Olivia, Mourning (11 page)

Chapter Eleven

The ship’s dressing bell roused Olivia at 4:30 the next morning. She shivered with the damp, untangled herself from the twine and tried to stretch the stiffness from her limbs without disturbing Mourning. He was still asleep, his hat covering his face. She couldn’t imagine how she must look and was glad that her mirror was buried in one of the baskets. She ran her fingers through her hair, but didn’t bother with her day cap. It was still dark and, anyway, none of these people were ever going to see her again.

When they were planning the trip Mourning had presented her with a homemade leather purse on a belt and said, “You gotta be able to get at some money without havin’ to lift up all them skirts and whatever else you got under there.” Now she squeezed the soft skin, feeling the coins and assuring herself that no one had robbed her during the night. Then she stood and lifted her arms over her head for a real stretch.

Further up the deck a straggly young man was selling tin cups of coffee out of a battered pot. Olivia smiled, pleased for Mourning to be proven so clever about keeping a small amount of money accessible. He stirred and Olivia turned her back to him, trying to grant him some privacy. She heard him sit up and waited for him to speak before turning around to wish him a good morning.

“I’m going to get a cup of coffee,” she said. “Are you ready for one?”

“Guess so.” He leaned forward and began untying himself from the baggage.

Olivia soon returned with the coffee and perched on his tool case. They sat in comfortable silence, sipping the hot bitter liquid.

She knew it was a mistake to ask again so soon, but couldn’t help herself. “What did you mean last night?” she asked. “What you said about my father finding my mother?”

“Don’t know what you talkin’ ’bout.” He shook his head and gazed out at the lake.

Why was he lying? “You said something about the way he cried when he found her.”

“I been real tired last night. Don’t know what I said. Listen, if you be needin’ the privy, go straight ahead. But I gotta go soon.”

“That’s all right,” she said, blushing. “You go first.”

She finished her coffee and tried to smooth her wrinkled clothing and re-comb her hair with her fingers. Then she sat thinking. He must have been referring to the day Seborn found Nola June dead in her bed. Olivia frowned as she calculated. Her mother had died in February 1829 when Olivia was not yet six. Mourning was no more than three years older than her. What on earth would Mourning Free have been doing in the upstairs of their house when he was eight or nine years old? Maybe he’d been bringing in firewood and ran upstairs when he heard a commotion? She shook her head. He would never do that. He wouldn’t step up onto the porch of a house belonging to white folks, without being told to do so.

Mourning returned and it was her turn to use the privy. There was one for men and one for women. Five-holers, so there was no privacy. When she returned they stood by the rail and poured water from a pouch over one another’s hands.

Then they took turns strolling about the deck. The sky was clear and she knew the air would warm up, once the sun made its appearance. The man in the black cap and jacket who had taken Olivia’s ticket when she boarded tipped his cap to her.

“Morning to you, Miss. See you’ve gotten your sea legs just fine,” he said.

“It’s lovely out here on the water,” she smiled, knowing it was ridiculous to feel as proud as she did for not being seasick.

“Not always. You’re having grand luck with the weather. Last trip I thought sure we was going under. Had to pull into a cove on an island right afore Cleveland. Three days we sat there shivering, hiding from that storm . . .” He went into great detail about the height of the waves and the child who was almost washed overboard, using his hands to illustrate the way the bow of the boat had bobbed forward, as if it were about to dive for the bottom.

When Olivia managed to extricate herself and resumed her stroll, she set her mind on taking in every detail of the enormous steamboat. It was quite a sight. An area of the lower deck had been roped off to serve as a pigpen and a few skinny dogs stood around it yapping. She wondered what made those pigs worth transporting all the way to Michigan. Were there no pigs to be had in Detroit? They were making their usual pig stink, so she didn’t stay to wonder for long.

