Soon Be Free (8 page)

“Of course you don't,” Miss Farrell said. “You've not had the experience.”

James had put up with quite enough. “Miss Farrell, ma'am, thee must hear a thing or two about Solomon Jefferson here. He's a free man, born free in Boston, Massachusetts, and he's lived free all his life.”

Solomon tapped James on his shoulder, but James shrugged him off.

“He's been to school. I reckon he can read about as well as thee.”

“If you can read at all,” Will muttered.

Miss Farrell bit her finger, and tears welled up in her eyes, until James felt a twinge of remorse, but not enough to say
I'm sorry.
He nudged Solomon, and they stepped away from the woman.

She wasn't about to let them escape, though; she sidled right up between James and Will. “You must think me a heartless sow.”

“You ain't heartless,” Will said, and James quickly drowned his words: “We forgive thee.”

While Miss Farrell dabbed at her eyes, Solomon whispered, “James, sir, you'd best stop saying
thee
and
thy.
Nobody's going to believe you're a Southern gentleman if you talk like that William Shakespeare man.”

James nodded and practiced
you
and
your
in his head. It sounded so common, so coarse. When they got to the front of the line, the steamboat agent asked, “This black man got a pass to travel?”

“No need, sir,” Solomon answered.

“Was I talking to you?” The burly agent addressed his comments to Miss Farrell. “Is he your slave, missus?”

“Oh, land's sake, no. I'm a Philadelphia woman. We don't keep slaves in the North, goodness no.”

“Whose slave is he, then? Soon as the boat loads, I'd be glad to see him home to Louisiana, or
is it Mississippi? I could make me a pretty penny.”

Solomon looked down at the ground and softly said, “I live in Lawrence, Kansas, sir, on free soil. I'm a free man.” He lifted the flap on his leather pouch for proof, but the man must have thought Solomon was reaching for a weapon, because he jumped on Solomon's back and wrestled him to the ground. The passengers behind stepped back and formed a wide circle.

James made a snap decision and said in his most commanding voice, “Sir, let my man up.”

Will poked the agent away with his crutch, and Solomon scrambled to his feet. He opened his pouch while James said, “Might I see thy badge,
your
badge, sir? Ah, Mr. Tully, allow me to introduce myself. I'm James Baylor Weaver, of Owensboro, Kentucky, and this is my brother, Will. Our father is Caleb Weaver, owner of a tobacco plantation.”

Miss Farrell said, “Why, I thought—”

James kicked her ankle. “Solomon's our bondsman, third generation in our family. If it would make you rest easier, I can produce legal papers to that effect.” James pulled a document out of his pouch and offered it to Tully.

At that very moment, Solomon also thrust his free papers into Tully's hand. Tully shoved his glasses down to the tip of his nose to study Solomon's papers.

“This sure enough says he's free.” Then he looked at James's papers. “This sure enough says he's not.” He looked from James to Solomon. “Now, I ask you, what's an honest, God-fearing man to believe?”

“Oh, I can explain,” said Miss Farrell. “The boy's plain mad.” She cupped her hand around her mouth and whispered good and loud, “He's not got his bait just right on the hook, if you understand my meaning. In fact, the child's on his way to see a doctor in St. Louis, and so's the lame one. It would be a tragedy if you didn't let them and their trusty servant board, sir, as the doctor could make a difference in whether this boy ends up in an asylum or the other one gets a peg leg.”

“Who are you?” the agent asked.

“Alma Farrell, the boys' governess. I know I look like too fine a lady to be part of a domestic staff, but looks can be deceiving.” She fluttered her eyelashes, and the agent blushed.

Tully was thoroughly bamboozled now. Free or slave? Madman or free man? Owensboro, Philadelphia, or Lawrence? Shaking his head, he handed Miss Farrell both sets of papers, took all four tickets, and let them board the
Francie Mulryan.

Once safely on board, Miss Farrell pulled a Chinese fan from her carpetbag and said, “Well, that's about the most fun I've had since the day my daddy had a pickle barrel topple over on him at
Hannibal's Saloon! I do admire a good lie now and then.”

