Olivia, Mourning (4 page)

Now the good Reverend lost no time in calling a town meeting to be held in his un-swept and un-scrubbed church. The Mourning Free situation must be discussed. Olivia and Mourning hid outside, beneath one of the open windows at the back. Reverend Dixby started it off by speaking at length about their Christian duty to pitch in together to ease the situation of this poor orphan. He thought the best solution would be for the whole town to take care of him. Mourning was right; he could go back to working like before. Whoever he was working for would give him his dinner that day.

Mrs. Brewster was the first to respond. “That’s ridiculous. Saying everyone will take care of him is the same as saying no one will. I don’t know how people who call themselves Christians could even consider such a thing. He isn’t even ten years old.”

“All right then.” A male voice called out from the back of the church. “How ’bout you adopt him? Tuck that Nigra boy between your clean white sheets every night?” This evoked a wave of snickering.

Reverend Dixby raised his voice. “Gentlemen, please, we are trying to have a serious discussion, in a Christian spirit.”

“That boy’s been taking care of himself long as I remember,” another man said. “Tell you one thing – he’d survive on his own better than you would, Dixby.” Several men hooted and women hushed them. “Besides,” the man continued when the laughter had died down, “the negro race is used to that kind of thing.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Mrs. Brewster asked.

“Look at all them slave children get sold away from their parents and get along just fine. And them tribes over in the jungles of Africa don’t know which children belong to which parents any more than them monkeys do.”

“What can you possibly think you understand about the suffering of slave children torn from the arms of their mothers?” Mrs. Brewster retorted. “And I’ve no doubt the hitching post knows more about Africa than you do. You couldn’t find it on the map for a dollar.” This drew even louder laughter.

“So what do
you
think we ought to do with the little darky?” a different voice called out.

“There are plenty of good negro families over in South Valley,” Mrs. Brewster said. “I’m sure we could find one willing to take him in.”

“What makes you think he won’t run again, just like he done from Goody Carter’s good negro family?” A voice Olivia recognized as that of Mr. Bellinir, the owner of the Feed & Grain, spoke. “If he’s wantin’ to stay here so bad, why not let him? I can pay him wages for a few days a week. Give him his dinner on the days he works for me.”

“I can do the same,” Mr. Sorenson, who owned the brewery and saloon, piped up.

This led to a chorus of indignant male voices: “Just hold your horses, who says you get him? . . . I got more work for him than you do . . . No, you don’t and I been paying him more than anyone else . . . You don’t got no loft he can sleep in . . .”

Olivia stood on her tiptoes and peeked in the window, just in time to see Mrs. Brewster grab old Mr. Vance’s cane and pound the floor with it, commanding silence. “Shame on you all! Fighting over who gets first right to exploit the poor child. Give him his dinner, indeed. So is he to go without breakfast and supper? And on Sundays and days when he has no work, he simply will not eat at all?”

Mrs. Monroe spoke up. “If he wanted to learn to help me with the cooking for my boarders, I could give him a plate out in the kitchen whenever he’s not working anywhere else.”

“And where’s he supposed to sleep?” Mrs. Brewster pressed.

“I could let him stay in that storage shed out back,” Reverend Dixby said. “Won’t even charge him anything. He can stay there in exchange for a few simple chores each week.”

Olivia and Mourning turned to look over their shoulders at the windowless shed. It hadn’t been used for years, had no stove, and looked ready to blow over in the first good wind.

“That won’t be necessary,” Mr. Carmichael said. “The boy is welcome to sleep in my office.”

“That wouldn’t be right,” Reverend Dixby retorted. “How could he afford to pay rent?”

“Who said anything about charging him rent?”

“Then what do you want of him?”

“As long as he cuts his own firewood, he is welcome to the warmth of my stove. I’ll ask nothing of him in exchange.”

“And what if he gets sick?” Mrs. Brewster pressed. “Who’s going to care for him?”

“Isn’t that what you Christian ladies are good at?” The rowdy voice from the back broke in again.

