Chasing the North Star (29 page)

As the train rattled and banged along, Jonah saw that each little town they passed had a white church and a red schoolhouse, a store and a village meeting hall. A pump and water trough stood in the middle of each village. Most houses were white and looked recently painted and clean. Jonah held on to the ladder and his teeth chattered, but he was thrilled to be in such high country. After about an hour Jonah was numb with cold. The train began to labor up an even higher hill, and it felt as though the rails ahead must go right off the ground into the sky. Did the ground get higher the farther north you went? Everyone described the North as “up” north. Jonah felt they were already approaching the top of the sky. Spruce trees lined the track. And then the locomotive ahead appeared to drop out of sight. Jonah looked around the corner of the boxcar and saw a great open vista. It was a deep valley with a lake in the distance. He held his breath, looking at the depth and grandeur of the scene revealing itself. A town lay at the edge of the lake, with steeples that shone like points of snowflakes and big brown buildings with many eyes stretched along the sides of hills.

It took several minutes for the train to wind and rumble its way down into the valley and approach the town. The cars rattled and clanked slowly through the outskirts, and soon as Jonah saw the yard ahead where barges and steamboats were pulled up to the docks by the tracks, he knew it was time to jump off. The railroad ended where its cargo would be loaded onto boats for the trip across the lake.

When Jonah touched the ground, he was so stiff with cold, he fell and rolled off the gravel into weeds. He was almost numb, but pushed himself up and looked around. The town was on flat land by the lake, with steep hills on either side. To the east two gorges cut through the ridge and waterfalls milked and smoked over the rims of rocks. Mills with waterwheels jutted out of each gorge. To the south Jonah saw the apron of another waterfall combing and foaming from a lip of rock. It was like no place he'd ever seen. The lake stretched out of sight to the north between rounded shoulders of hills.

With no money, no scythe, no kettle, Jonah had to think first of getting something to eat. He walked away from the tracks toward the center of town as a steamboat blew its whistle. No one he passed on the street paid him much attention. Wind shoving off the lake chilled him more, and he had to get warm before he could think what to do. He had to get out of the biting wind.

Seventeen

Jonah

At the corner of Aurora Street, Jonah came to a brick church with stained-glass windows, and found the door unlocked. It was mostly dark inside, but he saw benches in the light from the colored windows. Out of the wind the air was warmer. As Jonah's eyes adjusted a little, he saw a stove at the side of the church near the altar. He walked toward the front and realized as he neared it that a fire was crackling in the stove. If the stove was lit, someone must be in the church.

“Hello and welcome,” a voice said.

Jonah spun around and saw a man in a shiny black robe emerge from a room behind the pulpit.

“Hello, sir,” Jonah said and took off his hat. “I just wanted to get warm.”

“I'm Timothy Belue,” the man in the robe said. “You are most welcome.”

Jonah was so surprised he couldn't think what to say. He couldn't claim to be a laborer on his way to work. It must be a Sunday if a fire was roaring in the stove.

“Make yourself at home,” Rev. Belue said. He was a short man with glasses and side whiskers. He didn't seem at all surprised to see Jonah. “We'll have worship service in about twenty minutes,” the reverend said. “You are very welcome to stay.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jonah said.

The minister looked at Jonah's boots and his coat, soiled with soot and ashes from the train. “I keep coffee and biscuits in the back room to refresh me while I prepare my sermons,” he said. “Could I offer you something to nibble?”

Jonah knew it was impolite to accept, but he was too famished to refuse. “Thank you, sir,” he said and bowed his head. Rev. Belue led him to the little room piled with books and papers. Another black robe hung from a hook in the corner. A coffeepot sat on the hearth of a small fireplace where lazy flames beckoned and gestured. The preacher cleared a spot at the table and set a plate of biscuits and a cup of coffee before Jonah.

As Jonah sipped the coffee, he felt the hot liquid warm his belly and begin to spread through him. His bones ached with cold, and the warm coffee didn't touch the marrow at first. The biscuits were sweet as the sweetest cake. There was butter to spread on the biscuits, making them even sweeter.

Mrs. Belue, who was the organist, arrived and also invited Jonah to stay for the service. She was taller than her husband, with dark hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. She invited Jonah to come to their house for dinner after the meeting. “I hope you'll find friends in Ithaca,” she said.

