Homegoing(42)

“Yeah, they came. Just asked the usual questions, though. Wasn’t bad. I hear they found the man that done it.” Poot was born free, lived in Baltimore his whole life. He’d worked on Alice for about a year, and before that he’d worked on just about every other ship in the port. He was one of the best caulkers around. People said he could just put his ear to a ship and it would tell him where it needed work. Jo had come up under him, and because of that he knew just about everything there was to know about ships.

He payed the hull, spreading hot pitch over the whole thing and then covering it with copper plates. When he was first starting out, Jo had almost died heating the pitch. The fire had been magnificent, and so hot it was like the Devil’s breath, and before Jo knew it, it had started to chase the wood of the deck. He’d looked down at all that water floating in the bay, and then back up at the fire that was threatening to take the whole boat down with it, and he’d asked for a miracle. That miracle was Poot. Quick as can be, Poot had put out the fire and calmed the boss down by telling him that if Jo couldn’t stay, he wouldn’t either. Now whenever Jo lit a fire on the boat, he knew how to tend it.

Jo had just finished the hull and was wiping the sweat out of his eyes when he saw Anna standing and waving from the dock. It was rare for her to meet him after a workday because he usually finished before she did, but he was pleased to see her.

As he grabbed his tools and started walking toward her, he realized something was wrong.

“Mr. Mathison says for you to come to the house quick as you can,” she said. She was wringing her handkerchief in her hands, a nervous habit he detested, for seeing it always had the effect of making him nervous too.

“Is Ma all right?” he asked, grabbing her hands in his and shaking them until they finally stilled.



“Yes.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

He looked at her hard but could see that she was telling the truth. She was nervous because Mathison had never asked to see Jo before, not in the seven years that she and Ma had been cleaning house for him, and she didn’t know what it could mean that he was asking her now.

They walked the few miles to the Mathison house so quickly that the contents of Jo’s toolbox rattled uncomfortably against the box walls. Jo was walking a little ahead of Anna, and he could hear the patter of her small feet struggling to stay in step with his long legs.

When they reached the house, Ma Aku was waiting on the porch, her cough their only welcome from her. She and Anna led Jo into the parlor, where Mathison and a handful of other white men were sitting on the plush white couches, the cushions so full they looked like small hills, or the backs of elephants.

“Kojo!” Mathison said, standing to shake his hand. He’d heard Ma Aku call Jo that once, and had asked them what it meant. When Ma had explained it was the Asante name for a boy born on Monday, he’d clapped his hands together as though hearing a good song, and insisted on calling Jo by his full name every time he saw him. “Taking away your name is the first step,” he’d said somberly. So somberly that Jo hadn’t felt it wise to ask what he was thinking—the first step to what?

“Mr. Mathison.”

“Please, have a seat,” Mr. Mathison said, pointing to an empty white chair. Jo suddenly felt nervous. His trousers were covered in dry pitch, so black it looked like hundreds of holes lined them. Jo worried the pitch would stain the chair, making it so that Anna and Ma Aku would have more work to do the next day when they came in. If they came in at all.

“I’m so sorry to bring you all the way over here, but my colleagues have informed me of some very troubling news.”

A fatter white man cleared his throat, and Jo watched the jiggle of his neck as he spoke. “We’ve been hearing about a new law being drafted by the South and the Free-Soilers, and if it was to pass, law enforcement would be required to arrest any alleged runaway slave in the North and send them back south, no matter how long ago they escaped.”



The men were all watching him, waiting for him to react, and so he nodded.

“My concern is for you and your mother,” Mr. Mathison said, and Jo looked over to the door where Anna had been standing just moments ago. She was probably back to the cleaning by now, worried about whatever it was Mathison had to say to Jo. “As runaways, you might have more trouble than Anna and the children, who are free in their own right.”

Jo nodded. He couldn’t imagine who would be looking for him or Ma Aku after all of these years. Jo didn’t even know the name or the face of his own old master. All Ma could remember was that Ness had called him the Devil.

“You should get your family further north,” Mr. Mathison said. “New York, Canada, even. If this thing passes, there’s no telling what kind of chaos it’ll cause.”

—

“Are they gon’ fire me?” Anna asked. They were sitting on their mattress later that night, after the children had all gone to sleep, and Jo was finally able to explain to her what Mathison had called him over for.

“No, they just want to warn us, is all.”

“But your ma’s old master died. Ruthie tol’ us, remember?”

Jo remembered. Anna’s cousin Ruthie had sent word from one plantation to another to a safe house and finally to Ma Aku that the man who had owned her had died. And they had all breathed easier that night.