Chasing the North Star (3 page)

“What are we going to do with this boy?” the other man said.

“Ain't nothing to do with him except make him tote liquor.”

Jonah wanted to drop the jugs and run, but he was so tired he knew they could shoot him before he reached the edge of the road. If one missed, the other was sure to hit him. Eventually the men decided they would tie Jonah to a tree. They had to get off the road, but they couldn't let him see where they were going because they were on the way to the place where they stashed their supply of liquor. The man with the pistol said they would kill Jonah if he told anybody he'd seen them.

“No, sir,” Jonah said. “I ain't seen nobody.”

“Damn right, you ain't seen nobody,” the one with the shotgun said. He made Jonah take a drink from the small bottle he carried in his pocket. The whiskey flared in Jonah's throat and sent a blaze through his belly. Then they used a piece of twine to tie his hands to a persimmon tree.

“Anything else we can do for you?” the man with the pistol said.

“All I need is a box of matches,” Jonah said.

“You want to burn down somebody's barn?”

“I just need to light my pipe.”

“I'll give you some matches,” the man with the pistol said. He gathered straw and leaves and heaped them at Jonah's feet. Then he poured some moonshine on the pile and dropped a match on top of it. Flames leapt up to Jonah's knees where he stood with his arms around the tree. He stepped to the side and stomped the flames as the two men laughed and headed off into the woods with their mule and clinking jugs. He heard their laughter echoing off the trees as he kicked dirt on the fire. By the time he'd stamped out the last burning leaves and straw, the woods were quiet and he couldn't hear the tinkle of jugs anymore.

The bootleggers hadn't bound his hands very tightly, and Jonah found that by leaning away from the tree he could rub the twine against the hard bark. By working his hands up and down, up and down, he wore the twine so thin he could break it. His wrists got scratched, but within a few minutes he was free.

It was almost daylight now, and he could see the trail the blockaders had taken along the side of the mountain, winding down through a kind of thicket. As the sun came into view, Jonah looked out from the ridge on a world he'd only dreamed of before. The first rays turned the mountain peaks copper, but the valley before him had fog along the streams and lifting out of coves.

Across the valley to the north a hill rose above a church steeple, and beyond that a higher ridge rippled to the west. Past that ridge other mountains rose into the early sun, like steps climbing one after the other. Mountain floated behind mountain to the edge of the world. It seemed impossible he could see so far.

Just looking at the distant mountains he didn't feel as tired or as hopeless. He was miles above the Williams Place, standing at the edge of a strange world. Surely in all the blue and copper mountains he could get lost and they'd never find him. He was so far up in the sky he must be close to the heaven they talked about in the Bible and in church. But no matter how thrilling the mountains and the view were, Jonah had to find a place to hide and rest, and he had to find a place to sleep, and something to eat. All he had was a knife and the coins in his pocket.

After following the trail through laurels for a way, Jonah climbed to the very top of the closest ridge. Under some oak trees he found a bed of moss, which, though lumpy, was softer than the ground. Jonah cut some limbs off a sweet shrub to cover and hide himself when he lay down.

He fell asleep and dreamed about dogs. A big dog like a cur lunged at him out of the dark, and when he backed away another dog gnawed at his leg. A dog barked in his ear. Another dog trotted toward him, one that appeared to be a mad dog. When Jonah woke he heard a dog barking, so it was not just a dream. The dog was far below him, somewhere down in the valley. By the sun he could tell it was late afternoon. A breeze stirred in the trees, but he could hear cicadas and a squirrel quarreling, and the dog barking. There was an ant on Jonah's chin and he flicked it away. Another ant prickled on his neck, and he saw ants on his pants. There must have been a nest of ants in the moss. He jumped to his feet and began to brush the ants away. He'd been stung on his legs and on his elbow.

The barking dog sounded closer than it had before. He listened, wondering if he could tell what kind of dog it was and if it was headed his way. Jonah knew they used bloodhounds to track runaway slaves. They used other hounds, too, and mean dogs like bulldogs and curs and Airedales. Jonah had once seen the sheriff come through the Williams Place looking for a runaway slave. All the Negroes had stood in silence as they watched the dogs go bellowing and yelping by, sniffing and panting, following a path along the edge of the field and past the last fodder barn. But when they reached the creek they lost the trail. The runaway must have walked right in the stream. Jonah had heard of all kinds of ways you could throw dogs off your tracks. The best was to run in a creek so far that the dogs lost hours trying to find where the trail continued on land again. But you could also run the length of a fallen log, then jump as far as you could, or swing on a grape vine across a gully. Any gap in a trail would slow the dogs down.

