Chasing the North Star

by Robert Morgan

  It looked as if there was a vegetable garden close to the house, for he saw bean poles with vines on them reaching above the rows of okra. He was sure there’d be tomatoes and summer squash there, maybe onions and carrots. But the garden was near the woodpile and he dared not get close. An ash hopper for making lye for soap stood just a few feet from the woodpile.

  Beyond the garden rose a little building with a chimney, which Jonah guessed was either a blacksmith shed or smokehouse. If it was the former there might be a box of matches by the furnace. If it was the latter there might possibly be matches by the fireplace, though that was unlikely since meat was cured in late fall, not in the middle of summer.

  Bending low behind the corn rows, Jonah worked his way around the little patch, keeping an eye out for anybody who might be in the field or garden. Crack and thud, the axe went, crack and thud. As he got closer he saw a long barn by a rail fence and a pasture on the hill where several cows grazed. The manure pile beside the barn glistened with a halo of flies. With disappointment he saw the small building was indeed a smokehouse.

  Staying close to the barn and then in the shadow of the smokehouse, he crept to the door and looked in. It was so dark he couldn’t see anything inside except the shelves where the salted meat was laid and the hooks where the hams could be hung over the fire. There was an overwhelming scent of smoke and ashes, grease and salt. It was not a bad smell, but summer heat had made the air a little rancid. Jonah looked out of the corner of his eye into the gloom. A couple of hams that appeared to have been turned to stone lay on the shelf by the door. Another ham, carved down to the shank, rested on a small table. As his eyes adjusted to the shadows, he studied the shelves and benches and saw kindling wood and a bag of salt. An old butcher knife lay on the table beside the shank meat, and Jonah sliced off a slab of the meat and put it in his pocket.

  Jonah backed out of the smokehouse and closed the door. The afternoon air appeared brighter after the shade of the building. There was no longer the sound of chopping. He stood perfectly still and waited to hear someone moving. A chicken walked by and a puppy ran up wagging its tail. The puppy twisted its behind to show how happy it was to see him. A door banged and Jonah hoped the wood chopper had gone inside. He waited a little longer, and then walked sideways with his back to the shed. Skirting the manure pile where flies the color of dew dilated and hummed a chorus of hallelujahs, he reached the barn and hugged the wall to reach the edge of the pasture.

  With someone at the house he dared not get any closer. His back was sore and his feet were sore. He couldn’t believe he’d been crazy enough to run away from the Williams Place where there was plenty to eat and a bed to sleep in. You must be dumb as a chicken, he said to himself. All he wanted to find here was a box of matches that would cost a penny at the Gap Creek store. He was risking his life just to find a few matches. It seemed he’d been a fool to run away from all the comforts he’d ever known and all the safety he’d known, too.

  Jonah saw it was too risky to cross the fence into the pasture, because the pasture was open and on high ground where he could be seen from the creek valley. Keeping the barn between himself and the house, he followed the fence to the edge of the pines and ducked into the cover of the trees. He noticed a trail that swung below the barn and into the pines, and he followed it into a hollow. The trail ended at a spring below some laurel bushes where a gourd hung on a stick. There was a wash table on the bank beside the spring branch, with two wooden tubs and a washboard. A black pot sat on rocks over the ashes of a fire. A cake of soap the color of beeswax lay on the table. Jonah suddenly knew how thirsty he was. He’d not had a drink all day. As he reached for the gourd to dip a drink he saw something blue out of the corner of his eye. Running to the table he saw it was a paper matchbox.

  Sliding the box out of its sleeve, Jonah saw the box was almost empty, with no more than ten or twelve matches inside. But he could not have been happier if he’d found a box of gold coins. With a dozen matches he could start fires for a week or more. He quietly slipped the box inside his shirt and then took a drink from the gourd. Then, with the matches close to his belly, Jonah climbed through the pines up the hill above the pasture. Before it got dark again he had to study about his plans. He had to be smart if he was going to make it through North Carolina to Virginia and then to the North. He had to be smart every minute of the day.

