Divided We Fall

by C. Alexander London

  One day, out by Widow Parker’s farm, Winslow took her last eggs to gobble up himself, and I told him I thought it weren’t right to go taxing folks who couldn’t afford it. Not when he had plenty to eat and they had not near enough.

  “You don’t like it,” he said, “then you can go on home and let the men do their work. We’ll call on you when we need Dash for workin’.”

  “What about me?” I asked.

  “What about you?” Winslow grumbled as he chewed his tobacco and spat a fat wad in a brown puddle at my feet.

  “You don’t want my help? Just my dog’s?”

  Winslow chuckled, and I knew right off he didn’t care for me at all. To him, I was just some boy. He wanted Dash’s nose, was all.

  “I’m fast and brave!” I objected.

  “How’s your back healing up?” Winslow asked, but I knew he weren’t really asking, just making fun. My temper went up and my face turned red as a beet and that made Winslow laugh a big, guffawing laugh, and I couldn’t put up with that.

  I quit on him right then and there.

  I whistled for Dash and we stormed off. We was through with the Home Guard and through with Winslow.

  After I quit, I took Pa’s old rifle out and spent my days hunting in the woods with Dash. We caught possum and squirrels storing up for winter, and one day I took home a mess of quail for Ma to roast. Thanks to me and Dash, we ate better than most, and whenever we had extra, Ma had me run it over to Widow Parker, who was about as thin as a railroad tie. She was mighty thankful, and she wished me well and asked after Julius. I told her he was doing good and giving old Billy Yank what for, and though it weren’t exactly the truth, I figured it was close enough to tell it without feeling myself a liar.

  It was one of those late autumn afternoons out hunting that Dash picked up the scent of blood. He let out a howl and led me over to a thorny bush, and I could see the little green spikes glistening red. Now it coulda been any kind of big animal that cut itself on that bush, and at first I thought that if we could track the injured beast down, maybe we’d eat wild boar that night, but then I saw bits of cotton cloth tangled up in the thorns and left behind.

  I never heard of a wild boar that wore cotton clothes, except in a tall tale Ma once told me. My heart quickened in my chest, thumping louder than Dash’s tail on the dirt of the forest. This weren’t no tall tale. Dash’s nose worked the edges of that thorn bush, and I knew all I had to do was tell him to go, and he’d be off after whoever left this blood and cotton behind. I feared it might be another deserter, and I didn’t want to go after a man like that alone. The cut on my back had only just healed, and I was sure to have a scar for the rest of my life in a place I couldn’t even scratch. I wasn’t fixin’ to have another.

  But what if it weren’t a deserter running hurt through the woods? What if it was another hunter, and he’d got injured and needed some help? I could track him down with Dash. Maybe I’d save his life. What kind of boy would I be if I didn’t try to help an injured man on account of being afraid? Julius was chasin’ down the whole Union Army, after all. I could go after one injured man. Dash and my Pa’s rifle would protect me just fine. Least ways, that’s what I told myself.

  I patted Dash on his side, and he looked up at me, eager and slobber-lipped.

  “Go git ’em, boy!” I shouted, and that was all the hound dog needed. With a high-pitched “Aooo!” Dash was off, paws beating the earth and nose working like a bellows on the blood-scented air. I chased right behind, and it felt good to run.

  Dash ran so fast, I couldn’t hardly keep up. It was his high-pitched barking and howling “Aooo!” that told me which way to go. When I finally got to him, he stood under a tall tree, barking up the trunk. The leaves had begun to turn red and gold, and they’d thinned out considerably from the height of summer so that the sun came through the branches and dappled the ground.

  “Aooo! Aooo!” Dash said.

  “I got it, boy,” I told him, and I unslung my rifle. There was a bloody streak running up the trunk, and I followed it with my eyes to where the branches started, and I searched and searched, like I was looking for a raccoon hiding up the tree. Then I saw it, the curled-up shape of a person trying to keep out of sight in the crook of a big branch where the leaves was still thick. Every time he moved, a rain of yellow, red, and orange leaves spiraled down from the branch and settled on the ground. No foolin’ those leaves. They gave his position away with their rustlin’ and fallin’.

