The kindly parson may have been amused by my inventions, but my brother was not. He told me our Dear Mother had made him swear he would always be truthful, and that his oath extended to me, even if I’d been too young to swear it myself, and that every time I told a lie an angel fell from Heaven.
For days after that I went around looking for fallen angels, but never encountered one, so I come to believe my big brother must have been mistaken, even if he did believe such a thing. But as strict as he can be about never lying, I’m pretty sure Harold won’t mind if I bend the truth to stay alive.
Of course, that’s before I find out what they want me to lie about.
First thing Smelt does is force the prisoner to sit up. There’s something pitiful about a man with a sack on his head. Knowing he can’t see what’s going to happen next, and how every little noise makes him flinch. The light of dawn has come into the lean-to shelter and I can see the man’s hands are all swollen black from where he’s been tied up.
“You hear me in there, Festus?” Smelt demands. “Count of three I’m cutting off this sack, and if you don’t want your head cut off, too, you better tell us what we want to know.”
Out of Smelt’s wide leather belt comes a thick-bladed knife with a wicked curve, just right for slicing a hog’s throat, or a man’s. He slips the shining blade up under the flour sack and slices it open with one flick of his wrist. The sack falls away and I’m looking at two white eyes as big as saucers. Two white eyes in a face the color of creamed coffee.
“Festus is our darky friend, ain’t you, Festus?”
The white eyes squint up at Smelt and I can tell the darky man is fearful but he’s angry, too. “I ain’t Festus,” he says. “Never was.”
“You’re Festus if we say so,” Stink insists, waving his fist in the man’s face.
The man gives his head a stubborn shake and glares up at Stink. “My name is Samuel Reed and I am a free man, born to a free woman in the state of Rhode Island!”
Smelt slowly crouches down, holding the big knife. He smiles in a way that makes me feel sick to my stomach. If a snake could smile it would look just like him. “This ain’t Rhode Island,” he says, “and we don’t care who you was born to, or where you got the crazy notion that a darky can talk the same as a white man. All we care about is this. Tell us where you hid them runaway slaves.”
“They are not slaves!” the man insists. “They have been set free by President Lincoln.”
“Yeah? If they ain’t slaves no more, why they running away?”
The man refuses to answer. The way he’s keeping still and quiet, it’s as if he expects to die before the sun gets much higher. Might be he’s praying, too, without saying the words aloud.
“Best get it over with,” Stink suggests.
“Last chance,” Smelt says, pointing with his knife. “Speak or meet your Maker.”
The darky man gives his head a little shake. You can tell he’s scared of the knife, and doesn’t want to die, but he won’t say where the runaway slaves are hid, even if it kills him.
I’m scared of that knife, too, but something in me needs to pipe up, and I can’t stop my mouth from saying, “You might just as well throw your money in a hole in the ground!”
“What?”
Smelt and Stink turn their attention to me.
“You can’t sell this man if he’s dead,” I point out.
Stink looks as if he’s fixing to punch me, but Smelt stops him. “Hold on,” he says. “The boy may have a point. We could forge owner papers easy enough, and collect the bounty.”
“Bounty?” I ask, figuring the more talk, the less call for a knife.
“Ten dollar bounty for every slave returned to Maryland,” Smelt tells me. “Emancipation don’t cover the border states. That’s a legal fact.”
They’re talking about the Emancipation Proclamation. I heard men arguing about it down at the general store, where they smoke and chaw of a Saturday afternoon. Seems like when President Lincoln declared that slaves in the Confederacy were free, he didn’t dare free the slaves in Union states like Maryland, Delaware, or Kentucky, in fear the border states might join the rebels. The proclamation is more like what they call a promise to the future, when the war has been won. Don’t count for much now, not if you’re a slave.
Smelt and Stink get to talking and decide they’ll leave the darky man alive for now, at least until the boy helps them locate where the runaway slaves are hid. The boy who’s going to lie his way onto the Underground Railroad. The boy who’s going to make them rich.
Must be that being scared makes you stupid, because it takes a while for me to realize the boy is me.
