Fire on the Mountain

by Terry Bisson

  “Haven’t seen one of these in years,” he said. “I don’t work on cars no more. I don’t call them little hummers cars. Sooner fool with a toaster. But this is different.” He unpinned the engine cover, and Harriet and Grissom helped him lift it away.

  He was the skinniest man Harriet had ever seen. He looked like a piece of string standing up.

  He whistled approvingly between blinding white teeth. “This is pottery, children.” He shut off the hydrogen on the firewall, connected a nearby battery into the ‘lube’ circuit with jumper cables, and heaved on the flywheel with a broomstick. When the crankshaft turned, it sounded like the lid on a pickle crock being slid over. He nodded; the problem was the ‘oil’ field. The reason the old pottery engines never wore out, Elvis explained to Harriet (who was the only one listening) was because the moving parts were separated by a magnetic field that kept the porcelain cylinder walls and the contra-porcelain pistons a ‘fraction of a corn husk’ apart. The circuit board that kept the field awake had popped a coil, and that’s why the engine had rattled like a basket of pots. It shouldn’t have even turned over, Cardwell said, much less fired. If they’d run it, they’d have killed it in less than a minute.

  “Shame, too,” he said, “to kill something that otherwise could live forever. Let’s look under the injector board, right here, and see how old she is.”

  She was twice Harriet’s age and less than half his own.

  “I’d rather go to hell in a car than to heaven in a hummer,” Cardwell said.

  “I don’t care what I go in,” said Yasmin. “I just have to get to Staunton tomorrow, and I have to get that car back to Nova Africa in one piece.”

  Cardwell said the co-op wouldn’t have a board this old; it would have to come from New York or maybe even Charleston. However, he just might find a board in a junked corn picker that just might work; there just might be one with a hydrogen pottery engine behind a dairy barn on the old Gentry place just this side of Winchester.

  Leave the car and call in the morning.

  It was getting dark by the time they got back to the Shenandoah Inn in a borrowed hummer. Yasmin called Charleston to tell them about the car. “Don’t worry about it,” the motor pool manager said. “Come back on the airship. We’ll mail a board up, and somebody else can drive her down.”

  “No, I think it’ll be fixed tomorrow,” Yasmin said. “Besides, I have to stop back in at my mother-in-law’s. I don’t want her to have to watch the Mars landing alone.”

  Then Yasmin called Pearl to tell her they would be late.

  “They’re late too, honey,” Pearl said. “Turn on your vid. There’s a big storm on Mars and they can’t go down. They’re liable to be parked all of a week in orbit.”

  Oh no, Yasmin thought as she logged off and punched on the vid. She felt as if she was circling the planet with them; she wished they would go ahead and land so she could get on with her life. “Planet wide dust storm,” the woman on the vid was saying.

  That settles it, Yasmin thought, scanning past. She decided to go on and tell Harriet she was pregnant, tonight.

  While her mother was on the wire with Charleston, Harriet stood on the terrace outside the hotel room and scanned the mountainside with her eyes narrowed, trying to make out the trail Grissom had shown her on the map—the trail Tubman and Brown and their men had followed up the mountain on the Fourth, a hundred years ago, loaded down with weapons and cornmeal, shot and powder and dry beans, pursued by a lynch mob the size of a nation. All she could see were scarlet trees and dark green laurel, waving like pond weeds. There was a storm coming up, and the air was filled with leaves. Then suddenly there it was—the trail, revealed by three figures hurrying down the mountain on a long diagonal—day hikers, not carrying packs, trying to beat the darkness home. Just like in Dialectics class, the trail discovered itself when somebody walked on it.

  Behind her she could hear her mother scanning through the vid. There was a story on about the Mars landing only hours away, but Harriet heard the finder scan past it, then double-click on eastern Kentucky quilts, ‘patterns as unchanging as the hills,’ as if anybody cared. Harriet wondered if they wrapped the dead in them, as the old-fashioned Gullahs on the Congaree River in Nova Africa still did. She bet they used pretty worn-out quilts.

