Chasing the North Star (16 page)

“Goat Man, are you in trouble?” I said. He nodded like he was trying to say yes.

I stepped back out in the rain. My fire was blazing and it was time to put on the coffee and start some grits or mush. I needed to go to the river for water. The goats had to be milked and hitched up to the wagon. And the Goat Man was lying there in the wagon in his own filth. We were out in the woods in Virginia and I didn't know anybody to ask for help.

I looked back in the wagon and the Goat Man opened and closed his good hand like he was milking, and I saw he meant for me to go milk the nannies. He was thinking more about the goats than himself. I didn't know what else to do, so I took the milk bucket and went to one of the nannies. I'd never milked a goat before, but I'd milked cows. But a goat has only two teats and is easier than a cow to milk, once you get down on the ground. There was no stool, so I dropped on my knees and milked the first nanny and then the second.

When I finished the second nanny and stripped her, I took the bucket and set it beside the wagon. And I saw what I was going to have to do, what I had been dreading. I was going have to clean the Goat Man up, because he couldn't lie in his own mess. He was an old man that couldn't even talk, and I had to clean him up. Girl, you are crazy, I said to myself. But I didn't see any other way. I couldn't let the old man lie in his filth. And I couldn't just walk away and leave him like that. Besides, the Goat Man was my protection. The Goat Man was so strange nobody bothered me as long as they thought I was his slave or his girl.

I took a bucket to the river and filled it, and then I warmed half the water over the fire. And then I took a rag and pulled off the Goat Man's clothes and washed him in the wagon. I put a piece of canvas under him and scrubbed him with warm water and then dried him with one of his rags. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Nothing is as bad as you expect, once you get in the middle of it. I'd seen a man's parts before and the Goat Man was no different. He was so helpless, he looked away most of the time, and he groaned like he was in bad pain.

After I washed him up and put on dry clothes, I went to make some coffee, and I made some mush. And then I had to hold the mug of coffee while he drank, and I fed him mush like he was a little baby. I kept thinking, Girl, what are you going to do? Way out here in strange woods with a helpless man and five goats. You don't know anybody and a sheriff could catch you and send you back to the Thomas Place to be whipped and branded on your cheek, and have your ear cut off.

We like to think we can make big choices, that we choose what we do. We like to tell ourselves that. The truth is, we usually do what we have to, what there is to do. We don't really know what we're going to do ahead of time. It just happens, like me running away because I saw Jonah at the jubilee. It was the biggest thing I'd ever done, and it wasn't even a plan, but just a happen.

I didn't know what I was going to do, but we couldn't just sit there in the rainy woods and rot. The Goat Man didn't have any money except what he made sharpening knives and saws and such. I thought I still had the money I took from Jonah on the night of the jubilee, but when I looked in my pocket, it was gone. It must have fallen out somewhere. There was nothing to do but hitch up the goats with the Goat Man lying in the wagon, wash up the pots and pans and put out the fire, and get on up the road the same way we had done before.

The road was muddy with little streams running in the ruts. The wagon splashed and creaked along. The river by the road ran red and angry with flood. We crossed a branch that was ugly and dirty. I tramped alongside the wagon holding my skirt up, but the hem got muddy all the same.

The first house we passed, a woman came out on the porch and hollered at me. I stepped into the yard and she said, “Ain't that the wagon of the Goat Man?” and I told her it was.

“Then where is the Goat Man?”

“He's not feeling too good,” I said.

“I need my scissors and knives sharpened,” she said.

“I'm doing the work now,” I said. I don't know why I said that, because I'd never used the Goat Man's wheel or his files. But I'd watched him use them. I figured that with a little care I could do knives and scissors, maybe file the teeth on a saw. I wasn't ready to use the solder torch though. I took the file and whet rock and wheel from the wagon and brought them to the porch. The woman carried out a half dozen knives, two pairs of scissors, and a handsaw and a bow saw. “I've never seen a woman tinker,” she said.

“I am a gypsy,” I said.

