“He ain’t dead!”
“Dead in Kansas Territory,” the Coachman said. He seemed certain. “We got a man here who reads. I was in the church the day he read that newspaper to us. I heard it myself. Old Brown was out west and had militia chasing him and the U.S. Cavalry hot on his tail and everybody and his brother, for there was a reward on him. They say he outshot ’em all, he did, but they caught him after a while and drowned him. God bless him. My master hates him. Now git.”
“I can prove he ain’t dead.”
“How so?”
“’Cause I seen him. I knows him. I’ll take you to him when he comes.”
The Coachman smirked, grabbing his reins. “Why, if I was your Pa, I’d put my boot so far up your arse you’d cough out my big toe, standing there lyin’! What the devil is wrong with you, to stand there and lie like that in God’s hearing? What’s the great John Brown want with a little nigger sissy like you? Now put your foot in the road ’fore I warm your two little brown buns! And don’t tell nobody you know me. I’m ’bout filled up with that damn gospel train today! And tell the Blacksmith if you see him, don’t send me no more packages.”
“Packages?”
“Packages,” he said. “Yes! No more packages.”
“What kind of packages?”
“Is you thick, child? Git along.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking ’bout.”
He glared down at me. “Is you on the underground or not?” he said.
“What underground?”
I was confused, and he stared down at me, hot. “Git on up the road to Chambersburg ’fore I kick you up there!”
“I can’t go there. I’m staying at the Kennedy farm.”
“See!” the Coachman snorted. “Caught you in another lie. Old man Kennedy drawed his last breath last year ’bout this time.”
“One of Brown’s men rented the house from his widow. I come to this country with him.”
That cooled him some. “You mean that new chatty white feller running ’round town? The one sporting ’round with fat Miss Mary, the blond maid who lives up the road from there?”
“Him.”
“He’s with Old John Brown?”
“Yes sir.”
“Why’s he running ’round with her then? That silly nag’s been boarded more than the B&O railroad.”
“I don’t know.”
The Coachman frowned. “My brother told me to quit fooling with runaways,” he grumbled. “You can’t tell the straight truth from a crooked lie with ’em.” He sighed. “I reckon if I was sleeping in the cold under the sky I’d be talking cockeyed too.” He groused some more, then fished in his pocket and pulled out a bunch of coins. “How much you need? All’s I got is eight cents.” He held it out. “Take this and git. G’wan now. Off with you. G’wan to Chambersburg.”
I growed a little warm then. “Sir, I ain’t here for your money,” I said. “And I ain’t here to go to nobody’s Chambersburg. I come to warn you Old John Brown’s coming. With an army. He’s planning to take Harpers Ferry and start an insurrection. He told me to ‘hive the bees.’ That’s his instruction. Said, ‘Onion, you tell all the colored that I’m coming and to hive ’em up. Hive the bees.’ So I’m tellin’ you. And I ain’t tellin’ nobody no more, for it ain’t worth the trouble.”
With that, I turned and started down the mountain road toward Harpers Ferry, for he had rode me a ways out.
He called out to me, “Chambersburg’s the other direction.”
“I knows where I’m going,” I said.
His coach was pointed toward Chambersburg, too, up the mountain, away from me. He harred up his horses and galloped up the mountain trail. It took him several minutes to get up the road and find a place to turn around, for he had those four horses drawing it. He got it done in a snap, and brought them horses banging down the mountain behind me at a full trot. When he reached me, he pulled them beasts to a dead stop. Stopped ’em on a dime. He could drive the shit outta that coach. He stared down at me.
“I don’t know you,” he said. “I don’t know who you are or where you come from. But I know you ain’t from this country, so your word ain’t worth a pinch of snuff. But lemme ask you: If I was to ask at old Kennedy’s farm ’bout you, would they know you?”
“Ain’t but one feller there now. That feller I told you ’bout. His name is Mr. Cook. The Old Man sent him to spy on the town ahead of his coming, but he ought not to have sent him, for he talks too much. He’s likely done spread the word to every white man in town ’bout the Captain.”
“Good God, you surely fib like a winner,” the Coachman said. He sat for a long moment. Then he looked around to see if the way was clear and nobody was coming. “I’mma test you,” he said. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled-up piece of paper. “You say you know your letters?”
“I do.”
“Well read that,” he said. Sitting up in the driver’s seat, he handed it down to me.
I took the paper and read it aloud. “It says, ‘Dear Rufus, please give my coachman Jim four ladles and two spoons from your store and make sure he don’t eat any more store-bought biscuits from you, which is charged to my account. That nigger is fat enough as it is.’”
I handed it back to him. “It’s signed, ‘Col. Lewis F. Washington,’” I said. “That’s your master?”
“God damn that elephant-faced old bugger,” he muttered. “Never drew a short breath in his life. Never done a day’s work. And feeding me boiled grits and sour biscuits. What’s he expect?”
“Say what?”
He shoved the paper in his pocket. “If you was speaking the truth, it’d be hard to tell it,” he said. “Why would the great John Brown send a sissy to do a man’s job?”
“You can ask him yourself when he comes,” I said, “for you is full of insults and nothing more.” I started down the mountain, for there was no convincing him.
“Wait a minute.”
“Nope. You been told, sir. You been warned. G’wan ’round to the Kennedy farm and see if you don’t find Mr. Cook setting there talking in ways he shouldn’t.”
“What ’bout Miss Mary? She working with Old John Brown too?”
“No. He just made her acquaintance.”
“Sheesh, he couldn’t do no better than that? That woman’s face could stop a clock. What manner of man is your Mr. Cook that he runs behind her?”
“The rest of his army don’t act in the manner of Mr. Cook,” I said. “They coming to shoot men, not chase women. They is dangerous. They coming all the way from Iowa and they got more hardware than you ever saw, and when they load their breachloaders they drop the hammer and tell it to hurry. That’s a fact, sir.”
That got him, and for the first time I seen the doubt move off his face a little. “Your story is fetching, but it sounds like a lie,” he said. “Still, ain’t no harm in me sending somebody by old man Kennedy’s farm, if that’s where you say you living, to check on your fibbing. In the meantime, I reckon you ain’t dumb enough to mention me or the Blacksmith or Henry Watson to nobody in town. You liable to end up on the cooling board if you do. Them two is as bad as they get. They’d bust a charge into your head and feed you to the pigs if they thunk you gived away their doings.”
“They better makes sure they got all their back teeth if they do it,” I said. “For when Captain Brown comes I’mma tell him you and your friends here was a hinderance, and y’all will have to deal with him. He’ll curdle your cheese for treatin’ me like a liar.”