Chasing the North Star

by Robert Morgan

  Pling! A bullet spat by and splashed on the river.

  As the little house drifted farther from the bluff, Jonah was less afraid of being hit by a rifle shot than he was of the boys telling what they’d seen. If men heard there was a Negro boy floating on top of a building in the flood, they might row out in a boat to seize him. And soon as they rescued him from the river, they’d put him in chains. In the middle of the river, in broad daylight, he couldn’t hide. And it would be many hours before it was dark. Jonah saw dead chickens floating in the river, and a dead collie dog. He saw what appeared at first to be a mule, but noticed, because of the small ears, that it was a pony. Though he’d not eaten since the evening before, and he’d puked up most of what he had eaten, Jonah wasn’t hungry. The ugly, muddy floodwater, the corpses and snakes and dead animals, had killed any hunger he might have had. But he was thirsty. His lips were dry and his mouth was dry and he felt parched inside. Looking at the muddy water made him thirstier still. He thought of cold spring water. He thought of water sparkling and twisting from the spigot of a pump. He would like some cold cider or lemonade. A bottle of ginger beer or sarsaparilla would be wonderful. The bubble and bite of soda water would taste good in his sticky mouth. Lying against the rotting roof, Jonah must have drowsed off, for he thought he’d come to an even bigger river that must be the Potomac. All he had to do was get to the left shore and he’d be on his way to the North again.

  All that day and into the night Jonah rode on top of the little house. He grew thirstier. In the darkness he saw lights along the shore, far away, at the edge of the floodwaters. The shack rocked and dipped and bumped into logs and other floating buildings. At some point he sank into sleep again, still grasping his perch on the roof. When he woke it was already light, and he saw the mountains beyond the river, long and low and smooth. He slept again.

  He was awakened by voices. Jonah raised his head and looked at the far shore and saw nothing but more rushing floodwater. Only when he looked behind him did he see a boat making its way toward him. Two men rowed the boat and a third man stood in the prow holding a rope. The man standing had a pistol in his belt.

  “Hey, boy,” the man in the prow yelled to him. The boat edged alongside the floating little house. Jonah pretended he didn’t hear the man.

  “Climb down and take this rope,” the standing man called.

  Jonah was afraid of the man’s pistol. If he didn’t obey, the man might shoot him. But even if he got away from this man he would tell others and they’d catch him farther down the river. It was not only fear but thirst that made Jonah obey the man with the rope.

  “Jump down,” the man ordered.

  Jonah tried to slide down slowly, put a foot on the window sill and lower himself to the water. But once he let go of the ridge pole he slid quickly and had no way to brake himself. He clawed at the rotten shingles for a hold, but only slid faster. He hit the water and flailed his arms, trying to find the rope. The boat came to him, and instead of the rope he grasped the prow. “Hold on there,” the man with the rope said. It took the man several tries to pull Jonah into the boat. Meanwhile the little house drifted on, rocking and spinning in the current, as the oarsmen directed the boat toward the bank.

  “A sorry sight you are,” the man with the pistol said, once Jonah rested dripping on the floor of the boat. The man pulled a canteen from his coat and gave it to Jonah. When Jonah put his dry cracked lips to the mouth and drank, he thought it was the sweetest, coolest liquid he’d ever tasted.

  Twelve

  Angel

  As long as I lived down in the basement with Hettie, I could keep my eye on Jonah. I knew he was going to run away as soon as he could. He was going to try to leave me again. He didn’t know yet how much he needed me. When he grew up more, he would see things differently. But in the meantime I couldn’t lose him again, because he was my only hope it seemed to get to freedom. I couldn’t see any other way.

  But then Miss Linda called me into the parlor one day and said she was moving me upstairs and I could start entertaining gentlemen. I was going to have a room next door to Prissy. “Every house needs a big girl,” Miss Linda said. “Some men likes fat girls, and colored girls best of all.” Miss Linda said I had really soft skin. She reached out and touched my arm.

  This room upstairs had fancy sheets and pillows and pretty lamps. The bed had a canopy over it, and carved posts. There were pictures on the walls of women wearing almost nothing. Miss Linda gave me new dresses and perfume and pink satin shoes. And she said Mr. Wells was going to come talk to me.

