A few days later I left Horatio at the Arcade where, when we met up after he got off from the upholstery shop, he wouldn’t stop shouting that I was behaving with pure lunacy, though he also confessed that he had been dreaming of heading south with me too. As I departed Washington Square I heard a voice utter just above a murmur, “Red,” and looked over to see my cousin Dandy, in a doorway, hat tilted low on his head, his charcoal jacket and trousers rendering him a shadow: “Where you heading?” I walked over to him and answered just as softly, “I’m trying to figure out how to get to Washington.” He said, “Running from somebody?” and I shook my head, said, “Naw, Cuz, I wanna go work with the Army,” and he said, “Colored can’t sign up for this war.” I answered, “I’m gonna work mess,” and he beckoned me closer and whispered in my ear, “I need to get out this town, been thinking about Buffalo or Boston, but seeing as all the commotion happening down there Washington’ll do.” I stepped away from him, a bit incredulous, and asked him, “How?” Dandy looked around us, and said as if each word would vanish soon as he uttered it: “Can you meet me here in three days as close to 6 pm as you can manage?” “For sure,” I replied and he added, “Bring whatever money you got but don’t tell nobody, just leave your Mama a note and a couple bits for rent, make sure you put something in your stomach,” then he asked me my birthday and concluded, “We’ll be in Washington faster than you can say Abe Lincoln.”
Though I doubted Dandy’s scheme would come to anything I did exactly as he said. I packed a few things each day while Mama and Jonathan were at work and counted out my money. When I left I had to go upstairs to borrow a scrap of paper, a quill and some ink from Miss Lucie Allen to write my letter, and grew so nervy I wanted to take a stroll but instead I heated up a potato and ate it, drank water, checked twice that I had put out the stove. Soon as I heard the church bells ring 5 I split to meet my cousin. Since I arrived early near where I saw him the day before, I milled about, finally asking a white man the time. He told me quarter to six, so I walked up to the square then raced back, counting the minutes, and right on the hour I saw Dandy there in the doorway, dressed as if he worked for the railroads, with a leather saddle bag and a second cloth bag slung over his shoulder. Dandy said, “We heading to the depot down on Washington,” which I knew meant the Philadelphia Wilmington and Baltimore one, so I started up the street and Dandy said firmly, “No, no, Cuz, they coming for us,” and he slipped back into the shadows till a cab came, the horse rearing when it stopped abruptly. Dandy ordered me, “Get in, fast,” and we did and sped down Seventh to Christian, before I knew it we were at the depot. Dandy said, “Stay close, and whatever you do, from now on anybody talk to you keep your mouth shut.” We went around the rear of the station, where we met a brother Dandy talked to for a few minutes, until he hailed me over, saying, “Okay, give him some change.” I did, then Dandy gave him some more money from a roll he had concealed somewhere, and something else wrapped in burlap and twine, though I knew not to ask what it was. The man ushered us to a luggage car on a train bound for Washington, and whispered something in Dandy’s ear, said we would know when we get to the capital because that was the last stop, these days no trains ran on to Virginia. We settled in behind some crates, curling up as tiny as we could. Another brother came in and spotted us but didn’t say a thing. Eventually we heard the whistle, the train began to move. Once we were pulling out Dandy handed me a little pocket watch, all filigreed silverplate around the edges, a small cream envelope, then a swig of liquor from his flask. I sat up, listening to the music of the wheels along the track—
— And Dandy woke me saying, “Red, Cuz, gather your stuff up, let’s go.” Soon as the door gaped, he said, “Make it,” and the two or three men stepping to unload the crates and luggage glared at us as if they were seeing ghosts, but Dandy said something so fast I didn’t catch it, he winked and gestured to them with his fingers, and they let us pass. As we scurried out I saw white men dressed in different kinds of uniforms, probably all military, as well a lot of our people too. I counted what appeared to be twice as many as at home. I asked Dandy, “Are they slaves? “ and he said, “Probably free as we is in Philly,” then he added that we had to get to Q and 9th Street before sundown. He asked one of the men for some water and where we could relieve ourselves, then we exited the station. The city was nowhere as built up as Philadelphia and unlike the initial perception the station offered appeared to have considerably fewer people. Neither of us was sure what direction we were facing so Dandy said, “Take out that watch.” He stood so close I could feel his hot, sweet breath on my cheeks. He wrapped his arm around me as if cloaking us in invisibility and said, “See, on the back you got a little compass, so whatever you do don’t lose your papers and don’t lose this.” I swore to him I wouldn’t. I also saw that we were facing South and there, looming right in front of us, atop a hill ringed by buildings, was a gigantic white building with an unfinished dome. Astonished, I asked him, pointing to it, “Do you think that’s the President’s House or the Capitol?” Dandy shrugged. “Cuz,” he said, “you got to act like you from here,” so I dropped my arm, though it took me a minute or two to stop staring.
I glanced at the compass again. “Which way we sposed to go?” Dandy said, “They say due north up New-Jersey.” We searched, as inconspicuously as we could, until we found that street. We started walking, not really talking because I could tell Dandy was striving hard to appear as ice as possible while also paying close attention to everything around us. He was not listening to anything I was saying, not about how much emptier and dirtier the capital was than Philadelphia, how there were twice as many soldiers everywhere, how every other person appeared to be like us. Most of them nodded in our direction and I made sure to nod back, but Dandy only tipped his hat and pressed forward, though every so often he would ask how I was feeling, if I needed any water or anything else.
All the while I was counting the street letters as we headed north, the grid not unlike Philadelphia’s, thirteen blocks we crossed, the buildings thinning out eventually to meadows and pastures, dense thickets of alders and hawthorns, stands of oaks and ailanthus broken intermittently by shacks and lean-tos, almost like the far northeast or southwest parts of our own city. A strange thought struck me and I asked Dandy, “How you know there ain’t no Confederates hiding in these bushes or trees,” and he answered, “Cuz, you know I like me a joke but not one like that.” I consulted my watch-compass and told him we needed to walk in the direction of the cluster of buildings to our west. Before I knew it we were there. As soon as I saw the condition of the structures, crude edifices of wood and tin, and towards the backs tarpaulin tented to extend some of the dwellings, I wondered were we really going to stay here? though I trusted Dandy. He approached and spoke with a couple of rough-looking men and a woman outside one of the buildings, a shack that could only generously be labeled a house, but I remained where I was until he called for me. “Here where we staying, Red,” Dandy said, and introduced me to a short, dark walleyed man with a pointed beard named Cyrus, and a pretty woman in a yellow headwrap and dress named Eliza, who invited us inside. They seated us on stools around a stove and fed us, all the while questions about how we were feeling, but nothing about Philadelphia or the trip down. I remembered what Dandy had told me and let him talk, smiling but politely maintaining my silence.