Zenobia set up, reached into her bag, and pulled out somethin to eat. “We gots to get movin and find a place to hide out afore tomorrow mornin.”
We rested, then gathered our sacks and hung them over our shoulders. I picked them lightnin bugs out of her hair and scattered them acrost the grass. Then, we stepped back into the cold crick and tossed water onto the bank to wash away our smell.
Every time I heard a hooty owl call or a dog fox bark, I jumped. I were right used to bein outside, but tonight, I just wanted to settle down in front of a fire and sleep.
Zenobia and me walked for a few hours. We didn’t talk none; it seemed like the water washed away all the words from us and sent them downstream. Finally, we heard the dawn song of a sparrow. Old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody, it called, safe on its perch in a nearby tree. But there weren’t no safe for us in the full light of day, and I were plumb out of ideas to keep us goin.
If you’re kind to the trees, they’ll tell your story ahead of you to the other trees, and they will always lend you shelter.
Zenobia and me was tired. I knowed we couldn’t keep on walkin. I looked up into the branches of the huge sycamore where the little bird sang its song over and over, over and over. I wished I could feel so happy at the comin of the mornin.
Ten feet above us, a thick branch swooped acrost the crick, then dipped down almost into the water. I waded to the sturdy limb and pulled myself up and over, then dangled my legs on each side like I were ridin one of Grandpa’s old horses. First I slid an inch, then another, and finally I hitched a few inches at a time till I got to the middle of the crick. Zenobia stood below me and watched as I hoisted myself up through the big branches, then up again till I were a good twenty feet above her. I looked down, through the wide leaf hands and branches, at glimpses of the curlin blue-green of the water.
“Get up here, trouble girl. You got no business bein down in the crick this time of day. Foller where I come up. There ain’t no way for someone to track us up here from the middle of the water.”
Zenobia checked her sack, tied it closed, and looked up into the thickness of leaves. She hugged the limb, pulled herself onto it, and crept to the center of the crick.
“I don’t like this. I never like bein up high. What if I falls?”
“Turn your mind to climbin up and don’t think nothin about fallin down,” I urged.
Zenobia stood, steadied herself, and grabbed the branch above her. I watched her get her balance and walk slow toward the trunk. Once she reached it, she leant against its bulk, then gripped the branch and pulled herself up. At first, she were careful, but then she climbed faster and faster. Just as I started to caution her, she reached for a branch, and it snapped. She slipped, down, down, one limb, two, three, reachin, graspin, and hollerin as she fell toward the rocky crick below us.
“Hold on, girl!” I screamed.
She flailed, thumped, and stopped her fall in the fork of two strong limbs. They looked like big speckled arms cradlin her in the air.
“Oh law,” I said. “Cain’t you take care and get up here without near killin yerself and lettin everyone know we here?”
She looked up and shouted, “I didn’t spect to be climbin no trees, and I sure didn’t spect to be flyin through no trees.”
“That weren’t no flyin,” I said, “that were fallin, and fallin and hollerin, and that ain’t what we needs now.”
Within a few minutes, she righted herself and began the climb through the branches, but she come more slow this time, not so bold and full of herself. Finally, she set on a limb just a few feet away. She were breathin hard and holdin on tight. Bloody scratches striped her arms, legs, and the side of her face. She looked like she’d been wrestlin a bobcat.
I could tell she hadn’t spent no time in trees, but for me, hidin out high in tree branches always felt like a safe nest. Folks never think to look up. How many times had I run and hid from Pa and my brothers after they hurt me? They’d hunt through the woods never knowin that I set up above them and watched their every move.
When I pulled in my legs and arms and stretched full out along the thickness of the limb, no one would ever be able to see me. I reached out and patted the patchy trunk. “We safe now, Zenobia. Just move closer to the trunk and keep your legs straight out so they don’t show.” I motioned her forward till she set close beside me. She slipped the torn pack off her back, looped the strap around her waist, and tied herself against the tree.
Zenobia shook her head. “I seen me some bears in trees, some birds, some possums, some squirrels, but never no slave girls.” We giggled.