Best of all was to do what a fox would do: backtrack. An old slave named Elmer had once described that ploy to him. First you got a lead on the dogs, then you turned and walked back in your own tracks. When you came to a bank or stream you jumped as far as you could. If you were lucky the hounds would go right past. As soon as they'd gone by, you ran as hard as you could in the direction you'd come from, hoping the dogs would just be confused. Elmer had told him to never climb a tree, for if they spotted you there was no escape.

Best was to have hot pepper to sprinkle in your tracks, or gun powder, or meat with laudanum in it. But Jonah had none of those things in his pocket. If the dog was coming his way, he'd have to find a stream big enough to run in. His tracks could easily be seen in a spring branch or a swamp.

Jonah listened to the bark, but couldn't tell if the dog was really close. To reach a stream all he had to do was walk downhill, but he had to avoid roads and houses, and he knew there might be cabins on the slope or in the hollows of the mountains. It was better not to run, but to walk quickly and quietly. Before reaching the creek Jonah came to the edge of a little cornfield, tucked into a cove beside a branch. The corn smelled sweet as syrup. He stopped and listened, but didn't hear the dog anymore. He watched the rows carefully to see if anybody was around.

Three

Jonah

The white field corn was not full in the kernel yet. In another week the grains would be bursting with milk. But the seeds were already sweet. Jonah pulled three ears and hurried back into the brush along the branch. If he left no shucks in the field no one would ever know he'd been there. If people reported things stolen along his route then someone might guess he'd come this way. They'd know the direction he was headed and Mr. Williams would send somebody to cut him off and bring him back to the Williams Place.

Jonah was so hungry he bit off the pulpy seeds and hardly chewed them. He swallowed like a dog gulping mush. But then he slowed himself down. If he ate the raw, green corn too fast, it would give him a bellyache and he'd end up sick. He slowed down and munched the sweet, fibrous seeds. The smartest thing is not to hurry, Jonah told himself. When you have a long way to go, it does no good to get out of breath and confused. It won't help to wear yourself out when you don't have to. Mrs. Williams had more than once warned him not to be in such a rush. Hurrying was his weakness. He'd run away from the Williams Place in a hurry. A pain shot through his bones and through his bowels. He would never see Mrs. Williams again. And he'd never see Mama again. You fool, he said to himself. He put his arm across his eyes and cried hot tears. Whoa there, he said. Jonah was ashamed of himself for crying, and he was ashamed of himself for stealing money from Mama.

Later, as he ate the second and third ears, he listened for the bark of a dog. But all he heard was the slapping of the corn leaves in the breeze in the nearby field and the mutter of the branch. Chewed slowly, the corn got sweeter on his tongue. By the time he swallowed, the corn was sweet as molasses. As he chewed, the sweetness of the corn became part of him. He didn't know how it worked, but somehow the rich things he ate became part of his blood and then part of his flesh and bones. What he ate became his strength, and his future.

If it was a thousand miles to the North, and he could travel ten miles a day, it would take him months to reach his destination. He tried to recall the tutor's lessons in arithmetic. By any guess it would be late October before he got where he was going, and would be liable to be cold by then. He'd need a coat and shoes and heavy clothes. He'd need a place to stay warm. It would take money to buy the clothes. He could try to steal from clotheslines, but at some point he'd need more money than he'd taken from Mama.

Jonah pulled the jar from his pocket and looked at the coins. It was a little jar Mama had once put cherry preserves in. He counted the silver coins first. There was one silver dollar and no gold coins. It was all the money Mama had saved that summer from selling herbs out of the little garden behind her cabin. Sometimes Mr. Williams would give her a coin on her birthday, and every Christmas Mr. Williams gave each of them two bits.

Besides the silver dollar, there were two half dollars with pictures of eagles on them, and eight smaller coins, each worth two bits. Jonah counted fourteen little dimes and twenty-three nickels and eleven red pennies. As he tried to add the amount in his head he kept losing track of the numbers. But finally he separated the coins out on the ground and counted each pile and figured he had six dollars and sixty-six cents. It was a lot of money, and it was not a lot of money. It was more money than he'd ever held in his hands at once. But it would have to last him until he got all the way to the North. For that long trip he didn't even have a penny a mile.

Silver had its own smell. Jonah held the dollar and half dollar pieces to his nose. Silver tarnished like it had soot on it. What he could smell was the tarnish of silver touched by air. It was a smell of something faraway. Touching the coins left the smell on his hands. He dropped the coins into his hand and then back into the jar. And then he dumped the coins again one at a time into his left palm. Nickels had less smell on them, but pennies gave off an aroma when touched by his fingers. The pennies had big pictures on them and writing on their backs. They smelled of a special kind of spice and of secret places deep in the ground.

