Walk on Earth a Stranger (14 page)

We crewmen grab our bowls and run to be served. Mrs. Joyner retrieves a checkerboard tablecloth from a trunk and spreads it out over a walnut table with shiny polish. It's an odd sight, all that fancy furniture sitting on the riverbank, surrounded by mud and grass, water and trees. People stare
as they pass, but Mrs. Joyner goes about smoothing that cloth just so and setting a perfect table like she's preparing for Sunday after-church visitors.

I sit on the edge of the flatboat's roof and dangle my feet, watching the Joyners eat their formal meal together. That's what civilization looks like out west, I suppose. Like a round peg in a square hole. As I use the cornbread to soak up the chowder, I find myself itching to put all that furniture away and out of sight.

“You sure you don't want to travel down river and see New Orleans?” Captain Chisholm says at my shoulder.

I jump. “No, sir, I'm set on heading west.” If he could find gold the way I can, he'd head west too. Anyone would.

“Thought as much.” He reaches out to shake my hand, and presses some coins into my palm. “Here's wishing you luck along the way.”

Before I can force out a thanks, I notice Joe packing leftover cornmeal cake into my saddlebag. “It's going to go bad with no one here to eat it,” he says.

“Please stay,” Red Jack says. “But only so I don't get demoted back to unskilled labor.”

“We emptied the whole boat,” I protest. “There're no more stalls to muck. You'll sleep in every morning like the lazy cat you are.”

He frowns at me, just like he did that first day, but now I know he means it kindly.

That's about all the good-byes I can take, so I pull my hat brim low to hide my watery eyes and head ashore. Peony paws
the ground, itching to stretch her legs, but I hang around, pretending to check my gear while Mr. Joyner haggles with some longshoremen about pay.

“Need help loading everything?” I ask Mr. Joyner.

“I'm not paying you,” he says.

“I didn't ask for pay.”

He hesitates, but he nods. “I'd be much obliged.”

As I heft a trunk toward the wagon, he says, “You might as well go north with us, at least as far as Cape Girardeau.”

My relief is short-lived. Mrs. Joyner, who sits the wagon bench, jumps in with, “Now, darling, don't impose yourself on the lad. I'm certain he has plans of his own.”

I angrily heave the trunk over the side, and it lands with a too-loud clunk.

“There's only one direction to go,” Mr. Joyner says, “and the lad might as well travel with us. It's too late to send him scouting ahead, and there's no point in making him wait behind when he's traveling light—He'll simply overtake us. He can help load and carry, and I don't even have to pay him.”

“That's fine by me,” I'm quick to add. It's not fine. It's highway robbery, is what it is. But it's also better than being alone.

Mrs. Joyner folds her hands into her lap and frowns.

We wait while Mr. Joyner hires two men who are relatively clean and able to provide references. Even so, we're another hour getting all the furniture loaded. Mr. Joyner climbs onto the bench, snaps the reins over the oxen, and the wagon lurches forward. Peony and I follow, Coney running circles at her heels.

We glimpse the Mississippi River through breaks in the trees as we ride along. I keep Peony behind the wagon and out of Mrs. Joyner's sights, which ensures that I inhale buckets of dirt and mud flecks. Andy and Olive peek at me through the bonnet, their cherub faces jerking up and down with each rut in the road.

We travel less than five miles before night begins to fall. The wagon slows and pulls over to the side. I steer Peony around and discover that we've reached a small farmhouse.

A small slave girl, no more than ten years old, answers the door and runs to fetch her master. He's a lean, older man, with skin like weathered hickory.

“Hello, good sir,” Mr. Joyner says. “My family and I—”

“What state are you from?” the old man asks.

“Tennessee,” says Mr. Joyner.

He grunts. “As long as you aren't from Illinois or Ohio or any of them places.”

I gape at him, realizing he means free states. Maybe things are different near the frontier, but no one in Georgia ever refused to help my father because of his Yankee ways.

The old man steps inside to have a brief conversation with his wife, and they reach an agreement. “We can provide accommodations and provisions. Supper and breakfast. You'll have to share the beds.”

