When I Crossed No-Bob Read online

  No one says so, but it appears this Mr. Tempy has traveled a ways. Miss Irene says he lives in a place on the Leaf River right outside Taylorsville.

  They are on their way to Mobile to drive the fattest hogs I ever seen and sell one hundred dollars' worth. He has brought sweet potatoes and cornmeal from a barrel marked u.s. He says years ago the federal government put him in charge of distributing federal food because they didn't trust the Confederates, but the food was so slow to get down south, most everyone has forgotten about it by now.

  "If you're not a Confederate," I say, "does that make you a Yankee?"

  Mr. Frank laughs and says the war's over, but he looks at Mr. Tempy to see what he says.

  "I'm neither Confederate nor Yankee, Miss Addy, though I once fought for the feds. Not everyone can be so easily divided into two groups of either-or. Some would call me a deserter, but I believe I've deserted no one. I'm for peace. I'm for family. Period."

  "I think my momma told me about the likes of you," I say. "You one of those Jones County deserters?"

  "Who might your momma be?"

  "She's an O'Donnell," Mr. Frank says, as though this should explain everything, and that gets me riled.

  "She says about three hundred well-armed deserters have a little town called the Free State of Jones," I say. "She says you all are traitors and you all should be shot."

  "Addy," Mr. Frank says.

  "Addy, you're being rude to our guests," Miss Irene says. "You come inside with me this instant."

  "No, no. She's fine," Mr. Tempy says. "Miss Addy, I would love for you to pay us a visit where we live under the tall pines and canebrakes. Be our guest. Besides, most of the folks you call deserters have moved on. Mostly it's a few of us and the Choctaw. We're free of everything there. Free of judgments from family, friends, and foes. Come whenever you'd like. I think you might like it there."

  "Yes, sir," I say. "Thank you kindly. But I have supper to tend to." I go inside and start fixing up the cornbread. I'm flustered, the way I see some chickens are sometimes, and I'm not sure why.

  From inside, I can hear Mr. Frank telling Mr. Tempy about the general store he wants to start. Mr. Frank would have to take regular runs to New Orleans for supplies. Mr. Tempy says he'd be happy to go along with him—safety in numbers, he says. He goes off for a while about the great cities of America before and after the war—Charleston, Natchez, Chicago, and more. Mr. Tempy says traveling now can be dangerous. You have to carry a gun, always loaded. Bandits and thieves are on the road, at the ready, knowing you're loaded with either cash or supplies. They don't just take. They kill too. I walk over toward the open door to hear Mr. Tempy whisper about a story I already know. Two brothers rob men, rip open their bellies, take out their entrails, then stuff the bodies with stones or sand to sink them in the rivers.

  "That'd be the Harpe brothers," I say, walking out onto the porch. I want them to get this right. "That all happened on the Natchez Trace way before the war and they're both long dead. I know some say the O'Donnells did that, but those were the Harpes, and they cut off Big Harpe's head and nailed it in the fork of a tree out near Robertson's Lick."

  Mr. Frank and Mr. Tempy stare at me. "It's true," I say. "Then some old woman went and took that old Harpe head years later because she needed to pulverize the bones of a human skull for some remedy."

  Mr. Tempy laughs.

  "It's not make-believe," I say. "It's all true, what they say. My pappy says those Harpe brothers were as mean as the stories say."

  Miss Irene skirts me away and says we got some cooking to do.

  "You think she knows whatever happened to that Little Harpe, Wiley?" Mr. Tempy asks Mr. Frank.

  I shout behind me, "He joined up with Mason's gang and got put on trial in New Orleans." Miss Irene slams the door shut, but I yell through it. "They cut off his little head too. Stuck it on a pole along the trace, north of Rodney." Then I open the door a crack and listen.

  "For Pete's sake, Tempy. Don't encourage her," I hear Mr. Frank say. "You think she knows as many good stories as she knows bad?"

  "Aw, come on now, Frank," Mr. Tempy says. "She's still got both ears, both eyes. She hasn't done anything wrong yet."

  "Yet," Mr. Frank says. "I can't get her to print her name properly, but she knows words like entrails."

  "Yeah, well, at least she's heard about a court system. She might be the only O'Donnell who has. You could send her away. Heard tell about a nunnery in Baton Rouge," Mr. Tempy says, but I don't listen to the rest.