  “I see you up there!” I said.

  I heard no reply, but I saw the figure move, and it almost took my breath outta me. It weren’t no deserter up in the tree, and it weren’t no man either. It was a girl, her skin dark as a moonless night, her clothes all torn and tattered, her hair knotted and tangled with leaves and thorns and such, and her bare feet and legs bleeding something fierce.

  I didn’t need to have Pa’s smarts to know what she was: contraband. That’s what folks call a runaway slave.

  She was the first one I ever saw, and it was my duty as a citizen of the South to bring her to justice.

  “You gonna come down, or do I gotta shoot you down with my rifle?” I hollered up.

  “Aooo!” Dash added, which made the girl curl even tighter into the crook of her branch.

  “I see that you’re bleeding,” I told her. “You can’t stay up there till Judgment Day.”

  “I ain’t comin’ down ’less you call off that dog,” the girl shouted at me. Her voice was scratchy, but she spoke more clearly than I expected.

  She didn’t sound half as scared as the crazy old deserter who’d cut me a few months back. Runaway slaves weren’t as bad as deserters from the army, I supposed, but they was still bad, stealing themselves away like that, when they was owned fair and square. I might even get a reward for bringing this girl back to her master. She’d probably get whipped something fierce in punishment, but she’d broke the law by running away. I’d be breaking the law if I didn’t return her, reward or no. The law’s the law.

  Funny thing. We was fighting a war with the federals and they wanted to take away all the slaves in the South with their Emancipation Proclamation, and it occurred to me then that I hadn’t never talked to a slave before, or any of their race, man or woman, young or old.

  “How’d you hurt yourself?” I asked.

  “Runnin’,” she said. She didn’t offer more explanation, and I guess I didn’t care to ask. She stared down at me with her eyes shiny as black river stones, and I looked up at her for a while, but the sun coming through the leaves was like arrows shooting at me. Staring up made my head hurt. I slung my rifle back up on my shoulder, and I grabbed Dash by the scruff of his neck.

  “Hush now, boy,” I told him, and he did it, lowering his howls down to a whimper. “Sit,” I told him, and he sat down on his hind legs, but I could feel his muscles all tight and ready to jump.

  Dash didn’t like unfamiliar folks. I pulled out the cord I carried in a loop and slipped it around Dash’s neck to hold him back.

  “There,” I said. “I called him off. Now you come on down and surrender yourself.”

  “I’m coming down,” the girl said. “But I ain’t surrendering.”

  “You got to surrender,” I told her. “I caught you.”

  “You ain’t caught nothing!”

  I blew a strand of hair out of my face and shook my head. This girl had me frustrated. I was wasting the whole afternoon on her. “I caught you!” I yelled, and my voice went and cracked again. I tried to cover it up by clearing my throat, but the girl let out at a laugh anyhow.

  “You ran me up a tree,” she said. “That ain’t the same thing as catching me.”

  She had me there. I run enough raccoons up trees to know that they ain’t caught until they caught. They were tricky creatures, raccoons.

  I didn’t know if girls was tricky like raccoons, but I couldn’t well climb up after her, and I didn’t want to take no chances.

  “I got a dog and rif
le,” I told her. “So if I ain’t caught you yet, it’s just because I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You ain’t caught me yet because I ain’t let you catch me,” she snapped right back. “Now, why don’t you tie that dog up over there.” She pointed to another tree trunk. “Set your rifle down beside him, and then I’ll come down.”

  I looked where she pointed, then I looked back at her. Then I looked up and saw the sun had already started to make its way across the afternoon sky. It’d start getting chilly out here, and my stomach was already grumbling, and the sooner all this was well and done, the better. So I did like the girl said — not because I couldn’t have caught her if I wanted, but because this way would be faster — and I tied Dash up and I set Pa’s rifle down, and then I came back to the tree trunk.

  She shimmied down in front of me and landed on the ground with a wince. Her left leg and her left foot were cut pretty bad.

