by Lisa Wingate
A racket takes our eyes to the street. I look up and expect that it’ll be cattle or wagons, but it’s a detachment of Federal soldiers, riding down the street in lines, two by two. Cavalry. They don’t much resemble the ragged Federals of the war, who wore blue uniforms patched up and stitched over holes, stained with dirt and blood and held together with carved circles of wood where the brass buttons went missing. The soldiers back then rode bone-thin horses of whatever kind they could buy or steal, as horses got hard to come by with so many killed in battles.
These soldiers today travel on matched bays, the whole bunch of them. The yellow cavalry stripes on their pants show bright, and the black bill caps sit square and level. The brass plates on their rifles shine at the sun. Scabbards, buckles, and hooves raise a clatter.
I step back in the shadows. A tightening starts deep in my middle and works its way through me. Ain’t seen soldiers anytime lately. Back home, if you spot one you don’t dare look his way or stop to talk. No matter that the war is over and been over all these years, you get seen talking to the Federals, folks like Old Missus don’t like it.
I pull Juneau Jane and Missy back, too. “We got to be careful,” I whisper and hurry them away to the other end of the alley. “That woman in Jefferson said it was the Federals come looking for Mr. Washburn and his papers. What if they’re looking for him here, too? Some of that trouble Lyle brought on, maybe.” I’m surprised by my own mouth for a minute. I didn’t call him Young Mister or Marse Lyle, or even Mister Lyle, just Lyle, like Juneau Jane does.
Well, he ain’t your marse, I tell myself. You are a free woman, Hannie. Free to call that snake by his given name if you want to.
Something inside me gets bigger, just then. Not sure what it is, but it’s there. Stronger now. Different.
Juneau Jane don’t seem worried about the soldiers, but it’s clear her mind’s on other things. She looks down the hill, where shanties made from all manner of wagon parts, downed branches, slabwood, barrel staves, crates, and sawed trees squat low on the muddy banks of the Trinity River. The frames lean toward the water, covered in hides, oilcloth, tarred scrim, and pieces of bright-colored signs. A little brown boy pulls wood off one shack so he can feed the cook fire at another.
“I could manage a change of clothing down there, before seeking Mr. Washburn. Some of the huts appear vacant,” Juneau Jane says.
What’s she thinking? “That’s got to be Battercake Flats. Where Pete told us not to go.” But arguing don’t do no good. She’s already finding her way to the path. Can’t let her walk down there by herself, so I go along, dragging Missy with me. Missy might scare somebody, at least. “Get me killed. Get me killed in Battercake Flats,” I call ahead to Juneau Jane. “Ain’t the sort of place I want to meet my maker, that’s for definite sure.”
“We will not leave our belongings,” she says, marching right ahead on them skinny spider legs.
“We will if we’re dead.”
Two soot-smudged white women in threadbare clothes come up the path. They inspect us over real careful, studying our bundles to see, can they steal something? I grab hold of Missy’s arm like I’m worried, say to her, “Now, you leave them two women be. They ain’t hurting you.”
“You’ns in need a’ som’pin’?” one of the women asks. Her teeth are rotted off into sharp points. “Got us a camp jus’ thar. Hungry fer some hot grub, err ya? We don’ mind to share our’n. Carryin’ any coin, err ya? You gimme jus’ a little, Clary, here, she’d skee-daddle on over to the merkateel store, git us’ns some coffee. Drunk up the las’ of our’n in camp. But it ain’t far…to the merkateel.”
I look yon, and there’s a man standing and watching us. I back off the path and pull Missy with me.
“No reason for to be so skeert and skitterish.” The woman smiles, her tongue working the holes where teeth are gone. “We’s right friendsome folk.”
“We have no need of friends,” Juneau Jane says and moves away to let the woman pass.
The man down the hill stays watching. We wait till the women round the courthouse, then we turn and go that way, too. Back up the hill.
I remember what Pete said. There’s good people, and there’s bad people. Here in Fort Worth town, round every corner we turn, seems like somebody’s looking us over, seeing if we’re worth the trouble to steal from. This is a place of plenty and none, this Fort Worth. A town you’ve got to know the way of to be safe in it, and so we go to the blacksmith shop to find John Pratt. I leave Missy and Juneau Jane outside, and step in just myself. He’s kindly, but can’t say about Mr. Washburn.