STINK MULLINS TAKES CHARGE of Samuel Reed, the darky man, while me and Smelt head off into the pine forest, looking for a trail.
He’s tied a rope around my neck, like you would with a mule or a dog, and if I pull too hard the rope tightens.
“You’re a quick little fella,” he says. “Best keep in mind you can’t outrun my knife.”
To demonstrate, he flicks his knife at a tree trunk and hits it square in the middle, with the blade buried deep.
There may come a time when I can get loose and run for it, but for now I’m going along, doing what he says. Walking through the soft leaves, smelling the spruce and pine all around us, and the ferns that tickle my knees.
About a mile from the lean-to camp we finally come upon the trail. By the look of it, wagons and horses have passed by recently. Smelt rubs his scraggly beard and nods to himself and says, “We ain’t got that far to go, so we best get your story straight.”
“My story?”
“Who you’re pretending to be. Family hiding the fugitives is Brewster,” he says, as if expecting me to be impressed. “You heard of the Brewster Mines?”
I shake my head.
“Ain’t heard of much, have you? Jebediah Brewster come here from Pennsylvania and made a fortune in gemstones. Now he’s selling lead and copper to the army and using the money to send slaves to Canada, where they can’t be touched. I know for a fact the old man has got thirty fugitives hid somewhere on his property but I don’t know where. That’s what you’re going to find out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Run away and we’ll kill the darky for sure, and sell your horse, and then hunt you down.”
“I promise not to run away.”
“You’re a liar, boy. Your promise don’t mean nothing to me,” he says with a sneer. “Only promise counts is this: If you run, my knife will find your back.”
“Yes, sir.”
We aren’t but half a mile on the trail before the ground starts to slope away and the trees thin out, and the sky gets big and full of sunlight. At the bottom of the hill is a fine stone wall, straight as a schoolmarm’s ruler, and beyond the stone wall, set like a jewel on the crown of a soft green hill, is a big house. An amazing house. A grand house made of stone and brick, with white pillars in the front and curtains in the windows and slate tiles on the roof and chimneys on every corner.
I’m thinking I’d give anything to live in a house like that, and be rich and happy and never have to worry about anything. And then Smelt yanks on the rope around my neck and says, “The best lie starts with the truth, boy. Tell ’em your name is Homer Figg and you’re looking for your brother. Tell ’em your horse got stolen. Tell ’em you’re hungry.”
Smelt takes the rope off and shakes me, like he wants to make sure I’m paying attention. “You understand? Just get inside the house.”
“Yes, sir.”
“They’ll likely take you straight to the kitchen. Brewster’s cooks will fuss over a skinny runt like you, and want to fatten you up with biscuits and butter and honey. Sound good?”
“Yes, sir.” It does sound good.
“Women who work in the kitchen will know everything that’s going on in the house, and in the mines, too. All you have to do is keep your eyes and ears open.”
“Yes, sir.”
“After supper you make an excuse and go out to the privy. I’ll be waiting.”
I start to say “yes, sir,” but he puts his finger on my lips and says, “Ssshh. Don’t lie to me. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking how to get around old Smelt. Thinking how to sell me for butter and biscuits. All you have to know is this: If you don’t come to old Smelt, old Smelt will come to you.”
Then he lets me go.
THE HOUSE ON THE HILL gets bigger and bigger the closer I get. There are puffy white clouds reflected in the windows and the clouds are moving against the sky, and that makes it look like the whole house is moving, too. It’s like I can feel the earth turning and have to be careful where to put my feet. The whole thing makes me so dizzy that the gentle green hill seems to get steeper and steeper and finally it tips up and I’m facedown in the grass.
Fainted from lack of food. All that talk about biscuits and butter and honey, it must have reminded my stomach that it hasn’t had food since I wolfed down the slops intended for Squint’s hogs, and started the whole terrible business of Harold getting sold to the army.
Soft, soft grass. Better than a pillow. Makes me forget I’m hungry, makes me forget everything.
Next thing I’m floating. No, not floating, I’m being carried, and there are gentle murmuring voices that sound like running water, and then I’m in a warm place and somebody is holding a cup to my lips and telling me to drink.