“If he’s set on staying, why not give him a chance?” Mr. Carmichael spoke and no one dared interrupt him. “Those good negro families in ‘The Bottoms’ aren’t going anywhere. I understand your concerns, Mrs. Brewster, and they are real ones. I’d like to believe that if the boy fell ill, we would all find it in our hearts to help care for him. If he requires the services of Doc Gaylin, I will commit myself to bearing the cost of those services.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Doc Gaylin said. “There will be no charge.”

Reverend Dixby soon brought the discussion to an end. He affirmed their collective responsibility for the boy and sent them home smiling. Allowing Mourning Free to stay in Five Rocks and earn pennies doing the menial jobs they didn’t want to do for themselves was the Christian thing to do.

That night Olivia lay awake, staring at the ceiling and thinking how awful it was for a child to have no parents to stick up for him.

After that meeting Olivia went looking for Mourning every afternoon and pulled him aside for his lesson. If they had time and it was sunny, they went down by the river. Otherwise school was held in the storeroom of Killion’s General, using the pickle barrel for a desk. One day Mrs. Monroe peeked through the open door while Mourning was studying what Olivia had written on her slate. Then they heard her lodge a loud complaint with Olivia’s father.

“I heard that girl of yours was teaching him to read.”

“What of it?” Seborn growled.

“Well it’s nothing to me, but folks are saying it ain’t seemly. She ought not to keep so much company with a nigger.”

“They are children,” Seborn said. “He’s only a boy. A boy with enough troubles of his own, I might add, without all you good women piling more on.”

Olivia listened with her head cocked. It was the kindest thing she had ever heard her father say.

Mrs. Monroe ignored the insult and persisted. “Well, I fail to see what need a colored boy has of book learning.”

“Way I see it, make life easier all around,” Seborn replied. “If he could read, whoever he’s working for could leave him a note, tell him what he’s wanted to do.”

“Well, all I know is that back East women who open schools for darky children go to jail. It said so right in the newspaper,” Mrs. Monroe said, before the tinkle of the bells on the door announced her departure.

“That Mrs. Monroe don’t know nothin’,” Mourning said. “Colored man need to know how to read more than any white man.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” Olivia frowned at him.

“It surely do. What if I tell you ’bout some slaves what escaped off a plantation all the way down in Virginia. For weeks they’s goin’ north.”

Olivia never pointed out his grammatical errors. When Billy Adams or any of the other boys at school said things like “don’t know nothin’’ or “ain’t got” Olivia rolled her eyes and repeated the correct phrase in a show of great superiority. But Mourning’s voice flowed into his pattern of speech with such warm resonance, it sounded as if the words were meant to be put together just that way. Olivia was more tempted to imitate him than correct him, but knew how ridiculous she would sound.

“They ain’t got nothin’ but their feet,” Mourning continued. “And they be walkin’ all night and hidin’ in the woods when the sun be shinin’. Don’t got nothin’ to eat but bark and berries. Just about starve straight to death. Can’t hardly stand up. Can’t hardly see where they goin’. But they keep on, walkin’ all night. Walkin’ and walkin’. And walkin’ some more.” He stopped to dip a cup of water from the barrel and drink it.

“So what happened to them?”

“Finally they be here in Pennsylvania, in the snow. Walk all the way from Virginia. And then what you think happen to them? Them slaves be losin’ their direction and turnin’ ’round the wrong way. They be spendin’ the next few days walkin’ smack back toward that slave state what they come from. Smack toward the slave-catcher what’s chasin’ after ’em. You know why? Cause of they can’t read no map and can’t read no road sign. So that show you.” He stabbed a finger at the air in front of Olivia’s face. “Person got to know where they be in this world. Specially a person what can get sold if he be in the wrong place.”

“So what happened?” Olivia asked. “Did the slave-catchers get them?”

“No. Luck from the Lord, they pass by a field where a colored man be workin’. He set them back on the right way. They find their way to Five Rocks in time for her to birth her baby.”

Olivia stared at him for a long moment, hand cupped over her mouth, slowly absorbing the realization that the slaves in Mourning’s story were his parents.

“Well, you don’t have to worry, Mourning Free,” she said at last. “You already read way better than most of the blockhead white kids around here.”