  Since he had money in his pocket, Jonah had to figure out a way to go into stores and buy what he needed. The money was just a burden if it couldn’t be spent. It would wear a hole in his pocket and be lost. Any unfamiliar black boy going into a store in a strange place would look suspicious. And it was possible Mr. Williams would send out posters with his name and description. He’d seen such posters on store walls in Travelers Rest, and he’d seen announcements in newspapers about runaways.

  It occurred to Jonah that on rare occasions Mrs. Williams had written a note to a storekeeper in Travelers Rest and had Jonah or another servant carry it there and bring back the merchandise. If he had such a note he could take it into a store and buy what he wanted. What he needed was a pencil and paper. But to get the pencil and paper he’d have to go into a store. It seemed a problem that couldn’t be solved.

  Another problem that hadn’t occurred to Jonah until now was that there were few plantations, therefore few slaves, in the mountains, meaning that everyone there would notice him. And the deeper he went into the highlands, the more suspicious he would appear. He hadn’t thought of that before. He’d have to be even more careful than he’d planned. Deep in the mountains where they were not used to seeing black folks, everybody would notice him and remember him. But it was also possible that since there were so few slaves in the uplands, someone might be willing to help him. If they didn’t have slaves themselves, they might not be sympathetic to Mr. Williams or afraid of the Fugitive Slave Law.

  Jonah reached the top of the hill, where hickory trees replaced the yellow pines. There was less undergrowth, and he walked quickly along the comb of the ridge and down the other side. In another hour it would be dark and he had to find a place to sleep. The ants on the bed of moss had taught him how vulnerable he was when sleeping on the ground. Besides ants, the copperheads were crawling blind in the summer night. It was dangerous to hurry through the woods as it got dark, for he might step in a sinkhole, or walk over a copperhead, or run into a hornet’s nest. Or worse yet, run into someone carrying a gun who would take him into custody. The woods were getting so dark he could hardly see the spiderwebs.

  Suddenly Jonah saw something white looming in the trees ahead. At first he thought it was a tree in blossom, and then he thought it might be fog or white smoke. He slowed down and slipped from tree to tree, holding the money in his pocket to keep it from rattling. The thing had a shape, like a sheet draped over a frame. It had a tall pointed hat. Jonah edged from tree to tree, holding his breath in the dark shade of the thick woods. Whatever it was stood just on the other side of the trees. He pushed a chestnut limb aside and caught his breath. And then he laughed at himself and called himself an idiot. “Whoa there,” he said.

  For there stood a little white church with a gray steeple. It was a church made of logs whitewashed until they glowed in the twilight. The steeple was white, too, except for the pointed tip, which was gray with weathered, cedar shingles. It was a tiny building with a patch of graves beside it, small as a kitchen garden. The church reminded him of a toy, a playhouse, a dollhouse, but was just big enough so he knew it was not a toy, but a real place where people gathered for worship.

  Finding the church made Jonah feel better. He waited and listened and heard nobody else. The windows were dark and the only sound came from a bird calling in the woods. The gravestones under the trees tilted this way and that way. Jonah darted out into the clearing around the church but didn’t try the front door. Instead he circled to the back, where two wooden outhouses sat at the edge of the woods. There was a second door on the side of the church and he turned the
knob. At first the door didn’t give, but he shook the knob the way you sometimes shake a key to make it fall in place. The glass knob turned and the door swung in.

  It was completely dark inside the little church, which smelled of old wood and dust and ashes. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he saw the fireplace to the left of the pulpit. Benches were aligned on the bare floor. Jonah felt the matches inside his pocket, but decided not to light the lamp. A light might attract someone who happened to be passing. The air in the church was hot and stale. A lighted lamp would make it warmer still, and smoky.

  As quietly as he could Jonah pushed two benches together to make a bed just in front of the altar. The benches were hard but clean, and they’d keep him off the floor. He was stiff and sore and his wounds were a little itchy. He found that if he lay down carefully he could rest on his back, but he’d have to lie still.