“Just a small sip,” the voice says, and for a moment I think it’s our Dear Mother and then I wake up and see big gray eyes studying me. Big gray eyes and rosy red cheeks and a helmet of fine white hair. “Turkey broth,” she says. “Good for what ails you.”
The lady with the gray eyes helps me sit up. She holds the cup while I sip the broth. Nothing ever tasted so good or made me feel so warm and safe and alive.
“Do you know where you are?” she asks.
“Big house,” I say.
“The Brewster house,” she explains. “I’m Mrs. Bean.”
“Brewster bean,” my tongue says.
“I’m the cook hereabouts,” she gently explains, “and when they find a starving boy in the front yard, it’s only natural they bring him to me.”
Mrs. Bean takes the empty cup and says there’s more where that came from, when I’m ready. She folds her plump arms and looks at me kind of sideways, as if trying to see inside my head. “Are you simple, dear? Or is it hunger makes you ramble?”
I take a deep breath and try to clear my head. Then I tell her who I am, like Smelt suggested, and that I’m looking for my brother, and that my horse got stolen, and leave out where I come from exactly, so nobody can send for Squinton Leach.
Seems like Mrs. Bean believes most of it because she starts nodding and saying, “Oh dear, oh dear,” and I decide it’s time to shed a tear or two for my lost brother, to really make her believe me, and the next thing I know she’s hugging me and patting my head and promising that Mr. Brewster will find Harold.
“When Jebediah Brewster sets his mind to a thing, watch out!” she declares, dusting at her white apron. “Mr. Brewster will be back later, and you’ll tell him what you told me. Orphan boy searching for his brother. That will get his attention.”
Meantime Mrs. Bean makes it her mission to fill my belly. She asks would I rather have a plate of meat and gravy, or pancakes and bacon, and I go for the pancakes. While the bacon is sizzling in the big iron fry pan, the kind our Dear Mother called a “spider,” I sit next to the stove and watch, because Mrs. Bean, she’s something to see, the way her plump hands fly around the room like pale white birds, bringing things out of cupboards and jars and larder boxes.
“Can’t help notice you lack shoes,” she says, stirring flour into a blue mixing bowl. “Did you lose them along the way?”
Figure there’s been enough truth for one day, so I say, “Yes, ma’am. Lovely pair of boots, made from the skin of a timber rattler.”
“A rattlesnake! Oh my!”
“Yes, ma’am. Snake had me cornered when Harold wrassled it to death. Snake tried to spit in his eyes and blind him, but Harold was too quick. Broke its neck with one flick of his wrist.”
“Amazing,” she says. “A snake with a neck.”
“Must have been thirty foot long.”
Mrs. Bean nods. A little puff of flour comes up from the bowl. “And then your brother skinned the snake and made you boots, is that what you’re telling me?”
I thought about that, and decided modification was in order. “Not exactly. Fact is, Harold did skin the beast, but I made the boots myself. Had a matching belt, too. They took everything.”
“The thieves who stole your horse. What did you call that horse, now? King something or other.”
“Prince Bob. Bob’s a thoroughbred racehorse. Three years old and faster than a bee sting.”
“Remarkable,” says Mrs. Bean. “And where was it you said you came from?”
“Oh, up in the north,” I say vaguely. “Little no-account place.”
“Yes, but it must have a name, mustn’t it? Every place has a name, no matter how small.”
“Smelt,” I tell her in a moment of inspiration.
“Excuse me?”
“Smelt. That’s what they call it. On account of the swamp nearby.”
I’m congratulating myself for not calling it Stink. Stink would be too much to believe, but Smelt is subtle. Smelt is rarified.
“Never heard of Smelt,” Mrs. Bean allows, fixing her calm gray eyes on me. “Thought I knew every village in the state of Maine, at least by name. But I’ve never heard of Smelt.”
I almost say that Smelt had never heard of her, either, but think better of it. Nothing like the prospect of pancakes to make me smart-mouthed and sassy.