Ten years had passed since then and Olivia seldom saw Mourning any more. They were agreeable to one another whenever he worked at Killion’s General, but he spent most of his time at the Feed & Grain, Ferguson’s Livery, or Smithy’s – all places Olivia seldom had cause to visit. When the weather was mild he was often gone for months at a time, working outside of town on someone’s farm. By now he was nearly a stranger to her.

Olivia put on her coat and boots, picked a wrinkled cellar apple from the bowl on the table and put it in her pocket, wrapped a scarf around her ears and mouth, and opened the back door. She felt like laughing when an image formed in her mind – her trying to drag a kicking and screaming Mourning Free into a wagon headed for Michigan.

Olivia was glad to see it had stopped snowing. She loved the steel blue haze of the afternoon light in this kind of weather. The sun had begun to drop in the sky and the town wore a veil of mystery, the houses casting gray shadows and the church steeples stark against the muted sky.

For a moment she grew melancholy. With her father gone she was an orphan too, just like Mourning Free. She didn’t have anyone to stick up for her either. But she shook herself silently.
Oh, woe is you. So get going and start sticking up for yourself. That’s the way the world is.
She found herself taking more comfort in Mr. Carmichael’s plain hard statement of fact than in all the damp condolences that had been heaped upon her by sobbing women.

She raised her chin and forced a blank expression on her face before starting up Main Street in search of Big Bad, the broken-down workhorse no longer worth his feed that Mourning had bought a few years ago. When he moved from place to place he packed all his worldly possessions into two small leather bags and threw them over the back of Big Bad’s saddle.

Olivia spotted the horse tethered in front of the Feed & Grain. “Hullo there, old boy,” she said, offering him the apple and stroking his neck while he chomped. “Poor old thing. If that back of yours gets any more swayed, your belly’s going to start scraping the ground.” The horse turned its brown eyes on her and moved its head up and down, as if agreeing. “Guess your daddy must be in there.” She patted his warm neck good-bye.

When I have my own farm
, she thought,
I’m going to get a nice old horse like Big Bad. Well, not that old, but calm and friendly like him. I’ll ride him everywhere – into town, over to visit the neighbors – and not sidesaddle either. Anyone has a problem with that, it’s just too bad. But they’ll be glad to see me coming, because I’m going to learn how to bake pies and cakes and always take one along when I go to visit. And I’ll have a big golden dog who’ll go everywhere with me, running along beside the horse, snapping at butterflies. That’s how it will be in the beginning anyway, before I have a family. Then I’ll have too many children to fit in a buggy; I’ll have to get a big farm wagon and put extra seats in the back. When the dog gets tired of running, he’ll bark and jump up there with them.

She entered the Feed & Grain and found it empty of customers. Mr. Bellinir was bent over the counter, writing in a ledger. Olivia greeted him and asked if he knew where she could find Mourning Free.

“Out back.” He jerked his thumb.

Mourning was working alone in the cavernous storeroom. His back was to the wide doorway, so he didn’t see her standing there and she watched him for a few minutes.

This man could be my salvation
, she thought.
Now all I have to do is make him realize that I could be his.

He plucked a sack of feed from the heap in the center of the room and heaved it onto the top of a neat pile, making it taller than he was. He paused to shake his arms, then counted the sacks in the stack and turned to write on a piece of paper that lay on a wobbly wooden table.

Olivia waited for him to finish before saying, “Hullo Mourning.”

He glanced over his shoulder and said, “Day to you, Livia,” in an off-handed way. Then he stiffened and turned to face her, looking at his toes while he mumbled, “I sorry . . . ’bout your father.”

She nodded. “Thank you for saying so. Mrs. Hardaway asked me to come get you. She needs you to mend some pot handles and the door of the oven.”

“Early tomorrow okay?”

“Sure,” she said. She moved closer to him, stopping three feet away, and lowered her voice. “But I . . . I wanted to talk to you about something else. In private.”

He stared at her and said nothing.

“It’s about a business dealing.”

His face broke into a grin. “Who you be doin’ business with, that old rag doll or your teddy bear?”

“I mean it,” Olivia said. “I’m serious. It’s a chance for both of us to change our whole lives.”

His expression went blank again.

“But it’s sort of secret. I need to talk to you about it in private.”