  She wished her mother would just let her father be gone, be dead, sail on, and quit worrying about him never coming home. Her grandmother said it was because Leon had never been buried. People were old-fashioned that way, she explained, they wanted to cover you up. But for Harriet there was nothing strange about her father sailing through space and never touching ground. She didn’t want him covered up.

  It was time to get home. Harriet had wanted to have her mother to herself for just a few days, before getting back to Charleston, school, friends, family, collective. But it hadn’t been much fun. Her mother was distracted, vague, as far away as when she’d been halfway around the world, in Africa.

  Maybe something had happened there. Maybe she had met a man and was going to get married. Harriet didn’t even like to think about that.

  She put one foot up on the railing and looked at her new shoes. It was neat that they were from space; she bet her mother wouldn’t have gotten them if she had known. They had grown up her ankles, and when she stroked the high tops, they loosened slightly. They felt nice. The problem was, she had slept in them two nights and they still looked stupid: like gray house slippers with thick yellow soles.

  She heard the finder scan back to the Mars story, double-clicking on it this time. The whole world was poised in orbit with the Lion, waiting on the storm that was scouring the canyonlands 1,200 klicks below.

  When Harriet was at Vesey Youth Camp on Wadmalaw Island the summer before last, a woman from the Pan African Space Administration had made a special visit to show her the memorial plaque that the Second Expedition was going to put on Mars for her father. Harriet held it for a school picture. It was as light as a palm leaf, but it would last, the woman said, a million years. A million years. It was embarrassing because she had cried when they asked her to read it out loud.

  “Harriet.” She heard her mother’s voice from right behind her, startling her. Then she felt her arms around her, as surprising and warm as sunlight from between clouds. “I have something to tell you. Don’t look at me so worried like that, honey. Some good news.”

  If Brown and Tubman are going to free the slaves, when are they going to do it? That was the question on most folks’ minds as summer turned into the fall of ‘59. Of course, black folks and white were worrying about it from somewhat different perspectives. By September they had been on the mountain two months, and nothing had happened except for the disaster when the militia, and then the cadets, went after them. No slaves had been freed that anybody knew about. Meanwhile, federal troops—real troops and not just whiskey-tossers and hog-callers—were gathering in the Loudon Valley east of the mountain; and the slaves were waiting, watching, wondering, pondering. Freedom. What did it mean? Did it mean I had to live like the white folks? In spite of their nicer houses, I didn’t envy them their mean, pinched lives. I envied the ‘free’ black folks some, but not much. I even figured to be free myself someday, since Deihl had promised Mama and me our papers when we moved North. But it didn’t mean much to me. There were plenty of ‘free colored’ around Charles Town, and from what I had seen, a black man’s freedom in a white man’s world didn’t amount to much. My real dream, which not even Cricket knew, was to go far away, beyond the mountains, away from the black folks as well as the white, away from Virginia, from America: and I imagined that somewhere over the rainbow (which I had seen once straddling the mountain like a bridge) there was a land where people lived in peace and harmony, didn’t spit in the corners for boys to mop up; talked sweet to children; read books; didn’t fight; didn’t smell like wood smoke and horse shit. I know now it was Lebanon, a dream imparted to me along with reading by my homesick friend, the Arab—his idealized childhood Leba
non, mixed with every child’s original dream of socialism, that genetic (I insist!) utopia without which there would be no actual socialism, with all its warts, for soul-hungering man. Some but not all of this sweetness I was to find in Nova Africa, some in Cuba, some in Ireland; but all that was still a lifetime away. Meanwhile, every night the fire on the mountain burned, and the question burned in folks’ heads: If they’re going to free the slaves, when are they going to do it? Then one night something happened that struck fire to my soul and settled forever all my questions about ‘freedom.’

