Soon Be Free (7 page)

But two wheels and two horses weren't stuck, and those horses were chomping to get going. All four were whinnying at one another. The mud-deep horses won the battle. They simply lay down on a hard patch of ground and pulled the wagon over
until horses and passengers were caddywampus and the baggage and Will's crutch were thrown into the bushes that were just bursting with new spring greenery.

Miss Farrell landed on top of James and Will, and her hoops just about swallowed them up. “I never!” she cried as they tried to push her off, but she probably weighed more than the two of them combined.

Now Solomon and the driver were pulling on the horses to stand the wagon back up, but all the animals were spooked and the coach was a hopeless wreck. A wheel had broken off and rolled into a ravine, and the door hung by one hinge like a flap of skin.

“I quit!” yelled the driver. “Two months driving this thang until my kidneys is loose in my belly, and they don't pay me but a slave's wages, which ain't enough to keep my dogs any meat on their bones, let alone my wife and children. Out, all of you.”

James and Will and Miss Farrell tumbled out onto the solid earth. James helped Will up and propped him against a tree. The driver collected their baggage, kicked a wheel coated with mud, handed Will his crutch, and pointed through the trees. “Yer in luck. Through there's the river, and they's a Frenchman's got a Delaware wife runs a flatboat across the river.” He handed them back the three and a half dollars they'd each paid and grinned mischievously. “Have an elegant trip, folks!”

James and Solomon carried their trunk between them, and Solomon also dragged the lady's trunk while she showed fat limbs by lifting her skirts out of the mud and thistle.

Will outdistanced them quickly and reported back. “Look yonder, the flatboat.”

The flatboat was tied to a cottonwood tree on the north bank of the Kansas River, and to another tree on the south bank. A system of pulleys and winches got that contraption across, helped along by the force of the river current.

The flatboat owner gladly took their money and loaded the four of them on the boat.

“He expects me to sit right out here under God and the sun?” Miss Farrell asked. She pulled the rim of her hat over her face, as though her hide would molt if it got a little sun. But at least she wasn't upset anymore to be riding with Solomon, for she gladly clung to his arm as the pulleys cranked and the boat started moving.

Suddenly a man streaked through the redbuds and cottonwoods and grabbed the rope that anchored the boat. He waved a bowie knife; sunlight gleamed off of it in blinding flickers. “The Frenchman, he ain't got no charter to ferry people crost this river. I do, two miles down.”

His throat just inches from the knife, the Frenchman yelled in his own language. He was probably cussing, but his English was better than
the ferryman's. “My wife's people are the Delaware, and they own the land this side of the river, friend.”

“Ya ain't own the south bank,” the ferryman said, using that knife as a pointer.

“No, sir,” the Frenchman said, calm as could be. “Not anymore. But if you have a right to Delaware Trust Land on the north bank of the river, then the Delaware have a right to white man's land on the south. Fair play?”

“Listen, mister, I got the charter from the U.S. government, and you ain't even a citizen
or
a red man. You four on that boat, I'm warning you, load off or I'm cutting the rope that ties this piece of cork you're floating on, and y'all will drift downstream, want to or not.” He raised the knife to the rope, and Miss Farrell screamed.

“Throw down that knife!” An Indian woman came into the clearing, aiming a shotgun right at the ferryman.

“Whoa,” he yelled, backing into the trees.

“Nice to see you, darlin',” the Frenchman said as his wife climbed aboard and tucked her shotgun under a blanket. The Frenchman yanked on the rope and sent them all floating across the Kansas River to the grinding sound of the pulleys. Not twenty minutes later, he and his wife were smooching on the north bank.

“Look at those two,” Will grumbled. “Kinda makes you sick at your stomach.”

• • •

Hundreds of people waited with James and Will to board steamboats and to see travelers off on their journey along the Missouri River, which was nicknamed “the Big Muddy.” Solomon stood away from the crowd, even apart from the other Negro passengers, and a quick glance told James he was plumb scared to venture out of Kansas Territory. James had never known Solomon to be scared, even that time he'd been dragged off by a slave catcher, and it pained James sorely now. Why, Solomon was just about the best friend he had.