Mouth shut, I take the time to survey Mrs. Bean’s magnificent kitchen. The room is bigger than Squint’s whole house, with a fry stove and a bake stove and a full fireplace with a Dutch oven. Pantry has more canned goods than the general store in Pine Swamp, and there are three different slate sinks, one for washing dishes and one for rinsing vegetables, and one just for the heck of it, I guess. Loads of cupboards with glass fronts, copper pots of every size, rock-maple countertops, a butter urn Mrs. Bean says belongs in a museum. And drawers. There are big drawers and little drawers and bread drawers and knife drawers, and linen drawers, and drawers for extra things left over.
Mrs. Bean suggests I stop opening and closing the drawers and sit down to pancakes and bacon. She pulls out a chair and scoots me up to the kitchen table. There on a big white china plate is a pile of pancakes I only ever dreamed about, because Squint never gave us more than stale bread and sour molasses. Pancakes slathered in yellow butter. Steaming pancakes drowned in warm maple syrup.
Figure Smelt must have killed me for sure, and I’ve woke up in Heaven. Or maybe I’m still so hungry I can’t think straight. Then I decide that good as the pancakes taste, this can’t be Heaven because there aren’t any clouds or golden harps or angels with whispery wings. And God would be there, too, wouldn’t He, if this was really Heaven?
That’s when he comes in from the parlor, dressed all in black. God Himself.
THE MAN WHO LOOKS LIKE God Himself is Jebediah Brewster, owner of the house. He’s got a long, flowing white beard, piercing blue eyes, and a booming voice that rattles the china when he bellows, “Hello!” A voice that freezes my brain and makes it hard to answer simple questions like, “What be thy name, son?” and “Where be thy home?”
Quaker talk.
“The young scallywag calls himself Homer and says he’s from a place called Smelt,” says Mrs. Bean, weighing in. “The only truthful part of him is the part that’s hungry.”
“Smelt, hey? Very interesting,” Mr. Brewster responds in his kindly way. “All God’s children are from somewhere. The precise location matters not. Thee be welcome in this house, Homer, whoever thee be and whatever has brought thee here.”
Mr. Brewster sits down at the table, adjusts his
black water sleeves, and announces that he will have a glass of cold water, if Mrs. Bean will be so kind as to oblige. He thanks her, takes the glass in both hands, and drinks it in three long gulps. His big throat moves under his beard and you can hear the water going down, like it was leaking out of an old hand pump.
“The finest spring water,” he announces, dabbing delicately at his beard with a linen napkin. “That’s what drew me to this particular location. Clear, cold spring water, steeped in the best minerals. It keeps the guts healthy and purifies the blood. I intended to bottle it as an elixir, and sell it by the drop, but in digging out the spring we encountered gemstones, and that became my business. Just one of the Lord’s many surprises.”
Mr. Brewster then folds his long-fingered hands like he’s praying, and studies me for a while. As if he’s looking at my soul, if I got one, and finds it wanting. Makes me fit to fidget, being studied like that, but I manage to hold still. Because both of ’em are waiting for me to tell a lie, I can sense that much.
“Does thee know much about gemstones, Homer?” Mr. Brewster asks, sweet as can be.
Something in me wants to say my third cousin Curtis McTavit has been trading gems for his whole life, and recently come into possession of the world’s largest ruby that he got off the widow of Blackbeard the pirate, but that the ruby is cursed. Ever since he got the ruby, poor McTavit lives in fear. He’s barricaded himself inside his own dungeon and believes that the ruby speaks to him in the ghostly voices of all it has cursed. Course I don’t have a cousin named Curtis McTavit, or any cousin I’m aware of, and I clamp my jaw shut until the urge passes.
“He’s gone quiet,” Mrs. Bean observes suspiciously. “Maybe it was starving made him talk so.”
Mr. Brewster takes a deep breath and nods to himself, as if satisfied. “Homer Figg,” he announces. “Thee may be an innocent stranger or thee may be a spy sent by those who oppose us, but one thing is clear to me. God has a hand in this, and He would not have us turn away a hungry child.”