by Lois Ruby
“What do you think about those fishermen they said would help us?” Callie whispered, propped up on one elbow. She bolted up, and her elbow jabbed James. Her face was silvery in the moonlight. She closed her eyes, and James saw them working under her eyelids, like Ma in prayer. But Callie conjured up a different kind of miracle. Shivering and dozing, James heard her firm voice: “It’ll be all right with the fishermen. I saw ’em.”
“How’d thee see them, Callie? Tell me that.”
“Mama Pru and me, we can see things before and after, we can see things up close and way far off. We can see what ain’t even ever going to be.”
Sometimes Ma said when she was praying that she could see things other folks missed because their minds were overgrown with weeds. But this was different.
James gave Callie a skeptical glance, and she bristled. “You don’t have to believe me, James Weaver, but you’ll see soon enough. The fishermen are waiting for us to come, and we gotta go now.”
“Yes, suh!” Homer said as Callie pulled each of them to their feet. She barely said another word the rest of the night while they trekked on toward the fishermen’s shack on rain-soaked ground as soft as a belly.
• • •
“That must be it,” Will said, pointing to a small lean-to on the south bank of the Ohio. That place sure looked pitiful in the first light of morning, all rotted wood and nailed-up windows and a porch step sloping about forty-five degrees toward the ground.
Homer said, “Look like it’ll fall over if the win’ blow too hard.”
Will studied Miz Lizbet’s hand-drawn map. “Yep, right halfway between Owensboro, Kentucky, and Rockport, Indiana. That’s the fishermen’s hut, all right.”
It had better be, James thought, because he couldn’t bear one more night outside in the biting rain. Why hadn’t somebody told Ma, when she came up with this harebrained idea, that March was the rainy season in these parts? Four days had passed since James had been dry, and his soggy stockings had worn blisters on his heels; every step was torture. The first two nights they’d been walking, James had passed the time by daydreaming about crisp white sheets and a big old heavy goose-down quilt such as Ma was always sewing on. The last two nights he’d dreamed about a hearty meal. By then they were eating nothing but the roots and berries and leaves Callie had learned about from Miz Pru, and an occasional scrawny carrot or potato they might pull up in somebody’s garden that had barely taken root this early in the spring.
A thick rope of smoke twirled out of the chimney of the fishermen’s shack, promising warmth inside, maybe even some hot chicory coffee or steaming soup.
“I’d best go up to the door alone,” James suggested. “Thee hide back until I’m sure Callie’s prediction is right.”
“Oh, chicken livers, James. I’ve seen these fishermen in my head. Just trust me.”
“Thee doesn’t know much about my family, Callie. My pa’s a lawyer. With him, everything’s got to be proved.”
Callie crossed her skinny arms over her skinny chest. “Well, seems to me what you need’s a little faith, James.”
“Oh, I know about that, too,” James said with a shimmering sigh. “My ma’s one hundred percent faith. Faith and fortitude.”
Will chuckled. “My ma says yours is the stubbornest woman she ever met.”
“If your daddy’s all proving, and your mama’s all believing, it’s a wonder they ever got together,” Callie sputtered. “Go and knock on that door, Mr. Proofman, and you’ll see I’m right.”
No one answered. James pushed the door open a couple of inches; Callie crept up right behind him. The warmth of the room urged them forward—the smoldering embers in the fireplace and the black kettle swinging over the hearth, licked by little tongues of flame.
On the rough-hewn table was a message, burned into smooth hide:
WELCOME WAYFARERS. THE OLD MAN IS A-WAITING.
“What does thee suppose that means, the old man?”
“It’s the song, James, doesn’t anybody sing it where you come from? The old man is a-waiting for to carry you to freedom. Follow the drinking gourd.’ ”
“I remember Miz Lizbet used to sing that.”
“Natcherly,” Callie said, motioning for Homer and Will to come into the warmth of the little house. “It’s a secret code telling us how to cross the Ohio River. This way’s freedom.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
FLOATING FEATHER
The shrill whistle sliced the air again. I could hear Jeep’s heart hammering next to mine. I raised my head off the ground to see what the whistle-blowing woman would do. Mike cussed under his breath, or maybe it was a prayer. On the other side, the dog was flipping his tail and licking Jeep’s face like an ice-cream cone, and I heard Jeep whisper, “Whoa, boy, that tickles.”