Mr. Joyner offers many expressions of gratitude, as well as a few coins. After taking care of the animals, we go inside and find a cozy, warm cabin that smells of dried apples and
wet soot. We sit around a plank table beside a stone hearth. The table's centerpiece is a wooden vase, filled with wrapping-paper flowers dyed yellow, and I swallow against the sudden sting in my throat.

The tiny slave girl brings a tray of salt pork and onions, which isn't nearly as tasty as Fiddle Joe's cooking but still hits the spot. The men trade news, most of it focused on the gold in California and the settlement in Oregon territory. When the table is cleared, the old man and his slave drag a feather mattress out from the bedroom and place it before the hearth.

“I reckon you and your family can sleep here tonight. Your hired hands can have the back porch, and your boy can make do in the barn.”

Mrs. Joyner bristles. “He is not our boy. He's traveling with us temporarily.”

I don't understand how that woman can be so hot and cold, so kind one moment and so uppish the next. But I know better than to stay where I'm not wanted, so I excuse myself and slip into the barn.

“Looks like I'm sleeping with you tonight, girl,” I say to Peony. “Just like always.”

I'm so tired it's only a few minutes until I drift off. A whisper startles me awake.

“Mr. McCauley?” Mrs. Joyner's voice.

Lantern light pools around me, and I tense up in my bed of straw, but I don't turn over. “What?” Maybe she wants her blanket back.

“I . . . Um . . .” She falls silent.

“Spit it out, ma'am. I've very tired.”

She gasps a little, then says all in a rush: “Mr. Joyner says he wants you gone by morning.”

“What?” I flip around to face her. “Why? I haven't been any trouble. I work hard.”

Her face is even more prim by lantern light, her features sharp and mean. “We face a grave challenge, Mr. McCauley, as we head into the godforsaken wilderness. I must shelter my children, give them a chance at a good life. That means protecting them from . . .” She falls silent again, and a muscle in her cheek twitches.

“From people like me?”

“I am a
mother
, and a mother knows a runaway when she sees one. I'm sure you understand. Perhaps if you had references . . .”

“Does Mr. Joyner really know you're here?”

Her lips press into a thin line.

“Pardon my saying, but this is hardly the Christian thing to do.”

“I gave you that quilt!”

“And I suppose it made you feel good about yourself. Here, take it back.” I start to untangle myself from it.

She hesitates. Then: “No. It's yours. But, please . . .”

I let her plea hang in the cold night air for a spell, until she shifts on her feet and drops her gaze. Finally, I say, “I'll be gone by morning.”

She slumps in relief.

I say, “I wish you and your family the very best of luck, ma'am. Maybe I'll see you in California.” I don't really mean it, but it gives me a nasty twist of pleasure to see her startle at my words.

“To you as well, Mr. McCauley.” She turns and walks away fast, lantern light bobbing with each step.

I lean into Peony's shoulder. “How do you feel about leaving right now?” I whisper, and she nuzzles my hair in response. It's not like I could sleep after that, anyway.

I pull on Daddy's boots. My feet have gotten used to them, big size and all. I don't even get blisters anymore.

My hands shake as I throw Peony's saddle over her back, and I realize I'm crying. I wipe at my cheeks with the back of my hand. I grab Mama's locket and squeeze a moment, giving it a chance to refill my well of resolve.

I tighten the cinch, check my saddlebag, and mount up. Outside, a light mist is falling on a world that's so cold and wet it feels like a tub filled with misery. The Joyners plan to head north, either to Port Girardeau or St. Louis, so I'll take the first left I find and head north later.

Coney is curled up on the porch of the house. He lifts his head and stares quizzically. He stands, shakes himself, and follows us down the road a ways before whining and turning back. Of everyone in the Joyner family, I'll miss him the most.

I nudge Peony forward. “It's just you and me now, girl.”

