Olivia, Mourning (12 page)

Olivia blushed, not knowing enough French to understand what he was saying, but enough to think it was something sappy. As they whooshed past, the man turned and sang, “
Il y a lontemps que je t’aime, jamais je ne t’oublierai . . .
”

The other men in the canoe laughed and loudly joined in the song. A few lowered their paddles and turned back toward the steamboat, smiling, waving, and calling welcomes until they were out of sight.

“Guess you been right ’bout romantic,” Mourning teased. “That fella like you pretty good.”

“My troubles are over. Love has found me.”

Soon the busy port came into sight and the man in the black cap walked past, announcing that they were ready to dock. Olivia wasn’t happy to have arrived. The cold hard deck had become familiar and she was terrified of plunging into those crowds of people down on the docks. All those statistics she’d read to Mourning, attesting to Detroit’s burgeoning population, had been only numbers on a page; she’d still expected to arrive at a frontier town – hovels of sticks and wattle, a cluster of log cabins, maybe a few homes built of fieldstone – not this enormous city strung along the shore.

Neither did Mourning seem anxious to disembark. They remained at the rail while the boat emptied around them. The wharves were a madhouse, the road behind them clogged with large wagons and dozens of funny one-horse buggies, most of them with only two wheels. These makeshift vehicles had a place for only the driver to sit; one or two passengers perched on a small ramp behind him, clutching the back of the seat.

“Well,” Olivia said at last, “I guess if we’re going to buy a wagon … Mourning, look at that! There’s an Indian down there.” She pointed at a man with long black hair adorned with feathers.

“They won’t do you no harm, Miss.” The man in the black cap spoke from behind her. “They been living here forever. Started with the French letting ’em put up their village outside the old fort. Heard one of ’em bought one of the old French ribbon farms.”

Olivia chatted with him for a short while and then turned to Mourning. “Should I stay here and watch our things while you go look for a wagon? Or do you want me to come with you?”

He looked down at the crowds on the wharf. “Can’t see what help you gonna be to me.”

The deck around them was empty. Mourning had made a stack of his tool box and her wicker baskets and Olivia squatted behind it to reach under her skirts for money. She stealthily pressed the coins into Mourning’s palm, afraid of anyone seeing a flash of gold before he slipped them into his pockets.

“How much you give me?” he whispered.

“A hundred and fifty dollars.”

They had agreed that he would try to get a team for $80, but go as high as $100, and try to get a wagon for $30, but go as high as $45. He slung one of the water pouches over his shoulder and turned to leave.

“Don’t you want to eat something before you go?”

“Ain’t hungry,” he said and plopped his wide-brimmed felt hat onto his head.

“At least take some fruit.”

She bent down for two apples and two pears, which he shoved into his pockets. Then she watched him tromp down the gangplank, praying he wouldn’t be abducted or robbed the moment his feet hit the road. He didn’t look back and was soon swallowed up in the general chaos. Olivia leaned against the rail, prepared for a long wait and trying not to fret about the disasters that might befall Mourning. The man in the black jacket came near again and she asked him some questions about the city.

“Tell ya, Miss, I ain’t all that familiar with the business establishments. Know my way to the United States Hotel and the tavern right near it and that’s about all I got need of. But I can tell you where the main streets are at. The one you see right there, running along the river, that’s Atwater. Next street up is Jefferson Avenue. They probably got them kind of stores you’re looking for on them.”

“It looks like a real city,” she said, disappointed to find Detroit so civilized. She had never seen so many brick buildings and even spotted a red and white striped barber’s pole.

“Oh yeah, Michigan got settled real quick, once they opened up that Erie Canal. Half of New York and New England came pouring out here. Not to mention all them folks what don’t even speak English. Couldn’t put enough boats in the water. I hear they even got a new university some ways west of here. And farther past that they’re building a state prison. Now there’s a sure sign that civilization has arrived.”

