The Journey of Little Charlie Read online

  “So what we done was in-ducted seven of the dead passengers to be members and stand in for our corpses.

  “Once one ’em locomotives jump the track and hit the water, everyone inside it gets turnt into large pieces of fried chicken, so identifying bodies wasn’t gonna be something no one put too much effort in.

  “We pult it off, the company was kind ’nough to notify our families and supply each one of ’em with a great big crispy piece of meat in a box for burying.

  “I didn’t have the nerve to do it, but I hear a couple of the other fellas wore disguises and went to their own funerals so’s they could see what folk really thought of ’em. I couldn’t unna-stand what good that information was gonna do ’em. I was jus’ grateful for getting a second chance at making a new life for myself.

  “I ’membered thinking at the time ’tis too bad this can’t be a reg’lar part of living, where we all gets a chance to walk away from whatever train wreck we’s made of our lives and run off to start up building something new.”

  He looked off to the side and spit.

  “Only trouble with that is all you end up doing is building that same old life back again. You jus’ a actor moving on to another performance. You might get a different group of characters, a different set, but in the end you’s starring in the same old stinking play.

  “One morning you gonna wake up and wonder who was the lucky ones, them that went down with the train and was snuffed out quick, or them that lived on and was having to get their train wreck played out slow over years and years.”

  For the first time since we’d been traveling, the cap’n laughed a real laugh and said, “And with that bit of mirth I’m gonna read my Bible.

  “Good night, gennel-men.”

  * * *

  O’er the next few days, I was able to pick me a few kernels of corn out the crap the cap’n kept dishing out.

  For a sample, thieving’s got one of the Ten Commandments all to itself, which means it’s high up on the things that Jesus don’t want you to do, higher up than tossing a sack full of whining kittens in the river or pissing down your neighbors’ wells or tricking someone that’s a known dimwit into giving you their shoes.

  That meant the righteous, Christian thing about going north with Cap’n Buck was that by bringing thieves back to pay for their sins, we’s helping to right a great wrong. That, the cap’n said, was why what we’s setting out to do was more than doing good work, it was doing the Lord’s work.

  I’s having to remind myself of that particular hard with each passing sunrise that took us closer to them thieves and farther off from Possum Moan and the last time Cap’n Buck took a bath.

  I know some folk might say I’m too prissy ’bout it, ’cause don’t too many summer months get away from me without one bath in ’em, but being that cleanly is a part of my nature.

  I couldn’t tell you where that peculiarity come from ’cause don’t neither Pap nor Ma get bothered by being around folk that’s smelling ripish. Or, truth tolt, they don’t get upset by being odoriferous their own selfs.

  But even someone whose nose ain’t sensitive couldn’t help but take notice of the smells the cap’n’s churning out. I got some good ’spicions that the cap’n’s last bath hadn’t happened months afore he went off shopping at that market in Charleston. He must be one ’em folk that believe it’s bad luck to take a bath in May, June, July, or August, plus any month that’s got the letter r in its spelling.

  So, far as this being the Lord’s work, I was going to take his word for it, ’cause it jus’ didn’t sum up that nothing holy would be tied up in something that smelt this bad.

  If someone was hunting us down ’stead of vice the versa, they wouldn’t even need no genu-wine, first-rate, blue-ribbon bloodhound to pick up our trail; even a twenty-year-old, half-dead porch mutt with a snout full of snot wouldn’t have no problems pointing out which direction the cap’n come from and which way he was heading, not even in a hurricane.

  And it didn’t matter how many hints and ’couragements I laid out to him, he jus’ didn’t want no truck with water and soap. Best I could figger, we’d been on this journey for two, three weeks and other than a quick dunking if we’d misestimated the depth of a river, the cap’n hadn’t been nowhere close to letting nothing wet but things that come out his own body wash o’er him and his clothes.

  One the times when we was pulled up for the night near a stream and I was swishing my clothes through the water and using clay for soap, I took a risk and decided to talk to him. I said, “You know, sir, since I’m already doing it, I wouldn’t mind running some water o’er something of yourn too.”