Again. It's just you and me
again
, is what I should say. But I know she understands.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

T
he first person I meet on the road as the sun rises is a grinning huckster with a beard as stiff as a whisk broom. Patches cover his elbows, and a striped feather juts from his hat's band. His mule cart is loaded with pots and pans, bolts of fabric and plaster dolls, pickaxes and even wishbone-shaped divining rods that he claims will lead a fellow to gold.

“No, thank you,” I tell him. If the divining rods worked at all, my uncle wouldn't have killed my folks to claim my magic.

His smile is fierce and determined. “I have it on the best authority that these rods—”

“I don't have any money.”

His smile disappears like fog in the sun. “Good day, then.”

He snaps the reins, the mules protest, and the cart rattles forward. I turn Peony around and walk beside him.

“Can you tell me if this is the road to Independence?” I ask.

He waves his hand dismissively. “Every road will take you
to Independence if you choose the right direction and keep on going till you get there.”

“But which direction is the right direction?”

He points ahead. “If you go down to the river and turn north—”

“I don't want to go that way.”

“If I had any maps, I'd sell you one. Huh.” He rubs his whisk broom beard. “Maybe I should load up on maps.”

“Can I go that way?” I point the direction he's just come from.

He pulls up short and twists in his seat. “Head west and ask folks for the road to Charleston. You can make it there by lunchtime. Go to Mrs. Moore's boardinghouse on Market Street if you need a place to stay and tell her that—”

“Where do I go from there?”

He sighs. “From there, you'll head west to Sikeston, Poplar Bluff, and then Springfield. There are a lot of towns along the way, but if you remember those, it'll get you in the right direction.”

“Sikeston, Poplar Bluff, Springfield.”

“When you get to Springfield, you make a quarter turn to the right and head north. That'll get you to Independence.”

“Thank you, mister. I sure appreciate it.”
Charleston, Sikeston, Poplar Bluff, Springfield, Independence.
I tip my hat to him and turn Peony back around. I almost feel hopeful again.

“It's more than four hundred miles!” he shouts at me.

“Then I better get started!” I shout back.

“Good luck.”

“Good luck to you too, mister!”

Four hundred miles is nothing. I've traveled farther than that already. I'll reach Independence by early March, find Jefferson, and leave with one of the first wagon trains of the season. If everything goes well, we'll be in the gold fields of California by the end of summer.

An hour later, clouds roll in, and a cold rain falls, soaking me to the bone. Peony slogs through fetlock-deep mud. By the time we reach Charleston, my head feels thick, and it hurts to swallow. I'm far away from Georgia now, and more than willing to spend the twenty cents I can't afford to pass the night in Mrs. Moore's public boardinghouse, but it's already full up with folks heading west.

I keep going until nightfall, when I find a farmer willing to let me sleep on the floor in front of his hearth.

I make it as far as Sikeston before coming down with a fever, and I spend an anxious week burning up in a farmhouse near a place called Gray's Ridge. Despite the family's kind care, I rave something awful, fighting them constantly—first because I'm afraid they'll find out my secret, and later because in my feverish state I mistake the father for Uncle Hiram. Even after my fever breaks, I find him hard to look at, with his long, fine nose and keen gaze. When I'm well enough to travel again, they're glad to see me go, but not as glad as I am to leave. I give them two precious dollars for all the trouble.

It's a cold, wet spring, with day after day of weather that
can't decide if it wants to be rain or snow. Many of the roads are quagmires, trapping wagons and blocking passage. It's slow going, and I can't make up lost time no matter how hard I try.

These hills are chock-full of pioneers who are making an enterprise of boarding westbound travelers. I almost always find a bed, a meal, or unasked-for-advice in exchange for mucking a few stalls or splitting some firewood or—if I'm desperate—parting with a few pennies. When I get back on the road, I sometimes find a napkin full of cookies, or a little grain for Peony. Once, I even discover a tiny ball of lavender-scented soap tucked into my saddlebag.

In spite of the goodness all around me, the low clouds feel like a yoke about my shoulders, and the sky drizzles sorrow down on Peony and me as I slump over her withers. It gets harder and harder to smile at strangers, and each morning, I'm clumsy and slow about packing up and getting back on the road. One night, when I'm camped in a small glen after having shot a squirrel with my pistol, I'm finally able to put words to my misery.

