Negroes till they was ready to roast corn and eat earworms in his favor. He raised the rafters on that old lodge house. He had them Negroes bellowing like sheep. When he harped ’bout destroying the white man’s slave yard, they hollered, “Yes!” When he railed ’bout taking the revolution to the white man, they screamed, “We is all for it!” When he honked on ’bout busting them slaves loose by force, they piped out, “Let us begin!” But when he quit his speech and held up a paper asking for volunteers to come up and sign on in his war against slavery, not a man stepped forward nor raised his hand. The room was quiet as a cotton sack.
Finally a feller in the back stood up.
“We is all for your war on slavery,” he said, “but would like to know what your specific plan is.”
“I can’t announce it,” the Old Man grumbled. “There might be spies among us. But I can tell you, it ain’t a peaceable march using moral suasion.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I aim to purge America’s sin with blood. And I will do it soon. With the help of the Negro people.”
That curdled my cheese right there, and I decided Canada is where I would stay. I had my pantaloons, shirt, and shoes hidden away, plus a few pennies I’d managed to save up from our Yankee fund-raising. I figured with all them high-siddity niggers in the room, there must be at least one or two kindhearted souls among ’em who would help me get started out new again, maybe tender me some shelter and a bit to eat till I got going enough to pull up my own knickers.
A slim feller with long sideburns and a smock coat near the front of the room stood up. “I allows that is plan enough for me,” the feller said. “I will join up.” His name was O. P. Anderson. A braver soul you will not meet. But I’ll get to O.P. in a minute.
Next the Old Man looked around the room and asked, “Is there anyone else?”
Not a soul stirred.
Finally another feller spoke out. “If you will just tell a little of your battle plan, Captain, then I will join. I can’t sign a contract knowing what kind of dangers is ahead.”
“I ain’t asking you to trot ’round a circle like a horse. Is you wanting to save your people or not?”
“That’s just it. They’re my people.”
“No they’re not. They’re God’s people.”
That started some wrangling and conniption, with some arguing this way and that, some with the Old Man, others against. Finally the first feller who started the ruckus said, “I ain’t afraid, Captain. I escaped slavery and run three thousand miles here on foot and horseback. But I hold my life dear. And if I’m to lose it fighting slavery, I would like to know the manner in which it is to happen.”
Several others agreed with him, and allowed they’d join, too, if the Old Man would simply reveal his plan —where it would happen, when, what was the strategy, and so forth. But the Old Man was stubborn on that count, and wouldn’t turn. They pressed him on it.
“Why is you holding back?” one said.
“Is there a catch?” said another.
“It’s a secret conference, Captain! Ain’t nobody gonna tell!”
“We don’t know you!” somebody hollered. “Who are you? Why should we trust you? You is white, and got nothing to lose, whereas we stand to lose everything.”
That got him, and the Old Man firmed up, he got mad, for his voice thinned out and his eyes growed steady and cold, which they did in them times. “I has proven over the course of my life that I am a man of my word,” he said. “I am a friend of the Negro and I move to God’s purpose. If I say I am planning a war to end slavery, that is word enough. This war will begin here but not end here. It will go on whether you join it or not. You have to meet your Maker just as I do. So go ahead: Work out on your own what you chooses to tell Him when your time to meet Him comes. I only ask”—and here he glared ’bout the room—“that whatever you do, tell no one about what you’ve heard here.”
He looked ’bout the room. Not a soul spoke out. He nodded. “Since there is no one else signing on, our business is done. Therefore, as president of this here body and author of this here constitution, I hereby move to close this—”
“Hold a minute, Captain.” Here a voice come from the back of the room.
Every head turned to see a woman. She was the only woman in the room besides yours truly, who don’t count. She was a short, slender number. She wore her hair under a wrap and a simple maid’s dress and apron. Her feet was covered by a pair of man’s boots. She dressed like a slave, except for a colorful shawl, beaten and worn, which she carried across her arm. She had a quiet manner ’bout her, she weren’t a talker, you could see that, but her eyes was dark and boiling. She moved toward the front of the room like the wind, quick, silent, smooth, taut as rope, and them fellers parted and slid their benches out the way to let her pass. There was something fearful ’bout that woman, silent, terrible, and strong, and I made up my mind to keep away from her right off. I had good practice being a girl by then. But colored women could sniff out my true nature better than most, and something told me that a powerful-looking woman like that could not be fooled with nor did she fool easily. She slipped to the front of the room with her hands folded in across her chest and faced the men. If you passed by the window of that old lodge and peeked inside, you’d’a thunk a cleaning woman was addressing a room full of professors, explaining to them why she hadn’t cleaned the privy or some such thing, for the men was dressed in suits, hats, and bow ties—whereas she was dressed like a simple slave.
“My name’s Harriet Tubman,” she said. “And I know this man.” She nodded to the Captain. “John Brown don’t have to explain nothing to this plain woman. If he say he got a good plan, he got a good plan. That’s more than anyone here got. He done took many a whipping for the colored, and he took it standing up. He got his own wife and children starving at home. He already gived the life of one of his sons to the cause. How many of you has gived yours? He ain’t asking you to feed his children, is he? He ain’t asking you to help him, is he? He’s asking you to help yourself. To free yourself.”
Silence in the room. She glared ’bout.
“Y’all clucking like a bunch of hens in here,” she said. “You setting here warm and cozy, worrying ’bout your own skin, while there’s children crying for their mothers right now. There’s fathers torn apart from their wives. Mothers torn from their children. Some of you got wives, children, living in slavery. And you setting here on the doorstep of change, scared to walk through it? I ought to take a switch to some of you. Who’s a man here? Be a man!”
Well, it hurt my heart to hear her talk that way, for I was wanting to be a man myself, but afraid of it, truth be told, ’cause I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to be hungry. I liked somebody taking care of me. I liked being coddled by Yanks and rebels for doing nothing but shoving biscuits down my throat, and being led ’bout by the Old Man, who took care of me. And before that, Pie and Miss Abby taking care of me. Mrs. Tubman standing there so firm saying them words, reminded me of Sibonia before she met the hangman’s noose, tellin’ Judge Fuggett to his face: “I am the woman, and I am not ashamed or afraid to confess it.” She was a fool to hang for freedom! Why fight when you can run for it? The whole business shamed me worse than if Mrs. Tubman had whipped me, and before I knowed it, I heard a terrible squawking sound in the room, the sound of a scared soul, shouting forth, hollering, “I’ll follow the Captain to the ends of the earth! Count me in!”
It was several moments before I realized all that piping and squawking was my own voice, and I nearly wet myself.
“Praise God!” Mrs. Tubman said. “And a child will lead them! Praise Jesus!”
Well that got ’em all going, and before you know it, every single soul in that room stood up and stumbled over each other in their bowler hats to get to the front of the room to sign on. Clergymen, doctors, blacksmiths, barbers, teachers. Men who never handled a gun or sword. To a man they put their names to that paper, signing on, and it was done.
The room emptied thereafter, and the Captain found himself standing in the empty hall with Mrs. Tubman while I cleaned up, sweeping the floor, for he had borrowed the hall under his name and wanted to return it as he got it. He thanked her as she stood there, but she waved her hand. “I hope you do have a plan, Captain, for if you don’t, we will all suffer for nothing.”
“I’m working on it, with God’s help,” the Old Man said.
“That ain’t enough. God gived you the seed. But the watering and caring of that seed is up to you. You’s a farmer, Captain. You know this.”
“Course,” the Old Man grumbled.