  Sure enough there was a knock at my door that same evening. He was tall and strong and he talked real nice and called me darling, but his look was real hard.

  “Sarepta, you’re the prettiest girl we’ve seen in this house in ages,” he said. He said colored girls made the best love there was. He talked sweet and gave me a gold necklace, and told me take off my clothes. I saw he was the boss or pimp or whatever they called it of this place. He owned it, and Miss Linda and all the girls. I saw he was going to try me out. He was going to see how I worked. So I said to myself: I’m not going to disappoint him. I can pleasure any man. I’ve got to stay here and keep an eye on Jonah, and I’ve got to make a little money. Miss Linda said I would get fifty cents for every man I took upstairs.

  I tried hard as I could, to do everything I ever knew or thought of. And Mr. Wells must have been satisfied because when he got up and put on his clothes, he left a silver dollar on the bureau. And when he left I felt ashamed, and then proud of myself, too, for I knew I could make money and live. And Miss Linda wouldn’t turn me out as long as I made her and Mr. Wells some money.

  Jonah didn’t say anything to me after I moved upstairs. He passed me in the hall and looked the other way. He was mad at me but I couldn’t help that. A girl that had run away had to live the best way she could. He thought he was finished with me, but I wasn’t through with him. He was my only hope to get to the North.

  Next thing I knew it turned cold and the leaves started flying off the trees and Jonah built a fire in every room upstairs and carried wood up each morning. I knew he was going to leave, and wondered what he was waiting for. “You can’t leave without me,” I whispered to him, but he didn’t answer.

  One night in came an awful storm, and while I was lying in bed under the man they called Judge Hillman, I heard rain beat on the roof and lash against the windowpane. There was lightning and thunder, and rain beat on the wall like the wings of a thousand birds. And it seemed the storm was the end of something, or the beginning of something. The storm was a portent, and it seemed everything outside would be killed by that storm.

  And next morning Jonah wasn’t anywhere to be found. Lonella said Jonah had gone in the night. We didn’t know what direction he took, but I guessed it was up north. The storm hadn’t let up. In fact it got worse, blowing leaves up against the house so yellow leaves stuck to the windowpanes, and the walls shook with every powerful gust.

  “No way to track him in the rain,” Mr. Wells said to Miss Linda. “The sheriff won’t even start out till the storm is over.”

  “We know he’s going north,” Miss Linda said. “The sheriff will send a telegram to all the towns down the valley.”

  “I told the sheriff to notify his owner in South Carolina,” Mr. Wells said, “but to not mention our names.”

  Jonah had done it again, left me, abandoned me, and I didn’t know where he’d gone. He went north I was sure, but I didn’t know where and I couldn’t do anything but wait and save my money. Prissy spent her money on laudanum, and other girls bought brandy, but I put my dollars and quarters in an old sock, and I knew I wouldn’t stay much longer at Miss Linda’s. Nobody needed to tell me Mr. Wells could be mean if you didn’t do what he wanted. The other girls whispered about the terrible things he had done, and I could see the cruelty in his eyes, in his mouth.

  About a week later I heard Miss Linda and Mr. Wells talking again and they said the sheriff a
t a place called Winchester had wired the sheriff in Roanoke that he had caught Jonah. It was no concern of Miss Linda’s and Mr. Wells, except they didn’t want to be accused of hiring a runaway slave. There was no way they could claim the reward.

  “The sheriff in Winchester will claim the reward,” Mr. Wells said.

  “But we sent out the warning,” Miss Linda said.

  “We can’t let anybody know we kept him here for months,” Mr. Wells said.

  “We had no way to know he was a runaway,” Miss Linda said.

