Out of the Night That Covers Me

by Pat Cunningham Devoto

  Tuway knew. Tuway had known all along. “So you gonna go messin’ up everybody else just ’cause your feelin’s hurt.” He slid down the wall of the car to a sitting position. “How in hell did I get myself in this mess?” he mumbled. “Some stupid know-nothin’ kid. That’s all I need. I knowed I shoulda stopped doin’ this long time ago.”

  Covering chagrin with defiance, the boy yelled again. “I don’t care what you say, Tuway, I’m going to Chicago. You think I care about him?” His hands clutched the wet straw. “No!” he yelled.

  Tuway sneered. “You goin’ to Chicago, are you?” He looked at John and shook his head. “You and half the Black Belt think they goin’ to Chicago.” He folded his arms. “Only you ain’t goin’ to no Chicago.” He rested his head back against the wallboards and closed his eyes. “Look outside, boy. This here train is headed south.”

  CHAPTER 39

  ONLY the outlines of Tuway and the other man were visible to him from time to time as they passed through deep stands of pine trees, then out into the open fields again. He was too embarrassed to ask why they were headed south, so he just sat there wondering why or what or how.

  After a time, the train began to slow. He knew they must be heading up to a river trestle, because there were no big hills in this country and no signs of lights or a town. As the front cars eased onto the trestle, Tuway roused himself. “Gettin’-off time,” he said almost casually, as if they were coming into a station, but of course they weren’t. They were in the middle of the swamps that led up to the river. Tuway stood up by the door. “Get over here, boy.” He grabbed John’s shirt and pulled him over to the open door again. “When I tell you to jump, you jump, or I’ll push you. Whichever—you goin’ off this train.”

  “But . . . but . . .” He tried to back away. “I want to go with y’all.”

  “You goin’ with us, only you gonna be the first one off.” He pulled John to the very edge of the open door. The train was slowing even more now, climbing up the grade.

  “Roll when you land and then don’t move. I don’t want you wanderin’ off in the swamp.”

  He stared out into the black night, holding John’s arm in a firm grip, waiting for the right moment.

  Just as Tuway said, “Jump,” he gave John a shove, and the boy was launched out into the night air that rushed by, his hands outstretched, grasping at black space. He hit the ground first with his hands, feeling the gravel along the side of the tracks jam into his palms and scrape at his legs before he rolled over and over down a dirt bank. The cars rumbled past him, the deafening, disjointed noise of steel on steel pulling cattle and cotton, iron ore and coal south to the docks in Mobile. He lay with his head down as the line of boxcars blew past him and small rocks pinged off his shirt and pants.

  As quickly as the noise of the train was on him, it had gone on without him, as if he had never existed. He raised his head to watch the red light of the caboose disappearing into the night.

  The sound of the train trailed off in the distance and was replaced by the noise of swamp creatures welling up around him. Their chatter was deafening as they called back and forth to one another in the night. He sat very still, slowly rubbing his hands to rid them of the small pieces of gravel that had wedged in his palms as he had tried to break his fall. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw glimpses of water, right in front of him, at the bottom of the grade that held the train tracks. A stabbing fear ran through him. He had been pushed off the train in the middle of the swamp and left to die among the snakes and whatever else was out there. They had just waited for the right place to get rid of him, a place he could never get out of, could never escape. Tuway and the other man were sitting in the boxcar this very minute, laughing about how stupid he was. Now he longed for the safe haven of the smelly boxcar full of wet straw and cow droppings.

  “Hey.” He heard it coming from above his head. “Hey, get yourself on up here.” He looked up, to see a light dancing along in the dark. He caught his breath in relief. It was Tuway with a flashlight and he was walking the tracks.

  “I’m here.” He turned, still too afraid to move, remembering all the stories Shell had told him about the size of water moccasins that lived in the swamps. Tuway got directly over him and pointed the beam down the slope making a path up to him.

  “Get on up here, boy. I ain’t got all night.”

  John stood and scrambled up on all fours, following the flashlight.

