“Here I’ll fill it at the pump, les you want to.”
“Thank you,” said Luke politely. “I’d be obliged if you would.” He didn’t want the girl’s mother, who was right then peeking out the door, to come any closer and get a good look, especially at Caswell. She had a baby on one hip. Gracey handed him the canteen.
“I thank you,” Luke said, “for your kindness.” He poked Daylily in the shoulder.
“Thank you, Gracey,” she said and poked Caswell, who also said, “I thank you too.”
They left the family and soon ran into several more little farms and then buildings bigger than houses with tall smoke-stacks, and lots of men working around them. The river ran right through Harper’s Ferry, next to some kind of factory. Their eyes were wide, taking in this new world.
There were not so many workmen on their side of the river, so they were almost alone, but they could see the houses on the hills in the distance. Across the river, everybody they saw seemed to be busy doing something, carrying things like tools or stacks of wood in different directions. Wagons went by, hauling what looked like parts of rifles. They could hear the men shouting at each other.
“Wait now, y’all. We got to talk,” said Luke. They sat down on some plank wood on the riverbank. “Now, we don’t know what gon happen here. This here’s Harper’s Ferry for sure, and we got to have a plan. First, Caswell,” said Luke, “you know we’s colored and you ain’t, right?”
Caswell’s eyes filled up with tears. “That don’t matter no more, Luke,” he said. “I thought we was brothers anyway.”
“Well, we is, but grown folks don’t feel that way about it. They don’t know what we done been through. They don’t know we’s brothers.”
“And sisters,” added Daylily.
“Right, and sisters,” Luke answered. “They just think you White, and we is colored, and that’s all they is. Ain’t no mixin up with some folks. So we got to remember the plan. If we gets separated, you got to remember. Count on your fingers to ten. Now, every year when them cornstalks get high, it gonna be warm and be summer and then it be harvesttime. And when that happen ten times, hightail it to Betty Strong Foot’s before the first frost, so we can be together.”
“Luke, that’s a powerful long time. We might be dead then,” said Daylily. She was about to cry, and so was Caswell.
“You stop that, girl,” he said. “You get little Caswell all upset. He ain’t but seven year old. Just think about them stars we saw and how we said our mamas be up in Heaven. They up there together, and so we got to stick together too, even if it take ten years. We be grown then. We can do anything we want. In ten summers we gonna meet at Betty’s house in the woods, no matter what. When you gets to ten, follow the river back to Betty’s house, first time the corn high. Remember, first time the corn is high, then harvesttime. Caswell, count on your fingers too. War’ll be over then. Every time y’all look at them stars, think about us, and we’ll be together.”
Caswell counted to ten on his fingers, and said, “And Luke, I won’t forget, your mama is an angel too, OK?”
Luke nodded, and they sat on the riverbank in a heavy silence for a while longer. Finally, Luke said, “Us got to find us some Black folks we can trust.”
“Gracey was Black, wasn’t she?” Caswell said eagerly. “Let’s go. Let’s go back there. They had food.”
“Yeah, but they had a house full of chirren and nothin but flour and lard,” said Luke.
“Maybe they knows somebody though. They’s free,” Daylily volunteered.
“We need us some Union soldiers, that’s what we need,” Luke said. “This here might be a reb town.”
“Maybe they can tell us then. Let’s go back, Luke, please?” Caswell pulled on Luke’s coat and started up a chant: “Let’s go back, let’s go back, let’s go back.”
Daylily joined him.
Luke didn’t have any other plan so he told them, “Yeah, we goin back and ask. Ain’t no harm in askin folks.” And they turned around.
When they got back to the potato patch, the girl was gone, and Daylily’s face fell.
Luke said, “Betcha they in the house. We got to go see. Can’t do nothin else.”
The girl, Gracey, was out in back of the little house with her brothers and sisters, and her mother was inside with the baby. She came to the open door when they walked up. A dog was barking somewhere near.