I miss Daddy.

With the thought comes a flood of memory. The winter I was nine years old, Daddy announced that he would teach me how to hunt. Mama bundled us both up and packed all the jerky and hard tack we could carry and sent us on our way without wringing her hands once. Daddy and I hiked horseless into the woods and were gone six days.

He showed me how to test the wind, to read tracks and
scat, and to be as patient and ghostly as winter itself. He taught me to field dress an animal when it was too big to carry, to shoot a rifle without toppling over, and to find dry wood in the snow. At night, we scraped hides in front of our tent while the fire crackled and our clothes steeped in wood smoke, and he regaled me with tales of his own father, who headed west and spent years on the Ohio frontier in search of adventure and fortune.

Sure, I was little, but I was smart enough to understand the wistfulness in my daddy's voice. That's why Mama let him do wild things without complaint—like take his nine-year-old daughter on a hunting trip. Because the kind of man who fled Boston to make a new life in Indian country was the kind of man who might just keep on going. If Mama didn't let him sow some wild oats, maybe he'd do something wilder. Maybe he'd go west.

So it's now, with my own fire crackling, my lips greasy with the squirrel I just ate, and the night echoing with the distant yip of a coyote that I miss Daddy most. He should be here with me. We should have been on this adventure together.

On April 1, 1849 I reach Independence. I crest a rise, and there she is, stretching wide and strange below me.

My first impression is of mud. It spatters off horse hooves and wagon wheels, stains the base of every building and the legs of every pair of trousers, mixes with half-melted snow to create a soup of gray and brown. The few buildings making up the town proper are painted muddy white or muddy red.
Centered before the largest of these is the one bright spot: an American flag, whipping proudly from a high pole. It's the new one, with a full thirty stars.

Surrounding the town are acres of tents and wagons, thousands of oxen and horses; even a few hasty shacks, spread over a vast, flat landscape of mud and snow. And beyond it all is a slow, muddy river, curving gently into the horizon and shimmering like gray silk in the early spring sun.

I'm not sure what I expected. A neat town square like Dahlonega's. An empty corner with no one in sight but Jefferson McCauley, standing there with his hands in his pockets and a welcoming grin on his face.

I spend all day wandering, getting to know the lay of the land. I've never seen so many people all in one place. I'm bumped and jostled everywhere I go, and it's a peculiar thing to be so crowded and so alone at the same time.

The general store is a small, cluttered building with a floor made from poorly joined wood planks, all covered with muddy boot prints. I open my mouth to ask the clerk if he's met anyone named Jefferson McCauley, but words fail me.

A gleaming Hawken rifle is mounted on the wall behind him. It's Daddy's. Which means the brothers who robbed me are here in Independence. The scent of rotting forest trash suddenly fills my nose, as if I'm still hiding in that pile of musty leaves.

“Sir? Can I help you?”

My hands are clammy cold, and my legs twitch, as if to run.

Don't panic, Lee
. The brothers could have traded it to
someone bound for Independence. They're probably still plundering the back roads of Georgia or robbing flatboatmen along the river.

“Sir?”

“I . . . How much for that rifle?” I ask, pointing. Maybe it's not Daddy's gun. The wood grain is different, the polish a bit worn near the trigger guard.

“Sixty dollars.”

I gasp. “Why so much?”

He shrugs. “People need guns to go west, and they're willing to pay for 'em. Tell you what. You come back in a week, and if this gun hasn't sold by then, I'll let it go for fifty.”

“Sure. Thanks.” I stare at it, thinking of the twenty-four dollars I have left. The gun isn't Daddy's; I'm sure of it now. My fright made me stupid.

Even so, I can't bear to be in this store a moment longer. I ought to pick up some hardtack and a new whetstone for my knife, but I don my hat and turn to go.

“I knew a man who had a gun just like that,” says a voice at my shoulder. A familiar voice.

