When I Crossed No-Bob (11 page)

Pappy, who people say is such a jokester in No-Bob. My pappy, who lives to make people laugh. It was Pappy who burned a cross over thirty feet high in front of the colored people's church. It was Pappy who killed my sweet little friend named Jess Still.

Last night they said they were curing what they called the horrors of anarchy and reckless Negro rule. But Pappy and these O'Donnell men? These men are stirring up a fight when there is no fight. These men, this whole nation of men, were forced to quit the war in 1865, when they lost. Then they got mad and started to fight each other. They are trying to make it so that it is like it was before all the fighting and they kill anybody and everybody who disagrees.

I put together what I've known all along but couldn't admit to myself. I think of the talk last night, what Pappy said, the secret handshakes. All around me are my people. All around me are violent men, killers, members of the Klan. I could run and tell Mr. Frank now so he could get the sheriff who has the warrant for Pappy's arrest, but I think,
No, I cannot, should not.
Already I have brought too much trouble to the Russell home.

I look down at my sleeping pappy. If I could, I would shake him awake this instant and stand before him and tell it to his face. I would say to him,
Pappy? You are a killer and a thief. You have stolen so much from so many. You have taken lives. You will not steal from me. You will not steal away my life.
But I could never say this to his face.

I look around at all the passed-out, sleeping men in this grungy one-room house, and it's like seeing the map in Mr. Frank's schoolhouse for the first time. I see exactly where I am now, and I know what to do. I do just what Pappy would do if he were his own little girl. I bundle up some leftover cornbread and sweet potatoes in my quilt. I put on my new blue coat and tie the quilt around me so the food won't fall out. I take the asafetida bag from my pocket and hang it around my neck.

Then I step over everybody laying there on the ground and I keep stepping and stepping and stepping until I am running. And I keep running. I only have one plan and that plan is to get out.

You have to cross No-Bob to cross out of No-Bob and I do. I run across No-Bob and away into the piny woods where the trees sway like dancers and the hills are snakes curling their backs.

Once in the woods, I walk the paths that few know, past misty fields sprayed with leftover, worn-out corn and rows of longleaf pines standing soldier straight. I say hey to the frogs and the rabbits and the birds and Mr. Snake who slithers into some sunshine to sun himself.

When I need to do my business, I squat in the field like a partridge.

I keep moving to stay warm. I walk further away from the roads, to where the pines grow closer together, to where
horses can't pass through. I am grateful for the shoes and the good, warm coat Mr. Frank gave me. Did he know? Did he know how I would need and use them both? I only wish I'd taken the jar of peaches. No peaches better than the ones from those two trees in front of Little Bit's house. Little Bit and Jack are two lucky people, to have all the fried chicken and peaches they can eat. Do they know their own good fortune?

No-Bob is not but six miles long and three miles wide, but who's to say really where it starts and stops?

I need to get far away from No-Bob. I set out for my very own forty days and forty nights.

I walk and walk and walk some more, and when night comes, I set up camp along Leaf River. It has warmed up some, and my coat is hot and heavy. I take it off, then my shoes and all the rest. I think to use the white sand along the shore to scrub my body clean. Then I plop myself all the way into the river and bathe myself. I've walked so far and I am so dirty, the icy water feels good and clean. I think about Little Bit then, how she said she was baptized and her ma was baptized in, where was it, Magnolia? I look around at all the trees and name the ones I know. Papaw, black tupelo, sweet gum, sassafras. I wish I had some other words to say, because this here
bathing is not like any other. Maybe it is the cold water. Maybe it is this here river and the black, wet, sweet-smelling land all around me. Or maybe it is because I have run away.

Lord,
I say.
I am very much alone right now. Would you mind please holding my hand?

It is quiet, like church before the O'Donnells come in, prop their guns up in the corner against the back wall, then praise and sing. The moon is high in the sky, full and bright, and if it could make a sound, it would sound like moths in a lantern trying to get out.

I bundle up in my coat and quilt and make a bed of dried leaves so that I am not sleeping on the cold ground. As it gets darker, I hear panthers screaming way off in the forest and the wildcats howling and now I miss miss miss Momma and Pappy and I think,
How did I ever get into this pickle?

