The Journey of Little Charlie

  He said to me, “All right, Little Charlie Bobo, we’s in a real pickle here, but if you do everything I says, we gonna be in Dee-troit in time for supper, laughing ’bout this.”

  He tapped the gun on Syl’s head and said, “And you gonna be where you wished you was, in your mammy’s arms picking cotton in South Carol-liney ’stead of strutting ’round Canada pretending you’s white. Big as you is, you’s a three-thousand-dollar darky if ever there was one.”

  He said to me, “I promises you, Little Charlie, you do everything I says and we’ll be fine. You hear me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  We felt the train rock toward the station side of the tracks.

  I said, “They hooked the train back up!”

  The cap’n closed his eyes for a second, then said, “They ain’t hooked nothing; there’s a gang of men boarding the train on them cars in front and behind. They gonna come at us from both ends.”

  He let out a puff and said, “All right. This is it, lads. Both of y’all do ’zactly as I says or we’s all gonna die right here.”

  He pushed Syl into the lane and followed behind.

  He steered Syl down onto the top step of the train, then fast-fast squozed up behind him. He bobbed his head from side to side. I figger that’s so’s no one could get a clean shot at him without taking a chance on hitting Syl.

  “Follow close behind, Little Charlie.”

  The crowd falled back, but they wasn’t so far back that we couldn’t hear the gasps and moans they made once they seent the sit-a-way-shun.

  The cap’n yells so’s everyone can hear him, “My son’s armed too, and even if none of y’all’s heard of me, I knows you heard of him.

  “That’s right, this here’s Baby Face Bobo. Young as he look, he done tracked down sixteen runaway slaves by hisself. Only had to kill two of ’em in the process. Y’all don’t wanna mess with him. Y’all might get us, but at least twelve a you’s gonna be escorting us to damnation.”

  At first I thought the cap’n was making me a part of his family so’s to bluff these people, but then I seent he wasn’t doing nothing but tying our fates together, making it so no one could see me for what I really am, a young innocent boy ’stead of being a child of the devil.

  With them words, the cap’n had jus’ writ my funeral speech.

  He yells back at me, “Baby Face, stay close, but I’m begging you, don’t start killing no one jus’ yet.”

  I was a goner.

  I helt the gun at my side and stepped behind the cap’n and Sylvanus.

  More grumbling come from the crowd.

  The cap’n whispered, “Holt that gun up, boy.”

  I didn’t move.

  He hissed at me, “The first shot’s going into your playmate here and the second’s yourn less’n you holt that gun up.”

  I raised the pistol so’s everyone could see it.

  More sighs and sharp drawing-ins of breath come from the crowd.

  The three of us moved real slow. We was bunched up so tight and moving so jerky and clumsy we must’ve looked like a hunnert-year-old man with six legs.

  Finally, the cap’n reached the last of the steps and let Syl drop onto the platform. He stepped off behind him.

  The cap’n yelled, “Sheriff, I wants three horses, which I’ll leave at the ferry in Windsor. If I don’t get ’em, this boy is dead. Y’all got five minutes and the clock is running. I ain’t to be trifled with.”

  The sheriff took a couple of steps toward us with his hands helt up. But afore he could say a word, a old, dried-up colored woman hollered out, “Oh, my Lord! No! No! No! It caint be!”

  She raised her hand, pointing a shaking, crooked black finger in our direction.

  “I knows this devil! I knows him! He done cleant hisself up, but I knows that voice! I done heard that voice every night in my sleep for nine year. You’s Massa Tanner’s man, Cap’n Buck!”

  She walks slow from the crowd and her mouth was tore wide open. Things was moving so peculiar that I can’t say if she was screaming or not, but it ain’t really important; the look on her face was ’nough to make every hair on my body stand up like porky-pine quills.

  She was pulling on her hair so hard her eyebrows was halfway up her forehead.

  “Has you forgot me, Mr. Cap’n? Sir?”

  Her body and face was twisted to make you think demons had grabbed holt of her.

  “Do you remember my girl? Did you even know her name? She was Rose O’Sharon. Do you hear me? Rose O’Sharon was her name. Has you forgot?”

