“Thought they might trot off before they done what the Captain told ’em what to do.”
“The Captain. Who’s that?”
“I already told you. John Brown.”
“And what did the Captain tell you to do?”
“Hive the bees. Ain’t you heard me?”
Cook came to the kitchen, holding a pot of water. Then moved to put some kindling on the fire to make some hot water. “You hive her yet?” he said gaily. He was just a fool. He was the gayest man I ever saw. It would cost him. He’d be deadened ’cause of it, acting a fool.
“She don’t believe it,” I said.
“What part of it?”
“No parts of it.”
He stood up and cleared his throat, agitated. “Now listen, Aunt Polly, we come all this way to fr—”
“Becky’s my name, if you please.”
“Becky. A great man’s ’bout to come here and free your people. I just got a letter from him. He’ll be here in less than three weeks. He needs to hive the bees. Free you all.”
“I done heard all I need to hear about hiving and freeing,” Becky said. “How’s all this hiving and freeing gonna happen?”
“I can’t right tell all of it. But Old John Brown is coming, surely. From out west. Freedom’s nigh for you and your people. Onion here ain’t lying.”
“Onion?”
“That’s what we call her.”
“Her?”
I piped up quickly, “Miss Becky, if you ain’t one to hive or get on board with what John Brown’s selling, you ain’t got to come.”
“I didn’t say that,” she said. “I wants to know what he’s selling. Freedom? Here? He might as well be singing to a dead hog if he thinks he’s gonna come here and get away scot-free with that. There’s a damn armory here.”
“That’s why he’s coming,” Cook said. “To take the armory.”
“What’s he gonna take it with?”
“Men.”
“And what else?”
“And all the Negroes that’s gonna join ’em once he takes it over.”
“Mister, you talking crazy.”
Cook was a braggert, and it clean plucked his feathers to talk to a person that didn’t believe him or talked back to him. Especially a colored. “Am I?” he said. “Looky here.”
He led her to the other room, where the stacks of the mining boxes marked Mining Tools lay ’bout. He took a crowbar to one and opened it up. Inside, stacked in neat rows, were thirty clean, brand-new Sharps rifles, one after another.
I had never seen the inside of them boxes neither, and the fullness of the thing hit me and Miss Becky at the same time. Her eyes got wide. “Glory,” she said.
Cook snorted, bragging. “We got fourteen boxes here, just like this one. There’s more coming by shipment. The Captain’s got enough arms to furnish two thousand people.”
“There ain’t but ninety slaves in Harpers Ferry, mister.”
That stopped him dead. The smile disappeared from his face.
“I thought there was twelve hundred colored here. That’s what the man at the post office said yesterday.”
“That’s right. And most of ’em’s free colored.”
“That ain’t the same,” he muttered.
“It’s close enough,” Miss Becky said. “Free colored’s connected to bondage, too. Many of ’em’s married to those in bondage. I’m free, but my husband, he’s a slave. Most free colored’s got slave relations. They ain’t for slavery. Believe me.”
“Good! Then they’ll fight with us.”
“I ain’t say that.” She sat down, rubbing her head. “Coachman done sent me into a dilemma,” she mumbled. Then she uttered hotly, “This is some damn trickeration!”
“You ain’t got to believe,” Cook said gaily. “Just tell all your friends that Old John Brown is coming in three weeks. We attack on October twenty-third. He gived me the date by letter. Spread that around.”
Now, I was just a young boy dressed like a girl and foolish as a dimwit and not able to hold anybody in their wrong, stupid as I was, but still, I was a young man coming into myself, and even I weren’t that dim. It occurred to me that it didn’t take but one of them colored angling for a can of peaches or a nice fresh watermelon from their master to rouse the whole bit, to spill the beans, and the jig was up for everybody.
“Mr. Cook,” I said. “We don’t know if we can trust this woman.”
“You invited her,” he said.
“Suppose she tells!”
Miss Becky frowned. “You is got some nerve,” she said. “You busted in on Coachman’s property, damn near gave him away to his runny-mouth wife, and now you tellin’
“What I done to him?”
“You endangering his railroad.”
“He owns a railroad?”
“The underground, child.”
“Hold on,” Cook said. “Your Blacksmith ain’t deadening nobody. Onion here is like a child to the Old Man. She’s his favorite.”
“Sure. And I’m George Washington.”
