Chasing the North Star (9 page)

THE FIRST TIME I
went to a revival in the woods was three or four years after I moved into the big house. The meeting was at night and Mama said I should go, it was time for me to find my shouting glory. I told the master I had the bleeding sickness and couldn't be with him that night, and he believed me. He said he was going away tomorrow to buy calves, but he would be back in two days.

I walked into the woods after dark with Sally and Mama and a bunch of other help. The meeting was held in a little opening in the woods lit by lanterns, and there was a table and some logs to sit on. There were lots of black folks there from all the stations and plantations along the Pike. A band was playing as we walked into the clearing, a tambourine and drum, a washboard and a banjo. It was lively music and folks were clapping and hollering. The music stopped when the preacher, Brother Blakely, stood up by the table. He had on a long black coat and a tall stovepipe hat, and in his left hand he held something that looked like a big baby rattle. Every time he said a few words, he shook the rattle, and people would clap.

“Brothers and sisters, the Lord sees us tonight,” he shouted. “Don't matter how much grief you've seen, don't matter how heavy your hearts have been, the Lord sees us here tonight.”

“Amen, brother,” someone yelled.

“Don't matter we been down to Egypt land in bondage,” the preacher said. “Don't matter we got to wander forty years in the wilderness, for we got the promise of a new day and a better land. In my heart I know we're gonna see a better time.”

The women started to shout and clap, and I joined them. And when the band began playing again, I found my feet moving. The banjo and drum and tambourine and groan of the washboard seemed to call something out of the dirt under my feet. I heard a beat way down in the earth, and my feet had to move to the beat. “The Holy Ghost come here tonight,” Brother Blakely shouted, shaking the big rattle. “The devil's on the run and we gone have some fun. The devil don't dare show his pale face here tonight in our place of delight.” I saw then that the rattle was to scare away the devil and all the evil spirits. Next to me I noticed Sally had taken down her dress, and her big breasts glistened as she danced. “Can't nothing stop us cause we're on the way to the promised land,” Brother Blakely yelled. Other women took down their dresses, too, and everybody sparkled with sweat like they were covered with diamonds.

“Show the devil he can't claim our souls, because we're the children of the King,” Brother Blakely shouted.

Suddenly I felt confined in the fine dress the mistress had given me, my spirit bound up and choked by the expensive fabric and embroidery. I undid the buttons, and when my breasts were bare I began shaking, then gliding forward and back. It was like the world was rocking under my feet.

“This sister has got the Holy Ghost,” the preacher yelled and shook his rattle.

I danced toward the preacher and then away, saying things I didn't even understand, talking like I was in a dream. It was like my soul had been lifted up, and I knew I didn't need to ever be afraid again.

•••

NOW JUBILEE IS SOMETHING
else entirely, and I didn't get to go to a jubilee till I was older. I'd heard about jubilee and knew folks went off into the woods to sing and dance and have fun, without a preacher, but it was a well-kept secret. I heard rumors of their doings on the mountain. And once Jessie Mae laughed and said to me, “Up there on the mountain they just trade each other around like different kinds of clothes.” I asked her what mountain and she covered her mouth and said she wasn't supposed to tell.

“You talking about jubilee, girl?” I asked, and she gave me a look and wouldn't say any more.

When there was a secret, I had to find out what it was, so the next time I saw Eli, who worked in the stables, I asked, “When you gonna invite me to jubilee?”

He looked at me and said, “When you're big enough to keep your mouth shut.”

“I'm big enough now,” I said and shook my hips and breasts at him.

“White folks can't know,” he said.

“No reason for white folks to know,” I said.

“Next full moon,” he said.

