Elijah of Buxton Read online

  Finally Ma put the basket back in her lap and reached in. She knowed right off something was wrong ’cause with that toady-frog added to it, her sweater weighed ’bout five pounds more than the last time she touched it.

  She twisted her head to the side to look at Pa, unwrapped the toady-frog, and it dropped smack-down in her lap. She frozed up for ’bout one second, then jumped straight out the rocker. Yarn and needles and buttons and the toady-frog and the half-knit sweater flewed all over the stoop like your guts do after you been hoop snake bit! Ma’s knitting spectacles jumped partway up her forehead and she started hopping up and down and slapping at her skirt like it’s afire! The whole time she didn’t scream nor say a word.

  It was the funniest thing I’d ever seen in my life!

  Me and Cooter near ’bout died peeking out of the ditch. It caint be good for you to try to keep a laugh inside, I was this close to busting clean apart!

  Ma heard us trying to smother our laughs down and stared ’cross the road. She looked like she was fixing to say something but her mouth just opened and shut over and over. Didn’t no words come out so she walked all a-shake-ity into the house.

  Pa called over tome and Cooter, “Don’t y’all move.”

  He set Ma’s rocker back up then collected all her knitting tools and put ’em back in the basket. He picked up the toady-frog and brung him ’cross the road right at me and Cooter.

  He set the toady-frog down, shooked his head, and said, “Now, Elijah. You, me, and Cooter all thought that was funny. Your ma and that there toady-frog ain’t likely to see the whole adventure quite the same way.”

  Me and Cooter tried to keep our faces serious whilst Pa was talking, but tears were rolling down both our cheeks.

  Pa said, “Past a wart or two, I don’t think the toady-frog’s gunn cause you no grieving. But your ma …” He whistled low and long. “… she’s a whole ’nother story. So whilst you’s out here rolling ’bout in that ditch enjoying the tormentation you caused your ma and that toady-frog, why don’t you save us all some trouble and go in them woods and break off whichever switch it is you wants her to beat you with. ’Cause you know the next time you and her is in the same room together, that’s what’s gunn happen.

  “Cooter,” Pa said, “today your lucky day, son. You’s ’bout to get two shows for the price of one. If you thought that there was funny, you just wait till you see the way ’Lijah starts a-hopping and screaming once his ma lays that switch on his behind.”

  Pa smiled then walked away.

  Me and Cooter had to run near a mile afore we figured we were far ’nough away to really let our laughs rip out. And rip out they did. I ain’t never laughed so hard! We fell all over ourselves and couldn’t barely stand up. We rolled and rolled whilst talking ’bout the way Ma looked when she opened that sweater!

  We couldn’t neither one of us get a whole sentence out.

  I said, “Did you see the way —” then I commenced choking.

  Cooter said, “And … and … and then she —” and started pulling at the grass and slapping at the ground.

  Then I said, “I never knowed Ma could jump so —” and the laughing closed my throat right up.

  Once me and Cooter were all laughed out and commenced walking home, things changed. A gloom started creeping over me the same way clouds’ll all the sudden start sliding up to cover a full moon. Cooter was whistling and still laughing every once in the while and, doggone-it-all, I saw how unfair this whole commotion was turning out to be. He’d got just as much fun from everything that happened as I did, but it looked like I was gonna be the only one that had to do any kind of paying for the enjoying. I started working up a good apology fulled up with lots of sincereness for when I saw Ma.

  When I got home, Ma didn’t say a word! She must’ve thought the whole thing was too embarrassing and couldn’t see no way of ’buking me without bringing up the subject of toady-frogs again, so she let it go.

  I gotta say I was real proud of Ma ’cause of the good way she took the toady-frog joke. It’s funny, just when you think you caint admire your folks no more than you already do, something like that happens and lets you know you’re wrong.

  Two days later I got back from helping Mr. Leroy down on Mrs. Holton’s land. Ma and Pa were sitting on the stoop. Ma was back to working on that sweater and Pa was whittling away. She must’ve baked, the cookie jar was sitting twixt ’em.

  She said, “How Mr. Leroy doing, son?”

  “He’s good, ma’am.”

