Soon Be Free (2 page)

Will hoisted his weight onto that flimsy crutch and swung himself into the house. James couldn't take his eyes off the leg that wasn't there.

“Got shot,” Will said, lowering himself onto the bench at the kitchen table. A pinned-up trouser leg hung like a sack below the bench. Dried blood had turned it the color of an ax left to rust in the rain. Will eyed a plate covered with one of Ma's embroidered flour-sack tea towels.

James offered him a biscuit that was no better than hardtack, but Will swallowed it in two bites without even a smear of butter or apple jelly. He ate
right through the rest of the biscuits like he hadn't had supper, or dinner before that.

“Surgeon sawed it off.”

James's stomach lurched. He kept hearing Grandpa Baylor's voice: “I tell you, boy, a man doesn't have a leg to stand on unless he's honest to the bone,” and now Grandpa Baylor was gone and Ma was on her way back from burying him in Boston, and here Will Bowers hadn't but one leg to stand on.

“It was the Border Ruffians did it.” Will dabbed at every crumb on the table until he had a good supply to suck off his finger.

“At least thee's alive,” James said, although he wondered if he'd want to be alive with only one leg. What did it look like inside that sack? Was it as raw as fresh meat, or had it healed over into ropy scars?

“Funny thing is, I still feel it.”

“Feel what, Will?”

“A whole leg. There's a blister on my heel from a wet boot. Itches on the bottom of my foot, too.”

It was too gruesome to think about, so James said, “Ma's been gone to Boston to bury my grandfather. She and my sister have been gone three months. Pa and I thought they'd be back by Christmas, but here it is the first of March. Until the last day or two, the snow's been too deep for travel cross-country. Doesn't stop my pa, though. He's over in Topeka on Kansas Territory business.”

“Some things never change.”

“Oh, Will, I'm mighty sorry about thy leg.”

Will petted the stump as if it were a dog nipping at him under the table. “Guess I'm lucky. Didn't I stand right there at your door last September and say I might come back in a box?”

“Thee did. Thee caused quite a stir in my house.” James chuckled. “I'd have gone with thee, but it's not the Quaker way. My ma and pa would have had fits.”

Will filled his palm with salt from the little salt-cellar and licked his hand clean.

“Thee's starving.” James jumped up and brought Will back some jerky and a cup of cold tea.

“What would you have done over there at Pottawatomie with John Brown's posse, James?” Will chewed away on that dried meat strip. “Talked to them pretty with all your thees and thous? That would have turned two or three dozen proslavers back and made them kneel and say their prayers right out loud.”

James felt his scalp prickle, coward that he was. Here they were, living right on the edge of Kansas Territory, which was free, and Missouri, which was a slave state. Border skirmishes were raging all around them. Every Lawrence man had taken up arms, except Dr. Olney and Pa and half a dozen other men in town who were Quakers. Mercy, even one of the Quakers was keeping a rifle clean and greased, just in case.

Flaring with anger—or was it shamed—James asked, “Why's thee here instead of at thy own place?”

“It's four more blocks. Try walking halfway across Kansas on a crutch.”

“There's another reason.”

“Which is?”

“Only thee knows. But I suspect it has something to do with being afraid to go home.”

“I'm not afraid of anything. I've followed John Brown into a raid on a camp of Border Ruffians. Sliced one up myself. I watched that doctor take off my leg with just a shot of whiskey to dull the ache.”

James shuddered. “There's a draft in here.”

“Heck, I'm not afraid of anything,” Will said again. “Except my ma. She'll fall over dead when she sees me like this. Reckon I can stay here tonight? I can face Ma better when the sun's just coming up.”

James glanced at the spot in front of the fire where the cat, Trembles, raced her motor. Weeks ago Solomon, who was a free Negro, had lain on a pallet by that fire, sweating through his typhoid fever while Miz Lizbet had nursed him back to health.

Miz Lizbet.
What a vexing woman she was, but how James missed her! Six weeks had passed since she'd died in this house.

Then Will startled him with a question: “Still harboring runaway slaves?”

“Thee knew?”

