and passed them, Jonah got an idea.

“Maybe they left their house unlocked,” he whispered to Angel.

“And maybe they left somebody at home,” Angel said.

Soon as the buggy was out of sight, Jonah turned back into the yard and walked to the back door. The ceiling of the porch was hung with dried beans and onions and peppers. He knocked on the door and stepped back, waiting for a cook or some other servant to open it. A dog came around the corner of the house and growled at him. Jonah whistled and held out his hand. The dog barked and backed away.

“That dog ain't too friendly,” Angel said. Chickens cackled in the henhouse behind the woodshed. No one came to the door and Jonah knocked again. When no one appeared, Jonah tried the door and found it unlocked. He stepped into the kitchen and Angel followed him. The house smelled of fresh baked bread and roast beef. The Sunday dinner had already been cooked and set on the table with cloths over the dishes, waiting for the family to return. Jonah and Angel each grabbed a roll.

Beside the door several raincoats hung on pegs, and beneath the coats sat rubber boots and galoshes. If nothing else, they could take some rubber boots. The dog whined outside the door and barked. Most likely the clothes were in bedrooms upstairs. Before looking for the stairs, Jonah tore a piece of beef off the roast on the table and crammed it in his mouth. The stairway was just down the hall, and Jonah mounted the carpet-covered steps, followed by Angel. The first room they looked in must have been a child's room, for a rocking horse sat in the corner.

The next room must have been the master bedroom, for women's shoes lined the floor on one side of the bed, and men's shoes stood in a row on the other. Jonah looked in the closet for a coat while Angel dropped to the floor and started trying on the shoes.

“That woman took her good boots,” Angel said. But there was another pair of boots, a little worn, made of fine leather with lots of hooks and eyelets. It took some effort for Angel to pull the boots over her dirty feet, but she finally got the shoes on.

“The boots are too little,” Jonah said.

“No, they're just the right size,” Angel said.

“Then your feet are too big,” Jonah said.

“No, my feet are just right,” Angel said, “for a woman my size.”

There was no heavy coat in the woman's closet. “We'll have to take a blanket,” Jonah said.

As soon as she had laced the boots, Angel looked in the man's closet, and took out a heavy black wool coat. “Look here,” she said.

“That's a man's coat,” Jonah said.

“A warm coat is a warm coat,” Angel said and slipped the coat on. It was not a bad fit.

It was at that moment they heard a whimper and a whine in a room down the hall. Both Jonah and Angel froze and listened, then tiptoed to the bedroom door and looked down the hall. The whine came again. Jonah looked at the top of the stairs. To get to the steps, they had to walk past the room where the sound came from. Something metallic rattled, like a chain or coins in a box.

Jonah and Angel stood in the hallway, and Jonah heard the blood thundering behind his ears. The rasp of a chain ran over the floor.

“Let's run,” Jonah whispered. He and Angel started toward the stairs, but just as they reached the first step, the bedroom door flung open and a woman with wild hair and scabs on her face glared out. She whimpered and moaned and flung her arms, which were held by chains. Jonah was so startled he just stood there staring at the chained woman for a second, then dashed down the stairs.

Jonah and Angel didn't stop running until they were out the back door and across the yard, with the dog barking and nipping at their heels. When they reached the road they grabbed the scythe and kettle and began walking.

“That woman is a ghost,” Angel said, all out of breath.

“That was no ghost,” Jonah said, short of breath also. “She was a lunatic.” It took them both several minutes before they could breathe normally. When they got out of sight of the house, they stopped to rest. The black overcoat fit Angel pretty well, and the laced-up boots protected her feet from the rocks and mud.

“I wanted to get some more of that beef before I left,” Jonah said.

“Don't want to eat anything else from that house,” Angel said.

Even though it was cold, and even though the road was rough along the river through the mountains of Pennsylvania, Jonah and Angel were able to travel ten or fifteen miles each day. The mowing blade on his shoulder seemed to give him a special immunity that he didn't entirely understand. With the scythe he seemed to have a citizen's rights. They walked all day and camped by fires in the woods at night. He caught trout in the river and Angel took eggs from henhouses in the hours before dawn. He bought cheese and crackers from a country store with some pennies he found in a church collection box. They slept in their coats on beds of pine boughs with bare feet to their fires. He didn't try to touch Angel again, but some nights she would push up against him and let him warm himself between her breasts and legs. At those times in the dark, she seemed like a different person from the snapping, sarcastic woman who walked beside him in the daylight.

Every day they followed the river north, through dark mountains and snowy fields. The mountains were long-running and steep as walls. He was grateful he didn't have to climb over them. The road always ran near the Susquehanna River. They passed through the towns of Wilkes-Barre and Eatonville. They came to Terrytown and Towanda, and reached the village of Sayre, where the river turned right, toward the northeast. Elmira was a few miles to the west, on the Chemung River.

Jonah's map was so wrinkled and blurred, he could hardly read it. But he'd memorized the names and the directions on it. He knew the names of Elmira and Auburn, Rochester and Buffalo. If they could get to Auburn, maybe they could find what they were looking for. Maybe someone there could help them get to Canada. Instead of breaking away from the river to reach Elmira, he decided to follow the Susquehanna northeast.

