CHAPTER 12

I open my stinging eyes. Ruby fans me with her apron. She’s talking to me, too. “Hallelujah Wonder. Who was that man? That’s a bad man, I think.”

“Come on, Lu,” Eustace says. “I’ll help you.” He hands me his hankie. “Here. Take deep breaths into this.”

I take it and cover my mouth. I inhale a few times. Even with the hankie, the air is thick with smoke. But I begin to feel a bit better. I look around for my crate, but I can’t see it on the ground. “Where is it?” I ask Eustace.

Ruby bends over and leans into my face. “I got it,” she says, and points at the ground near her feet. “It’s right here. I got it safe for you, but I didn’t want to hold a snake crate.” Then she looks from me to Eustace, like she’s suddenly realizing something. “But it isn’t a snake in there, is it?”

I look at her; then I look at Eustace, who shakes his head at me, which tells me not to tell his ma. I grab the crate.

From Tolerone to my house is only two miles, but with Ruby and me, and with Fob acting like a baby again, we move very slowly. The Medicine Head is thrumming a mellow call to me. I feel like I am constantly adjusting the crate under my arm.

Ruby stops and looks back at the town every few feet. People scream. Horses whinny. We hear crying and anguish. We also hear shouts of good people trying to help other people, things like “Here! Get in my wagon.” And “I’ve found her!” But in between those kindnesses are mostly crashing and rumbling and black smoke, gray ash, and red embers. I never liked much about Tolerone, but I sure feel sad about that now. When Ruby stops, I stop, too. I look back and nearly want to run and maybe help somebody—even the Millers. Maybe help anyone. Eustace tugs at us.

“Don’t ever run at a fire,” he says, as if reading my mind.

“You did,” I say quietly.

Ruby whacks Eustace on the back of the head.

“Ouch!” Eustace says. He rubs his skull furiously. “What was that for?”

“For running into a fire!” Ruby says. She tucks stray hair back up into the cloth she always wears wrapped around her head. Ruby’s hair is nearly all gray and white. I’m struck again by how old she is. “I’d have gotten myself out,” she insists. “You could have gotten yourself killed.”

“All right, Ma,” says Eustace. He rubs his head again. Fob barks as though in agreement.

My lungs hurt. My feet are burned. We’re all of us, head to toe, ashes. I should be exhausted, but the events of the night and the mere fact that I survived them, the Medicine Head, the fire, Captain Greeney, make me feel full up with verve. I look up into the sky and try to breathe deeply.

“Oh,” moans Ruby. “I am tired.” She keeps moving, though, one foot in front of the other. She looks back at Tolerone and shakes her head. “All those poor souls,” she says. “I hope they don’t suffer.”

I recall a story Father told me about a fire. Once, when he worked on a whaling ship, he survived a fire that burned up the whole thing in the middle of the ocean. The whalers were boiling whale blubber in cauldrons inside an enormous brick oven. The flames didn’t stay in the oven, though.

One of the sailors was tarring the deck too close to the oven, and he and the bucket burst into flames. So did the deck, the side of the ship, then the sails, then the rigging, and eventually the whole ship. My father and the rest of the crew, including the burned sailor, were able to escape by lowering the small whaleboats into the ocean.

Father said the burned man suffered awfully for the three days it took for a ship to come find them. The top half of his body was totally burned. His hair was gone and his scalp was burned down to white membrane with red spots all over. His ears had melted completely off. One of his eyes was fine, but the other eyelid sagged over the eyeball. Father said his eyelid looked like a clump of wax on a candle. Father was good at describing things, especially awful things, so that you could really see them in your mind. Father said the man’s burned hands had no skin and had curled into claws. Whenever anything touched him, he screamed in agony.

The burned man from my father’s story was in such pain that he begged someone to shoot him, and they would have done it if they’d had a gun, but no one did. So they tried to keep him as comfortable as possible and gave him every last drop of rum they had. He lived long enough to be lifted onto the rescue ship; then he finally died after a few more days. His last words were “Oh, good.”

“I hope they don’t suffer, too,” I say to Ruby about the people of Tolerone, though I know better.

“Come on, Ma,” says Eustace. “You’re doing fine.”

Good old Eustace keeps us all going. And the farther we get away from the fire, the quieter the Medicine Head gets.

I hold on to Ruby’s arm. It’s bare. Her blouse’s been burned or torn. I’ve never seen her arm before, and now I can see why. White scars run up and down the entire length of it. They look like wrinkled worms.

“What are these?” I ask. “All these marks?”

Ruby shuffles along and breathes heavily. I suppose her lungs hurt, too. “Miss Wonder, you don’t want to know about that.”

Eustace looks straight ahead and picks up the pace.

“Yes, I do,” I say. “What did you do?”

“She didn’t do those to herself,” Eustace says. He shakes his head like I’m a big dummy. I’m too tired to get mad at him. “Tell her, Ma,” he says.

“I was younger than you,” Ruby says. “It was a long time ago. I don’t like to think about those days.”

“Did someone hit you?” I ask.

“Oh, yes,” Ruby says. “Someone hit me all the time. And tied me up and hit me some more.”

“For what?” I ask.

“For what?” she repeats. “For nothing. That’s what. I was just a child. If I looked at a body wrong, I got tied up and hit with a spoon or a lash or a fire iron. My missus was a madwoman.”

“Why didn’t your mother stop her?” I ask.

“My mother?” she says. “I never saw my mother but a half dozen times. She died or got sold.” Ruby shrugs. “Truth is, I don’t even know what happened to her. I was too young, and then it wasn’t proper to ask. I got raised by an elderly house slave. She was a good woman, but she couldn’t protect me from the white missus.”

