The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg (4 page)

“I’ve got to find my brother afore he gets killed in the war.”

Smelt finds that amusing. “You and your rich uncle gonna buy him out of the Union Army, are you? I checked your pockets, boy. You ain’t got no money. Not one red cent. You don’t have a saddle and you don’t have shoes. All you had was an old nag ain’t hardly good enough for glue. And we aim to keep that horse, for the trouble you caused us.”

“That makes you a horse thief,” I tell him.

Smelt slaps my face. Not too hard, just enough to make me cringe. “Watch what you call a man! Horse thieves are for hanging. Call me a thief, but have you got any papers to prove you own that bag of bones?”

“Yes, sir. Piles of papers. Deeds and bills of sale and proof of ownership.”

“Hid them in the woods, I suppose, all those papers?”

“No, sir. Left ’em in the safe in my uncle’s bank.”

“Uh-huh. You’re a pretty fair liar, ain’t you, boy? Look me in the eye and tell me you really got papers.”

I look him in the eye and say, “I’ve got papers. It’s my horse, fair and legal.”

“Hmm. That’s good. Average man might believe you, but I expect you stole that nag from some poor farmer.”

“No, sir! It was my father’s horse, and left to my Dear Mother until she died. It should belong to me and my brother.”

Smelt nods to himself, like he knew I was fibbing all along. “‘Should be’ is a different thing than ‘is.’ Forget the horse, boy. Figure how you can be useful. That’s what’ll keep you alive.” Stink comes into the lean-to holding his hand that’s bleeding.

“Horse took a bite out of me,” he announces, sounding surprised.

“What’d you do?” Smelt wants to know.

“I bit him back.”

“You want to be careful, Stink, biting on a horse. It’s bad for your teeth.”

“That how you lost yours?” Stink asks, sneering.

But Smelt ignores him and licks his one remaining tooth, as if deep in thought. “Whilst you was biting horses, I come upon an idea,” he says. “I think there’s a way we can use this boy.”

“Use him? He ain’t hardly big enough to dig his own grave.”

“No,” says Smelt, “but he’s a prodigious good liar. Ain’t you, Homer Figg?”

Comes to me that I better tell the truth, or they’ll find a way to make me dig my own grave.

“Yes, sir,” I admit. “I’m a real good liar.”

I
ONCE TOLD
P
ARSON
R
EED
of the Pine Swamp Congregational Church that my mother and father were not dead, but away visiting Queen Victoria, and that they would soon be sending for me and Harold. The parson was powerfully impressed that a boy of five knew the queen by name, and even more impressed when I explained that my father had been hired to fell all the trees in England, and that the task would take no more than a week. The parson said he’d not been aware that so few trees remained in the British Empire, and I explained that my father could fell a tree with one swing of his ax, and could therefore lay an entire forest down in an hour or so, depending on his mood. And while my father was laying waste to the forests my mother was busy in the royal palace, teaching the queen how to spell.

When Parson Reed said it was a great surprise to learn the queen could not spell, I explained that until recently kings and queens had no need of spelling or reading, because servants did it for them, and the parson remarked that I had a surprising knowledge of the world for a child of my age, or any age for that matter.

The kindly parson may have been amused by my inventions, but my brother was not. He told me our Dear Mother had made him swear he would always be truthful, and that his oath extended to me, even if I’d been too young to swear it myself, and that every time I told a lie an angel fell from Heaven.

For days after that I went around looking for fallen angels, but never encountered one, so I come to believe my big brother must have been mistaken, even if he did believe such a thing. But as strict as he can be about never lying, I’m pretty sure Harold won’t mind if I bend the truth to stay alive.

Of course, that’s before I find out what they want me to lie about.

First thing Smelt does is force the prisoner to sit up. There’s something pitiful about a man with a sack on his head. Knowing he can’t see what’s going to happen next, and how every little noise makes him flinch. The light of dawn has come into the lean-to shelter and I can see the man’s hands are all swollen black from where he’s been tied up.

“You hear me in there, Festus?” Smelt demands. “Count of three I’m cutting off this sack, and if you don’t want your head cut off, too, you better tell us what we want to know.”

Out of Smelt’s wide leather belt comes a thick-bladed knife with a wicked curve, just right for slicing a hog’s throat, or a man’s. He slips the shining blade up under the flour sack and slices it open with one flick of his wrist. The sack falls away and I’m looking at two white eyes as big as saucers. Two white eyes in a face the color of creamed coffee.

“Festus is our darky friend, ain’t you, Festus?”

The white eyes squint up at Smelt and I can tell the darky man is fearful but he’s angry, too. “I ain’t Festus,” he says. “Never was.”

“You’re Festus if we say so,” Stink insists, waving his fist in the man’s face.

The man gives his head a stubborn shake and glares up at Stink. “My name is Samuel Reed and I am a free man, born to a free woman in the state of Rhode Island!”

Smelt slowly crouches down, holding the big knife. He smiles in a way that makes me feel sick to my stomach. If a snake could smile it would look just like him. “This ain’t Rhode Island,” he says, “and we don’t care who you was born to, or where you got the crazy notion that a darky can talk the same as a white man. All we care about is this. Tell us where you hid them runaway slaves.”

