May the Road Rise Up to Meet You: A Novel (43 page)

Mary, Mista Kittredge says as irritated as you ever heard him, Mr. Longley tells me that his boy Micah has run off. Do you know anything about this?

You try to look surprised about it, crinkle your eyes and open your mouth, then shake your head from side to side.
No
suh, you say.

She’s lying! Mista Longley says, and then a colored man’s coming in through the front door, and Mista Longley’s looking over at him.

Jeremiah, tell Mr. Kittredge what you saw out behind his store, he says.

Well, Massa, it’s like I says, I be mindin’ my own binness jus’ thinkin’ ’bout dat filly you sent me t’see—

Get to it! Mista Longley shouts, and Jeremiah seems a little scared now.

So’s I walk roun’ down th’alley, an’ I sees Micah an’ that gal kissin’ an’ dey sayin’ ’bout how three bells they fixin’ t’run off.

Mary, is this true? Mista Kittredge asks you.

Your eyes go wide, and you shake your head and say,
No
suh! I ain’t been kissin’ no man. You cover your arms over your chest like the very thought of it makes you uncomfortable.

She’s lyin’, Kittredge, Mista Longley says. For Christ sakes, you can’t trust these niggers any more than …

There’s a gasp from the Misses’s sister-in-law, who’s a good Christian woman, you been told. And you hear Miss Juss start to crying way up on the landing, and then the Misses steps up to her, and Mista Kittredge gets upset with it all too, jumping in to cut off Mista Longley in the middle of him going on and on about how niggers can’t be trusted.

I will not have this in my home!
Mista Kittredge explodes, and everyone’s upset now. The Misses and Juss and the Misses’s sister-in-law are all crying full out now, and the Misses’s brother sticks his chest out and steps up next to the Mista.

Listen Kittredge, Mista Longley says, calmer now. Just ask her what Micah said about where he was goin’ when she saw him today.

Mista Kittredge turns to you, and you start wipin’ some of your tears off your cheeks and say, I ain’t seen Micah since he worked on the shop two months back.

Sho’ she be forgettin’ dis very aft’noon, Jeremiah says, I sees her standin’ out back—

Shut your mouth in my home! Mista Kittredge shouts, and that’s the end of Jeremiah sayin’ anything. And then you figure on putting it all to rest.

Micah mighta been a little sweet on me back then, you say, but I don’t know why anybody’d think I’d go round kissin’ men an’ talkin’ ’bout runnin’ off … seein’ how you an’ the Misses done so much fo’
me
? An t’leave Miss Justinia? I don’t know hows I could
ever
bear it …

You start to crying, and though you lied and all, the tears are the real thing, what with all the emotions running through you at once. Then Juss comes running down the stairs, and the Misses is following after her, and they’re hugging you soon as they get to the bottom.

Goodnight
Mr. Longley, you hear Mista Kittredge say. And that’s all you hear from the men after that.

There’s plenty of crying and hugging, and even Mista Kittredge, once he’s chased the men out, gives you a little hug and says how he doesn’t ever want to think of you running off.

We’ve been good to you, Mary, yes? he asks, and you start to crying some more and shaking your head yes over and over again.

Then the Misses’s brother says
Happy Christmas
, and everybody laughs, and soon you’re all heading back to bed. Only there’s no sleep for you. You’re looking out your window ’til the sun comes up around seven bells, and there’s no sign of Micah.

The next day is different from any Christmas with the Kittredges you can remember. Juss comes down to your room before they go off to church, then stops by again with the cousins following right behind her when they get back. During the day you eat with the resta the slaves, and they don’t tease you any, don’t seem to know what to say, and you know they all know about what you lost. Cora musta told them. Bessie tells you she heard that Mista Longley got every slave-catcher in town out looking for Micah, and you know he didn’t go home. He’s on the boat, you hope, heading up the James River without you … safe, you hope.