  Lying so near the altar where sinners had prayed and backsliders had been reclaimed, Jonah knew he should pray also. It wouldn’t hurt to ask the Lord to help him. A bug of some kind buzzed in the air above him, but Jonah was so tired he sank almost instantly into a long voyage of sleep in the isolated sanctuary.

  WHEN HE WOKE JONAH thought at first how thirsty he was, and then how hungry. All he’d eaten yesterday were the three ears of partly green corn. Today he’d eat the meat, but first he needed a drink of cool water. Lying on the benches, he looked down at the puncheon floor of the little church. Years of wear around the altar had smoothed the wood until it was almost polished, but dust had collected in the cracks between logs. The dust looked bright as salt where early sun came through a window. Jonah thought of the sweat and tears from many revival meetings in late summer, as well as the storms of dust in the air even now whirling and wrestling in the sunlight, and settling hour after hour, year after year, on the bumpy floor.

  As he sat up and rubbed his eyes, Jonah saw what looked like a black letter Q or an X, run around the pulpit and disappear. He knew it must be a bug or a fly, but it really looked like a black letter of the alphabet had fallen out of the Bible some Sunday and lay on the altar until he had disturbed it. He stood and peered around a corner of the pulpit.

  A black widow spider sat under the shelter of the lectern. Its belly sparkled like a drop of wet ink, and its legs curved slender as buggy springs. Black widows could jump. Jonah knew he should kill the spider, for it might bite the preacher or song leader as they stood at the pulpit. But there was nothing in sight he could use. He needed a stick or a broom. Besides, he wasn’t sure black widows spread a web and stayed in one place. Maybe they traveled and ate the insects they encountered. By Sunday morning the black widow might be far away. Jonah decided to leave the dot of venom where it was. The empty church was so quiet he didn’t want to disturb anything.

  Jonah did push the two benches back to their original places before he left. He wanted to be on his way, to hurry through the valleys and hollows, leaving no more trace than a breeze or a shadow.

  There was a spring near most churches and Jonah soon found the spring behind this one. In fact it was a double spring, with two springheads coming from opposite directions out of the hill and merging into one branch. The southern head was sluggish and filled with moss and flies. But the northern spring rippled out clear into the basin, with sand dancing around the inlets and the overflow throbbing. He took a coconut shell from a stick nearby and drank the cold sparkling water, which tasted like it had run through rock and quartz and precious metals from deep in the earth. Jonah took a slice of the shank meat out of his pocket. If he started a fire he could slide the meat on a stick and cook it brown and crisp. It would taste like ham, salty ham. But the smell of the slab of pork was a little off, and when he looked at it closely he saw tiny worms like grubs in the fibers. The meat had been blown by flies. Even if he raked out the worms the piece would not be edible. He dropped the shank meat on the ground for the ants to find, and rinsed his hands in the branch.

  With the coins rattling in his pocket, Jonah followed the spring branch down the valley. He wasn’t sure anymore where the Turnpike was, but he wanted to avoid it in any case. If Mr. Williams came looking for him, that was the way he’d come. Even if he crossed the Turnpike or had to follow it a ways, he should stay on it only briefly.

  Jonah wanted to go north, and north was to the left if you faced the early sun. The spring branch ran toward the sun, so he turned to the left and walked, and when he came to a field he saw a wall of mountains ahead, higher mountains. The steep ridge had cliffs like teeth along its top. The steepness and height made him weak with dread. He was tired from hunger. How could he climb such a steep barrier unbroken by gaps or low places? And yet, if he was going north, that was the way he had to go.

  He crossed the field and came to a little creek that seemed to shiver right out of the mountainside ahead. Maybe if he followed the creek it would take him part way up the ridge, and lead him into a hollow where the climb would be easier. It was the sheer cliffs that scared him. The small stream wandered like a path through the woods. He jumped from rock to rock and bank to bank. Sometimes he had to duck under limbs, and twice he saw snakes slip off branches into the water. And then he came to a larger pool and saw several shadows hovering near the sandy bottom. Without a fishhook it seemed impossible to catch something so quick and slippery. If only he could drive one into the shallows of the little stream. Thinking of a narrow, shallow pool gave Jonah an idea. Stepping to the bank he began breaking sticks about a foot long. He gathered dead sticks and living sticks of sourwood and sweet shrub. He broke poplar limbs and maple limbs. With his knife he cut some river cane until he had more than a hundred sticks. He stripped off leaves and sharpened the ends of the bigger sticks.