“Been many folk leave the town since the railroad didn’t come on,” he says. “Lot of people had been speculatin’ on that. Shucked out when the news come. Hard times, right now. But there’s some who moved in to grab up what can be bought cheap. Could be your Mr. Washburn is that kind.” He tells us how to get to the bathhouses and the hotels, where most folk new to town would go if they had money. “You ask around there, you’ll likely find news of him, if there’s any to be had.”
We go along as he told us, asking anybody that’s willing to talk to three wandering boys.
A yellow-haired woman in a red dress calls us to the side door of a building, says she runs the bathhouse, and she offers a bath cheap. They got hot water ready and nobody to use it.
“Slim times, right now, boys,” she tells us.
The sign in the window says my kind ain’t welcome there and Indians ain’t, either. I know that because Juneau Jane points and whispers it in my ear.
Lady in the doorway looks us over good. “What’s wrong with the big boy?” She folds her arms and leans closer. “What’s wrong with you, big’un?”
“He simple, Missus. Simpleminded,” I say. “Ain’t dangerous, though.”
“Didn’t ask you, boy,” she snaps, then looks in Juneau Jane’s face. “What about you? You simple? You got Indian blood in you? You a breed or you a white boy? Don’t take no coloreds ner Indians in here. And no Irish.”
“He a Frenchy,” I say, and the lady hisses air to shut me up, then turns to Juneau Jane. “You don’t talk for yourself? Kind of a pretty little boy, ain’t ya? How old are you?”
“Sixteen years,” Juneau Jane says.
The lady throws back her head and laughs. “More like twelve years, I’d say. You ain’t even shavin’ yet. But you sure sound like the Frenchies, all right. You got the money? I’ll take it. I don’t got nothin’ against a Frenchman. Long’s you’re a payin’ customer.”
Juneau Jane and me move off from her. “I don’t like the look of it,” I whisper, but Juneau Jane’s got her mind made up. She takes the coins she needs and the bundle with her woman clothes and lets me keep the rest.
“We’ll be out here. Right here, waiting,” I say, loud enough for the lady to hear. Then whisper behind Juneau Jane’s head, “You get inside, you look for where there’s another door. See that steam rising out behind the building? They got to be emptying buckets and washing clothes back there. You slip out that way when you’re done, so she don’t see you in your lady clothes.”
I grab Missy Lavinia’s arm, steer her away and figure I might as well look for some of my own kind to ask after Mr. Washburn. Down the boardwalk, a boy’s hollering for boots to shine. He’s a skinny brown thing maybe about Juneau Jane’s age. I work my way over there and ask him my question.
“Might know,” he says. “But I don’t give answers free, ’less I’m shinin’ shoes at the same time. Them shoes you got ain’t worth shinin’, but you gimme five cents, want it done, I’d do it, but back in the alley, though. Can’t have the white folk think I do colored shoes. Won’t let me to use my brushes on them after.”
Nothing comes free in this town. “Reckon I can find out someplace else to ask…unless you want to trade for it.”
The eyes go to slits in his tan-brown face. “What you
wantin’ to trade?”
“Got a book,” I say. “Book to write the names of people you lost in the war, or who was sold from you before the freedom. You missing any of your people? We can put their names in the book. Ask after them all the places we go. You got three cents for a stamp, and fifty cents for the advertisement, we can write up a whole note about your people, and send it to the Southwestern newspaper. It goes by delivery all over Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas, to the churches where they can call it out from the pulpit, case your people are there. You missing any people?”
“Ain’t got none at all,” the boy says. “My mam and pap’s both killed by the fever. Never remembered neither one of ’em. Got no people to look for.”
Something tugs my pants, and I look down, and there’s a old colored woman, sitting cross-legged against the wall. She’s wrapped in a blanket, her back so humped she can scarce turn her face up to get a look at me. Her eyes are cloudy and dull. A basket of pralines sits in her lap, with a sign I can’t read, except some of the letters. Her skin is dark and cracked as dry leather.