“Y’all came back, I see,” said the mother. The woman had a pleasant face that used to be round, but she was beanpole thin. She had a turned-up nose and a wide mouth. The baby had dark skin like the mother, and lots of curly hair. She pulled at her mama’s ear.
“If you please, ma’am,” Luke started. “We just need to ask you . . . somethin happened and we can’t find our people.”
The woman looked at Caswell a little more carefully. “Who’s your people?” she asked, sitting down on the stoop in front of her door. She let the baby crawl all over her.
“Well, ma’am, you see . . . uh, really, all our peoples fighting with the Union, see, and we, uh, we just need to find some Union troops.” He sucked in his breath and held it.
The baby wanted to go to Daylily. She stretched out her little arms, and Daylily said, “Can I hold her, ma’am, please?” The woman handed the baby to Daylily. She looked glad for a little break.
“Son,” she said, “I see you got a problem here. Where’d y’all come from really? Are you runnin away from somewhere? And where’d you get this little White young’un? Cause I can see the White under all that dirt and sunburn.”
“Well, yes, ma’am,” Luke said, “I guess you can see that, and ma’am, well, we’s just tired. We been runnin and walking, a long, long time. And we just needing somewhere to lay our heads, you see, and some food.” Luke sat down on the stoop and put his head in his arms. He cried like a baby in front of everybody. Finally, it was all too much for him, and he couldn’t go on any more; he couldn’t take one more step.
Daylily and Caswell sat down too, exhausted and past talking. They looked straight ahead, out of reasons, out of questions, even out of fear. There was nothing left to do about anything.
For a few moments, the woman let Luke cry, rubbing him between the shoulders. The rest of the family came out of the house to see what was going on. Then she said, “My name is Iona Madison, and these are my young’uns, Gracey, Zach Jr., Matt, Harriet and Vina. Now y’all tell me who y’all are, and I’ll try to help you. That’s only fair.”
CHAPTER 31
DANGER ON THE STREETS
Mrs. Madison explained to the children that they could stay a while, but they needed to understand that they had to be careful. Union soldiers were all over the place. General Sheridan had taken possession of the entire valley. When the Confederate rebels had been there, it was bad enough, but life for the Madisons and other families was worse than it had ever been, because Sheridan’s soldiers had ruined everything they could to keep the rebs from burning it. Bridges were destroyed, crops were burned. Now there was very little to eat and it was dangerous to be out at night. During the day they should not talk to strange men. If anyone came into the yard they were to go immediately into the house. Everywhere there was destruction and suffering. Folks were starving and desperate. But she had to leave the children during the days when she could get work at the hospital, taking dirty laundry home and emptying dangerous slop jars. She was working only because Zach Madison’s death had left his family desperate.
The first day Luke and the others were with the Madisons, Iona had to work in the afternoon. But when she was leaving her hospital job, she ran into some very scary men. She had wrapped her shawl around her to ward off the evening chill. The way home was down a street that had been burned out by Sheridan’s men. Now only black skeletons of chimneys and stones rising out of the rubble were left of the buildings. There were piles of charred bricks everywhere.
She had stayed late because there were so many wounded that needed tending to, but she had stayed
too late, and she was not comfortable. Iona walked quickly, looking for other people on the street. It was deserted, but she could hear some voices up ahead. As she turned the next corner, she almost bumped into two men who were pushing each other around. She knew they would be trouble as soon as she saw their scrubby faces and snarling mouths.
“Well, well, well,” one man said. “Ain’t you the lady? Gimme that shawl.” He grabbed her shawl before she had a chance to stop him and danced around crazily while the other man laughed.
“They say all nigger gals can dance,” the first man said, and did an imitation of a dance with her shawl as a prop. Then the other grabbed Iona and forced her to dance with him. She could smell his foul breath, but she was trying very hard to stay composed because she knew those men would love for her to get hysterical. Somewhere in the distance she heard an ambulance bell and horse’s hooves.