Chapter Twelve

Mourning wasn’t gone nearly as long as she’d expected. She was looking idly over the rail and there he was, halfway up the gangplank, waving his hat and hollering.

“Come on down here,” he called.

“Okay, I’m coming. Just a minute.”

Feeling disoriented and afraid, she hurriedly checked that the fastenings were clamped tight on her baskets and Mourning’s tool case. The man in the black jacket was standing near the gangplank and she asked him to keep an eye on their things.

“Come on, come on.” Mourning proudly led her ashore. A wagon and a team of oxen, one black and one an orange-brown color, stood near the gangplank. “Meet Dixby and Dougan.”

Olivia smiled. Mourning had named the animals after Five Rocks’ Congregational and Episcopalian ministers, whom he’d always said were the most miserly of the people he worked for.

“Which one is this?” She patted the black one on his warm broad nose and received a friendly nod of his head.

“That be Dixby.”

“Well, hullo Dixby,” she said. As she walked around to survey the wagon, she let her hand run over Dougan’s orange flank, so he wouldn’t feel neglected. “How’d you get them so fast?”

“I go in the first grain store I pass and right there be this desperate fellow, downright beggin’ the owner to take ’em off his hands. Both the wagon and the team. But that storeowner, he don’t want ’em. Say he just bought a team and wagon off someone else goin’ back east.”

“Maybe there’s something wrong with them,” she said as she walked around again.

“No, they ain’t no nothing wrong. I checked ’em over. Them animals healthy and the wagon be in fine shape. Brakes even got skid shoes,” he said. The irritation in his voice made her feel bad for not having shown more appreciation.

She gave him a smile, pranced around the wagon, and climbed up onto it. “Oh Mourning, it’s wonderful. Just look at this nice red cushion on the seat. It’s perfect. Where’d all that stuff come from?” In the wagon bed behind her were sacks of feed and seed, some iron tools, a large washtub, and some pots and pans.

“The feed and washtub come with the wagon. Rest I bought with part a the money what was left.”

“You had that much left over? What did you pay for the wagon?”

“Ninety dollars. Not for the wagon. For the wagon
and
the team.”

“Only ninety dollars! Mourning, you’re a genius! You see! A lucky beginning like this is a sure sign that everything’s going to be all right!” Then she lowered her voice and asked, “Did you have any problems?”

“That white man took them gold coins out a my colored hand just fine.”

“See! Didn’t I tell you Michigan is a grand place?”

She silently thanked God for Mourning, imagining how awful it would have been to arrive here alone. How on earth would she have found some stranger to hire? Even if she did, anyone but Mourning could have walked off with her money and disappeared. Or claimed to have paid much more for the wagon and pocketed the difference.

“Well, let’s get going.” Olivia’s energy returned and she hurried back up the gangplank to help Mourning haul their things down. On their last trip back to the wagon she stopped to thank the man in the black jacket and impulsively planted a kiss on his cheek. “I’m going to have my own farm,” she informed him, beaming proudly.

“Better you than me,” he called after her with a grin.

“I already been in a few stores,” Mourning said, after they finished loading their cases onto the wagon. “I seen a big difference in prices, so we gotta go ’round a few times. I been in four different stores ’fore I bought that stuff.” He nodded at the back of the wagon.

So that was how they spent a long and tedious day. Atwater was the only street that had been paved with stone, so they were glad for the red cushion on the seat. A few streets were strewn with a haphazard covering of thin rounds of cedar, but when Olivia commented to one of the storekeepers on how pretty they were, he spat into a barrel and said. “Them dang things ain’t no use at all. Make it bumpier when it’s dry and first good rain, they up and float away.”

Between checking their purchases against their lists, keeping track of the different prices as they went from store to store, and fretting about the trip ahead of them and how on earth they were going to find one tiny little cabin in all those woods out there, the day passed in a blur. They had a few arguments, as when Olivia emerged from a store and called Mourning in to carry two mattresses out to the wagon. He looked at her as if she’d gone loony.

