Sweet Song (21 page)

The meat didn’t taste anything like the venison that often made its way into the beans at the camp. The opossum meat tasted sweeter and felt tougher than the venison.

Leon lay the leftover meat into the fire to be sure it cooked thoroughly through. With a full stomach, he sipped at his tea. He sang while one more night bore down on him.

The meat kept Leon warm all through the cold night. He awoke to see that a light snow had fallen, the last of winter, he was sure. He brushed his top blanket free of the snow. His body felt hot except for
his face, which had poked into the air from the hood he had made of the blanket.

Leon let the mid-March morning creep into his clothes as he prepared for his next day’s travel. He needed to continue around the ridge and eventually that path would lead him to a place that would overlook the river valley.

Despite the onion snow, the whip-o-wills and chickadees knew that spring had arrived. They sang spring’s praises to the world. The deciduous trees would soon bead with new life, each day a million buds popping from the ends of branches like magic.

But for now, the sky spread a dark blanket over the area. The air warmed inside the room of clouds. Rain would bring water to runs and streams, which in turn would produce runoff to accumulate in the creeks. As the ground thawed and the water level rose, the river would begin to fill with timber.

Leon felt an urgency to travel faster, to make better time, but he didn’t know Indian paths from deer trails. Underbrush became dense at times, especially close to creeks. The forest breathed with alternate clearings and dense underbrush. Opening to another stump graveyard, Leon circumvented the camp by traveling barely inside the woods, up the slope, and around the workload.

Leon stopped for a late afternoon meal. His legs hurt, and he breathed heavily from the near vertical climb he had been enjoying. He wiped his brow and hunched down to remove the opossum meat from inside his bedroll. He heard an eagle squeal, and peered into the sky.

Although he couldn’t see the eagle, he noticed a thin tree line that indicated a ledge. Curious, Leon got up, grabbing his bedroll as he did so, and worked his way toward the opening. He stood in awe.

E
ven with the clouds obscuring far hills, the valley spread for miles in browns and greens, brilliant yellows. The textures varied from mounds of fields left fallow, to the softness of sprouting grains. The river reflected gray from the sky. A breeze through the valley drove south, cooling the air. A combination of forest grove and farm field alternated across the land. Then there were the towns, one small and to the south, the other larger, much larger, and to the north. The northern town perched at a bend in the river and spread to both shores.

Leon sat on a rock and ate from his leftover meal. Alone on that rock, Leon felt relieved of his past for a while. The lying he had done fell away like caked dirt from his boot. His childhood, his father’s death, and his mother’s craziness, slipped over the edge of the long embankment, away from him, down, down toward the river to be washed away in a moment. His memories blurred and faded, replaced by the hope he saw in the panorama below. He wished desperately to be a new man. A white man perhaps. He had already taken on the lie for a year, why not hold onto it? Live with it? The longer he felt white, the easier he accepted the reality of it. And then there was his real father, his real blood, that meant his lie was already half true. Why hadn’t he seen that before? He could live that life. He could be white. He was as much white as black.

Shale trickled down the embankment set loose somewhere below him. A chipmunk emerged, scurried into some brush and another trickle of stone rolled downhill.

Leon rose from his perch and gathered his things.

Before nightfall, Leon hiked a sloping ridge around and down for several hours, making little progress toward what he knew was his destination. Yet, somehow, before night came down hard, Leon walked into a flat clearing where he could rest for the night. The rain he had expected had not arrived. Even though the air had warmed during the day, the temperature dropped considerably after sunset. Leon built a small fire and bundled himself in his blanket before curling his body on its side to prepare for the cold.

In the middle of the night, a light rain fell. Leon woke, dragged himself and his gear into a grove of pines where he felt better protected, even though it was away from the fire. The hush of raindrops falling throughout the forest soothed him. The trickling reminded him of his childhood, snug in his own corner, near the back door of the shack. The peaceful patter of rain helped him to dose once again.

He woke several times to the warming air and stared into the night, listening, breathing slowly. As the light of day advanced, Leon finished the food he had left. The sun peeled layer after layer of fog from the valley floor, from the river, and from pockets of trees, which made it look as though smoke rose from the woods. In time, the sun hit Leon directly. The humidity stuck to him.

At the base of the hill, the brush got thick, briars reached out to entangle and strangle poison oak, sumac, and choke cherry. Leon walked along that wall until he found where animals, probably deer, had created a tunnel through the brush. He could only hope that the cut-through went all the way to a clearing rather than end in the middle.

He held his knife out and cut away small man-shaped areas where the briars encroached on the tunnel. Birds flitted all around him in and among the brush. The loudness of their voices kept out the sound of the wind.

He proceeded for nearly two hours, wondering every fifteen minutes whether he should retreat and find a creek to follow. But he
continued through, never slowing more than it became necessary for him to cut his way farther in. Leon followed the animal’s trail even though it turned and looped back more than once. He pricked his fingers often. His clothes got caught by the briars, which pulled on him like tiny hands trying to keep him from going on. But he broke through time and again until he poked his head, and then his body, through a final thicket to a grassy field, long and damp, leading to what he knew were trees lining the riverbank. Although the air had warmed the topsoil, under the dampness the ground stood frozen.

Leon skipped and danced and twirled his arms careful not to slip. He hooted with joy to be through the brush. The sun leaned heavily into noon. The loudness of the birds had remained in the brush. Leon smelled the clean river-water air.

A few hours later, Leon glimpsed a road on the other side of some brush. Where that road came from was a mystery, but where it headed was the south bank of the Susquahanna River opposite the great town of Williamsport.

