The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (8 page)

“Mr. Brown. A Yankee Soldier.”

“Mr. Brown, a Yankee soldier,” he said. “Yes, there ought to be a few Browns in Cincinnati—common enough name. But if he’s not in Cincinnati he might be in Cleveland. That’s right here.”

He kept on looking at the map. I looked at the map, too.

“I got to go through all them places and I’m still in Luzana?” I asked.

“Correct,” he said.

“How I know you telling me the truth?” I said. “How I know you ain’t a Secesh?”

The old man looked at me a long time before he said anything. His face wasn’t kind, but it wasn’t mean either.

“I might be a Secesh,” he said. “Then I might be a friend of your race. Or maybe just an old man who is nothing. Or maybe an old man who is very wise. Maybe an old man who cries at night. Or an old man who might kill himself tomorrow. Maybe an old man who must go
on living, just to give two more children a pan of meatless greens and cornbread. Maybe an old man who must warm another man at his fire, be he black or white. I can be anything, now, can’t I?”

“How long it go’n take me to get there?” I asked him.

“Where?” he said.

“Ohio.”

“Still going?”

“That’s where I started for,” I said.

“Well, now let me see,” he said. He rubbed his chin and looked at me. He was so short I was nearly tall as he was—and you can see I’m no giant. “You weigh about what?” he asked. “Seventy? Seventy-five pounds? Yes, I’ll say seventy-five—give you a couple. That bundle, I’ll say, about ten. Let’s say you cover five miles a day—good weather and good road permitting. But the weather ain’t go’n always be good, it might start raining anytime and rain from now on. Bad weather you’ll cover only half the distance. That means two and a half miles instead of five. But weather ain’t all you go’n have to worry about. You got rattlesnakes, copperheads, water moggasins—they got to be reckoned with, too. That means you got to by-pass all bayous and all weedy places, and in order to do that you go’n have to buck back South or go West, because if you go East you go’n be headed straight for Mi’sippi. So that’ll knock that other half mile off, leaving you with just two per day. All right, that take care snakes and bad weather. But we have to consider at least one bad dog every other day. Now, since you and that boy’ll have to climb a tree and stay up there till somebody pull that dog away or till he just give up and wander off, that’ll rob you of another half a mile. All right, that take care bad dog. Next come old Vet’rans from the Secesh Army still hating niggers for what happened, and since they can’t take it out on the Yankees, wanting nothing better than to get two little niggers and tie them on a log full of red ants. So you duck round them and you lose another half a
mile, leaving you with just one mile per day. That boy over there sooner or later will eat some green berries or some green ’simmons, and what they go’n do to his bowels will cause you to lose another half a mile, leaving you with just a half. Well, you done made it to Arkansas. But the people in Arkansas ain’t heard the war is over, and soon as you and that boy land there they capture y’all and sell y’all to somebody in the hills. So, now, we forget traveling a few years—say, five, six—before they fully convinced Lee done surrendered and back at West Point teaching more gorilla tragedy. But let’s get back to you and the boy—y’all free again. You bigger and stronger and you can go ten miles a day now instead of five. But you got another worry now—men; black and white. The white one to treat you like he done treated you and your race ever since he brought you here in chains, the black one to treat you not too much better. So you settle down with a black one. No, not to protect you from the white man; if the white man wanted you he’ll take you from the black man even if he had to kill him to do so; you settle with one black man to protect you from another black man who might treat you even worse. But this one ain’t no bargain either; he beats you from sunup to sundown. Not because he wants to, mind you; he has to. Because, you see, he’s been so brutalized himself he don’t know better. But one day the boy there can’t take your suffering no more, and while the man is sleeping, the boy sneaks in and bust him in the head with a stick. Y’all start out again—now, y’all running. Y’all find your way into Tennessee where y’all captured again. No, not by the law you been running from—you captured by the good citizens of Tennessee. These here good people of Tennessee even more backward than them good people you left in Arkansas—these still speaking Gaelic. Since you ain’t got no Gaelic papers in this country, it’s go’n take them ten more years to learn Lee done quit and probably even dead now. Some kind of way you and the boy get away and start asking about Ohio. But since both
of y’all speaking Gaelic now the people don’t know what the world y’all talking about, so they point toward Memphis just to get rid of you. In Memphis you meet another nigger you ask the way. He don’t understand Gaelic either, but he’s one of them slick niggers who feels that any nigger speaking Gaelic ought to be took for all he’s worth, so he tells you and the boy to wait a minute and he’ll take you where you want to go. Y’all wait a minute, then y’all wait an hour, then a day, a year, five years—till that boy there got to bust this one in the head like he did the other one. Now, you and the boy steal horse and buggy and head out for Nashville—Nashville a straight shoot into Ohio. But in Nashville something else happens. Somebody there cracks the boy in the head. Since y’all been friends all these years you feel you ought to stay near his grave a year or two out of respect. But you finally got in Kentucky. In Kentucky you cook for white folks, you feed and nurse white children till you get enough money saved or till you fool another nigger to take you to Ohio. You know how to pick a man now and you pick a stupid one. Soon as you get there you drop him—you don’t want nothing more to do with men ever in your life. Well, you land in Cincinnati and you start asking for Brown. But you got a hundred Browns in Cincinnati. Some white Browns, some black Browns, even some brown Browns. You go from Brown to Brown, but you never find the right Brown. It takes you another couple years before you realize Brown ain’t here, so you head out for Cleveland. Cleveland got twice as many Browns. And the only white Brown people can remember that even went to Luzana to fight in the war died of whiskey ten years ago. They don’t think he was the same person you was looking for because this Brown wasn’t kind to nobody. He was coarse and vulgar; he cussed man, God, and nature every day of his life.”