So one fall evening I slipped out of the house way after dark. The master had gone off to Raleigh to be in the legislature and I had the night free. Mrs. Thomas had taken laudanum to sleep, so I knew she wouldn't need me. Five of us from the Thomas Place gathered at the edge of the woods. We got a chicken out of the coop and a bucket of beer from the master's barrel and Eli took his drum. Then we walked all the way to a place called Sound Mountain. I'd heard about Sound Mountain all my life because it was a place that had lights in the woods that glowed sometimes and sparkled at others. Some people said the lights were ghosts of Indians, and others said it was swamp gas or the devil's light. And rumblings came out of the belly of the mountain like distant thunder or thumping on a log.

I got excited as colored folks from other farms and plantations and houses in the valley joined us along the way. Some carried chickens in sacks and others things in baskets. Two boys toted a washtub of beer. The moon rose over the ridge as we climbed the mountain, and I saw a pink glow in the trees ahead.

And then I heard the sound way down in the ground, a sound like two big rocks rubbing together. And then it came again, slow, like the heartbeat of a giant. And the next thing I knew I was walking in time to the beat, ten steps to the beat. It was like a pulse running through my body.

It was both scary and thrilling to be out from under the eye of white folks, the masters and owners. Most of the things we did were at the direction of white folks. But we were out there that night by our own choice and for our own pleasure.

When we came to the clearing halfway up the mountain, I drank a gourd of the cold beer, and then looked into the eyes of this big old boy from over at Swannanoa. I took another drink of beer and shook my butt and let my dress down to the waist. I looked in that big boy's eyes again, and he said, “You're sweet as a barrel of honey.”

“Don't talk no trash to me,” I said and giggled.

“You're sweet as an angel,” he said.

“That's my name, Angel.”

“Is that a fact?” he said and we started dancing.

“But I ain't no angel,” I said.

“Thank goodness for that,” he said.

Then he put his big hands on my hips as we started to dance.

I realized Eli must have put something in the beer, because I felt easy and mellow, and after two drinks I saw lights flash like blue and purple heat lightning, and the firelight got brighter, and people's shapes stretched and distorted. And when the woman named Carrie cut a chicken's throat and dripped blood into my mouth, I felt like I was drinking the blackness of creation. I looked about me and saw we were all brothers and sisters.

THE FIRST TIME I
saw Jonah he was standing at the edge of the clearing, staring at our jubilee like he'd seen the devil coming out of hell with his pitchfork. He was so scared he looked gray. I felt sorry for him, yet I couldn't help laughing at him. Soon as I walked up and took his hand, I could tell he'd never been with a woman, because he didn't squeeze back but let me lead him like a child to the center of the yard where people were dancing. He rolled his eyes around like he had never seen women with bare bosoms before.

“Where you from, boy?” I asked. “How come you here?”

As I thought, he'd never heard of jubilee. He asked me who let us come out there in the night and dance, and I told him we didn't ask permission, we were just doing it for our own selves.

Finally Jonah took a drink of beer, and I helped him take his shirt off. That's when I saw all the welts down his back; that boy had been whipped and the blood had dried and the marks were still fresh. That's when I knew he was a runaway. He'd been whipped and he'd run away.

Lord, I said to myself, here you are dancing with a runaway and giving him beer and showing him jubilee. If he got caught you could be whipped yourself, and branded on the cheek, or have your ear cut off. But I kept on dancing.

He told me he'd run into a fence, and that was how he got those scratches and places on his back, and when he let down his overalls I could see he'd been whipped on the legs, too. And I knew he was just like all the other men I knew, always bragging and pretending he was something he wasn't.

But there was something about this boy I liked. Maybe it was because he had the gumption and craziness to run away. I'd never seen a runaway before. He was foolish enough to escape from wherever he came from, which meant he had more nerve than anybody else I knew. And I liked his looks, too. So I led him off into the bushes and showed him a real good time, and since it was his first time I wanted to make it special. I knew how to make a man happy, at least if he's got it in him to be happy.

