Crossing Ebenezer Creek Read online

  She returned with a pouch. In it, a tin. In the tin, wrapped in a handkerchief, twelve blue glass beads. “Was a Christmas gift from Pa to Ma. Wore them in her hair most Sundays.”

  “She must have looked lovely.” Caleb imagined Mariah on a sunny Sunday with blue glass beads in her hair.

  Caleb’s conscience took him to task for sharing so little about himself, as Mariah recalled her pa making her ma a new spinning wheel, taking delight in carving tiny flowers on the whorl.

  And there was the cedar trunk he made. And a fiddle for her one Christmas. “Like his, only smaller, made of a gourd and groundhog hide. Bow from bamboo and horsehair.”

  “And I’m guessing your pa taught you to play.”

  Mariah nodded. “His fiddle was his peace at the end of a day. Not much for fast tunes. Windin’ down kind mostly.”

  “You still got your fiddle?”

  Mariah shook her head. “Wore that thing out.” From the pouch she brought out a chisel and a small wooden mallet. “These my main keepsakes of my pa.” From her apron pocket she brought out the jackknife. “This was his too.”

  “Whoa!” Caleb laughed. “I’ll be sure not to rile you. You could do some real harm with that thing.”

  Mariah looked on edge.

  “What, did I hit a nerve, Mariah?” he asked, looking down at the bone-handled knife in her hand. A six-inch blade, he reckoned. “Mariah, tell me you’ve only had to use that knife for cutting twine, bark, and such.”

  “Yeah, twine, bark, and such.” She smiled.

  Caleb didn’t believe her. It was a put-on smile, but he wasn’t going to push it.

  Caleb was almost finished with the timberdoodle’s long, needle-thin beak when Mariah told him about times her pa blacked out the windows, brought out a speller from beneath a floorboard in the back of their cabin, then had her and her ma gather around the hearth.

  Caleb handed Zeke the timberdoodle.

  “My bird?”

  “Yes, your bird, my boy,” replied Caleb with a tug on Zeke’s cap.

  “That’s precious,” said Mariah.

  You’re precious, thought Caleb.

  “Thanky,” said Zeke.

  “Most welcome,” said Caleb.

  As Mariah delighted in Zeke zigging and zagging his timberdoodle, Caleb imagined her lips upon his, his hand—

  Once again her joy was gone. Her eyes were no longer on her brother, but on something—or someone—behind him.

  Caleb turned around. In the distance stood Jonah gawping, looking vexed.

  GOODNESS LIKE MINT

  Onward Mariah marched to the somewhere place, feeling the strain by day six. A little more jittery when a bobcat yowled or cannon boomed. A little more anguished by scenes along the way bringing to mind the end of days.

  Chimneys the only things left standing in some towns.

  The stench from the burning—homes, buildings, gin houses, bales of cotton.

  Pillars of smoke, pillars of fire.

  Women wailing, children’s hoarse cries. But silent as the grave was the white girl Mariah spotted spearing a pocket gopher on this day.

  Stringy blond hair. Stick-skinny legs a mass of scabs and bruises. Bruises on her face, neck. And welts. The girl’s dress, crusty-looking and tattered, was a burlap sack and never bleached. “Flour” was stamped across the girl’s back. She moved like it hurt to walk.

  The girl picked up the gopher, put it behind her back as they passed by. Mariah gave her a slight smile.

  “What you lookin’ at, you filthy nigra?”

  Mariah felt pity more than anything else. If goodness was like mint … She sighed, thinking of a bright March day long ago and making a mental note to tell Caleb about it when she saw him that evening.

  “Whatcha gon’ do with all them stones?” she asked her ma.

  They were behind their cabin. Mariah dangled on the post and plank fence around their patch. All winter they’d been feeding it ashes, eggshells, bones, fish heads, other scraps. Now planting time was on the horizon. Her ma had already turned the soil. Her pa had just brought over a wheelbarrow full of stones.

  “Stones are for the mint,” Patience explained. “Putting in mint this year.”

  “But can’t nothin’ grow in stones,” Mariah puzzled, crinkling her nose.

