WAY BACK HOME

Drena Hills

“I have come back to where I belong;

not an enchanted place, but the walls are strong.”

-

Dorothy H. Rath

Laramie, Wyoming 1883

I needed a drink. It had been 8 months, but it felt like my last one had been an hour ago.

The black clergy robe stuck to my scarecrow frame like a shroud and I paced as I convinced myself this had all been a terrible mistake.

I looked down at the Bible in my hand and suddenly it seemed a foreign object and I couldn’t recall a line of scripture in my head if my life had depended on it.

“The hell with this,” I said pulling off the robe and bolting for the door.

I hadn’t even cleared the frame when the two of them looked up at me smiling.

They were in their Sunday best and it almost worked, but Kid had worn his gun.

Two years of amnesty hadn’t changed much. They ate more regular, traveled nearly as much, but the shadow you could sometimes catch in their eyes was gone. They had taken to respectability and being national heroes and it showed in their stance.

Heyes looked younger, the weight of the world gone from his shoulders and the darkness from his eyes. Curry, well who could ever read Kid, he just looked happy his partner was. Two sides of the same coin were Heyes and Curry.

“Hey Preacher we were just about to go in,” Heyes smiled blocking my path with a smile that almost made me believe them waiting there was an accident.

“What are you two doing here?” I asked knowing.

“Come to hear you preach,” Kid said honestly. “Always said you were my favorite Bible thumper to have scare the hell out of me.” He then gave me that grin, damn, like a dog, all trusting and believing in you. Heyes knows the one I mean, it’s tripped him up enough times.

“Ain’t gonna be any preaching least ways by me. Must have been crazy to think I could go home again. Now out of my way boys I need a drink.”

Heyes let me walk past him then caught my arm.

“Lot of people believe in you Preacher.”

“Yea well I ain’t one of them. So both of you two stop ganging up on me.”

“Fair enough,” Kid said pushing off the post he was leaning against. “Meet you fellas inside.”

I watched him walk towards the front of the freshly white washed church building. He didn’t look back, but I felt his eyes all the same.

“He’s got a lot of faith in you Heyes.”

“No, just got a lot of faith in you.”

“Damn it don’t you understand I can’t do this! Ten years! More than ten years I have robbed and stole and broken nearly every commandment, what right do I have to walk into that church and tell people of God’s love and salvation!”

“Who better?” Heyes said quietly.

“Heyes I can’t do it.”

“Then don’t.”

I looked up hopeful and he grinned.

“No, I don’t mean quit, I mean stop trying to be the man you were ten year ago cause that clearly didn’t work. Why not be the man standing here to day. A man who has made mistakes and fallen and found he can go home again. Tell them that story Preacher, don’t waste those ten years. Kid and I did that at first. We tried to deny who we had been instead of taking that experience and using it to become who we wanted to be.”

I stared at him long and hard.

“You owe me this one Preacher, one try, that’s all I ask and if it don’t work, I’ll buy the bottle,” Heyes said simply.

“Hell of a thing to call a marker in on.”

“Yea it is rather devious isn’t it?” Heyes flashed that grin again and despite it all he made me feel better.

“You should be the one in that pulpit,” I grumbled as I found myself being led back up the stairs.

“Now, now Preacher, Hell is in enough of a shambles with you back and us going to church, let’s not send the place into complete shock. Oh and Preacher, check the front row, she’s here.”

I stared at him for a moment and then gasped understanding.

“How?”

“Kid got a hold of her, thought it only right, you did promise the lady.”

Suddenly filled with a new hope I nodded and let Heyes hand me my robe. Slipping it on I picked up my new Bible, the one Kid had bought me and proudly had assured me it was the most expensive one they had. I traced a finger over where he had engraved my name in gold on the front, Daniel Jenkins and underneath, one word, Preacher.

I exhaled.

“See you in there brother,” I said quietly.

“Never doubted it for a second Reverend,” Hannibal Heyes smiled warmly and shut the door.

Curious I stepped up and cracked the door slightly. The church was nearly full, but there, in the front row besides Kid she sat. Tiny thing, no more than 5ft, yet the sight of her gave me more confidence than a row of angels would have.

And suddenly it was yesterday and the memory replaced my sermon.

*****************************

Wyoming

1879

How does a man of the cloth fall away? Don’t flatter us and say we face greater temptations or challenges, man falls away because he forgets to trust.

The first time I saw Devil’s Hole I was three sheets to the wind and half off my horse. It was Kid who brought me in. Took a chance too, Jim was still leader and he and Kid weren’t getting along real well. But we had met in town and I had helped him out over a poker game and he felt he owed me, since the alternative was my freezing to death in the snow.