Seven

Jonah

With his knife gone and his money gone, Jonah felt he was starting all over again. He had matches and he had the tablet and pencil, which he'd left in the boat. He had the corn and the musk melon he'd picked the evening before. He had the fishing line on the bottom of the boat. With daylight come again, he would have to stay off the river, waiting for the end of day and dark.

But Jonah didn't feel as bad as he expected to. There was a kind of lightness inside him, as if a burden had been lifted. He felt a calmness he'd not felt since before Mr. Williams had whipped him. He had strength because he'd been with a woman, a big woman, for the first time. And what a woman she was! He recalled the woman's body as the color of sorghum at its sweetest. And he recalled the way the woman had grunted and hollered out and presented herself to him. He'd learned something he didn't know before about women. It was a whole new way of seeing the relations between men and women.

While he was thinking about the woman and his experience the night before, a strange idea came to Jonah. What if he could find some white branch clay and rub it on his face and neck and arms? Then nobody at a distance could tell he was black. He could paddle out in the middle of the river and those who saw him would not suspect he was a runaway slave. They might think he looked pale or sick, but nobody would want to bother a sick boy going down the French Broad River in a tiny boat. Now slow down and don't be stupid, he said to himself. But the idea caught in his mind and he couldn't see anything wrong with it. “Whoa there,” he said and laughed. He'd have to keep his hat on to cover his crisp hair, but otherwise no one could tell he was a Negro unless they got close.

The problem was to find a pocket of fine white clay. Most black folks knew where to find clay because they liked to eat a little once or twice a year, especially in the spring, to thin their blood and tune their systems. Only pipe clay would do, because white pipe clay had no grit in it. Such clay was found in creek banks and was dug out fresh each time it was eaten. The little creek where the boat lay might well have a clay bank.

Jonah climbed to the top of the mountain and then descended the other side to the creek. He rolled up his pants and waded out into the little stream, searching under grapevines and honeysuckle. Most of the bank was covered with brush. What he was looking for was a place where the bank had caved in. That was where a clay pocket was most likely to be exposed.

At a bend in the creek, Jonah found what he was searching for. The clay had leaves and dirt sprinkled on it, but he scraped that away with his fingers. And once the surface of the clay was clean, and he'd washed his hands in the creek, he dug out gobs of the white clay and stacked them on a rock beside the stream. To melt the clay he needed a pan where he could crumble the lumps and mix them into a kind of gray paint. But with no mixing bowl, he had to crush the clay in his hands and wet it to rub into a paste. He covered his forehead and nose and cheeks, his mouth and chin. He coated his neck and ears. And last he smeared the mixture on his arms and wrists and hands.

As the clay dried it would start to flake off. But he hoped enough powder would stay on his skin to fool someone who saw him from a distance. Jonah made his way down the creek, carrying an extra chunk of clay to use later. He loaded the corn and melon in the boat and was ready to push it out into the river when somebody stepped out of the woods. It was the fat woman from the night before, covered now in a kind of gown made from old feed sacks.

“What are you doing here?” Jonah said.

“I'm going with you.”

“How do you know where I'm going?”

“You running away—I'm gone run away, too.”

Jonah could feel the clay smeared on him beginning to dry. It made his skin stiff. “Who asked you to come?” he said.

“Boy, you need my help,” the fat woman said. “You don't know nothing.”

“Why you want to run away?” Jonah said. In daylight Jonah could see she might be only a little older than him. She might be nineteen or twenty.

“Tired of being a feet warmer for that old man.”

“Have you got a name?” Jonah said.

“People call me Angel,” she said, “but I ain't no angel.” She broke out laughing, like she had the night before.

“Got no room for anybody but me,” Jonah said. But even as he said it he remembered the night before and knew he wanted to be with this woman again.

“You don't let me come, I'll go tell the sheriff I seen you,” Angel said. She got into the front of the boat and sat down. She was bigger than he was and he had no way to get her out of the boat. He'd planned to travel alone. That was the only way he could get to the North.

“You get out of there,” he said.