She wants me to come close. I go to squat down, but Missy Lavinia tries to pull my arm. “Stop troubling me,” I tell her. “You just stand there.”
“I can’t buy your goods,” I tell the woman. “I’d do it if I could.” She’s a poor, ragged thing.
Her voice is so quiet, I have to lean close to hear her over the racket of men and wagons and horses passing by. “I got people,” she says. “You help me seek my people?” She reaches for the tin cup that sits with her, shakes it, and listens hard for the sound. Can’t be more than a few cents in there.
“You keep them coins,” I say. “We’ll put you in our book with the Lost Friends. Ask after your people anyplace we go.”
I move Missy Lavinia over to the wall. Set her down on a painted bench in front of a window. She’s white, so she can sit there, I reckon.
I go back and rest on my knees beside the woman. “Tell me about your people. I’ll remember it, and soon’s there comes a chance, I’ll get it in our Book of Lost Friends.”
She says her name is Florida. Florida Jones. And while the music plays someplace nearby and folks stroll on the boardwalk, and a smith’s hammer sings out whang-ping-ping, whang-ping-ping, and horses snort and lick their muzzles, dozing lazy at the hitch racks, Florida Jones tells me her tale.
When she’s done, I say it all back to her. All seven names of her children, and the names of her three sisters and two brothers, and the places where they been carried off from her and who by. I wish I could write it down. I’m carrying the book and what’s left of the pencil, but I can’t make enough letters and how they sound. Don’t know how to work the pencil, either.
Florida’s thin hands reach out, cold on my skin. Her shawl falls away, and I see the brand on her arm. R for runaway. Before I think what I’m doing, I touch a finger to it.
“I gone off seekin’ my children,” she tells me. “Ever’time they take one, I go seekin’. Stay seekin’ long’s I can, till they find me, or the pattyrollers cotch me, or the dogs git on me, bring me back home to that place I hate and that man I been made to be with against my wants. Once I get over the punishin’, Marse say, ‘Make another baby, you two, or else…’ and then that man get on me and pretty soon, I’m ripenin’ up again with another one. Love that sweet, pretty thing when it comes. Ever’time, Marse tell me, ‘Florida, you get to keep this one.’ And ever’time, he find hisself in need of money, off they go. And he say, ‘Well, that one was too fine to keep, Florida.’ And I just sit and cry out and mourn till I can get away and go searchin’.”
She asks if I could write a letter for her and mail it to the Southwestern newspaper. Then she hands over her cup for me to take the money.
“It ain’t enough yet, to pay for the paper,” I tell her. “But we can go on and get the letter ready. And the day’s early, yet. Might be we could help you sell the rest of your—”
Commotion in the street stops me. I turn in time to hear a woman scream and a man holler as a wagon just misses somebody. A horse tied at hitch sits back against the reins and breaks the slobber leathers and somersaults over its tail, its hooves kicking and thrashing the air. Other horses spook and pull and tug their reins free and wheel off. One smacks into a man riding a ewe-necked chestnut colt that looks barely old enough to be under saddle.
“Har!” the man hollers and jerks up the rawboned colt, puts the spurs to it and whips it over and under with his long bridle reins. The colt downs its head and goes to bucking—just misses barreling right into Missy Lavinia, who’s wandered from the bench. She’s standing in the street, just staring off. The wagon team bolts and the driver fights to gather them up before there’s a runaway. Folks on foot and dogs scatter in every direction. Men run to the hitch rails to grab their horses, and loose mounts hightail down the street, the reins flying free.
I jump up and go to running while the colt and its rider kick up dust clouds, them hooves sailing past Missy, but she just stands there looking.
Somebody calls from the boardwalk, “Yeehaw! Look at ’im buck!”
I get to Missy Lavinia just before the colt finally lands spraddle-legged, buckles in the knees, and goes down hard, rolling over the top of its rider, who hangs on and comes halfway back up when the colt does. “Git on yer feet, you broom-tail dink.” The man whips the horse on the face and ears till it finds its legs again, then he spurs it toward Missy Lavinia. “Git out the street! Ya spooked my horse!” He grabs a rope from his saddle, meaning to hit her with it, I guess.