Jonah and Angel stopped at a little schoolhouse in a village called Tioga Center. They reached the school at recess when children were playing tag and hide-and-seek, and running around the yard. The children got quiet as they approached, and the teacher came to the doorway to see what caused the sudden quietness. The teacher had a red face and wore an overcoat and gloves with no fingers.

“Good day, sir,” Jonah said and took off his hat.

The teacher nodded to him and to Angel.

“What be the best way to get to Auburn?” Jonah said.

The teacher looked at Jonah and the mowing blade as if he knew exactly why a black man wanted to go to Auburn. Auburn was a well-known waystation on the Underground Railroad. Many citizens in Auburn helped runaway slaves reach Rochester and Buffalo and then Canada.

“You're a long way from Auburn,” the teacher said.

“I was afraid of that,” Jonah said and bowed his head. The children gathered round to hear the conversation.

“If I was you, I'd go to Owego and catch the train to Ithaca,” the teacher said. “From Ithaca it's not so far to Auburn.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jonah said. “Where is Owego?”

“Just a few more miles up the river,” the teacher said. He told Jonah he was now in New York State. They'd traveled all the way across the mountains of Pennsylvania.

As Jonah and Angel left the schoolyard, children walked beside them and followed them to the road.

“Where are you going with that blade?” a boy said.

“Going to cut down some cornstalks,” Jonah said.

“Too cold to cut down cornstalks,” the boy said.

“Not where I'm going,” Jonah said.

At the end of the schoolyard, the children stopped and Jonah and Angel kept walking.

“Ain't never seen a nigger before,” the boy called after them. Jonah didn't look back.

They slept that night in a hay barn on a hillside, boiled four eggs in the kettle the next morning, and then started up the river again.

At the village of Owego Jonah and Angel found that the main street ran along the north bank of the river. It was a prosperous village with many brick buildings and a courthouse for Tioga County. The railroad station was right on the bank of the Susquehanna. A crane swung cargo from railroad cars onto a platform, and from the platform barrels and boxes, crates and bales, were loaded onto barges in the river. Goods were also being unloaded from boats and barges and stacked in train cars in the railyard. Owego was the busiest place Jonah had seen since Harrisburg. The streets were filled with people, and dozens of men worked in the freightyard and on the barges. Bales of wool were unloaded from one of the boats and winched up to the platform to be packed in a railroad car. Cattle were unloaded from one car, and sheep from another.

“I ain't going to ride on any more trains,” Angel said, as they watched freight loaded onto the cars.

“Then how will you get to Ithaca?”

“Maybe I don't want to go to Ithaca.”

“How will you get to Canada?”

“Find my own way, I reckon,” Angel said.

Jonah could never predict when Angel would get stubborn and arbitrary. She liked to provoke him at the most unexpected times. It angered him that she seemed reluctant to continue, now that they were getting close to their goal. Before he'd hoped to escape from her; now he found he depended on her.

“What do you plan to do?”

“I ain't going on a train and freeze to death,” Angel snapped. Jonah turned away from her. He walked away from the waterfront without looking back. He thought she might follow him, but she didn't.

Jonah knew he couldn't get on the train while it was stopped and being loaded. He followed a street that ran along the tracks until he came to the edge of the little town. Then he stepped on the tracks themselves and walked on the ties for maybe a mile, as the rails ascended a grade. Since the train would have to labor up the long hill, he figured that was the place to get on. Twice he looked behind to see if Angel was following him: she wasn't. He stepped off the tracks and slipped behind some sumac bushes at the edge of a field, then sat down on a log that was free of snow and laid his scythe and the kettle in the weeds beside him.

Jonah had to wait a while before he heard the
huff huff huff
of the locomotive coming from the town of Owego. The train had to gather speed as it left the freightyard, and it had to struggle up the grade. It was a small engine and it moved slowly. Jonah hunkered in the brush as the engine puffed past. The engineer leaned out the window looking ahead. The train whistle hooted and startled Jonah. He crouched lower until a passenger car went by and then an open car loaded with coal.

A boxcar passed, but its door was closed. Jonah picked up his scythe in one hand and the kettle in the other and ran to the edge of the rails. The train was rolling slowly, but every car appeared to be locked. He looked down the track and saw there were only four more cars, but they were open beds. He turned and ran after the first boxcar. It was easy to catch, but he wondered how he was going to grab onto the ladder without dropping the scythe and the kettle. He didn't want to lose either, but he had to seize a rung of the ladder with both hands. He threw both scythe and kettle aside and heard them clatter on gravel as he grabbed the rung on the boxcar.

Jonah rode between the cars as the train climbed higher into the hills and then entered a long valley. A light snow glittered on the fields and pastures, and big red barns rose noble as churches from the valley floor, mile after mile. Jonah shivered in the breeze but found if he clung close to the boxcar out of the wind he was not quite so cold. The sunlight warmed him, and when he bowed his head, he breathed less smoke and ash. It would do him no good to climb on top of the car, and there seemed no way to get inside it.

The train kept going up until it appeared to be on top of the world. The tracks crossed the wide valley and climbed around a long, low ridge and ran over rolling highlands. The hills were low and smooth and stretched out for miles, unlike any country Jonah had ever seen. He didn't know that the glacier had once rubbed these hills smooth and rounded them off, but he understood this was a different kind of landscape. Little farms were tucked in coves, and bigger farms stood out boldly on the open plateaus. Jonah felt he'd almost reached the true North. The land seemed to touch the sky in every direction.