When Jonah finished the biscuits and coffee and returned to the meeting room, the room was already half filled with worshipers. Rev. Belue sat in a chair behind the pulpit and Mrs. Belue began to play a quiet hymn on the organ. Jonah walked to the back of the church and sat on the last bench. Some of those entering in their fine Sunday clothes glanced at him and looked quickly away. An older woman smiled at him. Jonah knew he smelled bad after all the days on the road. He tried to gather himself into himself, to keep his stink from spreading.

As he watched the church fill, Jonah wondered how safe he was here, appearing in public, at a service for everybody to see. There was no guarantee that Rev. Belue, kind as he seemed, wouldn't report him to the sheriff if he knew Jonah was a runaway. And someone in the congregation might be suspicious of him and inform the authorities. But as he warmed up, filled with coffee and biscuits and butter, Jonah felt heavier and heavier. He'd walked many miles, and he'd not slept much the night before. As soon as the Reverend Belue stood up and announced the first hymn and the congregation began to sing, Jonah was already asleep. He dreamed about cliffs and waterfalls and sparkling lakes.

It was only after the church was empty that Rev. Belue woke him. “Service is over,” the preacher said and shook his shoulder. “I can see how rousing my sermon was.” The preacher laughed and Jonah woke to his laughter.

“I'm sorry, sir,” Jonah mumbled.

“No need to apologize,” the minister said. “Perhaps you needed sleep more than a sermon.”

Jonah had slept so deeply in the warm church, he was befuddled. It took him a minute to understand Rev. Belue's questions.

“Yes, sir,” Jonah murmured, as if he was about to go back to sleep.

“Well I have just one question really,” Rev. Belue said. “Have you killed anybody?”

Jonah woke and looked the preacher in the eye. “No, sir,” he said. “I never killed anybody.”

“Well, that settles that,” the preacher said. “Come with me to the house and we'll have some dinner.”

AFTER THE
Y
'D EATEN,
MRS.
Belue put on a kettle to heat water and told Jonah he could bathe in the downstairs bedroom. The pastor and Jonah carried a tub into the bedroom and a bucket of cold water and the kettle of boiling water. When the two waters were mixed the tub was half full of warm water. The preacher brought him soap and a towel and Jonah washed himself thoroughly for the first time since he'd left Miss Linda's. Until he cleaned himself he hadn't realized just how dirty and smelly he'd become.

To wash when you're dirty is almost as satisfying as eating when you're starved or warming when you're cold, Jonah thought. The coffee and biscuits, the nap in church, the dinner with the Belues, and now the bath—they all seemed too good to believe. He wondered when this dream would end.

Slow there, boy, he thought. Easy does it. Don't get too happy. Dangerous to be too happy.

After Jonah dressed and emptied the tub in the backyard, Rev. Belue led him down to the basement of the house, where he had a small printing press. It was the first press Jonah had ever seen. He looked at the large screw that pushed the plates together, and the bits of type in trays. A book could be made from the letters packed in the boxes.

“I haven't asked what your old name is,” Rev. Belue said.

“Why is that?” Jonah said.

“Because you will need a new name.”

Jonah hadn't thought of that. Of course the reverend was right: he would need a new name. It would be foolish to go by his old name. Jonah tried to think what he should call himself. He'd used different names since he'd run away from the Williams Place. He'd been Julius and Ezra and Isaac and Jeter. Thinking of Mama back in South Carolina, in her little shack behind the mansion, brought tears to his eyes. He could never again be Jonah Williams. He would no longer be Jonah who disobeyed God and was swallowed by a fish and coughed up on the shore. He wanted to be somebody that arrived at the promised land. Moses had gone into the wilderness, but he'd not been allowed to reach the land of Canaan. It was Joshua that led the people on to the promised land. Joshua was the prophet who made it into Canaan.

“I am Joshua,” Jonah said, “Joshua Driver.”

“That's a good, strong name,” the minister said. “Joshua from the Bible and Driver for one who goes forth, and goes far.”

The preacher took letters from the tray and arranged them on a plate, then screwed the plate tight. He fitted the plate on the press, inked the letters with a pad, and placed a small sheet of paper on the press. With the wooden arm he turned the big screw until the two halves of the press came together. When he raised the top half and took out the sheet of paper, the words were like tracks with soles of bold new ink.

