Nightjohn (5 page)

Come a night in winter. Leaves gone,
pigs all killed and hams hanging in the smokehouse. I sat in the dark, in the corner of the quarters, wishing I could go back a season to where I didn’t have the troubles, and I heard a sound next to me in the dark and it was him.

John.

Be right there, next to me.

“Come on,” he said.

“What?”

“Follow me. We got to go so’s you can get back before first light.”

“Go where?”

He smiled. Took my hand. Led me to the door. “School—we got to go to school. Don’t you want to learn the rest of the letters?”

“But—”

And we go.

I was never off the place. Been only once to the fields where the corn and cotton grow. John he take me across the
fields, out the other end into thick trees, down into some brushy ditches along the river.

Suddenly he stopped.

It be pitch dark. Any light from the stars can’t get through the trees and brush and we stand for two, three deep breaths.

Then I smell it. Smoke. Faint smoke and John he leads me down a ditch until we hit a wall of solid brush. The smoke smell is strong now, stink of pitch burning. John he whistle like a catbird and there was a rustle of brush and then a slit of yellow light opened and he pulled me into the brush.

Inside the brush.

There is light, bright yellow from three pitch torches being held by three people. But there’s more people there. Same as all on one hand, thumb and the one next to it on the other.

They’re all smiling at me. I don’t
know any of them but they’re all smiling. Short boy comes up to me.

“We’re from over the hill at the Stankin place. Two from there and the rest from Placers.”

I didn’t know nothing about those places but I smiled back. “You all know John from before?”

He nodded. “He come at night. Tell us to learn some letters, then tell us to come here. To school.”

I didn’t know what a school was, what it was supposed to be. This was slats of brush dragged and pushed over a ditch, thicker and thicker and closed in on the ends.

Be a pit.

Pit school.

John he moved to the end and held one of the torches up. In the other hand he held a book. I’d seen a book. Saw one of the women at the white house looking into one.

“This is a catalog.” John held the book up. “It is full of things you can send for and own if you have money. They use it all the time. The whites. You read it, and it will tell you things. It has pictures and writing to talk about the pictures. Each of you come up and see it. Be quick now. We only have a couple of hours and I want to give you some letters. Sarny, you know some of them. You help me.”

Everybody look at me.

“Only know this many,” I said, holding up my hands.

“That’s a good start. They don’t know more than one or two. So you help me until we get to how many you know. Then we can all work together.”

We look at the catalog and I can’t believe it. Here in the school, pit school covered over so the light won’t show out of the ditch from the torches, we look at the catalog. All the things we don’t
have. Dresses and shoes with buttons and little gloves and pretty hats and overalls and I started crying. Thinking of all the things, all the pretty things, and then I see it.

Picture of a horse. Got a thing around his head for feeding him, around his head and hanging over his nose.

BAG
.

Says it right there. Under the picture. There’s other words, but right there it says to me:
BAG
.

“I know this one.” I pointed out the word, the word to John. “This one right here. It is
bag
. That’s a bag on a horse’s nose.”

He laughed. Love the laugh. Same deep black laugh. Like night thunder. “Soon, Sarny, soon you’ll be able to read them all. All of you will. Now let’s start so you can get back.”

And we do.

I take a stick, rub some dirt clear and
draw the lines in the dirt for three of them who watch.

Feels good to write again.

Late he come walking.

Late in the night when they in the white house are all asleep and we be asleep and nobody can know nothing, late when the moon is down and the stars are hiding in clouds, late when it isn’t the day before and it don’t seem like ever the new day will come—that late he come walking.

In the night he come walking. Late in the night and when he walks he leaves the tracks that we find in the soft dirt
down by where the drive meets the road, in the soft warm dirt in the sun we see his tracks with the middle toe missing on the left foot and the middle toe missing on the right and we know.

We know.

It be Nightjohn.

Late he come walking and nobody else knows, nobody from the big house or the other big houses know but we do.

We know.

Late he come walking and it be Nightjohn and he bringing us the way to know.

Excerpt from
Sarny
by Gary Paulsen

Copyright © 1997 by Gary Paulsen

Published by Delacorte Press, Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

All rights reserved.

I had never seen the town. Had heard of it, talk all the time of all the houses and people and stores. Some of the men went now and again to help load and they came back with stories of men in frock coats and women in long dresses and carriages so fancy it seemed you could eat them. Billy he said he saw a black man eating hard candy from a sack. I had never even seen hard candy let alone eat of it and he said they had it in the stores and would sell it from jars a penny a bag but Billy now and again saw hants and heard whispers others didn’t hear so I didn’t believe everything he went on about.

The ax-faced man with the wagon had come from the road to town and had taken my children down that road and that’s the way I went. Couldn’t help but nearly run. They’d been gone six—no, seven—days and maybe they were in that town and I could find them there and my feet they just wouldn’t walk slow.

Still I hadn’t walk-trotted a mile when Lucy she caught up with me. Tall girl, leggy so she could move, sixteen, seventeen years old with a smile all the time even when things weren’t funny. Sometimes she made me think of myself when I was younger though maybe she was a bit smarter and a good bit prettier. Didn’t show the smart but it was there.

