The journey to Boston was supposed to take four days, but on the third day, as we swung through Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the train stopped to take on water, and he announced, “We are getting off here, Onion.”
“I thought we was going to Boston, Captain.”
“Not directly,” he said. “I suspect there might be a spy among my men in Iowa. I don’t want the federal hounds to catch us.”
We hopped another train in Pittsburgh for Philadelphia, and got off there for a day to wait for the next train to Boston which weren’t due to leave till morning, whereupon the Old Man decided to walk about the city for he was an outdoor man and couldn’t bear the thought of setting by a warm woodstove in the station and resting his feet. That city was right enjoyable. The sights and colors of it whirled up before my eyes like a peacock’s feathers. Even the smallest street in Philadelphia made the biggest road in Kansas Territory seem like a rutted back alley, full of nags and chickens. Folks in fine clothing strutted about; and there were homes of red brick with perfect, straight chimneys. Telegraph wires, wooden sidewalks, and inside privies lined every street. The trading stores were loaded with fresh poultry, cooked fish, brass candles, ladles, cradles, warming pans, hot-water bottles, commodes, brass ware, even bugles. As I took it all in, I decided the Old Man was a fool to leave the east to fight on the prairie on behalf of the colored. Even the colored in Philadelphia didn’t seem to care about their slave brothers. I seen a few of them strolling about, sporting pocket watches, walking canes, breast pins, and finger rings just like white folks, they were right dandy. In fact, they was dressed better than the Old Man.
The next morning, at the train station, the Old Man, he got into a wrangle with the ticket agent, for he was nearly out of money and had changed his mind about going to Boston straight off. Instead he wanted to stop off at Rochester, New York, first. That stretched him to the limit, and he spent his last money getting the tickets changed. “You perhaps question why I am spending my last before we get to Boston,” he said. “Fret not, Onion. We will find more funds where we’re going. It is worth the cost of ten tickets to Boston, for we are going to meet with the king of the Negro people. He is a great man and a dear friend. Have no doubt, Onion, that in the coming years his exploits will be heralded across this country for generations, and you will be able to tell your children that you have met him. He has promised to fight with us to the end, and that is important, for we will need his help in our cause, to hive the bees. We will need thousands of Negroes, and with him, we will get them. So be kind to him. And polite. He has promised to fight with us. We must convince him to keep his promise to help us hive the bees.”
We arrived at Rochester station in the early morning, and as the train pulled in, there upon the platform stood a Negro unlike any I’d ever seen. He was a stout, handsome mulatto with long dark hair parted in the middle. His shirt was starched and clean. His suit was pressed and flat. His boots spotless. His face was shaved and smooth. He waited still as a statue, proud, erect. He stood like a king.
The Old Man descended the train, and the two shook hands and embraced warmly. “Onion,” he said, “meet Mr. Frederick Douglass, the man who will help lead our cause. Frederick, meet Henrietta Shackleford, my consort, who goes by the name of the Onion.”
“Morning, Fred,” I said.
Mr. Douglass looked at me coldly. Seemed like the bottom of his nose opened up two inches as he peered down.
“How old are you?”
“Twelve.”
“Then where is your manners, young lady? What kind of a name is Onion for a young lady? And why are you dressed in that fashion? And why do you address me as Fred? Don’t you know you are not addressing a pork chop, but rather a fairly considerable and incorrigible piece of the American Negro diaspora?”
“Sir?”
“I am Mr. Douglass.”
“Why, howdy, sir. I am here to help hive the bees.”
“And hive them she will,” the Old Man said cheerily. I never seen him knuck to somebody the way he knucked to Mr. Douglass.
Mr. Douglass looked me over close. “I suspect there is a pretty little piece of pork chop under all them rags, Mr. Brown,” he said. “And we will forthrightly teach her some manners to go with them fair looks. Welcome to Rochester, young lady.”
“Thank you, Mr. Fred,” I said.
“Mr. Douglass.”
“Mr. Douglass.”
“She a spritely little package, Douglass,” the Old Man said proudly, “and has showed pluck and courage through many a battle. I reckon it is the highlight of her life to meet the man who is going to lift her people from the chains of the underling world. Onion,” he said, clapping Mr. Douglass on the back, “I has been disappointed many times in my life. But this is one man on whom the Old Captain can always depend.”
Mr. Douglass smiled. He had perfect teeth. The two of them stood there proudly, beaming there, standing on the train platform, white and colored together. It made for a pretty picture, and if I’d had one of them picture-taking contraptions that had just come out in them days, I’d have recorded the whole thing. But the fact is, like most things the Old Man done, his business didn’t work out the way it was drawed up. He couldn’t have been more wrong about Mr. Douglass. Had I knowed what was coming, I expect I’d have taken that little derringer I kept from my Pikesville days out my pants pocket and popped Mr. Douglass off in the foot, or at least cleaned him up with the handle of it, for he would short the Old Man something terrible going forward, at a time when the Captain needed him the most. And it would cost the Old Man a lot more than a train ticket to Rochester.
18.
Meeting a Great Man
The Old Man laid up at Mr. Frederick Douglass’s house for three weeks. He spent most of that time in his room, writing and studying. That weren’t unusual for him, to set over paper and write, or walk about with a pocket full of compasses, scribbling notes and consulting maps and so forth. It never amounted to nothing, but three weeks was a long time for me to sit inside anybody’s house, and for the Old Man, I expect it was worse. The Captain was an outdoor man. He couldn’t sit at a hearth long, or sleep on a feather bed, or even eat food that was cooked for civilized people. He liked wild things: coons, possum, squirrel, wild turkeys, beavers. But food prepared inside a proper kitchen—biscuits, pie, jam, butter—he couldn’t stand the taste of them things. So it was suspicious that he set there that long, for that’s all they ate in that house. But he hunkered down in a bedroom by hisself, coming out only to use the privy. From time to time Mr. Douglass went in there, and I overheard them two jawing with raised voices. I overheard Mr. Douglass at one point say, “Unto the death!” but I made nothing of it.
Three weeks gived me plenty of time to get acquainted with the Douglass household, which was run by Mr. Douglass’s two wives—a white one and a colored one. That was the first time I ever saw such a thing, two women married to one man, and both of ’em being of a different race. Them two women hardly spoke to one another. When they did, you’d a thunk a chunk of ice dropped into the room, for Miss Ottilie was a German white woman, and Miss Anna was a colored woman from the South. They was polite enough to each other, more or less, though I expect if they weren’t civilized, they’d a punched each other wobbly. They hated each other’s guts, is the real picture, and took their rage out on me, for I was uncouth in their eyes and needing barbering and learning of proper manners, ways to sit and curtsy and all them things. I gived them a lot of work in that department, for what few manners and ways Pie taught me out on the prairie was cow dung to these women, who didn’t use an outdoor privy, and never chewed tobacco or used words like “haw” and “git.” After Mr. Douglass introduced me to them and retired to his own scribbling—he scribbled, too, like the Old Man, them two scribbled in separate rooms—them two women stood me before ’em in the parlor and studied me. “Take them pantaloons off,” Miss Anna barked. “Throw them boots out,” Miss Ottilie throwed in. I allowed I’d do what they asked but would do it in private. They fought over it, which gived me time to slip off and change alone. But that drove Miss Anna mad, and she made a comeback two days later by dragging me into her kitchen to draw me a bath. I scooted out to the drawing room and runned to the white wife, Miss Ottilie, who insisted she draw me a bath, and let them two wrangle over that. In that manner I kept them off me and let them catfight the whole business out.