Sharpening a blade with the wheel was pretty simple. I just held the lip of the metal to the stone and turned it so sparks and dust flew. I kept sharpening the blade till it sparkled and was razor thin at the edge, thin as a whisper. But sharpening a saw was different because the teeth had different angles and directions and the file had to be true to the pitch, this way and that way, changing back and forth along the edge. I tried so hard to file the teeth right I was sweating and my hand trembled.

The goats wandered into the woman's flowerbed and she hollered and drove them out. I stopped working and tied the goats to the wagon and came back and filed on the saws some more. When I was done the woman gave me a quart of sourwood honey and two dimes.

“You are just learning,” she said.

“Yes, ma'am,” I said and took the honey and the money.

People all along the road were surprised to see me come into their yards with the Goat Man's wagon. Sometimes they went out and talked to the Goat Man lying in the wagon while I sharpened their knives and saws and scissors. And sometimes a woman looked at me and told me she didn't have anything for me to do, and I had to get on up the road. And sometimes, when I could, I stole eggs from a henhouse because eggs made the Goat Man strong, and besides I liked eggs in the morning. It was a habit I'd gotten used to in the big house. While the field hands in the quarters ate mush of a morning, Sally always gave me an egg or two.

And the Goat Man started to move again. First he could push himself around while I washed him, and in a few more days he could take the bucket and rag from me and wash himself. I don't know what kind of sickness he had, but he was getting his strength back little by little, as the leaves along the road turned yellow and orange and it was cool in the morning. We went on up the road past a place with a brick courthouse.

Now I had to stop by a creek to wash out his clothes and my dirty dress. I didn't have a washpot, so I heated water in a kettle and washed in the dishpan and rinsed in the creek. I wore my new gold dress while the old one was being washed and dried by the fire. I was hanging wet clothes on sticks to dry when I looked around and saw the Goat Man slide out of the back of the wagon and fall to the ground. I ran to him, but he waved me away. He pulled himself up off the ground on the side of the wagon, and I handed him a spade to use as a crutch. The Goat Man grabbed the handle and took a step. He arms trembled as he leaned on the spade. He took another little step. I could see his left leg was good and his right leg was bad. He took another step holding on to the shovel. Making tiny hops he moved to the fire. It seemed like he was holding the spade up as much as it was holding him up.

The Goat Man pointed to the spade handle and then he pointed to the woods. He pointed to the hatchet on the side of the wagon and then he pointed to the trees again. Then he pointed to the handle again. For a minute I didn't know what he meant, and then I saw he wanted me to take the hatchet and cut a stick in the woods he could use for a walking stick.

While the clothes were drying, I took the hatchet and went looking for a sapling just the right size. The Goat Man needed something strong to hold him up, but light enough to carry easily. He needed a stick smooth to the touch that wouldn't bend too much. I found a maple, but it was too slim. A white oak would be too crooked. A pine or a poplar would break too easily.

And then I saw this hickory straight as a curtain rod and nearly as thick as my wrist. I hacked it off at the ground and then chopped it to about four feet long. Yellow leaves fell all around me, whispering and cool when they touched my arms.

At the fire the Goat Man looked at the stick and tried leaning on it. And he pointed to the rough end where it was cut and the bark was thick. So I took a knife from the wagon and peeled the bark from the sapling. The bark was stiff as oxhide, but I stripped it off and smoothed the bare wood with the knife, scraping away knots. I rounded off the big end so it felt like a knob, scraping the hickory wood smooth as an egg.

With that hickory stick the Goat Man could hobble around the fire and go to the woods to do his business, and I didn't have to clean him up anymore. When the clothes were dry, we moved on, him riding in the wagon. And when we came to a house, he went to the door, holding on to the stick, and I carried the wheel to the porch, and his other tools. The woman brought out her knives and scissors, saws and hoes.

I never saw anybody so happy to be working again. The Goat Man was so thrilled, he smiled all the time while he filed and turned the wheel and made sparks fling off the metal. I reckon he was that happy to be walking again, happy to not be lying in that wagon. That was the first time I ever saw how happy work can make a man. Being lazy is dreary, and lying helpless is more awful still.