“Peg leg?” Will said. “I ain't a pirate, Miss Farrell, ma'am.”

• • •

The first two days on the river passed pleasantly. James and Will shared a cabin that was fancier than any place James had ever slept. Meals in the dining room were elegant affairs, with forks and knives as heavy as hammers, and tablecloths starched so stiff, they crackled when your knee brushed against them.

Solomon was a deck passenger, along with other Negroes, wagons, and teams of horses and oxen. And because there were some three hundred passengers aboard, no one had seen Miss Farrell for two blessed days.

The spring rain had been sparse so far, and patches of the winter's ice hadn't melted yet, so the shallow water presented headaches for the captain of the
Francie Mulryan.
On the third day out, the boat edged up to the shore, and the captain announced, “All able-bodied boys over twelve and men under fifty will be getting out here.”

“What?” Will demanded. “We're not
there
yet, are we?”

“We'll never make it over the sandbars in this shallow water,” the captain said, “unless we lighten the load.”

“How long are we going to have to walk?” an angry gentleman asked.

“Oh, no more than five, six miles,” the captain assured him.

Will scrambled to be among the men disembarking, but James firmly said no. “There will be plenty of time for walking on the way back from Kentucky. Save thy shoe leather.”

Will put up a weak battle. “You leaving me here with the women and children?” But he reluctantly agreed. He said the humidity from the river made his empty leg ache something fierce.

Two hours up the river, the men could all board again, and James found Will with a showgirl perched on his good knee and her arms around his skinny neck. “You're just the cutest thang!” the girl said.

“Somebody had to look after them,” he told James.

Later, Will found a place at the poker table and coaxed James to sit down. “There's no sin in just watching.” But James wasn't so sure. Ma did not approve of gambling, and, anyway, the game was puzzling. Those men drank spirits and said things like
hit me,
but nobody did, and
one-eyed jacks are wild,
but nobody seemed the least bit wild. They didn't say anything at all normal that James could understand, like
Mighty tough mutton this noon, eh?

Will had a nice colorful stack of chips in front of
him, more than anybody else at the table except for one man who had flared cuffs and a lacy bib down his shirt and diamond studs for buttons. His face never moved except for a throb at his temple like a silent drumbeat. Only his eyes spoke, and the dealer always seemed to know what he was saying, though James had no idea what language he was speaking.

Behind them, a band played “My Old Kentucky Home” and “I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair.” Children danced to “Pop Goes the Weasel.” James imagined Rebecca's head bobbing in the crowd, her cheeks red, her dress all askew, as the band slid into “Listen to the Mockingbird.”

Bored with the poker game, James glanced out the window of the saloon and saw several Negroes dancing on the deck to the music, which must have come through only faintly to them.

Among the dancers, Solomon stood as still as a fence post.
He misses his sweetheart,
James thought. And as much as Miz Lizbet used to rile James with her stubborn
amens
and her disgusting cures for freckles—buttermilk and manure, indeed!—James had to admit he missed her just a little bit, too. Now he wondered what her people in Kentucky had in mind for him.

That night I held vigil again, waiting for Raymond and Mattie to make their big move.

Their radio was tuned to a thirties big-band station. Ordinarily this corny music would have been jumbled with Jay Leno streaming out from under my parents' door, but Mom and Dad were at the Cervettis' with other history faculty couples for a wild evening of Pictionary and Trivial Pursuit.

This is pitiful
, I thought.
I'm spending Saturday night alone with a jelly jar pressed to the wall. Get a life.
Then I reminded myself that at least I'd be doing the limbo next Saturday night on my nondate with my nonboyfriend, so I jumped off the bed and opened the folding shutters of my closet to see what might qualify as an actual party dress. Scraping hangers across the rack, I eliminated one ugly, wrong-color, too-short, too-tight specimen after another. But I made a useful discovery: I could hear Mattie and Raymond much more clearly from in the closet.

“Raymond, I told you to keep the book in the Bubble Wrap. The dye flakes are all over my clothes.”

