When I Crossed No-Bob by Margaret McMullan Read Free Book Online Page B

and I write down the names she calls out. I write what all I know too. Every place has a name. Every name has a story. My letters turn out better.
    We both hear singing that's a might bit better than mine or Little Bit's.
    "Hey, look," Little Bit says. "The black folks got church going at the schoolhouse. Let's go listen."
    I heard about this schoolhouse, but I have never seen it. This schoolhouse was built after the war for any free slave who wanted an education. They used the schoolhouse for their church services same as us.
    You never can tell about church because you never can tell about the preacher. Seems to me a church is only as good as its preacher. One year in No-Bob, a passing preacher called for a foot-washing. I got stuck with Stump O'Donnell's feet, and by the time church was over, his feet were still black. It was so nasty that afterward, we all of us complained, and even the preacher had to admit that the duty of washing the feet should be performed in a private capacity only.

    Little Bit and me listen to the black folks singing "Steal Away."
    Up at our school, Mr. Frank said that before the war was over, on the day of emancipation, most all the field hands were called in and told they were free. White folks told their field hands they had to boss their own business, told them it was up to them to find their own work. If they wanted to stay on, they'd get paid, but most never did get paid. Most went into debt. They got turned loose without nothing.
    I never knew much about freedom or slavery myself. None of the O'Donnells could afford slaves, but they would have had them if they could have.
    I think I understand why some of the colored folk stayed and keep on staying. They're like me. They don't know anywhere else like they know home. And so many of the ones
who stayed were old, past the time when a body can move on. They stay and they do the same thing they did before the war, when they were slaves, but now they work for money or land that they never seem to get. They stay with their freedom. Their free is inside their heads and I can't help but wonder if that is free enough.

    Inside the schoolhouse they must be having a baptizing, because the preacher is talking about baptizing and saying how Baptist is the only real religion. He's saying a while back everybody had to offer up sacrifices, a goat or a sheep or something. But Jesus come and changed all that. He says, "Father, I'll die for them." But why did he go and die for people who were poking and prodding him, sticking thorns on top his head, filling his dry mouth with vinegar? Who would die for such a sorry lot? And so it was that he became a sacrifice.
    My brain itches, thinking on what the preacher is saying. Our sacrifice, his father's sacrifice, or Jesus's, I cannot figure which.
    "Presbyterians don't go down under the water like Baptists do," Little Bit whispers.
    Soon enough they start singing my favorite, that song called "Old-Time Religion."
    This singing is so good that Little Bit and I stay on until
the end. When they all come out, Little Bit waves after one of the little boys I recognize. Jess Still. He comes running over and we all three say hey.

    He laughs when he sees Little Bit.
    "You're red, Little Bit!"
    She laughs, painting his cheek with a leftover juniper berry. "You're purple."
    He's small and I see the asafetida he wears round his neck in a little bag.
    "Can I smell?" I say, pointing to the bag.
    He nods, telling me his ma, Early Rise, gave him the bag to keep him from having asthma, smallpox, measles, and any other diseases.
    "I used to have one too." The herbs together smell sagey and sweet.
    "Guess your momma figure you don't need one anymore now that you're grown up and safe from disease."
    "Maybe," I say. "Maybe not."
    He looks me over. He has what my momma used to call a traveling eye. His one eye stays fixed while his other eye roams. I think on how handy that would be, how it would keep you safe.
    Jess lifts the bag off