Oh, please, let them come by here, she prayed silently. Something had to happen soon or she might not ever see her children again. The men had dragged her into the middle of the intersection and had hold of her arm. Stalling for time, Iona said in a mock polite style, “Gentlemen, could I have my shawl? The night air is a little cool.”
They were still standing in the street holding her when suddenly the ambulance wagon was upon them, bells clanging and horses charging ahead furiously. The men let her go to save themselves, and Iona saw her chance. Running for her life, she headed for the edge of town and home.
Luke knew it wouldn’t be fair to stay long because the family had so little to eat. The children were all skinny arms and legs, and huge eyes that looked even bigger because they were so thin. They had mostly scraggly winter greens and little potatoes from the patch out back. How to join up with the Union army was now the main thing on his mind, and he was busy thinking about doing that. That would solve some of the food problems for them, and maybe he could sneak back and bring the rest of them food from the soldiers’ supplies.
The family slept in two rooms—the four children in one bed, the mother and baby Vina in the other room. Mrs. Madison made a pallet on the floor for Luke, Caswell and Daylily in the big kitchen Zach Madison had built before he died. The house was the nicest one Luke had ever seen Black folks living in. He hated to leave the house, and it was hard to think about going without Caswell and Daylily. It had real floors, and a big black cookstove, and chairs for everybody to sit in at the table. What he didn’t know about were the things Mrs. Madison had traded for food in the last month, precious things she had decided meant nothing next to her children’s hunger.
Shortly after dark, Luke lay down with the rest of them, but tired as he was, he didn’t sleep well. Union troops patrolled the streets. He had seen them yesterday on their way into town. Before first light, he had decided he would go, striking out once more on his own. No one who had known him two months ago when he left his aunt Eugenia as a frightened little boy would have recognized his walk or the look in his eyes. At almost twelve, he was lean and stripped down of the nonsense of boyhood. He would not see Daylily and Caswell again for ten years.
CHAPTER 32
PLAYING SCHOOL
Daylily would not be consoled. She was sure Luke had run off to fight, and, in her mind, to die. She cried for hours as soon as she was convinced that he was really gone. And she was silent for four days. The only time she spoke was to comfort Caswell, who was also in tears when he realized what had happened.
“Come on now, Caswell,” she said, her voice low and discouraged. “We can’t cry. Luke wouldn’t like that; you know he wouldn’t.”
Iona watched them carefully, this little White boy who looked like an Indian, and Daylily, who seemed to be fiercely protective of him. She had only pieces of their story, and she wondered what had really happened to them. She did her best to make them both feel better, although two more children in a household of six was more than a notion. She didn’t say what she thought, that it was a good thing Luke had run off. She’d never have been able to feed him. One thing though, Daylily seemed glad to have a girl close to her age to be friends with, even though Iona would still find her moping and staring at the road after many weeks had gone by. Gracey and Daylily took to each other with relief. Here was a sister to share the load of four younger children, and here was a sister big enough to share girl things with at the end of the day.
Daylily and Gracey had a lot to do while Iona was at work, weeding the garden, trying to appease the younger children, scrubbing the floors. The boys were always hungry, and so Gracey and Daylily were constantly thinking up games for them to play to keep their minds off their stomachs.
“I know,” said Daylily one afternoon, “let’s play school.”
“How we gon play school?” asked Gracey. “We can’t read.”
“Well, I can,” said Daylily. It still surprised her every time she realized that she could admit that without being afraid.
“You joshing me!” Gracey said. “Show me how!”
So Daylily gathered the younger children together to sit in two rows on the ground.
“What we gon write on?” asked Gracey.
“I know,” said Daylily, and she ran to the barn, where she had seen some leftover planks of wood. When she returned, she had a piece of flat board and a piece of charred wood in her hand.
The boys were fussing by the time she got back. Vina the baby was playing on the grass, but the girls were patiently waiting.
