“Go to bed, Robert,” I said, closing the door behind me.
It was past midnight. I went to the familiar chair next to the fire and sank into its worn leather, sighing deeply. This room always gave me comfort. How grateful I was to Robert for anticipating my need for a fire this evening. How I relied on him. I thought of him now brushing down my coat and hat and then finishing up his chores for the night. Lamps and candlesticks would be collected and carried down to the kitchen, where Molly would clean them in the morning. Then, if he hadn’t already, Robert would go for a final assessment of the small parlor where I took my morning meal. There he would make sure that the grate had been cleaned and the logs set for an early-morning fire. He would check to see that the tea table was covered with a linen cloth, the crease set exactly down the center, and in the morning my tray would hold a crystal salt cellar, a porcelain egg cup with a soft-cooked egg, a slice of ham, and next to it, a small cruet of mustard. There would be butter set on ice in the gleaming silver butter dish, and after I spread it on my warm toast, I would clip off the top of the egg and dip the buttered toast into the warm yellow yolk. Then, while I enjoyed my tea and the morning paper, Pan would likely show up to ask some precocious question that would undoubtedly amuse me.
Pan! How accustomed I was to having him here. Robert was my mainstay, the one who established and adhered to a routine that gave me balance, but Pan—Pan was the one who gave me cheer. And where was he now?
I reassured myself that he was resilient enough to look out for himself until he was rescued. After all, he was already twelve, close to the age that I was when Henry found me. I rested my head back and closed my eyes, reviewing my own capabilities at that young age, but all I could recall was how helpless and utterly terrified I had been on my arrival in Philadelphia.
IT TOOK ME weeks to begin to trust Henry. All of my life, Grandmother had instilled in me that Negroes were sly and dangerous and not to be trusted. Now, though, I was not only eating and sleeping next to Henry, I was also relying on him to see to my needs.
His feral way of life was foreign to me, yet he taught me daily survival skills, and by the time my health was fully restored, I was beginning to enjoy the outdoor independent life. Under my grandmother’s roof, I’d had servants to do my bidding, and my most difficult challenge had been to voice a request. Here, with Henry, I was expected to do my share of the work and was soon responsible for gathering the wood and tending the fire. Rather than viewing this as a hardship, I found it stimulating and woke each morning with renewed vigor.
In the early fall, Henry began to bring up the subject of my going into the city to find employment, but I avoided the issue, for the idea of leaving him petrified me. This man had not only saved my life but continued to provide for me, and daily I grew more dependent on him. Then one evening, after we had just finished a satisfying meal of wild onion and rabbit stew, Henry approached the subject again. We sat near the crackling fire, but the night around us had turned cold.
“The snow comin’,” he said, “an’ I got to move out.”
“Where to?”
“I got another place a ways from here, place tighter for the winter.”
I didn’t look at him but shifted closer to the fire. “Can I come with you?” I asked. “I could pay you if you let me stay.”
“An’ with what you gon’ do that?” he asked.
I hesitated but decided I had no choice except to trust him. “I have some jewelry,” I said. “I can sell it.” I glanced over to read his response.
“I don’ suppose you keepin’ it in that coat a yours?” he said with a half smile.
I nodded and quickly slipped off my jacket. Using my whittling knife, I carefully slit open one of the hidden pockets that sheltered a piece of jewelry. From inside I pulled out my grandmother’s ring, set with a large blue sapphire and surrounded by sizable diamonds. My stomach clenched at the memory of her hand, only months before, smoothing my hair. Was it possible she was dead? I forced myself away from the dark thought and held up the ring for Henry to see. “We can sell this,” I said.
“Boy, you got to use that to find yo’self a place to live. It time you move on. You stay out here, they gon’ peg you for a nigga,” he said. “No sense in that.”
“But where will I go?” My voice rose high.
“You got to get yo’self into the city, look around. Not gonna find no work sittin’ out here. There’s lots a streets full of places where white people got business. We get over there and you go on in, tell them you lookin’ to work. Any kinda work you good at?”
“I’m good at reading and writing, and I can do numbers. And I know how to draw and paint. Grandmother had two of my paintings framed.” Sparks flew when Henry rearranged a log. I rubbed hard at my temples, trying to stop the thoughts from pushing through. “But they were burned up. Everything was burned up!” My voice trembled as I shook my head, trying to dislodge the memory of the great flames that had taken our home. I whimpered, remembering how I had scanned the smoldering rubble for remains of Grandmother, a woman I had always thought of as my mother.
“Boy,” Henry said, “you got to let go a those things an’ keep movin’ on, or they take you down.”
“But I keep thinking of the fire . . . of the pain she was in!” I tried not to cry.
“She don’ feel nothin’ now. She gone. It’s you that feelin’ somethin’. You think that’s what she’s wantin’ for you? Feelin’ the hurt that she’s not feelin’ no more?”
My throat was too choked to answer.
“I bin through enough to know you can’t carry nobody’s hurt. Hard enough to carry your own.”
I nodded.
“Now we got to get back to figurin’ out work for you. Is there any kinda work you can do with all that learnin’ in books?”
“Well, I can paint and sketch pretty good.”
Henry grunted. “I don’ know nothing ’bout that. Best we jus’ get you in there. It not gon’ be hard for a boy that look white as you to find hisself some work.”
The next evening Henry came home with news of a pawnshop where I could go to sell my piece of jewelry. “How ’bout we go in the morning?” he said, as easily as that.
I was so scared and angry with Henry for pressuring me to leave that I couldn’t sleep that night. What if Rankin and the patrollers were still looking for me? Until now, out in the woods and under Henry’s protection, I hadn’t worried about anyone finding me, but what if they came looking for me in the city?
As dawn broke, Henry had me roll my few belongings inside a burlap feed bag. We were deep in a forest, and as Henry led us out through the towering oaks and pines, I started to mark a trail, bending back twigs as he had taught me to do in case I needed to find my way back, but Henry moved so quickly that I soon had to turn my attention to keeping up. We traveled for a good while before we arrived at the outskirts of the forest, where lay a well-traveled road that led into the city. There we set out on what would have been a long walk of some miles had a farmer, driving a one-horse cart, not stopped. “You wanting a ride?” he asked.
Henry nodded to me and I answered, “Yes, we would.” The driver waved me up to my rightful place on the seat beside him, while Henry found room for himself in the back of the cart.
The driver slapped the reins and the horse moved out. Once under way, he glanced over at me. “You and your man going into town?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You from these parts?”
“No, I’m from Virginia,” I answered nervously, until I remembered Henry’s coaching. “If they start askin’ too many questions, you start askin’ some of your own.”