Got a few stares, but he found me a bunk laid me down and then went outside to have his cousin yell out questions regarding how much sense he possessed.

To this day I don’t know what Kid said, but it shut Heyes up and after that Heyes came in introduced himself and squared me being there with Big Jim.

Kid is the only man I knew who can argue with Heyes and win. Heyes told me once that his cousin was the best judge of a man he had ever met and even if he fought the strays Kid found, he never really thought of turning them away.

Course once they found out how well I could shoot I was accepted and never really questioned.

Kid had taken to calling me Preacher since the Poker game having been amused by my quoting scripture regarding the ungodliness of drawing to an inside straight.

I rode with the gang for about six months and then drifted off. It was two years before I saw them all again. My thieving had gotten pretty penny ante, while Heyes had taken the gang to the heights of notoriety.

Heyes invited me back for a job he was planning in Fort Worth, yea that one. Kid might be able to spot potential in a man, but Heyes sure knew how to bring it out.

The man could just sit down with you and share a drink and something about the way he listened and drew you out made you want to live up to all the things he was asking of you.

Only Heyes could keep me sober for a job and that said a lot. His faith in me, in all of us was probably the reason the gang was so successful. Man like that believing in a body is a powerful thing.

As for meeting her, well that happened after the Stanford job. I took a bullet in the shoulder. We had split up and I was with Kid , Hank and Lobo. He sent them on and took me into the nearest town to try and get me some help.

I kept telling him to leave me, he was wanted for about $10,000 by then and I was just small change, but Kid was the stubbornest man when he got an idea in his head. I remember him half carrying me up the back steps of that hotel on the edge of town.

She was in the hallway when we turned the corner and looked up when Kid said, “Hang on Preacher I’m gonna get you some help.”

“Looks like he could use it,” she said and without a second glance opened the door to her room and told us to enter.

Kid paused, but I was bleeding pretty bad and the last of my energy was gone and I guess I collapsed completely on him and he had no choice. Harriet said that was God, Kid said it was his rotten luck, but it left him with no choice.

“Ma’am, this really isn’t a great idea,” Kid said even as he laid me on one the beds.

“Men shooting men rarely is young man,” she said and poured water into a bowl and handing him a cloth to use for bandaging. “Now I got me speaking to do, but when I finish I’ll bring you back some more bandages and food.”

“Thank you ma’am. Ma’am don’t you even want to know who we are?” Kid said perplexed.

“Your men on the run, ain’t got it in me to ever not help them sort,” she smiled.

And that was our first introduction to Harriet Tubman.

***********************************

“Grew up in Maryland, parents didn’t marry, slaves not allowed,” she said later as she and Kid sat beside my bed.

“When did you leave, I mean…”

“Runaway?” she smiled. “Nineteen. See this mark on my forehead? Got that when a master threw a chunk a rock at another runaway, dern near killed me. But it was the Lord’s way of saving me. Took me a year to recover, no one thought about sending for a doctor. When I got well enough to work again they put me in the field, thought I was a half wit now. But I wasn’t.”

“I heard stories about you from my mother,” Kid said fascinated. “She said you got over 300 slaves north.”

“Your momma abolitionist?”

“Yea a Quaker,” Kid said. “Our cellar was on the underground more than a few times.”

“Where abouts?”

“Lawrence.”

She nodded, “Brave folk there, heard about them we did, especially when that devil Quantrill came looking for revenge. What you momma think about you doing this sort of thing after her bringing you up right?”

Kid looked uncomfortable, “My folks died in the raid.”

“And you figured robbing and killing folks was all right then?”

“I don’t kill folks,” Kid said angry getting up and going over to the window.

“How much you wanted for boy?”

He turned surprised, “10,000.”

“Well I was wanted for 40,000. We all wanted in a way, just the reason that makes the difference. That what you want to be wanted for boy?”

I was conscious, but neither of them realized. As I watched this tiny woman work at his soul I felt a shame and hunger all at the same time.

“Look ma’am life don’t always give a man chances.”

“But it does give him choices. What’s your name boy?”

“Jedediah Curry,” Kid said almost defiantly. “I see you recognize the name, well yea your right, I’m that Curry, gunslinger, sorry now you helped us?”

And I will never forget the way she looked up at him so calm and with that little smile.

“I knew you mama, golden hair, blue eyes like yours, I thought I knew those eyes! She was there in Philadelphia when I arrived!”

Kid fell back into his chair, “You knew my mother!”

“Working with William Still, chief brakeman on the ‘railroad’. Yes, kinder woman I never met, so full of life, shy thing though, funny you being her son. She married her an Irish man didn’t she?”

“My father,” Kid said his eyes full of wonder.

“Oh yea met him once, such a strange pair, him so rough and tumble and her all society proper. He loved her though.”