“Mattresses! We don’t got to be buyin’ no mattresses. We get some canvas, sew it over double, fill it with hay.”

“Really? Exactly where do you think you’re going to get hay out there?” She could tell from the look on his face that he hadn’t thought of that. They both found it hard to fully comprehend – they were headed for a new home where one had to assume there was
nothing
. None of the things a person normally takes for granted.

“So we use grass or weeds. Leaves maybe.”

“Look, I know you think I’m a spoiled child, but we won’t be able to work very hard if we can’t get a good night’s sleep. I don’t think two store-bought mattresses are such a great extravagance.”

“Your money.” He shrugged and followed her in to get them. He made no comment when she added two comforters to their purchases. She chose faded used ones and tried to hold her head at an angle that dared him to object, though she didn’t see how he could. What would he suggest, that they bury themselves in leaves to keep warm? Or cuddle up between Dixby and Dougan?

When she came out of another store carrying a new broom with neatly trimmed bristles, he shook his head. “You know how long it take me to make you a splint broom? ’Bout five minutes. Know how much it cost? ’Bout nothing.” Olivia raised her index finger to her pursed lips and tossed the broom into the back of the wagon.

When they were done shopping they sat on the wagon seat, gnawing on bread and jerky and no longer irritable. Olivia watched the people who passed them in the street. To her disappointment none of them looked like gunslingers or bank robbers. Apart from a pair of rough-looking, fur-bearing trappers, they looked far too much like the law-abiding, church-going folks of Five Rocks. They encountered no more Indians that day, though she was pleased to see a number of black faces.

“We best get going,” Mourning said, wiping his hands on his pants. “Fella in the store said we gotta turn onto that big wide street where we seen that building with the silver dome and go till we come to a square what got some grass on it. That where we gotta turn left onto the Chicago Road. He dint remember if it got a sign on it or not and if it got one, it might not say Chicago. It might say the new name – Michigan Avenue. You got your map from your uncle’s will?”

“Yes.” Olivia leaned over the back of the seat to lift the lid of one of her wicker baskets and remove her precious envelope. “Yes, here it is, the Chicago Road, right here.” She held it out to Mourning with her finger on it. “So we’re all right? You know the way?”

He nodded. “We be all right. Don’t matter none if we get lost no how. ’Mount a shopping you done, we could survive in the woods for a year or two. Feed a lot a the forest critters too.”

“Are you ever going to stop griping about me buying that loaf of sugar? I’ll be glad to fix your coffee bitter if you want.”

Their bickering was good-natured. Everything was going well. There was only one thing left to do. Follow Uncle Scruggs’ map.

Before they turned onto the Chicago Road, Olivia put her hand on Mourning’s forearm. “Look at that, Mourning.” She pointed at a three-story building of yellow brick. “Detroit Female Seminary,” she read the sign. “That whole big building, just for girls. Maybe after we get rich I can go to school here.”

“That ain’t all they got in Detroit.” He grinned. “This morning I been in the Black Second Baptist church. Whole congregation of coloreds, part freed slaves, part people what was born free. They got a school in there too. Haw Dixby, Haw Dougan,” he commanded the team and turned onto the Chicago road. “You been right ’bout this city, Livia. They got colored dock workers and servants and all, like you gonna expect, but they also got a colored barber and I seen white customers sittin’ in his chairs. They got coloreds what owns all kinds a stores and white folks goin’ in and buyin’ from ’em, like that ain’t no thing. Even got a colored saloon where white folks go to gamble.”

Olivia smiled. “So I guess you’re going to feel comfortable here.”

“That ain’t all. They got a colored doctor what treats white people and a colored man what bought hisself a steamship. Hadda hire hisself a white captain, cause they don’t wanna give him a license, but it still be his boat.”

