Pa and our neighbor, Mr. Highgate, both were carrying rifles and told us to walk in line.
I knowed right off what it had to be. I knowed there was only one reason they’d let the white children and the Indian children leave without no one watching ’em. I said, “Pa, there’s slave catchers here, ain’t there? Is that why everyone’s toting guns?”
Pa said, “Don’t fret, son. We’s just being cautious. Ain’t no one seen nothing for sure yet.”
Pa told me that one of the Settlement’s white friends from Chatham had come busting in on horseback and warned that there were two American scallywags with pistols and shackles and chains asking questions ’bout the best way to get to Buxton.
We all looked ’cross the fields and watched the edge of the woods, fearing that the American kidnappers were gonna come out firing, trying to snatch someone into slavery.
A little ways from home the Preacher came running at us holding on to a long sharp blade from off a scythe. He said to Pa, “I heard there are two of them. I’m going to check south.”
Pa said, “Hold up, Zeph, they was supposed to be up in Chatham, that means they gunn come from the north. ’Sides, you shouldn’t be out there without no gun, someone with a firearm should go with you.”
The Preacher said, “If it was me, I’d circle around and come from the south. You all go look north. I’m not expecting any trouble. These are my woods, I know what’s what out here.”
Then he ran off south.
Didn’t nothing come from all the excitement we had. The worst thing that happened was we had twice as many Latin verbs to study at school when we went back.
The Preacher waren’t seen for the next couple of days and that did cause some folks to worry, but everybody knowed he disappeared all the time so didn’t no one pay it too much mind.
Two nights later I tiptoed out of my bedroom and peeked ’round the corner of the parlour to see if Ma and Pa were up. Waren’t no candles nor lamps burning so I looked up the stairs to check their bedroom next. It was dark there too. I went up a few steps and heard Pa snoring, they were sleeping for sure.
I slipped out of my nightshirt, put some clothes on, then crawled out my window and dropped on the ground. I waited a second to make sure waren’t nothing disturbed, then started running through the truck patch toward the trees.
I hadn’t got ten yards into the woods when all the sudden my heart quit beating and my blood ran cold! Something tall and white and ghostish, like a giant haint, came walking slow out from ’mongst the trees.
My mind acted like it was gonna get all fra-gile but it didn’t take much time afore I knowed it waren’t nothing but a horse, a stranger horse. It didn’t even take that much time for me to scat back home and jump into my bedroom window.
I slipped back into my nightshirt and ran up the stairs to Ma and Pa’s room. I called out, “Pa?”
Everybody was still a little jumpy what with them paddy-rollers ’round somewhere and the Preacher not being seen for a while so Ma and Pa were up in a flash!
I told ’em, “I couldn’t sleep and was looking out my window and saw a horse come from out of the woods!”
Pa said, “White folks?”
“No, sir, the horse didn’t have no rider.”
Pa said, “Were it one a our’n? You think someone leaved the barn door ajar?”
I told him, “No, sir. ’Twas a big white stallion with a saddle, nothing like none of ours.”
Pa snatched on some trousers, ran downstairs, grabbed a torch and his rifle, then ran outside barefoot.
He hadn’t said not to, so I followed close behind him.
Pa lit the torch and we started searching for signs of the horse. Pa picked up his tracks and we found him just down the road.
The horse had camped hisself in front of the Highgates’ home. His head was leaned down over their picket fence and he was chawing on bunches of flowers, uprooting most of Mrs. Highgate’s black-eye Susies.
Pa handed me the rifle and torch and walked up on the horse slow. He patted the horse on the neck and said, “There, boy. There now.”
The horse’s eyes had a wild roll to ’em but he didn’t seem to mind, so Pa picked up his reins and pulled the horse out of the flower garden.
I pointed at the horse’s haunch. “Pa! Look! He’s hurt!”
A big patch of dry blood was all over the horse’s right-hand flank.
Pa checked the horse over good. He even pulled the saddle off and said, “Ain’t him, but something’s done bled bad here.”