I reached out, pulled a danglin buttonball off a stem, and tossed it at her. She grabbed another, and afore we knowed it, we both had them buttonballs stickin to our clothes and hair.
“We best get restin and quietin down,” I said. “We should be in Waterford town by tomorrow night.”
“Why we goin close to a town?” she asked. “Town mean people. People gonna know we in trouble. Know we runaways.”
“I been thinkin on it for a while, and Waterford’s not like other towns,” I said. “The preacher’s wife told me them Quakers are good, kind folk, and right now I cain’t think about anythin except tryin to find me some good, kind folk—and tryin to get some sleep.” I snuggled against the tree; the branch swayed slightly and pieces of sunlight flashed through the big, papery leaves above us.
The faraway sound of a rooster’s crow and the chuck, chuck, chuck of wood bein chopped carried acrost a wide meadow and rollin hills. Them was comfort sounds, like the sizzle of bacon or the purrin of a kitten. I reached into my sack, pulled out my patchwork Hannah, and tucked her under a strap. Then I patted at my pocket to make sure my lucky buckeye were still safe. Zenobia leaned back against the sycamore’s broad trunk and closed her eyes.
“I wonder where my baby sister and my ma and papa be?” Zenobia asked. “I wonder if Promise still callin for me? Now our family all in pieces like your rag doll.”
Family, I thought. I didn’t know nothin about family, and now that my grandpa were gone, I wouldn’t know what to do if any of my kin ever said a kind word to me. Hannah doll and Grandpa was the closest to family I’d ever had.
I slept until the growlin and gnawin of my stomach woke me. I opened my eyes and stretched out slow and catlike.
Somewhere close by, I heard the voices of children, a man, and a woman yellin. I looked down through the leaves at what bits I could see of the ground below us. A big woman, dressed in men’s clothes and high leather boots, stepped into the flickerin shade of the tree and glanced around. She bent over the earth, as though lookin for footprints, and called out to the others to hurry up.
Her deep, boomin voice woke Zenobia. She stretched, groaned, and shifted on the limb, not knowin that anyone were nearby. The branch swayed, and some of them sycamore buttonballs dropped down through the leaves and onto the woman-man below us.
A mouth closed at the right time is often wiser than an open one.
I drew in my arms and legs and signaled Zenobia to do the same. When I peeped over the edge of the limb, I could see the woman-man knockin buttonballs out of her hair and off her shoulder. I pressed myself flat against the limb as she walked acrost the leafy ground below us.
Nearby, a flock of chatterin goldfinches dangled from the ripenin buttonballs and tugged at them. They called to each other, warbled their see-me, see-me, chickoree, and flew from branch to branch.
“Gold birds,” the woman-man said in her gruff voice to nobody.
I opened my eyes wide and looked over at Zenobia. We set, afeared to move, afeared to breathe, afeared to gaze down at the woman-man again, scairt she’d feel our stares.
My body ached from stayin put so long, and I knowed Zenobia were feelin it too. She stretched, stuck out her leg, and wiggled her toes back and forth. The branch didn’t move, but I shook my head and wanted to scream at her not to chance it again.
“Over here!” the woman-man yelled. “We’ll ta
ke cover here tonight.”
Then clankin, a horse whinnyin, and voices below us.
Zenobia peered down through the branches and glanced at me, her eyebrows all knit together.
“What?” she mouthed, but I shook my head and held a finger in front of my lips.
I stuck my head over the edge of the limb and watched the happenins down below. Five tattered boys, three whites and two Negras, trickled into the clearin under the tree. One Negra, black as gunpowder and tall and straight as a young pine, were hog-tied to the other. A thin, weasel-faced man on a chestnut horse stopped beside the sycamore, swung out of his saddle, and tied the reins to a bush.
“I don’t want to git no closer to a town or a road,” the woman-man said. “We don’t need no one snoopin our business, and we got water right here.”
The weasel-face nodded and brushed dirt from his pants. “We’ll keep ’em hid here tonight,” he said.
Oh law, if they was thinkin to camp here all night, how could Zenobia and me stay in the tree?
Below us, one of the Negra boys began to sing a sad, sad song.
