Read Online Night Birds, The by Thomas Maltman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Thomas Maltman
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tremble like this?” he asked. The girl shook her head.
“The aspen trees did not recognize Christ when he came among us. They alone, in all creation, did not bow to the Son of Man, and so they are doomed to shudder until the end of time.” The girl listened to the wind rustling in the leaves.
“You must be watchful,” he told her. “This world brims with signs and portents. The leaves of a silver maple will turn upside down when rain approaches. A horned moon means snow. Trees, wind, birds, stones: They all have messages and we must listen and be ready when they appear amongst us.”
Jakob’s own sign had first come to him the Sunday afternoon he stayed and listened to the Reverend Benjamin Keene preach the Higher Law doctrine. But it was a hand-scrawled note that came the next day which changed things for good. Aside from yearly subscription income, the newspaper earned a tidy sum printing advertisements for escaped slaves and nearby slavery auctions. Like any other business in Little Dixie at that time—a region of the country that produced the hemp used to bind huge cotton bales and the hogs to feed the antebellum empire—Jakob’s Saline County Luminary was dependent on the slave trade to put food in his children’s mouths and he labored not to think too deeply about what this meant.
The hand-scrawled note and the dime that accompanied it arrived on Monday in the mail, along with a separate envelope from the north advertising the rich soil in Minnesota territory, which had just become a state. The note was written on blue butcher paper still stained with animal blood. It described an escaped slave named Ruth, a “mulato with skin the color of burnt chicori.” The writer also mentioned, in passing, a distinguishing mark of a “circle brandid in the dark of her left thy.” The last part said she came out of Callaway County and promised a reward of fifty dollars for her capture and return. Jakob set the advertisement for Minnesota aside and read and reread the note over again many times. Notices for escaped slaves sometimes described mutilations, lash marks, cut ears . . . but this marking stuck in his mind. He kept picturing the pink imprint of the wound in the soft skin of her inner thigh. For a reason he could not fathom he felt a connection with this slave. Even as he printed the information in that week’s edition, he felt it somehow drawing her closer.
Two nights after he printed the ad, Jakob did Caleb’s chores out in the cow barn since the boy had taken sick. A round harvest moon hovered low over the valley and its light pierced the slats of the barn. The milch cows and draft horses were dozing. A whale-oil lantern cast celestial shapes against the stalls. One side of the lamp was pricked out in stars and moons and these cosmic patterns flickered and danced while Jakob pitchforked piss-wet straw and manure into a rancid pile. He had just spread a fresh layer of hay in the stall when he heard a movement in the loft above him.
A rain of hay motes sprinkled down from the hayloft. The lantern hissed by his side. He held his breath, listening, and then heard a board creak again. The hairs rose along his spine. It was not a sound that belonged in his barn. The cats that usually trailed after him when he did morning milking were nowhere to be seen. Jakob lifted the lantern.
“Is that you up there, my shadow?” he called. Hazel often followed him about wherever he went and he hoped she might be playing such a trick now, but even as he said it he knew she was inside. Jakob looked at the slender ladder rising into the darkness of the haymow. It called to him, this shadowed place. He set down the lantern, but kept hold of the pitchfork as he climbed. His boots were heavy on the ladder rungs. He heard the sound of his own breathing in the quiet, the drum of his heart in his ears. The ladder creaked with each step. From out of the loft’s edge far above him, he saw two pink
“The aspen trees did not recognize Christ when he came among us. They alone, in all creation, did not bow to the Son of Man, and so they are doomed to shudder until the end of time.” The girl listened to the wind rustling in the leaves.
“You must be watchful,” he told her. “This world brims with signs and portents. The leaves of a silver maple will turn upside down when rain approaches. A horned moon means snow. Trees, wind, birds, stones: They all have messages and we must listen and be ready when they appear amongst us.”
Jakob’s own sign had first come to him the Sunday afternoon he stayed and listened to the Reverend Benjamin Keene preach the Higher Law doctrine. But it was a hand-scrawled note that came the next day which changed things for good. Aside from yearly subscription income, the newspaper earned a tidy sum printing advertisements for escaped slaves and nearby slavery auctions. Like any other business in Little Dixie at that time—a region of the country that produced the hemp used to bind huge cotton bales and the hogs to feed the antebellum empire—Jakob’s Saline County Luminary was dependent on the slave trade to put food in his children’s mouths and he labored not to think too deeply about what this meant.
The hand-scrawled note and the dime that accompanied it arrived on Monday in the mail, along with a separate envelope from the north advertising the rich soil in Minnesota territory, which had just become a state. The note was written on blue butcher paper still stained with animal blood. It described an escaped slave named Ruth, a “mulato with skin the color of burnt chicori.” The writer also mentioned, in passing, a distinguishing mark of a “circle brandid in the dark of her left thy.” The last part said she came out of Callaway County and promised a reward of fifty dollars for her capture and return. Jakob set the advertisement for Minnesota aside and read and reread the note over again many times. Notices for escaped slaves sometimes described mutilations, lash marks, cut ears . . . but this marking stuck in his mind. He kept picturing the pink imprint of the wound in the soft skin of her inner thigh. For a reason he could not fathom he felt a connection with this slave. Even as he printed the information in that week’s edition, he felt it somehow drawing her closer.
Two nights after he printed the ad, Jakob did Caleb’s chores out in the cow barn since the boy had taken sick. A round harvest moon hovered low over the valley and its light pierced the slats of the barn. The milch cows and draft horses were dozing. A whale-oil lantern cast celestial shapes against the stalls. One side of the lamp was pricked out in stars and moons and these cosmic patterns flickered and danced while Jakob pitchforked piss-wet straw and manure into a rancid pile. He had just spread a fresh layer of hay in the stall when he heard a movement in the loft above him.
A rain of hay motes sprinkled down from the hayloft. The lantern hissed by his side. He held his breath, listening, and then heard a board creak again. The hairs rose along his spine. It was not a sound that belonged in his barn. The cats that usually trailed after him when he did morning milking were nowhere to be seen. Jakob lifted the lantern.
“Is that you up there, my shadow?” he called. Hazel often followed him about wherever he went and he hoped she might be playing such a trick now, but even as he said it he knew she was inside. Jakob looked at the slender ladder rising into the darkness of the haymow. It called to him, this shadowed place. He set down the lantern, but kept hold of the pitchfork as he climbed. His boots were heavy on the ladder rungs. He heard the sound of his own breathing in the quiet, the drum of his heart in his ears. The ladder creaked with each step. From out of the loft’s edge far above him, he saw two pink
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