  “You stop in and give my regards to Mrs. Holton?”

  “Yes, ma’am, she told me to ask ’bout you.”

  “Mrs. Brown come by, axed if you’s gunn go fishing tomorrow.”

  “Yes, ma’am, right after my stable chores.”

  “She done some baking too, say she hoping to trade for two of them big perch.”

  It waren’t Ma that baked, it was Mrs. Brown! This made the baking in the cookie jar a lot more interesting!

  “What she bake,Ma?”

  Ma reached down and picked up the cookie jar.

  She said, “You know how Mrs. Brown is, ’Lijah, always trying something new. She baked some sugar cookies and some other kind of cookie she call …” Ma quit knitting and looked over her spectacles at Pa. “Ooh, Spencer, I must be getting old. I caint for the life of me recall what she said they was, can you?”

  Pa held up on his whittling, looked at her, and said, “Naw, darling, I caint recall neither.”

  Ma slapped the arm of her rocker. “Oh yes! Now I ’member, she baked them walnut and sugar cookies and something she say she gunn call rope cookies. You’s lucky they’s some left. Was all I could do to keep your daddy out of ’em.”

  She tipped the cookie jar toward Pa and he reached in and pulled out a cookie that had walnuts stuck to the top of it and sugar dusted all over it!

  Pa bit on the cookie and said, “Almost as good as your’n, Sarah!” He winked at me.

  Ma leaned the jar at me but just as I was ’bout to reach in, she pulled it back and said, “Now, ’Lijah, you know better than that. You been working hard with Mr. Leroy. Go wash up first, son.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I ran ’round to the back stoop to wash my hands quick as I could. When I came out front, Ma tipped the cookie jar at me again and I dug my hand right in.

  Ma was right, it felt like Pa’d et near all of ’em. But as I moved my hand ’round in the bottom of the jar, I felt one n’em rope cookies … and Mrs. Brown must’ve just brung these cookies over, ’cause the last one left was still warm!

  I pulled the cookie outta the jar.

  My heart quit beating, my blood ran cold, and time stood still!

  My fingers were wrapped ’round the neck of the worst-looking snake in Canada West!

  I screamed, “Snake!” and afore I knowed it, I was tearing off ’cross the road into the woods. By the time I worned myself out I must’ve run two miles. I stopped and leaned ’gainst a tree, waiting for my breathing to catch up to me. Something made me look down in my hand.

  I screamed, “Snake!” for the second time.

  But this time I remembered to turn the snake’s neck a-loose and throwed it down.

  I wouldn’t’ve thought I had enough strength left in me to run, but being afeared and being tired look like two things you caint feel at the same time.

  When I ran back up on our stoop, Ma’s and Pa’s faces were wet with tears. Pa was leaning over the side of his rocker like he’s having a fit.

  I’d been so afeared and trusted my folks so much that it didn’t come to me till right then that that snake hadn’t crawled into the cookie jar on his own, he must’ve had some help. It was a true shock when I figured out Ma was setting this whole thing up as a lesson!

  When my voice finally came back I said, “Ma! How could you do that?”

  They rolled!

  Pa fought to catch his breathing. “Well, Elijah, seem to me what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for th
e gander.”

  It’s a horrible feeling when the people who’re supposed to raise you go out of their way to scare you for no good reason, and making it worst was that they were getting so much enjoying outta it. ’Sides, fair’s fair, and scaring your ma with something as harmless as a toady-frog calls for getting switched, not getting terrorfied.

  “Why would you do that?” I was crying so hard that the words were getting choked down in my throat. “Ma, you’re always telling me I can dish it out but I caint take it, so if you know that, how could you do this to me? And ’sides that, you know how much I hate snakes!”

  “Mmm-hmm, ’bout the same ’mount that I hate toady-frogs.”

  “But, Ma! Toady-frogs ain’t nothing! Snakes are dangerous! ’Twaren’t no toady-frog that gave Adam and Eve a apple, ’twas a snake! And you ain’t never heard of nothing called a hoop toady-frog, have you? No! That’s ’cause they’re harmless! It’s snakes what’ll kill you!”