Olivia kept a smile on her face, though she knew there were plenty of white people in Detroit – even abolitionists – who didn’t like having negroes around. While waiting for Mourning to come out of one of the stores, she had picked up someone’s discarded newspaper. An article on the front page called free colored people the “unwanted debris of an unfortunate and undesirable institution.” It said even Thomas Jefferson had advocated shipping all the coloreds away, to Haiti or Liberia. Jefferson had suggested that the American government sell the land that had been taken from the Indians to pay for transporting “the whole annual issue” of black children to some far off place. The “old stock” should be allowed to die off in the ordinary course of nature. But at least, if Mourning’s impressions were correct, white people in Detroit were not inclined to harm coloreds.

Ahead of them Olivia could see where the buildings ended and the woods began and suddenly felt reluctant to leave the city limits. “Maybe we should go back to one of those hotels and wait until morning to start out,” she said. “It’ll be dark soon.”

“Best to travel at night,” Mourning said. “Cooler it be, better it be for the oxen.”

“Well, let’s stay anyway,” she said. “How much can hotel rooms cost? Tomorrow morning we could even take one of those ferries over to Windsor, see what Canada’s like.”

“Nah. We best be gettin’ where we goin’. We don’t wanna leave this load in the wagon more than we gotta. We be comin’ back to Detroit soon enough. Once we settled in, know how we gonna keep ourselves alive, we can go spend a day over in Canada. Go down
south
to Canada.” He smiled.

“All right.” She looked away from him. “I don’t know why I’m being such a big baby. Scared of getting lost in the dark.”

“Good to be scared,” he said. “Make you careful. But we got lanterns and we got oil and we got guns and a wild lady here what knows how to shoot ’em. Remember the question you been aksing me all the time – What’s the worst that can happen? Worst that can happen, we drive around in circles for a few days.”

“When are you going to teach me to drive?”

“Not today. Gotta teach myself first. Empty wagon be hard enough. Heavy load like this, when we gotta go down hills, them brakes – even with the skids on – ain’t nothing against all that weight pushin’ on ’em.”

“Oh.” She turned to look at the load in the back, imagining them going down a steep hill and the wagon crashing over poor Dixby and Dougan, flattening them into orange and black smudges on the trail. “I thought it was only hard going up hills,” she said. “I never thought about going down them.”

“Stop worrying.” He looked over at Olivia. “Thanks to you bein’ such a spoiled little girl, we got better beds right here with us than what they gonna give you in any hotel. We got everything. A whole life in a wagon. No clouds in the sky neither.”

When they were outside the city limits he stopped to fill a lantern with whale oil and hung it on the hook of the wagon post, ready to light. Now she became acutely aware of how alone they were together. Apart from the rustlings of small animals, the only sound was the soft clop of hooves on hard-packed dirt. They saw no one on the side of the road and no other wagons passed them. Neither of them spoke for a long while.

As long as rays of daylight still slanted through the branches, Olivia could admire the beech, maple, basswood, oak, and hickory trees. Uncle Scruggs was right about that too. The woods towered to the sky and they
were
so green it hurt to look at them. The ground was thick with ferns, berries, and wild grapevines. But since the sun had set, all she saw out there was dark and darker dark. When Mourning stopped again to light the lantern Olivia felt even more isolated, the two of them trapped in a tiny circle of light.

Mourning cleared his throat and made an effort to fill the silence. “They say the land ’round here be real good,” he said. “Black and rich. It be mostly clay bottom, so you gotta ditch it to drain the water off. They say you gotta look for a sandy spot, if you be wantin’ to build, cause that clay ain’t much to be livin’ over in wet weather.”

Olivia could think of nothing to say. Her whole body ached and all she wanted was to sleep.

“That what the man in the feed store say.” He rambled on, sounding as ill-at-ease to be alone together as she felt. “Land be rich as a barnyard, level as a floor, and no stones to clear away. The more you farm it, the more the clay be gettin’ worked up into the soil and the better wheat it raise. So I guess my main job gonna be cutting trees. Corn ain’t gonna ear in the shade.”

“How can you see where we’re going?” She peered nervously ahead of them.