“Thought you liked my company,” Angel said and shook her breasts.

“How can you run from a sheriff with dogs?” Jonah said.

“I can run fast as you.”

He had to get going, and he had to get away from her. He hadn't planned on this. He'd have to slip away from her the first chance he got. He pushed the boat out into the river and sat in the back.

It was so much easier to paddle in daylight on the French Broad. Angel weighted the boat down, so it was steadier in the water. He guided the little craft between rocks and skirted the edge of a trough of shoal water, then worked his way into the middle of the river, where he would be hardest to recognize. The river moved as fast as someone could walk. The blisters on Jonah's hands were still sore, but they'd toughened overnight. He gripped the paddle and his hands itched a little with healing. They passed someone fishing on the bank of the river and waved to him and the man waved back. Better to act friendly and not afraid. Who would think a runaway slave would wave at him? But he hoped he looked like a white man with a Negro servant. Soon as he stopped for the night, Jonah would take the hook and line from the bottom of the boat and tie them to a pole and do some fishing himself. His belly was empty and he'd love a roasted fish to go with the roasted corn.

“I'll paddle when you get tired,” Angel said.

“You stay right there,” Jonah said.

“You look like a ghost,” Angel said and giggled.

“We'll both be ghosts if we get caught.”

As he paddled between rocks and fast water, the river seemed to gather speed. He'd have to look and act quickly, and listen for the roar of rougher water or a falls ahead. Jonah wondered where the river would take him, now that he'd given up his plan to stay in the mountains and follow the chain to the north. A river ran away from the highest mountains. A river always moved toward lower ground, for water never flowed uphill. This river ran to the north, though, or the northwest, roughly in the direction he wanted to go. That was the way of hope. He'd follow the river as long as it tended to the north, and then he'd start walking again, if he could get away from this fat woman.

“I got to pee,” Angel said.

“You wait till we stop on the bank.”

She ignored him and stood up, pulling her gown up to her waist.

“Middle of the boat!” Jonah shouted and pointed to the gunwale just in front of him. If she sat on the edge near the front it would tip the little boat over. As Angel rested herself over the side and peed, Jonah leaned as far as he could in the other direction to balance the craft. He was relieved when she finished and crawled back to the prow.

Where waves splashed on his arms, the clay began to melt. Black dots appeared on his skin. And as the day got hotter and he began to sweat, the clay ran down his face. At first there were only streaks in the gray paint, and then spots and streaks between the streaks.

“Boy, you look like a corpse yourself,” Angel said. Jonah ignored her.

When he came to a long stretch of river where there were no houses, Jonah pulled into the shallows and pushed the prow of the boat onto the shore. Rubbing bits of clay between wet hands, he smeared himself again, this time putting on a thicker coat. Maybe if there was enough clay on his face even sweat couldn't melt it.

“You ain't going to fool nobody with that,” Angel said.

“What makes you so smart?” Jonah said.

“I was born smart,” Angel said and laughed.

As soon as he pushed off into the current again, Jonah was glad he'd reapplied the clay makeup. A bridge appeared ahead, a long bridge made of poles and logs, with people and horses crossing it. He'd have to go under the bridge, within fifteen or twenty feet of the people crossing. He aimed for a section of the bridge near the middle of the river. He'd paddle with his head down and with luck nobody crossing the bridge would even notice him. And maybe they would just assume Angel was his servant.

And then Jonah saw the boys. They were barefoot and wore overalls held up by only one gallus. They wore straw hats and were skipping rocks into the river, making flat rocks hop across the surface of the splashing stream. Jonah stayed near the middle of the river, far from the boys who stood by the east end of the bridge hurling rock after rock. The rocks lit sparks of splash across the water, as if something invisible was dashing across on tiptoe.

It was too late to swing over to the west side of the river. Jonah paddled faster, trying to ignore the boys. The rocks they threw skipped in front of the boat and one hit the side of the craft. He didn't dare yell at the boys or go to the shore to confront them. Nothing could be stupider than to get into a fight with white boys. They'd see the clay and see that he was African. But if he ignored them they might think that was strange also.