  Pa was slapping his sides so hard it’s a wonder he didn’t bust no ribs. You couldn’t do nothing but expect that kind of rudeness from him, but the way Ma was carrying on was terrible shocking!

  “Ma! I thought we were trying to make it so’s I wouldn’t be so fra-gile! Look at me, I caint quit shaking!”

  I could see I was wasting my breath. If people could die from laughing too hard, I’d be a orphan.

  I know it probably ain’t right to feel this way ’bout your own ma and pa, but I was sore disappointed in the way they were acting. Afore I got in bed that night, I even used a stick to flip my pillow over. I was so shooked up that I wanted to make sure Ma waren’t gonna carry on this lesson no further.

  ’Bout the only good thing that came from Ma’s snake-in-the-cookie-jar lesson was there waren’t no one else ’round to see it, not even Cooter. It wouldn’t’ve been no time atall afore everyone in the Settlement knowed ’bout what happened. And even if Cooter and me are best friends, and he wouldn’t do nothing to on-purpose make me look low, I knowed that me running off from that snake like I’d done was such a good story that even a best friend couldn’t’ve been blamed for letting it accidentally slip out. ’Specially a best friend like Cooter.

  The whole adventure would just turn into another one n’em things that would be stuck onto my name forever. And, doggone-it-all, seems like what people enjoy sticking to your name permanent ain’t never good things, they’re always tragical. I ain’t the kind of person that complains for no reason, but I gotta say, I already got one tragedy tied up with my name that is so horrible that it wouldn’t be one bit fair that I’d get another.

  The tragedy that’s so horrible put a scar on me that I’m-a be carrying till the day I die. You’d think growned folks would cry when they saw me, but that don’t happen atall. Even Ma and Pa try to act like it ain’t all that noticeable and that they ain’t ’shamed to have folks see they’re raising me, but I know better.

  It happened when I waren’t nothing but a baby and I caint see why I’m to blame, but that’s when the famousest, smartest man who ever escaped from slavery stood on a tall stage that had got built in the schoolhouse and raised me way up over his head in front of a crowd of people. From the way Pa tells it, the man must’ve had me twenty feet up in the air. He was giving a speech when the accident happened ’cause every time he made a point he’d give me a little shake way up there over top of his head.

  I waren’t even a year old back when Mr. Frederick Douglass and Mr. John Brown visited Buxton. Pa said all the Settlement people had got excited and worked up something terrible ’bout them coming and were dashing ’round trying to polish Buxton up, sort of like the way you’d rub the dirt off your Sunday shoes if you knowed Mr. Travis was gonna give ’em a hard look.

  They rushed to get the new schoolhouse finished so’s there’d be a place big enough for the meeting. They made sure the picket fences in front of everyone’s home had got a good slap of whitewash on ’em. They made all kinds of food and such and they even had a special blanket made out of sewed-together flowers to go ’cross Flapjack the mule’s back so’s he could lead a parade.

  All this fussing was going on ’cause folks in Buxton were gonna celebrate three special people at this big meeting. Special person number one was Mr. Frederick Douglass ’cause he use to be a slave, just like most the folks here in Buxton, and now they say he can talk the bees outta flying to the flowers. Special person number two was Mr. John Brown ’cause folks say, other than maybe Reverend King, the man who started Buxton, there waren’t no white man ever made that was better’n him. And special person number three was me ’cause, it ain’t something I ever boast on, but I was the very first child to be born free in the Elgin Settlement at Raleigh in Canada West, what we call Buxton.

  Mrs. Guest, who’s the best sewer and knitter in the Settlement, had even gone and knitted some fancy clothes for me that Ma still keeps in a peculiar-smelling boxmade out of cedarwood. Me and Ma have a pretty good disagreement ’bout them clothes ’cause to me they look a powerful lot like a girl’s dress and bonnet. When I got growned enough to understand what it was they’d paraded me ’round in, I was just as much ’shamed ’bout the clothes they forced me to wear as I was ’bout the accident twixt me and special person number one.

  Pa said everything was all right with the celebrating until the parade got to the schoolhouse and most of the speechifying was over. That’s when Mr. Douglass came and took me from Ma, walked high up on the stage with me, and held me up in the air over his head.

