Chaneysville Incident (15 page)

“Well, in a way it was good that it happened like it done, on accounta it settled ma mind on jest about everything. So as soon as I could get outa there I set out lookin’ for Mose.

“Now, Mose wasn’t the easiest fella to find, ’specially that time a year. What he’d be was holed up somewheres cleanin’ his equipment so he’d be ready when they harvested the corn, or he’d be trampin’ over half the County lookin’ for God knows what. He done that all the time. I don’t know why; he already knowed the County bettern God knowed Creation. Anyways, you couldn’t find him if he was holed up; places where he kept his worms an’ his kettles an’ whatnot was the closest-kept secret this side a Eleanor Roosevelt’s underwear. You couldn’t track him if he was explorin’; wasn’t a man alive could track Mose ’thout a bloodhound, an’ maybe not then. But what we done a long time ’fore all this was to set up a couple signs; I had ma signs an’ Mose had his an’ Josh had his. So the first thing I done was to head for a old hollow tree about two mile northwest, out towards Wolfsburg, an’ when I got there I felt around inside it for a while an’ come up with an acorn. Which meant that he wasn’t holed up—in which case he wouldn’ta left nothin’ an’ ma butt woulda been busted—an’ that he had headed south from there. Which may not sound like a whole lotta help, but if you know where a man started an’ which direction he headed in, you oughta be able to find him ’thout too much trouble. So I found me a creek, an’ I followed that upstream—which was what Mose woulda done jest in case somebody decided to track him with some dogs—lookin’ for high ground, an’ when I found some I headed south again, right up over Kintons Knob.

“I was halfways to Manns Choice when I heard him comin’. He was singin’. He always done that. May sound strange for a man to take all that trouble hidin’ his trail from dogs that ain’t even there an’ then go around makin’ noise like that, but Mose claimed that it didn’t make no difference, on accounta what he sung was spirituals an’ couldn’t nobody but colored folks hear ’em, an’ even they couldn’t hear ’em too far. Well, he musta been right, ’cause I could hear him comin’—well, more like I could feel him, on accounta his voice was so low—an’ it wasn’t moren five seconds later that I seen him. I tell you, it was always a sight to see Mose movin’ through the woods. You’d see him in town, or even up to Hawley’s, an’ you’d start to think maybe he wasn’t so much, nothin’ moren any other man. But you see him in the woods, movin’ along over dry leaves without makin’ a sound, movin’ in big long strides that done to distance what a flame does to wax, you’d jest about want to head for town an’ streetlights an’ sidewalks ’cause you’d know you never had no more business in the woods than a catfish in a foot race.

“I stopped an’ he come up to me. Says, ‘Hey, Jack, what you doin’ out here with your pants wet?’ I still hadn’t dried off from wadin’ in that damn creek. ‘I been pissin’ in ’em,’ I says, ‘an’ you gonna be pissin’ in yours when you hear what I got to say. Siddown.’ An’ he done it, an’ I told it all to him. Well, not all of it. I didn’t tell him about the sunset-starin’ an’ whatnot, on accounta he wouldn’ta understood it; Mose wasn’t never crazy enough over a woman to do anything like that. He had a hard enough time understandin’ it as it was.

“ ‘Damnation,’ he says when I’d done finished tellin’ him. Says, ‘I can’t see why a man’d want to go an’ get messed up with a white woman for.’ ‘Hell,’ I says. ‘You can’t see what a man’d want to get messed up with any kinda woman for. But this here ain’t no time to be gettin’ into that. This here’s the time to be catchin’ up to Josh.’ Well, he seen the sense a that, even if he didn’t see the sense a nothin’ else, an’ we set out.

“Well, it was ’bout four o’clock when we got back; Mose coulda made it faster, I imagine, but I held him back a bit. So we was too late. When we come up the Hill—we come up the back way, a course—we could jest about smell the fact that old Josh’d already lit out; you could hear his dogs a yippin’ an’ yappin’ like they only done when they’d got fed recent an’ knowed they wasn’t gonna get left out to run nothin’. But we stopped by Josh’s place anyways, jest to make sure. Well, he was gone, all right, an’ it didn’t look like he’d done changed his mind about what he was gonna do—you could see where he’d took a bath an’ shaved, an’ his overhauls was hung up on a nail, so he musta been wearin’ that suit didn’t nobody believe he owned. Mose looked the place over for a minute or two an’ then he looks at me. ‘I ain’t never seen this fool this neat,’ he says. ‘Me neither,’ I says. ‘This place don’t smell a nothin’ ’sides pine tar soap,’ he says. ‘Surely don’t,’ I says. ‘He ain’t had a woman in here, ’cause you can’t smell that,’ he says. ‘Surely can’t,’ I says. He shook his head. ‘You mean to tell me some little old pasty woman can do all that to a man?’ ‘Mose,’ I says, ‘I think what’s important here is that she’s a woman. Now, we know white men ain’t worth dog dung, but it strikes me that
any
kinda woman is a mighty powerful thing to fool with.’ Mose shook his head again an’ went outside. I knowed where he was goin’, so I jest waited. He come back in about a minute. ‘Sonofabitch,’ he says. ‘The sonofabitch limed his sonofabitchin’ outhouse!’ You could tell he was struck with it. ‘Hell,’ he says, ‘maybe he is fool enough to go down there an’ ast a white man can he marry his daughter.’ ‘Well, damn,’ I says, ‘I tole you that. Tole you he was fixin’ to get his butt busted.’ Mose looks at me real sharp. ‘
His
butt?
Your
butt. Every black butt this side a Pittsburgh. You think they gonna let it go at his butt? Why, the first damn thing them white folks is gonna get to thinkin’ is if one nigger can quit sneakin’ in the back winda an’ start knockin’ at the front door, we all gonna be linin’ up on the porch. What you think they gonna do?’