“They are not slaves!” the man insists. “They have been set free by President Lincoln.”

“Yeah? If they ain’t slaves no more, why they running away?”

The man refuses to answer. The way he’s keeping still and quiet, it’s as if he expects to die before the sun gets much higher. Might be he’s praying, too, without saying the words aloud.

“Best get it over with,” Stink suggests.

“Last chance,” Smelt says, pointing with his knife. “Speak or meet your Maker.”

The darky man gives his head a little shake. You can tell he’s scared of the knife, and doesn’t want to die, but he won’t say where the runaway slaves are hid, even if it kills him.

I’m scared of that knife, too, but something in me needs to pipe up, and I can’t stop my mouth from saying, “You might just as well throw your money in a hole in the ground!”

“What?”

Smelt and Stink turn their attention to me.

“You can’t sell this man if he’s dead,” I point out.

Stink looks as if he’s fixing to punch me, but Smelt stops him. “Hold on,” he says. “The boy may have a point. We could forge owner papers easy enough, and collect the bounty.”

“Bounty?” I ask, figuring the more talk, the less call for a knife.

“Ten dollar bounty for every slave returned to Maryland,” Smelt tells me. “Emancipation don’t cover the border states. That’s a legal fact.”

They’re talking about the Emancipation Proclamation. I heard men arguing about it down at the general store, where they smoke and chaw of a Saturday afternoon. Seems like when President Lincoln declared that slaves in the Confederacy were free, he didn’t dare free the slaves in Union states like Maryland, Delaware, or Kentucky, in fear the border states might join the rebels. The proclamation is more like what they call a promise to the future, when the war has been won. Don’t count for much now, not if you’re a slave.

Smelt and Stink get to talking and decide they’ll leave the darky man alive for now, at least until the boy helps them locate where the runaway slaves are hid. The boy who’s going to lie his way onto the Underground Railroad. The boy who’s going to make them rich.

Must be that being scared makes you stupid, because it takes a while for me to realize the boy is me.

S
TINK
M
ULLINS TAKES CHARGE
of Samuel Reed, the darky man, while me and Smelt head off into the pine forest, looking for a trail.

He’s tied a rope around my neck, like you would with a mule or a dog, and if I pull too hard the rope tightens.

“You’re a quick little fella,” he says. “Best keep in mind you can’t outrun my knife.”

To demonstrate, he flicks his knife at a tree trunk and hits it square in the middle, with the blade buried deep.

There may come a time when I can get loose and run for it, but for now I’m going along, doing what he says. Walking through the soft leaves, smelling the spruce and pine all around us, and the ferns that tickle my knees.

About a mile from the lean-to camp we finally come upon the trail. By the look of it, wagons and horses have passed by recently. Smelt rubs his scraggly beard and nods to himself and says, “We ain’t got that far to go, so we best get your story straight.”

“My story?”

“Who you’re pretending to be. Family hiding the fugitives is Brewster,” he says, as if expecting me to be impressed. “You heard of the Brewster Mines?”

I shake my head.

“Ain’t heard of much, have you? Jebediah Brewster come here from Pennsylvania and made a fortune in gemstones. Now he’s selling lead and copper to the army and using the money to send slaves to Canada, where they can’t be touched. I know for a fact the old man has got thirty fugitives hid somewhere on his property but I don’t know where. That’s what you’re going to find out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Run away and we’ll kill the darky for sure, and sell your horse, and then hunt you down.”

“I promise not to run away.”

“You’re a liar, boy. Your promise don’t mean nothing to me,” he says with a sneer. “Only promise counts is this: If you run, my knife will find your back.”

“Yes, sir.”

We aren’t but half a mile on the trail before the ground starts to slope away and the trees thin out, and the sky gets big and full of sunlight. At the bottom of the hill is a fine stone wall, straight as a schoolmarm’s ruler, and beyond the stone wall, set like a jewel on the crown of a soft green hill, is a big house. An amazing house. A grand house made of stone and brick, with white pillars in the front and curtains in the windows and slate tiles on the roof and chimneys on every corner.

I’m thinking I’d give anything to live in a house like that, and be rich and happy and never have to worry about anything. And then Smelt yanks on the rope around my neck and says, “The best lie starts with the truth, boy. Tell ’em your name is Homer Figg and you’re looking for your brother. Tell ’em your horse got stolen. Tell ’em you’re hungry.”

Smelt takes the rope off and shakes me, like he wants to make sure I’m paying attention. “You understand? Just get inside the house.”

“Yes, sir.”

“They’ll likely take you straight to the kitchen. Brewster’s cooks will fuss over a skinny runt like you, and want to fatten you up with biscuits and butter and honey. Sound good?”

“Yes, sir.” It does sound good.

“Women who work in the kitchen will know everything that’s going on in the house, and in the mines, too. All you have to do is keep your eyes and ears open.”

“Yes, sir.”

“After supper you make an excuse and go out to the privy. I’ll be waiting.”

I start to say “yes, sir,” but he puts his finger on my lips and says, “Ssshh. Don’t lie to me. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking how to get around old Smelt. Thinking how to sell me for butter and biscuits. All you have to know is this: If you don’t come to old Smelt, old Smelt will come to you.”

Then he lets me go.