Pa gave me the horse’s reins then went to Mr. Highgate’s door and knocked loud.
Mr. Highgate’s window rose up and his shotgun poked out.
“Who there?”
“It’s me, Theo. Come on out, there’s a hoss what ain’t got no rider in your yard. Maybe someone’s afoot somewhere.”
Pa and Mr. Highgate stirred everyone and they lit torches and searched high and low but didn’t come up with nothing or no one.
The next morning, since his hand got hurt at the sawmill and he caint work, Mr. Highgate took the horse and saddle to the sheriff in Chatham so’s no one would say we stoled ’em. Some of the white people ’round here are always trying to blame everything that goes bad on Settlement folks and we waren’t looking for no trouble.
Three days after that, the Preacher showed back up with the fancy holster and the mystery pistol. After ’while he told Mr. Polite he’d found them whilst he was out in the woods near the river. He said he went into Chatham to see if the gun belonged to anyone there but it didn’t, so he was laying claim that it was his own.
People had a hard time believing the Preacher’s story. They said someone might find a white man’s pistol that had bounced out of his saddle or his jacket or his holster, but it waren’t likely they’d find a pistol and a holster all together. They said ’bout the only way to get a white man away from his gun and holster was to take it off of him whilst he was at rest in his coffin.
Ma was right when she said people that use to be slaves love to talk, ’cause soon after that folks started prettying up some of the wildest stories you could think of ’bout why that horse came to Buxton. Stories started getting told that the Preacher had stoled up on those two white men with the blade from that scythe and slit their throats and cut ’em into hunks then throwed their earthy remainders in Lake Erie.
They said there’d been two white twins from America riding ’round Chatham on two white stallions whilst toting two of the fanciest pearl-handle, silver-plate pistols just like the one the Preacher said he found. They said whilst the Preacher was killing those men, one of the horses spooked and bolted and that was the one that wandered into the Settlement. Then, they said, the Preacher rode the other white stallion to Toronto and sold it and the second pistol in the market there.
I thought this waren’t nothing but gossiping and story pretty-upping.
The way I figure, if the Preacher had took those guns from those men, how come he only said he found one pistol?
That don’t make no sense, that don’t make no sense atall. It’s mathematics and I ain’t real partial to that, but seems to me that as much as he enjoyed showing off the one gun he’d found, he’d’ve enjoyed showing off two of ’em twice as much! And everybody knowed it would be near impossible for the Preacher to keep a story as rousing as that all to hisself.
By the time me and Old Flap got back to the barn, Mr. Segee had already shut everything up and went home. That was good for me. I’d been counting on giving him two of the fish I’d chunked to say “thank you, kindly” for letting me take Flapjack out, but since the Preacher had took near ’bout half of what I caught, I waren’t gonna have no extras for Mr. Segee.
I got Old Flap back in his stall, shut the stable door, and started walking home.
Folks that had finished working and had cleaned up and already et waved or started calling to me from their stoops.
Mr. Waller yelled, “Evening, Eli. Them fish looks too heavy f
or a boy your size to be toting. You’s ’bout to end up busting something on you that you gunn need one day. Why don’t you ease your burden some, son, and set two or three of ’em over here?”
I told him, “Evening, Mr. Waller, but they ain’t heavy to me. You must have forgot how strong I am. ’Member how I helped you move those stones and you told me you ain’t never seen no boy young as me with so much strength?”
He said, “’Deed I do, Eli, ’deed I do. But ain’t no harm in me trying for a little Friday night fish-fry now, is there?”
I said, “No harm atall, sir, but I already told Mr. Leroy I was gonna give two of ’em to him and I already got someone that I’m-a try to swap this here big perch with.”
He said, “You keep me in mind next time, then, son.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll do that.”
A ways on, Miss Duncan-the-first and Miss Duncan-the- second both said, “Evening, Elijah, looks like you done good!”
“Yes, ma’ams!”
A little farther toward home, Mrs. Brown stood up out of her rocker, waved a handkerchief at me, and called, “Yoo-hoo! ’Lijah Freeman! Yoo-hoo! Just the boy I been waiting on!”
