Nightjohn by Gary Paulsen Read Free Book Online

the soot on them they looked black and I stopped one of them on the outskirts. Woman maybe forty, looked sixty, seventy, kept picking at her dress.
    “Could you tell me where they take slave children?” I asked. “To sell them?”
    But she didn’t answer, just looked past me, past Lucy at where a building used to be and there wasn’t anything but burned boards and smoke. “We had a store there. We had a store right there. See? Right there where—”
    “I had two children, miss,” I said. “They came here on a wagon. They must have come here. They were this high, to my waist and a bit more. A girl and a boy. Did you see them?”
    Didn’t say anything for the longest time. Just kept picking at her dress where there was a hole as big as her hand burned through. I started to turn.
    “I had a boy,” she said. “I had a son and he went to Antietam and is buried there. I had a son and a store and a husband who ran off and now they’re all gone.”
    “I’m sorry but—”
    “I never had slaves. I didn’t like slavery. Why did they burn my store?”
    “I don’t know.”
    She picked some more, tears cutting the soot on her face, making white streams. “The man you want is Greerson. He owns—I guess owned would be the right way to say it now. He owned the slave yards at the south end of town.”
    “Thin man, face sharp like an ax, slick hair?”
    She nodded. “Yes. He might know what happened to your children. Just go to the south end of town and look for the yards. If you see my husband would you send him home?”
    But we were already gone, headed through the broken town, me with my small sack and Lucy with her two hams, looking for the slave yards.

FOUR
    We found the yards and almost got to Greerson in time. Yards were pens with slat-board roofs on them, rings in the wooden walls for chains, chutes that came out to a central open area like there was on the plantation for working with the pigs and cattle.
    Same as that. There was some smoke where somebody had tried to fire the pens but the wood wasn’t close enough to burn and it went out. The place was empty.
    Or almost.
    Out front of a small shack was the wagon with the chain rings in it, the wagon that took my children, and I felt the pull of it, felt that it had been close to little Delie and Tyler and thought maybe they were inside the shack but no, nothing there but papers thrown all over, boxes of papers.
    “Oh Lord,” I said. “They’re not here.”
    There was a sound from the back then. Sound like a hammer hitting meat to soften itand I ran out around the shack into the main yard opening and there was Greerson.
    Not alone though. There was a black man there, big man, hands like my Martin had, shoulders like a door, and he was holding Greerson up against the side fence with one hand and beating him with the other.
    Didn’t look even mad, the black man. Just as cool were he at a job of work. Hold him with one hand, bring the other back like a club, like a hammer, like a cleaver.
    Chunk!
    In the forehead, in the face, slow hits that seemed to float, but each time Greerson’s head snapped back like a mule had kicked him and I forgot for a moment why I was there. Just watched. Then I thought, no, not yet, I need this man.
    “Hold!” I said. “Wait. This man took my children and I need him to tell me where they are.”
    The black man turned and looked at me. “He laid a whip on me. Laid a whip on all of us, but he laid it on me hard. I’m just taking it back. But I can finish later.”
    He stood to the side but kept holding Greerson up against the fence by the neck. Greerson he just hung there and when I came close I could see that he wasn’t going to be doing any talking. His face looked like awagon had run over it and both his eyes had rolled back to just show white and what breath there was came in little jerks.
    “Greerson—can you hear me? You remember coming for my children? Out to the Waller place? You remember that?” But he didn’t