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THE WATSONS GO TO BIRMINGHAM—1963
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For my family
who always believed
CONTENTS
1. Trouble
2. The Broken Plate
3. Harrison's Warning
4. Old Master Hackler's Ghost
5. Onions
6. Still as a Tree
7. Night Scare
8. Spiders and Candles
9. Two Fingers Gone
10. River of Death
11. Cornfield Bottoms
12. The River Man
13. Hetty Scott
14. A Forest of Silence
15. The Gray Yarn
16. Widow Taylor
17. Beneath Hay and Feed Sacks
18. Our Poor Colored Brethren
19. Laid to Rest
20. Carryin On
21. Ham, Eggs, and Miz Kettle
22. A Stringer of Fish
23. Green Murdock
24. Ace of Spades
25. Negro Hollow
26. Red Stars in a White Sky
27. Harrison's Secret
28. Snow Coming
29. Ordee Lee
30. Going North
31. Haste Will Be Your Undoing
32. Keep Your Eye on the Sun
Map
Author's Note
Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Keep your eye on the sun
See how she run.
Don't let her catch you with your work undone.
I'm a trouble, I'm a trouble.
Trouble don't last always.
—Virginia slave song
Trouble
Truth is, trouble follows me like a shadow.
To begin with, I was born a slave when other folks is born white. My momma was a slave and her momma a slave before that, so you can see we are nothing but a family of trouble. Master sold Momma before I was even old enough to remember her, and two old slaves named Harrison and Lilly had to raise me up like I was one of their own, even though I wasn't. Then, when I was in my eleventh year, the old slave Harrison decided to jump into trouble himself, and he tried to run away.
Problem was, I had to go with him.
The Broken Plate
It all started on a just-so day in the month of September 1859, when I broke my master's plate while clearing the supper table. I tried to tell Lilly that if Master Hackler hadn't taken a piece of bread and sopped pork fat all over his old plate, I wouldn't have dropped it.
But Lilly kept her lips pressed tight together, saying nothing as she scraped the vegetable scraps into the hog pails.
“And Young Mas Seth was sticking his foot this-away and that-away tryin to trip me up,” I added.
Lilly didn't even look at me, just kept scraping and scraping with her big, brown hands.
“Maybe it was a spirit—could be Old Mas Hackler's dead spirit—that got ahold of me right then and made that plate fly right outta my hands.”
Lilly looked up and snorted, “Spirits. If Old Mas Hackler wanted to haunt this house, he'd go an’ turn a whole table on its end, not bother with one little china plate in your hands.” She pointed her scraping knife at me. “You gotta be more careful, Samuel, or they gonna sell you off sure as anything, and I can't do nothin to help you then. You understand me, child?”
“Yes'm,” I answered, looking down at my feet. Every time Lilly said something like this to me, which was more often than not, it always brought up the same picture in my head. A picture of my momma. She had been sold when I was hardly even standing on my own two legs. Right after the Old Master Hackler had died. Lilly said that selling off my momma paid for his fancy carved headstone and oak burying box, but I'm not sure all that is true.
In my mind, I could see my momma being taken away in the back of Master's wagon, just the way Lilly told me. Her name was Hannah, and she was a tall, straight-backed woman with gingerbread skin like mine. Lilly said that she was wearing a blue-striped headwrap tied around her hair, and she was leaning over with her head down in her hands when they rode off. The only thing Lilly knew was that they took her to the courthouse in Washington, Kentucky, to sell her.
After my momma had gone, it had fallen on Lilly's shoulders to raise me as if I was her own boy, even though she wasn't any relation of mine and she'd already had two sons and four daughters, all sold off or dead. But she said I had more trouble in me than all six of her children rolled up together. “I gotta be on your heels day and night,” she was always telling me. “And even that don't keep the bad things from happening.”
When she was finished with the hog pails, Lilly came over to me. “How's that chin doin?” She lifted the cold rag I'd been holding and looked underneath. “Miz Catherine got good aim, I give her that.”
After I had broken the china plate, Master Hackler's loud, redheaded wife, Miz Catherine, had flung her table fork at me.
“You aren't worth the price of a broken plate, you know that?” she hollered, and sent one of the silver forks flying. Good thing I had sense enough not to duck my head down, so it hit right where she was aiming, square on my chin. Even though it stung all the way up to my ear, I didn't make a face. I was half-proud of myself for that.
“You pick up every little piece,” Miz Catherine had snapped, pointing at the floor. “Every single piece with those worthless, black fingers of yours, and I'll decide what to do about your carelessness.”
After that, Lilly had come barreling in to save me. She had helped me sweep up the white shards that had flown all over, and she told Miz Catherine that she would pay for the plate. Master usually gave Lilly a dollar to keep every Christmas. “What you think that plate cost?” Lilly asked Miz Catherine as she swept.
“How much do you have?” Miz Catherine sniffed.
“Maybe $4 saved up.”
“Then I imagine it will cost you $4.”