I said, “Evening, Mrs. Brown.”
“I just finish baking three cherry pies, ’Lijah, and Mr. Brown tells me he been having a powerful yearning for some perch. You suppose a pie be worth a perch?”
I said, “Yes, ma’am! I’d’ve had you two of ’em, but I had to do some tithing and got jacklegged.”
She said, “One’s fine, you know I don’t like nothing but catfish no way.”
I waren’t never gonna catch a catfish rock fishing. Catfish must be the smartest fish there is, it’s like them and carps were the only fish that added rocks and horseflies together and came up with something bad. They didn’t come off the bottom of the water for nothing.
I walked up on Mrs. Brown’s stoop. She always wore black and some of the times waren’t in such a happy mind as she was today. Her only baby, a two-year-old boy, died hard of the fever two years pass and ever since that happened, Mrs. Brown was being bothered by spells.
If you were out sneaking ’round in the woods at night when you were supposed to be sleeping, you might get a terrible fright when you came through the forest and saw her leaning up ’gainst a tree, humming and rocking to and fro with her arms wrapped ’round herself.
But ain’t nothing more terrorific than walking through the trees in the moonlight and coming up on her squatting down, brushing dirt from a spot on the ground that didn’t look no different from any other spot in the woods. But there was something ’bout that one particular spot that was calling Mrs. Brown and telling her to brush at it with her bare hand. And she’d brush it till it waren’t nothing but hard earth.
Other times, times like this, you wouldn’t’ve knowed there was nothing plaguing her. ’Cepting for wearing nothing but black clothes she was just as right in her mind as me. She told Ma she waren’t gonna start wearing colours again till the Lord blessed her with another child, but the midwife here in Buxton and the doctor from up in Chatham both said that waren’t never gonna happen.
Some folks say Mrs. Brown’s touched in the head, but ’cept for scaring me in the woods at night she treats me real kind. And everyone knows caint no one in the Settlement bake the way she does!
I ain’t trying to be disrespectful of Ma’s cooking when I say that neither. Ma can fry some tolerable good fish and make vegetables that ain’t exactly horrible, but she caint bake for nothing. Pa would get pretty excited if I showed up with one of Mrs. Brown’s pies. He never let on to Ma how happy those pies made him, but if he thought she waren’t listening and couldn’t see him, he’d give me some big hugs and spin me ’round the room and kick up his heels!
Mrs. Brown held her front door open and said, “Come on in and pick which one n’em pies you’s partial to, ’Lijah.”
I said, “Thank you, ma’am,” and pulled off my brogans and left ’em on the stoop next to all my fishing tools.
The inside of her house had trapped the smell of the pies and soon’s you crossed through the door you couldn’t help but open your nose wide as it’d go, lean your head back, close your eyes, and breathe in as much of that air as you could!
I stood still and took me two more deep breaths. I learnt a long time ago that when you’re smelling something real good, you only get two or three first-place smells of it afore your nose won’t take no more notice. I didn’t want to move or nothing so I could enjoy the smell afore my nose started recalling I was toting six dead fish.
After I took my fourth breath, I was smelling as much fish as I was smelling pies, so I opened my eyes and commenced breathing regular.
Mrs. Brown was smiling at me.
I smiled back. “They sure do smell good, Mrs. Brown.”
“I ain’t meaning to be unhumble, but you know they tastes better’n they smells, ’Lijah. Come on in the kitchen and pick you one.”
We walked through her parlour. It was one of the Settlement’s rules that all our houses had to look just ’bout the same on the outside. All of ’em had to have a stoop and a picket fence and a flower garden out front and had to be exactly ten paces off the road. It waren’t till you went into the houses that you saw the different ways that folks set ’em up.