“Decided to come with you. That’s what I
wanted
to do,” she said when she caught up. “Except I didn’t know you’d be running. It like to killed me catching up.”

“They took my children,” I said. “I can’t walk slow—”

“I know. I was there. Don’t you worry, we’ll find little Delie and Tyler. Don’t you worry.” And there was that smile. “Waller he was still laying there when I left.”

“I don’t care a snip about Waller.”

“It’s good he’s dead.”

“I don’t care.”

“Maybe the pigs will eat him.”

I didn’t say anything more about him and never did say another word on him until I was old and even now could I see him, Bible or no, I wouldn’t forgive him. Spit on his grave.

I didn’t know how far it was to town but Lucy had heard it from Billy. “Seven miles,” she said. “A mile is the same distance as the
length of that south cotton field. So it would be seven of those fields. I figure we’ve walked three fields so there be four more. To town.”

She was carrying a sack that was heavier than mine, big weight down in the bottom. “What’s in the sack?”

Her smile widened, seemed to cover her whole face. “Got me an extra shift in there.”

“Heavy shift.”

“I stopped by the smokehouse on my way out and took two hams. They ain’t big but they looked done and I figured we earned them.”

“We earned everything—”

“Riders.” There was the sound of hooves.

Hard word. Riders. Them that run and come back talk about riders. Men on horses. Hard men. Mean to the bone men with guns and whips and chains and dogs. Riders is the word for the hard men.

But it’s wrong this time. These riders are wearing blue, brass buttons glinting in the sun, rattle of sabers and creak of saddles. There were twelve of them, two by twos with a man in charge, an officer, out to the side and a little ahead.

We moved off the road to let them by but they stopped. Officer first, then all the men, stopped and looked down on us.

“You’re free now.” The officer brushed at a fly that had been following the horses and buzzed his face.

“I know. Yes sir. Thank you. The soldier at the plantation told us that—”

“But there are still dangers. We are just an advanced unit. There are bands of renegade scavengers—rebel deserters—that we haven’t rounded up yet, killing and looting.”

New word. Scavenger. Didn’t know it. But knew the others—killing, looting. “Yes sir.”

“You might want to find a safe place to be until things settle down. Look for some Union troops encamped and stay close to them.”

“I can’t. I’ve got children to find.”

He had been looking away and he looked down on me now. Tall horse, tall man, looked down and smiled like he was a father. “Stay away from people on the roads unless they are soldiers.”

“Yes sir.”

And they were gone, the horses trotting past. Some of them looked at Lucy and some looked at me and their looks weren’t as soft as the officer’s. Looking at our shifts, way we stood. Two looked back as they rode away and I thought the officer was right, might be dangerous along the road especially at night. And from more than scavengers. But I didn’t say anything and when I turned I saw Lucy and she
was smiling back at the men and I thought, too much tooth in
that
smile. Might as well light a lantern and hang it over the store.

“Let’s go.”

It was afternoon, hot and muggy, and I kept moving and had there been time it would have been a marvel to see the country we traveled through.

Must have been a plantation every mile. Some of them nicer than the one I’d lived on and most of them less and all of them in smoke. Some big houses burning, some barns, sheds. Quarters burning all over the place. Blue-coated soldiers were everywhere. Moving this way and that. All seemed to have a reason to move, a place to get to, a place to leave. A lot of busy work.

Didn’t see any gray soldiers except dead ones. Saw a group in a ditch, almost in a row, must have fallen like they stood. All their coats were open to show their bellies and some of them had big holes, some weren’t marked so you could see it but they were all dead. Didn’t see any dead blue ones, only gray.

Lucy she made the hex. sign when we passed the bodies, little and first finger out and thumb down but I shook my head. “They won’t bother you. Not now.”

“They got spirits,” she said. “They all got spirits can come back and hant us.”

I didn’t think so. They just looked like busted dolls to me but I didn’t say anything more about it. Lucy she wanted to make the hex sign it didn’t hurt anything and maybe it would help.

Black folks around every corner, over every rise. Some walked with the blue soldiers, following them, smiling but scared-looking like they thought it wouldn’t last. Like you could be free and then not free. Not me, I thought, you try to turn me back into a slave and you’ve got your hands full. Might as well try to turn sawdust back into a tree.

Others they just looked dazed. Didn’t know where to go, how to get there. Some followed us for a spell and I looked back once to see six or seven trotting behind us but we set too pushy a pace and they all fell away.

Every one I see, every single one I asked about little Delie and Tyler. Every soldier and every black person and they all try, think hard and try, but none remember seeing them, not even the wagon and the ax-faced man.

Town wasn’t like they said. We came to the edge of it in the evening, just as the light was changing and it was getting hard to see. Part of it was light but most of it was smoke. Some buildings were all burned down, some were still burning. I didn’t see any fancy carriages or hard candy or pretty dresses or frock coats.
Nothing but ruin. There were no men, no black men, no white men. Some women were there, white women except with all the soot on them they looked black and I stopped one of them on the outskirts. Woman maybe forty, looked sixty, seventy, kept picking at her dress.

“Could you tell me where they take slave children?” I asked. “To sell them?”