Sarny (5 page)

“Freedom sure costs a heap.” And she never talked on it again. I wondered how it could be that grown men could stand not forty paces apart and shoot each other down, just stand and shoot and reload and shoot until a bullet finds you. Seems nothing would be worth that.

We walked until the sun was overhead, heading south, and finally came on somebody who told us where to go. There’d been people moving on the road all along. Soldiers running this way or that, horses with officers galloping up and back and twenty or thirty black people. They weren’t moving like the others, not aimed at going anywhere, just most of them away.

One man stopped us. Old man, shiny black with almost white hair and he waggled a finger at us. “It ain’t going to last.”

“What ain’t going to last?” Lucy asked him.

“This freedom. The South will take it back soon as the war is over. They get done killing each other we going back to chains.”

Wasn’t true of course and I knew it then too, knew it would last. But not all the Northerners were friendly when they went by. There was some to call us bad names and would have kicked us hadn’t we moved off the road and that made people worry that as soon as the fighting was done things would all go back the way they were.

“Where is New Orleans?” I asked the old black man.

“New Orleans? Child, why do you want to know that?”

I told him about my children. “I’m going to get them back.”

He nodded. “I hope you do. I hope you do. I don’t know where it’s at, New Orleans. I think it’s south and west about the same amount and it must be a far piece because my master went there once and was gone near half a year getting there and back. I recollect he said it was south and west about the same amount. Is that ham I smell in the sack?”

Had to give him a piece. I wasn’t against sharing but most we met were hungry and did they see it the ham would go faster than grease on a griddle. He chewed slowly because he didn’t have any teeth, only gums, and I
took the time to ask him, “What is New Orleans?”

I didn’t know much but one thing I did know—no excuse for not knowing when you could ask a question.

“Why, child, it’s a city. A big city. My master he told us it was so big you couldn’t see it all in a day. A big, big city …”

We set to walking again and an officer on a horse came along presently and stopped us and asked after the Glenrose plantation. I remembered the name on a burned gate.

“It’s about three miles back,” I said. “Would you know how to get to New Orleans?”

“New Orleans? You don’t want to go there—it’s still in rebel hands. Not all of the South is free yet.”

“I’ve got children sold there …”

“Ahh. I see. God, this whole thing is … an abomination. Well, as the crow flies, which is I imagine the direction you’ll walk, it’s about three hundred and fifty miles almost due southwest.”

I thought on it and couldn’t make the number work in my mind. “How far is that—three hundred and fifty miles?”

He looked at my legs. “You can probably walk, at a steady pace, thirty-five miles a day. That means it will take you about ten days to
walk to New Orleans—if the weather holds fair for you.”

There, I thought. That’s a good number. Five and a mark and five more and we’re there. I walk faster I could get there quicker. “I thank you.”

“Don’t hurry. There’s going to be a big fight down there and we’ll win. You wait until after the fight and you won’t have to worry about bounty hunters taking you back for the reward.”

Knew about bounty men. Any slave that runs off can be caught by any man and turned in for a reward of hard money. I never had any hard money except a penny I found once but I knew money was a powerful drag on people.

We walked all that day, moving off the road for soldiers—Lord, I couldn’t believe how many blue-coated soldiers there were. How could the grays ever even think on winning?

Men carrying rifles were all on foot. Sometimes big guns went by on wheels pulled in back of boxes on wheels by horses. Men sitting on the boxes. I ’spected it was the wheeled guns that made the thunder though I hadn’t seen one fired yet and I thought if rifles carried by men could do such a terrible damage what could the big guns do?

Rip the sky, I thought. Rip men from their
souls, tear the sun open, kill like a bad wind. Scared me watching them go past even wearing blue coats. Big guns, hard men, faces dirty with smoke and death.

And more. I was having trouble with Lucy. Or starting to have trouble.

There was some to say I had a prettiness about me. Delie she had a broken piece of looking glass and I studied on it for some time but couldn’t see it. I was too tall, too strong looking to be comely.

But Lucy she was different. She had the colty look that comes on young women. Spry legs that the slave-shift barely kept from prying eyes and she smiled at everybody and I thought, somebody don’t marry her soon she’s going to bust.

