Chasing the North Star

by Robert Morgan

  “What was that?” Mr. Driver shouted down.

  “Lower the other bucket,” Jonah called up the shaft.

  As Jonah bailed out more water he saw other animals on the floor of the well, the skeleton of a bird, what appeared to be a squirrel, a snake about two feet long. He promised himself he would never drink out of a well again. There was a black rubber ball, a hair comb, a broken knife, its blade pocked with rust. The clay at the bottom of the well was many colored, streaked with gray and brown, red and yellow. As the water got lower he could see the inlets where water came out of the ground. Sand and bits of trash danced around the nostrils. And there was a place where bubbles came out of the clay and winked into the air. At the side he saw a bigger hole, like a burrow, and he wondered if a giant snake lived there. When he bent to look into the tunnel he saw the blackness went deeper and deeper . . .

  “WAKE UP, BOY.”

  As Jonah opened his eyes he saw a man bending over him. A girl in a gray coat stood behind the man. His chest was sore and his armpits were sore. He felt like his breath had been cut off.

  “He’s awake,” the girl said.

  It was Mr. Driver bending over him. Slowly it came back to him and Jonah felt how cold and wet he was. Clay was stuck to his clothes and to his hands. His head ached. In the sky beyond the girl, black birds whirled and circled and disappeared into the trees.

  “You got a lung full of gas,” Mr. Driver said. “That’s what you did.” Mr. Driver said that when he called down the shaft to him and Jonah didn’t answer, he knew he’d fainted. So he hauled him right up out of the well and laid him on the ground.

  “What gas?” Jonah said.

  “Natural gas, my boy.”

  Jonah remembered the bubbles he’d seen coming out of the water and blinking into the air. The headache crashed behind his forehead and thundered between his ears. The headache pushed behind his eyes like a trapped animal. He tried to sit up.

  “Take your time, my lad,” Mr. Driver said.

  When Jonah raised himself, the headache drained off to the side a little.

  “We got the well clean,” Mr. Driver said. “By God, we done it.”

  Jonah shivered. His wet clothes and wet shoes, the cold clay on his arms, made him jerk and shudder. The ache deep in his bones told him how thoroughly he’d been chilled. The chill was a numbness in his blood, in every vein of his arms and legs.

  “Come into the barn,” Mr. Driver said. “I’m going to start a fire to dry you out.” He told the girl, who was named Sylvia, to go to the house and get clean overalls and a shirt, dry socks and long underwear. “You could catch pneumony,” he added to Jonah.

  The farmer led him into a room at the end of the big barn, a kind of toolshed, with a fireplace and forge, where Mr. Driver did his blacksmith work. The walls were covered with tools hanging from pegs. A lathe and different kinds of saws showed Mr. Driver was also a woodworker. Throwing cobs and kindling in the fireplace, Mr. Driver started a blaze that cast orange light all over the toolroom.

  “Your color’s coming back,” he said. “You’d turned all gray.”

  When Sylvia returned with the clean clothes, her father told her to bring something from the kitchen for Jonah to eat. “A full stomach will warm you faster than anything else,” he said. “Bring hot cider and sausages and some bread.”

  Mr. Driver left Jonah alone to change by the fireplace. The overalls and shirt were too big for him, but the long underwear fit pretty well. Jonah dropped his wet clothes on the floor of wood shavings and transferred his map to the clean clothes. He rolled up the overall legs and shirt sleeves and slipped on the dry wool socks. The clean clothes smelled of lye soap and mild fragrance, as if they’d been taken out of a cedar chest.

  As he warmed up, Jonah’s thoughts became clearer. He was in the mountains of Pennsylvania and in the North, closer to Canada. He looked at the wet map and saw it was blurred, but still legible. The next place he had to reach was Elmira. He had to go up the river to Elmira, and then to a place called Auburn. From there he’d find his way to Rochester and then Buffalo. It was already cold in Pennsylvania. Jonah wondered if there would be snow when he got to Elmira.

