Nightjohn Read online

  “But—”

  And we go.

  I was never off the place. Been only once to the fields where the corn and cotton grow. John he take me across the fields, out the other end into thick trees, down into some brushy ditches along the river.

  Suddenly he stopped.

  It be pitch dark. Any light from the stars can’t get through the trees and brush and we stand for two, three deep breaths.

  Then I smell it. Smoke. Faint smoke and John he leads me down a ditch until we hit a wall of solid brush. The smoke smell is strong now, stink of pitch burning. John he whistle like a catbird and there was a rustle of brush and then a slit of yellow light opened and he pulled me into the brush.

  Inside the brush.

  There is light, bright yellow from three pitch torches being held by three people. But there’s more people there. Same as all on one hand, thumb and the one next to it on the other.

  They’re all smiling at me. I don’t know any of them but they’re all smiling. Short boy comes up to me.

  “We’re from over the hill at the Stankin place. Two from there and the rest from Placers.”

  I didn’t know nothing about those places but I smiled back. “You all know John from before?”

  He nodded. “He come at night. Tell us to learn some letters, then tell us to come here. To school.”

  I didn’t know what a school was, what it was supposed to be. This was slats of brush dragged and pushed over a ditch, thicker and thicker and closed in on the ends.

  Be a pit.

  Pit school.

  John he moved to the end and held one of the torches up. In the other hand he held a book. I’d seen a book. Saw one of the women at the white house looking into one.

  “This is a catalog.” John held the book up. “It is full of things you can send for and own if you have money. They use it all the time. The whites. You read it, and it will tell you things. It has pictures and writing to talk about the pictures. Each of you come up and see it. Be quick now. We only have a couple of hours and I want to give you some letters. Sarny, you know some of them. You help me.”

  Everybody look at me.

  “Only know this many,” I said, holding up my hands.

  “That’s a good start. They don’t know more than one or two. So you help me until we get to how many you know. Then we can all work together.”

  We look at the catalog and I can’t believe it. Here in the school, pit school covered over so the light won’t show out of the ditch from the torches, we look at the catalog. All the things we don’t have. Dresses and shoes with buttons and little gloves and pretty hats and overalls and I started crying. Thinking of all the things, all the pretty things, and then I see it.

  Picture of a horse. Got a thing around his head for feeding him, around his head and hanging over his nose.

  BAG.

  Says it right there. Under the picture. There’s other words, but right there it says to me: BAG.

  “I know this one.” I pointed out the word, the word to John. “This one right here. It is bag. That’s a bag on a horse’s nose.”

  He laughed. Love the laugh. Same deep black laugh. Like night thunder. “Soon, Sarny, soon you’ll be able to read them all. All of you will. Now let’s start so you can get back.”

  And we do.

  I take a stick, rub some dirt clear and draw the lines in the dirt for three of them who watch.

  A

  Feels good to write again.

  WORDS

  Late he come walking.

  Late in the night when they in the white house are all asleep and we be asleep and nobody can know nothing, late when the moon is down and the stars are hiding in clouds, late when it isn’t the day before and it don’t seem like ever the new day will come—that late he come walking.

  In the night he come walking. Late in the night and when he walks he leaves the tracks that we find in the soft dirt down by where the drive meets the road, in the soft warm dirt in the sun we see his tracks with the middle toe missing on the left foot and the middle toe missing on the right and we know.

  We know.

  It be Nightjohn.

  Late he come walking and nobody else knows, nobody from the big house or the other big houses know but we do.

  We know.

  Late he come walking and it be Nightjohn and he bringing us the way to know.

  Turn the page for a preview of the long-awaited companion novel to the bestselling Nightjohn.

  So many readers have written and asked: What happened to Sarny, the young slave girl who learned to read in Nightjohn? This riveting saga by master storyteller Gary Paulsen follows Sarny from her first moments of freedom at the end of the Civil War until her last days in the 1930s, and gives readers a panoramic view of America in a time of trial, tragedy, and hoped-for change.

