by Lisa Belmont
“Ain’t nothing for me in Mills Hollow anymore.”
He held out his hand and I took it, not even worried about whether or not we might fall. It seemed like all the falling had already been done. I couldn’t even imagine Pa ever looking at me the same again. Or Momma and Caleb for that matter.
Big Jim’s face softened, like the moon when it dipped in the water and made a blurry reflection.
“Uncle Burr will be glad to have you, Miss Chloe. I know he will.”
Uncle Burr, I thought. Maybe he’d take pity on me for helping Big Jim. Maybe I’d be accepted in Vermont for the very thing I was hated for here. That’s the funny thing about choosing sides. You’re either on one or the other.
“And we can make all the maple syrup we want,” Big Jim said. “Yessir, we can get to tapping them trees real good. First of March is when Uncle Burr says the sap gets going.”
“First of March?”
“Yessum,” he said. “It’s nature’s way of giving back something real sweet. All you’ve got to do is drill a hole and hammer in a spout. The sap gets to flowing real good then.”
Drill a hole and hammer in a spout, I thought, letting my eyes drift to shore. Pa and Caleb were down by the canoe and I got to thinking about all those times Pa would play his harmonica by the fire and set me on his knee. He’d get to singing Dixie and tell me that there wasn’t anything more precious to a man than his little girl. That liked to get Caleb riled up something fierce and he’d go shoot a tin can just to get it out of his system.
Maybe that was the problem with us. All that stubbornness that’d been built up for years. Maybe it just needed a spout to drain out of, to come flowing forth like sap.
I looked at Big Jim, the moonlight cutting through the trees and shining across his face.
“Yeah,” I said. “Things will be real good in Vermont.”
Down by the river, Pa and Caleb were looking for us to no avail. They couldn’t even find our footprints that led straight through the tall grass and up the embankment. I figured it wouldn’t be long before they went home.
“Big Jim,” I said. “The train’s gonna be leaving soon. We gotta head out.”
“But your pa’s down by the water,” he said, looking toward the shoreline.
“He won’t see us. He’s too far off.”
Big Jim looked like a calf at a new gate, wide-eyed and uncertain as all get-out.
“Come on,” I said. “We gotta get on that train.”
Big Jim hugged the trunk and eased himself down to the branch below. I followed him, going real slow and trying not to make any noise. The last thing we needed was for that metal box to get to clanging.
I had no idea whether or not Pa would come up this way, but I knew one thing. Once we were past the grove of trees, it’d be hard for Pa and Caleb to catch up.
Big Jim got to the ground and I was right behind him, checking the shore. A pair of lanterns were swinging through the tall grass and they met up with Pa and Caleb.
I heard Chester’s voice first. It sounded real worried, like on Halloween night when he was afraid to stick his hand in the hollow tree. I got to thinking he was worried because he didn’t know what was going to happen. He didn’t know how far Pa and Joss were going to go. They both had their shotguns slung over their shoulders and looked like they were ready for a real good hunt.
“Come on, Big Jim. Let’s go.”
He hobbled out from under the tree, but I couldn’t blame him for going slow. His ankle was still torn up pretty good.
He bounced those sacks off his back like he was old St. Nick and I worried they were making too much noise.
“Give me one of them,” I said.
“No, I’ve got it.”
“It’s slowing you down.”
Big Jim could be as stubborn as I was. He didn’t want to, but tossed me the bag. I grabbed it and wouldn’t you know, the darned clasp on the metal box came undone and liked to spring open louder than one of Caleb’s traps.
We turned around and saw lanterns moving up the hill.
“Run!” I yelled.
We must’ve looked a sight. We were cold and hungry, wet down to the bone, and about as tuckered as a heifer giving birth. It was a lot different from Pa and Joss in their goose down jackets and cozy earflaps.
We started up the hill and heard Pa and Joss behind us.
“Stop or we’ll shoot!”
I could see the fear in Big Jim’s eyes. It was in mine, too.
“Keep going, Big Jim,” I said. “They can’t see well in the dark.”
“Yessum.”
His breathing got real heavy, like he’d been trudging for miles through murky swamp water, and I realized then that we weren’t going to make it.
“Big Jim.”
