Running Out of Night (6 page)

We both set on a big limb that stretched like a bridge over the water. We opened our sacks, pulled out some apple slices and jerky, and chewed in silence. Soon we both be swingin our legs and talkin, almost forgettin for a few minutes where we was and why we was runnin.

“What your name?” the girl asked me.

“I don’t have no name. My mama died just when I were borned and nobody bothered to give me one, ceptin Grandpa, who always called me Sweet Girl when we were alone. But you can call me Girl like everyone else does.”

“Girl ain’t no name for you. I never knowed someone with no name. Even the Nkanga hens on the plantation has themselves names,” she said to me as she stood up and walked back acrost the limb and onto the bank.

“I give you one, but I needs to find a name that fits you good.” She bent to knot the end of the sack, then swung it over her shoulder.

I shuffled acrost the limb, climbed off, slipped my achin arm through the loop of the sling, then tied my bag closed.

“What’s your name?” I asked her, but she were on the other side of the clearin and hadn’t heard me.

“Hey, girl,” I shouted, “what you doin there?”

She kicked soil and leaves over the long, patterned body of the copperhead.

“Hopin for fair weather,” she said. “Cain’t leave this snake without a buryin or we have storms.”

The girl finished coverin the snake and stepped off the bank and into the crick. We both kicked and threw handfuls of water onto my sleepin spot and everywhere our feet had touched the ground.

I started to ask her name again, but the words never left my mouth. Loud barkin come from somewhere down to the bottoms. I could hear bayin and buglin, the song the hounds sing when they on a warm trail. Then more bayin, and this time too close. Was they pickin up our smells?

“We in trouble,” I said. “Let’s get movin. Stay in the crick.”

She looked at me and nodded afore she took off through the water. I follered close behind her, makin too much noise, splashin, slippin, and fallin over rocks and branches. I felt like I couldn’t raise my feet up another step.

This part of the crick twisted and turned, all crooked every which way. We’d go one way for a few minutes and near meet ourselves goin the other. It felt like we was makin no gains.

Then things started lookin like I’d seen them afore. We was in the Horseshoe Bends near to Bush Crick where Pa brought his wheat to be milled.

We come to a split. Wide waters one way, the other a
narrow run I thought to be Bush Crick. We stood at the whirlin pool where the two met and looked up one and down the other. “Which way?” the trouble girl asked me, but I didn’t have no answer.

Bathsheba, my favorite of Pa’s dogs, howled out her familiar yodel-like call from somewhere close by, and we took off runnin down the shinbone of water that rushed ahead of us.

F
inding a warm piece of wood from a tree struck by lightning will bring you great powers
.

T
he girl and me didn’t stop. We sloshed through the water not sayin a word. My sacks pounded up and down against my back and hurt shoulder as I run.

We kept runnin till Bathsheba’s bayin sounded a county away. I knowed that the old hound must be right confused, smellin my scent out where it didn’t belong.

The girl stopped runnin for a minute, bent over, her hands on her knees, and panted. Sweat dripped off her and into the fast-movin water. She straightened, clutched at her side, and bent over again.

“You hurtin?” I asked. She nodded and stayed bowed
like an old woman. I walked over to her, put my hand on her shoulder, and said, “Let’s stop. Let’s drink some water and rest a few minutes.”

The girl backed over to a big flat rock in the middle of the crick and dropped her sack. I follered and dropped my bag and sling beside hers. We both knelt, cupped our hands, and drank till we couldn’t drink no more.

The heaviness of the day were takin all the life out of us. We was both drippin wet, our clothes stickin to us, and every breath hard-like. I splashed water all over myself and then onto her. She turned toward me, laughin, and slapped the water hard till I were wet through.

Once, on a day near as hot as today, my grandpa told me that even a fish would be sufferin. I looked down at the small streaks of silver minnows dartin from shadow to shadow in the crick. They didn’t look to be sufferin none. I wished I could be one of them for just a few minutes.

The girl straightened, walked through the water, and climbed onto another big rock. I joined her, hauled up, and we set together back to back, our knees tented in front of us, the water rushin and whirlin around us.

“What’s your name?” I asked over my shoulder.

“Zenobia,” she said.

“What kind of name is that?”

“Zenobia is my gramma’s name, and Zenobia were a queen.”

The girl pushed back her thick, dark hair and shook the
sweat off her face. “Zenobia my milk name, and Ma say if I don’t like it when I get old enough I can change it. But I like it.”

“Zenobia,” I said aloud. “Zenobia.” I rolled it around in my mouth like a smooth stone. “Come on, Zenobia, we got more travelin to do.”

We stood up together, walked over to the flat rock, and picked up our sacks. We was soggy to the bone. The wind turned and carried the distant sound of the barkin and howlin of the hounds. And then a deeper sound and a long rollin rumble like the earth were goin to split open.

Another rumble; then the wind started tearin at the trees till their leaves whirled through the air. Then a crack, like someone firin at us, and a clap of thunder louder and closer than any I’d ever heard.

“Guess you didn’t bury that old snake good enough!” I yelled to Zenobia.

Ahead of us a huge sycamore tree, its heart burnt out of it from the lightnin strike, stood smolderin.

Zenobia took off and run toward the tree. I shouted a warnin to her about takin cover. She reached the blackened tree and peeled a short piece of the charred bark from its edge.

“This lightnin wood save us,” she said as she broke the sliver in half and handed a still-warm piece to me. “Keep it for good luck.”