“Think, Mattie. When have you ever seen me open that book?”

“Then who was in our stuff?”

“The teenage bombshell with the Ronald McDonald curls.”

I cringed. Was there time to get a haircut before next Saturday? I missed a few words, then caught Raymond: “I had a feeling the brat wasn't just doing the maid service number when I came back this morning. Mark my words, Mattie, if I catch that redhead messing with my stuff again, I'll break every bone in her scrawny body.”

I heard a sluicing sound—Raymond imitating my bones snapping, one by one. My stomach flip-flopped, and I pulled myself in tighter, into a safe package. My ear was still pressed to the wall.

“You think she saw everything?” I heard a lot of rustling of papers and imagined Mattie inspecting the contents of the manila envelope. “I can't tell.”

“It's not like you could pick up DNA tracings, Mattie.”

“You're getting hostile, Raymond.”

“We've gotta find it tonight. It's in the wall of one of the closets, that's what that moron Ernie's best guess is. Send a boy to do a man's job.”

“Thank you, Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

Raymond apparently decided to ignore her comment. “We know for a fact it's not the hall closet. I hit every inch of it before—”

“Before the mousetrap tragedy struck.”

I couldn't make out his rumbling response, but it was clear this romance wasn't
Romeo and Juliet
.

I closed my closet and lay on the floor watching the shadows under the door. Were they dangerous? Could a man who got his toe caught in a mousetrap actually come after me? Then I heard again the sickening sound Raymond had made—my bones cracking like eggs, like pencils. I knew I'd hear that sound over and over in my sleep, in my dreams. Yes, they were dangerous.

I propped my eyes open with my fingers to keep from falling asleep and dreaming. I reminded myself that
to be awake is to be alive,
if I wanted to live
deliberately,
but somehow I drifted off, anyway, and woke with the pattern of the carpet pocking my cheek and a dust ball in my mouth. I could have missed something important!

I inched my door open. No one was in the hall. I tiptoed over to the bathroom, where I thought I saw a pinpoint of darting light, although it could have been the low-wattage night-light in a socket close to the floor.

Slowly, I pushed the bathroom door open. Something blocked it. I pushed harder. The door was slammed in my face!

Miss Farrell tracked James down to say good-bye at St. Louis, where she was to board a train for Philadelphia. “Why, you're not even packed up. Aren't you and the others getting off here, too?”

“No, ma'am,” James said. “We're heading down the Mississippi until it hits the Ohio.”

“What about the doctor who's waiting for you in St. Louis?”

He shook his head.

“Then you're going on to Owensboro to see your mama and daddy?”

Again, he shook his head.

“Why, James Weaver, you rascal, you. That one-legged boy and the Negro and you, you're all going to Kentucky to help some slaves escape, aren't you? You're not raving mad at all.”

“I'm sorry I lied to thee. To
you,
I mean.”

“Ah-ah.” She put her finger over his lips. “I tell you, it's been a lark. Say, we should exchange tokens.” She buried her head in her carpetbag and pulled out a vial of something wet. “Smelling salts,”
she explained. “In case one of your runaways should faint. Oh, land's sake, you brave baby, you.” She pouted. “I bet you don't have anything to give poor Alma Farrell.”

“I do, ma'am.” He slid a page of his sketchbook out and handed her the drawing he'd done of her. All the wrinkles were gone, along with about fifty pounds of flab.

She squinted to study the picture. “Why, I'm even lovelier than I imagined!” She planted a juicy kiss on James's cheek. He couldn't wait until her back was turned so he could wipe the greasy red mess away before somebody saw it.

He watched her promenade down the gangplank. Her skirt swayed like a bridge; and the gangplank buckled, then sprang back into place once she was on land.

• • •

Every day the captain of the
Francie Mulryan
called the passengers together for a little geography lesson.

“Here we go again,” Will muttered, but James noticed that he absorbed each fact as though it were salve on a wound.

“Now that you're sailing the mighty Mississippi,” the captain announced, “every lady and gentleman aboard my ship ought to know what the Algonquin called this miraculous river. Any guesses?”