The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (7 page)

“We got something to eat,” I said.

“What, potatoes and corn y’all done stole?” he said. “Don’t have to tell me, I already know. I done met others just like y’all.”

He took the rabbit off the fire and laid it on the leaves he had spread out on the ground. Then he took a knife from his belt and cut the rabbit up in three pieces. When it had cooled off good he handed me and Ned a piece. He had seasoned it down good with wild onions that he had found out there in the swamps.

“You going North?” I asked him.

“No, I’m where I’m going right now,” he said. “South.”

I quit eating. “You got to be crazy,” I said.

“I reckoned you got all the sense, dragging that child through the swamps all time of night,” he said. “Good thing I’m a friend, not an enemy. I heard y’all long time before you stopped back there listening. I had been leaning on that pole so long I was fixing to fall asleep.”

“We was quiet,” I said.

“Quiet for you, not for me,” he said. “A dog ain’t got nothing on these yers. What you think keeping me going, potatoes and corn?”

I didn’t answer him. The rabbit was good, but I didn’t want show him how much I liked it. Just nibbling here and there like I was particular.

“Who you know in Ohio?” he asked me.

“Just Mr. Brown,” I said.

“Mr. Brown who?”

“Mr. Brown, a Yankee soldier,” I said.

“Lord, have mercy,” the hunter said, shaking his head. “Now, I done heard everything.”

“How come you going back South?” I said.

“What?” he said. He wasn’t eating, he was thinking about me looking for Brown. “I’m looking for my pappy,” he said. But looked like he was still thinking about me looking for Brown.

“Your mama dead?” I asked.

“What?” he said. He looked at me. “No, my mama ain’t dead.” He just looked at me a good while like he was thinking about me looking for Brown. “I know where she at,” he said. “I want find him now.”

“Y’all used to stay here in Luzana?” I asked.

“What?” he said.

“Your daddy and y’all?”

“When they sold him he was in Mi’sippi,” the hunter said. “I don’t know where he at now.”

“Then how you know where to look for him?” I asked.

He got mad with me now. “I’m go’n do just what you doing with that child,” he said. “Look everywhere. But I got little more sense.”

“Well, if you was beat all the time you’d be running away, too,” I said.

“I was beat,” he said. “Don’t go round here bragging like you got all the beating.”

I ate and sucked on the bone. I didn’t want argue with him no more.

“Who was them other people you seen?” I asked him. “Any of them going to Ohio?”

“They was going everywhere,” he said. “Some say Ohio, some say Kansas—some say Canada. Some of them even said Luzana and Mi’sippi.”

“Luzana and Mi’sippi ain’t North,” I said.

“That’s right, it ain’t North,” the hunter said. “But they had left out just like you, a few potatoes and another old dress. No map, no guide, no nothing. Like freedom was a place coming to meet them half way. Well, it ain’t coming to meet you. And it might not be there when you get there, either.”

“We ain’t giving up,” I said. “We done gone this far.”

“How far?” he asked me. “How long you been traveling?”

“Three days,” I said.

“And how far you think you done got in three days?” he said. “You ain’t even left that plantation yet. I ought to know. I been going and going and I ain’t nowhere, yet, myself. Just searching and searching.”

When he said this he looked like he wanted to cry, and I didn’t look at him, I looked at Ned. Ned had laid down on the ground and gone to sleep. He still had the flint and iron in his hands.

I told the hunter about the Secesh who had killed Ned’s mama and the other people. He told me he had seen some of the Secesh handywork, too. Earlier that same day he had cut a man down and buried him that the Secesh had hung. After hanging him they had gashed out his entrails.

“What they do all that for?” I asked.

“Lesson to other niggers,” he said.

We sat there talking and talking. Both of us was glad we had somebody to talk to. I asked him about the bow and arrows. He told me he had made it to shoot rabbits and birds. Sometimes he even got a fish or two. I told him I bet I could use it. He said I didn’t have the strength. He said it took a man to pull back on that bow. I asked him what he knowed about my strength. But he kept quiet. After a while he said: “Y’all want me lead y’all back where y’all come from?”

“We didn’t come from Ohio,” I said.

“You just a pig-headed little old nothing,” he told me.

“I didn’t ask you for your old rabbit,” I said. Now I was full, I got smart. “I don’t like no old rabbit nohow,” I said.

“How come you ate the bones?” he said.

“I didn’t eat no rabbit bones,” I said.

“What I ought to do is knock y’all out and take y’all on back,” he said.

“I bet you I holler round here and make them Secesh come and kill us, too,” I said.