He was bent over, trying to keep the sack balanced on his back as sweat dripped from his brow something awful. I only imagined how badly his ankle must’ve been hurting.
“You gotta go on ahead,” I said. “I’ll stay behind and distract them while you get to the train station.”
“No, Miss Chloe. I ain’t leaving you.”
“You’ve got to, Big Jim. Ain’t no way we can both make it like this.”
He knew I spoke the truth and looked to the top of the hill like he was doing some figurin’.
“I don’t want to go to Vermont without you.”
“You won’t. I’ll meet you there,” I said. “At the train station.”
I knew it was a lie, but he got to nodding real good and hugged me.
“We can have maple syrup in the morning,” he said.
“We sure can. On all them buttermilk flapjacks.”
“Yessum, Miss Chloe. I’ll see you on the train,” he said, smiling real big.
I watched him go as the night closed in around us. All them sounds were real distinct. I heard the river flowing like it was wanting to take me somewhere dark and lonely. Somewhere that even them crawfish won’t go. And all them palmetto leaves got to fanning real good like they were going to sweep away all the old debris from the past and make everything clear. I hoped it could be done. I hoped Big Jim would make it and wake up in a land flowing with milk and honey.
I scooted under a hickory tree, wading deep into the shadows as I thought of Pa and Caleb. We’d lived in that shotgun house for so long that we’d made just about every kind of memory there was to make. Last December we’d gone trudging through the woods and looked for a Christmas tree. Pa had brought his ax and chopped down a beautiful Virginia pine that we laid flat on Caleb’s sled and dragged home. Momma had made hot apple cider and Pa sat by the fire, playing Silent Night on his fiddle.
A year can make a whole lot of difference, I realized, but Pa and Caleb were still my kin. It was an unsettling thought, rising like the river on the bank, but at least I knew what I had to do. I had to stop running.
The tall grass got to rustling, and I looked at the moon. It was brighter than I’d seen it in a long while and it reminded me of the Star of Bethlehem. It appeared to be pointing the way to something. I felt lost in its glare, not realizing there was another light coming up the hill. It got brighter and brighter until I was in a spotlight. I blinked and Pa said, “Freeze.”
Caleb was holding two kerosene lanterns and Pa was raising his gun.
“Where is he, Chloe?”
I knew he meant Big Jim, but I didn’t answer. I just sat there, frozen.
Joss and Chester came up behind them, flashing their lanterns on me like I was a treed coon.
“Where’s the nigger?”
“He’s gone.”
Pa lowered his gun and looked at me. “You all right?
He didn’t hurt you none?”
“No, he didn’t hurt me.”
He held out his arms and gave me a big hug. I stayed in his embrace as Joss and Chester tore up the hill. They looked like a couple of coon dogs. Sniffing over rocks. Searching behind branches. At least Big Jim was nowhere in sight. I figured he was long gone by n
ow.
Pa didn’t pay them no mind. He just held me. That’s when I realized this is how it would be. How Pa would justify it to himself. It was all Big Jim’s doing. He would be the one who’d go down in late night stories by the fire as the horrible bogeyman who tried to lure me away from home. That’s the way it’d get retold to Alma and Miss Lilly, to Uncle Hickory and the rest of the townsfolk. Uncle Hickory would understand why I was acting up. Why I was being so mean and hateful at his store. Who wouldn’t be when they were under the spell of an evil nigger? I could just see it, a tale as famous as the one told about Miss Priscilla and Moses. It was one for the storybooks.
And yet, all I cared about was that Big Jim was safe. That he’d be making maple syrup with Uncle Burr and milking cows in the barn. That there was a place for him beyond the palmettos and tupelo gums. Beyond the swamp and the river shack. That he would no longer be the hapless scapegoat of every childhood myth and spooky Halloween tale.
And so, I let Pa take me by the hand.
“It’s over, Chloe. You ain’t gotta be scared no more. We’ve run off that nigger.”
I think he mistook my silence and the downcast look in my eyes to mean that I’d been through an unspeakable trauma. I had been, I suppose.
I got to my feet and imagined fiddler crabs burrowing deep into the salt marshes and Caleb chanting, “Go, Babe. Go!” to Uncle Hickory’s radio. It was the way things would return, to a place of deep rooting.
