“Finally they be here in Pennsylvania, in the snow. Walk all the way from
Virginia. And then what you think happen to them? Them slaves be losin’ their
direction and turnin’ ’round the wrong way. They be spendin’ the next few days
walkin’ smack back toward that slave state what they come from. Smack toward
the slave-catcher what’s chasin’ after ’em. You know why? Cause of they can’t
read no map and can’t read no road sign. So that show you.” He stabbed a finger
at the air in front of Olivia’s face. “Person got to know where they be in this world. Specially a person what can get sold if he be in the wrong place.”
“So what happened?” Olivia asked. “Did the slave-catchers get them?”
“No. Luck from the Lord, they pass by a field where a colored man be
workin’. He set them back on the right way. They find their way to Five Rocks
in time for her to birth her baby.”
Olivia stared at him for a long moment, hand cupped over her mouth, slowly
absorbing the realization that the slaves in Mourning’s story were his parents.
“Well, you don’t have to worry, Mourning Free,” she said at last. “You
already read way better than most of the blockhead white kids around here.”
Ten years had passed since then and Olivia seldom saw Mourning any more.
They were agreeable to one another whenever he worked at Killion’s General,
but he spent most of his time at the Feed & Grain, Ferguson’s Livery, or Smithy’s – all places Olivia seldom had cause to visit. When the weather was mild he was often gone for months at a time, working outside of town on
someone’s farm. By now he was nearly a stranger to her.
Olivia put on her coat and boots, picked a wrinkled cellar apple from the bowl
on the table and put it in her pocket, wrapped a scarf around her ears and mouth,
and opened the back door. She felt like laughing when an image formed in her
mind – her trying to drag a kicking and screaming Mourning Free into a wagon
headed for Michigan.
Chapter Four
Olivia was glad to see it had stopped snowing. She loved the steel blue haze
of the afternoon light in this kind of weather. The sun had begun to drop in the
sky and the town wore a veil of mystery, the houses casting gray shadows and the church steeples stark against the muted sky.
For a moment she grew melancholy. With her father gone she was an orphan
too, just like Mourning Free. She didn’t have anyone to stick up for her either.
But she shook herself silently. Oh, woe is you. So get going and start sticking up
for yourself. That’s the way the world is. She found herself taking more comfort in Mr. Carmichael’s plain hard statement of fact than in all the damp
condolences that had been heaped upon her by sobbing women.
She raised her chin and forced a blank expression on her face before starting
up Main Street in search of Big Bad, the broken-down workhorse no longer
worth his feed that Mourning had bought a few years ago. When he moved from
place to place he packed all his worldly possessions into two small leather bags
and threw them over the back of Big Bad’s saddle.
Olivia spotted the horse tethered in front of the Feed & Grain. “Hullo there,
old boy,” she said, offering him the apple and stroking his neck while he