This land? This land is just barely tame, and I think,
What am I doing in it?
You can't ever tame it. You can't grab a hold of this land. It grabs a hold of you. I tell myself I know these woods as good as any, but even I have to admit I picked the wrong time of year to leave shelter. I think to stay here only as long as it takes for me to think up another plan.

The trees look like they're cut out from black paper against
the sky, and the sound of wind rustling through cane is like no other. It's not a happy sound, not like the rustle of a woman's petticoat, nor is it lonely like the
swoosh
going through the tops of longleaf pines. It's mournful-like. Wishful, like maybe someone's out there calling for you, and you know it's the wrong thing to do to get up and go toward that sound, but still, you want to.

I look up and wonder if the stars will fall tonight, the way they did back when Pappy was a young man. He said that the night he saw stars fall, they didn't fall on anyone and they didn't hurt nobody, but nobody knew where they went. Maybe they fall through the cracks in the ground. Maybe they land in the streams and ponds where the water puts them out.

When Momma shut me up in the chifforobe and I rubbed my eyes with my knees, I saw pictures behind my eyelids and counted the stars inside my mind. Now I can see them with my eyes wide open, right in front of me up there in the sky. And even though I don't know everything there is to know about stars, and I don't know what will or will not hurt me, I am not so scared anymore because I am glad I am out of the chifforobe.

I fall asleep thinking on those falling stars.

***

The next day I walk on, deeper into the forest, across Leaf River. I pick up a good stick and make a notch in it for the day I've been gone.

I stand before the hackberry tree on Fisher Creek. This is the tree that is supposed to have water dripping from its branches and leaves. Momma told me the legend of an Indian maiden named Onumbee, or "Gentle South Wind."

Onumbee's lover was sent forth into war. Every day Onumbee went to a place to wait for the return of her love, watching for him day after day, hoping he would make his way back. The lover never returned, and, supposing he was killed, she began pining away. She finally died of a broken heart and was buried at the place where she waited and watched. All that remains is a hackberry tree, which is said to have water continually dripping from its branches and leaves. The drops of water are the tears shed by Onumbee, still crying because her soul still waits at the lookout for her lover.

I think now that Momma got her missing ideas from the story of Onumbee.

Or is this the hackberry tree where Mr. Sanders tied his pregnant slave woman and whipped her until she died, and
everybody knew that when you went around that tree, you could hear that baby cry?

I am tired, but I will not sit under that hackberry tree to rest. All around me the place is hard and gray, stained with yellow-brown, and it is cold and lonely and the wind moves through the trees, moaning and moaning, groaning and whistling.

I stare down at the river. I think of that slave that Mr. Russell once owned. Buck was his name. Little Bit told me a little bit about him. Mr. Frank and his pa walked him to the river Strong and Mr. Russell gave him a pair of eyeglasses and his freedom papers. Then Buck crossed the river all by himself, even though he was scared of water. He did it. He crossed over.

I touch the asafetida bag around my neck and move on, turning my pockets inside out to stop death. I head west toward Oakohay Creek, where I head north toward Cohay swamp. The woods is quiet and mournful. I stay away from canebrakes because of the wildcats.

By Hatchapaloo Creek I stumble on a bone so sharp, it cuts my leg. The bone is a leg bone. A big man's bone and it lies on top of more bones, all of them leg bones or arm bones. I recognize a torn piece of Confederate uniform, and then
another piece from a Federal uniform. I look all around me and see that I'm standing in a shallow grave full of bones from severed limbs, bones of our men on both sides, pappies, sons, grandpappies, brothers, and husbands. Not North or South bones, nor black, red, or white bones. Not even bones from a good family or a bad family. Just bones. Cut-off, sawed-off limbs turned into cut-off, sawed-off bones. All of them the same color now.

The bones do not scare me. I have cut up too many chickens and seen one too many hog killings to be afraid of a few leg bones.
I'm sorry,
I say to the bones. I'm sorry you are separated from your masters. I'm sorry I am stepping over you.

