He wouldn’t keep it shut when he slept. He and the Mam had their bedroom across the wagon-yard from my loft. In mid-winter with their windows closed tight against draftdevils I’d still hear Old Jon sleeping away like an ungreased wagon-wheel. Once in a great while I’d hear the Mam howling briefly during his bedwork. It’s a good question how they managed it, a two-hundred-pound lardbucket and a little dry stick.
In the dark of that March morning I fed the horses and mules, reasoning that someone else could get his character strengthened by shoveling. The tavern did own a pair of slaves for outside work. My only reason for ever cleaning the stable was that I like to see such jobs done right, but that morning I felt they could take the whole shibundle and shove it. It was a Friday anyway, so all work was sinful, unless you care to claim that shoveling is a work of piety, and I want you to think carefully about that.
I crept into the main kitchen, knowing my way around. Although a yard-boy, I practiced the habit of washing whenever I could, and so old Jon let me help at waiting on table, minding the taproom fire, fetching drinks. I was safe that morning: everybody would be fasting before church, comfortably, in bed. The slave Judd, boss of the kitchen, wasn’t up yet, so his scullion helpers would also be dead to the world. If Judd had discovered me the worst he’d have done would have been to chase me a step or two on his gimp leg, praising God he hadn’t a chance of catching me.
I located a peach pie. I’d skipped fasting and church a long time-not hard, for who notices a yard-boy? — and no lightning had clobbered me yet, though I’d been plainly taught that the humblest creatures are the special concern of God. In the storeroom I uplifted a loaf of oat bread and a chunk of bacon, and started thinking, Why not run away for good? Who would care?
Old Jon Robson would: squaring my bond would hurt in the pocketbook nerve. But then I’d never asked to have my life regarded as a market commodity.
Emmia might care. I worked on that as I stole down the morning emptiness of Kurin Street , true sunrise almost half an hour away. I worked on it hard, being fourteen, maybe more active in the sentimentals than most downyskins of that age. I had myself killed by black wolf, and changed that to bandits because black wolf wouldn’t leave enough bones. I felt we should provide bones. Somebody could fetch them back to show Emmia. “Here’s all’s left of poor Davy except his Katskil knife. He allowed he wanted you should have it, was anything to happen to him.” But I’d never actually got around to saying that to anyone, and anyhow bandits wouldn’t leave a good knife, rot them.
Emmia was sixteen, big and soft like her Da, only on her it looked good. She was a blue-eyed cushiony honeypot with a few more pounds than mOst girls have of everything except good sense. For a year my nights had been heated by undressing her in my fancy, all alone in my stable loft. The real Emmia occasionally had to bed down with important guests to maintain the reputation of the inn, but I wouldn’t quite admit the fact to myself. Certainly I’d been hearing the old cunty yarns and jokes about innkeeper’s daughters for years, but except for Caron lost in childhood Emmia was my first love. I did somehow avoid understanding that the darling quail was obliged to be a part-time whore.
I was gulping when I passed the town green. Pillory, whipping-post and stocks had become grayly visible, reminders of what could happen to a bond-servant who should get caught putting a hand on Emmia’s dress, let alone under it. As I neared the place where I meant to get over the stockade, most of the flapdoodle about bones drained out of my head. I was thinking about running away for real.
Found and brought back, I could be declared a no-brand slave and sold by the State for a ten-year term. But that morning I was telling myself what they could do with such laws. I had the bacon and bread, my flint-and-steel and my luck charm, all in a shoulder-sack that was my rightful property. My knife, also honestly mine by purchase, hung sheathed on a belt under my shirt, and all the money I had saved in the winter, ten dollars, was knotted into my loinrag — the bright coin that Emmia gave me tied off separately, never to be spent if I could help it. Up in the woods of North Mountain where I’d found a cave in my solitary wanderings of the year before, I had other things stored — an ash bow I had made, brass-tipped arrows, fishline, two genuine steel fish-hooks, and ten more dollars buried. The arrow-tips and fishline were cheap; it had taken a couple of weeks to save enough for those good fish-hooks, seeing how scarce and precious steel is nowadays.
I scrabbled over the palisade logs while the sleepy guard was out of sight on his rounds, and took off up the mountainside. The Emmia who talked in my heart quit whimpering over bones. I thought of the actual soft-lipped girl who would surely want me to turn back and stick it out through my bond-period, although in the flesh I’d done nothing hotter than imagine her beside me on my pallet during those rather sad private games.
Climbing the steep ground away from the city, I decided I’d merely stay lost a day or two as I’d done other times. Then it had usually been my proper day off. Not always: I’d risked trouble before and blarneyed out of it. This time I’d stay until the bacon was gone, and work up some fancy whopmagullion to tell on my return, to soften the action of Old Jon’s leather strap on my rump — not that he ever hurt much, for he lacked both muscle and active cruelty. The decision calmed me. When I was well into the cover of the big woods I climbed a maple to watch for sunrise.
From up there the roads out of Skoar were still shut away from sight by the forest. Skoar was insubstantial, a phantom city caught and hung in a veil of early light. I think I knew it was also a prosaic reality, a huddle of ten thousand human beings ready for another day of working, swindling, loafing, stepping on each other’s faces or now and then trying not to.
Before reaching my maple I had heard the liquid inquiry of the first bird-calls. Now the sun-fire would soon be at the rim; the singers were wide awake, their music rippling back and forth across the top of the world. I heard a whitethroat sparrow, who would not remain long on his way north. Robin and wood-thrush — could a morning begin without them? A cardinal shot past, ablaze. A pair of white parrots broke out of a sycamore to skim over the trees, and I heard a wood-dove, and a wren exploded his small heart in a shower of rainbow notes.
I watched a pair of whiteface monkeys in a sweet gum nearby; they didn’t mind me. The male put down his head so his wife could groom his neck. When she tired of it he grabbed her haunches and helped himself to a bit of love, a thank-you job acted out with his favorite tool. They sat then with their arms around each other, long black tails hanging, and he yawned at me: “Eee-ooo!” When I looked away from them the east was flaming.
Of a sudden I wanted to know: Where does it come from, the sun? How is it set afire for the day?
Understand, in those days I hadn’t a scrap of decent learning. At school I’d toiled through two books, the speller and the Book of Prayers. At a Rambler entertainment when I was thirteen I’d picked up a sex pamphlet because I thought it had pictures, and would have bought a dream book if it hadn’t cost a dollar. I knew of the Book of Abraham, called the one source of true religion, and was aware that common men are forbidden to read it lest they misunderstand. Books, say the priests, are all somewhat dangerous and had much to do with the Sin of Man in Old Time; they tempt men to think independently, which in itself implies a rejection of God’s loving care. As for other types of learning — well, I considered Old Jon remarkably advanced in wisdom because he could keep accounts with the bead-board in the taproom.