“Yes I is, Annie,” I said from the other side, “and I appreciate your understanding. For I is ashamed to undress around white folks, being colored and all, and having my mind on the upcoming freeing of my people. I don’t yet know the ways of white people, having lived around the colored so long.”
“But Father says you was a friend to my dear brother Frederick!” Annie shouted from the tub behind the door. “And you has lived on with Father and his men for the better part of three years.”
“Yes, I has, but that was on the trail,” I shouted back from my side. “I needs time to ready myself for indoors living and being free, for my people don’t know how yet to live civilized, being slaved and all. Therefore, I am glad you is here, to show me the ways of righteousness behind God’s doings in my life as a free person.”
Oh, I was a scoundrel, for she bit the whole thing off. “Oh, that is so sweet of you,” she said. I heard her splashing and scrubbing and finally getting out the tub. “I will be glad to do it. We can read the Bible together and rejoice in learning and sharing the Lord’s word and knowledge, and all His ways of encouragement and doings.”
It was all a lie course, for I weren’t no more interested in the Bible than a hog knows a holiday. I decided to keep out the house, knowing them arrangements just wouldn’t do, for while she was a bit dowdy compared to the swinging lowlifes I lusted after out west—in fact right dusty-looking in bonnet and hat when she come in, from days of riding from the family’s home in upstate New York—I glimpsed a good part of the inner package when she throwed herself in that tub, and there was enough there, by God, ripe and plump, to build as much of a fire ’round as I could imagine. I couldn’t stand it, for I was then fourteen, near as I can tell it, and had yet to experience nature’s ways, and what I knowed of it filled me with dread and wanting and confusion, thanks to Pie. I had to fill my mind with other doings lest my true nature show itself. I didn’t have a decent bone in my body, God seed it, so I resolved to keep off from her and out the house “hiving the bees” as much as possible.
That didn’t look to be easy, for we was charged to look after the Old Man’s army, which begun arriving in twos and threes right after the girls did. Luckily the Old Man needed me to consort and help him with his maps and papers, for that afternoon he rescued me from the kitchen by calling me to the drawing room directly to assist him in his drawings and plans. As Annie and Martha scampered ’bout the kitchen, preparing it for big work, he pulled several large canvas scrolls out his box and said, “We has finally raised the ante. The war begins in earnest. Help me spread these maps on the floor, Onion.”
His maps, papers, and letters had sprouted some in size. The small packet of papers, news clippings, bills, letters, and maps he once crammed into his saddlebags back in Kansas had growed to piles of papers thick as the Bible. His maps was scrolled on large canvas paper, unfurled to nearly as tall as me. I helped him spread them on the floor and sharpened his pencils and fed him cups of tea as he set on his hands and knees poring over them, scribbling and planning, while the girls fed us both. The Old Man never ate much. Usually he gobbled down a raw onion, which he bit into like an apple and washed down with black coffee, a conglomeration which made his breath ripe enough to draw the wrinkles out a shirt and starch it clean. Sometimes he throwed a little hominy down his gizzards just for variation, but whatever he didn’t eat, I polished off for him, for food was always scarce around him. And with more men arriving by the day, I knowed by then to furnish my innards as much as possible for the day when there wouldn’t be no furnishings to line it, which I expected wouldn’t be far off.
We worked like that for a day or two till one afternoon, poring over his map, he said to me, “Has Mr. Cook held his tongue whilst you was here?”
I couldn’t lie. But I didn’t want to discourage him, so I said, “More or less, Captain. But not to the limit.”
Staring at his map on all fours, the Old Man nodded. “As I figured. It doesn’t matter. Our army will be here in full within a week. Once they’re here, we will gather the pikes and go to arms. I goes as Isaac Smith in public ’round here, Onion, don’t forget it. If anyone asks, I’m a miner, which is true, for I mines the souls of men, the conscience of a nation, the gold of the insane institution! Now, give me my report on the colored, which you and Cook has no doubt been hoeing and cultivating and hiving.”