Miss Farrell entertained the crowd with a tale about her French poodle, demonstrating how Pierre pranced on his spindly legs; her hoops and skirts swayed like wheat in a storm. James watched Solomon relax a bit with Miss Farrell's silly prattling.

The steamboat would be heading for St. Louis, where the Missouri joined the Mississippi and flowed from there to exotic southern ports James had only heard of, like Natchez and New Orleans.

James hooked his coat on his thumb over his shoulder, as the day had grown warm and humid for March. He watched passengers from the
Western Star
languidly disembark on the Missouri shore. People greeted them with hugs and handshakes, and for a flash James felt a pang of homesickness, even for the bratty Rebecca.

Then Will said, “Psst, James, over here.” Will had caught sight of a very different sort of greeting as immigrants from the east claimed their wagons and oxen. A band of Missouri Border Ruffians held the men at bay with pistols while their confederates smashed locks on the trunks and crates. They slashed baskets and bags. Flour poured like water. Beans and rice clattered onto the dusty ground. Sewing notions and medicine bottles and gimcracks of every kind tumbled out and rolled all over while the owners gasped at the wreckage of their life's accumulation.

“No way are you Yankees bringing this stuff into Kansas,” one frenzied man yelled, and another said, “Hobie, look. I found me a cache of Beecher's Bibles.”

James recognized the code name for Sharps rifles, repeating guns meant for the defenders of Lawrence.

A third man held a billowy red dress up to his torso and did a little dance. “Molly Ruth's gonna look right pretty in this, reckon?”

One of the men guarding the owners yelled, “Quit your sporting, men, we've got work to do.” They began herding the passengers into a tight circle like sheep.

“Go get your women and children if you want to wake up anything but dead tomorrow. Y'all are taking another trip, back east.”

One brave soul shouted, “We've come across the country, and we mean to settle in the Free State of Kansas.”

“Oh, yeah?” Dry earth rushed up and blinded the men when one of the ruffians fired a couple of shots into the ground. More shots ricocheted off the ground, and the Eastern men ran for cover.

Will tamped the ground around those gunshots. “Who put you men up to this?”

Oh, no! Why did he have to open his mouth?

“What did you say, boy?”

“I asked, who are you working for?”

A big man with a buffalo mane of white hair stepped forward and hung his huge frame over Will. James's heart jumped as he inched closer, but for what? He didn't know the first thing to do as the pot began to boil.

“You soft on slavery, boy?”

Will stood his ground, that sack of leg swinging just as if a light breeze rocked a porch chair. “Yes, sir, I am.”

“Well, listen here, boy. If you've got a mind to steal you a few Nigras from their rightful owners and haul them over the border into Kansas, well, boy, you can count on this: Me and a thousand like me will be here waiting for you.”

The buffalo man seemed to notice James for the first time. “You, sissy-boy, you a fancy slave-stealer, too?”

“No, sir,” James said. Lying didn't come easily to him, but he remembered Ma saying, “One man cannot own another,” and so what they'd be doing with the runaways couldn't be stealing. “I'd never steal property. Sir.” Again, Ma's voice: “James, people are not chattel. They are human beings, with souls that belong to God.”

The mean man glared at Will. “This boy your friend?”

Will pivoted on his heel. “Who, him? I never saw him in my life.”

James swallowed a lump in his throat the size of a crab apple.

The man waved his gun. “Git, both of you, go on.”

Will raced his crutch to the end of the loading dock, and James made himself walk slowly, as if he had nothing to hide. But he did have something to hide: a huge ball of fear knotting in his stomach like the eye of a storm.

Will found him when they were out of sight of the brigands. “Well, you didn't get all lily-livered back there with that wild man.”

“Felt lily-livered, though.”

“Who cares what you feel, James? It's what you show that counts.”

“I'm never going to have thy kind of courage.”

