Running Out of Night (15 page)

“Sorry, Brightwell. I should’ve waited, but it’s been so long since I been anywhere, and I were just wonderin.…”

“Wonderin can lead you to a mess of trouble. You here now. Might as well go out and see Auntie. She thought you might could be comin down for supper, but she didn’t know you’d come down so soon—and without the signal.”

He lifted me up and hauled me through the door and into the middle of a kitchen bright with the light from a fireplace big enough for Brightwell to stand in. A huge iron pot hung from a crane over the flames. Whatever were cookin smelt like heaven.

When Auntie heard us comin, she lit an oil lamp, carried it to the table, and piled more logs under the pot bubbling above the flames.

“I go pick up the pieces,” Brightwell said as he set me down and turned back to the mess I’d made.

“Welcome, Lark. Thee must be hungry. Did thee sleep well?” Auntie asked. She passed a platter of food to Zenobia, who were settin the table.

My tongue got all twisted up and I mumbled an apology for all the ruckus, the broke crockery, the mess, and comin down when I weren’t yet called.

Auntie just looked at me and smiled. She were a right patient woman.

A handsome gray tabby cat were curled up on a pile of kindlin in a big, shiny brass applesauce pot beside the
fireplace. She never opened her eyes but flicked her ears back and forth as though she wanted to hear every word we said.

My stomach rumbled, and I sniffed at the sweet-smellin food like a rabbit in a field of clover. The table were set with four plates, a platter of big golden biscuits, ham, butter beans, poke sallet, and a bowl mounded with a cloud of grits. A feast.

Auntie pulled out a mule-ear chair crisscrossed with a seat of woven rush. She patted at it and motioned for me to sit. Zenobia perched on a little stool, and Auntie Theodate set on another. Brightwell, so tall he nearly touched the low kitchen ceiling, stooped as he walked acrost the room and checked the big iron latch on the door.

I had so many questions to ask, but I were hungry, and without ever thinkin about manners, reached acrost the table for a biscuit.

Auntie looked at me, her blue eyes twinklin, and grasped Zenobia’s good hand, then mine—the one without the biscuit. Brightwell walked over to join us.

“Sit thee down, son.” Auntie nodded to a bench beside me.

“Cain’t sit tonight, thank you, Auntie—if I do, I be sittin on my good luck, gots to keep it free.”

Auntie closed her eyes and bowed her head. Brightwell bowed his and took Zenobia’s hand first, then mine after I dropped the biscuit onto my plate.

We were a circle of quiet.

I kept waitin for someone to say the blessin. I opened one eye, tilted my head sideways, and looked around the table. All their heads was down, but nary a word come out of any mouth. Should I pray? Was they waitin on me to do it?

Auntie squeezed my hand, then let it go.

“We Quakers do silent prayers,” she said, “just as we do in our First Day meeting.”

I’d heard about Quakers and their meetins and some of their strange ways from the preacher’s wife. “What kind of meetin can you have without no talkin?” I asked.

Zenobia giggled, took a gulp of milk, and licked the foam off her lips. Auntie explained that they call their day of worship First Day instead of Sunday, and when they gather at their church, they call it a meetin, but without a preacher or words.

I didn’t care what they called their churchgoin or how they prayed; I just wanted to put some real, hot food into my mouth. My stomach growled so loud that Auntie laughed and passed me a platter of meat, then the bowl of steamin white grits.

Rain began to fall steady-like.

“Good to have the rain again tonight,” Auntie said. “Neither dogs nor travelers will be about on a night like this.”

Her words made me feel safer, made me enjoy the tastes, the smells, the dancin firelight even more.

Between bites, Auntie asked us questions about our
lives. I never knowed how hard it would be to hear them stories Brightwell and Zenobia told—and here I thought my life had been bad.

The big tabby cat jumped down from her bed of kindlin and rubbed her softness against my leg. I stretched out my bare foot and smoothed it over the cat’s back.

Brightwell told how his ma were taken out of their cabin one night, dragged by her hair so as not to leave any marks on her, and never seen again.