Coins were the most interesting objects Jonah knew. They were equal to whatever could be bought with them. A little piece of metal could be equal to a horse, or a wagonload of corn. A quarter could be equal to time, time worked for a white man, the time it took a blacksmith to shoe a horse, an hour spent with a whore, or so he'd heard from Johnny Williams.

“What do you mean, whore?” Jonah had said.

“You don't know what a whore is?” Johnny said. “A whore is a fancy woman you pay for, to hop. You pay by the hour.”

“Where is such a woman?” Jonah said.

“Why, everywhere. In Greenville, in Charleston.” That had set Jonah thinking in a whole new way. Time was equal to money, and a woman's body was equal to money an hour at a time. It seemed that everything was equal to money, including freedom.

But coins were like jewels, too. They shone and clinked with music in them. They had little faces carved on them, and birds and flags. A coin was a work of art, a thing of beauty. It had weight and texture to the touch. The feel of the coins of money delighted and thrilled Jonah. Money was different from anything else in the woods because it was a man-made sign. Jonah knew that he'd need more money for his journey to the North. But even with money he could be stopped and beaten and returned to Mr. Williams anytime. He himself had a price. He was worth so many dollars to Mr. Williams, and to other white folks. Maybe a hundred dollars, maybe five hundred, for he was, at eighteen, young and strong. A few coins were equal to him. If he ever got to the North he knew he'd have to make money, if he was to be free and happy. Money was equal to freedom, to a house, a horse, a field, a fine suit of clothes, a wife, a fancy woman. He would find money and make money. If he ever made it to the North, that's what he would do.

There was no reason to carry Mama's jar; it hardly fit in his pocket, and it made the coins rattle and clink. He was lucky the bootleggers hadn't heard the coins. What he needed was a leather poke, a little sack. He'd have to carry the coins in his pockets until he could find such a sack. The heavy coins would wear a hole in his pocket, and then he could lose them. As soon as he could, he'd have to find a safer way to carry his money.

As Jonah was putting the coins in his pocket, a thought came to him that sent a shiver through his bones and gut. The amount of the money was $6.66, which was the number that was the Mark of the Beast in the Bible: 666 was the sign of the Anti-Christ. He'd heard the preacher talk about that evil number, and he'd read about it himself in the Book of Revelation. It was the sign of the end of the world and the Great Tribulation. Whoever was marked with the number wore the sign of Satan. Whoever had the Mark of the Beast would be damned.

Jonah thought of throwing all the money away. The number showed it was cursed because he had stolen it from Mama. It was the amount that had taken her so long to save, money to buy herself cloth for a new dress. The number of the Beast was his punishment for stealing and for running away. Jonah weighed the coins in his hand. They felt heavier than they had before. There was something crushing about the weight of the silver and copper. The value seemed bleached out of the metal and the magic of the pictures and faces faded. All the delight he had taken had melted away.

And then Jonah knew what to do. Taking a penny from the handful, he poured the rest back into his pocket. With a stick he scratched a hole in the ground, big enough for the penny to fit in. Quickly he covered the red cent with dirt and raked leaves on top of the dirt. He patted down the leaves so no one would ever know they'd been disturbed. He almost smiled as he placed sticks on the leaves. Now there was six dollars and sixty-five cents in his pocket. He had no number of the Mark of the Beast on him. He'd paid his tribute to the earth under his feet. He'd returned the metal to the soil it came from. Now the metal in his pocket was not as tainted. He carried on his person enough metal to last him for weeks and hundreds of miles.

I
T WAS LATE AFTERNOON
when Jonah crossed the creek on rocks. The stream was bigger than he'd thought at first, and when his foot slid on a mossy rock he crashed into water up to his pants pockets. The creek water was so cold it burned his butt, and he stood and splashed through the pool to the shallows, holding his breath. He didn't know why he held his breath, but he did until he reached the ground near the bank. As he approached the bank, a tree limb moved near him and he saw a long, dark snake like a corkscrew unwind itself from the limb and plop into the water near his feet. It was a water snake that went scribbling out into the current and downstream. But he couldn't tell whether it was a cottonmouth or not.

The far bank of the creek was covered with trees and bushes, briars and vines. It looked impossible to get through. He parted two bushes to find an opening. He hoped there was no poison oak or poison ash among the mess, and no copperhead hidden in the weeds. Turning sideways, stooping under vines, Jonah emerged from the thicket along the creek and saw a log house at the edge of a clearing. Someone was chopping wood and he listened to the knock of the axe, and the thud of the echo from the ridge across the creek. Between the creek and the cabin a cornfield fidgeted its leaves in the breeze.