  Ma said she was worrying right off ’cause Mr. Douglass is a excitable man when he gets talking, and he started bouncing me up and down and swinging me ’round with joy, saying I was a “shining bacon of light and hope for the future.”

  I asked Ma what that meant and she couldn’t say. Don’t seem to me that getting called a piece of meat off of a pig is anything that you should get excited ’bout, but Mr. Douglass thought it was great and folks kept cheering and he kept tossing me up and down till the accident happened.

  Ma says even back then I was a fra-gile child, and the more he tossed me, the more she was fretting. She said I was having a whole lot of fun then I smiled real big and, without no kind of warning atall, the accident happened. I throwed up everything I’d et all over Mr. Douglass’s beard and jacket.

  I learnt from Ma that people who use to be slaves love prettying up any kind of story. She says talking is near the only thing they use to get to do without no white person telling ’em how or when, so they make the most out of it once they get the chance. She says they love making a summer day a lot hotter than it really was, or making rain or drought last a whole lot longer than they really did, and they ’specially love telling you how their great-great-grampa or gramma use to be the king or queen of Africa.

  Bad as my luck is, the people that live in Buxton ain’t choosed to pretty up the fact I’m most proud of myself for, my rock chunking, they’ve prettified what happened twixt me and Mr. Frederick Douglass.

  They’ll tell you I throwed up on Mr. Douglass for a whole half a hour afore Ma came and snatched me away and pointed me out the schoolhouse window. They say I near drownded the man. Some folks swear I throwed up so hard that desks and chairs rose up and floated out of the schoolhouse. Mr. Polite said I throwed up so plentiful that didn’t no deers nor rabbits die in the woods for five years after. He said the bears and the wolfs et my vomit for that long since it was considerable easier for them to do that than to try to run down some animal that waren’t looking to get et.

  And that don’t make no sense. That don’t make no sense atall.

  First off, ’cause they’re always telling us how smart Mr. Frederick Douglass is. They tell us he can talk Greek like a Greek and Latin like a Latin, and anyone who’s that smart ain’t gonna sit and hold no baby over his head that’s throwing up on him for no whole half a hour. I could understand it if he was surprised at first, ain’t no one gonna expect to get throwed up on by a baby boy in a girl’s dress and bonnet. Bu
t if Mr. Douglass is near smart as folks say, seems tome he’d’ve had the sense to aim me out the window his self. Seems to me if I really did throw up for a whole half a hour, only the first five minutes would’ve been on Mr. Douglass, the last twenty minutes would’ve had to be out that window.

  It also don’t make no sense ’bout the bears and wolfs neither, ’cause if they were coming into the Settlement three times a day to eat what I’d throwed up, this would’ve been a mighty unsafe place, but didn’t none of the growned folks act worried ’bout sending their children off to do no chores.

  Back when I was ’bout five or six Ma told me to fetch a bucket and go into the woods behind our home and pick her some blueberries.

  This is probably one of the reasons Ma thinks I’m a fra-gile boy. I remember soon’s she told me to go I got all afeared and shake-ity.

  I said, “By myself?”

  She said, “It ain’t that far, ’Lijah. I’m-a keep watch over you.”

  “But, Ma! What ’bout all those bears and wolfs? What if I’m out there when they come for their supper?”

  She smiled and said, “’Lijah, don’t be silly. Ain’t no wild creatures like that been seen ’round these parts since afore you was borned.”

  I said, “But, Ma, how come everybody keeps telling me ’bout what I done to Mr. Douglass that got all the bears and wolfs coming to the Settlement looking for something to eat?”

  She laughed and told me some of that growned-folks talk, some of that talk that makes it so’s you ain’t never sure ’bout much of nothing. She said, “Son, you got one n’em sets of mind what’s gunn have you fretting ’bout the littlest things. Life’s gunn be a tough row to hoe for you if you don’t learn you caint be believing everything folks tell you, not even growned folks.”

  One minute Ma, who’s got a good head for thinking, tells me I got to respect everything what growned folks say and the next minute she’s wanting me not to believe some of the things the same growned folks tell me! If that don’t leave you scratching your head you got a better brain than me!