As I hurried over, I heard Darg cursing and the sound of skin hitting skin, and a yelp. I rushed to the doorway.
It was fastened by a nail from the inside, but you could push it open a crack and peer inside. I peeked in there and seen something I would not soon forget.
From the sliver of lights in the broken shutter I seen my Pie in there on a straw bed on the floor, buck naked, on all fours, and behind her was Darg, holding a little tree switch about six inches long, and he was just doing her something terrible, just having his way with her and striking her with that whip at the same time. Her head was throwed back and she was howling while he rode her and called her a high-yellow whore and turncoat for turning in all them niggers and revealing their plot. He whipped her with that switch and called her every name he could think of. And she was hollering that she was sorry and had to confess it to someone.
I kept a two-shot pepperbox revolver under my dress, fully loaded, and I would’a busted in there and put both loads in his head right then, but for her look of liking the whole business immensely.
15
Squeezed
I never said nothing to nobody about what I seen. I done my duties around the Pikesville Hotel like normal. Pie come to me a few days later and said, “Oh, sweetie, I been so terrible to you. Come on back to my room and help me out, for I wants to work on my letters.”
I didn’t have the spirit for it, to be honest, but I tried. She seen I weren’t shining up to her like normal, and got mad and frustrated and throwed me out as usual, and that was the end of it. I was turned out in a way, changing, and for the first time was coming to some opinions of my own about the world. You take a boy and he’s just a boy. And even when you make him up like a girl, he’s still a boy deep down inside. I was a boy, even though I weren’t dressed like one, but I had my heart broke as a man, and ’cause of it, for the first time I had my eye on freedom. It weren’t slavery that made me want to be free. It was my heart.
I took to spilling a little rotgut down my throat in them times. It weren’t hard. I growed up around it, seen my Pa go his way with it, and I went with it. It was easy. The men in the tavern liked me, for I was a good helper. They let me help myself to the suds at the bottom of their mugs and glasses, and when they found out I had a good singing voice, throwed me a glass of rye or three for a song. I sung “Maryland, My Maryland,” “Rebels Ain’t So Hard,” “Mary Lee, I’m Coming Home,” and religious songs I heard my Pa and Old John Brown sing. Your basic rebel was as religious as the next man, and them songs moved ’em to tears every time, which encouraged them to throw more happy water in my direction, which I put to good use, sousing myself.
It weren’t long before I found myself the life of the party, two sheets to the wind, staggering around the saloon, singing each night and tellin’ jokes and making myself handy the way my Pa done. I was a hit. But a girl in them times, colored or white, even a little one, who drinks and carouses with men and acts a fool, is writing an IOU that’s got to be cashed in sooner or later, and them pinches on my duff and old-timers chasing me ’round in circles at closing time was getting hard to take. Luckily, Chase appeared. He’d tried his hand at cattle rustling in Nebraska Territory and got broke at it, and he come back to Pikesville heartsick about Pie as I was. We spent hours setting on the roof of Miss Abby’s, drinking joy juice and pondering the meaning of all things Pie as we stared out over the prairie, for she wouldn’t have squaddly to do with neither of us now. Her room on the Hot Floor was for only those who paid now, no friends, and we two was clean out of chips. Even Chase, feeling low and lonely, tried his hand at getting fresh with me. “Onion, you is like a sister to me,” he said one night, “even more than a sister,” and he groped at me like the rest of them old-timers in the tavern, but I avoided him easily and he fell flat on his face. I forgived him course, and we went on like sister and brother from then on, my kidnapper and me, and spent many a night drunk together, howling at the moon, which I generally enjoyed, for there ain’t nothing better when you sunk to the bottom to have a friend there.
