Fire on the Mountain (16 page)

As for
your friend
here, I am well. Our work gathering medical materials is so far either unnoticed or unbothered by the authorities, but I am not so naive as not to expect an investigation or Grand Jury soon, not to mention a Copperhead attack.

And you? I would dearly like to hear from you. Though you are less than a month departed, I admit I miss your letters more than I would have thought. My emotions, like my opinions, have been in continual alteration here, putting all in a new light. How is Bath? And how is England? And how is School? And how is my dearly missed—friend—Emily?

Do please write.

Yours &c. &c.
Thos. (Hunter, M.D.,
ad imminen)

“She would be back by now. Plus, there’s nothing in the town she wanted to see. Plus, the center was closed this morning when we left, anyway. She doesn’t even like museums; besides, you would have seen her there. She would have left a note. Ever Since Leon . . . died, she’s been super-considerate all the time; she babies me, really. Her own mother. Except when she’s mad. She’s been mad at me ever since I gave her those shoes. She has it in her head they don’t look right. You know how kids are. Or I don’t know, maybe you don’t. Shit, it’s starting to rain. There’s something else; one thing I didn’t tell you. Last night I told her that I was pregnant.”

“Oh,” Grissom said.

His eyes dropped from Yasmin’s broad face to her long figure. He would never have guessed. They were standing on the steps of the Shenandoah Inn. He had come right over when she called.

“Well, maybe that upset her,” he said. “Maybe that’s why she didn’t go with us to Martinsburg.”

“She wasn’t planning to go anyway,” Yasmin said. “She said she wasn’t interested in some little old lady.” She looked up and laughed, and this time Grissom laughed with her.

“Maybe she went up the mountain,” he said. “She was asking me yesterday about the North Star Trail. Hey, I even gave her a map.”

Yasmin looked across the river. “Where does this trail start?”

“Right there. It’s nothing to worry about. These are little bitty mountains.”

“I don’t see anything but bushes. She didn’t seem upset last night when I told her.”

“How come you waited so long to tell her?”

“What do you mean?” Yasmin said, agitated again. “That’s not fair. When I picked her up in Staunton, it was the first time I had seen her in four months.”

“You waited a day and a night.”

“You’re right. I don’t know.”

“What did she say?”

“I don’t remember. She didn’t seem upset. Not about that, anyway. You know what we talked about? Those damn shoes. She doesn’t think they look right, and you know what, at this point I think she’s right. I wish I had never gotten them. There’s something you’re supposed to do to them, but I can’t remember what it is. You know what else, Grissom? It suddenly just occurred to me.”

“What?”

“She never asked me who the father was. Shit. Now look.”

It was really starting to rain.

How well I remember the night that Mama sat me down at the board table in the kitchen and told me that she and Deihl were leaving Charles Town. Leaving Virginia. It was late October, cool enough so that the coal-burning cookstove, which in the summer urges children out the kitchen door, was drawing me toward it. The fire felt good. I stood first on one foot, then on the other. Old Deihl stood in the corner with his horse-smelling hat in his hand. Mama was the slave and he was the master, but she did all the talking and handled the money; they were that way. It was time to move North, Mama told me; troubles were coming to the Shenandoah. Deprivations, degradations, depredations, she said, using those Bible words that have been the solace of the ignorant and the learned alike for centuries. She mentioned neither Brown nor Tubman; never looked up and never looked east, toward the window and the mountain; but this was not peculiar to her, it was common to all the black folk in town, free and slave alike. Brown was like a woman’s curse, accounted for by all but acknowledged by none, at least among ourselves. The plantation Africans were different, which is why lately I felt easier in their rough company, and often went to Green Gables to see the Fire on the Mountain. You could see it almost as well from town, but nobody looked. If Deihl could sell the stable, Mama said, we could be in ‘Balmer’ (as folks called it then, great-grandson, and still do today) in a week. Then on to Pennsylvania. There was plenty of money to be made up North (here old Deihl sucked his pipe like January wind in a chimney). It was too uncertain here in Virginia; there would be fighting and fires; there would be reprisals against black folks and their friends and families (Deihl again sucked his pipe); there would be famine and pestilence. Mama went on, describing poor little Charles Town and Harper’s Ferry as if they were Sodom and Gomorrah, but I was hardly listening by then. I had one eye on the door, for I had to get to Green Gables and find Cricket. I wasn’t concerned about moving North in a week, since I had already laid my plans: to meet with Cricket and join Brown and Tubman’s Army that very night!

October 20, 1859
Miss Emily Pern
Queens Dispensary
Bath, England

My Dear Emily:

I hope this reaches you in good health and Spirits. I passed my tutorial (hoorah!) and am preparing to go South after Thanks Giving, to take up practice. I am of course apprehensive. In fact, and I tell you only because this letter is entrusted to my friend Levasseur, who is on his way to England—I again recommend him to your affection and trust—in fact, I go on behalf of our Medical Assistance group to render aid to the rebel army there. The bold talk is done and the hour is gathering.