  I will run away before I ever get sent to a nunnery in Baton Rouge.

  Miss Irene and Zula are fixing up a supper. Zula is very quiet as she works. She doesn't say a word as she pulls apart a chicken so that Miss Irene can cook it.

  Miss Irene doesn't have me do all we did for Mr. Frank's ma and pa way back in May, but we do put out a fine spread of food all the same. Zula doesn't eat with the men. Miss Irene tells me that it's her custom to eat separate, so she and I eat with Zula a ways away from Mr. Frank and Mr. Tempy. Zula is small but strong-looking with her dark hair, dark eyebrows, and wide nose. Her brown eyes are set apart and she looks smart to me. She and I sneak peeks at each other. She eats small bits at a time. I eat big chunks.

  Mr. Frank and Mr. Tempy eat every last crumb. After our meal, Miss Irene says she wants to make a custard for later on. She takes Zula with her to gather eggs from the hen house.

  "Howdy do, Shanks." I recognize the voice. Outside, Mr. Smith sets up high on his horse and doesn't come down. His redheaded boy, Rew, the boy I sit beside at school, sits on the horse behind his father. Mr. Smith only has the one leg. He lost the other at the Battle of Tupelo. His wife, Tid Smith, stands aside her husband's horse. She looks tired and worn out, but when she sees us on the porch, she eyes Mr. Tempy in the queerest way.

  Mr. Smith, he tips his hat and says, "Hey, Miss Addy." I say hey and look at Mr. Frank and Mr. Tempy, feeling good again about myself. Mr. Smith and my pappy fought together. Mr. Smith told me once that Pappy was a great soldier because he wouldn't submit to the rules in army life. He says Pappy was brave on duty but sometimes left camp without permission, so he was called before a court-martial and sentenced to death. Pappy stood at his gravesite, awaiting the firing squad, when Mr. Smith says he interceded on his behalf and saved his life.

  I don't understand why his son, Rew, lies and says that his father says such terrible things about the O'Donnells.

  "I see you got company." Mr. Smith leans close to see who else is on the porch. Mr. Tempy steps forward then.

  "Don't I know you?" Mr. Smith says to Mr. Tempy.

  "I don't believe so," Mr. Tempy says, smiling.

  I seen the looks on lots of men's faces in No-Bob just before a brawl, usually right after Sunday church, when the men go down to the creek to water their horses and pass the bottle. Put a few O'Donnell men together with a bottle, and before too long, you got a fight. I seen the way an O'Donnell man looks before he's fixing to cut someone, and that is the look on Mr. Smith's face right now.

  "You want to come in, sit a spell?" Mr. Frank says. I' spect Mr. Frank seen the look on Mr. Smith's face too.

  "No, sir. I just come to pay you a visit, Frank. Already stopped and spoke with your pa. I have some business to discuss."

  I wonder why Miss Irene and Zula aren't coming out to the porch to greet Mr. Smith. They stay inside the hen house, peeking out every now and then.

  "Addy," Mr. Tempy says. "Show me where the well is. I'm powerful thirsty."

  "What kind of business?" Mr. Frank says to Mr. Smith. Mrs. Smith and Rew just stand aside like they're not even there.

  I know Mr. Tempy knows where the well is because he fetched the first bucket of water for Miss Irene, but I lead him over there all the same.

  I walk real slow so I can hear what Mr. Smith's got to say. I hear, "Shanks, you're one of our best wide-awake citizens." I hear, "You and I both know niggers ain't supposed to always know right from wrong. They ain't got maste
rs anymore to teach 'em." I hear Mr. Frank say that the Bible doesn't say anything about slavery being right. "You know that," he says. I hear Mr. Smith say, "Right or wrong, with deadly fear, we dread the possibility of Negro rule." I hear, "We're here to help. You should join up and help too, Frank. You missed the war, Frank. Don't miss this. You're a good Christian, ain't you?"

  I am still wearing the shoes that I am not used to. They pinch my heels and I would rather be barefooted. These here shoes are the hardest shoes. I can't bend them so much as crack them. I will wear out before they ever get soft.

  "I was no secessionist, I will tell the truth about it, Addy," Mr. Tempy says. "Some of these boys thought it was big to get the big guns on. Not me." He pulls up the bucket of well water and drinks, then wipes his mouth with his sleeve.

