We arrived at Rochester station in the early morning, and as the train pulled in, there upon the platform stood a Negro unlike any I’d ever seen. He was a stout, handsome mulatto with long dark hair parted in the middle. His shirt was starched and clean. His suit was pressed and flat. His boots spotless. His face was shaved and smooth. He waited still as a statue, proud, erect. He stood like a king.
The Old Man descended the train, and the two shook hands and embraced warmly. “Onion,” he said, “meet Mr. Frederick Douglass, the man who will help lead our cause. Frederick, meet Henrietta Shackleford, my consort, who goes by the name of the Onion.”
“Morning, Fred,” I said.
Mr. Douglass looked at me coldly. Seemed like the bottom of his nose opened up two inches as he peered down.
“How old are you?”
“Twelve.”
“Then where is your manners, young lady? What kind of a name is Onion for a young lady? And why are you dressed in that fashion? And why do you address me as Fred? Don’t you know you are not addressing a pork chop, but rather a fairly considerable and incorrigible piece of the American Negro diaspora?”
“Sir?”
“I am Mr. Douglass.”
“Why, howdy, sir. I am here to help hive the bees.”
“And hive them she will,” the Old Man said cheerily. I never seen him knuck to somebody the way he knucked to Mr. Douglass.
Mr. Douglass looked me over close. “I suspect there is a pretty little piece of pork chop under all them rags, Mr. Brown,” he said. “And we will forthrightly teach her some manners to go with them fair looks. Welcome to Rochester, young lady.”
“Thank you, Mr. Fred,” I said.
“Mr. Douglass.”
“Mr. Douglass.”
“She a spritely little package, Douglass,” the Old Man said proudly, “and has showed pluck and courage through many a battle. I reckon it is the highlight of her life to meet the man who is going to lift her people from the chains of the underling world. Onion,” he said, clapping Mr. Douglass on the back, “I has been disappointed many times in my life. But this is one man on whom the Old Captain can always depend.”
Mr. Douglass smiled. He had perfect teeth. The two of them stood there proudly, beaming there, standing on the train platform, white and colored together. It made for a pretty picture, and if I’d had one of them picture-taking contraptions that had just come out in them days, I’d have recorded the whole thing. But the fact is, like most things the Old Man done, his business didn’t work out the way it was drawed up. He couldn’t have been more wrong about Mr. Douglass. Had I knowed what was coming, I expect I’d have taken that little derringer I kept from my Pikesville days out my pants pocket and popped Mr. Douglass off in the foot, or at least cleaned him up with the handle of it, for he would short the Old Man something terrible going forward, at a time when the Captain needed him the most. And it would cost the Old Man a lot more than a train ticket to Rochester.
The Old Man laid up at Mr. Frederick Douglass’s house for three weeks. He spent most of that time in his room, writing and studying. That weren’t unusual for him, to set over paper and write, or walk about with a pocket full of compasses, scribbling notes and consulting maps and so forth. It never amounted to nothing, but three weeks was a long time for me to sit inside anybody’s house, and for the Old Man, I expect it was worse. The Captain was an outdoor man. He couldn’t sit at a hearth long, or sleep on a feather bed, or even eat food that was cooked for civilized people. He liked wild things: coons, possum, squirrel, wild turkeys, beavers. But food prepared inside a proper kitchen—biscuits, pie, jam, butter—he couldn’t stand the taste of them things. So it was suspicious that he set there that long, for that’s all they ate in that house. But he hunkered down in a bedroom by hisself, coming out only to use the privy. From time to time Mr. Douglass went in there, and I overheard them two jawing with raised voices. I overheard Mr. Douglass at one point say, “Unto the death!” but I made nothing of it.