“Well, Mose may not a been the smartest fella when it come to men an’ women, but he sure knowed a good bit about politics. I tell you, I had never even thought that far, but I seen he was dead right. I heard ’bout the riots they had right down in Philadelphia an’ out there to St. Louis maybe two, three years before this all went on. Way I heard it, that St. Louis thing started on accounta some little boy went swimmin’ in the white folks’ water, an’ they throwed rocks at him till he drowned, an’ if they done that to a little boy that went swimmin’ in the wrong swimmin’ hole, I hated to think what they was gonna do to a full-growed man that started tryin’ to marry somebody’s white daughter. So I thought about that for a half a second, an’ then I says, ‘Well, we best not be settin’ ’round here talkin’ about outhouses, then. We best find that fool an’ pound some sense into his head.’ Mose nods. ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘only we gonna have a damn hard time, seein’ as the way I judge it he’s got about a half-hour lead, an’ he’s gonna be on horseback.’ I thought hard, an’ then I says, ‘Would be, ’ceptin’ he’s gonna be ridin’ slow, on accounta the road’ll be dusty an’ he won’t wanna mess up his suit. An’ we can borrow a horse from Hawley. An’ you know every shortcut for thirty miles, so we shouldn’t have no problem.’ ‘Well,’ says Mose, ‘we do got one. We don’t know where he’s goin’.’

“Which was true. So there we was; half an hour behind already, an’ we didn’t even know where the finish line was. All I could do was stand there. ‘Come on,’ Mose says, an’ he starts out the door. ‘Come on where?’ I says. ‘Well, hell, Jack,’ he says, ‘we know he’s headed south. We’ll head that way an’ maybe we’ll get an idea.’

“So we lit out. Went chargin’ down to Hawley’s, but he wasn’t there, so we jest told his missus we was borrowin’ the horse. Turned out he took the horse with him. So we hotfooted it down the west side a the Hill, headin’ for the swingin’ bridge into town—that was standin’ then—so’s we could hit the Springs Road, but then, jest like Mose said, an idea hit me. Well, all it was was me recallin’ what that white fella had said ’bout Southampton Township; but I guess you could call it an idea. Anyways, I jest says, ‘We go east,’ an’ Mose didn’t even bother to say what the hell or give me a funny look; he jest swung off an’ we went hightailin’ it down towards the Narrows. I tried to get up enough breath to tell him what was happenin’, but he waved me off. I was grateful for it too, on accounta travelin’ with Mose on foot was somethin’ that took all the breath you could spare, leastways till you caught your second wind. So I didn’t try to explain nothin’ else, I jest kept movin’, an’ pretty soon it come to me what we was doin’: we was trailin’. Not trackin’, now; trailin’. Anybody that’s spent jest a little bit a time in the woods knows there’s a world a difference. Maybe you got a pack a dogs, an’ they’ll all take after a bear, an’ every one of ’em will head off one way, followin’ the scent. Trackin’. But there’ll be one old hound—mostly it’s an old hound, though I seen a couple pups that could do it—an’ he’ll circle around an’ whine an’ sniff an’ whine some more, an’ then he’ll take off in some damnfool direction that don’t make no sense. He won’t act like he’s got a scent, on accounta he don’t; he’ll jest act like he knowed right where he was goin’, an’ jest what he was doin’. An’ if you’re out for the exercise, you follow the pack, but if you want bear meat, you follow that hound, on accounta what he done is put hisself right into that old bear’s head. Started thinkin’ jest like him. Knows where that bear is goin’ an’ what he’s gonna do, jest as soon as the bear knows.

“Now, Mose, he wasn’t no fool. He knowed I’d knowed Josh a sight longern him, an’ he knowed we was still a sight closer, an’ he figured I knowed, jest
knowed
, what the man’d do. An’ I started to tell him he was wrong, but then I says to maself, Jack, maybe you do know. So I forgot about where I was goin’; I jest let the spirit move me, so to speak, an’ old Mose come whippin’ along beside me, never sayin’ a word, never astin’ a question. We was trailin’.