  Patience beckoned her over, pointed to the back corner of the garden patch, told her that’s where the mint would live. “It’ll spread if it ain’t hedged,” her ma explained, then told her how mint roots roam under the soil and send up shoots inches, feet away, making more roots, and those roots then roam, send up shoots, making new roots. “And up comes more mint. If I don’t wall it off, mint will take over the garden. We’ll wind up with no corn and cabbages, no beans and tomatoes, no peppers, no goosefoot, no squash, no okra.”

  Mariah asked if the mint could spread all the way out to Riddleville Road if there were no stones in its way.

  “Possible,” said Patience.

  “Could the roots roam and shoot up, roam and shoot up, over all of Georgia—over the whole Southland?”

  “Wouldn’t that be a sight!” Patience replied. “And just imagine what a fine world this would be if goodness was like mint.”

  “And nobody troubled it with stones.”

  Her ma’s mint left Mariah’s mind during a halt before a row of dilapidated double-pen cabins. Two boys, one cream, one caramel, stood in the door of one. Big heads. Large, empty eyes. Matted hair. Spindly. No shoes. One, about Zeke’s age, was sucking his thumb.

  Mariah waved. “Come on!” she called out. “Tell your people to come on! Come to freedom!” She was about to fetch the boys when a rheumy-eyed, rickety man, bent almost in two, came to the door. “Git inside!” he growled. After the little boys obeyed, the old man shut the door.

  What would keep that old man from taking freedom? Too broke-down to care anymore? Was he like Josie? Staying because someone he loved got hired out? His son? Was he the little boys’ pa? Where was their ma?

  Josie, baby Sarah, Little Jack. How were they faring? Had Nero taken off? If he didn’t, Mariah hoped he got the hire-out and was put to hard labor building barricades, digging trenches, and whatever else Rebels needed doing to free up a white man to fight. Serve Nero right. Mordecai had told Mariah that hire-outs died like flies, something they kept from Josie. If Nero didn’t take off and didn’t get hired out, Mariah prayed to God he wasn’t giving Josie torment.

  Of all the men to be on guard against—pattyrollers, Judge Chaney’s brother with his thick, fleshy fingers, tarrying a fortnight most times, Master Robert—Nero was the worst.

  First time was in the barn when she was milking a cow. Nero crept up behind her, mumbled something about her growing so pretty, laid a hand on her back. “You mine,” he slurred.

  All on fire, Mariah grabbed an empty pail, swung it with all her might, left Nero clutching his side when she fled.

  Weeks later Nero tried to shove her into the corncrib. By then Mariah went nowhere without her jackknife. She whipped it out in time to ward off Nero.

  “Second time you refuse me,” Nero had barked. “Ain’t gon’ give you but so many chances. Six, thas all. You don’t be mine six time I come for you, I will tell Miss Callie you due a whippin’.”

  Along with Miss Callie’s madness, Mariah had to deal with Nero’s cat-and-mouse.

  Him looking about to charge on her when she was getting a wash pot going, then steering clear and snickering.

  Him peeping at her through the cookhouse door, making nasty gestures.

  Him trying to sneak up on her when she headed to the chicken coop.

  Him once just staring at her, mumbling about extra dresses, more food, and how she was to respect the white in him.

  Her shoving the cedar trunk against her cabin door. Nightly.

  The day before Yankees descended on the Chaney place, Nero had preyed on Mariah for the sixth time. In the barn again. She didn’t use a pail to fend him off this time or her jackknife. She
used her knee.

  “Yo’ time up!” Nero raged, clutching his groin. “You fool heifer, yo’ time up!”

  Mariah knew the only reason she didn’t get whipped was because, what with all the commotion coming from Sandersville, Callie Chaney kept Jonah and Nero busy hiding silver and other valuables.

  More than once Mariah was tempted to tell Jonah about Nero’s dirty ways—tempted to even turn it into a tale of all-out outrage. She knew Jonah would hurt Nero, maybe even—

  She couldn’t. Couldn’t set Jonah up for hard trouble. Hitting a slave driver was second to hitting a white man. If Jonah hurt or even killed Nero, he could be made to suffer a hundred different ways.

  Just as Mariah prayed that no outlaws came to the Chaney place, so she prayed that Nero had gone away. She chided herself for not trying harder to talk Josie out of staying. But then she remembered Josie’s resolve, reminded herself that she could no more have talked Josie out of staying than Josie could have talked her out of leaving.