  "My momma was only telling me what my pappy says." I tell Mr. Tempy that when I first heard about Mr. Lincoln, I thought he was partly God, but Pappy set me straight. He says Mr. Lincoln was more devil than God.

  "What else did yer pappy say about us?" His hogs are in the pen nearby, sniffing around.

  "Y'all are nothing more than a band of criminals. You got a hideout?"

  He looks me up and down. "Maybe."

  "You got treasure? Like pirates?" I head on over to the smokehouse. I need to get the dirt into barrels, and while I do this, Mr. Tempy helps, and he tells me a story about a man named Newt Knight who was a poor man, and even though he didn't own any Negroes, he thought that the twenty-Negro law wasn't fair, that it enabled the rich men who had at least twenty slaves to avoid serving in the army and that the Confederacy wasn't right to ask him to risk his life for people who rated themselves so far above him. So this man, Newt Knight, stayed behind and camped out on the Leaf River. Some call it Deserters' Den. He stayed there all during the Civil War. Some say there is Yankee treasure soldiers brought back from all over buried all around Knight's camp.

  I pour water over the dirt. After we boil it down, we will have salt. Cornmeal without salt is hardly worth eating. Salt is up to ten cents a pound and Mr. Frank isn't going to New Orleans or the coast anytime soon.

  "All I know is if there was a war right now, I'd join up." I put away our shovels and slap my hands to get rid of the salty smokehouse dirt.

  "Now, Addy, why in the deuce would you say that?"

  "I'm from No-Bob, Mr. Tempy, and if I went off to war, I'd get far, far away from danger."

  Mr. Tempy laughs but I don't because what I'm saying is the truth and he and I both know it.

  "That's funny, Addy," he says. "Don't you ever laugh?"

  "I laughed in my brain," I say.

  Some of Mr. Tempy's hogs begin to squeal. I look at Mr. Tempy and plug my nose. "They stink."

  We see Mr. Smith stepping down from the porch, his pole leg thunking on the planks. He yells back to Mr. Frank, "You hear say, 'Don't wait for six strong men to take you to church'? Well, then, don't wait for six strong men to take you to join up, you hear?" He hauls himself, then his wife and son, up on his horse, leans in, and giddyups.

  Mr. Tempy and me, we go back up to the house.

  "You best be careful, Frank," Mr. Tempy says. "I sure hope me and the missus being here didn't cause you any trouble."

  "No trouble."

  "You know about this club he's talking about don't you?"

  "He's calling it a Christian group. All men."

  "A Christian group." Mr. Tempy spits a wad of chewing tobacco. "Oh, yeah. All good people. White men who go to church and work hard. Good family men. Oh, they're not against anyone. Except Indians, Jews, coloreds, and anybody not like themselves." The way Mr. Tempy is talking makes me think he is joshing. Makes me think he's not calling it straight. This Mr. Tempy is like no other person I met. He says something funny, but his face is so serious. He has my head all full of confusions.

  "Trouble, are they?" Mr. Frank says to Mr. Tempy.

  "They're called the Ku Klux Klan, Frank," Mr. Tempy says, all business now. "White men who ride around on horseback at night scaring all the freed slaves. They're up to no good."

  Zula comes out of the hen house and stands beside Mr. Tempy, who puts his arm around her.

  "That Anglo man, he is full of loud noise and words." It's the second time I've heard her talk.

  "Frank," Miss Irene calls out from the hen house. "Someone's taken all the eggs and someone's done stole one of our chickens."

  Mr. Frank and Mr. Tempy, the two of them both, they look at me.

  The chicken thief could have been a fox or a mink or a skunk. But I don't wait to hear. I have no interest in such things as talk of chicken thieves and trouble. I head up the road to Mr. Frank's ma and pa's house to find Little Bit, so we can go chart out our own little bit of Smith County.

  Little Bit wants me to take her to No-Bob so we can map it, but I say no, no, not on your life. I have other plans than to cross back into No-Bob. I reckon we need to map out better, more uncharted territory. I tell Little Bit there's treasure to be found.

  Before we set out, we stop by Mr. Frank's house where Mr. Tempy is still talking a mean streak. I hide red pepper in Mr. Tempy's chewing tobacco. We stay long enough to catch the look on his face after the first two chews. His watery, bulging eyes catch mine and I say bye.

