Soon Be Free (14 page)

A luxurious steamboat side-paddled its way
through the center of the river, lights dancing on the water. James yearned to be on that boat just for one warm, dry, belly-filling night, but that wasn't possible, not with two escaping Negroes.

They walked upriver until they found a narrow crossing place. James said, “Reckon we can ford the river here? We can wade out to those melting ice islands.” He remembered Miz Lizbet's tales of runaways crossing the river by leaping from one ice pocket to the next as if they were cobblestones.

“I don't know,” Will said. “If any one of those floes out in the middle won't hold us, we'll sure enough drown in the icy water.”

James reminded him that whatever ice wasn't broken up and melted by the steamboat would certainly be solid enough to support them.

“That water look mighty col',” Homer said, shaking his head. He tossed his rubber ball from hand to hand. “Freezin' mighty col'.”

Callie was skeptical as well. “You expect me to jump from one piece of ice to another? Did you stop to think how my feet are going to freeze right onto that ice?”

But Homer had a solution. He pulled out of his shirt the gingham napkins that had once held his food, and he tied them around Callie's feet with perky little knots poking over the top. “Now you got red-and-white shoes, yes, suh!”

Homer and James, wearing boots, had no trouble leaping across the first three chunks of ice, and Callie followed them, slipping dangerously, but she was agile.

However, it was impossible for Will's crutch to gain purchase on the slick ice, and plumb hazardous for him to swing from one floe to another on his leg. And all this in the dark. “I can't do it,” Will said grimly. “Y'all will have to go on without me.”

James reached across and grabbed Homer's arm just as he was ready to jump to the next platter of ice. “We have to go back, all of us.”

By the time they were back on the shore, Will had a better idea.

“In the first light we'll build us a raft.”

James thought about the first runaway Ma had harbored at their house. He'd been a master with a hammer and nails; where was he
now?
Anyway, they had no tools to build a watertight raft that would carry them across this mean water.

Will had it all thought out, in spite of a cold rain that suddenly turned the morning into pure misery. He showed them how to build two makeshift rafts of logs and branches tied together with hickory withes. Then they had to wait the day out until it was safe to put their rafts into the chilly water.

Pelted with rain, they kept their eyes on the
flickering lanterns dotting the other side of the river and tried poling themselves across. Homer hand-paddled until his arms hung limp as flags, and all they did in their hours of labor was go round and round in ever-widening circles to avoid those same ice floes that were meant to be their salvation.

“We're through with this foolishness,” Will announced. “I say we take our chances finding the fishermen Solomon heard about. He believes they're friendly, that they'll ferry us across in a skiff like they do others.”

“But what if they're not friendly?” Callie argued. Her voice from the other raft seemed to bubble up out of the black water, for James couldn't see her at all. “They might just send us back to Bullocks'.”

“No, suh, I ain't goin' back,” Homer said, and he paddled even harder.

“Now's a good time for some of your magic, Callie,” muttered Will. “Follow me, we're going back to shore.”

They spread out on the shore. Tired as a racehorse, James gazed up at the heavens. The rain had let up a bit, and now he could see the North Star, taunting him, telling him that he and Callie and Will and Homer weren't any closer to the safety of Lawrence, Kansas, than they were to the stars themselves.

“What do you think about those fishermen they
said would help us?” Callie whispered, propped up on one elbow. She bolted up, and her elbow jabbed James. Her face was silvery in the moonlight. She closed her eyes, and James saw them working under her eyelids, like Ma in prayer. But Callie conjured up a different kind of miracle. Shivering and dozing, James heard her firm voice: “It'll be all right with the fishermen. I saw 'em.”

“How'd thee see them, Callie? Tell me that.”

“Mama Pru and me, we can see things before and after, we can see things up close and way far off. We can see what ain't even ever going to
be.”

Sometimes Ma said when she was praying that she could see things other folks missed because their minds were overgrown with weeds. But this was different.

James gave Callie a skeptical glance, and she bristled. “You don't have to believe me, James Weaver, but you'll see soon enough. The fishermen are waiting for us to come, and we gotta go
now.”