“You boys,” Daylily said. “Get over here and sit down. I’m the leader now.” Caswell and Zachary came first.
“Now,” said Daylily. “We gon start with ABC.”
“What’s that,” said Zach.
“A the first letter in the alphabet,” she answered. “Like if I said, ‘A piece of chicken.’ A looks like this,” and she wrote the letter on the wooden board with her burnt stick.
That day they got through three letters, A, B and C, before the boys refused to sit still any longer, and Zach said, “Oh, shoot, I’m through. I don’t care about no ABC.”
Matt agreed and school was over for that day.
The weeks went by, and once, returning home from her drudgery at the hospital, Iona walked in on a scene she found remarkable. Daylily was seated in front of all her children except Gracey, reading to them from the family Bible. Gracey was trying to scratch out letters on an old plank with a scrap of charcoal. There was also a child there who lived down the road on a neighboring farm. Because Iona had seen him before and knew who he was, she didn’t really worry about his presence. That was, not until much later.
She had never imagined that Daylily, fresh from a plantation, could read and write! Iona was so delighted that she felt a little less tired, a little less in despair that day. And Daylily had found herself at last. From then on, she was one of the Madison family’s own, forever.
CHAPTER 33
JAMES JR.
He took his coat and his canteen, that was all. It didn’t take him long to get to the center of town. As he was coming close to some ruined buildings, Luke saw one group of Black people and then another. Then on a nearby hill he saw a crowd of Black people clustered around campfires. He decided he’d stop and ask somebody where he could find the soldiers’ camp.
The first colored person he saw who seemed really friendly was a white-haired man sitting by the side of the road with what looked like might be his family grouped around him. They were all eating something that looked like bread. And they had a wagon with a mule harnessed to it. Behind them stood burnt-out pieces of buildings and chimneys. There were stones and scorched metal pieces in the road where Luke stood. “Hey, y’all,” said Luke. “What y’all doin here?”
“Hey yourself,” said the old man. “Who you?”
“I’m Luke,” he answered.
“Don’t have no last name?”
“Guess it’s Higsaw,” said Luke. He wasn’t quite sure what the rules were about names now that he had run away from Massa Higsaw.
“Guess it is, then,”
said the old man. “I be John Miller. We been following the federal lines. My son, James, he just gone looking for the soldiers to find work. This my grandson, James Jr.” He pointed to a big boy who looked to be about fifteen.
Luke said, “Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” said James Jr. He had on an old felt hat, and some overalls and a jacket. He was barefoot and he was really heavy and tall.
“Which way he go?” said Luke, excited now that he was so close to the troops.
“Yonder, up that hill,” the old man pointed. “See them colored folks? Go up there, and right over that next hill there’ll be soldiers’ camps. You want a piece of hardtack?”
“Thank y’all,” said Luke.
“We got that following behind soldiers. They be dropping things, leavin they old things behind.”
James looked at Luke. “You goin up there?” he said.
“Uh huh,” Luke said while trying to chew the stuff. It was the hardest thing he had ever tried to bite. “Goin to join up,” he said.
“Wait,” said James. “Let it go soft in your mouth first. Then chew it.”
James moved closer to Luke. “I wanna go, Grandpapa. Just wanna look. I ain’t goin to join up.”
One of the women spoke up. “You don’t need to go runnin off. You just get in trouble. Let this boy go on bout his business.” She had a toddling child who was pulling at her hand.
“Please, Mam, I’s tired sittin here,” he said.
She looked at him, too weary to say no. “Gwan” was all she said, and waved him on with her hand.
Luke and James Jr. walked off toward the hill up ahead. Luke looked up at James Jr. “How old are you?” he asked.
“I be fourteen next year,” James said. “How bout you?”
“I be twelve soon. Don’t know what month.”
A small company of soldiers went by, and the boys stood still and watched. As they started walking again, the conversation turned to guns, rifles and soldiers.
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