  Jonah studied the pool where the trout hovered near the bottom. At the lower end the pool got sandy and shallow before spilling over a lip of rock. He began planting the sticks in sand about an inch apart. He made a line from the deeper water to a shallow depression. The sticks stood like pickets of a little fence. He made a second line starting about four feet from the end of the first and converging into a chute that led into the shallows. When finished, he had a funnel that narrowed into a passage no more than four inches wide. If he could scare a trout into the entrance of the funnel and drive it up the chute, he could catch it in the shallows with his hands.

  First placing his matches in a dry spot on the bank, Jonah waded into the pool from the side opposite the trap. Trout flashed like bolts of lightning in the water. He tried to see where they went, but the shadows and mirrory sides turned too fast for him to follow. And then he saw something rippling the water between his rows of sticks. Wading quickly across the pool to drive them, he saw two trout indeed had gone into his trap. The fin of the bigger one sliced out of the water. It was a fat trout, maybe fourteen, fifteen inches long. Jonah stepped into the entrance of the funnel and the fish thrashed farther up into the neck.

  The trout floundered right into the narrows of the chute and Jonah reached down to grab the bigger one. Because the fish was so quick and slippery he couldn’t grab hold of it. Instead, he tried to scoop both trout up and heave them onto the bank. Jonah tossed one thrashing fish up on the bank. But the other trout had turned between the rows of sticks and shot between his feet and was gone. It was the bigger fish that escaped. But the other trout flipped and trembled among the ferns on the bank, and he seized it and held it with his fingers in the gills.

  After he’d cut off the head, ripped open the belly, and raked out the guts, Jonah laid the trout on a log and scraped off the tiny scales, then washed the scales and slime away and impaled the fish on a sourwood stick. With the knife he shaved curls off a stick of dry pine and started a fire. Then he held the trout on the stick over the flames. Without butter or oil the fish had to roast in its own grease. As the trout browned in the flames, it filled the woods by the creek with the scent of roasting flesh. The fire made the place in the woods seem almost like home. The fire and the smell of the cooking
fish inspired him with a new confidence.

  When the trout was browned on the outside he took it off the flames. The flesh was too hot to eat, and he blew on the steaming sides. Jonah wet his lips and nibbled a morsel near the tail. To keep from burning his tongue he moved the bit of fish around in his mouth, and when he tasted the flesh he knew it was the sweetest thing he’d ever savored. Fresh from the stream, the trout had a vivid flavor he’d never known before. It was like other fish he’d had, but better, so much better.

  As the fish cooled, he nibbled bits off the comb of bones. The fish tickled his mouth and sweetened his belly. He ate slowly, cleaning every bit of meat off the tines of bones. The warmth and strength of the fish flowed out from his belly into his veins and into his limbs. Jonah sat on the ground and leaned against an oak tree. He would wash his hands in the creek in a minute and move on. It was a thousand miles to the North and safety. It was so strange to think that he had to go all the way to Canada to be safe and free.

  How strange that he was Jonah and not someone else, strange that he’d been born who he was and where he was. He could just as easily have been born in another time and place. He could have been born white and free. He could have been born a Cherokee Indian or a chief in Africa. He could have been born rich and in the North. Instead he’d been born Jonah Williams, a slave on the Williams Place, which Mr. Williams called Snowdon. And he’d been whipped for stealing a book that was already his. And he’d had no choice but to steal himself from Mr. Williams and run away into the night. The sores on his back itched and smarted. His feet were sore from all the walking he’d done. But he had a knife and he had matches and he had a gut full of trout. And he knew how to spend the money he had, if only he could find pencil and paper.