So the redheaded devil Miz Catherine had taken most of Lilly's savings just for my broken plate—although, truth was, Lilly really had $6 tucked away. And she had given me a banged-up chin. But, as Lilly always said, it could have been worse.
Then we heard Master Hackler's heavy footsteps coming down the hall. He walks hard on his heels, so you can always tell him from the others.
“You be quiet as a country graveyard,” Lilly warned. “And gimme that cloth.” Quick as anything, she snatched the cloth from my chin and began wiping a plate with it.
“Still cleaning up from supper?” Master Hackler said, peering around the doorway. “Samuel's made you mighty slow this evening, Lilly.”
“Yes, he sho’ has.” Lilly kept her head down and wiped the plates in fast circles. “But I always git everything done, you know. Don't sleep a wink till everyt
hing gits done.”
“What should we do about the boy's carelessness, Lilly?” he asked in a hard voice. I could feel my throat tighten, as if a big snake had wrapped itself around it.
“Samuel's nothin but a child,” Lilly answered, calm and even-voiced as always. “Still learning how to keep ahold of his self.”
“Catherine thinks he ought to be punished, so he's more careful next time. A few stripes of cowhide would make a difference, she says.”
The snake squeezed tighter, and I dug my fingers into my palms.
“I always git after him for his carelessness, Mas Hackler. You know I does,” Lilly continued, laying on her sweet tone smooth as jam on a slice of bread. “I'm gonna take away his supper tonight. I got a good bean soup and a peach pie made, and I ain't giving him even a bite. Goin hungry, that's what gits to a boy his age.”
Master walked to the corner of the kitchen where I slept.
“Going cold ought to get to him too.” I could hear him snatch up my two blankets. “I'll take these for tonight, maybe tomorrow night. You see to it, Lilly, that he doesn't curl up on those hearthstones to keep warm.”
“Yessir, I will. You can be sho’ I will.”
Master's big shadow stood over me. “You're as weak and chickenhearted as a girl,” he spat. “Got to have some old, slave woman stand up and fight for you.” And then the heels pounded away from me, and took the snake around my throat with them.
Once Master Hackler was out of earshot, Lilly said sharply, “Git up and open that kitchen door, Samuel.” She hefted up the tub of old dishwater and carried it outside. While I stood there, Lilly flung the water hard as she could into Master's yard. It splattered like an angry rain over the steps, the yard, and the few scraggly plants in the kitchen garden.
“You mad at Mas Hackler?” I asked. “For what he said?”
Lilly turned and glared at me with eyes that had changed to smoldering coals in her dark face. “No. But I sho’ is mad at you. You always go and bring me troubles I don't need.” She slammed the tin tub down on the step. “I'm old and I seen enough hard times in my life. Now, you go on and take them hog scraps to Harrison in the barn ‘cause I don't even wanta look at you anymore this evening.”
I could feel the hot tears coming into my eyes. Lilly said folks were only allowed to cry if people were near dying or dead, so I tried to keep her from seeing my eyes filling up faster than a pump at a trough.
Keeping my head down, I grabbed the hog pails from the kitchen. But Lilly's hand latched onto my arm as I hurried through the door. I thought she was going to give me one of her talking-to's.
Instead, she said in a low voice, “You ask Harrison for something to eat, you hear? I promised Master that I wouldn't give you no food, but I didn't promise him no one else would.” She gave me a little push.
“Now, git outta my sight.”
Harrison's Warning
I found Harrison in the barn greasing Master Hackler's riding boots. Harrison was the oldest person on Master's farm. He didn't even know his true age, but he said he figured he was close to threescore and ten, give or take a handful of years.
I pulled up a milking stool and watched him rub circles of sharp-smelling bootblack into the leather. His fingers were so stiff from being old that they always reminded me of wood spindles, and I could hardly keep my eyes from staring at them and thinking about all my fingers turning into pieces of wood someday.
“Mas'er Hackler told me his boots been leakin,” Harrison said slowly, without looking up. “So I'm a-gonna make them good and black.” He spit on the boot top to make the grease smooth. “Need bootblack on them fancy leather boots of yours, Samuel?” Even though he was looking down, I could see a slow grin wrinkling across his face.
“I ain't got boots,” I said. With my shirtsleeve, I took a quick swipe at drying my eyes. “I ain't even got a pair of shoes to wear ‘til November.”
“Well, how you gonna keep yo’ tender, brown feet dry, then?” Harrison slapped his leg and laughed so hard that I could see all his missing teeth, which were a lot. I laughed too, even though I wasn't sure what he thought was so downright funny.
Then Harrison grew serious and gave me a look. “So I hear you got yo'self in trouble with Mas'er and Miz Catherine again. That true?”
I studied the hog scraps in the pails—browning apple cores, turnip greens, red tops of beets, all mixed together. Hogs could eat food right off whitefolks’ plates, I thought, and not have to worry about a thing
“Broke a good plate and put Miz Catherine in a fit. That why you crying them big ol’ tears?” Harrison looked up. “You gonna answer me sometime ‘fore the day of the Great, Samuel?” he said sharply.