“Everybody in town knew, except your pa.”

“Naw, not anymore, we're not.”

“So, you letting me stay here tonight like those runaways did? Least I'm not against any law.”

“We could make thee up a pallet on the floor by the fire. Thee wouldn't have to manage stairs.”

Will nodded. “I swear, I could sleep a week.”

And he nearly did. He slept around the clock until Ma and Rebecca came back after being gone to Boston for three long months and found a one-legged boy asleep in the parlor.

I told the kids in the lunchroom on Monday, “There was this really weird guy hanging around in my yard last night with a shovel and a flashlight.”

“What did he want?” Mike tilted his head back, and a sheet of straight black hair hung over his collar as he let a canned peach slice slither down his throat like a raw oyster. He has some amusing mannerisms, if you're into zoological feeding customs.

“That is so revolting.” Sally wrinkled her freckled nose. “What was the guy, a gas-meter reader?”

Jeep popped the last of his sandwich into his mouth, and his words came out peanut-butter garbled. “On a Sunday night? With a shovel and a flashlight?”

“He said he was looking for his car keys.”

“Oh, yeah, I'd buy that,” Jeep said.

I held a spoonful of Swiss Miss tapioca in front of my lips. I know Mike hates tapioca because it reminds him of why he goes to the dermatologist.

“How can you eat stuff that looks like zits?” he asked.

“Like this.” I slid the spoon into my mouth and
slurgged the pudding off. “Delicious.” The Cafeteria Werewolf came by and snapped up two of those vomit-colored trays. I smiled at her, which always makes the fur stand up on her arms. I said, “Whatever the guy was looking for out there, I'm sure it had to do with James.”

“We gotta bring
him
into the picture again?” Mike protested. “The guy's been dead since before man started walking upright, and you women talk about him like he's a box office sensation.” He flicked his tongue over his braces. There didn't seem to be enough room in his mouth for both his tongue and all that hardware. I know, I'm making him sound grotesque. He's actually kind of cute with those dimples that drill his cheeks when he laughs. And he laughs a lot.

Sally, all business, said, “Okay, guys, let's think this through. What's the working theory?”

“None, yet,” I admitted. “Ahn, what do you think?”

Ahn was eating Asian foods she'd brought from home, things that looked like stringy spinach and crunchy Styrofoam strips. “Unknown at this time.”

“Wait and see if the creep turns up again,” Jeep suggested. I loved the glow of his newly shaved brown head, oiled and glistening in the harsh cafeteria lights. Jeep is a young Michael Jordan, only it will probably be two years before he is eye level with MJ's belt buckle.

The noise in the cafeteria was becoming a thundering roar. “Five minutes till we go down to the Dungeon,” Mike shouted over the chaos. The basement of Thoreau Middle School is as indestructible as a Roman fortress. We have science down there just in case a chemical experiment explodes or one of the reptiles gets loose, which is something we engineer pretty regularly. We are eighth graders. We are
supposed
to do stuff like that.

The cafeteria was starting to clear out, and it sounded like a train rumbling through a subway station. I yelled, “Did I mention I got the man's flashlight?” Mike raised an eyebrow in interest.

“With his address on it. Anyone want to go to Kansas City?”

“How?” Mike asked.

“We could hitchhike,” Jeep said, tossing his fork and knife into a tub of soapy water.
Splat.
The Cafeteria Werewolf wiped her cheeks with her paws and scowled at Jeep. We were dying to catch her some night howling at the full moon.

“Hitchhike and risk certain death,” Sally reminded him.

“You afraid of a little old psychopathic truck driver, Sal?” Mike asked.

“No, my parents, if they found out.”

“Don't worry, we'll get a ride,” I assured them all.

Mike smashed the last of his peaches with his
milk carton. “We're infants; we're driver's licensely challenged, remember?”

“You always see the glass half empty. I'm conceiving a plan, Mike.”

He groaned. “A Dana plan. We're all doomed.”

