Glory over Everything: Beyond The Kitchen House(21)

“An’ with what you gon’ do that?” he asked.

I hesitated but decided I had no choice except to trust him. “I have some jewelry,” I said. “I can sell it.” I glanced over to read his response.

“I don’ suppose you keepin’ it in that coat a yours?” he said with a half smile.

I nodded and quickly slipped off my jacket. Using my whittling knife, I carefully slit open one of the hidden pockets that sheltered a piece of jewelry. From inside I pulled out my grandmother’s ring, set with a large blue sapphire and surrounded by sizable diamonds. My stomach clenched at the memory of her hand, only months before, smoothing my hair. Was it possible she was dead? I forced myself away from the dark thought and held up the ring for Henry to see. “We can sell this,” I said.

“Boy, you got to use that to find yo’self a place to live. It time you move on. You stay out here, they gon’ peg you for a nigga,” he said. “No sense in that.”

“But where will I go?” My voice rose high.

“You got to get yo’self into the city, look around. Not gonna find no work sittin’ out here. There’s lots a streets full of places where white people got business. We get over there and you go on in, tell them you lookin’ to work. Any kinda work you good at?”

“I’m good at reading and writing, and I can do numbers. And I know how to draw and paint. Grandmother had two of my paintings framed.” Sparks flew when Henry rearranged a log. I rubbed hard at my temples, trying to stop the thoughts from pushing through. “But they were burned up. Everything was burned up!” My voice trembled as I shook my head, trying to dislodge the memory of the great flames that had taken our home. I whimpered, remembering how I had scanned the smoldering rubble for remains of Grandmother, a woman I had always thought of as my mother.

“Boy,” Henry said, “you got to let go a those things an’ keep movin’ on, or they take you down.”

“But I keep thinking of the fire . . . of the pain she was in!” I tried not to cry.

“She don’ feel nothin’ now. She gone. It’s you that feelin’ somethin’. You think that’s what she’s wantin’ for you? Feelin’ the hurt that she’s not feelin’ no more?”

My throat was too choked to answer.

“I bin through enough to know you can’t carry nobody’s hurt. Hard enough to carry your own.”

I nodded.

“Now we got to get back to figurin’ out work for you. Is there any kinda work you can do with all that learnin’ in books?”

“Well, I can paint and sketch pretty good.”

Henry grunted. “I don’ know nothing ’bout that. Best we jus’ get you in there. It not gon’ be hard for a boy that look white as you to find hisself some work.”

The next evening Henry came home with news of a pawnshop where I could go to sell my piece of jewelry. “How ’bout we go in the morning?” he said, as easily as that.

I was so scared and angry with Henry for pressuring me to leave that I couldn’t sleep that night. What if Rankin and the patrollers were still looking for me? Until now, out in the woods and under Henry’s protection, I hadn’t worried about anyone finding me, but what if they came looking for me in the city?

As dawn broke, Henry had me roll my few belongings inside a burlap feed bag. We were deep in a forest, and as Henry led us out through the towering oaks and pines, I started to mark a trail, bending back twigs as he had taught me to do in case I needed to find my way back, but Henry moved so quickly that I soon had to turn my attention to keeping up. We traveled for a good while before we arrived at the outskirts of the forest, where lay a well-traveled road that led into the city. There we set out on what would have been a long walk of some miles had a farmer, driving a one-horse cart, not stopped. “You wanting a ride?” he asked.

Henry nodded to me and I answered, “Yes, we would.” The driver waved me up to my rightful place on the seat beside him, while Henry found room for himself in the back of the cart.

The driver slapped the reins and the horse moved out. Once under way, he glanced over at me. “You and your man going into town?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You from these parts?”

“No, I’m from Virginia,” I answered nervously, until I remembered Henry’s coaching. “If they start askin’ too many questions, you start askin’ some of your own.”

“Are you from here?” I asked. “I mean, is this where you were born?”

“Yessir. Born and raised, but my parents come from Germany. They’re gone now, but they left me a small farm. Me and the boys, I got two of ’em, we raise some cattle and crops like these potatoes.” He nodded back toward his cargo. “We make out all right, bringing carrots and potatoes into the market whenever we got some.”

The man pulled his battered hat low over his head to shade his weathered face, and he gripped the brown leather reins as he guided his horse over the rut-filled road. “That rain last week didn’t help this road,” he said. “Lucky it’s dry today, though. That mud can be rough to get through.”

I bobbed my head in agreement, though I had no experience with driving or difficult road conditions. Until my recent flight from Tall Oaks, I had been so sheltered by Grandmother that in all of my thirteen years I had never left our farm.