“You must be in a confusion. Ain’t nowhere near April Fools’ Day.” He turned away and picked up another sack of feed.

“All right, if that’s the way you want to be. I’m not fooling around, but suit yourself. Pay me no mind. If you don’t want to have your own farm, your own land, I can’t force you to.” She turned to leave.

She was at the door when he asked, “What land?”

She spun around, her face lit up. “I knew you’d do it!” She managed to keep her voice low, though she felt like shouting.

“I ain’t said I’m a do nothin’,” he said as she approached.

“Oh you will, once I explain. But that might take a while and . . .” She paused and nodded toward the front room of the store and Mr. Bellinir. “He knows I’m back here with you, so I shouldn’t stay too long.” She frowned. “I thought maybe we could meet down by the river, but it’s so cold. How about in the Congregational Church? Reverend Dixby doesn’t keep it locked, does he?”

“Nah.” Mourning shook his head. “But you don’t wanna be talkin’ ’bout nothing secret in there. Reverend Dixby got a nose what way too big. He see you goin’ in there after me, take him ’bout three and a half minutes to call a town meeting on us. But I got a place we can talk. Nice and warm, too. I got the key to Mr. Carmichael’s office and he gone over to Strickley. Ain’t gonna come back till late at night. I’m a go there first, through the back door, and get the stove lit up. Then you come knock on the front door and wait a bit ’fore you let yourself in. Anyone see you, they gonna think him or Billy Adams be in there and hollered out for you to come in.”

“How long should I wait before I come?”

“Don’t matter. Few minutes.”

“Is it all right for you to leave work now?”

“No mind to him when I be doin’ this, long as it get done. I’m a tell him I gotta fix your stove. Poor old Mrs. Hardaway can’t cook nothin’ – door keep fallin’ on her foot.”

Olivia nodded and turned to leave. From the middle of the store she called over her shoulder, “I’ll tell Mrs. Hardaway you’ll be right there,” and then said goodbye to Mr. Bellinir. He barely nodded, his attention focused on his ledger, though Olivia suspected he paid more mind to what went on around him than he let on.

She paused outside Killion’s General, glimpsed Mourning coming out onto the sidewalk, and slipped into her brother’s store to wait. This was the most excitement she’d had in years. She nodded to Avis and milled around the shelves, helping herself to some of the peppermint candies he kept in a glass bowl on the counter. When she went back outside wisps of smoke were curling from Mr. Carmichael’s stovepipe. Olivia did as Mourning had told her to and found him sitting on one of the two chairs next to the stove. She settled opposite him.

“Okay,” he said. “What land you got to give away?”

“You remember my Uncle Scruggs, don’t you?”

“Lorenzo? What used to be the Post Master?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, I ain’t never gonna forget him. I been standin’ right behind him the day that horse took into his head. I seen it all.”

“Well, maybe you don’t know that before he came back here, he was a farmer. He and his wife Lydia Ann had a place – eighty-acres. Right on the bank of a river with good fresh water. He dug a cellar, built a cabin over it, put up a barn, even set a springhouse over the river. It’s a beautiful place. He never would have left except Lydia Ann died of the fever and he lost his heart for it. So he came back to town, but the farm still belonged to him. When he died it went to my father and now it will go to me or one of my brothers – whichever one of us wants to claim it and put in a crop. Neither Avis nor Tobey is interested. I am. All I need is someone to help me.” She paused. “That’s why I need you to be my partner. To do the farming.”

He tipped his chair back, balancing on the hind legs. “I see how that gonna get you a farm. All I see it gettin’ me be an aching back.”