Everyone on the boat seemed to have something to say to anyone willing to listen, each one more expert than the next about Michigan, farming, boats, and the weather. Many of the passengers were ruddy-faced, blonde-haired people whose language made them sound like they were constantly clearing their throat.

Olivia paused to watch two majestic bay horses in their roped off stalls, wishing she had an apple in her pocket. They were beautiful animals, but jittery. Neither of them seemed to have their sea legs. She stroked both of their necks and then, feeling hungry, wandered back to where Mourning was waiting. He had already laid out another grand meal. She went to buy a second cup of coffee for each of them, sat down, and put her face up to the early morning sun, content.

She had expected to come off this boat with exciting tales for her grandchildren – storms, broken-down engines, exploding boilers, fires, or at least a threatening sandbar. But so far it seemed that their trip would be relentlessly uneventful. Later that afternoon the boat docked in Cleveland. They had only an hour to go ashore and buy more food.

Mourning became friendly with the other colored passengers and spent most of the trip exchanging information with them. Though some intended to continue farther west, most were headed for small towns in Michigan. Olivia heard someone mention a nice black community in Backwoods and nodded to Mourning as if to say, “Didn’t I tell you so?”

She avoided engaging the white passengers in conversation. Mostly she sat on Mourning’s tool case, with a volume of Elizabeth Barrett Browning for company. While they were sharing their evening meal, she once again tried to get Mourning to tell her what he knew about her mother, but he looked so uncomfortable that she let it go.

Once we’re settled I’ll just have to find a bee tree
, she thought.
Make a big batch of Mammo Killion’s honey wine. That stuff gets anyone talking
.

On the third morning the passengers began stirring before dawn. Olivia heard someone say they’d be reaching the mouth of the Detroit River in a few hours. By the time Olivia and Mourning had stretched their aching limbs and finished their breakfast, the lake ahead of them had begun to narrow and passengers crowded the rails. Olivia and Mourning managed to squeeze among them – on what she by now knew to call the port side of the boat – and marvel at the shoreline. It was dense with orange and red flowered shrubs of a kind Olivia had never seen.

“That be Canada over to starboard,” the colored man standing next to them said.

Olivia stood on her tiptoes and looked behind her, saying, “A whole foreign country, right there! You could throw a stone at it.”

“I hear in Detroit they got a ferry, take you over to Windsor,” the colored man said. Then he laced his fingers together over the small mound of his belly, looking pleased with himself. “Now let me aks you folks a question. About geogurphy. If a person be going straight south from Detroit, what be the first foreign country he gonna run into?”

“Mexico?” Olivia ventured.

“Nope,” said the man. “You wanna guess?” He turned to Mourning.

“Argentina? Ain’t that a country down there?”

“Indeed, but that ain’t the one he gonna come to. No sir. You go south from Detroit, first foreign country you gonna run into is Canada. Fella showed me on a map.” He slapped Mourning on the back and moved away to ask another passenger the same question.

Olivia turned back to the rail and nudged Mourning, saying, “Just look at that,” as she nodded at the cluster of islands ahead. “I can’t believe how pretty it is here.”

The islands were all densely vegetated and they could see a tangle of wild grape vines around the fruit trees. So Uncle Scruggs hadn’t been fooling about his paradise. She looked behind her again and saw that there were more islands near the Canadian bank, which also had four windmills strung along it, their white sails tautly swollen.

“Oh, aren’t they just the most beautiful things?” she said and then turned back to the American side. “Oh look, there’s one over there too.”

“Captain fixin’ to turn to the right,” Mourning said. “Gonna go ’round that big island up there.” She looked ahead and saw the lush island he was nodding at, the east bank of which was a shallow shoal littered with boulders. Mourning continued, “It called Grosse Ile. That mean Big Island in French. Shipping channel go between it and Canada.”

“How do you know that?”