I whirl, my hand flying to my five-shooter.

A tall Negro grins down at me. Though a graying beard sprouts on his jaw, and his eyes are crinkled with new lines, I recognize him at once. “Free Jim!”

He looks me over. “Well, hello, uh, Mr. . . .?”

“McCauley,” I whisper.

“Mr. McCauley! Aren't you a sight for sore eyes.”

It's like God dropped a little piece of home right in front
of me, and it's all I can do to resist throwing my arms around him. Instead, I hold out my hand, which he clasps. “Nice to see you too, Mr. Boisclair.”

“Long way from Dahlonega,” he observes as his eyes continue to search my face.

“I'm not the only one who's come a long way.” Though it's only been a couple of months, Free Jim looks as though he's aged years. A thousand questions dance around in my head.
Why did you leave? Where is Jefferson? Is my uncle looking for me? Is he
here? I manage, “Rough trip?”

His smile drops away, leaving only fatigue. “Maybe I'll tell you about it sometime.”

“Maybe we'll swap stories.”

“Hey, you there,” the store clerk interjects. “You going to buy anything? Because if not, I'd rather you didn't clutter my doorway.”

We're nowhere near the doorway. “Show some respect,” I snap. “Mr. Boisclair is a free Negro and a respected businessman, and his shop is about ten times bigger and cleaner than this godfor—”

“Let's go, Lee,” Free Jim says, tugging my arm. I let him drag me out the door, even though I'm seething. The street is bustling. A buggy rolls by, spattering mud onto my legs.

“Guess I'll have to do business elsewhere,” I tell him as we walk toward Peony. “There's another store a few streets over by—”

“I didn't need your help in there.”

“I wasn't trying to help. It's just . . . He had
no
right to talk
to you that way.”

He sighs and changes the subject. “Glad to see Reuben's palomino in good health. I thought that was her, but I wasn't sure until I saw you inside.”

“Jim, I have to ask.” I drop my gaze and shuffle my feet, gathering my words and my pluck. “Did you travel with anyone? I mean . . . Is anybody from Dahlonega here with you?”

“I came alone.”

“Oh.” It feels like I can breathe again. “That's good.”

“Your uncle Hiram left a few weeks after you did,” he adds gently, “when it was clear you'd run off.”

My gaze darts around the busy street, even as I grab for Peony's reins. “Is he here? Did he—”

“Hiram sold the Westfall land to Mr. Gilmore and went to catch a boat in Charleston. He's sailing to California by way of Panama.”

My knees go watery with relief, and I lean against Peony for support.

“He sent some men west after you, just in case. But no one caught even a hint of you.” His eyes twinkle. “They were looking for a young lady, after all.”

My plan worked. I can hardly believe it.

“Well, except that good-for-nothing Abel Topper,” he continues. “He rode back into town more than a week after you left, insisting he chanced upon your mare. By then it was too late; you were too far ahead.”

“Where's Topper now?”

“He left for California with your uncle, once it was clear no
one would hire him for the railroad.” In a dropped voice he adds, “They aim to reach the gold fields ahead of you.”

I nod. I've always known I'll have to face Hiram again someday. “At least I won't see him on the trail. Is anyone still looking for me? Did he post a reward or something?”

“Not as far as I know.”

But there's an agitation about him. He opens his mouth to say something, closes it. He runs a hand through his tight beard, clears his throat, tries again. Finally, he asks: “Did Hiram kill Reuben and Elizabeth?”

I can hardly force the word past the lump in my throat. “Yes.”

He nods, as if he'd already worked out the answer. “I expected he'd do something foolish someday.”

“Why?” Tears sting my eyes, and my hands clench so hard that my nails dig into my palms. “What are you talking about? I don't understand!”

Free Jim settles a giant hand on my shoulder and clasps it. “Do you have a place to stay?”

“Sure,” I lie. I can't bring myself to tell him I lost most of his money and all of his shirts.

“I have some things to do. Meet me tomorrow at the Hawthorn Inn. It's two blocks north of the square. Noon. We'll talk.”