  Tuway stood there with the other man by his side. “You gotta hit them banks when they have a good slope in’m. Then it’s just like rollin’ off a log,” he said to the other man, not giving John any notice. “You jump while it flat and you end up breakin’ a leg.”

  They started walking on down the track as soon as John was up the hill. Not a word to him. He hurried to keep up and make conversation to let them know he was not afraid. “I guess we decided it was too dangerous to stay on that train, especially since it was going in the wrong direction.” He tried to laugh. No one said anything. They kept walking back up the track. He hurried to share the light.

  “I waited almost too late to start jumpin’,” Tuway said to the other man. “Nearly ’bout run into the bridge ’fore I could get off.” The flashlight began to flicker on and off. “Oh shit. I think I done busted it when I picked up the boy at the train station,” he said, hitting it into the palm of his other hand. They stopped to wait on him to fix it. It was impossible to go on with no light. It was that dark. The flashlight flickered on and they walked, but not too far before it went out again. “The path that leads in is right up ahead, but this here light ain’t gonna last us. Y’all gonna have to wait here for me to go get some lanterns.”

  “What path?” They didn’t answer him. “Why do we need a lantern? We can just follow the tracks out when it gets light.”

  For the first time, Tuway addressed John. “You wanta go in the swamp at night, with no moon and no light, and try to find the way?” He turned to the other man. “Not only do I got me a white boy—look how his face stand out in the night—but I got me a dumb-ass white boy.”

  “I ain’t dumb,” the other man said. “I’m stayin’ right here till you get us some light, Tuway, and much obliged.”

  “Me, too,” John whispered.

  “Here’s the path,” Tuway said. Just then, the light went out for good. He hit it several times but nothing happened. “At least we to the path. Come on down here.”

  They followed him down the steep slope of the track bed to the edge of the swamp, holding on to each other’s shirts and feeling their way. That’s what the boy assumed was out there in the darkness, a swamp. “I’ll have to go on down to the river and around by myself. You sit tight till I get back. It’s gonna take me probably an hour or so. The four o’clock northbound comin’ by after awhile. Don’t you move a muscle when it comes, you hear? Stay down here, hid out of sight.”

  He was gone, out into the night.

  They stood listening to the sounds of the swamp, tree frogs calling to one another, interspersed with a screech owl or the rustle of leaves as something moved about in the dark. John stepped closer to the man. “Do you think we should sit down?”

  “With us not seein’ what’s on the ground?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  There was a long silence.

  They looked off in the direction Tuway had disappeared.

  After a time, they grew used to the sounds and weary of standing. “Suppose we go on up to the tracks and sit on them till the train comes. We can still get back down in plenty of time so it won’t see us,” the man said.

  “I guess that would be okay,” the boy said, and followed him back up the hill.

  “What’s your name?” John asked as they took uneasy seats on the tracks.

  The man hesitated for a minute. “Berl. It’s Berl.”

  “I’m John.” He would have put out his hand, but there was no way to see.

  Berl put his satchel down and sat in silence on the track
s. Finally, John had to ask, “You are going to Chicago, aren’t you?”

  He heard Berl take a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and fumble for a match. “Reckon Tuway’ll mind if I smoke?”

  He didn’t wait for the answer and struck the match. “You want one?”

  “Me?” John tried not to seem surprised. “Uh, no. No thank you.”

  “Hell yes, I’m goin’. Ain’t nobody gonna stop me.” The fire from the match gave light to their space for one moment before they disappeared into darkness again. The anonymity of the night, and the longing to talk, even to this little boy, seemed too much for Berl. “Been behind for five years. Then this year when my hogs come down with the cholera”—he took another drag—“and I didn’t have no money for vaccine, and Lou Ann run off . . .” He pulled hard on his cigarette and they both watched as its glow ran up the white paper cover. “Didn’t have no money, no nothin’. Cal come by deliverin’ fertilizer.” He laughed, remembering. “I was sittin’ there watchin’ my hogs tryin’ to bed up, knowin’ it was the cholera. I musta been a sorry sight.”

  The boy didn’t know what to say. He had never been talked to this way and certainly not by a complete stranger. He was glad for the dark.