  She tried screaming the girl’s name again, but the words ripped her throat apart.

  The cap’n turned to look at the woman …

  Things started in moving real slow, giving me plenty of time to think good and clear.

  I could say what happened next happened ’cause I’d done a whole lot of pondering on it, or it was something I’d been waiting on, waiting for the ’zact right minute to do, but them would be lies.

  I really done it ’cause of that man who use to work on the railroad. His words had got blowed so deep under my skin that only way they’d come out was when the worms reclaimt ’em.

  I wasn’t ’bout to make the same mistake once ’gain. I wasn’t ’bout to make however much time I had left living be a slow-moving train wreck. I knowed the cap’n was evil ’nough to pull this off and get us all to Dee-troit. I knowed Sylvanus and his ma and pa was gonna be slaves ’gain. And I knowed it would be my doings that caused it.

  I ’membered everything Pap tolt me ’bout shooting and looked in the pistol’s cylinders to check the bullets.

  My heart dropped into my gut.

  The cap’n didn’t trust me ’nough to give me a loaded gun. The chambers was all empty.

  I ’membered when I first met the cap’n and how I thought I outweighed him by eighty pounds and could real easy smash his head in with my fist. I hadn’t lost no weight since then; fact is, we’d been eating so good up in Dee-troit and Canada I’d probably put on another ten, fifteen pound.

  And I was thinking ’bout Pap and how the cap’n had made it so that he was tore up by nightmares from watching a baby get cat-hauled.

  A baby.

  I knowed after the next minute I was either gonna be a dead boy or someone riding to Windsor with a broke-up heart.

  The last straw that busted the wagon’s axle was when something the cap’n had said in the moonlight in the river finally made itself clear to me. It was only one word and it exploded in my head like a boiler.

  He’d called me “orphan.”

  I swung my right fist as hard as I could, aiming at the cap’n’s face.

  Time was slow ’nough that I seent his nose flatten out and spread o’er his cheeks, looking like someone had slapped him in the face with a piece of brownish Georgia ham.

  I felt bones crunching and wasn’t for sure if they was his or mine.

  It didn’t really matter; the cap’n’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he turnt Syl a-loose and staggered a bit. Syl fell to his knees jus’ in front of the cap’n and started struggling to get holt of his breath.

  I’d mis-underestimated how hard-head the cap’n was. I’d just stunned him for a second; I hadn’t knocked him down at all.

  The cap’n turnt to me and his eyes was aglow with something past hating.

  He said, “It figgers. I should’ve give you the same treatment I give your ma. And after all I done for you …”

  He raised the pistol and leveled it at my head.

  Syl pushed the cap’n’s arm up right as he fired. The bullet whistled o’er my head and smacked itself into the train, shattering glass.

  Then, the cap’n had been right, the mob was on us.

  Syl got crowded up on by a bunch of folk and shoved and pushed and pulled till the last I seent of him, he was disappearing through the door of the train station.

  The cap’n’s squeal was the same as a pig that was on the wrong end of a dull knife.

  Then
there was a swarming done by the fanciest-dressed colored folk that ever come together, piling into the spot where I was. I felt a hunnert different hands, black and brown ’long with a good sprinkling of white ones, snatching and tugging and poking and grabbing at every part of me.

  Then, doggone it all, time really slowed down, letting me ponder my pruh-dic-a-mint.

  If someone was to ax me aforehand, I’d-a said I couldn’t think of nothing worst than getting jumped on by a whole vexed mob.

  But it didn’t take long to see that laying a good beating on someone is problemish for a mob once they decide that’s what they gonna do.

  First off, everyone’s too squozed up, one atop the ’nother; there ain’t near ’nough space for no one to throw a proper punch. Soon’s someone rears back to slug you, their elbow’s bound to bump into someone else that’s looking to snatch hair out your head and most the power gets sapped out the punch.

  Second off, and I ain’t for sure this happens in every mob beating, but in mine they was too excited and worked up to really do the damage they could’ve did if they jus’ calmed down some. They was willy-nilly throwing punches and kicks and swinging sticks and wasn’t hitting me with but one or so blows outta ten.