Ironically, the first victim of my plan to go back South is my principle against duelling. I wrote you that my sister’s beau was seeking to challenge me; well, in order to preserve my image as a Virginia gentleman, essential for our success, I have agreed to meet him at dawn tomorrow on the Schuylkill. Duelling is of course illegal here, but any school with as many Southerners as Temple must have informal arrangements, and so there is a field where shots heard are not remarked. It is now midnight and I sit with two Longmann cap and ball pistols before me on the table where my texts have sat this past four years. What a blunt field of study is Death! I have loaded the guns with powder and wad but no shot, but we draw lots and his weapons, I suspect, will not be so solicitous of the Flesh. At any rate, it is not the violence of death I fear but its precipitous finality: that I might depart this world never having thanked those Parents who gave me life; or those friends who have given birth to my Spirit, such as yourself and my Jacobin, Lev. But Emily, let me be bold. You may have suspected that I harbor in my breast feelings, for you, that are somewhat more tender than I have expressed, thus far. Is it too much to hope that your inclinations, toward me, might also grow if encouraged? I would ask leave, when this evil work is done, to offer you a declaration, beyond this timid confession, that I hope will not surprise, or repel you. But enough said can be too much. So, for the present, I remain:

Your humble and Ob’d’n’t servant, & admiring & affectionate friend. And, God willing, someday, perhaps more:

Thos. Hunter, M.D.
Tom

For weeks, since False Fire, I had been plaguing Cricket to run away with me and join Brown’s men. At first he had laughed scornfully; then he chided me that such talk was foolish, then dangerous. Only gradually did I begin to suspect, then understand, that there was more to his hesitancy than his usual obstinacy (that it was cowardice I had never believed); and that he himself was in contact with the Army of the North Star. I later found out, as we all did, the hard way, that he was in fact one of those who helped people and supplies find their way up the mountain (for they were back on the Blue Ridge, as well as on the mountains to the south) and perhaps helped the wounded find their way down. All this and more Cricket kept a secret as he kept everything else, by carrying it loose and open in his hand, by acting loose-lipped and foolish; he was perhaps the only African in the Valley who spoke openly and even admiringly about Brown, as though to be looting arsenals and burning courthouses were as admirable and thrifty as thinning trees. All this, I see now, was to remove him from suspicion as one of their confederates; it was Cricket’s variation of the ancient deception we all played, one way or another, on the whites. The old folks played it by acting as if Brown were only more white folks’ foolishness and contrary to all sense and understanding. Mama did it by acting as if freedom was the curse. I did it. Since Lee’s defeat the fire was back on the mountain, but sporadically, shifting. Cricket’s job was to bring the new recruits to the foot of the Blue Ridge, along the last section of the underground railway: the new section of track that had been laid by Brown and Tubman so that it no longer led North, to escape, but up the ridge and then South, to liberation. All this was told me later, or I figured it out, although who recruited Cricket and how, I was never told and I never asked. Even today, even after all these years, and the winning of independence and the building of socialism, I would not want to know, so dear to our Nova Africa is that deep silence of the slave: it is our liberty bell. But I knew none of this then. All I knew was that Brown and Tubman had outwitted Lee, and like a million other Africans who had been ‘waiting to see,’ I wanted to join them. Oh, Brown was our lion and Tubman our fox, great-grandson! If you won’t go with me, I’ll go by myself, I threatened Cricket; and with this he finally listened (we were putting bottle glass on his baby brother’s grave) and stood up and cuffed me more tenderly than usual (as I see it now, through eyes washed clean by time and tears)—then looked me up and down, figuring, I guess, that there was only one way to shut me up. “Bring a piece of bread, a candle, a clasp knife and Deihl’s pistol to Solomon’s Pond tomorrow night,” he told me. But Deihl doesn’t have a pistol, I complained. He swatted me again and asked me if Deihl was a white man. I said, of course. Every white man has a pistol, fool, Cricket said. It’s only a question of finding it. Sure enough, I found it later that night, the very same night that Mama told me we were moving North. It was an ancient Bavarian cap and ball with an octagon barrel, wrapped in a calico rag in a chest at the foot of the bed in the old man’s upstairs room where he hardly ever stayed. It was as heavy as a coal stove, but stealing it was the easiest part. The hardest part was the note. Even though I knew she couldn’t read it, I wrote Mama that I was gone to either Death or Glory, to fight and die for Freedom’s flag. Then I wondered, who would read it to her, since few black folks who could read could be trusted (except of course myself). Also, Cricket had told me to follow his instructions exactly and leave
no clues
. So I tore the note up. Then, knowing I would never return, and Cricket would never know, I wrote it again and left it in Mama’s oven, where Deihl would never look. By now it was time and my heart was pounding as I wrapped up a chunk of cheese and stole out of the house, out of the town, and down to the slough west of Charles Town and south of Harper’s Ferry that was called Solomon’s Pond. But the joke was on me: it was only a test. Cricket rebuked me for bringing the cheese (even as he ate it), saying that I must follow directions
precisely
. He told me to put the gun back where I’d found it and meet him exactly one week later at midnight at the abandoned firehouse at the edge of Charles Town, bringing absolutely nothing. Not even the gun? He laughed and said Brown had no need for antiques. He asked if I had written Mama a note. No, I lied. Cricket seemed pleased; he said good, don’t bother, since we wouldn’t be joining the rebels anyway but helping them from here in town. I was furious and disappointed, but before I could protest he was gone. I ran home and tore up the note and crept into bed long before sunrise.