I didn’t want to pass up any chance of good luck. I
tucked the sliver into my sack, and we raced for a sheltered openin in the rocks.

We smelt the rain afore it hit. Then it come down so hard and loud it wiped out the sounds of the crick.

Zenobia reached the openin afore me. “It’s a cave,” she yelled over her shoulder. She shouted somethin else, but her voice were lost in the wind and rain.

I ran and almost made it to the openin when a lightnin strike hit so close I heard a sizzlin sound, like fritters fryin in grease. Right with it come the thunder, ear-burstin loud. I ducked my head, and Zenobia’s hand yanked me inside just as a young cottonwood crashed acrost the willows and sealed the entry hole closed.

A
whistlin girl and a crowin hen always come to some bad end
.

I
heard Zenobia pantin, but I couldn’t see her. I twisted round and looked back at the openin, all covered now by a crisscross of branches. I felt like I were lookin out of one of my willow baskets.

“We be trapped,” I said as I shifted my bundle and sling and turned back toward Zenobia. Slowly my eyes got used to the darkness, and I could see her face peerin over the top of the bundle.

“Trapped feel good and safe,” she said.

“Trapped never good,” I answered. It give me the allovers when I thought back to the animals I’d seen strugglin to free themselves from Pa’s lines, workin so hard
they’d gnaw off their own legs to get free. “Right now we need to rest, and then we’ll break through them branches and get out of here. Best travelin by night anyways.” I shivered and drew my wet pack up against my body.

The floor of the cave were covered with twigs, leaves, and bits and pieces of fish bones and crawdad. It smelt thick, musky, like where the river otters rubbed and rolled on the banks of Catoctin Crick. I didn’t even want to think on what else were in the cave.

Zenobia’s pantin quieted; then she settled into a purrin sleep. I were beginnin to think that she could drop off anywhere. My heart calmed. Some people are afeared of bein closed into dark or small places, but somehow they always made me feel safe. I liked it when I could see folk but they couldn’t see me. But bein trapped in here made me feel right rattled. I closed my eyes. The sounds of the crick and the rain stutterin onto the leaves of the fallen cottonwood seeped into me.

Here I were, trapped in a cave with a runaway slave girl. A few days ago I’d been trapped in another way. Trapped at the cabin with Pa and my brothers and never a hope of much good happenin to me. Now, I were on my way, but on my way to where and what?

We both slept. Zenobia woke first and called to me. “Girl. Listen.”

I didn’t need her to tell me to listen. I heard dogs barkin, their yelps piercin right through the roarin of the water. Then I felt heavy feet thuddin along the sandy banks
above us, and then the crashin sounds of someone slippin down the bank and through the brush. Then a loud splash and yellin.

“Bank fall in!” a familiar voice yelled. “And them fool dogs. Where they go?”

I could see movement through the tree branches and the flash of Pa’s red shirt. My heart took a jump. More yellin and then the sound of Pa workin his way up the cliff and through the brush. Finally, just the sound of the river roarin past us.

I gulped air, Zenobia exhaled, and then the frenzied sounds of a pack of huntin dogs slidin down the bank and thrashin through the stream. They howled, barked, and lunged into the branches that laid acrost the openin to the cave.

“We done for,” Zenobia said.

I figured it wouldn’t take more ’n a few minutes for the trackers to circle back to us once they heard the familiar findin calls of the hounds. Their barks was so loud I couldn’t hardly think.

“Zenobia!” I shouted. “Start breakin a hole in them branches so’s I can reach my hand through.”

For once she didn’t ask me no questions, but she looked at me like I were a crazy girl. The cave were so small she could barely squirm past, but soon I could smell green and hear the
snap, crack, snap
of twigs as she broke them and tossed the pieces aside.

The dogs yipped and barked as they pawed at the fallen
tree. Two or three of the hounds fought each other till one yelped and cried out in pain.

I rolled onto my good side and curled up like a fiddlehead so’s I could turn around and wriggle toward Zenobia and the little circle of light. The bundle and sling got in my way. They snagged on tree roots and slid off my shoulders, but I tugged at them and slipped them back on. I couldn’t leave our food and Hannah doll behind.

“Move,” I said. She looked back at me, nodded, tore at one last handful of twigs, and pushed herself against the side of the cave.

Zenobia had made an openin the size of a fox’s hole. One of the dogs found the hole and worked his head into it. He snarled, teeth bared, as he lunged, pushed, and lunged again, all the while tryin to force his way into the cave.

I slid the packs off my back, reached inside the sling, and grabbed some ham bones and a knuckle. I used one of the big knobs of bone to push the dog back from the hole, and then I opened my hand flat so’s he could grab the bone without bitin me. His mouth clamped over the bone; he backed out of the hole and disappeared. Another head poked inside the openin, this one whinin to get at me. Another bone snatched from my hand, and another, and another till each one of the five greedy hounds, not wantin to share with the others, slunk off to worry their bones in peace. I waited, expectin to hear the men shoutin to the dogs, or worse yet, lookin for us. What if the dogs carried them bones back to the trail? But no, I know hounds, and
they loves a hunt, but once they get a bone they’ll hide out till it is eat to nothin.

Outside, there weren’t a sound to be heard exceptin for the crick. I reached past the bag of food and grasped Zenobia’s fingers. She curled them round mine, and we held on to each other.

I don’t know how much time passed, but the quiet stayed and slivers of peachy light shone through the cottonwood’s leaves.