Free I Was a Revolutionary by Andrew Malan Milward Page A

They’d been so overrun with exodusters the last month, they were losing all patience and goodwill. This was not a matter of skin color, the mayor said repeatedly. This was a matter of economics, and Atchison simply couldn’t afford to keep giving away food and the like. So it was back to the basement of another crowded church, hoping the hostility would fade, and eventually, as more and more people were transferred, it did, dissolving into mean disregard. CK and Mil took turns ministering to the sick and elderly, praying, listening as they spoke.“Ain’t no Kansas I heard about,” said a bone-thin older man, too sick to travel, one night as he lay on his pallet by the fire. CK sat beside him, Bible open on his lap. “Jayhawkers and John the Brown ain’t even a memory. ‘Eden on the Prairie’ ain’t even a dream no more.” CK raised a tin cup to the man’s lips but he shook it off. He was in pain, knew he would soon die, and said he wasn’t scared. O Death, be kind to him, thought CK. He’d seen men unafraid of the end and he hoped he could muster the same resolve when Death came for him. But while that would not be the end, lying in the arms of his Savior was something he wasn’t yet ready to court.
    While most accepted transportation back to Wyandotte or Topeka, CK looked into passage to Nicodemus. The steamer to Atchison had brought them north of Wyandotte but no farther west, leaving them three hundred miles from their destination. A railway would suffice but was costly. He thought of Dulcet, imagined him in a bar, smiling over a bottle of brown liquor, as he captivated others with stories of his journey out of the South. CK carried on an imagined conversation with him as, again, he looked for work. Maybe now Dulcet would stop his scoffing and understand how hard it was to live in a godly way. The lost company of his friend, however, paled now beside the loss of that money. In these times the only salve for CK was Nicodemus. When he felt that wrath come upon him, he’d start to sing “Wake Nicodemus,” but now the song was less affirmation of his vision than a guard against succumbing to disillusioned anger.
    Defying CK, Mil sought work as well, determined as she was to get out of Atchison. She took up washing and laundering linens for a few families, carrying out the tasks with Rachel on her hip or at her feet. After a few days, CK found steady work in a grain elevator from a man named Roberts, who lived outside of town. Roberts worked right alongsidehis hired men, putting in a full day, too. He seemed to like CK, and one day as they descended the steps of that towering elevator, along with another man Roberts referred to as “Germany,” he offered to let CK stay on as long as he wanted. “You’re the hard kind of worker I could use around here,” he said. “Ain’t that right, Germany? We could use us another two, three like CK.”
    â€œThey take our jobs,” Germany said, his voice heavy with the accent of his home. They were the first words CK had heard him speak beyond the uh-huh grunting that shoveling grain necessitated. He was older than CK, bespectacled, and did everything with an air of agitation, whether hauling heavy grain sacks into storage or wiping a smudge from the lens of his glasses with a handkerchief from his back pocket. He repeated himself, Germany did, and set out in the opposite direction, before turning back to say he would see Roberts tomorrow morning, nodding curtly.
    This made Roberts laugh. “Don’t pay him no mind. He thinks he’s white, is all.” He took a rag from his denim trousers and dabbed at his forehead, repeating his offer to CK. “Black, white, don’t much matter to me, so long as you carry your weight.” CK thanked him, but remained resolute on leaving for Nicodemus after he’d raised enough money for train fare. “Whatever suits you,”