“How can you holler if you knocked out, dried-up nothing?” he said.

I had to think fast.

“I holler when I wake up,” I said.

“I don’t care about you, but I care about that little fellow there,” the hunter said. “Just look at him. He might be dead already.”

“He ain’t dead, he sleeping,” I said. “And I can take care him myself.”

“You can’t take care you, how can you take care somebody else?” the hunter said. “You can’t kill a rabbit, you can’t kill a bird. Do you know how to catch a fish?”

“That ain’t all you got to eat in this world,” I said.

He looked at Ned again.

“If I wasn’t looking for my pappy I’d force y’all
back,” he said. “Or force y’all somewhere so somebody can look after y’all. Two children tramping round in the swamps by themself, I ain’t never heard of nothing like this in all my born days.”

“We done made it this far, we can make it,” I said.

“You ain’t go’n make nothing,” he said. “Don’t you know you ain’t go’n make nothing, you little dried-up thing?”

“You should ’a’ kept that old rabbit,” I said. “I don’t like old rabbit meat nohow.”

He didn’t want argue with me no more.

“Go on to sleep,” he said. “I’ll stand watch over y’all.”

“No, you don’t,” I said. “You just want take us back.”

“Go on to sleep, gnat,” he said.

I shook Ned, and he woke up crying. I told him the Secesh was go’n catch him if he kept up that noise. I let him sit there till he had rubbed the sleep out his eyes, then we got up and left. All that time the hunter didn’t say a word. We went a little piece, till we couldn’t see the camp no more, then we turned around and came on back. I had made up my mind to stay wake all night.

“Well, how was Ohio?” the hunter said.

Ned laid down in the same place and went right back to sleep. I sat beside him watching the hunter. I felt my eyes getting heavy, but I did everything to keep them open. I dugged my heel in the ground, I hummed a song to myself, I poked in the fire with a stick. But nature catch up with you don’t care what you do. When I woke up the sun was high in the sky. Something was cooked there for me and Ned—a crow, a hawk, an owl—I don’t know what. But there it was, done and cold, and the hunter was gone.

We ate and started walking, going North all the time. I watched the ground getting blacker and more damp. With the sun straight up we came to the bayou that I knowed we had been headed toward for so long. Now, I had to carry Ned and the bundle, the bundle on my head, Ned on my hip. The water came up to my knees most the time, and sometimes it even got high as my waist. How I made it over only the Lord knows. But I made it and found a good place to sit down and rest. By the time I had rested, my dress had dried out, and we started walking again. We came in another thicket where they had had plenty fighting. You could see how cannon balls had knocked limbs and bark off the trees. It had a mound of dirt there about half the size of my gallery where they had buried many soldiers. They had put a cross at one end of the grave with a cap stuck on top of the cross. The weather had changed the color of the cap so much you couldn’t tell if it belong to a Yankee or Secesh. We sat there and rested awhile and I told Ned not to be scared. He didn’t look scared so I reckoned I was saying it for my own good. After a while we got up and went on. We came out of the swamps, and now far as I could see I saw nothing but briars stretched out in front of me. I didn’t have time to stand there thinking which way to
go—not with that sun coming down like that—I told Ned we was turning left. Not a tree in front of us nowhere. If we wanted shade at all we had to go back in the swamps or try to find a cool spot against the briars. One was just as bad as the other, so we kept on walking.

When we came to the end of the briars, it must have took us an hour to get there, we turned back right. Now I could see a little gray house way way across the field. The field had nothing green, just weeds and dry corn stalks that could ’a’ been there even before the war. We started toward that little house. We wasn’t giving up, far far from giving up, but I knowed we had to take some chances. We needed water, and I had to find out if we was going the right way.

From way cross the field I could see smoke coming out the chimley. When I came up to the yard I saw an old white man standing on the gallery with a dog. The old man was short and fat with snow white hair just round the sides and the back of his head. Not a speck on top. His face was red red; not kind, but not mean either.

“This how I go to Ohio?” I asked him.

“That way,” he said, pointing East.

“We ain’t going that way, we going this way,” I said pointing North.

“No, it’s East,” he said.

“We going North,” I said. “We ain’t going no East.”

“You’ll never get to Ohio that way,” he said. “Iowa, maybe, but never Ohio. Ohio is East of Luzana.”

“You trying to tell me I’m still in Luzana?” I said.

“Yep. Still Luzana,” he said. “Lot more of it will be Luzana before you through. You and that boy out there hungry?”

“Yes sir,” I said.

“Come in and eat,” the old man said. “I have something ready for y’all.”