  He looked at me slant-eyed and said, “Boy, this partnership gonna come to a quick and ugly end if I gets one more indy-cation you’s got some interest in seeing me out my clothes.”

  I said, “Why, no, sir, I ain’t got no interest in that, not at all. I’m jus’ thinking some water might loosen up your clothes a bit. You might be more com-fitted if they wasn’t so stiff and would bend easy in the places where most folks’ clothes bend.”

  Good sense stopped me from saying it, but the man smelt worst than something warm that dropped out the south end of a sick northbound goat.

  He leant up on his elbow and looked me dead in my eye and said, “There you go again, acting interested in me and my clothes. You best watch yourself, boy, I ain’t use to brooking no sass from no youngsters, I don’t care how big you is. And I don’t mean maybe.”

  I ain’t no fool, so I let that sleeping dog lay.

  I was jus’ gonna have to be content trying to always ride upwind of the ol’ cap’n. Either that or find something thick and suitable for blocking up both my nose holes.

  I ain’t saying it’s ’cause all the encouraging I done to get him to wash hisself, but the night after I’d tolt him ’bout bathing, I sure did get a surprise.

  All the sudden I was awake. It was late and the moon was playing hide-and-go-seek with some puffy dark clouds, making the woods and the shadows slide ’twixt different shades of gray. The fire had gone cold and the horses was where they’s s’pose to be, still tied to a poplar tree.

  It didn’t ’pear nothing was wrong, but something’d woke me just as sure as I’d got my name called.

  It was the quiet.

  I’d growed so accustomed to the cap’n’s grunting and making noises whilst he was sleeping that when them sounds quit, it caused me alarm.

  The only place he coulda gone was the river, so I cut through the woods to find him.

  When I was right on the river, I heard some low sounds, so I stood behind a tree and took me a peek.

  The moon got hid again and I really couldn’t see nothing.

  When the clouds eased up and let loose of the moon’s light, I could see the cap’n plain and clear.

  He’d took off his shirt and was standing waist-deep in the river, slowly splashing water up on hisself.

  ’Cepting for his hands and neck and face, the cap’n’s skin was white as the belly of something dead, but what really drawed my eyes was his chest. There was a whole set of bumps and knobs all along his ribs.

  I’d seent this afore in Possum Moan; when you summed it up with his bow legs, these was signs that someone had got a bad dose of rickets when they was young.

  Standing there all aglow and lumpity-chested, he ’peared to be something that drugged itself off the bottom of the river ’stead of something that’d walked out into it.

  His gun belt was looped under his arm and ’round his neck, with the holster and pistol hanging behind him on his back.

  ’Twas easy to see he hadn’t had much practice at this washing stuff; he didn’t even bother to rub the water ’gainst his skin, he jus’ let it roll offen him. Plus, if he’d-a took his hat off and used it to scoop up the water, he coulda got a whole lot more on him than the splashes his tiny hands was cupping up.

  And I ain’t got no idea how he thought water by itself was gonna loosen up the grease and
filth that was clinging on him; he needed strong soap, and lots of it, to even start to break the grip that mess had on him.

  The cap’n finally give up on pretending he was trying to wash hisself. He give a long hard sigh and his shoulders sagged whilst he put his hands o’er his eyes. His head rolled back on his neck and his mouth come open, making a quiet moan.

  ’Twas easy to see he was toting a harsh burden. ’Twas almost ’nough to make you feel sorry for him.

  Almost.

  I don’t know how it happened so fast, but one second I’m looking at the cap’n and starting to feel something for him and the next I’m staring down the barrel of his pistol.

  The cap’n said, “Show yourself or I’ll blow you clean into the next district.”

  I done what I was tolt.

  I throwed my hands up and cried out, “It ain’t no one but me, Cap’n! Don’t shoot!”

  He kept the pistol on me with his right hand and waded to the shore where his shirt was, but what he done with his left hand brung back something I’d forgot I remembered.