Jonah kept his head low and paddled hard. Rocks came dancing across the water in front of him and beside him. Another rock thunked again on the side of the boat. He held the paddle in his right hand and raised his fist at the boys. They laughed and yelled and pumped their right arms at him. He was within ten yards of the bridge when a rock bounded across the water as if the river was made of rubber and smacked him on the cheek. Jonah's face stung and he tasted blood in his mouth. He spat and heard the boys laughing. Tears welled in his eyes, and he was glad he was so far from the bank no one could see the tears. The tears would melt the clay around his eyes.

Another rock danced over the river and hit Angel square on the shoulder. “Ouch!” she said and rubbed the place that had been hit. She shook her fist at the boys on the bank and turned to look back at Jonah. “See how much good your white clay does.”

The bridge ahead was blurred by his tears, but he aimed between two sets of pillars in the middle of the stream. As he shot under the planks, hooves and wagon wheels thundered above him. And when he came out into the sunlight again he saw the boys following him along the east bank. Thrilled by their success at hitting him and Angel and the boat, they ran along the bank scooping up more rocks. “Hey!” he called to them and shook his fist, and the boys yelled back and slapped their knees. They threw rock after rock, and one landed in the boat and one hit him on the knee, but it had run out of speed and didn't hurt much. The current was sweeping them away and the boys couldn't catch up. Besides, they'd had their fun, and were ready to turn to some fresh amusement. Jonah spat out bloody spit. His jaw hurt and he hoped the rock hadn't broken a tooth or a bone. More likely it had bruised the gum and made it bleed. He dared not wash his cheek or mouth with river water. The river was moving faster and he couldn't take his eyes away from the rocks and snags. He paddled ahead of the current. As he came around a bend he saw the town ahead. There were houses on both banks, but more on the east bank. It must be Asheville, he thought.

In the bright daylight Jonah guided the boat just where he wanted to go. He could twist the paddle to the left or right to guide it. After two days he was sure of his strokes and shot the boat around rocks and dropped through charging chutes. His skill with the paddle gave him new confidence. At this rate he could go many miles in a day. He was moving fast in the right direction. All he needed was to get rid of his passenger.

“Is that Asheville?” he said.

“Don't you know nothing?” Angel said. “Sure it's Asheville.”

A long, low building ran along the bank on his right, a warehouse of some sort. And beyond that, houses and brick buildings clustered on top of a hill. The banks were high as bluffs, and Jonah saw only three or four docks down by the water. He kept to the middle of the river, which tore itself apart on snags and gulped around rocks, gathering speed. He wiped more blood from his lip.

If God sees everything and foresees everything, then he must have foreseen I'd be hit by that rock, Jonah thought. If God is all-powerful, as preachers say, that must mean he intended for me to be hit by the rock. It was a thought so scary, he couldn't get his mind around it. If he followed that logic, it meant that God wanted him to be hurt. If God controlled everything, then he must have wanted Mr. Williams to accuse him of stealing and whip him. And God must want some people to be slaves and some to be masters. If God was in charge of everything, then he must know how much cruelty there was, and how hard most people's lives were. And he must have meant for fat Angel to get in his boat and slow him down.

Jonah rubbed his cheek and was already tired from thinking such thoughts. There must be something wrong with his logic, for the plan of things could not be as crazy as these thoughts made it seem. Why would everybody be brought into the world to suffer? It seemed that if there was a secret to things, that secret was cruelty. He paddled hard around rocks as the river seemed to move faster. The stream appeared to be running away from itself faster than a man could walk. He dodged a snag sticking up out of the riverbed. The river was running away as he was running away. The river was his partner. He guided the boat with an assurance that surprised him.

“Ain't you gone let me paddle?” Angel called back.