  “That hurt?” I pointed. She nodded that it did.

  I wiped the sweat off my forehead and I thought on it. The girl was bleeding, and if I didn’t get her fixed up before I returned her to her owner, folks might say it was my fault, that I damaged their property. I couldn’t just let her bleed herself to death. If I saw a man’s dog hurt by the road, I’d patch it up, and I figured the same was true for slaves. They was more valuable than dogs, certainly, even if they was harder to trust.

  “Sorry, Ma,” I muttered to myself as I ripped the sleeve off my shirt and came toward the girl with the cloth. Another bit of my clothes ruined.

  The girl backed away.

  “For the bleedin’,” I told her. She took the cloth from me and tied it around the cut in her leg. She tied it real good, like someone had taught her.

  “Who’s your master?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer me.

  “I said, who’s your —?”

  “I heard you!” she shouted, cutting me off. Then she stuck her chin up in the air. “But I got no master.”

  “Every slave got a master,” I said.

  “I am no slave.” She grimaced as she pulled the cloth tight around her wound.

  “You a runaway slave.”

  “My name is Susan,” she said.

  “And I’m Andrew.” I sorta groaned it, because she was being difficult on purpose. “And that don’t make no difference in the world.”

  She shook her head at me.

  “Now you tell me, girl,” I commanded her, the way I’d heard foremen command their slaves on the big plantations. “Whose property are you?”

  “I said my name is Susan,” she snapped. “And the man who bought me got killed in the war.”

  “Someone inherited his property, I’m sure.”

  “I’m nobody’s property,” she said coolly.

  I didn’t want to argue with her no more, but I had to figure out something. I couldn’t spend all day in the woods talking with a runaway slave. We had to get going someplace.

  “Well, where you come from?” I said. “Where’d you live before your master got killed?”

  She didn’t answer, just pressed her lips together.

  I sighed. “I gotta untie Dash, I guess.”

  “Mobile,” she said, because she didn’t want me letting Dash loose. He was straining on the cord I’d tied him with and growling at the girl all the while. It was enough to make any stranger nervous.

  “Mobile,” I said. That explained a lot. She was from the city, probably serving in some fine house where she learned to talk smart and fix bandages and get civilized. I bet she even looked down on me for being a country boy. That made me mad, and I wanted to tell her off, but Pa said that rudeness was a sign of a weak and lazy mind, so I bit my tongue. “Well, I can’t take you all the way back to Mobile. That’s in a whole different state. How long you been traveling?”

  She crossed her arms and didn’t answer me. Best I could figure it, she’d run off and was trying to get up to Jackson, where the Union Army was. A lot of slaves ran off to find the Yankees because they took in the runaway slaves and wouldn’t send them back. Guess the Yankees figured they could break up the rebellion if all the slaves ran off, but they had another think coming. My family did just fine without slaves, and all the emancipation proclamations in the world wouldn’t break our fighting spirit.

  “I gotta take you to the Home Guard,” I said. “They’ll know what to do with you.”

  Her eyes went wide when I said that. Her lip quivered a bit, and she glanced over my shoulder toward my rifle. She was scared, but she wasn’t about to give up.

  “Don’t think about trying to get the jump on me,” I told her.

  “I’m stronger than you,” she said.

  “Dash’ll protect me.”

  “Dash?”

  “My dog.”

  “He’s tied up.”

  “He’ll break free if I’m in trouble, and if you run off, we’ll just catch you again.”

  “You didn’t catch me yet,” she said. “I’m still free, ain’t I?”

  “Not for long.” I took a step backward, closer to my rifle. I figured I’d need it. The girl was right: She sure looked stronger than me.

  When I took a step backward, she took a step forward, keeping the distance between us the same.

  “I ain’t gonna let you get that rifle,” she said.

  I took another step back and she took another step forward, and then Dash growled. The girl stopped stepping toward me.