Pa’s lantern swayed beside me, casting a hazy light on fallen leaves, and I figured that’s where I was heading, back to our little shotgun house. To the smoke that curlicued from our chimney and to the frying pans that cooked bacon grease that Momma would pour over biscuits. And I would’ve done it, too. I would’ve returned to my old way of life if I hadn’t heard the crunching of leaves, the snapping of twigs, and seen Big Jim coming through the shadows. Joss and Chester were behind him, pushing the barrels of their shotguns into his back.
“Look who we done found. Lazy nigger was jes’ sitting there on a stump.”
“Miss Chloe,” Big Jim cried, as he held onto the sack real good. “I done hurt myself bad,” he said, reaching for his ankle.
I felt an instant surge of fear as I looked at Pa. He was a hunter by nature and pointed his gun right at Big Jim.
“Get your black hide up against that tree, nigger.”
“No, Pa,” I said. “He don’t mean no harm.”
“Miss Chloe,” Big Jim said, holding the sack real tight. “Please tell ‘em we gotta go.”
“You ain’t going nowhere, nigger. Now get up against that tree.”
“Pa, don’t hurt him,” I pleaded. “I was only trying to help Big Jim find his way to the train station. He’s going to Vermont to stay with his Uncle Burr.”
“Yessir,” Big Jim said, as he put down his sack with a loud clang. He got up against the trunk of the oak and said, “Miss Chloe’s going to make maple syrup with me and Uncle Burr.”
“Is that right?” Pa said. “You think Miss Chloe’s going with you, huh?”
“I sure do,” Big Jim said. “She said so herself.”
“Well, you know what I think?” Pa said. “I think you’re trying to kidnap her.”
“No, sir,” Big Jim said. “I ain’t forced nobody to do nothing, have I, Miss Chloe?”
“No, Pa. He ain’t forced me,” I said, grabbing Pa by the arm.
Pa motioned to Joss to get the rope.
“I say he has,” Pa said, nodding to Caleb.
My brother grabbed me, pulling my arms behind my back as I yelled to Big Jim to run. He looked at me, real afraid, but didn’t move. Joss had brought the barrel of his shotgun up to Big Jim’s face.
Pa made a noose in the rope and put it over Big Jim’s head.
“Lord,” Big Jim said. “You gonna kill me?”
Pa threw the end of the rope over the branch and told Joss he needed help. Chester took the shotgun and kept it pointed at Big Jim.
“You’ve been mighty bad, Big Jim,” Pa said. “You been alone with my daughter and that’s a sin.”
“No, Pa!” I screamed. “He ain’t been bad. Big Jim saved me. Down by the swamp he saved me from a gator,” I said, starting to cry as all them tears made everything blurry.
Caleb held me real tight and I called out, “Big Jim.”
“Yessum, Miss Chloe.”
I wanted him to keep talking, just like those lazy days at the tree fort. I wanted his voice to echo across the water. I wanted him to startle the birds and scare up the possums that hung upside down in the trees.
“Big Jim.”
“Miss Chloe,” he said, but this time his voice was choked.
“Big Jim!” I screamed, as Pa pulled the rope tighter. “Pa, don’t do this.”
Big Jim’s eyes were white and moving like he was looking right at the ghost of Foxhole Swamp.
“Pa, you don’t know what you’re doing. You think you know everything about Briscoe Mason, but you don’t.”
That got him to turn around and look at me.
“What are you talking about?”
“Help me, Mason,” Joss said, grabbing ahold of the rope for another go at it.
“Briscoe Mason bedded a house slave. She was Big Jim’s great-grandmama, Ruth.”
“You’re making up stories, Chloe.”
“No, I ain’t, Pa. That diary you gave me of Dolly Mason’s tells all about it. Big Jim’s our kin, Pa. He’s Briscoe Mason’s great-grandson. Same as Caleb.”
“Shut up, Chloe.”
Big Jim grabbed at the noose, trying to loosen it as Joss hollered for Chester to get a pail from the canoe for Big Jim to stand on.
“You said you’d never do nothing to hurt the legacy of Briscoe Mason, Pa. Well, Big Jim’s his flesh and blood.”