It looked as if there was a vegetable garden close to the house, for he saw bean poles with vines on them reaching above the rows of okra. He was sure there'd be tomatoes and summer squash there, maybe onions and carrots. But the garden was near the woodpile and he dared not get close. An ash hopper for making lye for soap stood just a few feet from the woodpile.

Beyond the garden rose a little building with a chimney, which Jonah guessed was either a blacksmith shed or smokehouse. If it was the former there might be a box of matches by the furnace. If it was the latter there might possibly be matches by the fireplace, though that was unlikely since meat was cured in late fall, not in the middle of summer.

Bending low behind the corn rows, Jonah worked his way around the little patch, keeping an eye out for anybody who might be in the field or garden. Crack and thud, the axe went, crack and thud. As he got closer he saw a long barn by a rail fence and a pasture on the hill where several cows grazed. The manure pile beside the barn glistened with a halo of flies. With disappointment he saw the small building was indeed a smokehouse.

Staying close to the barn and then in the shadow of the smokehouse, he crept to the door and looked in. It was so dark he couldn't see anything inside except the shelves where the salted meat was laid and the hooks where the hams could be hung over the fire. There was an overwhelming scent of smoke and ashes, grease and salt. It was not a bad smell, but summer heat had made the air a little rancid. Jonah looked out of the corner of his eye into the gloom. A couple of hams that appeared to have been turned to stone lay on the shelf by the door. Another ham, carved down to the shank, rested on a small table. As his eyes adjusted to the shadows, he studied the shelves and benches and saw kindling wood and a bag of salt. An old butcher knife lay on the table beside the shank meat, and Jonah sliced off a slab of the meat and put it in his pocket.

Jonah backed out of the smokehouse and closed the door. The afternoon air appeared brighter after the shade of the building. There was no longer the sound of chopping. He stood perfectly still and waited to hear someone moving. A chicken walked by and a puppy ran up wagging its tail. The puppy twisted its behind to show how happy it was to see him. A door banged and Jonah hoped the wood chopper had gone inside. He waited a little longer, and then walked sideways with his back to the shed. Skirting the manure pile where flies the color of dew dilated and hummed a chorus of hallelujahs, he reached the barn and hugged the wall to reach the edge of the pasture.

With someone at the house he dared not get any closer. His back was sore and his feet were sore. He couldn't believe he'd been crazy enough to run away from the Williams Place where there was plenty to eat and a bed to sleep in. You must be dumb as a chicken, he said to himself. All he wanted to find here was a box of matches that would cost a penny at the Gap Creek store. He was risking his life just to find a few matches. It seemed he'd been a fool to run away from all the comforts he'd ever known and all the safety he'd known, too.

Jonah saw it was too risky to cross the fence into the pasture, because the pasture was open and on high ground where he could be seen from the creek valley. Keeping the barn between himself and the house, he followed the fence to the edge of the pines and ducked into the cover of the trees. He noticed a trail that swung below the barn and into the pines, and he followed it into a hollow. The trail ended at a spring below some laurel bushes where a gourd hung on a stick. There was a wash table on the bank beside the spring branch, with two wooden tubs and a washboard. A black pot sat on rocks over the ashes of a fire. A cake of soap the color of beeswax lay on the table. Jonah suddenly knew how thirsty he was. He'd not had a drink all day. As he reached for the gourd to dip a drink he saw something blue out of the corner of his eye. Running to the table he saw it was a paper matchbox.

Sliding the box out of its sleeve, Jonah saw the box was almost empty, with no more than ten or twelve matches inside. But he could not have been happier if he'd found a box of gold coins. With a dozen matches he could start fires for a week or more. He quietly slipped the box inside his shirt and then took a drink from the gourd. Then, with the matches close to his belly, Jonah climbed through the pines up the hill above the pasture. Before it got dark again he had to study about his plans. He had to be smart if he was going to make it through North Carolina to Virginia and then to the North. He had to be smart every minute of the day.

Since he had money in his pocket, Jonah had to figure out a way to go into stores and buy what he needed. The money was just a burden if it couldn't be spent. It would wear a hole in his pocket and be lost. Any unfamiliar black boy going into a store in a strange place would look suspicious. And it was possible Mr. Williams would send out posters with his name and description. He'd seen such posters on store walls in Travelers Rest, and he'd seen announcements in newspapers about runaways.