Something about her look, the way she moved, her smile made all the men look at her. Was like I wasn’t even there. Look past me, over me, around me to see Lucy. Men almost fell off the wheeled boxes with the big guns looking back at her and sometimes the walking soldiers would trip and fall on the man in front to watch her.

By afternoon I knew something had to be done so I took Lucy off the road into some whistle willow and sat her down. “Give me that extra shift.”

She handed me the shift from her bag. “What are you doing?”

“Covering temptation,” I said. “Before it turns to something worse.”

I took my sewing bag out, ripped cloth from her second shift and sewed a top on the one she was wearing to cover what men shouldn’t see, then sewed some more on the bottom to hide those legs.

“I look like a feed sack,” she said when it was done. “Like a bag of potatoes.”

“Good. Now let’s get to walking.” I handed her some of my corn bread. “Chaw on this and stop smiling.”

“Stop smiling?”

“At the men we meet on the road. Stop smiling and look down and don’t take on such a wiggle when you walk past them.”

“Well, I declare!” She stopped and stamped her feet in the dirt. “Is there a thing I’m doing
right
?”

I had to laugh.

“And I
don’t
wiggle. It’s just the way I naturally move …”

I started off walking again and set a good pace and she caught up soon, the mad gone, the smile back. You couldn’t stop that smile with a hit from a shovel. But the dress helped and she did look down when we met soldiers
and there wasn’t near the tripping and falling going on.

We walked until the sun was high and would have walked more ’cept we had to find water to drink and that brought us on to the work of scavengers.

Thirst come on us hard when it got warm, then hot, and there wasn’t a brook or spring to find. Not that it would have helped since there seemed to be dead horses in every opening. Never saw anything so hard on horses as war. In the fields where they’d had battles the dead horses were so close you could walk on them without hitting ground—’most as bad as the dead men.

“We’ll have to find a well,” I said. “Pull into a plantation and find water. Maybe a jar to carry some in. I should have thought when we left.”

“You were hurryin’,” Lucy said. “You were in a powerful hurry.”

We came on a gate with the name of Sunacres on it and started down a long lane with tall elms on either side. Would have been pretty hadn’t I known that slaves planted every tree, made every rock fence and rail corner, hand-shoveled the lane.

Something wrong. I could feel it before we came to the house—white and big and ugly with four white posts holding the front roof up. Little smoke here and there, no black people, no white people showing. Dead dog in the yard, dead long enough to have clouds of flies on it, dead horse by a paddock off to the side. No chickens. Nothing.

“I don’t like this,” Lucy said, whispering. “Let’s get water and get out of here.…”

There was a well with a hand pump in front of the paddock by the dead horse and I wanted to go there and get a drink but something, some call, kept pulling me towards the house. Just to see it, I thought, to see in a big house. Maybe nobody there. Just a peek. Stupid.

“Sarny, have you lost your brain?” Lucy saw me walking to the house. “Get
back
here!”

But I was going to see it. Up the steps, watching, listening. Didn’t hear nothing. Inside to a tall room with stairs going up the back and I couldn’t help but hold my breath.

Some bad things were done there. Everything torn apart and busted, blood on the floor. Bad things. Terrible things. But still the richness was there and I thought nobody, not a soul, should live like this, should have this, especially when it came on the backs of others.
Pretty colors and gold seemed to be on every corner, every decoration.

“Lucy,” I said, “come see. Come see how they lived here.”

She came in but stopped just inside the door and made the hex sign. “There’s bad here—see the blood? Bad.”

That’s when I heard it. Small sound. Like a puppy would make. Little noise, whimper.

“It came from upstairs.” Lucy heard it too. “It’s witches’ sounds. Let’s leave …”

But it wasn’t witches. Too soft for that and besides, I never heard a witch’s sound. Never saw a witch. Didn’t believe in them. You could believe the Bible or you could believe witches. I believed the Bible.

I moved to the stairs at the back of the big room and walked up them slow, thinking that women came down this in fine gowns. Walked down pretty and soft in fine gowns.

Sewed by slaves. Couldn’t stop the thinking. Everything pretty here was done by slaves.