“Dog’s a good judge of character,” the woman said. “You can get up.” Her voice seemed small for her square icebox build. Dusting off my jeans, I could finally look at her closely. She wore a huge turquoise-and-silver squash-blossom necklace and about a dozen rings, and she carried a twenty-pound bag of dog food over her shoulder like a baby, like it weighed nothing.
“Who are you kiddos?” she asked.
Jeep elbowed Mike, who elbowed me, who said the first thing that popped into my mind. “Who are you?” Good stall!
“I’m Faith Cloud, from next door. I feed Wolf while Mattie is gone.”
“The dog’s name is Wolf?” asked Mike.
“Look at him. He’s no Tinkerbell,” Jeep said. He was starting to regain his dignity after being facedown in the dust.
Now Wolf was on his hind legs, nosing the bag of dog food and Faith’s underarms. “Wolf just loves my Ban Roll-On. Down, boy. Who did you say you were?”
“I’m Dana. I’m, uh, Mattie’s niece.”
“Oh, honey, she talks about you all the time. I hope you didn’t come far, because Mattie’s gone for a few days.”
I put the back of my hand to my brow in a stage gesture. “Oh, I’m so disappointed. I wanted to surprise her on her birthday.”
“Today’s not her birthday. She’s a Taurus, same as me.”
“No, on my birthday. Did I say ‘her birthday?’ ”
“This very day is your birthday? Well, how ’bout that! Listen, come on over to Faith’s house, kiddos, and we’ll put a candle in a Twinkie. It’s the least I can do for Mattie’s niece. Mattie’s just the dearest neighbor old Faith Cloud’s ever known, and I’ve lived awhile, you bet. How old do you think I am? Go ahead, guess.”
“I dunno,” Jeep said. “Fifty-seven?”
Faith grimaced as if she had a sudden gas pain. “Pushing fifty. Me and Mattie were born the very same day, and Mattie and me being next-door neighbors, can you beat that?”
The way she kept saying Mattie and not Mattie and Raymond gave me a brilliant hunch. “I haven’t met my aunt’s new husband. Is he a nice man?”
Faith’s eyes clouded over. “She deserves better. Who are these handsome gents with you? Come, we’ll all shake hands on the way over to Faith’s house.”
She led us into her sunny back porch, three walls of which were picture windows. It was her studio. Canvases stood stacked against the house wall, and the redbrick floor was covered with a crunchy tarp under the easel where Faith’s current project dripped thick globs of paint.
“Don’t touch that canvas, it’s wet,” she reminded us as she went to the kitchen for iced tea and Twinkies.
We all stared at the bold blotches of crimson, yellow, and fuchsia pink. The thick pockets of paint looked like coagulated body fluids.
“I don’t get the concept,” Jeep said. “The only thing I recognize is this white feather.” It was a genuine feather, not paint, and it looked like it had just floated down and its vein had stuck onto the wet canvas. It fluttered gently in the breeze from the north window.
Faith came out with a loaded tray. “Do you like it?” she asked shyly.
Mike made a face, but Jeep covered for him.
“The feather’s really cool.”
“Oh, it’s more than cool.” She handed each of us a glass. The tea was milky, as though it had sat in the fridge for a week. “It’s a Lenni Lenape legend.”
“Who’s Lenni Lenape?” asked Jeep.
“That’s our name, my tribe. In our language it means the real people.” Faith’s laughter was like the tinkling of glass bells. “You probably think you’re the real people,” she said, pointing to Jeep. “What do you call yourselves these days? Afro Americans? American Africans? Ho! People try to call us Native Americans, but you can ask any one of us, and we’ll tell you. We’re Indians, and proud of it!”
Chapter Thirty-Four
March 1857
AN OLD GOOFER
Wonderful heat radiated off the walls of the fishermen’s hut. Suddenly James felt a rumbling beneath his feet when the floor started rising! He jumped aside. Sabetha’s eyes peered out of a two-inch slot.