“All right, now how long it’s go’n take us to get there?” I asked him.

“I see, you still going,” he said.

“That’s where we started for.”

The old man looked at me and shook his head. “The boy’ll never make it,” he said. “You? I figure it’ll take you about thirty years. Give or take a couple.”

“Well, we better head out,” I said. “Thank you very much. I wonder if I couldn’t bother you for a bottle of water?”

Ned was sound asleep, so I had to shake him to wake him up. I told him to get the flint and iron together. The old man gived me a jug of water and we left him standing out on the gallery.

I can tell you all the things we went through that week, but they don’t matter. Because they wasn’t no different from the things we went through them first three or four days. We stuck to the bushes most of the time. If we saw people, we hid till they had passed us. One day we had to run a dog back that was trying to follow us because we was scared the people might come looking for him. Another time I watched a house about an hour before I went and asked them for water. The people cussed us out first, then they broke down and gived us the water.

One day, with the sun straight up, we saw a man on a wagon. I went out in the road and waved him down and asked him where we was. He told me the parish. I asked him if that meant I was still in Luzana. He said close as he could speculate I was right in the middle of Luzana. I asked him could we ride with him. He said we could—if we was going the same way he was. But since it didn’t look like we was, then he had to say no.

I had already throwed my bundle in the wagon; now I was helping Ned up on the wheel.

“Y’all look beat,” the man said to me.

His name was Job; the people told us later.

“We was going to Ohio,” I said. “My little friend here got tired.”

“He look it,” Job said.

Job took us to his house. Soon as his wife saw us in that wagon she started fussing. Tall and skinny—nothing but a sack of bones. Looked like she ought to been too weak to even open her mouth; but that woman started fussing when we drove in that yard and didn’t stop till we left there the next day.

“What you doing with them niggers?” she asked Job. “You ain’t had no money to go and buy no niggers, and you sure ain’t got nerve enough to steal none. If you brought them here to feed them you can turn around and take them right straight on back. Ain’t got enough food here for me to eat.”

“Let them stay here tonight,” Job said.

“In my house?” the woman said. “Stink up my place?”

It was a cabin, not a house. Old—leaning to one side. Job had even propped it up with fence posts to keep it from falling all the way down.

“They can sleep in the crib,” he said.

“That’s right,” his wife said. “Ain’t got nothing else in there. No corn, no punkins, no cushaw, no ’tatoes. Look at this old ground.” She stomped it with her foot. “Look at that garden. What garden? Where my turnips? Where my mustards? Look at them old
dead mules. Look at this old ground.” She stomped again.

Job told us to stay in the wagon, and he got down and started unhitching the mules.