“Been talkin’ with a fella what lives here. He say everything growin’ on that Big Island be wild. Ain’t no farmer planted none of it. But look at it, all in straight rows, just like God laid out an orchard. When we get ’bout past it, you gonna see a couple a real small islands. One a them be called Mammy Judy, after an Indian squaw what used to go there to fish. Past it be another one called Fighting Island, ’ccount a the Indians used to make their camp on it, fight the British ships goin’ by.”

Mourning was obviously proud of knowing so many things about Michigan that Olivia didn’t. Olivia smiled back at him, wishing she could squeeze his hand.

“Thank you for coming with me, Mourning,” she said softly. “I’m really glad you did. I know we can do this together.”

He kept his smile on and nodded. He said nothing, but she thought his eyes shone with a far stronger light of hope and anticipation than even she felt.

The black woman who had been so seasick stood at the rail next to Olivia. Her husband was close behind her, his arms around her, and Olivia again felt a pang of loneliness as she wondered,
What is it about that woman that makes him feel like that? By watching her can I learn how to make someone love me?

When they neared the northern tip of Fighting Island the ship slowed to veer around a sharp bend to the right and Olivia’s mouth fell open. She counted five small steam-driven boats, all festooned with colorful banners. She could read the writing on the one that was coming towards them –
Excursions to Hog Island, Picnic Lunch Included
. Farther up the river were schooners of different sizes, sails taut in the wind, flying under brightly colored flags and coats of arms. Rafts, barges, and fishing boats bobbed among them, as did dug-out canoes, with and without sails.

“You’d think they’d all be crashing into one another,” she said in a whisper. “Isn’t it beautiful? So romantic. Especially those sailboats. It looks like they’re having a party, dancing around each other on the water.”

“Water by the port been just as crowded in Erie. Cleveland too,” Mourning said, sounding a bit puzzled. “Had plenty a sails too. You ain’t said nothing ’bout them being so beautiful.”

“I guess I wasn’t paying much attention. Or here the river makes it so much more … I don’t know.” She stopped and stared, unable to say out loud what she was feeling – that this was the place she was meant to be. She felt ridiculous even thinking it.

When she glanced up at Mourning his smile had grown wider. Again she wished she could touch him, just in a friendly manner. This was a moment she wanted to share.

“Maybe you like it so much cause this gonna be
our
city,” he said. “We gonna come here a lot.”

“Yes, that’s right. It’s not far from here to the farm.”

“See that marsh over there.” Mourning pointed to the shoreline. “That really a river. River Rouge. We gonna be comin’ on Detroit now, lickety-split.”

They passed a grimy cluster of grist mills, saw mills, tanneries, and small factories, but when Olivia looked past those, the city in the distance was beautiful. A pair of spires towered through the tree tops and a tin cupola glinted in the sun. When they drew near the railroad yard Olivia’s jaw dropped again.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she whispered. “Just look at it.”

Wharves well over 100 feet long jutted into the water and armies of stevedores were unloading the cargo ships at the docks into an endless row of warehouses. Between the warehouses Olivia glimpsed several sets of tracks and beyond them was a city of tall silos, mile-high stacks of crates, piles of lumber, and vats of oil.

“I never imagined anything like this,” she said. “This is so … so much.”

She blinked as a lilting voice called out. “
Bonjour! Bienvenue
!” Olivia looked down and saw an enormous canoe, crammed with ten or twelve pairs of oarsmen. None of their colorful shirts matched, but their headwear was identical – bright red caps with long pointed tops that folded over and ended in a tassel, like a sleeping cap or the hat of an elf in a children’s book of fairy tales. Every inch of space between them was piled high with huge bundles of furs.

“They must be some a them French voyageurs I heard about,” Mourning said. “Take the trappers out and bring their furs back. This Michigan got rivers what take you just about anywhere.”

As the canoe passed within a few yards of the ship, the man standing in the bow grinned up at Olivia, tore his hat off, clutched it to his heart, and called out, “
Quelle jolie fille . . . une vraie beaute. J’ai le coeur qui flanche ma belle
.”