  Then Little Bit and me, we gather up paper and some charcoal pencils, and we set out for our great adventure to find Mr. Tempy's buried treasure.

  Chapter 5

  We follow the road through the woods that smell of pine and toadstools, lichen and moss. These woods are dense, but if you know them, you know their paths—same ones the animals use. And I wouldn't mind now if Nona Dewitt or Rew Smith called me an animal. Animals are smart.

  Cobwebs catch in our hair and we laugh, pulling at the sticky strings.

  "Let's be spies like they done in the war," Little Bit says.

  "OK, but who are we spying on and who are we spying for?"

  "It doesn't matter," she says, all smiles. "Let's just spy!"

  "Hey, let's you and me make a map leading to Tempy's hideout."

  "Yeah!" Little Bit squeals. "Maybe there's hidden treasure like you said."

  "Yeah," I say. I'm just as riled as she is.

  I got me some big happies. We are outside and away from all that ugly talk of thieves and thieving. So much talk going on. But now we are outside. Outside! We are searching for treasure. We will draw us a map and put down all that we know. The setting sun is blinking off the tops of the shiny magnolia leaves and the air is cool and crisp.

  After a while, me and Little Bit, we turn off and walk the Choctaw trail that I know to be the Three-Chopped Wat Trail. We breathe in the smell of rotten leaves and squashed persimmons. We find juniper berries and paint our faces with the juices. We play hide-the-switch and Bugger Bear, but as the light fades our make-believe games get too scary for the both of us.

  This road here is a trail not many know about. My pappy shown me. He would take this instead of the one main road out of town to catch the train out of Mize to New Orleans—that is the one most traveled. I think of Mr. Frank's talk of going to New Orleans for provisions for his general store. Bandits and thieves still prowl up and down the main road. Everyone, like Mr. Tempy, is still telling tales about the Natchez Trace and all the famous ruffians who preyed on travelers, thieving and killing, laughing all the while.

  I look around now. This little trail is cleared almost to the width of a carriage road by horses' hoofs and people's feet. More people than I thought must know of it. On either side of us, thick, uncut longleaf pines come right up to the road, and with all that thick, tangled underbrush and dense canebrakes, there's no telling what all or who all is in there, hiding. I hear tell of wildcats in canebrakes.

  If I was the type of person to get spooked, I would be spooked, but I am not that type of a person.

  "How you be, Little Bit?"

  "I'm just fine, Addy." Her teeth glow whiter against her red, berry-stained skin.

  The wind blows th
rough the dried cane and makes a mournful sound. I am glad there is still light out, but it is fading.

  "If you get scared, just sing, OK?"

  "Don't worry about me. I like to be scared. Ever wonder why us children like to get scared?"

  "What should we sing?" I say. "How 'bout we could make something up?"

  "All right then," Little Bit says. She sings a funny tune about a kitten, and if there's a key, neither one of us can find it. Little Bit can't carry a tune in a bucket.

  While she sings, she takes the folded paper from her dress pocket. She unfolds the paper and starts to draw the map while I keep an eye out for chestnuts and treasure. Momma says food and money are the only two things on an O'Donnell mind. Good thing my mission keeps me from getting spooked.

  Already, Little Bit has drawn our winding road with a line that looks to be a snake. She is marking it with the trees we see, even putting in some squirrels and birds.

  We stop at the cemetery for the black folk so Little Bit can stand there and draw that in too. Most all the markers or stones are gone and there are just places where there are graves that are sunken in.

  "Did you know Miss Tiller?" Little Bit says.

  "No," I say. "I don't know many of the black folk in Smith."

  Little Bit walks up and down the graveyard telling the stories of everybody she knows. I think, How does she know all these people? I think, I only know white O'Donnells. I don't know any of the people in this here graveyard.

  I think of Mr. Frank's map up at the schoolhouse. What Momma and Pappy had between them—that fierce love—was not on that map. All the jokes I played on Mr. Frank were not on that map. The war was not on that map, and neither was the surrender. What is on a map, what does get recorded, and the way things look don't have much to do with what's going on with people. That makes me happy and sad—happy because I know the streams will keep streaming and the skies will keep clouding and clearing, even as we people fight and tear and claw at each other. But the big world going about its business no matter what we do makes me sad too because what difference do we make? Looking around me, at all the graves and leftover destruction—seems we just keep on messing up a darned good thing.