“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.
An Old Man
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 fin
ished 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?”
“Mr. Brown. A Yankee Soldier.”
“Mr. Brown, a Yankee soldier,” he said. “Yes, there ought to be a few Browns in Cincinnati—common enough name. But if he’s not in Cincinnati he might be in Cleveland. That’s right here.”
He kept on looking at the map. I looked at the map, too.
“I got to go through all them places and I’m still in Luzana?” I asked.
“Correct,” he said.
“How I know you telling me the truth?” I said. “How I know you ain’t a Secesh?”
The old man looked at me a long time before he said anything. His face wasn’t kind, but it wasn’t mean either.
“I might be a Secesh,” he said. “Then I might be a friend of your race. Or maybe just an old man who is nothing. Or maybe an old man who is very wise. Maybe an old man who cries at night. Or an old man who might kill himself tomorrow. Maybe an old man who must go on living, just to give two more children a pan of meatless greens and cornbread. Maybe an old man who must warm another man at his fire, be he black or white. I can be anything, now, can’t I?”
“How long it go’n take me to get there?” I asked him.
“Where?” he said.
“Ohio.”
“Still going?”
“That’s where I started for,” I said.
“Well, now let me see,” he said. He rubbed his chin and looked at me. He was so short I was nearly tall as he was—and you can see I’m no giant. “You weigh about what?” he asked. “Seventy? Seventy-five pounds? Yes, I’ll say seventy-five—give you a couple. That bundle, I’ll say, about ten. Let’s say you cover five miles a day—good weather and good road permitting. But the weather ain’t go’n always be good, it might start raining anytime and rain from now on. Bad weather you’ll cover only half the distance. That means two and a half miles instead of five. But weather ain’t all you go’n have to worry about. You got rattlesnakes, copperheads, water moggasins—they got to be reckoned with, too. That means you got to by-pass all bayous and all weedy places, and in order to do that you go’n have to buck back South or go West, because if you go East you go’n be headed straight for Mi’sippi. So that’ll knock that other half mile off, leaving you with just two per day. All right, that take care snakes and bad weather. But we have to consider at least one bad dog every other day. Now, since you and that boy’ll have to climb a tree and stay up there till somebody pull that dog away or till he just give up and wander off, that’ll rob you of another half a mile. All right, that take care bad dog. Next come old Vet’rans from the Secesh Army still hating niggers for what happened, and since they can’t take it out on the Yankees, wanting nothing better than to get two little niggers and tie them on a log full of red ants. So you duck round them and you lose another half a mile, leaving you with just one mile per day. That boy over there sooner or later will eat some green berries or some green ’simmons, and what they go’n do to his bowels will cause you to lose another half a mile, leaving you with just a half. Well, you done made it to Arkansas. But the people in Arkansas ain’t heard the war is over, and soon as you and that boy land there they capture y’all and sell y’all to somebody in the hills. So, now, we forget traveling a few years—say, five, six—before they fully convinced Lee done surrendered and back at West Point teaching more gorilla tragedy. But let’s get back to you and the boy—y’all free again. You bigger and stronger and you can go ten miles a day now instead of five. But you got another worry now—men; black and white. The white one to treat you like he done treated you and your race ever since he brought you here in chains, the black one to treat you not too much better. So you settle down with a black one. No, not to protect you from the white man; if the white man wanted you he’ll take you from the black man even if he had to kill him to do so; you settle with one black man to protect you from another black man who might treat you even worse. But this one ain’t no bargain either; he beats you from sunup to sundown. Not because he wants to, mind you; he has to. Because, you see, he’s been so brutalized himself he don’t know better. But one day the boy there can’t take your suffering no more, and while the man is sleeping, the boy sneaks in and bust him in the head with a stick. Y’all start out again—now, y’all running. Y’all find your way into Tennessee where y’all captured again. No, not by the law you been running from—you captured by the good citizens of Tennessee. These here good people of Tennessee even more backward than them good people you left in Arkansas—these still speaking Gaelic. Since you ain’t got no Gaelic papers in this country, it’s go’n take them ten more years to learn Lee done quit and probably even dead now. Some kind of way you and the boy get away and start asking about Ohio. But since both of y’all speaking Gaelic now the people don’t know what the world y’all talking about, so they point toward Memphis just to get rid of you. In Memphis you meet another nigger you ask the way. He don’t understand Gaelic either, but he’s one of them slick niggers who feels that any nigger speaking Gaelic ought to be took for all he’s worth, so he tells you and the boy to wait a minute and he’ll take you where you want to go. Y’all wait a minute, then y’all wait an hour, then a day, a year, five years—till that boy there got to bust this one in the head like he did the other one. Now, you and the boy steal horse and buggy and hea
d out for Nashville—Nashville a straight shoot into Ohio. But in Nashville something else happens. Somebody there cracks the boy in the head. Since y’all been friends all these years you feel you ought to stay near his grave a year or two out of respect. But you finally got in Kentucky. In Kentucky you cook for white folks, you feed and nurse white children till you get enough money saved or till you fool another nigger to take you to Ohio. You know how to pick a man now and you pick a stupid one. Soon as you get there you drop him—you don’t want nothing more to do with men ever in your life. Well, you land in Cincinnati and you start asking for Brown. But you got a hundred Browns in Cincinnati. Some white Browns, some black Browns, even some brown Browns. You go from Brown to Brown, but you never find the right Brown. It takes you another couple years before you realize Brown ain’t here, so you head out for Cleveland. Cleveland got twice as many Browns. And the only white Brown people can remember that even went to Luzana to fight in the war died of whiskey ten years ago. They don’t think he was the same person you was looking for because this Brown wasn’t kind to nobody. He was coarse and vulgar; he cussed man, God, and nature every day of his life.”
“All right, now how long it’s go’n take us to get there?” I asked him.
“I see, you still going,” he said.
“That’s where we started for.”
The old man looked at me and shook his head. “The boy’ll never make it,” he said. “You? I figure it’ll take you about thirty years. Give or take a couple.”
“Well, we better head out,” I said. “Thank you very much. I wonder if I couldn’t bother you for a bottle of water?”
Ned was sound asleep, so I had to shake him to wake him up. I told him to get the flint and iron together. The old man gived me a jug of water and we left him standing out on the gallery.
I can tell you all the things we went through that week, but they don’t matter. Because they wasn’t no different from the things we went through them first three or four days. We stuck to the bushes most of the time. If we saw people, we hid till they had passed us. One day we had to run a dog back that was trying to follow us because we was scared the people might come looking for him. Another time I watched a house about an hour before I went and asked them for water. The people cussed us out first, then they broke down and gived us the water.