“Yes, suh!” Homer said as Callie pulled each of them to their feet. She barely said another word the rest of the night while they trekked on toward the fishermen's shack on rain-soaked ground as soft as a belly.

• • •

“That must be it,” Will said, pointing to a small lean-to on the south bank of the Ohio. That place
sure looked pitiful in the first light of morning, all rotted wood and nailed-up windows and a porch step sloping about forty-five degrees toward the ground.

Homer said, “Look like it'll fall over if the win' blow too hard.”

Will studied Miz Lizbet's hand-drawn map. “Yep, right halfway between Owensboro, Kentucky, and Rockport, Indiana. That's the fishermen's hut, all right.”

It had better be,
James thought, because he couldn't bear one more night outside in the biting rain. Why hadn't somebody told Ma, when she came up with this harebrained idea, that March was the rainy season in these parts? Four days had passed since James had been dry, and his soggy stockings had worn blisters on his heels; every step was torture. The first two nights they'd been walking, James had passed the time by daydreaming about crisp white sheets and a big old heavy goose-down quilt such as Ma was always sewing on. The last two nights he'd dreamed about a hearty meal. By then they were eating nothing but the roots and berries and leaves Callie had learned about from Miz Pru, and an occasional scrawny carrot or potato they might pull up in somebody's garden that had barely taken root this early in the spring.

A thick rope of smoke twirled out
of the chimney of the fishermen's shack, promising warmth inside, maybe even some hot chicory coffee or steaming soup.

“I'd best go up to the door alone,” James suggested. “Thee hide back until I'm sure Callie's prediction is right.”

“Oh, chicken livers, James. I've seen these fishermen in my head. Just trust me.”

“Thee doesn't know much about my family, Callie. My pa's a lawyer. With him, everything's got to be proved.”

Callie crossed her skinny arms over her skinny chest. “Well, seems to me what you need's a little faith, James.”

“Oh, I know about that, too,” James said with a shimmering sigh. “My ma's one hundred percent faith. Faith and fortitude.”

Will chuckled. “My ma says yours is the stubbornest woman she
ever
met.”

“If your daddy's all proving, and your mama's all believing, it's a wonder they ever got together,” Callie sputtered. “Go and knock on that door, Mr. Proofman, and you'll see I'm right.”

No one answered. James pushed the door open a couple of inches; Callie crept up right behind him. The warmth of the room urged them forward—the smoldering embers in the fireplace and the black kettle swinging over the hearth, licked by little tongues of flame.

On the rough-hewn table was a message, burned into smooth hide:

WELCOME WAYFARERS. THE OLD MAN IS A-WAITING.

“What does thee suppose that means, the old man?”

“It's the song, James, doesn't anybody sing it where you come from? The old man is a-waiting for to carry you to freedom. Follow the drinking gourd.' ”

“I remember Miz Lizbet used to sing that.”

“Natcherly,” Callie said, motioning for Homer and Will to come into the warmth of the little house. “It's a secret code telling us how to cross the Ohio River. This way's freedom.”

The shrill whistle sliced the air again. I could hear Jeep's heart hammering next to mine. I raised my head off the ground to see what the whistle-blowing woman would do. Mike cussed under his breath, or maybe it was a prayer. On the other side, the dog was flipping his tail and licking Jeep's face like an ice-cream cone, and I heard Jeep whisper, “Whoa, boy, that tickles.”

“Dog's a good judge of character,” the woman said. “You can get up.” Her voice seemed small for her square icebox build. Dusting off my jeans, I could finally look at her closely. She wore a huge turquoise-and-silver squash-blossom necklace and about a dozen rings, and she carried a twenty-pound bag of dog food over her shoulder like a baby, like it weighed nothing.

“Who are you kiddos?” she asked.

Jeep elbowed Mike, who elbowed me, who said the first thing that popped into my mind. “Who are
you?
” Good stall!

“I'm Faith Cloud, from next door. I feed Wolf while Mattie is gone.”

“The dog's name is Wolf?” asked Mike.