  Mariah had to leave, doubly so for Zeke’s sake. Her brother would never be strapping-strong like Jonah. With the way Zeke’s mind came and went, there’d be a limit to the work that he could do. The older he got, the harder Callie Chaney would be on him. Maybe even label him useless.

  No more. That worry was behind her now. All the wickedness too. That thought alone helped Mariah soldier on.

  No more, she reminded herself as her feet burned, stomach griped, temples throbbed.

  No more, she thought when a wagon wheel got stuck in a rut and she had to help with the unloading, the pushing, the lifting, the loading up again.

  No more, Mariah thought when reminding herself that it was only right that she and Miriam walk the most. And now Ben. His pony died during the night.

  On this day, like other days, Dulcina and Zeke always rode in the wagon. Mariah learned early on that if on two feet Zeke was apt to stop and spin, Dulcina to wander off, like she sometimes did when they camped. Just last night, Mariah heard stirring in the tent, then saw Dulcina poking her head through the flaps. As Mariah got her settled back down, she saw the strangest look in her eyes. Delight.

  “Texas.” Meowed, caterwauled, whispered—that was still the only word Dulcina uttered. But now Dulcina sometimes fell into lapses of silent talking. No sound, only lips moving. Mariah feared things were getting worse, feared there was nothing she or others could do except keep close watch.

  Dulcina was beyond repair, Mariah had concluded, but she held out hope for Zeke, growing more curious by the day—sometimes by the hour.

  “Big worm have feet?” He pointed at a red-black-yellow-ringed creature slithering at the base of a tree.

  “Ma, when you gon’ learn me to fly?” Mariah followed his gaze. She shared in his delight at the sight of a bluebird on the wing.

  Though feeling poorly, with the brutal sun helping none, Mariah wanted her brother to keep asking questions.

  Of the red-black-yellow-ringed slithering thing, “No, Zeke, it don’t have feet and it ain’t a worm. It’s a king snake.”

  “Keen snake.”

  “King snake,” she repeated. “And as some snakes do awful harm, you steer clear of all. You hear me?”

  Zeke nodded rapidly as Mariah had done years ago. It was during one of what her pa called their Sunday “excursions.”

  If they set out for the river, her pa didn’t just help her perfect how to bait, how to wait, when to slack. He also had a lesson on something else, like how to tell sweet from brackish water.

  Fond memories flowed of her pa teaching her how to trap a possum versus rabbit.

  Names of trees—hawthorne, spruce, buckeye, sweet gum.

  How to tell a deer’s disposition by the bleat.

  And birds—coot, grackle, meadowlark, mourning dove, timberdoodle, bobwhite, quail—Mariah’s pa taught her their names and had her listen closely to their songs.

  “Learn all you can,” he always said. “Never know what will come in handy.”

  Just as he had given her the gift of curiosity, so now on the march Mariah encouraged the same in her little brother—though she had never asked her pa to teach her to fly.

  “No, Zeke, I won’t be teaching you to fly.”

  “But …”

  Mariah saw Zeke strain to string a thought together. “You learned me to swim like fishies,” he finally said.

  “That’s different.” Mariah laughed.

  “Why?”

  “People can swim. People can’t fly.” She waited for Zeke to ask “Why?” stumped as to how she’d answer.

  But she didn’t have to. Her brother’s mind had moved on, to a chipmunk at the edge of the road. It twitched its nose, reared up on its hind legs, and twitched its nose again. Zeke twitched his nose, then gave the critter a salute.

  Watching her brother in his new bliss, Mariah tried to reclaim that joy she felt when she joined the march, tried to get back that feeling that she could run, run, run, not faint. Now …

  Hazards, hardships—nothing new. But now hourly, daily, the ground beneath her feet was always shifting. Not a minute passed that Mariah wasn’t grateful for the journey, but she was tired of the march.

  Tired of still being trapped.

  But the march was her only hope. Couldn’t take off and make her way to a place of her choosing, not that she had any place to choose. New York was a fantasy. Milledgeville was the only place she’d ever been. When she learned that they were camped at Louisville or Bostwick—they were just words. Mariah had no idea where she was. And only one certainty: clinging to Yankees was clinging to freedom.

