Glory Over Everything (2 page)

“ 'Fraid they got it,” he said.

“Oh no!” I said, and defeated, I lay back down. There was nothing left! The money, the clothes, all were gone. Then another thought. “My jacket!” I cried out. “Where is my jacket?”

“You mean that coat you's wearin?” Henry asked. “Even when that fever got you sweatin' it out, the one thing you don' let me take off a you is that coat a yours.”

When Henry turned away, I reached down to feel the padded interior of my jacket where the jewelry had been sewn in. I sighed when I felt all the bumps and bulges, then I fingered the pockets, and when I felt my sketchpad and my small silver knife, I closed my eyes in relief.

“Here, it bes' you drink this down,” he said, returning to me with a mug.

He was on his knees beside me, and when he handed me the drink, both he and the water smelled of the earth. I drank deeply.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Why are you helping me?”

“Somebody help me out when I was runnin', like you,” he said, while looking me over. “You got a bad eye, or do it come from the beatin' you took?”

I touched my useless left eye instinctively. “I was born with it.”

Henry gave a nod.

“How long have I been here?” I asked.

“You bin here four nights,” he said.

When he went for more water, I looked out on the dark night through the open door, then listened to the night sounds. They were not what I had imagined I would hear in a city. “Where are we?” I asked.

“We outside Phil'delphia,” he said. “Far 'nough away that nobody comes out, but close 'nough that I get to my work.”

What did this man intend for me? Had he already turned me in?

“What are you doing out here?” I asked. “Why don't you live in the city?”

“How 'bout you tell Henry more 'bout you?” he said, but I closed my eyes at the thought, and before long, I fell asleep.

T
HE NEXT EVENING
I awoke to the aroma of a roasting fowl. Outdoors, I found Henry leaning over a fire and rotating our meal on a makeshift spit. When he glanced over and noticed me, he spoke. “You feelin' better?” he asked.

I nodded and tested myself by moving about. Though my arms and legs felt weak, my head did not throb as sharply as it had before.

Henry lifted a stick and poked it twice into the hot coals. When he raised it, the spear held two crusty roasted potatoes. He set each one in a wooden bowl, then removed the perfectly browned chicken from its spit onto a slab of wood.

“Sit,” he said, waving me over with a dangerous-looking knife. Driven by my newly awakened hunger, I overcame my wariness and sat down across from him, watching as he used the knife to split the chicken in two. After he placed half a fowl in each bowl, he handed one to me, then set the large knife down on a flat rock between the two of us, putting it easily within my reach. The gesture gave me some relief, for I hoped it meant that he did not see me as a threat.

Then I could wait no longer. I used my teeth to tear the tender meat from the bone, slurping and sucking the juice off my fingers. The potato crunched, then steamed when I bit into it, and I sputtered an oath when I burnt my mouth, causing Henry to laugh, a solid sound that came from deep within.

“Boy, you somethin' to see when you eatin',” he said, shaking his head.

As my stomach filled, my worry about trusting this man was slowly replaced with curiosity. Although of average height, he was powerfully built across the shoulders. I guessed him to be close to thirty-five or forty years of age. His hair grew out wild from his head, and his skin color was of the darkest I had ever seen. He was a fierce-looking man, and under ordinary circumstances I would have given him a wide berth.

When he speared another potato and handed it to me, I noted he was missing a thumb. He saw me looking and held up both his opened hands, wiggling stubs where his two thumbs once were. “They take 'em before I run.”

“Who did?” I asked, though I wasn't certain I wanted the answer.

“The masta, down Lou'siana,” Henry said. He looked out into the dark, and speaking in a removed voice, he told me about himself.

Born into slavery, he had grown up with his mother and younger brother on a large cotton plantation. The master was brutal in his handling of his slaves, and when he learned that Henry was involved in planning a revolt, he punished Henry by cutting off his thumbs and forcing him to witness his mother's flogging. She died as result, and that was when Henry and his brother decided to make their escape. “We out by two days when he get shot down. Nothin' for me to do but run.” He shook his head.