Will pulled an apple out of his rucksack. In three massive bites he was down to the core. “Come on.
We're about ready to board our gentlemen's ship. Might as well have a good time while we can, 'cause one thing's for sure: We've got some rough days ahead.” Will swallowed the sinewy core, seeds and stem and all. “Sure will take a long time. Months, maybe.”

“Hello, Dana?” Mike had put on his telephone voice, which was a full octave lower than his school voice. “Listen, this isn't about a date or anything.”

My heart somersaulted. “Who said anything about a date?”

“It's just a Bat Mitzvah thing.”

“You're not Jewish, Mike.”

“My cousin Sarah is. She's having a huge party at the Doubletree in Overland Park.”

“So, what's the not-a-date part?” I was filing a rough spot on my thumbnail, and the raspy sound made me feel squeamish. Or was it the conversation?

“Sarah's inviting about fifty kids, mostly little seventh graders, and I won't know anybody, and I'll sit there like a hermit, so I thought you could come and make me look normal.”

“No way. Ask Sally.”

“I already did. She swore at me.”

“And now you're asking me? I'm insulted. What about Ahn?” I had to be careful I didn't talk him out of this.

“Her brothers would never let her go. Besides,
how do I explain a Buddhist to my Jewish and Christian relatives?”

“So, let me get this straight. I'm the least offensive of your female friends?” I tapped the phone furiously with my nail file, trying to remember why I thought Mike was cute. After an embarrassing silence, I asked, “Mike? You alive over there?”

“It was just a wild thought. You don't have to go. I don't even have to go. I'll just say I have rabies or something.”

“Okay, okay, what's involved?”

“Dancing.”

“I'm not dancing with you!”

“Nobody says we have to dance. But I've got to warn you, Sarah will have a sappy DJ who engineers games like Hula Hoop and limbo contests.”

“Absolutely no Hula Hoops, you understand?”

“I'd rather eat sawdust. What about the limbo?”

“Possibly. Will there be food?”

“Mountains of it, and Pepsi flowing like the Mississippi.”

“When is it?” I asked, as though I were inquiring about a public hanging.

“A week from Saturday night.”

“I'll ask my parents.” Of
course
they'd say yes. The place would be loaded with parents. Mine wouldn't be able to resist sending me off to a safe, religious, family celebration like this, since they are already worried that I am a social misfit, the kind
who stays home on weekends to dissect crickets or cook marzipan.

“What do I have to wear?” I'd grown three inches since Christmas and don't have knees to model in
Vogue
with.

“You've got some kind of dress, don't you?”

“I'll go to the Salvation Army store,” I said dryly.

“That'll work. Thanks. You saved me from looking like a moron.”

His words sounded humble, but I could just see the grin of triumph spread across his face. I had a hungry urge to rub it off. “So, Mike, now you owe me big.” Time to come in for the kill!

“Anything. Whatever it is, I'm going to hate it.”

“Definitely. It involves getting your brother to drive you and Jeep and me to Kansas City and asking a lot of probing questions about Ernie's Bait Shop and the Berks, and maybe even breaking into their house.”

“Wait a minute. I could wind up in jail. This is way more than I owe you.”

I was glad he couldn't see my gloating sneer. “Right. So ask Sally to go to the stupid party, or ask Celina, that cheerleader who makes your ears turn red.”

“You're cruel!” Mike slammed the phone down, then called right back. “When do you want to go?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

“So soon? I don't have time to get mentally prepared.”

“Tomorrow,” I said firmly. “At two o'clock.”

The
Francie Mulryan
showed off like a dazzling queen along the bank of the Missouri. Her smokestacks poked into the clear blue, and her side-wheels churned water as her decks filled with passengers in all kinds of spring finery.

The baggage had already been loaded onto the steamboat. James, Will, and Solomon waited in line to board. Solomon held their tickets out for the agent, while Miss Farrell fumbled around in her enormous carpetbag for her ticket. She thrust it into Solomon's hand. “I just can't mind details,” she said.

“Ma'am, I don't think—,” Solomon protested.