  I wasn’t but three or four at the time, a tad too young to work the land proper. I woke up one morning and, thinking they was already in the fields, I went to finish my sleeping in Ma and Pap’s bed.

  The curtain was still dividing the room and when I pult it aside, I was surprised to see Ma standing there without no clothes on.

  We both give a yell, and Ma reached down to get her frock with her right hand and, spreading the fingers on her left hand, she put ’em ’crost her chest.

  The cap’n was doing the ’zact same thing, ’cept that Ma hadn’t wanted no one to see her chests, whilst the cap’n didn’t want no one to see his rickets.

  Keeping the gun level on me, he rasseled hisself into his shirt. I done the same thing I done when I’d seent Ma nekkid; I turnt my head away to give him his privacy.

  I couldn’t believe how vexed he was.

  “You gonna get yourself kilt sneaking up on folk, boy.”

  “Sir, I wasn’t doing nothing of the sort; I jus’ woke up and wondered where you was at.”

  He was standing in my face, and started swearing at me, close ’nough that clumps of slob was jumping off the hairs covering his mouth, splashing foulness all o’er my face. But I didn’t care, the pistol that was pressed ’gainst the side of my head was snatching up all my ’tention.

  Without no warning at all, the cap’n quit yelling, pult the pistol out my face, and brung it o’er his head. I knowed better than to reach my hands up; I didn’t want to give him no cause for thinking I was trying to grab his gun.

  I stood there looking down at him, staring dead in his eyes, a-waiting on the pistol-whipping to commence.

  But ’stead, the cap’n froze.

  I ain’t never in my life seent no one who ’peared to be so flummoxed.

  He brung the pistol down to his side and started up sputtering.

  “What the … What is that look you got on your face, boy?”

  I didn’t know I had no particular look on my face; how was you s’pose to look when you was ’bout to get beat down by a gun?

  “You think I ain’t seent that look afore? Has you really got the gumption to stand there bold-face and look at me with pity? Pity?”

  It wasn’t till he said it that I knowed it was the truth. Since he’d first come to our door, looking for his fifty dollars, I hadn’t been looking at the cap’n with nothing but scairtness, but once I seent how low and mournful and twisted up he was in the moonlight, how wore down and weary he was, I knowed he was right. I couldn’t feel nothing but pity for this sad old man.

  He yelled, “Is you blind, boy? You and all your kin ain’t nothing but a half step better than darkies and you got the nerve to look at me with pity in your eyes? How the hell is some sharecropping, stupid, no-reading orphan boy got the nerve to pity me? Me!”

  He finally pult the pistol off me and walked away.

  It didn’t sink in on me right then, it ain’t easy to think ’bout nothing when you’s had a gun drawed on you, but I sure coulda saved myself a lot of trouble if I’d been listening jus’ a little carefuller to what the cap’n tolt me.

  I stayed awake the rest of the night and so did the cap’n.

  When day broke and we et, wasn’t a word passed ’twixt us; we just clumb back on the horses and headed out on the road north.

  * * *

  Jus’ when I was getting use to the rise and fall of riding with the cap’n, he axed this group of folk heading south if we was on the right road for Dee-troit and how far it was.

  We seent we wasn’t ’bout to get no bad steering when, ’stead of having to stop and scratch their heads and try to do some figgering, the folk said, “Keep straight ’head and you’ll be there in half a day.”

  All my imaginings ’bout settling Pap’s debt and rustling up this gang that robbed the Tanners started gnawing at me and I was getting more and more excited and worked up.

  But as we rode into the city, my excitement started getting wore away.

  We come in from the south on a street someone tolt the cap’n was called Fort Street.

  There wasn’t no forts on the street but that wasn’t the peculiarest thing about it.

  What was odd was that you couldn’t smell no grass nor trees nor even soil. ’Twas like a blanket had got dropped o’er the whole stretch, smothering the life outta everything, like someone was holding a grudge ’gainst the plants and weeds and all else that was green. It was right unbearable.

  And the sounds, which started out peculiar and interesting, soon turned into being the sort of confusion that made you want to clamp your hands ’crost your ears.