He’d tried to stop the traders, but they kicked him, knocked out his front tooth, beat him till he nearly bit off his tongue, then threw him into the filth of a hog pen.

“My brothers and sisters all screamin for their ma, but she gone, just like our pa. Lord, she gone forever, and I couldn’t do nothin to help her. What kind of man am I?” Tears run down his face.

He stopped talkin, shook his head, and said, “I cain’t tell no more. It eats me all inside till I feel like a dried-out gourd. Sometimes, when I think on it, I feels … tastes the poison runnin through me, eatin through me, fillin my mouth with sick. Minds me that I weren’t good as an animal to them people—and times, when I think on that, I gets so mad that I feel like I could kill someone, and then I ain’t no more than an animal.” He bowed his head and didn’t look up.

Zenobia began to talk, lookin straight ahead, never blinkin. “The men, they makes me eat the tobacca worms
that I missed on them plants. They shove them big green worms into my mouth, down my throat till I near choke. I fight back, so they laugh, then they string me up high on the big tree to punish me for fightin. I there, hangin till my wrists are burnin fire.” She held out her twisted, scarred wrists. “Then they stake me down on the anthill. They laugh, laugh, while them ants crawl all over me, in my eyes, in my nose, down my throat, stingin me, stingin me, till I were on fire. I member me screamin, screamin, and they laughin and laughin. I knows how Brightwell feels. If I could’ve right then, why, I think I would’ve picked up a gun and killt them all.”

Both Auntie and I wiped at tears. Then Auntie looked from Brightwell to Zenobia.

“Children,” she said, “thee must remember what we Friends believe. Thee cannot overcome evil with violence, nor violence with evil, elstwise thee will be like thine enemy.”

Brightwell and Zenobia told more stories until my heart and my insides was all twisted and torn as her wrists. Even with my eyes squeezed closed the pictures of all them horrors come into me. I wanted to retch.

“I don’t know how we could ever be that bad, as bad as our enemies,” I said. “I do know that I’ll do whatever—whatever it takes to help you get to free soil.” I promised myself that I wouldn’t never let them bad things happen to them again.

“Free soil. Freedom,” Zenobia said. “Nobody tearin our families into pieces, work a good job, hold up our heads like peoples.”

Brightwell nodded in agreement and said, “Ummm-hmm. No white folks tearin our families into pieces, work a good job, ummm-hmm, hold up our heads like peoples.”

He paced back and forth, starin at the emptiness between me and Zenobia.

“Sometimes I think I be tore in so many pieces I ain’t never gonna be a real man. How you fix yerself when you’re tore at and tore at again and again?”

I thought about how I mended my skirt and my pa’s and brothers’ clothes, and how I darned socks and stitched together old Hannah doll from all the tore-up pieces of my mama’s wore-out quilts.

“You just keep mendin and darnin, stitchin and stitchin. At first, things look all pieced together, but after a while, you don’t even notice the stitched-up spots everywhere; they just look all of a piece. Never like new, but all of a piece and good enough to last a life,” I said.

Brightwell looked down at me, his pacin stopped.

“Then I best start piecin myself back together. Me and Zenobia have a new life comin on quicker than leaf drop, and we want to be near good as we can be.”

They deserved their new lives, but I couldn’t—no, wouldn’t—let them to go without me.

Auntie rose and told us that we all needed to rest. We
carried our plates to a bucket, righted up the kitchen, then stood in a small circle holdin on to each other.

“Tomorrow I show you where we hidin,” Zenobia said. “Too late tonight.”

We hugged; then Zenobia and Brightwell, candlesticks in hand, opened a small door and closed it behind them.

“Rest well, sweet girl,” Auntie said.

I walked acrost the kitchen, turned around to drink in all the peace inside that small room, then walked into the pantry.

Auntie stood below me as I crawled up the shelf-stairs.

“Thee must close the door tightly so the opening won’t show. Oh, and, sweet girl, please don’t come down tomorrow till we signal thee.”