He jogged, twisted his ankle and halted. His ankle ached. He rubbed his briar-pricked, timber-scarred hands together. They were rough and tender at the same time.

The late afternoon sky began to cover over with clouds. Breezes from the north chilled Leon’s skin. This night, he was sure, he’d be inside.

Leon leaned into the road. Grass grew down its center and choke cherry grew at its edge. He limped. He couldn’t place all his weight on his ankle. Occasionally he’d skip on his other foot to propel himself forward a little faster. That is how he made his way into town.

Five children saw Leon. They ran out to him. The two oldest looked to be ten, while the other three, ragged and energetic, were somewhere between four and seven, Leon guessed.

“Mister? Mister?” A dark haired boy with bowl-cut hair said.

“Yes,” Leon said, but he did not halt his progress.

The children followed.

“You in the war, Mister? You get wounded?”

Leon slowed to reduce the need to limp so noticeably. “Nope. Twisted my ankle.”

“Naw, you joshin’. You was in the war weren’t you, Mister?”

“Ah huh,” one of the smaller kids said.

“Why would I josh you?”

The five of them looked around at one another as though some silent communication took place. Then the spokesperson said, “You don’t want no pity.” He said it as if it were the most logical reason, as if the statement rang true.

“Well, I’m sorry to say it, but it’s not true.”

“Ah huh,” one of them said again.

“Nope,” Leon said. “I wish I could claim some pity, but I can’t do it and be honest.”

“Twisted then,” the older boy said.

“Twisted. It’ll be fine in the morning.”

“Oh.” That disinterested response was followed by, “We best be going.” Then all five of the kids ran down the road, turned off into an alley, and were gone from sight.

Shacks and houses were set back from the road. Some were well-built while others were barely standing. Little paths broke off from the road and led down skinny, weed-lined lanes or into a small cluster of buildings.

Dogs barked. Crows cawed. A woman came out a doorway and threw a pail of water to the side of her shack. She looked tired. She looked right at Leon and then went back inside. Evening followed Leon into town.

When Leon got into the heart of South Williamsport, he passed several men who nodded. “Howdy,” Leon said to each one in turn.

Another few people stood along the street and Leon asked for directions to where he could buy something to eat and maybe get a room for the night.

One man, dressed in a wool suit with a wool overcoat, pointed diagonally across a few streets. “About there. Go two more streets and turn left. Five more streets and you’ll see the Timberline Pub. They got cots in the back you can rent, and food you can eat.”

“Thank you sir.” Leon held out his hand and the man took it reluctantly. Leon shook the man’s hand hard, then went on his way.

Leon surprised himself when he got to the Timberline Pub and couldn’t get his feet to take him inside. He’d never been inside a
pub. He’d never been anywhere that he had to ask for a room and a meal even though he had the money to pay for both.

Another thing stopped him too. There was a sign, written plainly, the first word underlined. Still, he thought, after the war. It read, “Negroes use back entrance.” So, Leon hesitated.

All things black and white ran through his head. Another man stepped past him and walked inside, then two more came up. One said, “Can’t read?”

Leon pulled out of his daze. “No, I can read. I just. . .”

“I know. It’s hard to believe, but there’s still folk with an odd opinion as to who is part of mankind and who ain’t. And here, in this Quaker-built town, makes it even odder. I figure it’s their opinion. The food’s still good.” The man stepped back and waited a moment. “You goin’ in?”

Leon stepped forward, white once again. White with a black heart and a black family. White with a black memory and a black father who died to save his life.

Leon didn’t know what to do once he stepped inside. The man who had gone in before him sat at a table along one wall, while the two who came in behind him ambled over and sat at a more centrally located table.

Leon shuffled into the room, then made his way to the side and bumped into an empty chair. Embarrassed, he sat down and placed his bedroll on the floor under the table.

A middle-aged woman brought two steaming plates of food to a table, then walked over to the man who entered right before Leon.

“Biscuits and gravy,” the man said.

The woman nodded and walked toward Leon. “Dinner?” she said.

“Biscuits and gravy sounds good,” Leon said. His mouth rushed with anticipation.

The woman nodded at him as if he were a regular customer. Then she checked on the two men who came in after Leon. One of them ordered biscuits and gravy, but the other ordered chicken and dumplin’s.

That sounded good. Leon would enjoy chicken and dumplings much more, but he couldn’t urge his hand to wave the waitress over.
He couldn’t moisten his throat enough to get sound out. He really wanted that chicken. He hadn’t had chicken in a long time. Growing up they often had chicken. There were chickens cackling all over the place now that he thought about it. He had never noticed how many chickens there were in his life. It was too late, though. There’d be no chicken tonight.

Over the bar, three meals were listed on a slate. The chicken bore the most expensive price, then the biscuits and gravy, then beans and bread. A few tattered-looking men ate beans and bread, more who had biscuits and gravy, and only a few with chicken and dumplings. Leon could have been one of the few.

A moment later his meal came out. The plate emptied steam into the air. Leon reached out and took the plate from the waitress before she could set it down in front of him.

“Hungry?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Want a beer with that?”

Leon had never had a beer, but had seen enough drunk farmhands to dislike the idea.

“Water, then,” she said before he could answer.

“Yes, please.” He looked at her, something he had to do consciously. “And, do you have a room I could rent?”

She laughed, then got more serious. “Ain’t got rooms to rent, but we got a cot in a room you can rent.”

“Then I would like one.”

“You ain’t asked how much?”