  “Course I knowed ’bout Tuway,” Berl said.

  “You did?”

  “Everybody know ’bout Tuway.” Berl held the cigarette between his fingers and studied it. “Well now, all colored know ’bout Tuway. Everybody know Tuway can get you on a train to Chicago without payin’. Nobody know how he do it; they just know he do it, ’cept somehow he done stopped doin’ it lately. Cal done some fast talkin’ to get him to take me.”

  “What talkin’ did he do?”

  “When he told Tuway the law would be after me for not payin’ the man, that’s what did it.”

  “Will the right train come along tonight?”

  “No, man.” There was disdain in Berl’s voice. “It don’t work like that. First you gotta come out here and wait for the right train to come along. We was headed south before. Now we have to wait for the right one goin’ north. Simple as that.”

  “So do we just wait right here and then jump onto the next train?”

  “Not less you wanta end up in Mississippi or some such. Not less you got money. Me, I either ride the rails or I ain’t gonna go.”

  “How do I—uh, you—know which train to take?”

  “You have to wait for Tuway to tell you the right train. I don’t know how he know, but he do—which car be open and all. Then you hop on and go. In the meantime, you have to stay put down in the swamp till Tuway say it’s okay for you to go.”

  “How long will that be, do you suppose? I . . . well, I have to meet somebody in Chicago. I think it’s a week from today.”

  “You do, do you? Got yourself some business to attend to, do you?” Berl laughed. “Well, I don’t know. I hear tell Tuway have a shack down on the swamp where you can stay till the time to go. Suppose to be not far from here. I reckon that’s where he’s gone to now.”

  Off in the distance, a light appeared. They saw it before they heard the engine noise, which got louder and louder as the light got bigger. They both slid down the track embankment to wait as the huge engine came closer, and closer, then rumbled overhead, light cutting into the dark, churning wheels throwing gravel down on them as it passed. They watched as the caboose light swayed in the distance and the noise faded.

  “Now that there is a northbound, just like what I’m gonna be on, headed for the Promised Land, away from all this here dirt and sweat. In a year’s time, I’m gonna be drivin’ a Caddy, gonna have me a suit, gonna have two suits. The women love them suits.”

  “I’m gonna get one of them, too,” the boy said, trying to enter another world, but with no idea how it was done. “And I’m gonna get a Monopoly set and . . . and have lots of friends to play with.”

  “A what? A what set?”

  “Oh, oh nothing. I just meant I was gonna get rich up there, too. That’s where everybody gets rich, isn’t it?”

  “Why, hell yeah. That there is the place every nigger worth talkin’ ’bout is goin’. That’s where you can make it big. I got this cousin Willie J. Old Willie J. went up there. In one summer, he made enough to buy a car just from working in the slaughter—” Berl froze in midsentence. John looked up. Off in the swamp, a small light hung out over the water like a suspended star. It seemed to be swaying back and forth, in among the trees.

  “Looks like a train light,” John whispered.

  “A train light in the middle of the swamp?”

  “Maybe it’s Tuway.”

  “Tuway or the law.” They crouched down, both straining to see. The light was hanging above the water, slowly growing larger. They could see, reflected around its glow, the shadow of trees and the glint of water as it moved. Soon the reflection of moss off the low-lying branches gave off an eerie light as what now appeared to be a lantern swayed back and forth, suspended over the water. It came closer and closer. John moved to Berl’s side. He hunched down to try to get a better look. “Is that person, whoever he is, is he in a boat?” John whispered to Berl.

  “No, too many trees over there to get a boat through.” Berl kept moving his head. “Damned if whatever it is ain’t walkin’ on water, if it’s a person t’all,” he half-whispered.

  John swallowed hard. “Of course it’s got to be a person.”

  “Do you see how a boat could get in amongst them trees? And if they ain’t no boat, then what you ’spect they doin’ jumpin’ from tree to tree? That ain’t likely.” They watched as the light paused and then continued its journey toward them. “I heard ’bout things in the swamp, but I never paid’m no mind.” He stood and began to take a step back. When he did, he ran into John and they fell in the dirt.

