freedom; your carnal nature, craving the wide, open spaces that they have procured for themselves. You’re but chattel to them, stolen property, to be squeezed, used, savaged, and occupied.”
Well, all that tinkering and squeezing and savaging made me right nervous, ’specially since he was doing it his own self, squeezing and savaging my arse, working his hand down toward my mechanicals as he spoke the last, with his eyes all dewy, so I hopped to my feet.
“I reckons your oration’s done drove me to thirst,” I said. “I wonders if you have some libations around in one of these cabinets here that would help loosen up my gibbles and put me in the right understanding of some of your deepest comminglings about our peoples.”
“By God, pardon my rudeness! I’ve just the thing!” he said. “Would that I had thought of that first.” He fair dived for his liquor cabinet and pulled out a tall bottle and two tall glasses, pouring me a tall one and a short one for himself. He didn’t know but that I could drink like a man, having already gulped a bit of his hot sauce without his knowing and having absorbed rummy sauce with Pro Slave rebels out west who could hoist a barrel of whiskey down their throats and see double without a hitch. Even your basic pioneer settler church woman out west could outdrink any soft Yank who ate food stored in jars and cabinets and prepared in a hot stove. They could drink him right under the table on the spot.
He shoved the tall glass of whiskey at me and hoisted the short glass for himself.
“Here. Let us toast to the education of a country girl who learns about the plights of our people from its greatest orator,” he said. “Careful now, for this is strong.” He turned his glass to his talking hole and drunk it down.
The effect of that whiskey hitting his gizzards was altogether righteous. He sat up as if electrified. It throwed him. He shook and rattled a bit. His large mane of hair stood on end. His eyes growed wide. He seemed sotted right off. “Whew. That’s a sip, a sot, and a mop!”
“Why, you is right,” I said. I drunk mine’s down and placed the empty glass on the table. He stared at the empty glass. “Impressive,” he grumbled. “You means business, you little harlot.” He filled both glasses again, this time filling both to the brim.
“How’s about one for the plights of our people in the South who ain’t here to hear your speech on ’em?” I said, for I aimed to get pixilated, and his whiskey was weak. He poured another and I drunk mine down again.
“Hear, hear,” he said, and he followed suit, downing his a second time and looking bleary-eyed.
Mine’s was gone, but I growed to like the taste. “What about the pets who is in slavery, too, suffering in all the heat and cold without your word on ’em?” I said. He poured and I downed it again.
Well, that surprised him, seeing me throw that essence down so easy. See, I learned my drinking out on the prairie of Kansas and Missouri with redshirts, Pro Slavers, and abolitionists, of which even the women could drain a gallon or three and not get two-fisted so long as somebody else was pouring. It pushed his confidence a bit, seeing a girl outdo him. He couldn’t stand it.
“Surely,” he said. He refilled both glasses again. “Preach it, my country waif, sing that they needs to hear me everywhere in the world!” He was getting addled now, all his fancy prattling started to drop off him like raindrops bouncing off a roof, and the country in him begun to come out. “Nothin’ like a spree and a jag then a bout!” he barked, and he poured that weepy, sorry, tea-tasting willowy whiskey down his red lane one more time. I followed him.
Well, we just went on like that. We run through that bottle and then runned into a second. The more stupefied he got, the more he forgot about the hanky-panky he had in mind and instead germinated on what he knowed—orating. First he orated on the plight of the Negro. He just about wore the Negro out. When he was done orating on them, he orated about the fowl, the fishes, the poultry, the white man, the red man, the aunties, uncles, cousins, the second cousins, his cousin Clementine, the bees, the flies, and by the time he worked down to the ants, the butterflies, and the crickets, he was stone-cold, sloppy, clouded-up, sweet-blind drunk, whereas yours truly was simply buzzing, for that tea was weaker than bird piss, though when you drunk it by volume, it growed more to your liking and tasted better each lick. By the third bottle of essence, he had gone to pot completely, tripping over his oration and skunking about the birds and bees, which was the point of it all, I reckon, for while I was not even half-mud-eyed, he was bent on not being outdrunk by a girl. But being the great leader that he was, he never let go of himself, though he seemed to lose his fancy for me. The more bleary-eyed he got, the more he talked like a right regular down-home, pig-knuckle-eatin’ Negro. “I had a mule once,” he bawled, “and she wouldn’t pull the hat off your head. But I loved that damn mule. She was a stinkin’ good mule! When she died, I rolled her in the creek. I would’a buried her, but she was too heavy. A fat thousand-pounder. By God, that mule could single-trot, double-trot... .” I rather fancied him then, not in the nature-wanting sort of a way, but knowing that he was a good soul, too muddled to be of much use. But after a while I seen my out, for he was off the edge, wasted and looped beyond redemption, and couldn’t hurt me now. I got up. “I got to go,” I said.
He was setting in the middle of the floor by then, his suspenders off, clasping the bottle. “Don’t marry two women at once,” he managed to burble. “Colored or white, it’ll whip you scandalous.”
I made for the door. He took one final dive for me as I made for it, but fell on his face.
He looked up at me, grinning sheepishly as I opened the door, then said, “It’s hot in here. Open da winder.” Then laid his mighty Negro head, with his mighty hair like a lion’s mane, down flat on his face, and was out cold, snoring when I quietly took my leave.
19.
Smelling Like Bear
I didn’t tell the Old Man about his friend’s exploits. I hated to disappoint him and it didn’t seem proper. Besides, once the Old Man made up his mind about somebody, nothing could change him. If the Old Man liked somebody, it didn’t matter whether they was heathen or reckless or a boy sporting life as a girl. So long as they was against slavery, that was good enough.
He left Mr. Douglass’s house roaring pleased, which meant his face weren’t scrunched up like a prune and his mouth weren’t closed like a pair of tight britches. That was unusual for him. “Mr. Douglass gived me his word on something important, Onion,” he said. “That is good news indeed.” We loaded onto a westbound train to Chicago, which didn’t make sense, for Boston was the other way, but I weren’t going to question him. As we settled in for the ride, he proclaimed loudly so that all the passengers to hear, “We is aiming to change in Chicago for horses and wagon to Kansas.”
We click-clacked along for nearly a day and I fell asleep. A few hours later, the Old Man shook me awake. “Grab our bags, Onion,” he whispered. “We got to jump.”
“Why, Captain?”
“No time for questions.”
I cast a glance outside and it was nearly dawn. In the train car, the rest of the passengers was dead asleep. We moved to a seat near the car’s edge and lollygagged there till the train stopped to take on water, then jumped off. We hid in the thickets on the side of the tracks a good while, waiting for the engine to get up steam and roll again, the Old Man with his hand on one of his seven-shooters. Only when the train pulled away did his hand drop off his hardware.
“Federal agents is tracking us,” he said. “I want them thinking I’m out west.”
I watched the train pull away slowly. It was a long stretch of straight track up the mountains, and as the train huffed up it, the Old Man stood up, dusted himself off, and stared at it a long time.
“Where are we?”
“Pennsylvania. These is the Allegheny Mountains,” he said, pointing at the winding mountains in the direction of the train, which struggled up the straight track to a winding curve. “This was my boyhood home.”
That was the only time I ever heard the Old Man refer to his growing-up years. He watched the train till it was a tiny dot in the mountains. When it was gone, he took a long look around. He looked downright troubled.
“This ain’t no way for a general to be living. But now I know why the Lord gived me a hankering to see my old home. See these mountains?” He pointed around.