The Misses calls you in before the dinner, the way you’d expect, and they even drink a toast to you, with Mista Kittredge giving you a glass of wine to toast right along with them. But it’s nothing like it mighta been just one Christmas ago, when you woulda loved such things. Now it’s all confusion and thinking about Micah, and when it’s late evening, you slink back to your room, feeling like it’ll be haunted all your life now. Cora’s already there, and she’s had plenty of wine of her own. She’s softer than normal, not so much as last night, but softer than normal all the same. And she gets to talking about the man she lost and what happened when they ran off, and then she gets mad at you for bringing up the shadows
inside her
, and it’s like that little window of her heart closes tight all over again.

You’s a slave jus’ like me an’ dat fool nigga Jer’miah an’ any otha colored folks you sees ’roun dese parts. You got it better’n most all of em. Better’n plenny o’
white
folks got it. Soons you accep’ dat be when you learn how t’survive dis here life. An’ dat’s the bes’ you can hope fo’.

You don’t do any arguing with her, knowing there’s not much point, and maybe she’s right anyway. Then Juss sneaks down that night, opens the door with a candle half-burnt down, whispering so as not to wake up Cora, telling you to come up to her room where you can talk. So you go with her, bumping into Cora’s cot and waking her, and Juss starts to laugh, tells Cora not to worry,
it’s just the shepherds comin’ to visit the Baby Jesus
, and then she laughs some more. Up in Juss’s room she talks about the day and how annoying her cousins are and the presents she got and how she likes your gloves better’n anything her Momma and Daddy give her. Then Juss gets quiet laying there beside you.

I was so scared this mornin’, Mary, she says. Just the thoughta not havin’ you here …

Her voice trails off, and she starts to crying again.

Don’t worry, Juss, you say, and then the words form sadly in your mouth, the kinda words with more meaning than it might seem straight off. I ain’t goin’
nowhere
, you say. And it’s about as sad a few words as you ever said in your whole life.

There was a bridge six or seven miles up the James. Micah did some work near it three months earlier. And it only stayed in his mind at all because he’d followed the road that led to it, figuring he could get over the James to the job on the other side. But the bridge turned out to be knocked out entirely. A Yankee cavalry raid took it out earlier in the year, and then instead of fixing the old one, they built a bigger one a quarter-mile upriver. So on Christmas Day, when all Micah cared about was left behind in Richmond, that wreck of a bridge provided a perfect place to wait. On the south side of the river. The rowboat tucked away in the brush along the shore. Him tucked beneath what was left of the bridge.

He got there around first light, after everything went wrong back at the Kittredges’ house. He didn’t eat any of the cornbread or pork jerky. Didn’t drink from the river. Didn’t do anything but think about her
all day. Thought about how close he was to her. How they could’ve still slipped away and started upriver before Longley rousted a single slave-catcher from bed. He played those moments over and over in his head. Trying to figure how it went wrong. Trying to figure what he could have done. She was just eight miles away from him all that day. And the distance was crushing. It wasn’t until the last of the sunlight began to fade that he stopped thinking about what had happened, and started thinking about what was
going
to happen, instead.

So by nightfall he was on the move again. Not upriver, but back down it to the edge of the city. He pulled the boat up onto the shore and left his satchel beside it, taking only the knife, slung through a belt loop. Then set off. It was an even longer route to the Kittredge house, coming from west of the city now. Walked along the railroad tracks for a while. Then slipped through the fields of the slaughterhouse and the textile mill and eventually to the woods along the northern edge of the city. Two hours after he’d left the boat behind, he came to the open field behind the Kittredge house again. And hid there until the lights in the house were extinguished. Waited an hour or so past that, the cold biting at his limbs. Then made the same walk he’d made the night before.

Every step was short and considered. Five minutes, maybe more, passed before he finally reached the stables. Then he dropped to the ground, pulled himself along by the elbows as he’d done before. Waited to hear horses on the cobblestones. But nothing this time. When he reached Mary’s window, he was covered in mud. He looked around in every direction over the field, then stood up slowly, sliding across the wall to the edge of the window. Tried just to get his left eye across the edge of the window pane. His heart racing as he peeked inside and saw her figure in the bed beside the window. Thinking she was that close to him once again, and they could have this chance to slip away. He tapped his finger against the glass. Two three four times. Lightly first. Then a few times more, harder than before, and she started stirring. Took a few more taps to let her know it wasn’t a dream, and she lifted her head up off the pillow, and all at once he and she were shocked at the sight of each other. It was Cora in the bed. But she didn’t shout, and he didn’t jump back with shock either. Instead she lifted the window just a little. Started explaining the whole thing to him.