  All I knew was that Jonah was in jail in Winchester, wherever that might be. That night I studied on what I could do. I had nearly ten dollars in my sock. I had no choice but to follow Jonah, unless I wanted to be a whore the rest of my life. As soon as I got a little older, or got sick with one of those diseases, they would throw me out anyway. So early in the morning while everybody in the house was asleep, I packed my things in a pillowcase, and took my money and slipped down the stairs and out the back door. Lonella and Hettie weren’t up yet. The streets were still dark, but I walked all the way to the train station. Everything was closed, and I waited on a bench till the ticket man came and opened the station. I asked for a ticket to Winchester, and he said that would cost a dollar and twenty cents. I bought a ticket and he said the train would come in about an hour. “You want the six-fifty-two,” he said.

  I figured if I stood in front of the station somebody might see me, so I hid in the corner where they pushed the baggage carts and wagons. I’d never ridden on a train before, but there was no other way to get to Winchester. If I tried to walk along the road, they would catch me before dinnertime and send me back to the Thomas Place. You must be crazy, running after Jonah this way, I said to myself.

  When the big huffing and hissing and smelly train pulled in and people got off, I hurried along and climbed into a car. But I’d no sooner taken a seat than a man in a black uniform walked up and said, “What do you think you doing, girl? Go on back to the next car.” So I had to pick up my bag and walk back to the next car, where I tried to sit prim and ladylike on the dirty seat there.

  When the train stopped at Winchester, it was almost dark. It was just a village, no bigger than Roanoke, and I could see the courthouse down the street. Now I knew the jail would be behind the courthouse, or near the courthouse, so I walked around the building with a clock on its tower, and saw this big log house. A man came out the door with a tray and locked the door behind him. There were bars on the windows and it was dark inside. I walked on by, but when the man with the tray was gone, I turned back.

  I walked around the log house and heard something scratching and scraping inside. It was dark now and I couldn’t see anything.

  “Jonah, is that you?” I said. The scraping stopped, and I said again, “Jonah, is that you?”

  The scratching started again, and then I looked closer and saw this hand reach out of the hole under the wall.

  “Here, let me help you,” I said.

  Thirteen

  Jonah

  As soon as the boat touched the bank, the man with the pistol took Jonah by the arm and helped him out onto the ground. “You’re lucky we seen you, boy,” he said. The man had dried tobacco spit in the corner of his mouth.

  “Yes, sir,” Jonah said. “I was on my way to see Massa Cyrus’s mother in Winchester.”

  The man led Jonah by the arm up the steep bank to a road leading into a town. The two who had rowed the boat followed.

  “What might be the name of your master’s mother?” said the man with the pistol. A chill shot through the bottom of Jonah’s feet. He should have thought of a better explanation. If he was near Winchester he was caught.

  “I got a note here from my massa,” Jonah said. “She be Mrs. Page.” The note he’d written with his pencil to replace the one Miss Linda had thrown away was still in his pocket, but the paper was waterlogged and the writing blurred. Jonah unfolded the soggy sheet and handed it to the man.

  “This nigger boy, Isaac, is going to help my sick mother in Winchester,” the man read aloud. “Please help him get there. Cyrus Page, his owner in Knoxville, Tennessee.”

  The man with the pistol looked Jonah up and down. He said his name was Sheriff Watkins, and he made Jonah empty his pockets of the wet matches, the knife and fishhooks, and the tablet and pencil. He saw the note was written on a sheet from the tablet.

  “How did you expect to find your master’s mother if you didn’t even know her first name?” Sheriff Watkins asked.

  “I figured it was writ on the paper,” Jonah said. “Figured somebody would read it to me.”

  The sheriff led him down the road into the town with his deputies following. “What is your name, boy?” the sheriff said.

  “Like it say in the paper, I be called Isaac.”

  “Well, Isaac, you better come with me.”

  “Maybe somebody help me when I get to Winchester,” Jonah said.

  “You’re already in Winchester,” the sheriff said. The three men escorted Jonah through the little town to the brick courthouse, as people on the street turned to watch. They led him behind the courthouse to a building made of locust logs with bars on the windows.

  “We heard they’s a slave run away from Roanoke,” the sheriff said as he unlocked the door.

  “Ain’t been to no Roanoke,” Jonah said.

  “Well, Isaac, we’ll just hold you here until we find out,” the sheriff said. The jail was only one room with an iron cage on either side of an aisle. Jonah had to empty everything out of his wet pockets again, and the sheriff took his pocketknife, then directed Jonah into the cage on the left and locked the door behind him.

