Olivia, Mourning (7 page)

“You’re going to spend your life working in that store, aren’t you?” she asked with a sigh.

“Seems so.”

Sweet Tobey. He would never fail to disappoint. She looked up at the stars coming out, feeling small and alone under the endless sky.

“Okay, let’s go.” She slipped her arm through her brother’s and they walked in silence for a while.

“Are you coming to work in the store tomorrow?” he asked.

“No, I don’t think so. Mourning Free is coming over to fix some things for Mrs. Hardaway and I want to be there. I have to show him exactly what needs to be done.”

The next morning Olivia sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee, while Mourning banged on the oven door. She silently admired the way he worked, his movements quick and sure. The only thing he might not be good at was shooting a gun, but Uncle Scruggs had made sure Olivia knew how to do that. She had only taken aim at empty milk tins, but unfailingly blasted them from fifty paces. Sometimes even a hundred. She had also gone hunting with her uncle. Though she had never actually shot at an animal, she had helped follow a blood trail and so felt sure she’d be able to put meat on the table. And did it really matter if she couldn’t? Mourning must know how to fish and she could keep chickens in the yard
.

Mrs. Hardaway had gone out the back door with her shopping basket, leaving Olivia and Mourning alone in the house. Olivia said to Mourning’s back, “You know there are over a hundred negroes out there in Detroit, Michigan. I can show you where it says so, right in a book. And there’s a town called Backwoods, not so far from Fae’s Landing, with a whole lot too.” The last statement was a stretch of the truth. The book did mention the existence of a negro community in Backwoods, but didn’t say of how many.

Mourning ignored her and grunted, clanging his tools.

“You should have heard Uncle Scruggs talk about that how beautiful it is out there. And Fae’s Landing is only about forty miles from Detroit, where they have markets and railroads and boats on the river. So it would be easy to sell whatever you grow.” She paused and waited for him to respond, but he continued banging on the oven door.

She took a breath and continued. “You know, people who want to get ahead in life have to move with the times. And the ones who get farthest ahead are the ones who stay a step ahead of the rest. Now’s the time to go. With that Erie Canal open ten steamboats are docking in Detroit every day, full of people looking to buy land. Pretty soon there won’t be any left. It says right here,” she said, pointing at the almanac on the table in front of her, “that in 1830 there were only about 30,000 people in all of Michigan. How many do you think they counted last year?” She paused before answering her own question. “Over 213,000.” She repeated the number, emphasizing each syllable.

He stood up and turned to face her. “I told you why I can’t go.”

“Why would some old slave-catcher come poking around my uncle’s farm? They don’t even have slavery in Michigan. Outlawed it four years ago.”

“Maybe they ain’t got slavery, but they got plenty a runaway slaves. Probably even more than Pennsylvania. That underground railroad go right through Michigan on the way to Canada. So they be plenty a slave-catchers chasin’ after ’em.” He set the hammer down, rose from squatting in front of the stove, and took a seat across the table from her.

She got up to pour him a cup of coffee and set it in front of him. “Well, if the underground railroad goes through Michigan, that means there are plenty of white people out there willing to stand up for a black man. You’ll have Mr. Carmichael’s paper, you’ll have me, and you’ll have all those abolitionists. Before we leave you can ask Mr. Carmichael to make another copy of that paper. I’ll hold on to one of them for you, just in case you ever lose yours. Once we’re there we can find a local judge or attorney, someone like Mr. Carmichael and give him a copy for safe-keeping. Michigan isn’t some wild territory. It’s been a state for four years. They’ve got laws there, same as here. “

She did not, however, tell him everything she knew about those laws. After Uncle Scruggs returned to Five Rocks he had continued to receive the Detroit Gazette by post. Olivia had found a bundle of yellowing issues, each four pages long, the first three in English, the last in French. From them she learned that Michigan had the same laws against negroes that they seemed to have everywhere. Whites and negroes were forbidden to marry. Public schools were not required to accept negro children and if they chose to do so were allowed to provide separate facilities. In Michigan, however, they had another terrible law that she had never heard of before. She learned of it from an article that had appeared on the front page of an issue published in 1828:

“A much-needed amendment to the law for the regulation of negroes has finally been passed. As we have already informed our readers the original law passed in 1827 requires all negroes to carry a valid, court-attested Certificate of Freedom and to register with the clerk of the County Court and file a $500 bond guaranteeing good behavior. The new amendment enables sheriffs and constables to evict non-complying negroes.”