This certifies that ____________ has paid

500 dollars in good money for his freedom.

Robert Montgomery

Frederick, Maryland

Reverend Belue took a pen and wrote “Joshua Driver” in the blank space, and added the date “February 15, 1851” after the address.

“Well Joshua, you must carry this with you at all times,” the preacher said.

“Yes, sir,” Jonah said.

The reverend said he was foreman in the woolen mill at the foot of Ithaca Falls. They spun the wool that came in bales on the railroad from Owego into thread and yarn. The yarn was shipped by lake and canal to the cities in the east.

“I think you might find work as a janitor,” Rev. Belue said.

“Yes, sir,” Jonah said.

That night, before he went to sleep in the clean bed in the room downstairs, Jonah asked himself whether he should continue running, to reach Auburn and Rochester, Buffalo and then Canada. The Reverend Belue seemed to think he would be safe enough with his new name and the forged certificate of freedom. It was impossible to know how safe he was. But Jonah was worn out from running, and he didn't want to go on. And he'd never met anyone as helpful as Rev. and Mrs. Belue. He'd stay here for a while, until he got rested up. He'd stop here for a few days or weeks and see what happened. If he was caught, he would be caught. He just didn't feel like running anymore.

Eighteen

Angel

When Jonah left me in Owego, I told myself I would never see that boy again. It was too cold to ride the train. Besides, I couldn't run along a moving train and jump up on it again like he could. If I tried that I might fall right under the wheels and be cut to pieces. He ran away from me on the French Broad, and he ran away from me at Roanoke. And he rode off with that farmer in a wagon at Harrisburg. But I always caught up with him. We lived on boiled eggs all through the mountains of Pennsylvania, tramping through snow and mud and sleeping in haystacks and hay barns. But I wasn't going to run after him anymore.

Still, that left me standing there by the river where they were loading and unloading all the boats and snow whipped sideways in the wind. I walked down that street thinking about what I was going to do. Where was I going, now that Jonah had left me again? What was a big colored girl to do, cold and dirty, way up north on a riverbank?

I walked along the muddy street till I saw a bakery, and I walked behind the bakery and sure enough they had thrown out old bread. Some pieces were soggy and dirty and some were frozen, but I stuffed my pockets with stale bread. And I started to eat a piece that wasn't too dirty.

The train had already pulled out of the depot and I followed the tracks. Didn't seem like there was anything else to do. I figured Jonah had jumped on the train and was riding north in a boxcar or on top a boxcar, and he would freeze to death for sure before he got to the next town. With wind shoving into my face, I munched that old bread and followed, stepping over cinders and turds on the crossties.

As soon as I got out of town, climbing a little hill, I spotted something lying beside the tracks, and when I got closer I saw it was Jonah's kettle and his mowing blade. He must have dropped them when he ran to grab hold of that train. Either that or he fell off and was killed. I looked around but didn't see any pieces of his body or blood on the tracks. I didn't want anything to do with that mowing blade.

In the kettle there were matches and two potatoes, and a busted egg had run all over everything else and frozen. I hung the rope handle over my shoulder to carry the kettle, and started walking along the tracks, for I didn't know where else to go.

Under my breath I cussed that Jonah and told him in my mind he had seen the last of me. But the kettle had brought him luck, and maybe it would bring me luck, too. And soon as I could find an egg or two I'd boil them in the kettle the way we had done so many times. I'd fill my belly with eggs and bread and then maybe I could think about what to do next. I'd sleep in hay barns to stay warm.

After walking along the tracks and almost freezing in the wind, I stopped after dark at a big red barn. It was so dark I lighted a match to see inside and saw cows munching hay. It was so cold steam rose from the cows. By the ladder to the loft there was a feed room, and in the room were shelves with jugs, all shiny and stopped with cobs. If those jugs held molasses, I might just take a sip. I pulled out a stopper and tilted the mouth to my lips. But the stuff inside was sweeter and thinner than molasses. It had a special flavor I'd never tasted before, some kind of syrup I guessed. I tasted it again and swallowed some. The syrup was so sweet, it nearly burned the back of my mouth.

Besides the kettle I hauled the jug up into the hayloft, and sat down in the hay above the cows and ate bread and sipped from the jug. That syrup was so strong it made me warm inside. Girl, you could use some sweetening, I said. Then I wrapped the coat around me tight and lay down and pulled some hay over the coat and went to sleep.