At the top of the stairs was a dead man. White, old enough to be bald, blood on his shirt, and it stopped me. His eyes were open and staring at me ’cept not at me but past me and I remembered old Delie saying when somebody died the last thing they saw stayed on their eyes.

Somebody killed him. Was that still there? The sight of that? I called God to help me, make my heart stop pounding so hard, make my breath come even.

There. More sound, small crying. Not a dog. Maybe a woman, or a child.

“You’re touched,” Lucy whispered, and I jumped. Hadn’t heard her follow me. “This is bad, all bad.”

But I couldn’t stop now. Moved down the hallway past the man’s body and found the body of an old woman. White too, of an age to be married to the man. Eyes closed and blood on her front though not as much as the man.

Past her the body of a young woman, white, ’bout as old as Lucy and I won’t say more on her because it was worse than dead. Worse than all the dead in the field after the battle. Worse.

Still there came the sound and I went into a bedroom ’most as big as many people’s houses, bigger than the slave quarters at Waller’s. Everything was torn apart, tables and chairs turned, pictures pulled off the walls, but even with that there was a feeling of richness. Blankets off the bed would make a pretty dress, curtains would make a gown. Small rooms off to the side of the bedroom held clothes and I didn’t know they were closets. Didn’t know what a closet was then.

The sound came from the closet and I looked back in where it was dark and saw a small shape in the corner.

“Come out of there,” I said. “We ain’t going to hurt you.”

Little white boy. Younger than my Tyler. Couldn’t have been much over his second year. He didn’t come out so I reached in and fetched him out by the arm.

“What’s your name?”

But he didn’t answer. Just kept whimpering like a puppy and I looked up to the Lord and wasn’t all that happy with Him for treating me like this. “Now what am I going to do?”

Lucy she thought I was talking to her. “Do? Why, we’re going to leave this house and go to New Orleans, that’s what we’re going to do.”

“And the boy?” I held him close, thinking on Tyler. “What about him?”

Lucy she looked at me like I was crazy. “You’re going to leave him and get out of here. Are you thinking on taking him and raising him?”

“Don’t see a bunch of choices ’cept take him.”

“How far do you think we’ll get carrying a white child?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. But he’s needing help and it don’t much matter what color he is, does it? Might be we could take
him to a white family along the way. Just take him down the road a bit—”

“Just a bit? How many families you seen so far that would take in a strange boy?”

She was right. We hadn’t seen anybody in shape to take in boarders. We hadn’t seen anybody at all except people moving on the road and soldiers and bodies.

“We still can’t leave him. He’s too young to live on his own and there ain’t anybody else.…”

And that is how we came to have Tyler Two.

“Something’s broke with the part that lets him talk.”

Lucy she was sitting with Tyler Two in the light from the fire. We had stopped for the night and I didn’t much want to have a fire but it seemed even worse without the light so we moved back into a thicket so the light wouldn’t get out and made the fire small.

We were coming on to being rich. Before we left the plantation Lucy she found a wheelbarrow with an iron wheel and high sides and we took some blankets and matches and cornmeal and a jar of grease from the kitchen plus three jars to haul water. I found some rolls of heavy thread and string and a packet of needles that I put in my sewing kit. Lucy she found a big butcher knife and two spoons. I felt some bad taking all of it thinking it was stealing in some way but the people there they weren’t going to need it and we did.

We walked all day making good time with Tyler Two sitting on top of the load on the wheelbarrow. We must have passed enough people to make a town, blue-coated soldiers and free black men and women and sometimes white women and old people all moving along the road, and not one person said anything about two black women carrying a little white boy with corn-silk hair and sky-blue eyes on a wheelbarrow.

Folks they smelled the food in the wheelbarrow and wanted some but we had to stop sharing. There were so many people we would have been out of food in a short day.

You could tell the ones who wanted food. Black or white they were gant and walked weak and I wished we had a wagon full of corn bread and grease for them. ’Specially the children. There were many walking the road, some with older folks, some alone, and they all looked hungry and I couldn’t see them without thinking on Tyler and little Delie but we just didn’t have enough. Everybody headed north except us and the blue soldiers. We were going south. Some stopped to talk and they thought us touched for heading the wrong way.