I would’a gone whole hog with it and been a pure dee bum, but Sibonia’s hanging brung more trouble. For one thing, several of them dead Negroes was owned by masters who wasn’t agreed to Judge Fuggett’s rulings. A couple of fistfights got started on account of it. Miss Abby, who had argued against it, got called an abolitionist, for she runned her mouth about it considerable too, and that caused more wrangling. Judge Fuggett quit town and run off with a girl named Winky, and reports that Free Staters was causing trouble down in Atchinson was becoming more frequent, and that was troublesome, for Atchinson was cold rebel territory, and it meant the Free Staters was making headway against the shirts, which made everybody nervous. Business at the hotel dropped off, and the town’s business slowed up generally. Work got hard to find for everyone. Chase declared, “Ain’t no more claims to be had around here,” and he quit town to head west, which left me on my own again.
I thought about running, but I’d gotten soft living indoors. The thought of riding on the prairie by myself, with the cold, the mosquitoes, and the howling wolves, weren’t useful. So one night I went to the kitchen and clipped some biscuits and a mug of lemonade and slipped out to see Bob at the slave pen, being that he was the only friend I had left.
He was setting on a crate at the edge of the pen by himself when I come, and he got up and moved off when he seen me coming. “Git away from me,” he said. “My life ain’t worth a plugged nickel ’cause of you.”
“These is for you,” I said. I reached in the pen with the biscuits, which was in a handkerchief, and held them out to him, but he glanced at the others and didn’t touch them.
“Git off from me. You got a lot of nerve comin’ ’round here.”
“What I done now?”
“They say you gived up Sibonia,” he said.
“What?”
Before I could move, several Negro fellers watching from the far side of the pen slipped over closer to us. There was five of them, and one, a young, strong-looking feller, broke off the pack and come over to the fence where I was. He was a stout, handsome, chocolate-skinned Negro named Broadnax who done outside work for Miss Abby. He was wide around the shoulders, with a firm build, and seemed an easygoing feller most times, but he didn’t look that way now. I backed off the fence and moved along the rail quick back to the hotel, but he moved quicker and met me just at the corner of the fence and stuck a thick hand through the fence rail, grabbing my arm.
“Not so fast,” he said.
“What you need me for?”
“Set a minute and talk.”
“I got to go work.”
“Every nigger in this world got to work,” Broadnax said. “What’s your job?”
“What you mean?”
He had my arm tight, and his grip was strong enough to snap my arm in two. He leaned against the fence, speaking calm and evenly. “Now, you could be sproutin’ a lie ’bout what you knowed about Sibonia and what you didn’t know. And ’bout what you said and didn’t say. You could say it to your friend here, or you could say it to me. But without a story, who knows what your job is? Every nigger got the same job.”
“What’s that?”
“Their job is to tell a story the white man likes. What’s your story?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Broadnax squeezed my arm harder. His grip was so tight, I thought my arm might break off. Holding my arm, he peered around to make sure the way was clear. From where we was, you could see the hotel, the alley, and Darg’s house behind the pen. Nobody was about. In normal times, three or four people would wander down that alleyway during the day. But Pikesville had thinned out since Sibonia died. That woman was a stone witch.
“I’m talking letters,” he said. “Your job was to come back and write Sibonia some letters and passes and be quiet about it. You agreed to it.
I was here. And you didn’t do it.”
I had stone-cold forgot about my promise to Sibonia by then. By now Broadnax’s friends had slipped up to the fence behind Broadnax and stood nearby holding shovels, movin’ dirt, looking busy, but listening in close.
“There weren’t time to get out here. The white folks was watching me close.”
“You awful close to Pie.”
“I don’t know nothing ’bout Pie’s business,” I said.
“Maybe she told it.”
“Told what?”
“About Sibonia.”
“I don’t know what she done. She don’t tell me nothing.”
“Why would she, you frittering around dressed as you is.”
“You ain’t got to pick my guts about it,” I said. “I’m just trying to make it along like you. But I never had nothing against Sibonia. I wouldn’t stand in the way of her jumping.”
“That lie ain’t worth a pinch of snuff out here.”