  Berl jumped up without a word and began to back up the hill. “Where are we going?” John whispered as they backed up together.

  “I don’t know, but I ain’t stayin’ here.”

  Now the outline of a figure appeared walking on the water, not in the water, but on it, holding a lantern above his head. John and Berl slowly backed up the hill to the railroad track and at the same time seemed mesmerized with watching whatever it was.

  Tuway appeared in the swinging glow of the lantern, making little swirling pools in the still swamp water as he walked closer. “Come on back down here. Didn’t I tell y’all to stay ’way from them tracks?”

  They let out a sigh of relief. Even though he still looked like a levitating ghost, there was no mistaking the sound of Tuway’s voice.

  Berl began to laugh. “Goddamn, Tuway, if you didn’t scare the shit out of us.” He began walking back down the incline toward Tuway. “Walkin’ up like you some kind of ghost or somethin’.” He let out a yell of relief. “Ohweeee. That near ’bout took ten years off my life.”

  The figure stopped right in the middle of the water and stood silent, the glow of the lantern casting out long shadows all around him. Moss swayed in the trees just above him. He was close, but still offshore, and not saying a word, just standing there, once again a menacing presence. In a split second, their sense of relief had vanished.

  Berl stepped closer to the water’s edge. “How do you do that, standing on the water like that?” Berl tried to laugh.

  Tuway stood there, off at a distance of maybe ten yards, not speaking. There were only the sounds of the swamp until Tuway decided to talk. His voice was as ominous and low coming out of the shadows as he had meant it to be. “I told you not to go up to them tracks and I done told you not to talk.” They could see his eyes in the glow of the lantern, staring at them. “Nobody comes into the swamp without I say so, and I don’t say so to people don’t mind my rules.”

  “Now Mr. Tuway, you wouldn’t leave us out here in the middle of nowhere, would you? Me and the boy here?”

  Tuway said nothing, just stood there with the lantern lighting him up like some swamp statue.

  “Now Tuway,” Berl beg
an to plead. “I know I wasn’t suppose to talk or . . . or go near them tracks, but you done give me such a start. I swear, I ain’t gonna do it again. Brother, you just get me on a train goin’ north and you never have to see the likes of me again.”

  Slowly, very slowly, Tuway let the lantern down in front of him and began to walk on the water toward them. They watched, fascinated. He came right up to a water oak near shore, hung the lantern on a low-hanging branch, and then jumped the three or four feet from there to solid ground.

  “Ain’t gonna be no train north until a week from today, and that one already got people goin’ on it. You have to wait till after that.”

  “That’s all right, Tuway. Whatever you say. Long as I got me someplace to stay in won’t nobody find me.”

  Tuway said, “You sure you ain’t got no peoples can lend you some money ’til you can get a job?”

  “We done been through that, Tuway. I told you. I ain’t got nobody. Besides, even if I could, I wouldn’t want to be on no bus, where the law could find me. No, this is the only way, Tuway. I’ll do anything you say.” He held up his hand in pledge.

  “There ain’t no way in or out of here ’cept if I say so. If you go, ain’t no comin’ back less I say so.”

  “That’s okay by me, Tuway.” He held his hand up again for emphasis. “Whatever you say, brother.”

  Then Tuway glared at John. “You goin’ in whether you want to or not.”

  He turned back toward the swamp. “It’ll be light soon. We got to get goin’. Work crews come along the tracks ever so often and the five o’clock pass by before you know it. Now this here is what I want you to do. My boat off in the swamp a ways, but first we got to get to it.

  “Right beneath the water is outside planks from the sawmill. They throwed’m away as scrap. I take them pieces and nail’m just below the waterline between the trees to make a path through the swamp that goes from tree to tree and can’t nobody see in the daylight. Course you have to be careful where you step and you have to know just what you doin’. Most times, I would take you down to the river and we would row up and into the swamp, but it’s too late and the white boy shows out too much. I only use this path when I’m puttin’ peoples on the train.” He walked up to the edge of the water and jumped back out to the tree.