  Why, they bloodied one the ’nother’s noses jus’ as good as they bloodied mine! I knowed it wasn’t me what got no good licks in, ’cause I didn’t throw one punch. The farthest thing from my mind was hitting someone; I jus’ wanted to roll up in a ball and get left alone.

  Even though my lip got busted pretty good, I got through the trouble with all my teeth still setting in the proper spots in my jaw, but I seent one colored man lose a front tooth to a vicious left cross that missed me by two whole foots!

  But one peculiar thing a mob can do that I ain’t never seent happen when you’s getting whupped by one person, or even three, is to beat you clean out your clothes. Which was a real tragedy ’cause these was the first and only set of new clothes I ’spect I’ll ever get in my life.

  Jacket, necktie, shirt, britches, shoes, socks, all of ’em got snatched and ripped to rags and floated off somewhere. Each time someone connected with a punch and drawed back their fist, a bit of my brand-new, store-bought clothes was gripped up in their fingers. I s’pose if I was wearing unmentionables, they’d-a got beat off me too.

  But the Lord works in mysterious ways; it was two of the oddest things that come together and saved my life. And believe it or not, the first was getting beat nekkid.

  The second is the man the cap’n called a suit-wearing go-rilla.

  Once them folk beat my clothes offen me, ’twas that man that throwed hisself into the crowd and kept ’em from finishing me off.

  “What is wrong with you? Stop! Stop this instant! This is nothing but a young boy,” he screamed. “Can’t you see the only hair he’s got is on his head!”

  I looked down and was so flat-out embarrassed that I was grateful when a colored man who had big blacksmith arms was patient ’nough to take careful aim with his punch and knock me cold!

  The pain near kilt me, but I pushed open the heavy door to the Dee-troit jail.

  I guess it could be said I helped Syl get free of the cap’n, but there was more I had to do.

  The sheriff barely looked at me afore he dropped his nose back in the newspaper. Keegan coughed and spit.

  “Well, I stands corrected,” the sheriff said. “I didn’t think I’d be seeing anything of y’all again.”

  “Well, sir, I didn’t think we was gonna make it back neither. ’Twas turrible right from the minute we set foots in Canada.”

  The Dee-troit sheriff said, “Don’t say I didn’t warn y’all.

  “Your pard-nah outside?”

  He set his reading specs aside and looked at me for the first time.

  “And what in sweet baby Jesus’s name happened to you? You sure ain’t no kid no more. You musta been dragged ’twixt Toron-o and here behind a hoss.”

  “Well, sir, that ain’t what happened, but I ’spect the feeling of that ain’t much different than what did go on.”

  “Do tell, youngster, do tell.”

  “Do you mind if I sit, sir? I’m still aching near everywhere.”

  “Go ’head, boy.” He pointed at a chair. “How’d you get to be in such a state?”

  I eased myself down in the chair, but it didn’t help much; even my rear end was hurting.

  Once I got my breathing back, I said, “We run the boy down in a town called Saint Catharines and got him into the train with us. We brung him with no problems down to this horrible city by name of Chat-ham.

  “The train stops and a crowd of the best-dressed colored folk you ever seent carrying sticks and waving guns gathers up and say we got to give the boy back. Well, once I seent the odds we was bucking up ’gainst, I was all for letting him go, but the cap’n seent things different, says he ain’t standing for that at all, said he ain’t never backed down from no darkies in A-mur-ica and wasn’t ’bout to start the bad habit of doing it in Canada.

  “The cap’n was a man of his word too; wouldn’t back down from a crowd of two, three hunnert yelling and screaming colored folk. Dared ’em to do anything to him.”

  “You don’t say? Did they listen to him?”

  “I think some of ’em must’ve, ’cause once they commenced tearing him apart, it do seem a good bit of ’em jus’ stood to the side cheering folk on and didn’t join in.

  “But them that did, ooh-ooh-ooh-wee! They didn’t give him one ne’er-you-mind; they was busting to take him up on his dare. Last I seent of him, he was bloodied and buck-nekkid at the foots of a crowd of near a thousand colored folk and pre-turbed white folk too.