The fellers behind Broadnax edged to the corner of that fence, close now. A couple of ’em had plain stopped working altogether. Weren’t no pretense to them working now. I had that two-shot pepperbox sleeping under my dress, and a free hand, but it wouldn’t do nothing against all of them. There was five of them altogether, and they looked mad as the devil.
“God hears it,” I said. “I didn’t know nothing ’bout what she was aiming to do.”
Broadnax peered at me straight. Didn’t blink once. Them words didn’t move him.
“Miss Abby’s selling off the souls in this yard,” Broadnax said. “Did you know that? She’s doing it slow, thinking nobody notices. But even a dumb nigger like me can count. There’s ten souls left in this yard. Two weeks ago there was seventeen. Three of ’em’s been sold off in the past week. Lucious there”—here he pointed to one of the men standing behind him—“Lucious lost both his children. And them children ain’t never been inside Miss Abby’s hotel, so they couldn’t’a told it. Nose, the girl who gived you the word about the Bible meeting, she was sold off two days ago, and Nose didn’t tell it. That makes just us ten left here. We all likely be sold off soon, ’cause Miss Abby thinks we is trouble. But I aim to find out who sung about Sibonia before I leave. And when I do, they gonna suffer. Or their kin. Or”—he glanced at Bob—“their friends.”
Bob stood there trembling. Didn’t say a word.
“Bob ain’t been inside the hotel since Miss Abby throwed him out here,” I said.
“He could’a talked at the sawmill, where he works every day. Told one of them white folks over there. That kind of word’ll pass fast.”
“Bob couldn’t know—’cause I didn’t know. Plus he ain’t one to run his mouth at white folks. He was scared of Sibonia.”
“He should’a been. She didn’t trust him.”
“He ain’t done no wrong. Neither did I.”
“You just trying to save your skin.”
“Why not? It covers my body.”
“Why should I believe a sissy who frolics ’round in a frock and a bonnet?”
“I’m tellin’ you, I didn’t tell nobody nothing. And neither did Bob.”
“Prove it!”
“Bob rode with Old John Brown. So did I. Why didn’t you tell him, Bob?”
Bob was silent. Finally he piped up. “Ain’t nobody gonna believe me.”
That stopped Broadnax. He glanced around at the others. They’d all gathered in close now, they didn’t care who was watching from the hotel. I certainly hoped somebody from the hotel would bust out the back door, but nar soul come. Glancing over to the hotel back door, I seen they’d posted a lookout anyway. A Negro was over there, sweeping the dirt around with his back to the door, so if somebody come busting through, he’d hold that door closed a minute to give ’em all a chance to pop back into place. Them pen colored fellers was organized.
But I had their attention now, for Broadnax looked interested. “Old John Brown?” he said.
“That’s right.”
“Old John Brown’s dead,” Broadnax said slowly. “He was killed at Osawatomie. Your friend killed him. The feller you get soused with, which is all the more reason to skin you.”
“Chase?” I would’a laughed if I weren’t feeling so chickenhearted. “Chase ain’t killed nobody. Two hundred drunks like him couldn’t deaden the Old Captain. Why, at Black Jack, there was twenty rebels there with dead aim and they couldn’t hurt the Old Man. Turn me loose and I’ll tell it.”
He wouldn’t turn me loose all the way, but he motioned them fellers to back off, which they done. And right there, standing at the fence, with him gripping my arm tight as a raccoon trap, I gived it to him. Quickly told them everything: About how the Old Man come to Dutch’s and took me. How I run off and met Bob near Dutch’s Crossing. About how Bob refused to ride Pardee home once the rebels rode off. How Bob helped me get back to the Old Man and was stolen along with his master’s wagon by the Old Man hisself and brung into camp. How Chase and Randy brung us there after Old Man Brown run off after Osawatomie, where Frederick was murdered. I left out the part about not knowing for sure if the Old Man was alive.
It moved him enough not to kill me right there, but he weren’t moved enough to turn me loose. He considered what I spoke on though, then said slowly, “You had the run of things in the hotel for months. How come you never took off?”