  Cricket and I had been digging ginseng on the mountainside to trade, a perilous business since the Shenandoah’s main ‘sang’-digger, a poor white called Round Man, had claimed it all and was as jealous of his south slopes as a moonshiner of his springs. We gathered the stuff on Wednesday nights when he was at prayer meeting with his latest wife. I had been working late at Mama’s, which was so busy since the hotel at Harper’s Ferry was burned that we were serving cornbread and beans in the backyard in wooden bowls, and renting blanket rolls and a space in the barn for a quarter. Old Deihl was making money hand over fist. It put him in a good mood, and he was more willing than ever to let me ride Sees Her, since he was in a hurry to gentle and sell him. Cricket didn’t like horses in general and Sees Her in particular, though, and I always left him tied up in the locust grove at the side of the home house at Green Gables, and true enough, he seemed to belong there: a finer-looking horse than what most of the white folks arrived on. Then I would cut on down to the cabins out back, giving out one of the many signal calls Cricket and I had.

  This particular night Cricket and I were just coming back from our hillside piracy with a half a tow sack filled with Round Man’s ‘sang’ when we heard a bell ringing. It was the courthouse bell in Charles Town, almost three miles away. Then we heard another bell from Harper’s Ferry, four miles to the north. One deep and one deeper. My first thought was to worry about Mama, for the bells were fire bells, but we found all the folks standing in front of the home house, on the high ground, muttering and milling around, looking off toward town. One old man called Uncle Tom said with a wide, sly grin: “It’s Brown and Tubman. They burnt the courthouse. Brown and Tubman. Burnt the courthouse.” He said it over and over as if it were a stick he was whittling. I asked him which courthouse, and how did he know; but at that moment we heard a lone horse, and a white man rode up on a lathered, sorry-looking pony waving an old bowlprimed buggy pistol at the sky and hollering out: “They’ve burnt the church and the courthouse at the Ferry, and they’re a-coming this way. An army of niggers a-coming this way.” I guess he thought he was Paul Revere until he calmed down and realized who he was talking to, and his face went cold. “Where’s the white folks?” he demanded. “Where’s the old man?” he asked Cricket (referring to old man Calhoun, who owned Green Gables). Cricket was never first to respond when white folks asked a question; he had a way of stepping back, out of his grin, so that he was gone but the grin was still hanging there, almost visible in the air. It infuriated white folks and they didn’t know why. “They all in the house, mister, sir,” Uncle Tom called out. “Well, you all get back where you belong, you hear?” our Paul Revere said. He wheeled and rode toward the house with Uncle Tom and one other following to take his horse. He hit the porch with his boots clattering and started hammering on the door with his gun butt, looking over his shoulder, until they let him in. Meanwhile Uncle Tom tied the horse to the porch rail. By now the sky to the west, in the direction of Charles Town, was reddening, and I could hear, or thought I could hear, thunder. Cricket had stepped back into his grin and he shushed me: the thunder was horses, far off, coming closer. We thought for sure it was paddy rollers. All the slaves started melting back into the darkness, and Cricket pulled me back into the shadows of the big elms, but I didn’t need pulling. Horses meant white men, and we knew they would be out for blood tonight if their courthouse was burned. Then they rode into my life like absolute thunder: for it was not the paddy rollers but John Brown’s men. I looked, but I could not pick out either him or Tubman. I learned later that it was Kagi who led these early raids. There were sixteen of them, mounted on fair-to-good horses, with one mount doubled. They all held identical Sharps carbines at the ready, blackened with soot so they wouldn’t gleam; and they were all masked. They all had black faces, but several had white hands showing through the laid-on soot. Oh, great-grandson, they were smart! They were bold. I had never seen so many black men on horseback, carrying such weapons. But the most astonishing thing of all was, they carried a flag—a new flag, an unknown flag. It was as big as a sail, and green and black and red in broad stripes, like Ahmad’s of the Sudan or Garibaldi’s flag of Italy (though I had never seen either at the time); all I knew was that it was not the American flag and the man carrying it was black like me. He held it in one hand on a long pole braced against his saddle horn, and it whipped in the wind he made as he rode it around the yard once, twice, fast, for all of us to see. Well, the slaves were coming out of the shadows now! We heard the windows scraping shut in the house behind us while we slaves gathered in the yard at gunpoint; there must have been twenty of us in all. I’ve never seen men and women so eager to be held at gunpoint, even fetching their children for the honor. The horses stood stamping and blowing in the dust while the rebels sent two of us out back with a rider to empty the smokehouse; it was the end of summer, and all they found were two of last year’s hams (which the slaves had neglected to steal themselves). Somebody else came up with two sacks of yellow cornmeal. We only heard one sound from the house—a window scraping slowly open. In a flash an abolitionist turned and fired; a bullet whined off the slate roof, and the window slammed shut again. No more was seen or heard from the home house. Brown’s men were all silent except for one African who barked out orders and made no attempt to explain their actions. I understood right away that they were robbing us at gunpoint so none of us could be accused of helping them, protecting us not just from the whites (who were too scared to be watching anyway) but from the traitors among us. They demanded horses, and Uncle Tom delivered up Paul Revere’s pony without hesitation. I admit I hesitated for a moment, but only a moment, before I went to the locust grove and pulled Sees Her from the shadows; and without a tear (those came later, on command, for Deihl and his belt-whip) I handed the reins to the rider who was doubled up, who obligingly held a Sharps in my face. Then he did the strangest thing: he bent down and his rifle touched my cheek, like a cold little pat, and I burst into tears! Cricket thought he had hurt me and pulled me back angrily, cocking his fist and swearing at the man. But I wasn’t hurt; I wasn’t scared. The man behind this rider was wounded; he held his side and groaned as he slid off the back of his mount, and Uncle Tom helped him onto Sees Her. I patted his long old cold nose fondly and backed away, never to see him again. He was killed at Signal Knob. Then they were gone. I don’t remember them riding away, but I remember their hoof beats and someone shouting, “Fire!” Folks were banging on the door of Green Gables while others milled around in the darkness, confused. Somebody in the house was firing shots at the sky out a window while a few shadowy figures threw hay bales against the smoldering woodshed at the side of the house. “Good Lord, Miss Ann, they set the house afire!” It was burning (though it was to be put out and didn’t truly burn until later in the war). It wasn’t Brown’s men who had started the fire, though of course they were blamed. Equally characteristic of the confusion of the times was that, collectively at least, the same Africans who set the house on fire, helped put it out. Cricket was shaking me by the shoulders: “Did he hurt you? Did you see those guns? Did you see that flag? Are you crying because they took your old horse?”