Somehow Henry eluded his pursuers, and after months of indescribable trials, he found himself in Philadelphia. Now, though free for two years, he remained on constant alert.

“If that masta get ahold a me, he finish me off. That's why I stay hid. Every day I's lookin' out. I ain't never goin' back to bein' a slave. They got to kill me first!” He sat quiet, as though exhausted from telling his story. Finally, he roused himself. “And what 'bout you?” he asked.

I was startled by his direct question. I had not expected to have him share his past so openly, and now he wanted the same from me. But how far could I trust him? Negroes were liars and thieves and always ready to take advantage of a white man. Yet so far, this one had only helped me. Dare I tell him how alone I was? Was it safe to tell him that when I fled my home, I left behind everyone and everything I cared about, knowing that I could never return?

“I knows you runnin' like me. Why you got to get away, it don' matter none to me.”

“I shot my father,” I said quietly, hoping that he heard me, for I did not want to repeat those words.

“We do what we got to do,” he said.

“I hated him. His name was Marshall. I always thought he was my brother, but only a few months ago I found out that he was my father.”

“Why you thinking he your brother?”

“My grandmother told me that I was her son and my dead grandfather was my father.”

“And what 'bout your mama?”

“At the same time I found out Marshall was my father, I learned that my real mother was a Negro.” It was difficult to believe my own words, for I still loved my grandmother as my true mother.

“So you take a gun to your daddy?”

“He was going to sell me for a slave,” I said.

“You kill him dead?”

“Yes.”

“And you a nigga?”

“My mother was a mulatto,” I said. “Her name was Belle.”

“Was she a light cullah?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And your daddy was white?”

I nodded. “I look just like him. I'm as white as he was.”

“That don' matter. You still a nigga. But you can pass. That's your bes' bet.”

I had nothing to say.

“You got a family name?”

“Pyke,” I said. “I'm Jamie Pyke.”

“Not no more,” he said. “You got to go by somethin' else.”

I stared into the fire. How could this be? Until a few months ago, I had thought of myself as white, and now, unbelievably, I was a Negro without a name, running for my life.

A
S MY HEALTH
returned, Henry's manner toward me remained genial, and because I felt no judgment of my character, I ceased judging him. In fact, I came to rely on him so much that I disliked it when he left for his work at the tavern. When I was alone, any unusual noise startled me, and I would leave at a run to hide in the trees. My heart pounded as I hid, watchful and terrified, until I would emerge, weak with relief to realize that the disturbance had come from deer passing through or squirrels chasing one another. Daily I feared that Rankin, the treacherous overseer from our plantation, and his son Jake, two of the most ruthless men I knew, would find me. It was almost certain that they were still searching for me, and though they were known for their dogged determination in locating runaway slaves, their notoriety came from their merciless treatment of their captives.

Then gradually, as I became familiar to the particular sounds that came from living in the woods, I adapted to Henry's primitive lifestyle. By the time we were well into the pleasant season of autumn, each morning after Henry set out for work, I quite happily spent the day in the outdoors. There, while gathering wood for our evening fire, I had the time to observe the wildlife around me. Birds were in abundance, and my childhood fascination with them grew.

My interest stemmed from a large book of bird illustrations that I had been given as a child. Kept indoors for most of my early years, when I was not reading the book, I used the images to teach myself to sketch and paint. When I grew older, I used a penknife to carve birds and woodland creatures out of wood. Now, alone in this forest, I often busied myself whittling and sketching, and for those hours I was free of worries.

I decided that I might remain with Henry indefinitely, but as colder weather approached, he began to suggest that it was time for me to consider my future. “You got to get into town, find some work an' someplace to stay,” he said. “Snow comin'. It ain't nothin' like you see before. Snow here gets deep. Hard livin' out here.”

“But what will I do? Where will I stay?” I argued, fear causing a high childish whine in my voice.

“You get a job easy enough if you go in passin' for white. Thing is, you do that, you got to be careful,” he said.