I couldn’t tell him about Pie. I still loved her. He could’a put it all together and suspected what I knowed. They would’a deadened Pie right off, though I suspected they planned as such anyway, and I didn’t want that. I hated her guts but I still loved her. I was in a tight spot all the way around.
“I had to wait on Bob,” I said. “He got cross with me. Wouldn’t run. Now the trap’s sprung. They watching everybody close now. Ain’t nobody going nowhere.”
Broadnax pondered it thoughtfully, and he softened some, letting go of my arm. “That’s a good thing for you, for these fellers here is game to send their knives rambling across your pretty little face and throw you in the hog pen without instructions. I’ll give you a chance at redemption, for we got bigger game. Turncoat like you, you’ll get reward for your labor from us or somebody else down the road one way or the other.”
He backed off the fence and allowed me to straighten myself out. I didn’t turn and run. Weren’t no use in that. I had to hear him through.
“This is what I want you to do,” he said. “We hear word the Free Staters is riding this way. Next time you get wind of where they are, come out here and pass it to me. That’ll even us.”
“How I’m gonna do that? I can’t get out here easy. The missus is watching me close. And Darg’s out here.”
“Don’t you study ol’ Darg,” Broadnax said. “We’ll take care of him. You just pass the word on what you hear ’bout the Free Staters. Do that, and we’ll leave your Bob alone. But if you tarry, or we get word about them Free Staters from some corner other than you? Well, you’ll be overdue. And you won’t have to sneak out here with lemonade and biscuits for Bob no more, ’cause we’ll bust him so hard across the head, he’ll have a headache that’ll deaden him right where he is. As it is, only reason he’s drawing air right now is ’cause of me.”
With that, he snatched the handkerchief holding the biscuits and the mug of lemonade I brung out for Bob, shoved the biscuits down his mouth, drunk down the lemonade, and handed me the mug. Then he turned and walked back to the other side of the pen, and the others followed.
—
Oh, I was stuck tight then. Love will hang you up in many a direction. I thunk on it quite a while that day, thunk about Broadnax busting Bob’s brains out and coming into the hotel after me, and that was a worrisome notion. That Negro was determined. A man would have to pump a bunch of iron into a feller like that to stop him. He had a purpose, and that strangled the hope outta me. I fretted on it quite a bit that
night and the next morning, then decided to run outta town, quit the idea right off, then thunk on it again all afternoon, decided to run again, waited all night, quit on the idea again, then runned the same whole bit around my head in the same fashion the next day. The third day I got tired of spinning ’round and fretting in that fashion, and gone back and done what I normally done in them days, ever since I lost Pie really: I got drunker with greater purpose.
The fourth night after Broadnax made his threat, I went on a bender with a redshirt who’d stumbled into the saloon full of trail dust, and we was having a good go at it—me more than him, to be honest. He was a young feller, broad-chested feller, more thirsty for water than liquor it seemed. He sat at a table in a big hat pulled close over his face, a long beard, and his arm in a sling. He stared at me in silence while I laughed and joked at him and throwed his rotgut down my red lane while double-talking him and switching glasses so as to jug him more water than his whiskey. I overserved myself and he didn’t seem to mind it a bit. In fact he seemed to enjoy watching me get out my skull, which, on the prairie, if you can’t please a man one way, why you can always please him another. I seen Pie do that a million times. I took this big young feller for one of those, and after several toots and tears and swipes at his glass with him watching and saying nothing, I flat out asked him if I could polish off the entire bottle of whiskey which he had purchased, as it sat on the table hardly getting used by him in the proper manner and it was a waste of breakfast, lunch, and dinner and mother’s milk to let such a precious thing go to waste.
He remarked, “You drinks a lot of rotgut for a girl. How long has you worked here?”
“Oh, long enough,” I said, “and if you allows me to finish that bottle of bleary on the table there, sir, why, this lonely colored girl will fillet your ears with a song about fish.”