“Old no count,” his wife said. “That’s why you didn’t go to war like a man. Talking ’bout it ain’t your war, it’s their war. That’s why I ain’t got me no children. You no count. You just no count.” Then she started laughing.

Job told me and Ned to stay in the wagon till he came back. We sat out there two, maybe three hours. All that time we could hear that woman in the house fussing. They had a bayou behind the house and you could hear crickets and frogs on the bayou, but over all that noise you could hear that woman. When Job came back outside it was so dark we could hardly see him. He told us follow him to the crib. I had to wake up Ned and tell him come on. It was dark in the crib. The crib was hot and dry. I could feel dry grass under my feet, and the scent was strong. Job told us to go sit by the wall. I held my hand out till I touched the wall, then I sat down and pulled Ned down side me. Job was there now. I couldn’t see him too good, but I could smell him. His scent was strong as the grass scent.

“Here,” he said.

I reached my hand up in the dark and I touched his hand, than I took the piece of cornbread. It was wet on one end.

“Piece for him,” he said.

I gived Ned the piece I already had, then I reached for the piece Job was holding. He told us we could sleep there tonight, and tomorrow he was taking us somewhere else. We sat there in the dark eating the soggy bread. It had been dipped in pot liquor. Pot liquor that had been round couple days.

When Ned got through eating he laid down and went back to sleep. I sat against the wall listening to that crazy woman till way up in the night. The war
had done that to lot of them, drove them crazy like that. More than once I started to wake Ned up and tell him let’s go. I even put my hand on his shoulder to shake him once. But he was so tired. And I was tired, too. I told myself I would just sit there and keep guard.

The next morning when Job woke us up I was still sitting there against the wall.

“Where we going?” I asked him.

“Y’all friend Bone,” he said.

“I don’t know nobody name no Bone,” I said.

Job didn’t say another word. We clambed in the wagon. The woman was standing in the door fussing. Looking the same way she looked the day before. Like she hadn’t gone to bed, like she hadn’t closed her eyes or closed her mouth a second. We could hear her saying “no count” and “niggers” till we got out of sight. When Job was sure she couldn’t see us no more he reached in his pocket and brought out some pecans. That’s what we had for breakfast and dinner that day—pecans.

I have seen some slow mules in my days, but the two pulling that wagon must have been the slowest yet. Two little brown mules not much bigger than Shetland ponies. You couldn’t even see them from the back of the wagon. Like the wagon was moving there slow and creaky all by itself. I wanted to sit on the board with Job, but he told me to get back. And a good thing I did because later that day we met up with two Secesh on horses. Before they got to us Job told us to stay quiet and let him do all the talking. When they got a little closer he pulled back on the mules to make them stop. He didn’t have to pull back hard.

“See you got some niggers there,” one Secesh told him.

“Yes,” Job said. “Can’t say they much, but you got to start with something, a fellow poor like me.”

“Feed them, they’ll grow up,” the Secesh told him.

“Will do,” Job said.

“And y’all mind, y’all hear?” the Secesh told us.

“They better,” Job said.

The Secesh rode off. Job shook the lines. Had to shake them twice to make them two little mules come up. He didn’t tell us who the riders was, but I knowed all the time they was nothing but Secesh.

Job went on eating pecans and dropping the peels in the wagon. Looked like he didn’t have strength enough to drop them out on the ground. And maybe he just didn’t care—with that crazy woman back there fussing at him all the time. Them mules didn’t care too much either; that wagon just creaked and creaked and wasn’t getting nowhere.

Almost sundown that evening we stopped at a crossroad. Job told us to get down and walk half a mile and we was coming up to a big house. Go knock on the door, front or back, and tell the man there we needed a home. “But don’t tell who brought you here,” he said.

We started down the road, and the wagon moved on. The crop was down, and I kept looking back over my shoulder at Job. I could hear the wagon creaking, but it was moving so slow it looked like it wasn’t moving at all. Now, all a sudden I remembered I hadn’t told Job thank you. Now, I wanted to run and catch that wagon and tell him how much I appreciated what he had done for us. But my poor little legs was so tired they couldn’t go nowhere. I wanted to holler, I wanted to wave, make some kind of sign, but I doubt if Job would have heard me or seen me. The way he was sitting there, gazing down at them two little brown mules, I doubt if he even seen or knowed where he was going.