There was something in Pa’s eyes I’d never seen before and he came over and slapped me across the face. It was hatred, I suppose.
“He ain’t no such thing and you know it,” Pa said. “I ain’t related to no nigger.”
“What are you afraid of? Afraid that Briscoe Mason ain’t the glorious hero you’ve made him out to be?”
“Shut up, Chloe.”
“You told me he was loyal. Loyal to the South and to his wife.”
“He was.”
“Not the way Dolly tells it. She saw them together, Pa. She saw Briscoe and Ruth.”
He stopped dead in his tracks. “What did you say?”
“Dolly saw Briscoe and the house slave, Ruth. She saw them in the parlor together.”
“Ruth?” he said, looking at me.
“I found it in the diary. Dolly was real upset.”
Pa looked real tired all of a sudden. He went up to Big Jim, looking him over real good.
“You a big son of a gun, ain’t you? Going around Mills Hollow like you own the place. You and your black momma, always up at Whitehall. Think you’re something.”
Pa slapped Big Jim and tightened the noose around his neck. Chester brought a pail and set it before Big Jim.
“No,” I screamed. “Don’t get on that pail, Big Jim.”
Pa kicked Big Jim in the leg and told him to get on it.
“No, Pa. Don’t you see? You’re just like Blackie Sullivan.”
That got some fire in his eyes and Pa picked up his shotgun. He pointed it right at Big Jim. “Damn nigger cut me good.”
“No, Pa,” I said, breaking out of Caleb’s grasp. I ran to Big Jim and blocked him.
“You’re gonna have to shoot me first.”
“Get out of the way, Chloe.”
“No, Pa.”
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you,” he said. “But you ain’t no child of mine. You’re running all through the woods with this nigger like you’re some kind of whore.”
“No, Pa. It ain’t like that. It ain’t nothing like that.”
“Would you look at that?” Joss said. “Your girl’s a nigger lover, through and through. What are you gonna do about it, Ma
son?”
Pa cocked his gun.
I didn’t move, not a speck. Pa kept his line of vision right on me. He closed one eye like he always did when he was hunting, and I knew it’d be quick.
He yelled some obscenities, but I didn’t say anything. I was real quiet, trying to shut out everything that wanted to make me run. I think that’s why I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to be tempted. I wanted everything to just go black and pretend it was already over. And it was. Shots rang out, louder than those fired on Fort Sumter, and Big Jim liked to caterwaul something fierce. I wouldn’t know until later that the shots were way off the mark, high up in the tree, but the damage had already been done. A certain fearlessness had come over me.
Pa tossed his gun on the ground. “I can’t do it.”
He went and sat under the tree, trembling like he’d come down with the palsy.
“Get my gun,” Joss yelled at Chester.
Chester hesitated, more terrified than the night he was gonna stick his hand in the hollow tree.
“Get it, boy.”
Chester looked at the shiny metal shotgun and trembled as he handed it to him. Joss raised the gun and aimed it right for us like we were a couple of cornered coons.
“Pa,” I screamed. “Don’t let him do this.”
Pa didn’t move and I saw where his loyalties lied. Joss was the friend he’d always had, ever since childhood when he’d rescued him from that wild boar. Maybe it was like me and Big Jim. Something we couldn’t rightly explain, and yet, knew couldn’t be broken. That’s why I didn’t flinch none. I understood Pa’s loyalty.
“Nigger lovers can go to hell,” Joss said.
I felt the night close around me and let go of all my natural senses. The smell of the salt marsh creeks. Owls stirring in trees. Raccoons climbing out of their hidey-holes. It was what I’d grown up loving, and yet, I let it all go to seek what was inside me. That quiet place that knew I’d done the right thing.
Some might say it’s foolish to give up so much. To stand up for what you believe in if it means everything else will be taken away. Maybe those folks are right, but then again, maybe they don’t believe in nothing too strong. Nothing that shakes them down to their core and makes them forge ahead, no matter what.
I felt for Big Jim’s hand, holding it in the silence. It reassured me of what I was doing. What Miss Priscilla and Moses knew. That sometimes you gotta do what’s in your heart and just let life have its way with you.