Every day the Goat Man could walk a little better. He still had to lean on the stick I made for him. And he took short steps and favored his right leg. And I reckon his right arm didn't work as well as it had before. But he was soon working almost like he worked before, except he rode in the wagon more. He rode while I walked and led the goats.

Now we came to the place I later learned was Roanoke, between high, dark mountains. There were houses along four streets and the Goat Man went door to door asking if they needed any knives or such sharpened. And then while he was working on a porch, I glanced down the street at a store and saw somebody that looked like Jonah walk into the store. My heart jumped into my mouth and I almost fainted. It couldn't be Jonah, that low-down, trifling boy, I said. But I kept looking, and a few minutes later he came out with a poke in his hand, and I saw it truly was Jonah.

I wanted to go up to that rascal and crack him on the head, because I'd thought he was dead, or in jail, or taken back to South Carolina. But there he was in Roanoke, dressed in new clothes, and walking in the street just like a free man. You trifling, no-count rascal, I thought.

I was still holding a file in my hand, but I started following Jonah. I couldn't help myself. I didn't even think about the Goat Man and his work. I had to follow Jonah and see where he lived, and what he had done to have new clothes and walk in the street like he owned it.

He turned a corner and followed a road that ran into the country going north. I stayed back so he wouldn't see me, but I kept after him. I couldn't do anything else. And then he turned a corner into a yard with a white picket fence, and he went around the house to the back.

I couldn't go right up to the front of the house, but I meant to see what that boy was doing. I stepped into the woods and worked my way around to the back of the yard. There was a barn and woodshed and well there. Three young women sat on the second-story back porch talking and laughing. A black woman opened the back door and dumped a dishpan of water. I stepped around to the side of the barn, but didn't see Jonah anywhere.

I must have waited an hour listening to those girls talking on the porch before Jonah came out with a wooden bucket. He went to the well and I hollered to him from the bushes by the barn. When he saw who I was he turned gray, and hurried over to look at me. “What are you doing here?” he snapped.

“Well, I'm glad to see you, too,” I said.

And I saw how scared Jonah was, so afraid he'd be found out as a runaway, and he was afraid I was going to tell on him. He was afraid that if I was caught he would be caught and sent back to South Carolina or sold off to the South. And I saw he was so scared because he was so smart. He knew the names of all the states and towns and rivers he had to cross to get to the North. And he knew what happened to black men caught running away. He was little more than a boy. But he was like my brother now, and my only hope to find my way, and to find love. I can't explain it all, but that was what I felt all of a sudden. That was why I had to tease him a little and say I would turn him in if he didn't take me with him.

Now when a white woman came out on the back porch and saw me talking to Jonah, she called me in, and I had to think quick. This Miss Linda ran this place and I saw quick she wasn't anything but a whore. She had on a fancy dress and perfume, but she was nothing but a hussy. I told her my name was Sarepta, a name from the Bible. And when she called me into the front room and told me what I was going to do, I just smiled and nodded my head and said, “Thank you, ma'am,” like I was happy as a pig in mud. I'd do whatever she said because she spotted quickly that I was a runaway. She had the power over me, and I had to do whatever she wanted, because I had to stay close to Jonah. But she didn't know that, I reckon. Working for Miss Linda was the only way I could stay close to Jonah Williams.

While we were eating supper in the kitchen, us four colored servants, including Lonella the cook and Hettie the maid, I saw Jonah was so mad at me and scared of me he could hardly say anything. And I thought that was because he was already in love with me halfway and didn't know it yet. That was why he was so scared, because he knew he couldn't leave me again. He wanted to escape far away to the North, but he couldn't go anywhere without me. He knew how to read, and he had a map in his head, but he was just a scared boy that knew the odds against him. I wasn't going to tell him how I got to Roanoke and found him. I thought: let him be puzzled and think I followed him and tracked him like a hound dog after a fox. That would make him even more scared.