  Mr. Driver returned with a plate heaped with sausages, beans, biscuits, and a tankard of hot cider. “See if this will warm your innards,” he said.

  Jonah sat on the work bench and sipped hot cider. The drink had spices in it, cinnamon and something else, maybe cloves or nutmeg. As he swallowed, his thoughts began to focus better.

  “You cleaned out that old well proper,” Mr. Driver said. “Why don’t you stay a few days and help with getting firewood?” Mr. Driver pointed to a bench with sacks spread on it. “You can sleep right here,” he said.

  Mr. Driver told Jonah to eat and rest while he did the milking and feeding. “You catch your breath,” he said. As he sipped the cider and shifted closer to the fire, Jonah saw black spots flash in front of his eyes, and a black curtain fluttered in his vision and disappeared. Some of the gas must still be in his brain. He was empty. He needed to fill himself to drive away the gas and the blackness. The sausage was juicy and richer than anything he’d tasted in a long time. He ate it slowly, a morsel at a time, and munched the biscuit bread. As he ate, Jonah recalled that he’d last eaten a meal in the jail in Winchester. He’d fainted in the well from hunger as well as from the natural gas.

  The girl named Sylvia appeared at the door of the toolroom. In the firelight she looked younger than she had outside. She hugged the gray coat close with one hand and handed him a dish with the other. On the dish was a little cake covered with nuts and honey.

  “Mother said to bring you this,” the girl said.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Jonah said. He expected the girl to leave, but she stood in the doorway watching him. He stopped eating because she was staring at him.

  “Where did you come from?” she said.

  “From Harrisburg.”

  “But you don’t live in Harrisburg,” she said.

  “No, ma’am.”

  She wore a homespun frock under the gray coat. Her skin was very fair and clear and her cheeks red.

  “Where are you going?” Sylvia said.

  “I’m looking for work,” Jonah said.

  Sylvia stepped closer to the fire as though studying him. “Do you curl your hair?” she said.

  “No, ma’am,” Jonah said.

  “Would you like some more cider?” Sylvia said.

  “No, thank you, ma’am,” Jonah said. He began eating again. He wanted to eat all the beans and sausage and bread while he had a chance.

  “If you stay till Sunday you can go to church with us,” Sylvia said. “Mother and Papa and my three sisters and me ride to church in the wagon.”

  “Is the preacher good?” Jonah said.

  “Elder Herzog talks to the Lord,” Sylvia said and giggled.

  “How far is it to the church?”

  “It’s down the river,” Sylvia said. “I could get you some more sausages.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” She disappeared into the long hallway of the barn.

  Jonah looked into the fire and imagined he could see glowing mountains behind the flames and a road leading deep into the mountains, and maybe petering out in the mountains. The road turned this way and that way and appeared to stop.

  “These are hot,” Sylvia said as she came back through the doorway holding another plate.

  “Thank you kindly, ma’am,” Jonah said and reached for the plate.

  Sylvia stared at his head and extended her hand as if to see if his hair was wet. She touched his head and the front of his ear. It was a touch of curiosity. It seemed something she’d planned to do, when she got close enough. She giggled to show she’d not meant to do anything but act a little silly.

  “Sylvia!” Mr. Driver came into the room just in time to see his daughter touch Jonah’s hair and cheek. “Go to the house,” he ordered. When the girl was gone, Mr. Driver told Jonah that he would have to le
ave in the morning. He could not afford to have a strange man on the place with four daughters. “You’ll have to be on your way,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” Jonah said. He knew it wouldn’t do any good to explain that Sylvia had just been curious, that she’d not meant anything. And he’d done nothing but thank her for the sausage.

  “You must be gone by daylight,” Mr. Driver said before he left Jonah. He didn’t mention the dollar he’d promised for cleaning the well, and Jonah didn’t remind him. In South Carolina he would have been beaten and cut and hanged if a white man had seen a white woman touch him that way. If Mr. Driver would let him slip away, even without the dollar, Jonah knew he was lucky indeed.

