• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

I fell asleep.

Toward morning I woke up. I'd been dreaming that I was in the creek back home, wading and waiting for Johnny Surratt, who was to bring fishing rods. We were to fish the morning away. Then my father appeared on Manfred, in his full-dress uniform of the Union Army. "Johnny isn't coming home anymore, Miss Muffet," my father said. Then of a sudden there was a terrible fog and my father rode off into it. I ran across the creek to get to the bank and call him back, but he was gone. All I heard was voices muffled in the fog.

I sat up in bed. I was awake, but the muffled voices were still in the house. Downstairs. I got up and opened my door.

Addie was standing there, like she'd been waiting for me the whole time. I jumped. I'd taken to locking my door at night after she'd come into my room a couple of times and I'd awakened to find her standing over me.

"You should knock," I scolded.

"And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is accursed by God; you shall not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance," she said.

"What?"

"Deuteronomy," she said.

I stared at her. This woman could not read. But then, all Negroes know their Bible, even if they can't read. That didn't surprise me. What surprised me was that she'd said the words slowly, like a child reciting a verse, but in plain English, with no slave dialect.

She smiled. "I can speak in tongues when I want," she said.

I nodded.

"You know what that verse mean?"

I shook my head no.

"He do." She pointed to the direction of the banister and the downstairs. "Your uncle. He know full well." She was speaking like Addie again. "He know, and he goin' against that verse." Then she put her index finger to her lips, shushed me, and led me over to the banister.

I followed, thinking, Dear God, somehow she's found out that Uncle Valentine went to a hanging and brought the corpse back to the medical college.

"Listen," she said again. I peered down over the banister, listening. I must humor her.

Voices. One was Uncle Valentine's. Another belonged to Merry Andrews. And he was very excited. The other voices I didn't recognize.

Apparently Addie had already gotten the drift of the conversation. She was grinning widely. "You jus' listen. An' you'll know what I always tol' you 'bout him."

I sighed wearily. Were we to speak of this again? I was annoyed because I wanted to sit down and savor my dream, because my daddy had been in it. And even if it was silly to put so much store in a dream, the presence of my daddy was still strong with me.

"How many?" Uncle Valentine was asking.

"Hundreds," a strange voice said.

"What do you mean hundreds?"

"Hundreds were killed in the accident. All Federal soldiers. On their way home from Vicksburg, just out of Confederate prison camps." Merry's voice. "The name of the riverboat was the Sultana. On the Mississippi. Just north of Memphis, near Old Hen and Chickens islands. Word we got was that it was a burst boiler. Wreckage was strewn into the air. Men and horses and mules were everywhere in the water. Over two thousand souls were on board. They're saying at least twelve hundred were killed."

They were speaking in muted disembodied voices that seemed to float up to me like part of my dream. "There will be nothing left of them," Uncle Valentine said sadly.

"You're working on burns, aren't you?" Another voice. Whose?

Robert's.

"Yes, burns," Uncle Valentine said. "You're right. This is our chance to learn about burns! Of course, forgive me, Robert, I'm not thinking clearly. I've had no sleep. How quickly can you get there?"

"I can leave now," Robert said. "There's a train at eight this morning."

"Mole?"

"I'm on my way, boss. Just give the word."

"Spoon?"

"I'm all packed."

The Spoon and the Mole! I was awake now, all