I didn't tell him that I had never considered anything other than presenting myself as white. I had never and would never consider myself a Negro. In fact, the idea disgusted me.

Henry thought awhile before he continued. “You pass, you got to cut ties with any niggas that you know.”

“I don't know any,” I said.

“There's me,” he replied, but it took a while before I caught his meaning.

A
FTER
I
FOUND
work in Philadelphia, I took Henry's advice, and we cut ties. My life progressed and I did well for myself, establishing a place in Philadelphia society.

I was alarmed, then, when Henry sought me out some fifteen years later; he was a link to my past that could ruin me if it were exposed. I was living as a white man, in white society, with no affiliation to any Negroes other than those of my household staff. Yet suddenly, he appeared with the request that I give employment to his seven-year-old son.

I might have refused him, but after I saw his desperation, and faced with the debt I owed him, I could not refuse. Thus I agreed to take in Henry's son, Pan, so he might be taught to perform the domestic duties in an established house.

On our first meeting, the young son struck me as rather delicate, with his slight build, dark skin, and ears that jutted out from his thin face. Pan's unflinching brown eyes met my own, an unusual habit for one of his race. And it was there, in the boy's eyes, that I recognized something of myself. For all of his bravery, they held something of the fear that I had felt when I first came to Philadelphia.

I agreed to provide for the boy, but I had no intention of becoming involved with him, and turned him over to Robert, my butler, and Molly, the cook, for use in the kitchen. A few weeks after his arrival, Molly reported back to me: “That boy, he's something! He work like I tell him to, but you never see nobody ask questions like he do. ‘Why you do this? Why you do that?' He even ask if I show him how to write down his name.”

Eventually, as Robert gave him more chores, I began to see Pan around the house more frequently. He was an uncommonly cheerful child, and when he saw me, he'd enthusiastically call out, “Hello, Mr. Burton!” And he didn't leave it at that. Almost always his greetings included other comments, such as “Did you see my new shoes?” or “I'm sure gettin' plenty to eat.” His demeanor was so winning that in spite of myself, I began to take notice of him.

Then came the day he found me cleaning the cage of my much prized cockatoo, Malcolm. When Pan opened the door to my upstairs room, his eyes opened wide. “What you doin' with that bird?” he asked.

“I'm caring for him,” I said.

“Ain't he supposed to be outside?” He looked back out the door. “Does Robert know you got him in here?”

Malcolm flew to Pan's shoulder, and though the boy stiffened, he stood his ground. When the bird began to nose Pan's ear, the boy did not move but rolled his eyes up at me. “He gon' hurt me?”

“No, I rather think he likes you,” I said.

Malcolm leaped onto his favorite perch with a questioning squawk. Pan stared. “I sure never do see somethin' like him before.”

“His name is Malcolm, and he is a salmon-crested cockatoo.”

“Where did you get him?”

“He was my first friend when I came to this house,” I said, surprising myself with my open answer.

“Your—”

“Naughty boy!” Malcolm interrupted, using his favorite phrase.

Pan gaped, then gave a nervous laugh. “That him talkin'?”

“It is,” I said.

“That bird was talkin'?”

“Yes, he mimics very well.”

The boy clapped his hands. “Make him talk again!”

His interest in the bird reminded me of myself as a child, and I decided to give him an opportunity. “I'll tell you what. You have Robert send you to me every day at this time, and I will teach you how to take care of him. Then you can hear him speak every day.”

“You sayin' you let me help you out with this bird?”

“That's what I'm saying.”

“Won't be no work for me!” he said. “But Robert don't want me foolin' 'round the house outside a the kitchen, 'less he say so.”

“I'll speak with Robert,” I promised.

I
T WASN'T LONG
before Pan was supplying Malcolm with the sycamore and dogwood branches that the bird loved to gnaw, and after the boy discovered how to keep Malcolm occupied, I often found the bird happily nipping at a swinging ear of corn or pecking at a carrot that hung above his perch.