Missy throws her chin out and bares her teeth and hisses at him.
I try to move her up on the boardwalk where he can’t run us down, but she won’t budge, just stands there hissing.
The rope comes down hard. I feel it whip my shoulder, hear it sing side to side through the air, slapping saddle leather and horseflesh and whatever else it can reach. The rider reins the colt round, while the wild-eyed thing bawls and snorts and balks. It comes sidewards and spins and fights for its head, knocking into Missy Lavinia. She goes down into the mud, and I fall atop of her.
“Please! Please! He addle-headed! He addle-headed! He don’t know!” I yell and throw my hands out front of us as the rope sings again. It hits my fingers hard, and I grab on, desperate to stop it. The rawhide honda whips back and hammers my cheekbone. Lights explode in my eyes, and then I’m falling down a deep hole into the black. I take the rope with me, hang on to it for all I’m worth. I hear the cowboy yelp and the colt stagger and then the thump of its heavy fall. I smell the gush of its breath.
The rope jerks me up before I can let go, and I fly forward off Missy. Next thing I know, I’m belly-down in the street and looking in that horse’s eye. It’s big and black, shiny like a drop of wet ink, white and red at the edges. It blinks one time, slow, looking into me.
Don’t be dead, I say in my mind and see the rider pushing hisself out from under the laid-over colt. Other men run over, pulling at the ropes that’ve got the poor thing tangled. One more blink, and they shoo the horse to its feet, and it stands there splayed and heaving, better off than the man, who’s on one leg. He tries to stand but folds, and howls and goes halfway down before somebody catches him.
“Gimme my rifle!” he yells out, struggling for the scabbard on his saddle. The colt spooks and buggers away. “Gimme my rifle! I’m-a git rid of us a halfwit and its boy! You be needin’ a shovel to pick up what’s left when I git through.”
I shake the fog out of my head. Need to get up, get away before he puts a hand on that gun. But the world spins, everything moving like a dust devil—old Florida, the sorrel colt, a red-and-white-striped pole by a store, the sun shining on a window glass, a woman in a rose-pink dress, a wagon wheel, a barking dog on a leash, the shoeshine boy.
“Hang on. Now just hold on,” somebody else says. “Sheriff’s comin’.”
“That halfwit tried to kill me!” the man hollers. “Him and his boy tried to kill me and steal my horse. He’s broke my leg! He’s broke my leg!”
Go, Hannie, run, my mind shouts. Get up! Run.
But I don’t know which way is up.
CHAPTER 20
BENNY SILVA—AUGUSTINE, LOUISIANA, 1987
Few things are more life affirming than watching an idea that was fledgling and frail in its infancy, seemingly destined for birth and death in almost the same breath, stretch its lungs and curl its fingers around the threads of life, and hang on with a determination that can’t be understood, only felt. Our three-week-old history project, which the kids have dubbed Tales from the Underground, in a mixture of the original Tales from the Crypt idea and an homage to the Underground Railroad, the freedom chain that helped escaped slaves make their way north, has found its feet.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays in the classroom, we’re reading about heroes of the Underground Railroad like Harriet Tubman, William Still, and the Reverend John and Jean Rankin. The room that was once so deafeningly raucous I couldn’t hear myself think, or so quiet I could hear—even over my own reading of Animal Farm—the clock ticking and the soft wheeze of students napping at their desks, is now noisy with tapping pens and pencils and snatches of lively, perceptive debate. Over the past two weeks, we’ve talked at length about the national and political conditions of the antebellum time period, but also about the local histories we’re uncovering on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, when we line up and march two blocks down the street, not always in an orderly fashion, to the old Carnegie library.
The library itself has become a partner in our Tales from the Underground project, adding colorful local history to our discussions, not only because of the story of how the grand old building came to be but also what it meant and how it served for decades. Upstairs in an old theater-style community room, aptly dubbed the Worthy Room, framed photos on the walls testify to a different life, a different time, when Augustine was officially divided along the color line. The Worthy Room hosted everything from stage plays, political meetings, and performances by visiting jazz musicians, to soldiers mustering for war and Negro league baseball teams forbidden to bunk at the hotels and in need of a place to sleep over.