“I’m troubled, I’m troubled, I’m troubled in mind,
If Jesus don’t help me, I surely will die.
O Jesus my Saviour, on thee I’ll depend,
When troubles are near me, you’ll be my true friend.”
“Stop!” the woman-man ordered. “Shut yerselfs up and don’t make no more noise.”
The singin stopped. I could hear murmurin, and then some talkin between them.
“I said shut up!” the woman-man shouted.
I leant over and peeked down.
The woman-man pulled a crumpled hat from her waistband and cuffed the two boys and kicked at their legs, just the way my pa always did me and the dogs.
The weasel-face tugged another piece of rope from his belt, looped it round the tree and the two hog-tied Negra boys, and knotted it.
“Y’all stay here,” the woman-man ordered the boys. “Leave here and we’ll find ya and whip ya till yer own mother wouldn’t know ya.”
I heard a low answerin, and then the woman-man and weasel-face untied their horses and led them toward the oak woods.
Three of them other boys set down under the tree and talked quiet amongst themselves. The two black boys paced back and forth, back and forth on their short tethers, the way our hounds did when Pa tied them to the porch rails.
Them other boys wasn’t chained nor tied, and I couldn’t help wonderin why they didn’t jus leave. Run for it. Hightail it to Waterford, or home, or wherever they wanted to go. But Pa hadn’t never tied me—why had I stayed with him for so long?
The sun rode lower in the sky. Still the weasel-face and woman-man didn’t come back. The two black boys stopped pacin and set down, their backs against the trunk like they needed to be propped up.
Zenobia wiggled and shifted again. This time the tree branches swayed. I reached over to rap on Zenobia’s leg, and my Hannah doll slipped from under the strap and slid from my lap. I almost caught the hem of her patchwork skirt, but she were off and already on her way down through the limbs. She stopped fallin for just a moment as she caught on a big clump of mistletoe. “Thank ya, baby Jesus,” I said to myself, but then Hannah, devil-bent to cause us trouble, come loose and disappeared through the leaves.
The boys stopped talkin. I imagined them lookin up, tryin to see where that doll come from.
It didn’t take but a blink afore they was up and yellin at us.
“Git down here!” they called. “Git down here or we comin up to git ya.”
“Thanks, trouble girl,” I whispered. “You done it now. Got any ideas how to get us out of this?”
I couldn’t help myself. I quick-like looked over the broad limb again and saw them, hands shadin over their eyes, lookin up into the tree. I ducked back down.
“You. You, girl!” one of the boys yelled.
He’d said “girl,” not girls. He didn’t know that there was two of us up in the tree. One of us were goin to be okay, but which one? And how could one of us be okay if the other got caught?
“Who does he see?” I asked Zenobia. “We cain’t let them know they’s two of us.”
My question got answered afore we could decide what to do.
“Red,” he yelled, “this is your last chance or we comin up after ya.”
I looked over at Zenobia, mouthed a silent fare-thee-well, and began the long climb down.
Beware of those with eyebrows that meet; in their hearts lies naught but deceit.
It seemed like a world of time afore I got to the ground and looked into the chicory-blue eyes of the boy who yelled. I thrust out my chin so I seemed growed up and like they didn’t scare me none.
“What you want with me?”
The boy didn’t say a word, just stared and stepped aside so’s the shorter, white-haired boy, who were holdin my Hannah doll by a leg, could get up close. He looked from my head to my toes. I knowed that I were dirty and all tore up from washin down the crick, but I acted like I had on my clean Sunday clothes. Besides, he didn’t look no better than me.
“You done now,” the boy said. “You one of us, and you’ll be workin for them too.”
“Them? Why’d I be workin for them?” I looked from one boy to the other. “I works for myself now and nobody else.”
“We all slaves, and nothin more. We’re orphans. We might as well be black as them,” the chicory-eyed boy said, noddin his head toward the bound-together Negra boys.
“Why don’t you leave here?” I asked. “Leave here afore them people come back. You’re not tied to nothin, and you sure can run and hide away from them.”