  BFYR 154

  AVAILABLE FROM DELACORTE PRESS

  Excerpt from Sarny by Gary Paulsen

  Copyright © 1997 by Gary Paulsen

  Published by Delacorte Press, Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

  All rights reserved.

  THREE

  I had never seen the town. Had heard of it, talk all the time of all the houses and people and stores. Some of the men went now and again to help load and they came back with stories of men in frock coats and women in long dresses and carriages so fancy it seemed you could eat them. Billy he said he saw a black man eating hard candy from a sack. I had never even seen hard candy let alone eat of it and he said they had it in the stores and would sell it from jars a penny a bag but Billy now and again saw hants and heard whispers others didn’t hear so I didn’t believe everything he went on about.

  The ax-faced man with the wagon had come from the road to town and had taken my children down that road and that’s the way I went. Couldn’t help but nearly run. They’d been gone six—no, seven—days and maybe they were in that town and I could find them there and my feet they just wouldn’t walk slow.

  Still I hadn’t walk-trotted a mile when Lucy she caught up with me. Tall girl, leggy so she could move, sixteen, seventeen years old with a smile all the time even when things weren’t funny. Sometimes she made me think of myself when I was younger though maybe she was a bit smarter and a good bit prettier. Didn’t show the smart but it was there.

  “Decided to come with you. That’s what I wanted to do,” she said when she caught up. “Except I didn’t know you’d be running. It like to killed me catching up.”

  “They took my children,” I said. “I can’t walk slow—”

  “I know. I was there. Don’t you worry, we’ll find little Delie and Tyler. Don’t you worry.” And there was that smile. “Waller he was still laying there when I left.”

  “I don’t care a snip about Waller.”

  “It’s good he’s dead.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Maybe the pigs will eat him.”

  I didn’t say anything more about him and never did say another word on him until I was old and even now could I see him, Bible or no, I wouldn’t forgive him. Spit on his grave.

  I didn’t know how far it was to town but Lucy had heard it from Billy. “Seven miles,” she said. “A mile is the same distance as the length of that south cotton field. So it would be seven of those fields. I figure we’ve walked three fields so there be four more. To town.”

  She was carrying a sack that was heavier than mine, big weight down in the bottom. “What’s in the sack?”

  Her smile widened, seemed to cover her whole face. “Got me an extra shift in there.”

  “Heavy shift.”

  “I stopped by the smokehouse on my way out and took two hams. They ain’t big but they looked done and I figured we earned them.”

  “We earned everything—”

  “Riders.” There was the sound of hooves.

  Hard word. Riders. Them that run and come back talk about riders. Men on horses. Hard men. Mean to the bo
ne men with guns and whips and chains and dogs. Riders is the word for the hard men.

  But it’s wrong this time. These riders are wearing blue, brass buttons glinting in the sun, rattle of sabers and creak of saddles. There were twelve of them, two by twos with a man in charge, an officer, out to the side and a little ahead.

  We moved off the road to let them by but they stopped. Officer first, then all the men, stopped and looked down on us.

  “You’re free now.” The officer brushed at a fly that had been following the horses and buzzed his face.

  “I know. Yes sir. Thank you. The soldier at the plantation told us that—”

  “But there are still dangers. We are just an advanced unit. There are bands of renegade scavengers—rebel deserters—that we haven’t rounded up yet, killing and looting.”

  New word. Scavenger. Didn’t know it. But knew the others—killing, looting. “Yes sir.”

  “You might want to find a safe place to be until things settle down. Look for some Union troops encamped and stay close to them.”

  “I can’t. I’ve got children to find.”

  He had been looking away and he looked down on me now. Tall horse, tall man, looked down and smiled like he was a father. “Stay away from people on the roads unless they are soldiers.”

  “Yes sir.”

