To have the Captain’s blood on my hands on account of something I was supposed to do, it was just too much. I couldn’t stand it.
The plank she was setting on was propped on two boards. With both hands I pushed it a foot or so forward and burst out the hay and sat up.
“I got to go,” I said.
“What?”
“Tell Salmon to stop.”
“We can’t. We in slave country. Get back in that hay!”
“I won’t.”
Before she could move to it, I slid out from under the plank, pulled the bonnet off my head, and ripped the dress down to my waist. Her mouth opened in shock.
“I love you, Annie. I won’t ever see you again.”
With one swift motion, I grabbed my gunnysack and leaped out the back of the wagon, rolling on the road, her shocked cry echoing into the woods and trees around me. Salmon harred up the wagon and yelled back for me, but he might as well been hollering down an empty hole. I was up the road and gone.
28
Attack
I runned down the road like the wind, and caught a ride with an old colored man from Frederick, Maryland, who was driving his master’s wagon to the Ferry to pick up a shipment of lumber. It took us a full day to roll back for he was sharp, and had to roll past slave patrollers while stating his marse’s business. He dropped me off a few miles from the Ferry on the Maryland side and I done the rest on foot. I made it to the farmhouse late, several hours after dark.
The house was dark as I approached and I couldn’t see no candlelight. It was drizzling and there was no moon. I had no timepiece, but I guessed it was close to midnight.
I burst in the door and they were gone. I turned toward the door, and a figure blocked it and a rifle barrel met me right in the face. A light was throwed on me, and behind it stood three of the Old Man’s army: Barclay Coppoc, one of the shooting Quakers, Owen, and Francis Merriam, a one-eyed batty feller, crazy as a weasel, who had joined up late in the doings. All three was holding rifles and armed to the teeth with sidearms and broadswords.
“What you doing here?” Owen asked.
“I forgot to give your Pa the password for the Rail Man.”
“Father didn’t have a password for him.”
“That’s just it. The Rail Man had one for me to give him.”
“It’s too late. They left four hours ago.”
“I got to tell him.”
“Sit tight.”
“For what?”
“They’ll figure it out. We could use you here. We is guarding the arms and waiting for the colored to hive,” Owen said.
“Well, that is the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life, Owen. Can’t you wake up to it?”
I looked at Owen, I swear ’fore God he tried to keep a straight face on it. “I’m dead set against slavery, and anyone who ain’t is a fool,” he said. “They’ll come. And I will set here and wait till then,” he said. I guess this was his way of showing his faith in his Pa, and also getting out the deal. The farm was five miles from the Ferry, and I reckon the Old Man left him ’cause Owen had seen enough of his crazy Pa’s doings. He’d been all through the Kansas Wars and seen the worst of it. Those other two up there, the Old Man probably left them there to relieve them from the action, for Coppoc weren’t but twenty, and Merriam was thick as mud in his mind.
“Did the B&O come yet?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Haven’t heard it.”
“What time is it?”
“One ten in the a.m.”
“It don’t come till one twenty-five. I got to warn him,” I said. I moved toward the door.
“Wait,” Owen said. “I’m done pulling you out the fire, Onion. Set here.” But I was out the door and gone.
It was a five-mile run down to the Ferry, pitch-black with a drizzling rain. Had I stayed on the old colored man’s wagon and not got off at the Kennedy farm, I could’a ridden right into town and made it in better time, I reckon. But that old man was long gone. I had my satchel throwed around my back with everything I owned, including a change of boy clothes. I was planning on lighting out when it was done. The Rail Man would give me a ride. He weren’t staying, he said as much. Had I any sense I would’a throwed a revolver in my sack. There was a dozen of ’em laying in the farmhouse, two setting on the windowsill when I walked in there, likely loaded and primed. But I didn’t think of it.
I came hard down that hill, and didn’t hear a bit of firing as I came down it, so no shooting had started. But when I hit the bottom and runned along the Potomac, I heard a train whistling and saw a dim light on the other side, ’bout a mile off to the east, curving ’round the edge of the mountain. That was the B&O, not wasting no time, coming out of Baltimore.
I throwed myself down the road fast as my legs could go, running toward the bridge that crossed the Potomac River.
The train got to the other side just before I did. I heard the hissing of the brakes as it stopped short, just as I put my foot on the far side of the bridge coming over. I seen it halted there, setting, hissing, through the bridge span trestles as I ran. The train had stopped ’bout a few yards shy of the station, just as the Rail Man said it would. Normally it stopped at the station, discharged passengers, then moved up a few yards to the water tower to take on water, then headed over the Shenandoah Bridge, where it headed down to Wheeling, Virginia. That weren’t normal, for the train to stop there, which meant the Old Man’s army had already started their war.