“Been so long since we ate good, been so long we been travelin, I don’t know where we run or what we’d do,” the white-haired boy said to me. “Might as well be tied; if we run and they catch us, why, we’d be whipped to pieces.”
I could feel all the others starin at me and listenin to our words. I looked round. They was all dirty and wore tattered clothes, and was barefoot except for the white-haired boy, who had on boots holier than my worm-eaten tobacca patch. I knowed I couldn’t trust him, him with his two thick white eyebrows joinin together like one.
The Negra boys stood up and brushed dirt off their hands and pants.
“Easy you to hide,” the tallest boy, with the scarred face and missin front tooth, said. “But I cain’t. I’m a runaway, and they’s takin me back to my owner. I tried runnin a few days ago and this is what it got me.” He turned full round, and I could see his clothes all tore in slits and glued to his back with thick patches of dried blood.
“I know about that kind of hurtin. Pa and my brothers near broke me a few times,” I said. “I run away afore, but they always caught me. Not now, though. I lit out of that place for good, and I aim to find me a new life.”
“I don’t know how you spect that,” the white-haired boy said. “Nobody cares none what happens to us or to you. None of us got no family. We was sold to them, and now they’re sellin us for bondslaves. Nobody cares.”
“I care,” I said. “I care what happens to you and what happens to me.” I looked around the circle and saw some noddin their heads yes, others shakin them no.
“If’n we tell them bout you,” the white-haired boy said, “they’ll git us more food, take better care of us.”
“No they won’t,” the scarred boy said. “They pack her in with us, and we won’t get not a bite more, maybe even a bite less with another mouth to feed.” He looked at me, gave me a quick half smile, then faced the others.
“You, you, boy, you stop talkin at us,” the white-haired boy said as he shook his fist. “Who you think you are?” He dropped my Hannah doll and stepped right on her as he shoved the boy hard, then punched him in the stomach.
The boy buckled, straightened back up, and set his lips in a thin line. The other boy moved as if to step in, but the ropes held him tight.
I didn’t see where this talkin and fightin were lead
in me to no place good. I started to say somethin to them about us all helpin each other when I heard people talkin and horses clop-cloppin slow and easy toward us.
“Shhhh,” I cautioned, my finger in front of my mouth. “Don’t tell them nothin bout me.”
I looked up at the sycamore—the first branch were just out of my reach. My Hannah doll laid on the ground by the black boy. I wanted to grab her, but I didn’t have no time.
I run to the tree and jumped for the lowest branch, but missed it by an arm’s length. The tallest Negra boy, the one with the scarred face, swung me up onto his broad shoulders and said, “Git out of here.” I stood, reached up, grabbed the patchy limb, and pulled myself onto it.
I looked down, searchin for my Hannah doll, and saw the tall black boy bend over, pick her up, and stuff her inside his tattered shirt.
A horse whinnied.
I swished up and into the cover of the broad, leafy branches and climbed faster than I’d ever climbed afore. I looked for Zenobia, but for once she stayed put. Soon as I heard the woman-man and weasel-face gettin closer, I stopped, laid out flat on a limb, and hugged myself tight.
A fuzzy black-and-yellow-striped bumblebee hummed above me, circled, and landed on my arm. I didn’t move. I watched as it stretched out its long tongue and licked itself like a cat, then combed its front legs down its dusty, furred body. It stopped, looked at me with its huge eyes, then packed its cargo of yellow dust into pockets on its rear legs. Its wings begun to move, and I could feel a tiny whirlwind in the hairs on my arms.
Below me another whirlwind exploded. Dogs barked and howled. Men shouted and cursed. I heard my pa’s voice and the sound of the hounds. I felt like I were havin a nightmare with all the yellin and thrashin goin on. Old Delia dog were down there, snortin around the tree trunk, snufflin into the sand and leaves, raisin Cain.
“Where’s the redhead girl? And where’s my runaway slave girl?” Pa yelled. “I seen their tracks back a ways. Ya be hidin them and tryin to get the money, and I’ll beat y’all till there ain’t nothin left of your sorry hides. My hounds got the smell of them.”
Running Out of Night Page 5