  After he finished the sausage and sweet cake, Jonah set the plates by the fireplace. It was already dark outside, and he put another stick on the fire. The flames lit the room in a pulsing orange glow. Jonah had never seen so many tools as hung on nails and pegs on the walls. There were hammers and augers, drawknives and adzes, axes and hatchets, saws and carpenter’s levels. One corner had only farm tools, hoes and rakes, shovels and sickles. A scythe hung from a peg. The blade was honed thin as a whisper, and the metal and handle were oiled.

  As Jonah lay on the sacks on the bench, he wondered again if Mr. Driver might inform the sheriff he was a runaway. Even now the farmer might be on his way to find the sheriff. Everything was changed because Mr. Driver had seen Sylvia touch him. As Jonah lay on the sacks and stared at the sharp scythe, he began to think of a new plan.

  Fifteen

  Angel

  It was in that railroad car that Jonah saw how much he needed me. Before that he just wanted to play with me then go on his way, the first chance he got, like most men do. Men want you and then they want to get away. But when he kicked that other runaway out the door of the boxcar and thought that man might be dead, Jonah was more scared than ever, shaking inside his skin. I reckon he wondered how he was ever going to get up north, and he had killed another colored man.

  I sat down beside him and leaned against that cotton bale and put my arm around his shoulder, like he was my boy. And Jonah cried like a baby against my bosom because he was cold and afraid and hungry. And he was lost. He’d never been on a train before and he didn’t know where it was going, and he was far from home and his mama and everything he knew, and he had been attacked by another black man. He may have had the big map in his head, and all those words, but he was lost all the same.

  Now I knew how smart he was and how bold he was to run away, and he’d shown me the way. But without me he was never going to get to freedom. And without him I sure wasn’t ever going to make it either. He was my boy, but he was my man, too, scared in his bones, but wild enough in his blood to run away in the first place.

  He cried for a while and then he started feeling the warmth of my bosoms. He rested his head on me and then the man in him began to wake up. I could feel when it happened. One minute he just felt helpless and sorry for himself, and the next minute he felt my nipple under the cloth and he started to work his hands over me, seeing how good it felt, how soft and comforting I was. He touched my skin like he’d never felt soft skin before. He started waking up from his misery and confusion and seeing again how big and pretty I was all over.

  The fact is I was waking up, too. I’d been with lots of men and given them a good time, but I had never been with anybody like Jonah. Jonah made me feel a spark of sweetness down in my belly and in my head. I liked the way he touched my shoulders and my hair and rubbed me all over like he was finding a new country. And I reckon I was big as a country.

  I rolled over and let him take his way whatever he wanted, and it didn’t seem possible he could feel so awful before and then so good he could hardly get his breath. It was a miracle. We had nothing but ourselves on that straw floor. But his mouth was on my ear and neck and in my hair and his hands were all over me, and he didn’t say anything he was breathing so fast. And I was thinking: this is my man, and nobody else can cheer him up like me, and nobody can give me jubilee like this boy with his serious face and his head full of words and maps and plans for up north and a free life.

  “You are my angel,” he said.

  And I did feel like an angel. Everything I touched was lit like a cloud at sunset, and everything was sparkling like gold. And I saw apples and plums and ripe pears and blue grapes and sweet potatoes full of butter. And I felt wings inside me, in my back and inside my legs, like I was taking off and flying. I was flying over rivers and meadowlands, and fields of waving rye.

  And next thing I knew I was laughing, all covered with sweat and straw stuck to my skin. And we were so out of breath we couldn’t say anything. It felt like glory had rushed in and flooded all over me.

  Girl, you are in love, I whispered to myself. That is what you are. I had never felt like that before. We didn’t have anything and we were lying in a dirty freight car with nothing to eat and hardly knew where we were going. And I felt happy as an angel floating on a cloud.