I watched Kid’s eyes, he suddenly looked so young as all the bravo of his reputation fell away with this woman’s simple reminiscences.

A knock at the door sounded and we all froze. Kid was instantly back in control gun in his hand and moving behind the door motioned for Harriet to get it.

Cautiously she walked to the door and opened it slightly.

Hannibal Heyes blinked surprised. The trail had led him to this room, but this was not what he expected. He had been riding ever since we had not made the rendezvous afraid of whose blood he was trailing.

“Evening ma’am, sorry to be a bother I was wondering…”

“Heyes!” Kid said moving around the door the relief in his face only matched by his cousin seeing he was unharmed.

“Well come in boy, thought I got me a single room, but the Lord sometimes has other ideas.”

“Ah thank you ma’am,” Heyes said entering and pulling off his hat while he shot his cousin a confused look until he saw me. “Preacher, how is he?”

“Almost fit to ride Heyes,” I lied.

“Miss Tubman here helped us Heyes,” Kid said and waited for a reaction.

Heyes, well he’s read more than most and Kid knew he would know the name even if their families hadn’t of talked of her.

“Harriet Tubman?” Heyes said whirling impressed.

“Heyes she knew my mother.”

Heyes blinked trying to take all this in.

“Sit down boy and eat something,” Harriet merely said and pulled him up a chair.

************************************

“You older than him ain’t ya?” she said two hours later as Kid slept in the bed beside me finally allowed to let his guard down now that his partner was watching his back and I listened as those two clever minds sniffed around each other.

“Yes ma’am,” Heyes said amused.

“Seems a good boy, you the one that got him robbing?”

Heyes bristled, “I didn’t…”

“Don’t gotta do anything if someone looks up to you, they just follow as you do.”

“I never…”

“No mind, what you gonna do about it now?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well you got yourself and him right famous I hear that enough for your tombstone or were you thinking of maybe going home?”

“Going home? Ma’am I lost my home a long time ago, no home to go back to.”

“Yea the boy told me, true enough, but that ain’t the home I mean. I mean the one you build that they can’t take away. The one where you got peace about who you are and what you gonna do when you wake up each morning. You two ain’t never gonna find home until you do that.”

“Ya know for a little old black woman you got a lot of spunk,” Heyes said finally.

“And for a young big white man you got a lot of foolishness. Man with your brains, why he could be president, what you thinking risking both you and your little brothers lives robbing folks?”

“He’s my cousin, not my brother.”

“Not any more he ain’t. He’s your brother boy. Could tell that the minute you saw he wasn’t the one bleeding.”

“So what you want us to do, just quit?”

“I want you to find your way back home Hannibal Heyes. World needs men like you and Mr. Curry. Don’t waste it dying in no street over greenbacks.”

I don’t know about Heyes, but from that moment forth I began my journey home.

We left her three days later. She hid us the whole time and when Heyes came up with a plan to get us out she went right along with it. Her last words to us that day were, “I was a conductor on the Underground Railroad for eight years and I can say what most conductors can’t say – I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”

We talked about her once or twice on the way back to the Hole. Heyes kept shrugging it off, said he had this great plan to hit the mining train near Columbine. Kid he was quiet and me well I never went back just struck out on my own trying to forget what she said.

Ran into them twice in their quest for amnesty, once I saved them, another time they saved me. When they finally got it and opened that detective business of theirs, Kid looked me up and offered me a real job. Six months sober Heyes finally told me I was wasted on the work and said he had got me my church back. Took him another two months to convince me and here we now stood.

I opened the door and stepped up to the pulpit.

An air of expectancy waited my words and I tightened my grip on my Bible.

I looked down and saw Kid sitting there, smiling like not only did he believe I could do it, he would take anyone outside who thought I couldn’t and deal with them.

And Heyes, pleased as a papa watching a son take his first steps. Heyes is more of an optimist than he likes to admit. He really is disappointed when people don’t live up to all he sees in them. Kinda frightening and kinda wonderful.

And Harriet, la she had to be 60 now, smiling at me with that told you so look in here eye and I smiled back.

Then I opened my Bible and came home.

Historical Note: Harriet Tubman was born in Maryland in 1821. Everything she talks about here is true. She was injured and did escape when she was 19 to work the ‘railroad’ bringing 300 people to safety and freedom. Standing only 5 ft 2 she eventually was able to free her parents and family and was given a home in Auburn, New York. During the Civil War she worked as a cook, a scout, a spy and eventually a nurse for the North. After the war she spoke around the country and turned her home into a place for indigent African Americans. She died there on March 10, 1913 and was given military last rites.

Harriet had not been content to find her way back home. She had made sure all she met were given the same chance.