“An’ we was movin’ too, I mean to tell you. We covered some ground in the next hour or so. ’Bout a mile, mile an’ a half down, we cut off from the river an’ headed south on that road, runs down that side a the mountain, down towards Charlesville, an’ we went on down there lickety-split. Might not a been too hard on Mose, but it was a pace that shoulda been gettin’ to me. Only it wasn’t, on accounta I had that knowin’ feelin’. I seen old hound dogs that’ll go like that all night, long as they got a scent. An’ I had it, so we kept on. Musta covered seven, eight mile in that hour, all told. But then the feelin’ left me. Jest like that, an’ soon as it did, the strength went outa me too, an’ I stopped dead.

“Or anyways, I tried to. Mose wouldn’t let me. We dropped back to walk, but he made me keep movin’. He knowed jest what had happened, too. ‘Lost it?’ he says. I was too outa breath to do nothin’ but nod. An’ then, ’thout knowin’ why, I looked up in the sky, an’ I seen the sun.

“I stopped dead in ma tracks. I says, ‘Mose, if you was to want to get up on top a mountain to watch the sun go down, which one would you pick?’ Well, I think that shook his faith, a little bit anyways, on accounta he says, ‘Jest what the hell would I be wantin’ to watch the sun go down for?’ Well, I didn’t want to tell him. I didn’t know
how
to tell him. So I says, ‘Look, you’re on your way to see this fella about marryin’ his daughter, an’ you figure seein’ as he’s white an’ you’re colored it might be the last damn sunset you’re ever gonna see, so you want to get a good long look, an’ the fella you got to see is down in Southampton Township.’ Mose shook his head. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘if I had me a horse, an’ I was comin’ down this way—’ I stopped him there, on accounta the fella that said he seen Josh said he seen him on the Springs Road. ‘Naw,’ I says, ‘you’re comin’ down—’ ‘The Springs Road,’ Mose says. An’ I knowed I didn’t have to say no more. ‘Yeah,’ Mose says, an’ he was starin’ up at the sky, which was a mite dangerous on accounta we was pacin’ along perty good again. ‘I come down the Springs Road. Reason I’m on the Springs Road is so won’t nobody know where I’m headed—’ ‘An’ on accounta you couldn’t borrow no horse from Hawley an’ the onliest other place for a colored man to get one is to pay Les down to the Springs for one a them ridin’-stable nags.’ ‘Uh huh,’ Mose says. ‘So it takes me a while to get down there an’ pay Les his dime an’ ride out—’ ‘Saddle up an’ ride out, on accounta Les ain’t gonna be saddlin’ up no horse for no damn dime.’ ‘Uh huh, an’ I ride on down the valley as fast as I can go—’ ‘No, not that fast, on accounta it’s dusty an’ I’m wearin’ ma suit.’ ‘Uh huh, an’ I get to Patience an’ cut off an’ head up over the mountain, then I come down through Rainsburg an’ head up over the mountain again, an’ jest about sundown…’ An’ he looked at me an’ I looked at him, ’cause now we knowed where Josh was gonna be. He was either gonna be goin’ so slow he’d be on Evitts Mountain, west a Rainsburg, or he was gonna be pushin’ to get to the top a Tussey Mountain, east a Rainsburg, an’ all we had to do was get up on that east mountain ’fore the sun was clean down, an’ either we’d catch him or we’d be ahead of him. So we lit out.

“Now, I don’t recall too much more ’bout that part of it, mainly on accounta the fact that Mose wasn’t ’xactly human when it come to coverin’ ground in a hurry. I seen him run moren one dog into the ground, an’ there was stories that he’d outdistanced a pair of fellas that was after him on horseback. You may not believe it, but I sure as hell do, on accounta that night was like the Goddamn trottin’ races at the county fair, so far as I’m concerned. I won’t say the trees went flyin’ by, but there sure wasn’t no time to be carvin’ your name into the bark. An’ I know we passed up moren one farmer’s wagon. Don’t know how many; couldn’t count an’ move at the same time. But it was a lot. An’ jest ’bout the time the sun started touchin’ the tree-tops, we seen some smudges a smoke an’ ’fore we knowed it we was in Rainsburg. Wasn’t much of a town—still ain’t. Couple houses, a genral store, an’ a couple churches. Well, for a small town there was a goodly amount of commotion goin’ on; bunch a farmers at the store, settin’, but we didn’t have no time to stop an’ pass the time a day. We jest hightailed it to the south end a town, an’ we cut up over the ridge, an’ we had to slow down, but we made the best time we could, an’ even Mose was puffin’ a shade when we hit the top. Me, I was damn near dead. An’ I damn near died for real when we got there, ’cause the sun was gone, an’ so was Josh. There was enough light for us to find the place where Josh’d tied the horse.