Mr. and Mrs. Brown didn’t have much of nothing in their parlour. Where we had a table with a cloth and a vase for flowers and some chairs, they only kept a empty blue baby crib with a tired old white sheet over one corner. Where we had a big fireplace and mantel made out of bricks from the Settlement’s brickyard, they still had a fireplace made out of clay and rocks. Where Pa had paid Mr. Leroy to lay some maplewood floorboards, they still had floors made from rough pine. Their home only had one floor whilst ours had two. They’d only come up from America a couple of years ago and were still struggling.
The Browns et in the kitchen so they kept their eating table in there. Ma told me that lots of folks that use to be slaves couldn’t bust the habit of eating only in the room where they cooked, so heaps of people in the Settlement used their parlour for things ’sides eating food.
Mrs. Brown had the pies resting on a table near the back window.
Since I only had one perch for her, I picked the smallest pie and dropped the fish off the stringer into a big basin.
She said, “Thank you kindly, ’Lijah. Mr. Brown is sure enough gunn be surprised when he come home and have some perch!”
I took the pie. The tin was still warm! I said, “Thank you, Mrs. Brown. My pa’s gonna be surprised too!”
I stepped out on Mrs. Brown’s back stoop and scaled and cleaned the perch. I left the guts in the basin for her garden.
I went back into her kitchen. “I’ll bring you your tin back tomorrow, Mrs. Brown.”
“No rush, I ain’t gunn be baking no more till middle of next week nohow, so take your time. Tell your ma I ax ’bout her.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I took my five fish, my fishing tools, and my pie and started home again.
As I walked, I started calculating how I was gonna divvy up these last five fish. Three of ’em were enough for me and Ma and Pa if I didn’t eat too much, so Mr. Leroy was still gonna get the two I’d promised him.
Once I got home, I cleaned all five of the fish and Ma fried ’em up. After we et, I’d go take Mr. Leroy his share. He was always doing extra so he was the last one to lay off working. He never et till it was late.
It was easy to find Mr. Leroy. All you had to do was pay attention to the sound his axe made.
’Round this time of day, when it’s starting to getting duskish, the sound of Mr. Leroy’s axe is so regular and natural that Pa says it turns into a part of the scenery and you wouldn’t notice it unless you were trying to, or unless it stopped all the sudden.
It’s like the way you don’t notice the sounds toady-frogs make down by the river till they shut up. Then you say to yourself, “Them toady-frogs sure were putting up a awful racket
, how come I didn’t notice it afore?”
After I washed up I went out on the stoop to tell Ma and Pa I was gonna take Mr. Leroy his fish.
Ma’s hands never quit knitting. She looked over her spectacles and said, “Don’t you stay out too long, ’Lijah. If working with Mr. Leroy’s gunn mess with you getting up early and doing your chores, you knows which one of ’em you’s gunn give up, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Pa ain’t like Ma, he holds up on his whittling to talk. He don’t try to do whittling and nothing else together since he near whittled his little finger off that time whilst telling ’bout how hard he use to work in Kentucky. That finger still don’t do everything he wants it to do, but at least it’s still there. Mr. Leroy’s got him a finger that ain’t nothing but a nub.
Pa said, “You gunn work with him tomorrow?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good boy. On Sunday I’m-a help Mrs. Holton with some them stumps she got left. I’m-a need you and Cooter to come ’long.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ma’d put a rag on the plate of fish she’d fried up for Mr. Leroy, and I took it and headed down the road. Once I’d walked a spell I could hear him chopping in the south. He was down at Mrs. Holton’s place. She’s what Ma calls a unfortunate soul. Her husband got sick then got caught whilst they were getting free, but her and their two little girls got through.
She’d come to Buxton with lots of pieces of gold sewed up in her dress and bought fifty acres of land in the south of the Settlement. Everyone knowed ’bout her and talked ’bout her ’cause word was that out of the three hundred families here, she was the only one that never had to borrow no money to get her land. She paid for the whole thing cash on the barrelhead!
Folks are speculating all the time ’bout how much money Mrs. Holton has. She don’t flash it ’round or nothing, but folks say anyone that can buy fifty acres without no loan must be rich as a slave owner!
Elijah of Buxton Page 5