The Shenandoah was a covered bridge, with a wagon road running on one side of it and the train tracks on the other. From my side atop the B&O Bridge, I seen two fellers with rifles approaching the train from the Shenandoah Bridge side where it was stalled, ’bout a quarter mile off from me. I was still making it, running across the B&O Bridge, the train stopped dead, setting there, hissing steam, the lantern at the front of it dangling over the cowcatcher.
From the bridge as I got closer, I recognized the two figures as Oliver and Stewart Taylor, walking along the sides of the train, holding rifles to the engine master and coal slinger as they climbed down the train. They climbed down right into Oliver’s hands, they did. He and Taylor moved them along toward the back of the train, but what with the hissing and clanking of the engine, and being where I was, running hard, I couldn’t hear what was said. But I was busting it, running hard, almost there, and as I got closer, I could hear their voices talking a little bit.
I was just ’bout across the bridge when I saw the wide, tall silhouette of the Rail Man emerge from a side door of a passenger compartment and climb down the steps. He come down the steps slowly, carefully, reached up, shut the train door behind him, and set off down the tracks on foot. He come right at Oliver, holding a lantern at his side. He didn’t wave it. Just held the lantern steady at his side, walking toward Oliver and Taylor, who was walking away from him toward the Ferry with their prisoners. Oliver looked over his shoulder and saw the Rail Man, and he motioned Taylor to keep going with the two prisoners while he broke off and turned back toward the Rail Man, his rifle at his hip. He didn’t raise it, but he held it steady there as he came toward the Rail Man.
I runned hard to get there, giving it every string I had. I humped off the bridge on the Ferry side and turned and followed the tracks toward them and hollered as I come. They weren’t but two hundred yards off or so, but that train was clanking and banging, and I was in the dark, running down the tracks, and when I seen Oliver close in on the Rail Man, I hollered out, “Oliver! Oliver! Hold it!”
Oliver didn’t hear me. He glanced over his shoulder for just a second, then turned back to the Rail Man.
I was close enough to hear as I come now. The Rail Man kept coming at Oliver, and I heard him shout out, “Who goes there?”
“Stay where you are,” Oliver said.
The Rail Man kept coming, said it again, “Who goes there?”<
br />
“Stay there!” Oliver snapped.
I hollered out, “Jesus is walkin’!” but I weren’t close enough, and neither of them heard me. Oliver didn’t turn his back this time, for the Rail Man was on him, not five feet off, still holding that lamp at his side. And he was a big man, and I reckon on account of his size and him coming toward Oliver in that fashion, not being afraid, well, Oliver shouldered his rifle. Oliver was young, only twenty, but he was a Brown, and once them Browns moved on intent, there weren’t no stopping. I screamed, “Oliver!”
He turned again. And this time seen me coming at him. “Onion?” he said.
It was dark and I don’t know if he seen me clear or not. But the Rail Man did not see me at all. He weren’t more than five feet from Oliver, still holding that lamp, and he said to Oliver again, “Who goes there!” impatient this time, and a little nervous. He was trying to give him the word, you see, waiting for it.
Oliver spun back toward him with the rifle on his shoulder now and hissed, “Don’t take another step!”
I don’t know if the Rail Man got Oliver’s intent wrong or not, but he showed his back to Oliver. Just spun around and walked away from him, brisk-like. Oliver still had his gun trained on him, and I reckon Oliver would have let him walk back onto the train if the Rail Man had gone on and done that. But instead, the Rail Man did an odd thing. He stopped and blowed out that lantern, then, instead of walking back onto the train, turned to walk toward the railroad office, which was just a few yards off the track there. Didn’t head toward the train. Went toward the rail office. That killed him right there.
“Halt!” Oliver called out. He called it twice, and the second time he called it, the Rail Man dropped the lamp and stepped up toward the office. Double-stepped now.
God knows it, he never did wave that lantern. Or maybe he was disgusted that we wasn’t smart enough to know the password, or he just weren’t sure what was happening, but when he dropped that lantern and made toward the office, Oliver must’a figured he was going for help, so he let that Sharps speak to him. He cut loose on him once.
That Sharps rifle, them old ones during that time, they barked so loud it was a pity. That thing choked out some fire and offered up a bang so big you could hear it echoing all along the sides of both rivers; it bounced off them mountains like a calling from on high, the sound of that boom traveling across the river and bouncing down the Appalachian valley and up the Potomac like a bowling ball. Sounded big as God’s thunder, it did, just made a terrible noise, and it busted a ball straight into the Rail Man’s back.
The Rail Man was a big man, over six hands tall. But that ball got his attention. It stood him up. He stood still a few seconds, then moved again like he wasn’t hit, kept going toward the railroad office, staggering a bit, stepping over the tracks as he done so, then collapsed at the front door of the railroad station on his face. He flopped down like a bunch of rags, his feet flopping into the air.