  “It wasn’t an old horse,” I said. Tears that I could not understand until decades later were streaming down my face. I had seen freedom and, yes, great-grandson, I wanted it. Bad. Though I was only twelve, youth and age drink from the same deep pool, and I knew then, as now, the sorrow in the heart of joy
: I knew that I was saying good-bye not only to my horse but to my mother and my childhood as well. I rode off with those horsemen, and I am riding with them still.

  One of the goals of the U.S.S.A.’s second Five Year Plan (1955-60) was to reduce dependency on Canadian and Menominee small grain, and much of the former pastureland in the northern Shendandoah was golden with wheat. The valley opened out between Charles Town and Martinsburg, and it was like setting out on a golden sea.

  “It’s beautiful from an airship,” Grissom said.

  “Wouldn’t know,” Yasmin said.

  She had called, but the car wasn’t ready. Afternoon for sure, Mr. Cardwell had said. Since they had to wait around all morning anyway, Grissom was driving her in his little hummer to Martinsburg to meet Laura May Hunter, the owner of the Hunter letters. Harriet had stayed behind. To sleep late, Yasmin said. And to read.

  “And watch vid?” Grissom ventured.

  “I guess. The dust storm on Mars will be all over the news today. At least it will hold things up so we can get to Staunton, and Leon’s mother won’t have to watch the landing alone. I suppose you think I’m totally reactionary and neurotic for never talking about it.”

  “Not really,” said Grissom.

  “Well, I am. I guess.”

  “I’ve been thinking about your situation,” Grissom said. “It’s hard enough to lose somebody, but when they’re famous like that, you lose them but they’re not gone. They’re everybody else’s. They’ve been expropriated, nationalized.”

  Yasmin laughed grimly. “I never thought of it like that. Isn’t that sort of a weird way to look at a relationship?”

  “I bet it’s different for Harriet, though,” Grissom went on. “I bet it doesn’t hurt her as much as it does you. It would probably do you good to talk about it yourself.”