  “Syl … the runaway boy we near caught … got clean away.”

  The Dee-troit sheriff says, “Well, if they was so set on killing y’all, what you doing here?”

  Telling ’bout getting beat so bad you ended up buck-nekkid was too embarrassing. Like Pap use to say, “Sometimes a good lie can smooth the roughest road for folk.”

  I tried to smooth the road for both me and the sheriff. “I can’t really say for sure, sir. Seems I was already knocked ’way from my senses when they choosed if they was gonna let me go.

  “When I come to, first thing I notice is that every bit of me from head to toe is sore and achy like it ain’t never been afore. I fount out even your eyelashes can be a-throbbing.

  “Then I sees I’m sitting in a jail cell with the door wide open. I ain’t never been in no jail afore, but I figgered one the points of being in one is that the door is always s’pose to be locked on you.

  “That’s a right peculiar way to wake up, so I’m waiting to see if I can remember how I got there. ’Bout that time the Chat-ham sheriff come in and welcomes me back to being awoke.

  “I axed him how long I’d been out and he says nigh on five days.

  “I axed him what happened to the cap’n and he looked kind of nervous and said, ‘I’d rather not discuss that at this moment.’”

  Something else I wasn’t gonna tell Sheriff Turner was how ha-miliating it was when I noticed I was wearing the biggest set of diapers you ever seent.

  I said to Sheriff Turner, “I tried getting off the cot I’m laying in and that’s when I seent my left foot’s all bandaged up and too sore to walk on.

  “The Chat-ham sheriff tells me my little toe on my left foot was so chawed up that the doctor had to cut it offen me. Tolt me it was done by a colored doctor too!

  “But that ain’t the bad news you’d think it is; now whenever I goes barefoot, I’ll look down and get a good reminder of my pap! He lost two of his toes and I jus’ lost one, but that do give us something in common.

  “So I leans back on the cot and wait to see what part of me was gonna quit hurting first.

  “Truth tolt, I starts getting com-fitted jus’ laying ’round. It give me lots of time to think ’bout what I was gonna do next.”

  The sheriff said, “So what you come up with?”

&nb
sp; There was one other thing I sure wasn’t ’bout to tell these two. Whilst me and the Chat-ham sheriff was waiting on the train to take me back to Windsor, he’d handed me the old wore-out rucksack he’d been carrying.

  I’d tolt him, “Thank you, sir. What’s this for?”

  The Chat-ham sheriff set off looking discom-fitted again.

  He started up blinking like there’s salt in his eyes and said, “Young man, some of the time in the heat of the moment things happen that aren’t exactly intended. The contents of that bag are simply the remains of one such occurrence. Please check to make certain everything’s there.”

  I squatted down and set the rucksack on the floor of the train station.

  Soon’s I opened it a familiar stank chawed at my nose. The cap’n’s hat was atop of everything. I took it out and set it on the floor. Underneath the hat was the cap’n’s good suit of clothes. Or what was left of ’em. Under that was a boot, a belt, and a shrunked-down Bible.

  Banging ’bout at the bottom of the bag was the slave-hunting badge and the cap’n’s six-shooter.

  I looked at the sheriff. I didn’t know what to say.

  He tolt me, “We know you say the two of you weren’t related, but perhaps you could see these are returned to his family.”

  I was grateful the sheriff had took me out the cap’n’s family, but I didn’t want nothing to do with his garbage.

  “Sir, that’s kind of you, but I don’t know none his kin.”

  I gripped the cap’n’s gun by the barrel and reached it toward the sheriff.

  “Could you take this and I’ll toss the rest in the trash?”

  He said, “Well, I’ll take the gun but only to dispose of it. I’ll see that all of his goods are thrown out.”

  He started blinking again when he said, “While the people here may have a tendency to become a bit overwrought and inappropriately enthusiastic concerning some matters, son, none of them are thieves.”

  His hand went in his jacket and come out with a envelope and the cap’n’s wallet.