  Folks was yelling one after the ’nother, wagons and horses’ hoofs was making sharp clacking sounds on the bricks that covered up the road, hammering and banging was coming from each direction.

  As we rode down Fort Street deeper into the city, there was houses and every once in the while a building or two. The farther we rode, the less houses there was and the more buildings until the houses quit altogether, leaving one building or store or shop after the next.

  They was finally crowding one into the ’nother. Where there use to be the normal proper space ’tween buildings, they soon started bumping shoulders ’gainst each other. Fighting to make sure not even a starved-out cat could squeeze ’twixt ’em. The only spaces was when a street interrupted the wall of buildings.

  ’Twas like the land had done something foul or turrible and every street and every building and every road was serving to make it pay by holding it put, fighting to keep what was normal and proper chained down.

  The way the walls and buildings rose up brung to mind the chutes at the slaughterhouse where pigs and such was drove deeper and deeper to where the throat slitting took place.

  The cap’n didn’t have to worry none ’bout me wanting to stay in the city; this place had already died and was jus’ a rotting corpse. I wouldn’t stay here one minute past what I was being forced to.

  How could anyone live here? With no trees, no birds nor other free critter, no water, just noise and buildings that made you feel you was this close to dying.

  Dee-troit was huge! And colored folk was walking ’long on their merry way to who knowed where.

  The cap’n axed the first white people we seent where the sheriff’s office was.

  He decided to start talking to me again. “When you come in someone else’s backyard, you got to show ’em some respect and let ’em know what you up to. I been tolt the sheriff ain’t no Yankee, so we might be in luck.”

  We fount the sheriff’s office and pushed open the building’s door and went in.

  Sitting ’round a desk that was covered with newspapers and a cut-in-half tin can fulled up with cigar butts was two men. One was stout and old and the other’n was younger and skinny and stingy-looking.

  The cap’n said, “Evening, gennel-men, how y’all doing?”

  The old man set his newspaper down, grinned
wide, and said, “I ain’t doing nowhere near’s good as y’all. From the song of your voice, y’all must’ve left South Carol-liney a hour or so ago. I ain’t been down home in twenty-three years, so you knows you doing better’n me.”

  The cap’n said, “Wasn’t but three weeks ago we was there.”

  The old man said, “It sure do feel good to hear someone who don’t talk funny! Where’bouts y’all from?”

  “I’m from the Tanner plantation in the Richland District. This boy’s from Possum Moan.”

  The man reached his hand out and shook ourn.

  “Sheriff Glenn Turner’s the name. This here’s Keegan. Caint say I heard of neither one ’em places, but welcome to Dee-troit.”

  The Keegan man jus’ looked at us and nodded his head. His eyes had the same dead-water look as the cap’n’s.

  The Dee-troit sheriff said, “Anything I can do for y’all?”

  “Thank you kindly, sir. I’m knowed as Cap’n Buck and this here’s Little Charlie Bobo. We’s looking to get holt of some darky reprobates that run off. They been living up here for nigh on ten years. I’m letting you know as a courtesy what my intentions is here case there’s some trouble.”

  “I do ’preciate that. Ever since them fools in Washington passed them Slave Acts, some folk come busting up here looking to grab any darky they run ’crost. Next thing I know, I’m having to file papers on dead folk, both black and white.”

  So it was slaves that had stole four thousand dollars from the Tanners and run off with it! I couldn’t help wondering how much of the money would be left after ten years.

  The sheriff said, “Who is it y’all looking for?”

  “There’s three of ’em, a buck and a wench in their late thirties, their boy gotta be ’round twelve now.”

  “What’s they names?”

  “The ma and pa is Lou and Cletus, the boy is Sylvester. All with the last name of Tanner.”

  The man shook his head. “Ain’t ringing no bells with me. Keegan?”

  “Nope.”

  Sheriff Turner said, “But that don’t mean nothing. Dee-troit’s got more’n forty thousand people; yours is probably laying low. Them darkies that come from the South don’t cause us no problems at all, so we don’t never have no contact with ’em.