“Mama, that you?” Callie threw the trapdoor open and pulled her mother up into the room. Miz Pru followed, with Solomon behind her.
James was never so glad to see anybody! He watched Solomon get taller with each step as he gently pushed Miz Pru up through the trapdoor. And didn’t Miz Pru come up talking, as usual!
“Smell better up here. All of you’s here?” she asked. By now she’d shed all her turkey feathers and hemp stalks and was no bigger than Callie. “How am I gonna know if I don’t hear your voices, tell me that?”
“I be here, Mama Pru.” Homer hugged his mother and shyly placed the red ball in her hand. She dropped that ball like it was a steaming potato. Maybe she knew it had been in the dogs’ mouths, and Homer’s, and every possible unsavory place between here and there.
Miz Pru petted Homer’s thick square of woolly hair and asked, “How ’bout that stubborn white boy?”
“I’m here,’ Will assured her.
“And the one talks so pretty?”
“Thee can count on me, Miz Pru.”
“Well, then.” A smile spread across her face, which was the color of pecans but as wrinkled as a walnut shell. James noticed that her hands were wrinkled, too, and stained from sorting hemp plants by feel alone.
Callie had told James, “Miz Pru looks like she’s a hundred years old, but she’s no more than fifty-five or sixty. Conjurers don’t age smooth like regular folks. She used to pick cotton down in Alabama till the master sold her North along with her husband. Her life was a little easier at Bullocks’, but Miz Pru, she worked just like the rest of the field hands, from can see to can’t see.”
“What’s that?” James had asked.
“For a smart Northern white boy, you sure don’t know much. That means from sunrise to sunset.”
Now Callie was clunking a wooden spoon against a black cast-iron kettle that hung over the hearth. “You smell something good, Mama Pru?”
The old woman sniffed the air, and Solomon said, “Lizbet, she told me all about these fishermen who leave a shack open for any of us to come home, leave something simmering over the embers for our empty bellies.”
“Wouldn’t none of you have found it, though, if I hadn’t seen it in my back mind. Didn’t I tell you, James Weaver?” Callie swirled the wooden spoon around in the kettle and lifted a hot, grayish spoonful to her lips. “Potato soup,” she announced with such abiding pleasure that they all raced to the hearth to have a taste.
James longed to drop a dipper into that kettle and pull himself up a feast, but he saw the eager eyes of the others, heard Miz Pru smacking her lips, and he drew back to wait his turn. In his back mind he tasted sweet bits of onion, a mooshy chunk of potato big enough to fill his whole mouth. Salt stung his lips from this marvelous soup, so hot that it burned his throat as it slid down toward his growling belly. He watched Callie slip a spoonful into Miz Pru’s mouth, careful to catch every drop in her hand below the old woman’s chin.
Miz Pru said, “Needs pepper. Fishermen can’t cook worth nothing.” She reached out and squeezed James’s arm. “I’ve felt snakes thicker than you. Talking pretty ain’t gonna get you no meat on your bones. Take you some of this potato soup.”
Gladly!
While Sabetha ladled them up mugs of soup, Miz Pru held court. “Me, I like a man with meat on his bones. My Sully, now there was a fleshy man.”
Solomon sat on the floor at Miz Pru’s knees, warming his hands on the mug of soup Sabetha had just given him. “Miz Lizbet used to talk some about her daddy, Sully.”
“Old Sully, he worked at the hemp factory over in town,” Miz Pru continued. “Came home every Saturday night, and Law, didn’t we have a time!”
“Where Daddy be now?” Homer asked, from the floor on the other side of Miz Pru.
She clipped the side of his head. “How many times I gotta tell you, baby, your daddy with Jesus.” Turning back to the rest of them, she added, “The Monday Fever done it, sucking in all that hemp dust till he was breathing through wet sponges in his chest.”
Sabetha said, “You don’t have to talk about it if it makes you sad, Miz Pru.”
“Only thing makes me sad is Sully never held to my conjuring. Called me an old goofer. Said, ‘Prudence Biggers, you be attending to our daughter, Lizbet, not half the folks between here and Aferka. You got magic, girl? Use it on that poor, simple-minded boy of ours, or Homer ain’t gonna live long enough to get free with all the smarts the Lord done give him.’ ”
“Yes, suh, the Lord done give me smarts!”