“I haven’t finished yet –”

“Sides, farming take more than land and one skinny nigger you think be dumb enough to work it for you. You gotta have money. Gotta buy seed. Gotta eat for a whole year –”

“I have six hundred dollars of my own money. In gold coin. You won’t have to pay for anything. Once a crop is in, I’ll inherit the land. That’s all we have to do. But you could keep working it. I don’t know how long it takes to make money farming. You can figure that out better than I can. But whatever we lose, it’s my money. Whatever profit we make is yours. You keep it all, until you have enough to buy your own eighty acres. Maybe even your own quarter section. But you don’t have to work my farm that long if you don’t want to. The deal is, you go there with me, make the cabin livable, clear a few acres, and put in one crop. Then you can quit any time you want and I’ll pay –”

Olivia abruptly stopped talking and listened as heavy footfalls clomped on the wooden sidewalk. What would they do if someone knocked on the door? Everyone knew that Mourning was allowed to stay in Mr. Carmichael’s office, but should she hide under the desk? The footsteps continued on without stopping, but she swallowed hard, facing what she knew was the biggest problem in her plan – the two of them being alone together. If she were to go off with a white man who wasn’t her kin, even if he was old and decrepit, tongues would never stop flapping. And a young colored one?

Well, that’s just another reason why it’s going to be a secret
, she reminded herself.

But she knew the problem was real. She and Mourning would have to travel together, spend days, weeks, and months alone together on Uncle Scruggs’ farm. She stared at Mourning for a moment, wondering how well they would manage that. She still thought of him as her friend, though for years they’d barely spoken. Now he was all grown up and she didn’t know much about the young man sitting across from her.

I know the most important thing
, she thought. I trust him.
He is a good man. Never did a speck of harm to anyone. When he promises to do something, he does it. We’ll just have to manage, figure the rest out as we go along.

She plunged on. “I’ll pay you –”

“Pay me what? How much?” He sat his chair back down on all four legs.

“Well, I guess I don’t know. I guess I haven’t really thought it all out. But we’ll come to an arrangement that we both think is fair. And put it in writing.”

He leaned forward, elbows on knees, watching her intently. “Suppose I stay on, but we ain’t making no money?” he asked.

“Well, that will depend on you, won’t it?”

“Me and a barrel of luck. God give you whatever kind a weather he feel like, not what kind you be needin’. And I got no say over prices or what kind a insects gonna come eat everything up.”

“I realize that.” She nodded. “All I know is, plenty of people make a go of farming and most of them start out with a lot less than we will. And I’ll be the one taking all the risk. What do you have to lose? Worst that can happen, you wasted some time. Would you rather spend another year chasing around here, fifty people telling you what to do? I’m asking you, what do you have to lose?”

He sat perfectly still, leaning forward and studying his feet. Then he straightened up and slapped both thighs. “All right. You got a partner. Where this land be? Walking distance from town?”

“No. Not exactly.” She avoided his eyes as she removed a piece of paper from her pocket and unfolded the map she had drawn. “It’s out in Michigan. Right there.” She held it out to him, pointing at a small dot not far from Detroit.

He took the paper from her and studied it, his mouth puckered as if he were holding a dead snake between his upper lip and nose. “Michigan? This Garden of Eden be in Michigan?” He thrust the paper back at her, stood up, and closed the damper of the stove. “You for sure off in the head. Michigan. I look crazy to you?”

“What’s wrong with Michigan? It’s not so far away. There are steamships right from Erie that go all the way to Detroit.”

“You know I can’t be travelin’ with no white girl.” He glared at her.

“Says who?”

“Say the world. What your brothers gonna say when you tell ’em ’bout this great plan you got?”

“I’m not going to tell them. We’re going to keep it a secret. I’ll leave them a note, so they won’t be worried, but they won’t read it until after I’m gone.”

“You tryin’ to get me killed? How long you think it gonna take them to come find you?”

“I’m not that big of a dolt. I have no intention of telling them where I really went.” She rose and stepped toward him. “The note will say I went out east to look for a teaching job. I’ll promise to write and let them know where I am as soon as I get settled. When I’m ready to claim the land, I’ll come back and tell them the truth.”

“Oh, so that okay then. They ain’t gonna string me up till next year.” He waved a hand, as if dismissing her in disgust.

“Nobody’s going to string anyone up,” she said. “They won’t know you had anything to do with it. I’ll say I got a hired man to work the land for me. That won’t even be lying, really. You’ll be sort of like a hired man. And we won’t leave town together. You can tell folks you’ve heard of some distant relatives and are going to look for them. Leave a few days before I do. No one’s going to think we went off together. Why would they? Especially if we’re careful about not being seen with each other between now and when we leave.”