And I move on.

I find a cave guarded by trees, some of them maple, magnolia, some birch, some I don't know the names of. I don't find any bear or human being inside the cave. I heard tell about a Negro man who escaped his plantation and hid out in a cave all during the war. Last I heard, though, he was still there, telling people it was not time to come out yet. His people weren't hardly free.

Right in front of the cave, on the black dirt along the river, I crouch down and soak my cut leg in the water. While I'm down there, I catch a fish with a stick, and I eat that fish
whole, cooked at a fire I build. For dessert, there are dried huckleberries and chestnuts. I sit by the water, sucking on a cold, ripe, smushy persimmon, thinking nobody has to cook this into anything to make it good.

Away from the water, I collect spider webs to put over my cut and I wrap it with mud and sit awhile until it dries.

On this night, I sleep so well and warm inside the cave, I could be a bear and sleep there through the winter. I dream that I get up in this cave, and there next to me is a tiny man with twigs and leaves in his long hair. He says he has a gift for me and I am to choose one. He holds out a knife, some bright, black berries, and some roots. I already have a pocketknife. The berries I know are poison nightshade, and the root is from a sassafras tree. I choose the root because I like sassafras tea and I know how to make it.

When I wake up, I am so sure that the little man is there in the cave with me, I look all over for him. My fire is burned out, but the coals are still bright embers, and the air smells of vanilla. In my hand, I'm holding a chunk of sassafras root.

Outside the cave, all I see are acres and acres of these longleaf pines run through with rivers. I get water and set to making sassafras tea by the fire, and I decide to make camp here in this cave for as long as I need to.

***

I count the notches in the stick I carry in my coat pocket. Nine. Nine days of eating the fish I catch and the nuts I find, the berries and persimmons, sharpening my knife with the stone I keep in my pocket, and sleeping in the cave where I dream almost every night of the little man, and each night, he offers me the gifts. Sometimes the little man offers me a gun instead of a knife. Or he offers me poison oak or jimsonweed, but every night I pick the root or the herbs, knowing in my dream mind that I can use them to make something to help me or somebody else.

During the day, I explore the riverbanks and learn the rivers, remembering the names and what all I seen on the map in Mr. Frank's schoolhouse. Oakohay Creek flows from its source on the Smith-Scott county line and empties into Leaf. Big and Little Hatchapaloo run into Oakohay. The Leaf and Chickasawhay form the Pascagoula River that empties into Pascagoula Bay. The Pearl River, with its tributaries the Strong and the Bogue Chitto, empties into the Gulf of Mexico. All of these waters are streams or tributaries and they are never stagnant and they don't dry up. Now I know why Mr. Frank says if a river forgets its source, it dries up.

What happens to a person who leaves her family, her
source? When I lived with Mr. Frank and Miss Irene,
I
didn't dry up and die.

Every now and then, I go back to the land of the bones by Hatchapaloo Creek and say some words.
I'm so sorry,
I say.
I'm real sorry.

I miss people and I don't. I miss eating with people. I miss the smell of Momma and even Pappy, but not Smasher. I miss hearing Mr. Frank's steady voice and sitting next to him on his praying log. I miss his questions and everyday concerns. I miss the kind softness of Miss Irene, and the sound of her voice and her lady-laugh. I miss them both asking, "How are you today, Addy?" every morning, like they really wanted to know, and always waiting for my answer. And I wish more than anything I could just play here in the cave and in the water with Little Bit and Jess Still.

I can barely remember what Momma looks like. What was her first name again? What would she say to me being alone in the woods for so long? What would she have me do?

At night I feel Momma asking after me.
Addy? What have you gotten yourself into now?
Off a ways, I hear the water from the Hatchapaloo falling and joining up with the Oakohay.

I think on all the pioneers and outlaws that come before me, most all men, who lived in the wilderness, surviving by
sleeping in caves or a hollow tree or even, if need be, inside the carcass of a bear to stay warm.

One night I hear people coming on horseback, and I know from the sounds of their voices that it's Mr. Smith and his men who have traveled some distance to get all the way out here. For what, I do not know.