A letter to the editor in the next issue complained that:

“Not hardly a one of these dark bipeds has obeyed the law. This unfortunate species not equal to ourselves roams our towns and cities unsupervised while the men we pay to uphold the law choose to ignore their disregard for our legal system. For this sorry state of affairs we can thank the niggery abolitionists who are deviants and favor the social integration of these inferior creatures.”

Her conscience shouted at her to show that article to Mourning, but she couldn’t bring herself to destroy whatever chance there may be of him coming with her. Anyway, didn’t the horrible man who wrote that nasty letter complain about nobody obeying the stupid law? And the sheriffs not caring that they didn’t? And Fae’s Landing probably didn’t even have a sheriff. Anyway, maybe the negroes didn’t have to give them $500. Maybe filing a bond meant that a person signed some paper promising to pay $500 if they went and robbed someone or did some other bad thing. Mourning would never do anything like that.

Mourning said nothing and Olivia leaned forward and pressed on. “Please, Mourning, you’ve got to think it over again. Mr. Carmichael isn’t going to be around forever. You’ve got to make a life for yourself. I know you could run a farm better than anyone. You’d know how to buy a wagon and a team of oxen, wouldn’t you?”

He stooped his shoulders and slowed his speech to a drawl, the imitation of a groveling slave he had begun doing when they were children, any time she got bossy and annoyed him. “Far’s I ’member, Miz Olivia, you be wantin’ to buy something, you be handin’ over yo’ money and then you be takin’ that thing home.”

“Oh stop being ornery, you and your ‘Miz Olivia.’ You know what I mean. Would you know how to pick out a good pair and what you should pay for them?”

“Spose so.”

“You listen to me, Mourning Free. You can be as cantankerous as you want, but you know you can trust me. And I don’t mind telling you, I haven’t been able to think of anyone else that I would want to do this with. You’ve got to think about it. You’ll never have another chance like this. It’s true that you’ll be the one doing most of the hard work, but I’ll help with whatever I can. You can boss me. I surely know you’d like that.”

He grinned. “Boss you? That sound like the hardest part a your plan.”

“Seriously, Mourning, I’ll do the cooking and the laundry. Milk the cow when we get one. Raise some chickens. Just like a regular farmer’s wife. Like I said, you can use whatever money we make to buy your own land, until you’ve got forty acres of your own. After that, if you want, I’ll pay you a fair wage to keep on working mine. Or at least to oversee whoever I hire.”

“Black man overseein’ a white one. That indeed be a pretty picture. You got me bossin’ white folks ever which way,” Mourning said, but his easy grin turned to a look of fierce concentration and he sat silently studying the grain of the wooden table.

Olivia waited a few minutes before speaking again. This time her tone of voice assumed it was decided. “If all sorts of things do go wrong and we don’t make any money … well, you work out what would be a fair wage for each month you worked and I’ll pay it to you. There won’t be any way you can lose.” She paused to let this idea sink in before continuing. “There’s all sorts of land out there, Mourning. Once you get your own place going, you can keep buying more and more. They practically give it away. You’ll have your own quarter section in no time.” This was another stretcher. In fact she hadn’t the slightest idea what the current price of land in Michigan was, nor how much of it there was for sale. But all those steamboats full of eager immigrants must mean something.

Finally he spoke. “I always knowed you was strange, but that some crazy idea, even for you. You best stay here in your daddy’s house and read your books.” But his tone of voice had changed and Olivia thought she had him.

“It’s not a crazy idea, Mourning. Who do you think goes to places like that, anyway? People like us. People with nothing, looking for a chance to get something. It’s not my daddy’s house any more. It belongs to Avis now and I need something of my own. Look at the people around here who’ve got money – they’re the ones whose family came when there was nothing and made something out of it. Just like all the people going to Michigan now.”

