“Me and a barrel of luck. God give you whatever kind a weather he feel like,
not what kind you be needin’. And I got no say over prices or what kind a insects
gonna come eat everything up.”
“I realize that.” She nodded. “All I know is, plenty of people make a go of farming and most of them start out with a lot less than we will. And I’ll be the
one taking all the risk. What do you have to lose? Worst that can happen, you wasted some time. Would you rather spend another year chasing around here,
fifty people telling you what to do? I’m asking you, what do you have to lose?”
He sat perfectly still, leaning forward and studying his feet. Then he
straightened up and slapped both thighs. “All right. You got a partner. Where this
land be? Walking distance from town?”
“No. Not exactly.” She avoided his eyes as she removed a piece of paper from
her pocket and unfolded the map she had drawn. “It’s out in Michigan. Right there.” She held it out to him, pointing at a small dot not far from Detroit.
He took the paper from her and studied it, his mouth puckered as if he were
holding a dead snake between his upper lip and nose. “Michigan? This Garden
of Eden be in Michigan?” He thrust the paper back at her, stood up, and closed
the damper of the stove. “You for sure off in the head. Michigan. I look crazy to
you?”
“What’s wrong with Michigan? It’s not so far away. There are steamships
right from Erie that go all the way to Detroit.”
“You know I can’t be travelin’ with no white girl.” He glared at her.
“Says who?”
“Say the world. What your brothers gonna say when you tell ’em ’bout this
great plan you got?”
“I’m not going to tell them. We’re going to keep it a secret. I’ll leave them a
note, so they won’t be worried, but they won’t read it until after I’m gone.”
“You tryin’ to get me killed? How long you think it gonna take them to come
find you?”
“I’m not that big of a dolt. I have no intention of telling them where I really
went.” She rose and stepped toward him. “The note will say I went out east to
look for a teaching job. I’ll promise to write and let them know where I am as soon as I get settled. When I’m ready to claim the land, I’ll come back and tell
them the truth.”
“Oh, so that okay then. They ain’t gonna string me up till next year.” He
waved a hand, as if dismissing her in disgust.
“Nobody’s going to string anyone up,” she said. “They won’t know you had
anything to do with it. I’ll say I got a hired man to work the land for me. That
won’t even be lying, really. You’ll be sort of like a hired man. And we won’t leave town together. You can tell folks you’ve heard of some distant relatives and are going to look for them. Leave a few days before I do. No one’s going to
think we went off together. Why would they? Especially if we’re careful about
not being seen with each other between now and when we leave.”
He shook his head. “You got any brains? What ’bout folks out there in
Michigan? How you think they gonna like this colored boy showin’ up with a
white girl?”