  As they neared the campground, Mariah thought about her ma and her mint, Zeke and his peppermint sticks—mostly shards by now. By day the pouch was tied around his rope belt. At night, looped around a wrist. Again and again Mariah urged her brother to eat his sweets. “After a while all you gon’ have is a bag of dust.”

  Again and again Zeke shook his head, then said, “My freedoms!”

  Again and again Mariah thought, If only freedom came with wings. She wouldn’t be on a march to another’s somewhere place, but high in the sky soaring on wings like that golden eagle’s, scouting out her own somewhere place, a place where goodness grew like mint.

  SO BEAT DOWN

  When Caleb checked in on them that morning Mariah looked so beat down. What a shame after their glorious yesterday together. Fitful sleep, he guessed. When he learned about Ben’s pony, he knew that didn’t help.

  Before he headed out, Caleb made a mental note to be on the lookout for something that might cheer Mariah up. Dress? Straw hat? Cloth for a head wrap? Taffy? Then he remembered that he already had something that would lift her spirits.

  Earlier that morning, Captain Galloway showed him on a map the line of march for the next few days. As Caleb studied the route, he had a hunch about the final destination. When the captain revealed that one division, with General Kilpatrick’s cavalry, would form a flying column, striking out toward Augusta “to convince Rebels that we are gunning for Augusta”—Caleb’s hunch was even stronger. It was a place he was eager to see, a fine place to make a new beginning. At least it was before the war.

  Caleb started doing rough figures in his head. Printing press. Ink. Paper. Printer. Rent. Days ago, when he told Captain Galloway about his dream, he learned the captain had a cousin in the business, knew a thing or two.

  Caleb tallied up the figures the captain had given him, thought about the sum he’d left Atlanta with, Sherman’s pay. Not bad. The enterprise was doable.

  But there was something he forgot to factor in, something that wasn’t on his mind when he latched onto his dream. Till now he was the only one in the picture. Figured he could make the shop double as home till he got the business built up. But now he wanted Mariah in the picture. He’d need to do more figuring, taking into account Mariah and Zeke. And when the war ended, he’d probably have to get supplies from the North with so much of the South in wreck and ruin. Everything would be mo
re expensive. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Caleb whispered to himself, when the squad reached a farm. He decided to scratch the printing press and heed Captain Galloway’s advice to contract with a printer at the start. That would save him about a thousand dollars.

  Seeing Mariah in the picture made Caleb remember the moment in the wagon when he had an urge to tell her about himself. Skirting her questions wasn’t far from lying. Caleb felt bad about that.

  Caleb, you can trust me. With your life. With anything else.

  Of course he wanted to trust her. If he didn’t, how could he love her?

  Tonight. Tonight will be the night, he decided, as he loaded sacks of rice into his wagon. Tonight he’d tell Mariah his story. If he paired it with news of the likely somewhere place it would all go down easier.

  LASHING FURY

  Lonesome and pale was the late afternoon moon. Mariah was so grateful to be out from under the broiling sun.

  Thankful, too, that Mordecai and Chloe had volunteered to haul water.

  The tent. She was strong enough to tackle that after getting Zeke and Dulcina settled. Maybe once she had the tent up she’d crawl inside, grab a quick nap before supper. Just a few winks. Just a little quiet near the end of a day that started off with trouble. And there was more to it than her waking up tired and Ben’s tears over his pony.

  At daybreak, Hagar had lashed out at Miriam for spilling water on their fire. “You clumsy fool, you!”

  Minutes later two other women got into a shouting match over clothespins.

  About an hour after Caleb headed out to forage, two men Mariah only knew by sight got into a shoving match over a can of beans. One pulled out a razor.

  “Saddlebag!” Chloe had called out.

  Mariah helped Chloe tend to the one got his cheek slashed, while Mordecai talked the other man down.

  Mariah was nearly done with the tent when Jonah came over loaded with firewood.

  “Need a word,” he said.

  Mariah looked up, troubled by his tone. “Say on.”

  “Private.”

  Jonah put the firewood down, took the mallet from her hand, helped her up. “Miss Zoe?” He nodded at Zeke and Dulcina, then dropped the mallet on the ground.