Miz Pru grabbed his chin and squeezed his cheeks together until his lips puckered. “Well, jest look. Me and Homer outlived Sully Biggers by years.” Shoving Homer’s face aside, she reached out for Solomon’s hand, which she worked like she was wringing out wash. “If only my Lizbet could have lived to see us sitting here drinking soup like the rich white folks. Solomon, reckon she’s home free?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Solomon said quietly. “Miz Lizbet Charles is about the freest person I ever knew.”
• • •
Their bellies full, Miz Pru dozing in the only chair, they sat on the floor talking about what to do next, and then they heard the door of the shack inch open on creaky hinges. Solomon scrambled to his feet and pulled Miz Pru’s chair into a shadowy comer, and the others scurried behind Solomon and James, as if they could hide in this one little room.
Will leaned against the wall and lifted his crutch for a weapon as a man poked his face in. An animal-skin hat was pulled to his pitcher ears. “Name’s Clooney. You folks is safe,” he said. His voice was scratchy, as if he’d been shouting into the wind all day.
“Safe from what?” Will asked. “Could be a trickster.”
Callie yanked the raised crutch out of Will’s hand. “It’s one of the fishermen. Gray beard, white hair, beaver hat, just the way I saw him in my back mind.”
“You sure?” James whispered.
“Ask him does he have a finger missing.”
The fisherman stepped into the room holding up his left fist and let his fingers spring open. Four fingers. Clooney said, “No time to waste, folks. Ferry’s waiting.”
• • •
“Indiana,” said Callie dreamily as they all scrambled off the ferry on the north bank of the Ohio River. “I’ve been hearing about this place all my life.” She dug her toes into the rich soil. “I believe I’ll just take root right here and grow like that sycamore.”
Clooney tamped the earth with his scuffed-up brogans and said, “You’ve got a ways to go yet, folks. Fact is, there’s peril every road you walk—slave catchers for hire to send you back South, even runaways themselves who’ve gotten free and turned against their own kind for cold money.”
Sabetha said, “I just don’t believe they’d do that.”
Miz Pru huffed, “What’s all this I been hearing about being home free once you cross the river?”
The fisherman nodded soberly. “You heard right, ma’am, more or less.” He gazed back across the river and stroked his dangly sideburns, as if sea
rching for words that wouldn’t scare them too badly. “All I’m saying is, just watch who you trust.” And he gave Solomon the location of a farmhouse within a night’s walk. “You’ll be in safe harbor there. Folks there can send you on to the next place, and that place knows the next one and so on. It’s the only way this Underground Railroad works worth spit.”
James said, “Thee’s been very kind, Mr. Clooney.”
“What’s that you called me? You never heard my name. All you know about me and my buddy is, we catch fish for the steamboats, catch ’em and sell ’em. What else we do and who we are, why, it’s nobody’s business, you get me?” He doffed his beaver cap at the ladies and shook hands with all the gentlemen.
Homer grinned and pumped Clooney’s hand as if he were drawing water from a well, and the fisherman said to him, “You take care of these ladies, hear? See they get safe to their destination.”
“Yes, suh!”
Chapter Thirty-Five
GIFT OF FEATHERS
The sunlight shone brilliant and clear on Faith Cloud’s porch. The only thing that wasn’t clear was her iced tea, and I wondered what it had been used for in its previous life. Mike actually took a sip of that stuff, but then Mike can chew up jalapeno peppers like some people chew popcorn.
He asked Faith about the Lenni Lenape legend.
Faith tilted her head and said coyly, “Oh, I’ll tell it, but first let’s refresh ourselves with my secret-recipe tea.”
It flitted through my mind that Faith might be a crazy woman and we’d all be poisoned by her strange brew, but she took great swallows of it, and besides, Wolf seemed to trust her. Still, I set my glass behind a plant.
Faith looked out the window as though she were reading the legend in the trees and wind. “We believe a great guardian spirit hovers in the sky and looks after us.”
“Yeah, it’s called God,” Mike said, as though he’d heard it all.