I had never seen the inside of them boxes neither, and the fullness of the thing hit me and Miss Becky at the same time. Her eyes got wide. “Glory,” she said.
Cook snorted, bragging. “We got fourteen boxes here, just like this one. There’s more coming by shipment. The Captain’s got enough arms to furnish two thousand people.”
“There ain’t but ninety slaves in Harpers Ferry, mister.”
That stopped him dead. The smile disappeared from his face.
“I thought there was twelve hundred colored here. That’s what the man at the post office said yesterday.”
“That’s right. And most of ’em’s free colored.”
“That ain’t the same,” he muttered.
“It’s close enough,” Miss Becky said. “Free colored’s connected to bondage, too. Many of ’em’s married to those in bondage. I’m free, but my husband, he’s a slave. Most free colored’s got slave relations. They ain’t for slavery. Believe me.”
“Good! Then they’ll fight with us.”
“I ain’t say that.” She sat down, rubbing her head. “Coachman done sent me into a dilemma,” she mumbled. Then she uttered hotly, “This is some damn trickeration!”
“You ain’t got to believe,” Cook said gaily. “Just tell all your friends that Old John Brown is coming in three weeks. We attack on October twenty-third. He gived me the date by letter. Spread that around.”
Now, I was just a young boy dressed like a girl and foolish as a dimwit and not able to hold anybody in their wrong, stupid as I was, but still, I was a young man coming into myself, and even I weren’t that dim. It occurred to me that it didn’t take but one of them colored angling for a can of peaches or a nice fresh watermelon from their master to rouse the whole bit, to spill the beans, and the jig was up for everybody.
“Mr. Cook,” I said. “We don’t know if we can trust this woman.”
“You invited her,” he said.
“Suppose she tells!”
Miss Becky frowned. “You is got some nerve,” she said. “You busted in on Coachman’s property, damn near gave him away to his runny-mouth wife, and now you tellin’ me who can be trusted. It’s you we can’t trust. You could be selling us a heap of lies, child. You better hope your yarn matches up. If not, the Blacksmith will deaden you right where you is and be done with it. Ain’t nobody in this town gonna fret over a nigger child dead in an alley someplace.”
“What I done to him?”
“You endangering his railroad.”
“He owns a railroad?”
“The underground, child.”
“Hold on,” Cook said. “Your Blacksmith ain’t deadening nobody. Onion here is like a child to the Old Man. She’s his favorite.”
“Sure. And I’m George Washington.”
Now Cook got hot. “Don’t get sassy with me. We coming here to rescue you. Not the other way ’round. Onion here, the Captain stole her out of slavery. She’s like his kin. So you ought not to talk about your Blacksmith hurting this one here, or nobody else. Your Blacksmith won’t be drawing air long, fooling with the Captain’s plans. He don’t want to be on the wrong side of Captain Brown.”
Becky put her head in her hands. “I reckon I don’t know what to believe,” she said. “I don’t know what to tell the Coachman.”
“Is he the Negro in charge around here?” Cook asked.
“One of ’em. The main one’s the Rail Man.”
“Where’s he at?”
“Where you think? On the railroad.”
“The underground?”
“No. The real railroad. The B&O. The one that goes chug-chug. I reckon he’s in Baltimore or Washington, D.C., today.”
“Perfect! He can hive the bees there. How can I reach him?”
She stood up. “I’ll take my leave, now. I done told you too much already, sir. For all’s I know, you could be a slave stealer from New Orleans, come up here to steal souls and sell ’em off down river. You can have one of them brooms. It’s a gift. Use it to sweep the lies out this place. Watch the lady next door, if you don’t want deputies around. She’s a nosybody. Mrs. Huffmaster’s her name. And she don’t like niggers nor slave stealers nor abolitionists.”
As she moved toward the door, I blurted out, “You ought to check with your people. Check with your Rail Man.”
“I ain’t checking with nobody. It’s a trick.”
“G’wan, then. You’ll see. We don’t need you, neither.” She showed me her back, but as she moved to the door, there was a coat hook there, and she noticed the beaten shawl that the General gived me in Canada hanging on it. The shawl from Harriet Tubman herself.
“Where’d you get this?” she asked.
“It’s a gift,” I said.
“From who?”
“One of the Captain’s friends gived it to me. Said it would be useful. I just brung it ’cause ... I used it to cover some of my things in the wagon.”
“Did you now ...” she said. She gently took the General’s shawl off the coat hook. She held it in the light, then laid it on the table, her brown fingers spreading it wide. She stared carefully at the designs on it. I hadn’t paid them no mind. It weren’t nothing but a crude dog in a box with his feet pointed at all four corners of the box, with his snout nearly touching one of the top corners. Something in that design moved her, and she shook her head.
“I don’t believe it. Where’d you meet ... the person that gived you this?”
“I can’t say, for I don’t know you, neither.”
“Oh, you can tell her,” Cook said, runny mouth that he was.
But I didn’t open my mouth a bit. Miss Becky stared at the shawl, her eyes suddenly bright and full. “If you ain’t lying, child, it’s a great day. Did the soul who gived you this say anything else?”
“No. Well ... She did say don’t change the time, ’cause she was coming herself. With her people. She did say that. To the Captain. Not me.”
Miss Becky stood silent a minute. You’d a thunk I gived her a million dollars, for it seemed like a spell come over her. The old wrinkles in her face evened out and her lips broke into a small smile. The lines in her forehead seemed to vanish. She picked up the shawl and held it out away from her. “Can I keep this?” she asked.
“If it’ll help, all right,” I said.
“It helps,” she said. “It helps a great deal. Oh, the Lord is in the blessing business, ain’t He? He done blessed me today.” She got in a hurry then, whipping the shawl onto her shoulders, gathering up her brooms and tossing them in the wheelbarrow, as me and Cook stared.
“Where you going?” Cook said.
Miss Becky paused at the door, grabbed the door handle and held it tight, staring at it as she spoke. The happiness fell off her then, and she was all business again. Serious and straight on. “Wait a few days,” she said. “Just wait. And be quiet. Don’t say nothing else to nobody, white or colored. If a colored comes here asking ’bout your Captain, be careful. If they don’t mention the Blacksmith or the Rail Man in their first breath, draw your knife on ’em and make it count, for we is all blown. You’ll get word soon.”
And with that she opened the door, grabbed her wheelbarrow, and left.
24.
The Rail Man
Not long after, Cook got a job at the Ferry working at the Wager House, a tavern and railroad depot right at the armory where he could annoy the folks. His hours was long. He worked into the night, while I stayed at the farm, tidied house, tried to cook, hide what I could of them crates, and pretended to be his consort. ’Bout a week after he started, Cook come back to the house one evening and said, “Somebody wants to talk with you.”