She done changed her mine
.

She too scared to go runnin’ off with ya
.

Dat’s what I come to tell you las’ night
.

Cora said a whole lot more. Talked all about how Jeremiah was the one that turned him in. How Jeremiah heard their plans. How it didn’t matter far as Mary was concerned since
she changed her mine befo’ that all happen
. She told him how Mary made things all right with the Kittredges. How they didn’t figure she was ever in on anything. Then Cora shook her head back and forth. Seemed genuinely sad for him. Didn’t do nothin’ to change nothin’ though. And he stood frozen by the window ’til Cora started saying how they were out lookin’ for him.

Best you got now is to make a run fo’ yo’sef
.

Her words were enough to make his feet unstuck. They moved slowly away from the house, back the same way he’d come. But it wasn’t like he was doing any of the telling them what to do or where to go. Everything was a haze now. Didn’t bother hiding from tree to tree. Or look out for anyone around him as he went.
She done changed her mine
, he kept hearing. Not Mary’s sweet voice, but the scratchiness of Cora’s. The tired old nag. Just like
he
used to be. Like he would become again, without the hope of her.
She done changed her mine
. And it was hours, three maybe four, way into the early morning. Not far from first light, when he emerged from the woods again.

He saw the horse first. Tied to the tree a few feet from the boat he’d left by the shore. Then he saw the Home Guardsman, digging through the satchel he’d left beside the boat. Spilled the clothes out, the tools clanking on top of each other as they hit the ground. But he ignored them, went for the cornbread instead. Started stuffing great chunks of it in his whiskered mouth. Turnips and potatoes rolled out of the blanket and the horse took some interest in them.

Then everything happened at once. All his actions nothing more than simple instinct. Spurred on by the madness growing inside him. Everything seeming like it was
someone else
doing the moving, and he was standing just a little distance away, watching it all. Watching his body dash at the Home Guardsman. Watched the man panic, drop the cornbread, and make for his horse. For his gunbelt draped over the saddle. Micah’s body tackling the Home Guardsman to the ground just before
he reached it. Then they were rolling around over each other and back again, ’til Micah saw himself roll on top. And reach for the knife tucked inside his belt loop. The Home Guardsman began screaming loud as he could. Bits of cornbread flying from his mouth. And then there was Micah, plunging the knife into his chest. The man gasping, trying to yell some more. Then Micah’s powerful hands wrapped around the man’s throat. Silencing him. Squeezing tightly until the man stopped breathing altogether.

Then Micah could see himself, hands and knees and arms all covered in blood. And his body froze for a while at the sight of them. ’Til there he was dragging the man’s body to the river. Rolling it in. Watching himself watch the current take the man’s body a few feet downstream. Before sinking out of sight. Then he was wrapping up his satchel and the gunbelt, and riding off on the Home Guardsman’s horse fast as he could. Whatever was moving his body doing the holding on to the reins, and him just along for the ride. And they rode fast up the bank of the river, leaving the terrifying remains of those few moments. Leaving everything he cared for, quickly and completely behind. Leaving. Like it didn’t matter none anyway. ’Cause
she done changed her mine
.

She’d hardly ever spent much time in the kitchen before, not even on holidays or dinner parties, and especially not on the rest of the days of the year, when she was plenty busy with all manner of work to do in the dress shop or just to pass the time with Justinia. But this was something different altogether, since the Misses decided to close the dress shop for a whole week on accounta her brother and his family being here. And Juss was forced to spend most all her time with her cousin Ashleigh, who not Mary or Cora, or Juss most of all, could much stand for more than a few minutes at a time.

That chil’s what Miss Juss was fixin’ on bein’ if
you
never come along, Cora said after about three days of Ashleigh.