Two white men flung open the door and drug him in just as I reached Oliver. He turned to me and said, “Onion! What you doing here?”
“He was with us!” I gasped. “He was flocking the colored!”
“He should’a said it. You seen it. I told him to halt! He didn’t say a blamed word!”
There weren’t no use in tellin’ him now. It was my mistake and I planned to keep it. The Rail Man was dead anyway. He was the first man killed at Harpers Ferry. A colored.
The white folks runned with that later on. They laughed ’bout it. Said, “Oh, John Brown’s first shot to free the niggers at Harpers Ferry killed a nigger.” But the fact is, the Rail Man didn’t die right off. He lived for twenty-four hours more. Lived longer than Oliver did, it turns out. He had a whole day to tell his story after he was shot, for he bled to death and was conscious before he died, and his wife and children and even his friend the mayor called on him, and he spoke to them all, but he never did tell a soul what he done or who he really was.
I later heard tell that his real name was Haywood Shepherd. The white folks at Harpers Ferry gived him a military funeral when the whole thing was done. They buried him like a hero, for he was one of their niggers. He died with thirty-five hundred dollars in the bank. They never did figure out how he got that much money, being a baggage handler, and what he planned to use it for. But I knowed.
If the Old Man hadn’t changed dates on him, making it so the Rail Man gived his password to the wrong person, he’d’a lived another day to spend all that money he saved on freeing his kin. But he brung his words to the wrong man, and the wrong movement.
It was an honest mistake, made in the heat of that moment. And I don’t beat myself over the head with it. Fact is, it weren’t me who blowed out the Rail Man’s lantern and dropped it that night. It was the Rail Man himself that done it. Had he calmed down and waited another second he would’a seen me and waved that thing up and down. But it was hard buying that whole bit deep inside, truth be to tell it, for a lot was wasted.
I told Oliver standing there, “It’s my fault.”
“There’ll be time enough to count lost chickens later,” he said. “We got to move.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Understand later, Onion. We got to roll!”
But I couldn’t move, for a sight over Oliver’s shoulder froze me in my tracks. I was standing before him, looking down the track behind him, and what I seen made my two little walnuts, packed inside my dress, shrivel up in panic.
In the dim light of the tavern that lit the track, dozens of coloreds, maybe sixty or seventy, poured out of two baggage cars. It was Monday morning in the wee hours, and some was still dressed in Sunday church clothes, for I reckon they’d gone to church the day before. Men in white shirts, and women in dresses. Men, women, children, some in their Sunday best, and others with no shoes, some holding sticks and pikes and even an old rifle or two. They jumped out of them baggage cars like they was on fire, the whole herd of ’em, turning and running off on foot, making tracks back toward Baltimore and Washington, D.C., as fast as their feet could go. They was waiting on the Rail Man to wave that lamp. And when he didn’t, they took the tall timber and went home. It didn’t take much for a colored to think he’d been tricked by anyone, white or colored, in them days.
Oliver turned and looked back there just as the last of them leaped out the baggage car and hit the tracks running, then turned back to me, puzzled, and said, “What’s going on?”
I watched the last of them disappear, dodging in and out of the trees, jumping into the thickets, a few sprinting down the tracks, and said, “We is doomed.”
29
A Bowl of Confusion
I slunk behind Oliver and Taylor as they left the bridge in a hurry with the engineer and coal slinger as prisoners. They marched the two them past the Gault House on Shenandoah Street and straight into the gates of the armory inside the ferry gate, which was unguarded. On the way there, Oliver explained that the cat was out the bag. Cook and Tidd had already cut the town’s telegraph wires, his older brother Watson, another one of the Captain’s sons, and one of the Thompson boys was guarding the Shenandoah Bridge. The rest had overcome the two watchmen, stolen into the armory buildings, and seized them. Two fellers took up in the arsenal, where the guns was guarded. The train was held up. Kagi and John Copeland, the colored soldier, had the rifle works—that’s where the guns was made. The rest of the Old Man’s army of seventeen men was scattered ’bout in various buildings across the grounds.
“There weren’t but two guards,” Oliver said. “We took them by surprise. We sprung the trap perfect.”
We brung the prisoners into the Engine Works Building, the entrance guarded by two of the Old Man’s soldiers, and when we walked in, the Captain was busy giving orders. When he turned and seen me walk in, I thought he’d be disappointed and angry that I disobeyed his orders. But he was used to crazy conglomerations and th
ings going cockeyed. Instead of being angry, the expression on his face was one of joy. “I knowed it. The Lord of Hosts foresees our victory!” he declared. “Our war is won, for our good omen the Onion has returned! As the book of Isaiah says, ‘Woe to the wicked. And say ye to the righteous that it shall be well with him!’”