All the time I slept, I dreamed of Jonah and followed him and cussed him out. I wanted to tell him he wasn't worth a fart. He was sorry as a no-count polecat. I'd seen a rotten dog carcass more likable than him. Then in my dream I saw what I'd been trying not to see, which was that I knew I was going to follow that Jonah and see him again. Because he was just a boy that might grow up. He was just scared in a strange place and finding his way. I saw a house where we were going to live, with flowers in boxes on the porch, and I saw children on a floor scrubbed so clean it looked like a mirror to walk on.

And I saw that a woman couldn't quit loving a man just because he was scared and forgetful. She might get mad but she couldn't stop loving him. Besides, a man thinks like a child anyway. He follows his little colonel and the groaning in his belly and gets ideas and makes all kind of trouble. A woman has got to think for him when he can't think for himself. It made me sad to see that, but relieved at the same time. For I could see my way ahead, and I saw how hard it was going to be.

It took me three days following the tracks across the hills before I came to this town by a big lake. It was the biggest lake I'd ever seen, between hills and waterfalls glowing on the hills. I had no idea where Jonah was and what the name of the town might be. I couldn't read the sign at the depot, but stopped at a hardware store behind the station and asked what place this was. The man behind the counter looked at me funny, like he'd never seen a big, fat colored girl in a man's overcoat before. But he said I was in Ithaca, New York.

“Can't you read the sign?” he said and pointed to the depot.

“Just wanted to hear you say it,” I said.

Now I'd been thinking what I might do in this cold place. Snow covered the ground and ice hung like fingers from eaves. The wind off the lake cut my face like razors. I had to get inside before I froze to death. I didn't care if I worked in a steaming laundry or washing dishes or cleaning a bakery floor, as long as I could be inside.

At every store along the street, I asked if they had work I could do. They shook their heads and stared at me like I had three eyes or horns coming out of my head. Men sitting around a stove in a store chewing tobacco all looked at me in the dirty coat, carrying the kettle on a rope. It looked like I wasn't going to find anything. But I came to a big house with columns all painted white and there was a man at a desk inside.

He asked if I'd ever mopped floors and washed sheets and I told him I had done that all my life. He asked if I could make beds and clean chamber pots, and I said I'd done that since I was a child.

“Can you read?” he said, and I told him I had never been to school.

He looked at me and said I had to wash up, and I had to wear a uniform. He took me up the stairs to the third floor of the hotel—for that's what it was, a hotel—and showed me a little room not much bigger than the bed that was in it, with a little table. He told me to go wash myself, and he brought me a uniform.

I can't tell you how happy I was to have a room with a real bed, a clean room. There was no fireplace, but it sure was warmer than outside. And there was a blanket on the bed. I didn't care if I had to scrub floors and wash shit out of pee pots, for I had a place to lay my head, in a clean room. And nobody had asked if I was running away. I got some hot water from the kitchen of the hotel and I washed myself all over.

Every day it got colder in that town, and wind came off the icy lake between the hills, and snow blew down the streets like white ghosts and bees swarming. So I stayed inside and worked. I didn't need to go outside because I had to save my money, which was two dollars a week. And besides, I figured the less I was on the streets the less I was likely to be called a runaway. Maybe I would go on to Canada, where there weren't any slaves, when spring came and a girl could travel. I guessed Jonah must already be in Canada.

I worked at cleaning rooms. I swept and dusted and mopped the floors and emptied chambers. One day Tertius, the man at the desk, said to me, “Sarepta”—because I'd told him my name was Sarepta King—he said, “do you want to make some extra money?”

“Sure I do,” I said. I looked him in the eye and saw exactly what he meant.

“All you have to do is show a guest a good time,” he said.

“What do you mean a good time?” I said, to kind of tease him a little.

“You know what I mean,” he said and winked.

“How much extra money?” I said.

“Fifty cents a time,” he said.

So he came up to my room from time to time and sent me to a guest room where some salesman or farm boy had come into town, and I did my best to make them happy. Because I had no other way to save extra money for going to Canada. And pretty soon Tertius said I was the most popular girl he had.

“I'm the most girl for the money,” I said and laughed.

“That you are,” he said. “That you are.”