  “You make a mistake, sir,” Jonah said. “I ain’t no runaway.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Sheriff Watkins said. He told one of the deputies to bring two clean blankets for the cot in the cage, and he ordered the other to draw a bucket of fresh water.

  “That is your piss bucket,” he said and pointed to a pail already in the cell.

  “Ain’t done nothing wrong,” Jonah said.

  “Take your clothes off and wrap one of these blankets around you,” the sheriff said. Jonah took off his dripping shirt and pants and laid them beside the cot. The dry blanket felt good around his shoulders.

  Sheriff Watkins laid Jonah’s wet clothes by the door of his cage. “I reckon you’re hungry, Isaac, or whoever you are,” the sheriff said.

  “Yes, sir, I be hungry, and I be thirsty.”

  The sheriff left and Jonah looked around the cage. There was one barred window looking out on a side street. A cot made of boards stood in the corner, with a lumpy, straw-filled tick. The floor was dirt and the piss bucket sat in the opposite corner. Initials and names had been scratched on the log walls. JESUS LOVES ME had been inscribed with a nail or knife point.

  Jonah stood at the window and watched men repairing a roof. The storm must have blown away some shingles, for they were nailing new shakes among old weathered ones. Puddles stood in streets and in yards along the streets. Sunlight sparkled on the water in a ditch. Jonah was so tired, he sat down on the cot. The sheriff returned after a while with a plate heaped with beans and turnip greens and a pone of cornbread. And he carried a mug of steaming coffee, too.

  “We ain’t going to let you starve,” Sheriff Watkins said. “Whether you’re a runaway or not, we won’t make you fast.” He handed Jonah the plate through the slot in the door, and then he handed him the coffee.

  “Thank you, sir,” Jonah said. He took the heavy plate and cup to the cot and sat down. He was so hungry he was weak. He was so empty he felt light-headed.

  “You forget something?” the sheriff said. The deputy took something from his pocket and tossed it to Jonah. It was a wooden spoon.

  The beans and turnip greens needed more salt, but they were hot and juicy. And they’d been cooked with fatback, which gave them a rich and satisfying flavor. The beans were soup beans, sweet and powerful. He savored each bean l
ike it was a morsel of meat soaked in honey. The greens had a golden flavor, as if they’d absorbed all the minerals and salts in the earth, along with the mineral of sunlight and the sparkle of topsoil.

  The cornbread sopped up the juice that swirled around the beans and greens. It was hot golden cornbread, sweet as roasted corn picked freshly on a bright August day. The coffee was too hot to drink at first. He set the mug on the cot to eat, and when the deputy brought the water bucket with a dipper, he drank the water with his meal. Hungry as he was, Jonah made himself eat slowly. He knew it was better to eat slowly because he was so empty, and because he’d been sick. And he wanted to make the meal last as long as possible, for he didn’t know when he might have another. He munched the cornbread that still had a hint of buttermilk in its taste, and took smaller bites, then began to sip the coffee.

  Jonah had always loved coffee, and he’d never tasted coffee better than what the sheriff had brought him. It was dark and nutty, with the glistening, almost bitter sparkle or edge the best coffee had. The coffee tasted vivid, and it made things appear clearer. The other deputy brought a blanket, and as Jonah finished his cornbread and sipped the coffee he began to drowse. He’d slept little the last two nights, and he’d worn himself out clinging to the roof of the lurching little house. Sleep began to take hold of his legs and his arms. It was a kind of numbness that made his ankles itch. His feet were cold and he wished he had some dry socks and shoes to put on.

  He felt as if he might go to sleep before he’d spread the blanket on the cot. He set the empty mug and plate on the floor and unfolded the blanket, a gray blanket, a little threadbare but clean. When he sat back down on the cot, he felt the sleep rising in his veins and behind his ears. His shirt and pants were still wet on the floor, but he was too drowsy to think about them. Sleep was a warm bath rising, and soon he’d be floating beyond the touch of gravity. He would float out on the wide, swollen river of sleep. Sleep stretched absolutely level all the way to the horizon.