“You ain’t done a day’s hard work in your life. You got no idea what you talkin’ about. You tryin’ to tell me you gonna chop firewood and haul water? Sew your own clothes? Churn butter?”

“I can do those things, Mourning. I know I can. I’m young and healthy. I know it’ll be hard, but when a person wants something badly enough, they can do anything. I’ll get used to whatever I have to. And we aren’t going out into the wilderness. There’s a town nearby, with stores. We’ll be able to buy most of those things.”

“What about your brothers? They gonna be comin’ after me with all the rope they can find.”

“No one strings up negroes in Pennsylvania. Or in Michigan. You’ve been reading too many abolitionist newspapers,” she said in exasperation. “You know, for someone who’s never set foot in a slave state and has been treated pretty decently by every white person he’s ever known, you spend an awful lot of time worrying about getting lynched or sold down the river. Besides, I already told you, I’m not going to tell them where I’m going. And you don’t have to tell anyone either.”

He scowled at her and took a sip of the coffee. “I could sell Big Bad,” he said, his voice low, barely audible.

“You don’t have to do that. I told you, I’ve got money.” She stopped. “Oh, well, I guess you would have to sell him, since we can’t take him on the steamboat. But you’d keep that money. Our arrangement would be that I supply all the money and the land we start out with; you supply the strong back.”

“What if you run out a money?”

“We’ll think about that when it happens.”

He scowled again.

“Look,” she said, “I suppose if we did go broke you could always get work at one of the logging camps. They operate mostly during the winter, when there’s enough snow on the ground to make skid ways, so it’s perfect for a farmer.”

He glared.

“Well, I’d go with you, of course. I could get a job as a cook or washing the loggers’ clothes. Then, come springtime, we’d go back to farming. And why start out worrying about every tiny thing that could go wrong? What’s the worst thing that can happen to us? We fail. And you know the only thing that’s worse than failing? Being afraid to try. Stop rolling your eyes. Clichés get to be clichés by being true.”

They heard Mrs. Hardaway’s heavy step on the back porch and both grew silent. He rose, set his coffee cup on the counter, and began gathering up the pots she had set out for him.

“Day to you, Mrs. Hardaway,” he said as she came in. “I get these back later this afternoon,” he said.

“That will be just fine. Thank you for coming so quick,” she replied and set her basket on the table.

After the noonday meal, Olivia went behind the post office to the Reading Room and spent an hour working through the dusty stacks, picking out every book and journal she could find that had anything good to say about Michigan. Then she went looking for Mourning again and waited until no one else was around before shoving
Morse’s Geography
under his nose.

He again rolled his eyes and acted as if he were humoring her. “What now, someone find diamonds on your uncle’s place? Or maybe Moses been sighted wanderin’ there? Or maybe them Michigan farmers started growin’ gold ’stead a corn.”

“No, no gold or diamonds. But they do have trails that are wide enough for a wagon and they go to all these cities: Chicago, Port Huron, Saginaw, and Grand Rapids.” She pointed to each one on the map and Mourning’s eyes followed her finger. She left the book and clomped out.

The next morning she found him again and pulled a copy of the
Journal of the American West
from under her coat. “There’s a whole article in here about Michigan – about how it isn’t true what people used to say about it being a big swamp. That was all a big fat lie told by Mr. fancy pants millionaire John Jacob Astor and his fur company because all they wanted in Michigan was lots of bears and foxes, not settlers. So they made up a report about Michigan being no good for farming.”

“And now who say different?”

“There’s a government report that says so – from twenty years ago. They sent a bunch of men called the Cass Expedition to go canoeing all over Michigan. Those men came back swearing that all the farmers had to do was clear away the trees and they’d have fine farmland.”

Olivia kept up her campaign, but it wasn’t reading material she was counting on to win him over. The bossy, annoying women of Five Rocks would do that for her.

A body can live with anything, as long as they believe they have no other choice
, she thought.
But once he’s convinced he does have one, he won’t be able to stand those busybodies for one more minute.