  With love in her breast, a woman can go on. When she has her man, a woman can keep moving. A man gives her purpose, like a family gives her purpose. I saw that was why I followed Jonah, because without him nothing meant much. Without him minutes just stretched out forever and didn’t go anywhere. Time has no shape to it unless you are in love. Time doesn’t go anywhere but to more time, and then one day you are dead. Love makes the hours firm up into something big. I saw, as I lay there on the floor with Jonah, I had no choice, except to be with this man; I had no other way to go on.

  We lay there together on the straw till we got cold again. And when Jonah stood up and looked around, he saw the kettle the other man had. It had potatoes and matches in it, and he found a dirty folded paper. When he unfolded and looked at the paper, he said it was a map, a map to Canada and freedom.

  “I thought you had a map in your head,” I said. He was so tickled with the dirty paper, it made me laugh. It was like he’d found the secret answer to a puzzle. He acted so sure it made me feel sure, too. He now had both the map in his head and the map on the page. He looked out the door of the car and he walked back and forth between the bales of cotton.

  But the train started slowing and he said we must be coming to Hagerstown. And then when the car stopped we heard voices and had to hide behind a bale. And next thing we knew the railroad men closed the boxcar door and latched it and we were locked inside that car. The train started moving again and Jonah looked at the ceiling, but he couldn’t reach the door up there. He looked around the wall, but there was no way out. He was scared because we were locked in. And I was scared because he was scared. He tried the big door, but that was no good. We were locked in for sure.

  Now I saw him study the problem. Jonah got down on his knees and brushed away the straw and dirt. He rubbed the dirt away and found cracks around a trapdoor down there. And using the stiff handle of the kettle, he opened that big trapdoor. You never heard such a racket as came up from the wheels and tracks underneath, a clacking and humming, rattling and snapping.

  “Don’t you leave me here,” I hollered.

  But he took the kettle and the knife and lowered himself through the trapdoor onto the rods below.

  After the train stopped I tried to squeeze through the trapdoor in the boxcar. It was so narrow I scraped my hip and shoulder, dropping through onto the filthy rocks and crossties. Soon as I rolled over the rails and pushed myself up, I saw Jonah talking to a man on a wagon. Jonah held the kettle and climbed up on the wagon seat. I was going to holler out to him and I knew he saw me. But just then two policemen in blue coats came running up and grabbed me. One took my left arm and the other the right.

  I looked back over my shoulder at Jonah riding away in the wagon with the man in a wide-brim hat. He didn’t pay any attention to me. They rode up the road out of town toward the mountains. There was nothing I could do, because the policemen jerked me on down the tracks to the station.

  “I ain’t done anything,” I say to the p
olicemen.

  “We saw you get off the train,” one said.

  “Vagrancy and trespass,” the other said.

  “And maybe there’s reward for catching you,” the first one said.

  “Nobody is looking for me,” I said.

  “But we found you,” the second policeman said and laughed.

  They took me to their little jail made of rocks behind the courthouse, and locked me in a room with a cot and a pee bucket. And they brought me in a bowl of beans like soup beans except it was another kind of beans, and a jug of water.

  “We’ll be back to see you later,” one said, and then they left. I didn’t know what they meant to do, but then I reckon I did know. I had a good idea. There was nothing for me to do but eat those beans and sit on the cot and wait, because the windows had bars on them and the door was iron bars locked with a big lock. I sat there studying on where Jonah was. All I knew was I was somewhere in Pennsylvania, as Jonah had said. My head felt like a pig bladder full of mud.

  A little later the two policemen did come back. One stood outside the room while the other came into the room and took off his clothes. I saw there was nothing to do but let them have their way. They could beat me up and starve me, maybe kill me if they wanted to. There was nothing I could do to stop them. I pulled my dress up and lay back on the cot.

  “Now let me see yours,” I said, and he laughed.

  After the first policeman had a good time, he put on his clothes and the other came into the cell and stripped. And I had to do it all over again. Except this one wanted me to take my dress all the way off. All the while he was huffing and grunting, I wondered if they were going to keep me there to serve them day after day. Or would they send a message down south to Master Thomas and ask him for a reward?