“Sorry, Auntie, but thank you for tonight and for everythin.”

I pulled myself through the trapdoor, slid it back into place, and settled the rug atop it.

My nightshirt were on the bed, but I pushed it aside and crawled on top of the counterpane. I watched the light from the candle as it shone bright, then soft, then bright again.

I slipped off the bed, knelt, and bowed my head, prayin for a better life for Brightwell and Zenobia and askin that Auntie and Asa be kept safe. Somethin inside me wanted to ask for a better life, a safe life, for me too, but I remembered that travelin preacher sayin that you should always
pray with an open heart for others. Never for yerself. But that preacher didn’t say nothin about me prayin to my mama.

“Mama,” I whispered. “Mama, won’t you help lead me to a better life? I promise I’ll always help others afore myself. Thank you, Mama.”

I crawled back up onto my narrow bed and reached acrost the table to rub at the smooth of my buckeye. The little room were so crammed with life earlier today, but now it felt lonely, so lonely, and sad.

I blew out the candle. The warm black closed around me, and I pulled my Hannah doll up against my heart. The floors of the old house creaked and cracked. Grandpa always told that a crackin house was a sure sign of death comin. I could feel the chicken skin risin on my arms.

Outside I heard the loud calls of crickets, frogs, and a bird, trillin over and over—the sounds of a safe summer night.

Then silence. Silence thick and dark.

Were somebody outside watchin Auntie’s house?

L
ightning accompanied by a thunderbolt produces a madstone. Find one and keep it in your pocket to protect yourself from lightning, or put it in your house by a chimney and your home will never be hit
.

I
laid in bed listenin for the night sounds to start up, but they didn’t. Then the rain began again, fallin gentle on the roof, then harder, poundin and poundin, then soft again, drummin lightly like fingertips on a tin bucket. That were the last I remember afore the saw-sound crowin of a rooster and three loud thumps woke me. A gray mornin barely lit the room.

I rolled to my side and watched as the trapdoor slid back and Zenobia’s head poked above the floor.

“Mornin, Lark. This rain good. Nobody out now. No smells of us laid down. Auntie say she felt someone here most of last night, watchin the house.” Zenobia’s words
tumbled together like the water rushin off the edge of the roof.

So I weren’t wrong worryin about the quiet out there. Someone had been watchin Auntie’s house, lookin for somethin that didn’t fit right.

I got up from the bed and reached for Zenobia’s good arm. She scrambled into the room and set beside me.

A tray loaded with food appeared right behind her.

“Got it, Lark?” Brightwell asked as he passed the tray up to me.

We heard voices. Brightwell looked down, stepped back, and disappeared below us.

I set the tray on the bedside table and Zenobia set next by me.

“Auntie goin to tell you later tonight where you be goin soon,” Zenobia said. “And she give you a fine new name for the travelin. She call you Miss Abigail Harlan, but I likes Lark best.” More voices below, and then Brightwell climbed through the door, slid it back into place, and set down in the rockin chair. His long legs, near thick as an oak limb, stretched all the way to the bed.

We could hear the wind gainin outside, the sounds of rain poundin on the roof, and far away a huge clap of thunder, then a long, rollin rumble like the big wheels of a passin wagon. The storm had finally broken the hot spell and the little room felt cool and fresh.

A flash of lightnin shone through the slats above us and lit the top of the wall in brilliant stripes.

“Tonight,” Brightwell said, “Yardley and Asa come by and say late tonight we movin on to another stop, but you stayin here, Lark, till you get moved north. Auntie think it’s not safe for all three of us to leave together.”

“What you mean we’re not leavin together?”

Another flash. The room lit for an instant, and I could see every scar on Brightwell’s face. I wished I could run outside and find that piece of thunderbolt madstone so’s Brightwell, Zenobia, and me could travel safe together.

Zenobia raised a finger to her mouth and cautioned me to quieten down.

“If you’re goin, I’m goin,” I said over the crash and rumble of another clap, not near as close as the last. Weren’t no way I’d let my friends go without me.