  “Told you he’d protect me,” I said. I took three quick steps back and picked up the rifle. The girl didn’t move this time. She watched me, her face hard, like it’d been carved from rock. She looked like she was about to run, and I really hoped she wouldn’t because I didn’t want to chase her again, and I didn’t want to hurt her at all, but she clenched her fists and I squeezed my hands around the rifle.

  All of a sudden, the girl just crumpled where she stood, like a piece of paper in a fist. She curled in on herself and rested her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands and then she took to crying. I mean, weeping. She was just bawling there in front of me. Even Dash was startled. He sat back on his paws and cocked his head sideways.

  “I — now, don’t cry — I —” I didn’t know what to say. I never knew much what to say to girls under normal circumstances when I saw ’em in town. I wasn’t sure if I should yell at her or be sweet, like Julius said girls liked. All I knew was that I wanted her to stop her crying so I could place her under arrest. I lowered my rifle down and took a step toward her. I heard a rumblin’ growl from Dash, but I ignored it. I squatted down in front of her. “Why’re you cryin’?” I asked. “You sad for your master? Someone in Mobile’ll take you back, I’m sure. A lot of folks need maids and such. And you speak real good. I’m sure you’ll get bought up in no time.”

  “You don’t know nothing about nothing, do you?” she spat at me, and I almost fell backwards.

  “I —” I stuttered.

  “I heard that folks was free up north, and the moment I reckoned my master was dead, I ran off to get some of that freedom myself. My mother’d been sold off three years ago, and I’d given up hope of ever seeing her again. But then, when the war started, well, I got to hoping again. I thought maybe my momma would run to freedom herself. Maybe we’d find each other. My hope had nearly burned itself out, but a little spark lit up into a flame. I ran and I didn’t stop for nothing. Days, I ran. And just when I thought I was close, I get caught up by some boy and his dog! You know what it’s like to have your mother taken away from you? To lose hope? I come all this way only on the hope to see my mother again, and then, to see you? And to have my hope snuffed out?”

  She wiped her tears away with her hand and looked away from me. Her words chilled me. I remembered what Julius said in his letter to me over the summer: Do you know what hope is like, brother? It is the flame that no wind can extinguish. Without it, there is only darkness.

  How could a girl like this think the same big thoughts as my big brother? She
weren’t educated like he was, but she spoke real good. She weren’t heroic, but she was brave enough to run from her dead master’s house. The things she’d said wormed their way into my thoughts.

  I could turn her over to Winslow, sure. They’d punish her for running away, and then they’d probably take her back to her rightful owners or else sell her off again. They might even keep her for themselves. Or worse.

  I pictured what Winslow did to the deserter, how he shot the man in cold blood. I thought about Julius, lying in his tent in some camp, or on the march through mud and the blood of Yankee armies, and I felt a churn of nerves in my stomach, like always when I knew I was about to do something wrong, and the knowing it was wrong wasn’t gonna stop me doing it, anyway.

  “Stay away from the train tracks,” I said, backing away. Susan looked up at me, her head cocked sideways just like Dash’s.

  “What’s that?”

  “You gotta go thataway.” I pointed. “But stay away from the train tracks because the Home Guard patrols them.”

  “You —” The girl stood. She wasn’t so quick with her tongue now. I’d stumped her, and it felt good.

  “Yeah, I’m letting you go,” I said. “It’s a sin, letting property steal itself away, but I’m a sinner, I guess.”

  Her face got all funny and soft-looking. Her eyes flicked over me, and a smile pulled the corner of her mouth. I don’t know why, but I blushed with her looking at me like that, and I looked away and went back over to Dash, still tied up.

  “You better go,” I said, “before I change my mind and turn you in like I should.”

  She nodded and started to trot off. Then she stopped and turned back. “Thank you, Andrew,” she said, real proper, like we was in some Mobile shipowner’s tea parlor.

  “If you get caught, you better not say my name again,” I told her, and then she smiled for real, her teeth bright white in her dark face. I watched her run off, and I felt just about as low as I could. What kind of boy was I? Ripping up my shirt and then letting a runaway slave go? Helping slaves escape was against the law.