  And they were gone, the horses trotting past. Some of them looked at Lucy and some looked at me and their looks weren’t as soft as the officer’s. Looking at our shifts, way we stood. Two looked back as they rode away and I thought the officer was right, might be dangerous along the road especially at night. And from more than scavengers. But I didn’t say anything and when I turned I saw Lucy and she was smiling back at the men and I thought, too much tooth in that smile. Might as well light a lantern and hang it over the store.

  “Let’s go.”

  It was afternoon, hot and muggy, and I kept moving and had there been time it would have been a marvel to see the country we traveled through.

  Must have been a plantation every mile. Some of them nicer than the one I’d lived on and most of them less and all of them in smoke. Some big houses burning, some barns, sheds. Quarters burning all over the place. Blue-coated soldiers were everywhere. Moving this way and that. All seemed to have a reason to move, a place to get to, a place to leave. A lot of busy work.

  Didn’t see any gray soldiers except dead ones. Saw a group in a ditch, almost in a row, must have fallen like they stood. All their coats were open to show their bellies and some of them had big holes, some weren’t marked so you could see it but they were all dead. Didn’t see any dead blue ones, only gray.

  Lucy she made the hex. sign when we passed the bodies, little and first finger out and thumb down but I shook my head. “They won’t bother you. Not now.”

  “They got spirits,” she said. “They all got spirits can come back and hant us.”

  I didn’t think so. They just looked like busted dolls to me but I didn’t say anything more about it. Lucy she wanted to make the hex sign it didn’t hurt anything and maybe it would help.

  Black folks around every corner, over every rise. Some walked with the blue soldiers, following them, smiling but scared-looking like they thought it wouldn’t last. Like you could be free and then not free. Not me, I thought, you try to turn me back into a slave and you’ve got your hands full. Might as well try to turn sawdust back into a tree.

  Others they just looked dazed. Didn’t know where to go, how to get there. Some followed us for a spell and I looked back once to see six or seven trotting behind us but we set too pushy a pace and they all fell away.

  Every one I see, every single one I asked about little Delie and Tyler. Every soldier and every black person and they all try, think hard and try, but none remember seeing them, not even the wagon and the ax-faced man.

  Town wasn’t like they said. We came to the edge of it in the evening, just as the light was changing and it was getting hard to see. Part of it was light but most of it was smoke. Some buildings were all burned down, some were still burning. I didn’t see any fancy carriages or hard candy or pretty dresses or frock coats. Nothing but ruin. There were no men, no black men, no white men. Some women were there, white women except with all 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 it and 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 a wagon 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 hear me, didn’t hear anything. “You hit him too hard. He ain’t there anymore.”

  “I’m sorry,” the black man said, and he looked sorry too. “I didn’t know you were coming or I would have held back a tad.”

  It was Lucy that saved me. I turned away and the black man went back to hitting Greerson and I moved out of the yard and was near crying, thinking of little Delie and Tyler. The wind blew four ways and they could have gone any of them. No way to know.

  “In the shack,” Lucy said. “There might be something in all those papers about little Delie and Tyler …”

  And I would have walked away hadn’t she said it, would have walked away and never thought of it, never known.

  We went inside and started to work. I didn’t know what to look for, didn’t know where to begin, but Lucy just picked up a piece of paper and went to reading.

  “Male, teeth show age not over eighteen, answers to name of Herman, no whip scars, to be at auction. Nope.” She threw it aside and picked up another. “Female, teeth show age between twenty-five and thirty, answers to name of Betty, no whip scars, trained for house duties, to be at auction. Nope.”

  That’s what all the papers were. Bills of sale, hundreds and hundreds of them, all records that Greerson kept for all the time he sold slaves.

  It was soon dark, too dark to read, but Lucy she found an oil lamp with an unbroken chimney and some matches and soon we had light. Still hard to read but by holding the paper close to the lamp we could make out the letters.

  Must have read fifty or a hundred of them when I looked up and Lucy she was sitting there crying, holding the paper.

  “What’s the matter?”