• • •

That weekend we had the grand opening of Firebird House, named that because it had risen from the ashes of one fire plus both sackings of Lawrence. Now it was starting its fourth lifetime. Our own Firebird, a turquoise-and-yellow parakeet, watched with great boredom as we hung a rustic wooden placard on the wall next to his cage:

H
OME OF ARCHITECT

J
AMES
B
AYLOR
W
EAVER
(1844–1906)

AND OF
E
LIZABETH
C
HARLES,

BORN IN SLAVERY AROUND
1832

AND LAID TO REST IN THIS HOUSE IN
1856

We peeked from behind the new pink window sheers as the first customers pulled up in a car that seemed familiar. When Mom led them upstairs, I studied the register where Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Berk had scrawled their names and their Overland Park address, and the license plate number of their car.

It was the same old Ford that the man from Ernie's Bait Shop had driven.

Now I was more than curious; I
had
to find out
what they were looking for, especially if it had something to do with James Weaver.

The old-fashioned Victorian doors at Firebird House have the kind of keyholes big enough to see through, but that wouldn't have been enough to satisfy me.

I had a skeleton key; all I had to do was wait for the Berks to get hungry.

Will seemed to want to make himself scarce for James's reunion with his mother and sister, so he hung back in the shadow of the keeping room.

James was itching to throw his arms around Ma; three long months she'd been gone. Three months' worth of barely passable meals, and every shirt gray as dishwater, begging for her scrub board, and every pair of britches sorely wanting Ma's swift needle.

But with Will hulking around there in the shadows, James didn't dare whoop at Ma. Instead, he picked up his little sister, Rebecca, and whirled her around the room. “Thee's grown a yard!” he said happily. “Thee weighs pretty nearly a ton.”

Ma beamed at James. “What is that caterpillar that's crawled up under thy nose, James?”

James slapped his hand to the coppery fuzz above his lip and jerked his head toward the corner. “Say hello to Will, Ma.”

“Will Bowers, why on earth is thee hiding in the corner like a mouse?” James watched Ma's eyes pass over Will. She sized up the situation with
barely a glance. She turned her attention to housekeeping, running her finger through a winter's worth of dust on the hutch. “Thee's lacked a woman's touch,” Ma said, holding up the coffee kettle with the hole James had burned clear through it.

“Yes, ma'am,” James said shyly.

Rebecca darted and spun, inspecting every inch of the room. “Grandma Baylor's house in Boston is so much prettier,” she said mournfully, “but here's where my toys are.” She opened the wicker basket where her rag babies and rubber balls and spinning tops were heaped.

Ma said, “Run upstairs and see about stripping sheets off thy bed. I suspect James hasn't done the laundry in a month of Mondays.” She gave Will a good, hard look and flinched just a bit as she came to the empty leg sack. Eyeing the rumpled pallet on the floor, she said, “Will Bowers, thee must get on home. The snow's nearly melted, and thy mother must be frantic with worry for thee.”

“Yes, Mrs. Weaver.”

“Thee mustn't fret. She's a strong woman,” Ma said gently. She gathered Will's bag and handed him his crutch. “Go home, Will Bowers. God bless.”

Once the door was shut behind him, Ma raced toward James. “Oh, son,” she cried. “Thee's just about the finest sight I've seen in weeks.” She pulled James to her, sniffing his fiery hair that wanted a
good washing. “It's thy birthday, James. I'd have fought Bengal tigers to make it home in time. Where's thy father?”

“Be home by nightfall, Ma.”

“Oh, I have missed thee both so much, my teeth have fairly ached for thee. And Miss Elizabeth, James? Where is she this day?”

“Gone,” James said.

“Back to Kentucky again?” Ma asked softly. He was sure she sensed what he was about to tell her. How would Ma ever forgive them?

Palms sweating, he said, “Typhoid fever took her from us, Ma. Miz Lizbet's dead.”

I jogged over to Ahn's house on Vermont. It's a ramshackle bungalow that she shares with a flock of brothers and cousins who've come from Vietnam, without parents, all at different times. Ahn is the main cook for the family since she's the only one who doesn't have a job, as if round-the-clock short-order cook isn't a job.

About six people were studying all over the floor in the front room when I burst into the house. “Where's Ahn?”