I didn't say a word.
Heaving a loud sigh, Harrison set the riding boot down and stood up. “Think you got hard times, huh? You ain't seen no hard times yet, Samuel. Mine and Lilly's hard times is almost over, but your hard times is all ahead of you.”
I could tell what Harrison was doing next. He was turning around and lifting up his shirt back so I could look at them. I had seen them a hundred times, and seeing them always brought the snake twisting back around my throat.
“You look right here, son. Look at what I'm showin you.”
I couldn't do a thing but look up at them again. On Harrison's stooped brown back, the terrible stripes tore back and forth like the jagged scars that lightning makes when it splits through the bark of trees. Seeing them made me feel weak all over and sick.
“Them's hard times, child. You just remember that,” he said softly, letting his shirt slide back down. Then, turning back toward me, Harrison put his arm around my shoulders and gave them a hard squeeze.
“ ‘Nough that,” he said. “You know what I'm sayin to you. Now, let's git them hogs fed ‘fore they start chewin up the walls of the barn.”
Outside, Master kept a couple of big sows and some smaller hogs. I called the fattest, red-backed one Miz Catherine, when no one was around, and an ugly runt with a two-color nose was Young Mas Seth.
It would be slaughtering time come December, and Master said he wanted them all getting nice and fat. Young Mas Seth was already plump and Miz Catherine, she filled up half a barn door. The real ones and the hog ones both.
I helped Harrison heave the pails into the hogs’ trough, and we watched them squeal and fight their way into the slop. It reminded me again that Lilly had made a peach pie, and that I wasn't supposed to get a thing to eat that night unless Harrison gave me something. But, truth was, I knew Lilly'd try to pinch and save some for me to eat the next morning, if I kept quiet about it.
As we leaned over the fence watching the hogs, Harrison cleared his throat loudly and said, “Sleep with your top eye open this evenin, you hear me, Samuel?”
“What?”
Harrison stared up at the dark windows of the house for a minute, as if someone's eyes might be watching us. “I says, keep a look out this evenin,” he repeated, under his breath. “Things is gonna happen then, I hear.”
“What?” I could feel my heart thud in my chest. “Is something happenin to me?”
“Might be.”
“What's gonna happen?”
“Can't say. Just look out. That's all I'm tellin you.”
Right then, Master's oldest son, Cassius, came flying out of the house. He was trying to pull on his black frock coat, with one sleeve stuck out the wrong direction. I figured he was probably going to take one of Master Hackler's horses down the road to the Eagle Tavern in Blue Ash, Kentucky, where he would drink rum and carry on for half the night. And his hat was already setting the wrong way on his head, I could tell.
“I gotta saddle a horse for that one,” Harrison said, pulling a thumb toward Cassius. “You just look out, like I tol' you.”
Cassius had almost reached the edge of the yard.
“You sayin look for something good or bad?” I tried to ask while Harrison was moving away.
“Just look, that's all.” Harrison flung
a stray turnip into the hog pen. “Go on now, child.” He flapped his hand at me. “Go.”
“Tell me,” I kept on, my voice rising. “They sellin someone off? That what you heard?”
“Git away from me ‘fore you git me in a heap a’ trouble,” Harrison hissed. “You do the things you s'posed to be doin. I got my own work to do.”
So I couldn't do a thing but watch his hunched-over back disappear into the shadowy darkness of the stalls, knowing that something was about to happen to us.
Old Master Hackler's Ghost
The kitchen was cold and silent as death that night. Even the mice that usually scratched and scuttled along the shelves weren't making any sounds.
Sleep with your top eye open, Harrison had said.
And before going to her cabin for the night, Lilly had warned me to stay away from the warm hearthstones, like Master had ordered.
So I huddled on my straw tick, staring at the embers glowing in the black belly of the fireplace far across the room. Although I wanted to crawl over and warm myself by the fire, I didn't dare move. Maybe someone had his eyes on me, maybe that's what Harrison had meant.
I looked up and wondered if Master Hackler could see between the wide beams of the kitchen ceiling. His bedchamber was right up there. Perhaps one of his gray eyes was peering down at me, at that very moment, waiting for me to creep toward the hearth, where it was warm. Then he'd come pounding downstairs, cowhide me, and take me to the courthouse in Washington, Kentucky, to sell me, same as my poor momma.
It was too quiet in the house. Most times when I slept in the kitchen I could hear the fire popping, or the loose shutter upstairs creaking back and forth. Or Master Hackler's loud snoring and Miz Catherine's whistling noises. Seemed like the whole house was holding its breath. I closed my eyes and tried to think of something else besides being hungry for Lilly's bean soup and peach pie, and being as shivery as I'd ever been.
My mind started wandering to the Old Master Hackler, who had died in the bedchamber upstairs years before. He was one of the meanest, sorriest men that God ever put breath in or took breath out of. That's what Lilly said.
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