It was getting on toward Christmas when I was walking down the street and saw a black face come out of the hardware store. I stopped in the snow and my heart almost jumped into my mouth when I saw it had to be Jonah. Sure as shooting, it was that trifling boy who I thought was in Canada.

When I called his name, he turned around and looked at me hard. “I'm called Joshua now,” he said. I told him I was called Sarepta now, like I was at Miss Linda's. And when I told him I worked at the hotel I could see by his look he already knew what I did.

“Come over and see me,” I said. I told him I lived on the third floor of the hotel, and if he came to see me he should climb up by the back stairs. He said he worked at the Ithaca Falls Woolen Mill. Then he turned around and headed back toward the mill, where he worked as the cleaning man. I felt silly that I was so glad to see that no-good boy. I'd been wondering if I would ever see him again, and all that time he was right there in Ithaca. I was all heated up because I'd seen him and talked to him. And I saw maybe I'd stayed in Ithaca because I thought he might be there, or near there. I'd told myself I never wanted to see him again. But in my dream I knew better. And there I was, all out of breath because I'd seen his sorry ass. Girl, you are hopeless, I said.

But I studied on it, and knew Jonah cared for me. He just didn't understand it yet. That boy didn't know his own mind. He was dreaming of something big, like he longed to be a boss man, or president. He lived in a dream that would make him mighty disappointed. There was nobody to help him but me.

Tertius said that black boy named Joshua lived at the boardinghouse on Cayuga Street. Everybody in town knew where he lived, and where he worked. So I began to study on how to help him and how to make him see that he loved me. He was my only hope to have a house and family of my own. There was nobody else to love me.

So I took the old kettle that he'd carried all the way through Pennsylvania, that I'd toted over the hills to Ithaca, and I cleaned it up and polished it with wax until it shined. Then I got cookies and candy and nuts to fill it. Nothing pleased me as much as thinking about Jonah and fixing up a present for him. He liked to read, but I didn't know how to pick a book for him.

Now when it was just before Christmas I went over there to the boardinghouse on Cayuga Street and carried that old kettle tied up in a ribbon. I could hardly get my breath because I wanted to see Jonah so bad. His landlady looked at me funny, when I told her I came to see Jonah, and then I remembered he was now called Joshua.

“If you go to his room you can't close the door,” she said.

“I don't want to close the door,” I said and gave her a smile. I guessed she had heard rumors about me at the hotel.

Jonah was so startled to see me I almost busted out laughing. He was about to panic I reckon, and then he looked confused. When I showed him the present and he looked in the kettle I saw his eyes get wet. That told me what I already knew, that he cared for me, just like I cared for him. He lifted out the nuts and cookies and candy. And I said real quick, “Now what do I get?” He was so confused, I had to laugh again.

The door was open and the landlady stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at us. But Jonah leaned against me and brought his mouth to mine, and I kissed him like he was the dearest thing in the whole world. I just wanted to be with him. I'd been with lots of men, but that didn't mean anything compared to what it was like to be with Jonah again. We had loved in haystacks and barn lofts, and in the woods by the river. I didn't ever want to quit kissing him. But when I did stop, I asked him to come to my room.

“You live in the top of the hotel?” he said.

“Come up the back stairs,” I said.

And then I saw the book on the table. He had a black Bible. That boy had been reading again and it made me proud to think he was the one I loved, so smart and with a head filled with words and maps and the stuff he was always talking about.

When I walked back to the hotel in the snow and climbed the stairs to my room, I felt better than I had in a long, long time. I didn't have any presents or company in that cold, windy town. But I knew Jonah cared for me, and that made everything different. Jonah was going to come see me. And giving him presents was better than getting presents. He would see he couldn't do anything without me. He was so young he just didn't know what he wanted yet.

As I got in bed and pulled the old coat over me to stay warm, I thought about the Thomas Place. They would be having a Christmas party there before long. Old Sally would make eggnog and Master Thomas would give everybody fifty cents. And Christmas dinner would be collard greens and baked ham or sausage and sweet potatoes. And master would want me to come down to his room and keep his feet warm and be good to him. Except I wouldn't be there this Christmas; I'd be off in the North and I had my own man and a new name. I had a room to myself and money in a sock. Jonah may not have known I had him yet, but I did. That was the best present I could think of.