It got so that each afternoon at some point Mrs. Huffmaster would stomp onto the front porch where Annie and I sat and bark out, “What is you doin’ today?” and “Where’s my pie?” Just straight out bullying and poking. One morning she stomped up there and said, “That is a lot of shirts you is hanging out on your back line there.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Annie said. “My Pa and brothers has a host of shirts. Changes ’em twice a week, sometimes more. Keeps my hands busy all day washing ’em. Ain’t that horrible?”
“’Deed it is, especially when but one shirt will serve my husband two or three weeks. How you get so many shirts?”
“Oh, by and by. My father bought them.”
“And what does he do again?”
“Why, he’s a miner, Mrs. Huffmaster. And there’s a couple of his workers live here, work for him. You know that.”
“And by the way, where is your Pa and them digging again?”
“Oh, I don’t ask their business,” Annie said.
“And your Mr. Cook sure do have a way with girls, being that he romanced Mary up the road. Does he work in the mine, too?”
“I reckon he does.”
“Then why’s he working the tavern down at the Ferry?”
“I don’t know all his business, Mrs. Huffmaster. But he is a dandy talker,” Annie said. “Maybe he got two jobs. One talking and one digging.”
And on and on it went. Time and again Mrs. Huffmaster invited herself inside the house, and each time Annie would put her off by saying, “Oh, I can’t finish cooking yet,” or point to me and say, “Oh, Henrietta here is ’bout to take a bath,” or some such thing. But that lady was moved to devilment. After a while she stopped being friendly altogether, and her questions took on a different tone. “Who is the nigger?” she said to Annie one afternoon when she come upon me and Annie setting out reading the Bible and conversating.
“Why, that’s Henrietta, Mrs. Huffmaster. She’s a member of the family.”
“A slave or free?”
“Why, she’s a ...” and Annie didn’t know what to say, so I said, “Why, I’m in bondage, missus. But a happier person in this world you cannot find.”
She glared at me and said, “I didn’t ask if you was happy.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“But if you is in bondage, why is you hanging ’bout the railroad down at the Ferry all the time, trying to roust the niggers up? That’s the talk ’round town ’bout you,” she said.
That stumped me. “I done no such thing,” I lied.
“Is you lying, nigger?”
Well, I was stumped. And Annie sat there, calm, with a straight face, but I could see the blood rushing to her cheeks, and see the cheerfulness back out of her face, and the angry calm lock itself into place instead—like it did with all them Browns. Once them Browns got to whirring up, once they got their blood to boiling, they got quiet and calm. And dangerous.
“Now, Mrs. Huffmaster,” she said. “Henrietta is my dear friend. And part of my family. And I don’t appreciate you speaking to her in such an unkind manner.”
Mrs. Huffmaster shrugged. “You can talk to your niggers however you like. But you better get your story straight. My husband was at the tavern at the Ferry, and he overheard Mr. Cook say that your Pa ain’t a miner or slave owner at all, but an abolitionist. And that the darkies is planning something big. Now your nigger here is saying y’all is slave owners. And Cook says y’all is not. Which is it?”
“I reckon you is not privy to how we live. For it is none of your business,” Annie said.
“You got a smart mouth for someone so young.”
Well, that woman weren’t of the notion that she was talking to a Brown. Man or woman, them Browns didn’t knuck to nobody once they got on their hind legs ’bout something. Annie was a young thing, but she flew hot and stood up in a snap, her eyes a-blazing, and for a minute you seen her true nature, cool as ice on the outer part, but a firm, crazy wildness inside there somewhere; that’s what drove them Browns. They was strange creatures. Pure outdoor people. They didn’t think like normal folks. They thunk more like animals, driven by ideas of purity. I reckon that’s why they thought the colored man was equal to the white man. That was her Pa’s nature, surely, jumping ’round inside her.
“I’ll thank you to step off my porch now,” she said. “And make it quick, or I’ll help you to it.”
Well, she throwed down the gauntlet, and I reckon it was coming anyway. That woman left in a huff.
We watched her go, and when she crossed the muddy road out of sight, Annie blurted out, “Father will be angry with me,” and burst into tears.
It was all I could do to keep myself from hugging her then, for my feelings for her was deep, way down deep. She was strong and courageous, a true woman, so kind and decent in her thinking, just like the Old Man. But I couldn’t bring myself to it. For if I’d a pressed up against her and held her in my arms, she’d’a knowed my true nature. She’d’a felt my heart banging, she’d’a felt the love busting outta me, and she’d’a knowed I was a man.
26.
The Things Heaven Sent
Not a week after Annie put her foot in Mrs. Huffmaster’s duff, the Captain upped and laid down the date. “We move on October twenty-third,” he announced. That was a date he’d already called out, and written letters ’bout, and told loudmouth Cook and anybody else he reckoned would need to know it, so it weren’t no great secret. But I reckoned it made him feel better to announce it to the men lest they forget or wanted to hightail out of it before the whole deal begun in earnest.
October twenty-third. Remember that date. At the time, that was two Sundays distant.
The men was happy, for while the girls slept downstairs and was right comfortable, yours truly included, the men was packed like rats in the upstairs attic. There was fifteen up there in that tiny space sleeping on mattresses, playing chess, exercising, reading books and newspapers. They was squeezed tighter than Dick’s hatband, and had to keep quiet all day lest the neighbors or Mrs. Huffmaster hear them. During thunderstorms they jumped up and down and hollered at the top of their lungs to get their feelings out. At night a few even roamed the yard, but they couldn’t venture far or go to the village, and they had gotten so they couldn’t stand it. They took to squabbling, especially Stevens, who was disagreeable anyway, and throwed up his fists at any slight. The Old Man brung ’em in too early, is what it was, but he had no place to store ’em. He hadn’t planned on keeping ’em cooped up there that long. They come in September. By October it’d been a month. When he announced they was ready to make their charge on October twenty-third, that was three more weeks. Seven weeks total. That’s a long time.
Kagi mentioned this to him, but the Old Man said, “They’ve soldiered this far. They can stand another couple of weeks.” He weren’t studying them. He had become fixated on the colored.
Everything depended on their coming, and while he tried not to show he was concerned, he was wound up tight on it—and ought to have been. He had written to all his colored friends from Canada who promised to high heaven they was gonna come. Not too many had written back. He set still through the summer and into September, waiting on them. In early October, he got thunderstruck with an idea and announced he and Kagi was gonna ride to Chambersburg to see his old friend, Mr. Douglass. He decided to take me along as well. “Mr. Douglass is fond of you, Onion. He has asked about you in his letters, and you will make a good attraction for him to come join us.”