We went in, and he made us sit down on a bench
by the firehalf. It was nothing but a one-room cabin. He had a table in there, a bench that he had made himself, a chair he had made. He had a cot by the window. He had things on the wall—pots, jugs, pans and things like that. He had a big map on the wall at the head of his bed. He gived us some greens and cornbread and told us to eat. He didn’t give us a spoon, we had to eat with our hands.

“Ohio is East,” he said again.

“We been going the wrong way all this time?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t say wrong. I wouldn’t say exactly right, either,” he said.

He got a pair of eyeglasses off the mantelpiece and went to the map. I could see him moving his finger over the map and mumbling to himself.

“Yep. I was right,” he said. “Yep. Ohio—38, 41 lat; 80, 84 longi. Iowa, let’s see—where you at there, Iowa?—here you is you little rascal. Trying to hide from me and I ain’t done you nothing, huh? Iowa—40, 44 lat; 90, 96 longi. Yep, that’s where Iowa at, all right. While I’m standing here I might’s well look up old Illy. Where you at there, fellow? Uh-huh, just what I expected—36, 43 lat; 88, 92 longi. Yep, yep, that’s it, all right. Now, where you headed, you headed straight for 42 lat.” He turned and looked over the rim of his glasses at me. “You don’t want go to 42 lat, do you?”

Ned was almost through eating, but I had hardly touched my food. All a sudden it came to me how wrong I had been for not listening to people. Everybody, from Unc Isom to the hunter, had told me I was wrong. I wouldn’t listen to none of them.

I felt like crying. But I asked myself what would happen to Ned. He was holding up only because I was holding up. If I broke down he had nobody to guide him. No, I wasn’t go’n cry, I was go’n be strong. I looked at the old man standing at the map. How did I know he was telling me the truth? How did I know he wasn’t just another older Secesh trying to get me woolgathered? What was all this lat and longi stuff he
was talking about? How could Ohio be East when the Yankees come from the North?

I went on and ate, but I was keeping my eyes on him. Soon as I finished eating, me and Ned was getting out of there and we was heading North just like we had started.

“Come here,” he said.

I went to the map with my pan of food.

“Look here,” he said, tapping the map. “Now, this here is where you at now.” I didn’t see nothing but a bunch of odd colors, some crooked lines, and some writing. “That’s Luzana,” he said. “This thing running here, that’s what they cal Mi’sippi River. Course it ain’t running on the paper, but that’s how people say it—say it’s running—running North and South,”

“I ain’t going no South,” I said.

I had a mouthful of cornbread, and piece of it shot out my mouth on the map. The old man stopped talking awhile, but he didn’t look at me, he looked at the crumb. Just kept looking at it like it was a bug and it might crawl off if he turned his head. When it didn’t move he plucked it to the floor. “This one here, that’s what they call the Red River,” he said. “All this other stuff, river and roads. Up here—A-r—all this other spelling—that’s Arkansas. Up here, that’s Missouri. Spelt something like Mi’sippi, but not quite. Up here, that’s Iowa. 40, 44 lat; 90, 96 longi. There’s where you headed if you keep going North. Now, let’s go back here and start all over. Mi’sippi River, Red River—all them other rivers and roads. (Throw few bayous in there, too—the bigger ones.) All right, now, you here, you going East to Ohio. You have to go through Mi’sippi first.”

I hurried up and swallowed my food I had in my mouth. “I ain’t going through nobody Mi’sippi,” I said.

“No?” he said. He looked at me over the rim of his glasses. I looked straight back at him. He wasn’t mad, he wasn’t the kind who got mad quick, he believed in taking everything cool and slow. “All right, say you don’t want go through Mi’sippi,” he said,
looking at the map again. “Say you want make it hard on yourself, you want go through Arkansas.” Now he looked at me over the rim of his glasses. May be I didn’t want go through Arkansas, either? “Because that’s where you go’n have to go, less, of course, you planning on jumping over Mi’sippi,” he said. “And I think that’s a big order even for somebody smart as you.” He waited for me to say something. I didn’t. He looked at his map again. “All right, we in Arkansas now. Since Arkansas is North of Luzana, you go’n have to buck back East after you leave Arkansas—that’s this way—and you end up in Tennessee. That’s right here. All right, now you in Tennessee. You go till you hit Nashville—you done passed Memphis way back here near Arkansas: from Nashville you swing back North again and you ought to find you a good road to Louisville—that’s in Kentucky. From Louisville you get to Cincinnati—and you in Ohio. Right there,” he said, tapping the map. “Now, who you go’n look up in Ohio?”