Ruby has the kind of face that makes it easy to imagine her as a little girl. Some people do, in case you haven’t noticed it before. The image of a mean lady whipping poor little Ruby stiffens my back and arms, as though I’m bracing to receive those blows myself.

In the past, when I listened to Eustace go on about slavery, I would chuck away his talk sometimes. I guess I thought his life appeared sufferable. No one smacked him or whipped him or chained him. In a lot of ways, he seemed just like me—young and at the mercy of adults’ choices. But after listening to Ruby, I’m realizing Eustace’s life is a lot more troublesome than I thought. “Why would anyone do that to a little girl?” I ask.

“Well, the whole territory is asking that very question,” says Ruby. “You’re a smart girl, Hallelujah Wonder, but you got to look up once in a while. You keep studying the small things, rocks and seeds, but you also got to study what’s happening all around you.” She stops and turns back toward Tolerone. “Don’t let that town burn down for nothing,” she says. “Probably not much going to change while I’m alive, but you kids got a chance to improve. You can change all of this.” She waves toward the black sky.

I can’t remember the last time I had so little to say. I can’t remember the last time I was interested in anything an adult had to say.

“You understand?” Ruby asks.

I nod.

I don’t like it that some people, like Ruby’s missus and Captain Greeney, seem to be protected by the law or by title. I don’t like how the world can be completely upside down. Captain Greeney’s the one who should have been punished. Not my father. Ruby’s missus is the one who should have been punished. Not sweet Ruby.

The fire winds lap at my hair and lift strands of it. By morning, everyone in the territory will know what happened here tonight.

“You all right, Miss Hallelujah?” Ruby asks.

“I think so,” I say. I touch Ruby’s scars and stroke them softly. She doesn’t mind. “Ruby?” I gulp. “Does that mean you won’t be sad if the Millers… are dead? Because then you won’t be owned anymore?”

Ruby pats my arm. We keep walking. After a while she says, “Of course I’ll be sad. I don’t want anyone to suffer. I’ve had my share of miserable owners, but the Millers weren’t evil. Did you know Mrs. Miller nursed me through pneumonia a couple years back? Saved my life with her nursing. That was a good deed. But the owning of another human being was a bad deed, a real bad deed. And she ought to have recognized it and set it right! It takes folks a long time to change their minds and their ways sometimes. Good people do bad things all the time.” She shuffles along. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not angry at them. I am. And I deserve to be!”

“Do you think bad people sometimes do good deeds?” I ask.

“Well, I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I do,” says Eustace. “‘Yes’ is the answer to that. Just because Captain Greeney is an abolitionist doesn’t mean he’s a good person. He’s a bad person, Lu. And just because he’s an abolitionist doesn’t mean abolitionists are bad.”

“People are complicated, Lu,” Ruby says. “Truth is, they all got good and bad mixed up in them. Some got more of one. Some got more of the other.”

She groans a little, and she looks a bit teary. “I don’t wish no harm to the Millers,” she says. “That’s for sure. But it sure is a complicated feeling I have in my heart. I’m worried about my boy, mostly.”

I wonder what the deaths of the Millers might mean for Ruby and Eustace. They might get to be free. But more than likely, some relative of the Millers would come and claim them. Ruby and Eustace are property, according to some laws.

My brain and my whole body want rest. I’m weary. On one arm, I’ve got Ruby and all the troubles of Tolerone. On the other arm, I’ve got the Medicine Head and all the troubles of keeping it away from Captain Greeney.

I’m bothered by how close I allowed Captain Greeney to get to the Medicine Head. I know I have Eustace to thank for his quick thinking. I am very disappointed in myself. I’m even a little bit ashamed. And embarrassed that Eustace witnessed my cowardice. I’ve got to be braver. I’ve got to be more prepared. I’ve got to be the girl with “the good knot in her skull,” as Father always said I was.

As we walk, I remember the lengths to which Father went to keep the head from Greeney. And now it’s my job to keep it from Greeney. Suddenly, the Medicine Head feels like a thousand pounds of pressure. I worry that I’m not smart enough, that I’m not brave enough, that I’m not a good enough person.

“Thank you, Eustace,” I say. “You did some quick thinking back there.”

He keeps walking, holding his mother’s arm with one hand and carrying Fob tucked under his other arm. He’s got a queer, far-away expression on his face. I can’t tell whether it’s happy or sad. Or worried or intent.

“Why do you have that look on your face?” I ask.

Eustace’s eyes meet mine; then he glances at the Medicine Head’s crate and turns his face forward again. “I’m thinking,” he says.

He’s thinking about my problem. That’s what he’s doing. That’s what kind of a friend Eustace Miller is. His house just burned up. His animals are scattered all around the town. He’s a slave whose masters might be dead, which might mean he’ll have to have new masters, maybe mean ones. And he’s thinking about how to solve my problem. I start thinking of what to do, too. I also try to think of a good solution for Eustace so he doesn’t have to be a slave anymore.

What am I going to do with the Medicine Head? I know for certain I can’t let Captain Greeney have it. I also can’t keep it hidden or give it to anyone else. I can’t destroy it. Who knows what might happen if I did? Would it unleash some kind of evil force out into the world? Would I be personally cursed? I don’t know. But I trust that if destruction were the right choice, Father would have done it himself.

Then the Medicine Head seems to thrum or moan like it’s being hurt.

“Do you hear that?” I ask Ruby and Eustace.

“Hear what, Miss Wonder?” says Ruby.

Eustace glances at the crate. But he shakes his head.