“Look at him. He's no Tinkerbell,” Jeep said. He was starting to regain his dignity after being facedown in the dust.

Now Wolf was on his hind legs, nosing the bag of dog food and Faith's underarms. “Wolf just loves my Ban Roll-On. Down, boy. Who did you say you were?”

“I'm Dana. I'm, uh, Mattie's niece.”

“Oh, honey, she talks about you all the time. I hope you didn't come far, because Mattie's gone for a few days.”

I put the back of my hand to my brow in a stage gesture. “Oh, I'm so disappointed. I wanted to surprise her on her birthday.”

“Today's not her birthday. She's a Taurus, same as me.”

“No, on
my
birthday. Did I say ‘her birthday?' ”

“This very day is your birthday? Well, how 'bout that! Listen, come on over to Faith's house, kiddos, and we'll put a candle in a Twinkie. It's the least I can do for Mattie's niece. Mattie's just the dearest neighbor old Faith Cloud's ever known, and I've lived awhile, you bet. How old do you think I am? Go ahead, guess.”

“I dunno,” Jeep said. “Fifty-seven?”

Faith grimaced as if she had a sudden gas pain. “Pushing fifty. Me and Mattie were born the very same day, and Mattie and me being next-door neighbors, can you beat that?”

The way she kept saying
Mattie
and not
Mattie and Raymond
gave me a brilliant hunch. “I haven't met my aunt's new husband. Is he a nice man?”

Faith's eyes clouded over. “She deserves better. Who are these handsome gents with you? Come, we'll all shake hands on the way over to Faith's house.”

She led us into her sunny back porch, three walls of which were picture windows. It was her studio. Canvases stood stacked against the house wall, and the redbrick floor was covered with a crunchy tarp under the easel where Faith's current project dripped thick globs of paint.

“Don't touch that canvas, it's wet,” she reminded us as she went to the kitchen for iced tea and Twinkies.

We all stared at the bold blotches of crimson, yellow, and fuchsia pink. The thick pockets of paint looked like coagulated body fluids.

“I don't get the concept,” Jeep said. “The only thing I recognize is this white feather.” It was a genuine feather, not paint, and it looked like it had just floated down and its vein had stuck onto the wet canvas. It fluttered gently in the breeze from the north window.

Faith came out with a loaded tray. “Do you like it?” she asked shyly.

Mike made a face, but Jeep covered for him. “The feather's really cool.”

“Oh, it's more than cool.” She handed each of us
a glass. The tea was milky, as though it had sat in the fridge for a week. “It's a Lenni Lenape legend.”

“Who's Lenni Lenape?” asked Jeep.

“That's our name, my tribe. In our language it means
the real people.”
Faith's laughter was like the tinkling of glass bells. “You probably think you're the real people,” she said, pointing to Jeep. “What do you call yourselves these days? Afro Americans? American Africans? Ho! People try to call us Native Americans, but you can ask any one of us, and we'll tell you. We're Indians, and proud of it!”

Wonderful heat radiated off the walls of the fishermen's hut. Suddenly James felt a rumbling beneath his feet when the floor started rising! He jumped aside. Sabetha's eyes peered out of a two-inch slot.

“Mama, that you?” Callie threw the trapdoor open and pulled her mother up into the room. Miz Pru followed, with Solomon behind her.

James was never so glad to see anybody! He watched Solomon get taller with each step as he gently pushed Miz Pru up through the trapdoor. And didn't Miz Pru come up talking, as usual!

“Smell better up here. All of you's here?” she asked. By now she'd shed all her turkey feathers and hemp stalks and was no bigger than Callie. “How am I gonna know if I don't hear your voices, tell me that?”

“I be here, Mama Pru.” Homer hugged his mother and shyly placed the red ball in her hand. She dropped that ball like it was a steaming potato. Maybe she knew it had been in the dogs' mouths, and Homer's, and every possible unsavory place between here and there.

Miz Pru petted Homer's thick square of woolly hair and asked, “How 'bout that stubborn white boy?”

“I'm here,' Will assured her.

“And the one talks so pretty?”